College Administrator Experiences: A Phenomenological Study of Higher Education Leadership in American Prisons

Higher education for the incarcerated (HEP) is a re-energized phenomenon in the age of criminal justice reform and social change. Following the 2015 Second Chance Pell Grant Experimental Initiative (SCP), which granted select colleges tuition funding for prisoners, HEP grew exponentially. The successes of the SCP laid the groundwork for the 2020 FASFA Simplification Act. In July 2023 the 2020 FSA begins, and all those imprisoned within America may access Pell Grant Funds for higher education. Despite momentous efforts to bring higher education to the incarcerated, HEP grapples with continued challenges and lacks unified, evidence-based competency equal to normative higher education. For this new movement to be successful it needs stronger foundations for its new growth. This study presumes that HEP leaders of the SCP Era have vital leadership experiences to lend to the journey ahead of HEP. This transcendental phenomenological research study explores the dynamics of the HEP leader experience, gathers their experiences within HEP leadership, and investigates what they believe is important for HEP’s future. Thirty-five HEP leaders were interviewed to provide evidence related to their perceptions of the HEP experience and what is best for its expansion. The data equated to collective experiences dominated by Department of Corrections culture, practicalities of day-to-day needs in HEP leadership, a wealth of positive experiences that are vital to the profession and the need for foundational philosophes that guide HEP. The study revealed a style of persistent leadership that is required for HEP success and the future of its impending evolution

Doctor of Education Newsletter 2019

WSU Doctor of Education Inaugural Cohort 2019 Winona State University has an astounding reputation for educational practitioner preparation programs in the College of Education. As the summer of 2019 commences, a new journey begins for the inaugural cohort of doctoral students who embark on their quest to obtain Doctor of Education degrees.https://openriver.winona.edu/educationeddnewsletters/1000/thumbnail.jp

Doctoral Student Perspectives on Motivation and Persistence: Eye-Opening Insights Into the Ideas and Thoughts That Today\u27s Doctoral Students Have About Finishing the Doctoral Degree

It all comes down to this: we have an amazing team of faculty working with us who are present, supportive, intelligent, and motivated to help us succeed. They designed this program with those objectives in mind. We are in good hands, and any questions we have will be answered, so long as we ask them. Having the support system of our faculty, along with the tools we need to be successful, are major parts of the battle, already won. The rest is up to us. - A. Brooke Boultonhttps://openriver.winona.edu/educationeddbooks/1000/thumbnail.jp

Inspiring and Aspiring Educators: An Intersection of Historic and Current Education Landscapes

The book Inspiring and Aspiring Educators: An Intersection of Historic and Current Education Landscapes is a collection of graduate student writings from the 2021 summer Education Doctorate Residency at Winona State University.https://openriver.winona.edu/educationeddbooks/1002/thumbnail.jp

Strategies to breed sterile leucaena for Western Australia Estrategias para el desarrollo de genotipos de leucaena estériles para Western Australia

Strategies to breed sterile leucaena for Western Australia include plant breeding and biotechnology tools to generate sterile lines at both the tetraploid and triploid ploidy levels. For tetraploids, the main target species is the commercial Leucaena leucocephala, that is well known for its potential as a high-quality, productive and persistent forage. Gene editing technologies (CRISPR) will be utilized to edit out flowering genes and develop a non-flowering L. leucocephala and/or create male/female genic sterile lines of L. leucocephala. For triploids, the strategy is to cross tetraploid species (L. leucocephala and/or L. diversifolia) with diploid species to generate sterile triploid hybrids. The diploid parents will include species that have good forage attributes such as L. collinsii, L. macrophylla, L. shannonii and L. pulverulenta. Several of these triploid crosses have already been created by the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (Perth, Western Australia) and will be evaluated in the Kimberley and Pilbara regions of Western Australia for their agronomic performance and sterility. Vegetative propagation will be required for the tetraploid gene-edited non-flowering L. leucocephala. Triploids can either be vegetatively propagated, once generated, or generated via a seed production nursery

Genomic Hallmarks and Structural Variation in Metastatic Prostate Cancer.

While mutations affecting protein-coding regions have been examined across many cancers, structural variants at the genome-wide level are still poorly defined. Through integrative deep whole-genome and -transcriptome analysis of 101 castration-resistant prostate cancer metastases (109X tumor/38X normal coverage), we identified structural variants altering critical regulators of tumorigenesis and progression not detectable by exome approaches. Notably, we observed amplification of an intergenic enhancer region 624 kb upstream of the androgen receptor (AR) in 81% of patients, correlating with increased AR expression. Tandem duplication hotspots also occur near MYC, in lncRNAs associated with post-translational MYC regulation. Classes of structural variations were linked to distinct DNA repair deficiencies, suggesting their etiology, including associations of CDK12 mutation with tandem duplications, TP53 inactivation with inverted rearrangements and chromothripsis, and BRCA2 inactivation with deletions. Together, these observations provide a comprehensive view of how structural variations affect critical regulators in metastatic prostate cancer