Effectiveness of community outreach and engagement in recruitment success for a prebirth cohort.

IntroductionWe describe the effectiveness of community outreach and engagement in supporting recruitment for the US National Children's Vanguard Study between 2009 and 2012.MethodsThirty-seven study locations used 1 of 4 strategies to recruit 18-49-year-old pregnant or trying to conceive women: (1) Initial Vanguard Study used household-based recruitment; (2) Direct Outreach emphasized self-referral; (3) Enhanced Household-Based Recruitment enhanced Initial Vanguard Study strategies; and (4) Provider-Based Recruitment recruited through healthcare providers. Outreach and engagement included advance letters, interactions with healthcare providers, participation in community events, contacts with community organizations, and media outreach.ResultsAfter 1-2 years, 41%-74% of 9844 study-eligible women had heard about the National Children's Vanguard Study when first approached. Women who heard were 1.5-3 times more likely to consent. Hearing via word-of-mouth or the media most frequently predicted consent. The more sources women heard from the higher the odds of consent.ConclusionsWe conclude that tailored outreach and engagement facilitate recruitment in cohort studies

Calls to Leadership

Below is a document containing the combined remarks delivered by the following representatives from across the Illinois Wesleyan community:From the Board – Deon Hornsby ’97, Board of TrusteesFrom a Presidential Perspective – Richard F. Wilson, President EmeritusFrom Alumni – Elly Jones ’91, President of the Alumni AssociationFrom Faculty – Michael B. Young, Robert W. Harrington Endowed Professor of HistoryFrom Staff – Eric Gordon, 2015 Max Starkey Service Award recipientFrom Students – Lane Bennett ’18, President of Student Senate The speakers\u27 photographs and their remarks are also available for download here. A video of the ceremony is available at https://youtu.be/p4tqbmQALeQ?t=20m59shttps://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/jensen_inauguration/1004/thumbnail.jp

1983 Ruby Yearbook

A digitized copy of the 1983 Ruby, the Ursinus College yearbook.https://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/ruby/1086/thumbnail.jp

Green Infrastructure, Revitalization, and Sustainability

MCOM 441 Class “American Sponge City: Alternative Water Structures” Avery Davis: “The Los Angeles River: A City’s Urban Heartbeat” Robyn M. B. Stuber “Linking Social Sustainability to Sea Level Rise Through Vulnerability in Wicomico County, Maryland” Brent Cagle “Water Resources and Plant-Based Eating: Radical Lifestyle or Reality Check?

Can dominance genetic variance be ignored in evolutionary quantitative genetic analyses of wild populations?

Accurately estimating genetic variance components is important for studying evolution in the wild. Empirical work on domesticated and wild outbred populations suggests that dominance genetic variance represents a substantial part of genetic variance, and theoretical work predicts that ignoring dominance can inflate estimates of additive genetic variance. Whether this issue is pervasive in natural systems is unknown, because we lack estimates of dominance variance in wild populations obtained in situ. Here, we estimate dominance and additive genetic variance, maternal variance, and other sources of nongenetic variance in eight traits measured in over 9000 wild nestlings linked through a genetically resolved pedigree. We find that dominance variance, when estimable, does not statistically differ from zero and represents a modest amount (2-36%) of genetic variance. Simulations show that (1) inferences of all variance components for an average trait are unbiased; (2) the power to detect dominance variance is low; (3) ignoring dominance can mildly inflate additive genetic variance and heritability estimates but such inflation becomes substantial when maternal effects are also ignored. These findings hence suggest that dominance is a small source of phenotypic variance in the wild and highlight the importance of proper model construction for accurately estimating evolutionary potential

1947 Ruby Yearbook

A digitized copy of the 1947 Ruby, the Ursinus College yearbook.https://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/ruby/1049/thumbnail.jp

1939 Ruby Yearbook

A digitized copy of the 1939 Ruby, the Ursinus College yearbook.https://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/ruby/1041/thumbnail.jp

1971 Ruby Yearbook

A digitized copy of the 1971 Ruby, the Ursinus College yearbook.https://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/ruby/1074/thumbnail.jp