When God Builds a House

“Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it.” Psalm 127:1 Let me paraphrase: “Except the Lord build the association, we are wasting our time.” The Bible has many illustrations about building. Proverbs 14:1 says, “Every wise woman builds her house.” In Matthew 7:24-27, Jesus talks about the wise man who builds his house on the rock. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus describes the man who builds the tower, but first sits down to decide how much it costs (14:28). The cornerstone is Peter’s construction metaphor in 1 Peter 2. Paul describes building materials in 1 Corinthians 3:12 – wood, hay, and stubble as opposed to gold, silver, and precious stones. I don’t know about you, but I’m not interested in being the first little pig with a house built out of straw. So I asked myself, how does the Lord build a house? What should we know about His construction techniques? What house has the Lord ever built anyway

Preparing for ABHE Accreditation: Suggestions for Essential Elements 7 and 11

What can you do to bring your library up to the ABHE Standards for Accreditation? At the 2006 ACL Conference, a panel of librarians (Patty Agee, Tony Garrett, and Carol Reid) looked at two essential elements of the requirements to see how our libraries measured up. Our areas were the library’s relationships with the faculty (essential element number seven) and with the information technology personnel on our campuses (number eleven). After examining the new Library Guidelines for ABHE Colleges and Universities, which are posted on the ACL website as a member benefit under the Bible College section link, we graded ourselves and talked about the supporting evidence that we could present to a visiting team. Here are some of our suggestions about these areas

Will the 'Shire' ever be the same again? Schooling Responses to the Cronulla Beach Riot

In the aftermath of the Cronulla riots, schools were faced with the fallout of social conflict, including having to deal with widespread fear and confusion both in their local communities and among students. This was especially the case for schools in the Sutherland Shire and in the local government area (LGA) of Bankstown. Apart from the presence of many young people in the initial riot and the revenge raids, some schools, like churches, had been the target of attacks (Leys and Box, 2005: 1; Daily Telegraph, 2005: 5). Schools were also targeted as places to battle the consequences of cultural division: the then Prime Minister John Howard, in his Australia Day speech just over a month after the riots, complained that the teaching of Australian history in schools needed reform to properly foster the core values that would bind a nation together (Sydney Morning Herald, 2006). At all levels of government, a raft of programs designed to ease local tensions were introduced, many of which focused on young people or on schools (see Board of Studies New South Wales, 2007; Surf Life Saving NSW, 2006). This article outlines the contexts for understanding the role of schools: both in terms of the spatial dynamics of the ‘Shire’ and in terms of the changing nature of educational policy. It then focuses on a National Values Education Project (NVEP) involving five schools in south and south-western Sydney as a direct response to the Cronulla riot. It suggests that these contexts produce both a degree of cultural heterogeneity in young people’s social lives and a degree of segregation amongst young people in schooling which delimits ‘what is possible’ in terms of schooling responses to the Cronulla riot

Thinking Like A Nurse: The Impact Of Simulation And Clinical Experiences On Clinical Judgment In Prelicensure Nursing Students

Introduction: The ability to make sound clinical judgments is essential to safe nursing practice. Clinical experiences allow nursing students to integrate theory and practice and demonstrate clinical judgment. Simulation is being used by nursing programs to replace clinical experiences. Limited research is published regarding the effectiveness of simulation in the development of clinical judgment. This study explored differences in clinical judgment among nursing students in a maternal-newborn clinical course participating in simulation or hospital-based clinical experiences. Methods: This study used Lasater’s Clinical Judgment Rubric (LCJR), based on Tanner’s Clinical Judgment Model, to evaluate nursing students’ clinical judgment following completion of simulation or hospital-based clinical experiences. The model includes four dimensions: noticing, interpreting, responding and reflecting. The LCJR catalogues the behaviors associated with each dimension of clinical judgment. Participants were students registered for a maternal-newborn clinical course at prelicensure nursing programs in the Midwest. Students completed simulation or clinical experiences as scheduled by the program. Following completion of the clinical rotation, each student participated in an evaluative high-risk maternal-newborn simulation. Evaluative simulation experiences were recorded. Recordings were viewed and evaluated using the LCJR. LCJR scores were calculated, associations between mean LCJR scores for each group were examined using an independent sample t-test. Data were analyzed to determine if there were any associations between demographic characteristics and clinical judgment scores. Results: There was no statistically significant difference in clinical judgment for nursing students participating in simulation as compared to hospital-based clinical experiences (t = -1.056, p = 0.295). Of the demographic variables analyzed, race/ethnicity and current employment explained significant variance in clinical judgment. White, non-Hispanic participants scored higher compared to African-Americans (t = -4.539 p \u3c 0.001) and other ethnicities (t = -2.449 p = 0.018). Employed participants scored lower (t = -2.044, p = 0.046) than unemployed participants. This study provides evidence that replacing clinical experiences with simulation is effective in the maternal-newborn clinical area under conditions comparable to this study

A universal primer for isolation of fragments of a gene encoding phytoene desaturase for use in virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) studies

We have been using Virus-Induced Gene Silencing (VIGS) to test the function of genes that are candidates for involvement in floral senescence. Although VIGS is a powerful tool for assaying the effects of gene silencing in plants, relatively few taxa have been studied using this approach, and most that have are in the Solanaceae. We typically use silencing of phytoene desaturase (PDS) in preliminary tests of the feasibility of using VIGS. Silencing this gene, whose product is involved in carotene biosynthesis, results in a characteristic photobleaching phenotype in the leaves. We have found that efficient silencing requires the use of fragments that are more than 90% homologous to the target gene. To simplify testing the effectiveness of VIGS in a range of species, we designed a set of universal primers to a region of the PDS gene that is highly conserved among species, and that therefore allows an investigator to isolate a fragment of the homologous PDS gene from the species of interest. We report the sequences of these primers and the results of VIGS experiments in horticultural species from the Asteraceae, Leguminosae, Balsaminaceae and Solanaceae