Religious Diversity and Cooperation on Campus

This article addresses the issue of religious diversity and cooperation on college campuses. Nowhere is America’s religious diversity more apparent than on college campuses. College campuses have done much to engage issues of race, gender, and other important markers of identity. Religion has typically been left out of this conversation. It is a critical time for higher education to engage religious diversity seriously. The American campus is a unique space which encourages both identity commitment and pluralist community; it values both individual freedom and contribution to the common good. Successfully promoting pluralism and inter-religious engagement on college campuses could impact not only individual campuses, and the broader system of higher education, but even the country in which we live, and perhaps the world. The Interfaith Youth Core employs a unique methodology which combines service learning and interfaith dialogue. IFYC provides young people and the institutions that support them with leadership training, project resources, and a connection to a broader movement of interfaith cooperation

The Civic Relevance of Interfaith Cooperation for Colleges and Universities

As tensions around religious diversity escalate in America, there is an increased realization that interfaith cooperation has broad civic relevance. In this realization, there is an opportunity for American colleges and universities to play a leadership role in constructively engaging religious diversity. The authors of this article explore the current challenges posed by religious diversity, a model of interfaith cooperation focused on civic engagement and social cohesion. They also explore how college students have a particular leadership role to play in building interfaith cooperation

Building Religious Pluralism: The Interfaith Youth Core Approach

Building Religious Pluralism: The Interfaith Youth Core ApproachEboo PatelFounder and Executive DirectorInterfaith Youth CoreCassie MeyerDirector, Outreach Education & TrainingInterfaith Youth Cor

In Our Time: Advancing Interfaith Studies Curricula at Catholic Colleges and Universities

People who orient around religion differently are interacting with greater frequency than ever before. These interactions, especially in the context of college and university campuses, require young people to grapple with their own identities in ways that previous generations could more easily avoid. Conversations about religious diversity have become elevated at colleges and universities, which has led Drs. Douglas Jacobsen and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen to claim that religion is “no longer invisible” in the context of American higher education. As an organization that works with hundreds of American colleges and universities every year, Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC) believes that Catholic institutions are not only well-equipped to engage in interfaith conversation, but already are on the vanguard of this work. Interfaith efforts are particularly salient within Catholic Higher Education curriculum, where Interfaith and Interreligious Studies courses and programs are being established. As these exciting academic programs continue to take shape across the country, we recommend that scholars and educators continue to consider professional applicability, attention to intersectionality, and assessment as three important practices to adopt in their Interfaith and Interreligious Studies programs

Early childhood education in India: A possible investment in better outcomes? A quantitative analysis using Young Lives India

This paper explores the relationship between early childhood education and academic outcomes for children in India by estimating the ability of preschool participation at age 5 to predict results on major cognitive assessments at age 12. Initially looking at differences in means, it moves on to utilise regression analysis first in an uncontrolled model, and then in a model which controls for both gender and maternal education, as these have been deemed important inputs for academic attainment in the wider literature on human capital development. The sample used for this research is constructed from Young Lives (India), which from 2002 to 2017 surveyed two cohorts of children across Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, with a pro-poor sampling strategy. Surprisingly, the results of the analysis find that participation in early childhood education had a negligible effect on test scores, even when controlling for gender and maternal education. Meanwhile, maternal education emerged as a strong predictor of test results. These findings contradict much of the existing evidence that demonstrates associations between early childhood education and cognitive development, and, in turn, improved economic outcomes. Accordingly, it raises questions about the generalisability of the existing evidence and the quality of India’s ECE offering. The premise, method and findings of this paper are divided into nine sections, including an introduction, an explanation of Human Capital as the paper’s conceptual framework, a literature review, an overview of the context of ECE in India, a section on the paper’s data and variables, a methods section, an overview of the results, a discussion, and conclusions

A polymorphism in the haptoglobin, haptoglobin related protein locus is associated with risk of human sleeping sickness within Cameroonian populations

Human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT) is a neglected disease targeted for elimination as a public health problem by 2020. Elimination requires a better understanding of the epidemiology and clinical evolution of HAT. In addition to the classical clinical evolution of HAT, asymptomatic carriers and spontaneous cure have been reported in West Africa. A genetic component to human susceptibility to HAT has been suggested to explain these newly observed responses to infection. In order to test for genetic associations with infection response, genetic polymorphism in 17 genes were tested (APOL1, IL1B, IL4, IL4R, IL6, IL8, IL12B, IL12RB1, IL10, TNFA, INFG, MIF, HLA-G, HLA-A, HP, HPR and CFH). A case-control study was performed on 180 blood samples collected from 56 cases and 124 controls from Cameroon. DNA was extracted from blood samples. After quality control, 25 samples (24 controls and 1 case) were eliminated. The genotyping undertaken on 155 individuals including 55 cases and 100 controls were investigated at 96 loci (88 SNPs and 8 indels) located on 17 genes. Associations between these loci and HAT were estimated via a case-control association test. Analyses of 64 SNPs and 4 indels out of 96 identified in the selected genes reveal that the minor allele (T) of rs8062041 in haptoglobin (HP) appeared to be protective against HAT (p = 0.0002395, OR 0.359 (CI95 [0.204-0.6319])); indicating higher frequency in cases compared to controls. This minor allele with adjusted p value of 0.0163 is associated with a lower risk (protective effect) of developing sleeping sickness. The haptoglobin related protein HPR and HP are tightly linked and both are duplicated in some people and may lead to higher activity. This increased production could be responsible of the protection associated with rs8062041 even though this SNP is within HP