The Transfer Playbook: Essential Practices For Two- And Four-year Colleges

Recognizing the critical need to help millions of community college students failed by current transfer practices and policies.  A new report provides a detailed guide for two- and four-year colleges on how to improve bachelor's degree outcomes for students who start at community college.Every year, millions of students aiming to attain a bachelor's degree attend community colleges because of their affordability and accessibility. Most will not realize their goals. While the vast majority of students report they want to earn a bachelor's degree, only 14 percent of degree-seeking students achieve that goal within six years, according to recent research from CCRC, Aspen, and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The odds are worse for low-income students, first-generation college students, and students of color—those most likely to start at a community college

Food Localization: Empowering Community Food Systems Through the Farm Bill

Our intent in this Article is not to delineate foods that are local or not local, nor is it to lionize one agricultural production method over another. Rather, we hope to build on the literature that for many decades has documented how local communities have emerged as influential actors on the American food system through establishing control over local supply chains often alongside national and global supply chains. We begin with Part I, which explores how some food-system scholars have conceptualized these democratic changes occurring. We look to Thomas Lyson’s concept of civic agriculture, which attempts to move corporation-oriented communities away from the model of industrial agriculture and toward a model in which individuals are locally empowered in the land and marketplace. We also review Neil D. Hamilton’s concept of food democracy, which, like civic agriculture, acts as a set of alternative choices to the industrial food system and allows for more localized control of the food supply chain. Afterward, we attempt to connect two seemingly unrelated case studies to demonstrate what a food system influenced by Lyson and Hamilton could look like and how it could empower local communities. Next, in Part II, we turn to the federal government’s local-food policy. We discuss why laws promoting local food systems are proxies for laws democratizing our food system, and we then review a selection of federal legislation, often originating in the Farm Bill, that promote localization of the food system. In Part III, we explore deliberative democracy, a political framework that encourages the sort of participation and representation conceptualized in food democracy and civic agriculture. We then summarize the work of contemporary schools who have identified how deliberative democracy has been crafted by food-system participants. We highlight examples from the American political process to demonstrate their current existence in the food system. Afterward, we observe more deeply how deliberative democracy has grounded federal agriculture policy. Finally, in Part IV, influenced by past Farm Bills and historical agricultural policy, we propose various mechanisms Congress can implement in future Farm Bills to further legitimize its actions to promote localized food systems, as well as to provide structure to the democratization efforts it continues to support. Specifically, we propose various ways Congress can increase diverse representation in the food system and federal agricultural programs, which, through expanded access to decision-making and the strengthening of self-determination among an array of individuals, provide for further and enhanced food localization

“His mind will work better with both of us”: A qualitative study on fathers’ roles and coparenting of young children in rural Pakistan

Background: Parents are the primary providers of nurturing care for young children’s healthy early development. However, the literature on parenting in early childhood, especially in low- and middle-income countries, has primarily focused on mothers. In this study, we investigate how parents make meaning of fathers’ parenting roles with regards to their young children’s early health and development in rural Pakistan.Methods: Data were collected between January and March 2017 through in-depth interviews with fathers (N = 33) and their partners (N = 32); as well as separate focus group discussions with fathers (N = 7) and mothers (N = 7). Data were analyzed using thematic content analysis.Results: Parents described a distinct division of roles between fathers and mothers; and also several shared caregiving roles of fathers and mothers. Specifically, parents highlighted aspects of fathers’ coparenting and several common ways by which fathers supported their partners. We found that these gendered divisions in parenting roles were strongly embedded within a complex network of interacting factors across the individual, family, and sociocultural contexts of the study community.Conclusions: Our findings suggest a more family-centered conceptualization of fatherhood during early childhood that encompasses both fathers’ direct engagement with their young children and their indirect contributions through coparenting, while recognizing a variety of contextual systems that shape paternal parenting. Future parenting interventions that reflect the lived experiences of both fathers and mothers as parents and partners may further enhance the nurturing care environments that are critical for promoting healthy early child development

Associations between birth registration and early child growth and development: evidence from 31 low- and middle-income countries

Background: Lack of legal identification documents can impose major challenges for children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The aim of this study was to investigate the association between not having a birth certificate and young children’s physical growth and developmental outcomes in LMICs. Methods: We combined nationally representative data from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys in 31 LMICs. For our measure of birth registration, primary caregivers reported on whether the child had a birth certificate. Early child outcome measures focused on height-for-age z-scores (HAZ), weight-for-age z-scores (WAZ), weight-for-height z-scores (WHZ), and standardized scores of the Early Childhood Development Index (ECDI) for a subsample of children aged 36–59 months. We used linear regression models with country fixed effects to estimate the relationship between birth registration and child outcomes. In fully adjusted models, we controlled for a variety of child, caregiver, household, and access to child services covariates, including cluster-level fixed effects. Results: In the total sample, 34.7% of children aged 0–59 months did not possess a birth certificate. After controlling for covariates, not owning a birth certificate was associated with lower HAZ (β = − 0.18; 95% CI: -0.23, − 0.14), WAZ (β = − 0.10, 95% CI: -0.13, − 0.07), and ECDI z-scores (β = − 0.10; 95% CI: -0.13, − 0.07) among children aged 36–59 months. Conclusion: Our findings document links between birth registration and children’s early growth and development outcomes. Efforts to increase birth registration may be promising for promoting early childhood development in LMICs

