Reducing Teacher Stress Using Mindfulness

The prevalence of teacher stress is real and is currently at the forefront of recent research and studies. Stress has impacted teachers who are employed at Woodrow Wilson Elementary located in Newton, Iowa. There are ways to deal with stress and one of those ways would be implementing mindfulness exercises. This school improvement plan would implement mindfulness exercise training for teachers during the 2023-2024 school year. A teacher stress survey would be given before implementing the training, and the same survey would be given at the completion of the training. A reflection will be administered to determine if teachers feel like they will use mindfulness exercises in the future

Effects of Dredged Materials on Growth of Prairie Species

Dredged materials are taken from Illinois waterways by the hundreds of thousands of cubic yards each year. These materials make up a composition that varies by the location of dredging but invariably contain sand and clay brought up from the bottom of rivers and lakes. These materials are amassed at three locations throughout the state. While there is wide speculation for beneficial uses, dredged materials do not currently have any definitive use. We tested the hypothesis that dredged materials could be a useful component of constructed soil by measuring the height of native prairie plants grown in one of five soil mixes in a greenhouse experiment. Plants of four species native to Illinois prairies were grown individually in a soil mix ranging from 0 to twothirds dredged material for 8 weeks. These consisted of three herbaceous dicots and one grass- each having 5 replicates. Height measurements were taken when planted, and three additional times including when harvested. Shoots were harvested, dried and weighed. Soil type significantly affected growth of three of the four species with growth peaking in mixes that included small proportions of dredged material. We conclude that dredged sand and silt can be useful components of soil for the four prairie species studied.https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/urs2021bio/1000/thumbnail.jp

Automatically assembling a full census of an academic field

The composition of the scientific workforce shapes the direction of scientific research, directly through the selection of questions to investigate, and indirectly through its influence on the training of future scientists. In most fields, however, complete census information is difficult to obtain, complicating efforts to study workforce dynamics and the effects of policy. This is particularly true in computer science, which lacks a single, all-encompassing directory or professional organization. A full census of computer science would serve many purposes, not the least of which is a better understanding of the trends and causes of unequal representation in computing. Previous academic census efforts have relied on narrow or biased samples, or on professional society membership rolls. A full census can be constructed directly from online departmental faculty directories, but doing so by hand is prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. Here, we introduce a topical web crawler for automating the collection of faculty information from web-based department rosters, and demonstrate the resulting system on the 205 PhD-granting computer science departments in the U.S. and Canada. This method constructs a complete census of the field within a few minutes, and achieves over 99% precision and recall. We conclude by comparing the resulting 2017 census to a hand-curated 2011 census to quantify turnover and retention in computer science, in general and for female faculty in particular, demonstrating the types of analysis made possible by automated census construction.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, 2 table

Practicing Postures of Growth: A Quasi-Experiment Exploring Student Engagement and Ownership of Learning

The American education system has evolved into a competitive learning environment that defines student learning as the ability to pass high-stakes standardized tests and have high grade point averages, but there is a significant gap between K-12 and higher education expectations in what qualifies a student as “smart” and college ready. Literature shows that students who are taught how to take ownership of, engage in, and develop skills to enhance their learning are more likely to be college ready and cultivate deep learning experiences throughout the entirety of their academic career. The purpose of this study is to evaluate if college students can take ownership of and actively engage in their learning when taught various learning skills and mindsets. Using a quantitative quasi-experimental approach, this study was used to evaluate if there was a change in students’ learning when they were taught learning strategies. The results suggest that there was not only a positive impact on a students’ ability to take ownership of their learning when taught various skills, but also in their intentionality, understanding, and mastery of a topic. Developing a student’s ability to own and create deeper learning is a skill that would not only benefit students throughout their entire academic career, but also their entire adult lives

Bowen Family Systems Theory in the Life and Works of Ernest Hemingway

For my thesis I researched Bowen Family Systems Theory, a psychological theory that concentrates, not on the individual, but rather on the system within which an individual is involved as a means of explaining behavior. After further explaining this theory in terms of its eight concepts, I looked at the life of Ernest Hemingway, his relationships, his writing style and central theme, his success, and his hardships. For his works, I concentrated on Hemingway’s collection of orgamc short stories entitled In Our Time for the application of Bowen Theory. My research has led me to conclude that Hemingway managed anxiety through a variety of means, but most notably through alcoholism and writing

Prestige drives epistemic inequality in the diffusion of scientific ideas

The spread of ideas in the scientific community is often viewed as a competition, in which good ideas spread further because of greater intrinsic fitness, and publication venue and citation counts correlate with importance and impact. However, relatively little is known about how structural factors influence the spread of ideas, and specifically how where an idea originates might influence how it spreads. Here, we investigate the role of faculty hiring networks, which embody the set of researcher transitions from doctoral to faculty institutions, in shaping the spread of ideas in computer science, and the importance of where in the network an idea originates. We consider comprehensive data on the hiring events of 5032 faculty at all 205 Ph.D.-granting departments of computer science in the U.S. and Canada, and on the timing and titles of 200,476 associated publications. Analyzing five popular research topics, we show empirically that faculty hiring can and does facilitate the spread of ideas in science. Having established such a mechanism, we then analyze its potential consequences using epidemic models to simulate the generic spread of research ideas and quantify the impact of where an idea originates on its longterm diffusion across the network. We find that research from prestigious institutions spreads more quickly and completely than work of similar quality originating from less prestigious institutions. Our analyses establish the theoretical trade-offs between university prestige and the quality of ideas necessary for efficient circulation. Our results establish faculty hiring as an underlying mechanism that drives the persistent epistemic advantage observed for elite institutions, and provide a theoretical lower bound for the impact of structural inequality in shaping the spread of ideas in science.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, 1 tabl

The Influence of Identity Characteristics on E-Shopping Enjoyment and E-Loyalty among Women Online Shoppers

This paper will discuss research-in-progress which extends a previous study that examined the role of enjoyment on thedevelopment of e-Loyalty by considering the role of race, income, and education on the enjoyment and development of e-Loyalty in women online shoppers. The goal of this research is to develop a better understanding of the online consumer byinvestigating women in relation to their e-commerce behaviors and perceptions. By looking at the intersectionality of race,income, and education level, we hope to gain a better understanding of the complexities of women as consumers. In addition,we hope to gain a better understanding of the digital divide by investigating how identity factors may yield differentoutcomes in technology adoption or behavior. This paper will outline the research background, provide a literature review ofe-commerce, e-Loyalty, and the digital divide, and describe the research design for this investigation into the influence ofidentity characteristics and online shopping