Rebuilding the Lives of Youth Affected by Chronic Illness

Global Independent Study, Summer 2017 -- Ballymore, Ireland -- Partner Agencie(s): Barretstown, a Serious Fun Camphttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139009/1/French_Poster.pd

Promoting Transfer Student Success through Comprehensive Orientation Programming at GVSU

Research has shown that transfer students have lower retention and graduation rates than students who stay at the same institution for the duration of their college enrollment. Transfer students are a diverse group of students that face unique challenges when transitioning to a new institution, particularly when coming from a two-year school to a four-year college or university. This project examines common issues experienced in transition and explores best practices to set transfer students up for success at receiving institutions. Focusing on early academic advising, peer mentoring, and exposure to campus resources, this project restructures the current Transfer Advising and Registration system at Grand Valley State University to provide a more well-rounded introduction to campus that works to smooth the transition process for transfer students

Modeling the X-ray - UV Correlations in NGC 7469

We model the correlated X-ray - UV observations of NGC 7469, for which well sampled data in both these bands have been obtained recently in a multiwavelength monitoring campaign. To this end we derive the transfer function in wavelength \ls and time lag \t, for reprocessing hard (X-ray) photons from a point source to softer ones (UV-optical) by an infinite plane (representing a cool, thin accretion disk) located at a given distance below the X-ray source, under the assumption that the X-ray flux is absorbed and emitted locally by the disk as a black body of temperature appropriate to the incident flux. Using the observed X-ray light curve as input we have computed the expected continuum UV emission as a function of time at several wavelengths (\l \l 1315 \AA, \l \l 6962 \AA, \l \l 15000 \AA, \l \l 30000 \AA) assuming that the X-ray source is located one \sc radius above the disk plane, with the mass of the black hole $M$ and the latitude angle $\theta$ of the observer relative to the disk plane as free parameters. We have searched the parameter space of black hole masses and observer azimuthal angles but we were unable to reproduce UV light curves which would resemble, even remotely, those observed. We also explored whether particular combinations of the values of these parameters could lead to light curves whose statistical properties (i.e. the autocorrelation and cross correlation functions) would match those corresponding to the observed UV light curve at \l \l 1315 \AA. Even though we considered black hole masses as large as $10^9$ M$_{\odot}$ no such match was possible. Our results indicate that some of the fundamental assumptions of this model will have to be modified to obtain even approximate agreement between the observed and model X-ray - UV light curves.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures, ApJ in pres