Growing a Software Language for Hardware Design

The Liquid Metal project at IBM Research aimed to design and implement a new programming language called Lime to address some of the challenges posed by heterogeneous systems. Lime is a Java-compatible programming language with features designed to facilitate high level synthesis to hardware (FPGAs). This article reviews the language design from the outset, and highlights some of the earliest design decisions. We also describe how these decisions were revised recently to accommodate important requirements that arise in networking and cryptography

The Transfer Playbook: Essential Practices for Two- and Four-Year Colleges

Most students entering community college aim to earn a bachelor’s degree. But, as shown in a study released by CCRC, The Aspen Institute, and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center earlier in 2016 (see: Tracking Transfer: New Measures of Institutional and State Effectiveness in Helping College Students Attain Bachelor’s Degrees), a relatively small portion of these students transfer and earn a bachelor’s degree within six years. This playbook is a practical guide to designing and implementing a key set of practices that will help community colleges and their four-year college partners improve transfer outcomes. The playbook is based on the practices of six sets of community colleges and universities that together serve transfer students well. These institutions have higher than expected rates of bachelor’s degree attainment for degree-seeking students who start at community college and transfer to a four-year institution—after accounting for their student demographics and institutional characteristics. The playbook is organized around three broad strategies observed in these partnerships: (1) Make transfer student success a priority; (2) Create clear programmatic pathways with aligned high-quality instruction; (3) Provide tailored transfer student advising. Included in the playbook are essential practices underlying each of these three strategies, a discussion of the next frontiers of practice, and a list of activities for community colleges and four-year colleges to undertake in order to implement the strategies

The Dual Enrollment Playbook: A Guide to Equitable Acceleration for Students

More than a million high school students across the nation participate in dual enrollment each year. Dual enrollment students are more likely to graduate from high school, enroll in college, and complete college degrees. But students from historically underrepresented racial/ethnic groups and low-income backgrounds do not have equitable access to or success in dual enrollment. This playbook examines nine dual enrollment programs in Florida, Ohio, and Washington that have narrowed or closed equity gaps in dual enrollment for Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and Pacific Islander students. These programs—developed by partnerships between high schools and community colleges—show that it is possible to close equity gaps when intentional strategy is paired with innovation and commitment. The playbook identifies five principles and the supporting strategies and practices through which community colleges and K-12 leaders can advance equity in high-quality dual enrollment: Set a shared vision and goals that prioritize equity. Expand equitable access. Provide advising and supports that ensure equitable student outcomes. Provide high-quality instruction that builds students’ competence and confidence. Organize teams and develop relationships to maximize potential

In-fiber production of polymeric particles for biosensing and encapsulation

Polymeric micro- and nanoparticles are becoming a mainstay in biomedicine, medical diagnostics, and therapeutics, where they are used in implementing sensing mechanisms, as imaging contrast agents, and in drug delivery. Current approaches to the fabrication of such particles are typically finely tuned to specific monomer or polymer species, size ranges, and structures. We present a general scalable methodology for fabricating uniformly sized spherical polymeric particles from a wide range of polymers produced with complex internal architectures and continuously tunable diameters extending from the millimeter scale down to 50 nm. Controllable access to such a wide range of sizes enables broad applications in cancer treatment, immunology, and vaccines. Our approach harnesses thermally induced, predictable fluid instabilities in composite core/cladding polymer fibers drawn from a macroscopic scaled-up model called a preform. Through a stack-and-draw process, we produce fibers containing a multiplicity of identical cylindrical cores made of the polymers of choice embedded in a polymer cladding. The instability leads to the breakup of the initially intact cores, independent of the polymer chemistry, into necklaces of spherical particles held in isolation within the cladding matrix along the entire fiber length. We demonstrate here surface functionalization of the extracted particles for biodetection through specific protein-protein interactions, volumetric encapsulation of a biomaterial in spherical polymeric shells, and the combination of both surface and volumetric functionalities in the same particle. These particles used in distinct modalities may be produced from the desired biocompatible polymer by changing only the geometry of the macroscopic preform from which the fiber is drawn

Inference with difference-in-differences with a small number of groups: a review, simulation study, and empirical application using SHARE data

Difference-in-differences (DID) estimation has become increasingly popular as an approach to evaluate the effect of a group-level policy on individual-level outcomes. Several statistical methodologies have been proposed to correct for the within-group correlation of model errors resulting from the clustering of data. Little is known about how well these corrections perform with the often small number of groups observed in health research using longitudinal data.; First, we review the most commonly used modeling solutions in DID estimation for panel data, including generalized estimating equations (GEE), permutation tests, clustered standard errors (CSE), wild cluster bootstrapping, and aggregation. Second, we compare the empirical coverage rates and power of these methods using a Monte Carlo simulation study in scenarios in which we vary the degree of error correlation, the group size balance, and the proportion of treated groups. Third, we provide an empirical example using the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe.; When the number of groups is small, CSE are systematically biased downwards in scenarios when data are unbalanced or when there is a low proportion of treated groups. This can result in over-rejection of the null even when data are composed of up to 50 groups. Aggregation, permutation tests, bias-adjusted GEE, and wild cluster bootstrap produce coverage rates close to the nominal rate for almost all scenarios, though GEE may suffer from low power.; In DID estimation with a small number of groups, analysis using aggregation, permutation tests, wild cluster bootstrap, or bias-adjusted GEE is recommended