What We Talk About When We Talk About Housing Honors

When I went to college in the early 1980s at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, I entered as a freshman in the honors program. I have very specific memories of those first classes I took as an honors student—a section of honors sociology in which I wrote a case study of my German immigrant grandfather; an honors seminar in 1930s avant garde theatre in which the students wrote and performed plays based on the dreams they recorded nightly in their dream journals; an honors marine biology lab that ended at the professor’s house with a dinner where the group sampled the sea life the class had been studying; a section of honors composition taught by the legendary “Dr. Bob” Bashore, a former director of that program and the man most responsible for my eventual choice of nineteenth-century American literature as my academic specialty. Many of these classes took place in an open lounge area in the basement of some otherwise nondescript building, the name of which I can no longer recall. What I do remember is how different that setting was from the traditional layout of my other classes. Rather than occupying the rows of metal-footed tablet desks that populated my other university classrooms, the honors students usually sat on crescent-shaped couches or other furniture reminiscent of a 1970s-era church youth-group room

Where Honors Lives: Results from a Survey of the Structures and Spaces of U.S. Honors Programs and Colleges

The ninth item on the National Collegiate Honors Council’s (2014b) list of “Basic Characteristics of a Fully Developed Honors Program” reads: The program is located in suitable, preferably prominent, quarters on campus that provide both access for the students and a focal point for honors activity. Those accommodations include space for honors administrative, faculty, and support staff functions as appropriate. They may include space for an honors lounge, library, reading rooms, and computer facilities. If the honors program has a significant residential component, the honors housing and residential life functions are designed to meet the academic and social needs of honors students. (item 9

Project-oriented science instruction involving general-education undergraduates serving as mentors to underprivileged middle-students students

We report results from a novel, project-based science course funded by the NSF for general-education students in the EKU Honors Program and for middle school students. Key aspects of the course are: (1) instruction in the natural sciences adopting a regional context; (2) investigation of the water quality of a local stream involving all portions of a scientific study from planning to data collection and analysis to presentation; and (3) direct mentoring of underprivileged, seventh-grade students by honors students in project activities, including trips to campus for laboratory work and presentations. The course is meant to provide high-quality scientific instruction and serve as an improved model for general-education science courses, while teaching project-based science to all students. Moreover, we train our college students to become self-directed learners by giving them responsibility in engaging and mentoring at-risk, middle-school students while promoting STEM. The deep involvement of middle-school teachers in planning and implementation is crucial. The course instructs and promotes science at several different levels. We engage honors students using experiments, simulations, and field trips to illustrate fundamental scientific concepts while exploring geological and biological aspects particular to eastern Kentucky. The project is an investigation of the water chemistry and ecosystem of a typical stream, which experiences anthropogenic contamination by nutrients and fecal microbes as determined by land use. We first lead college students through each step of the project over a period of 8 weeks, and then they lead middle school students serially through those same steps. A key aspect of the project is travel to a local stream where every student engages in sampling activities. For our college students, the project culminates in a report written as a scientific paper. The seventh graders form groups and present oral and poster presentations to regional watershed experts and parents. We use pre- and post-course tests, attitudinal surveys, and focus groups to examine the efficacy of the course in fostering understanding of science concepts, increasing understanding of the environmental problems of a geographic region, and improving attitudes toward science for college and middle-school students

Project-based science for general education college students and seventh graders: Pitfalls and pointers

We teach a general-education science course for honors students, who in turn mentor disadvantaged seventh graders through a water quality investigation of a local stream. Activities for both groups involve all aspects of a scientific project: scientific background, local context, project design, data collection and analysis, and communication of scientific results. On successive weeks, we first lead our college students through each step in the process then the honors students mentor middle school students through those same steps. College and middle school teachers act as facilitators, and each honors student is responsible for about 6 to 8 middle schoolers. The college students and 7th graders often form strong bonds during their work together. The project explores nutrient (ammonium, NH4; nitrate, NO3, phosphate, PO4) and fecal microbe (Escherichia coli) contamination within the stream, as well as macroinvertebrate distribution and abundance, which is affected by overall water quality. Both student groups are responsible for documenting project activities in a project notebook. Once we establish background principles and context, both college and middle school students sample stream water and fauna. Selected students measure nutrient and E. coli concentrations in water samples, whereas all students pick and identify macroinvertebrates from 4 stations. Students then analyze all data to identify probable contamination sources and to assess water quality using established macroninvertebrate indices. Honors students give oral group presentations on their project findings in class. The project culminates when the 7th graders come to campus and present their work with oral and poster presentations. We invite parents, interested water-quality experts, and local dignitaries to the presentation event. Coordination of supporting college class content, supporting middle school class content, and project activities for both student groups - especially the middle school sampling trip to the stream - requires careful planning, shuffling of middle school schedules, and enthusiastic support by all instructors and administrative educators. Also, preparatory instruction and practice for college students in project activities is key, so they feel more comfortable in mentoring 7th graders

Predicting success in medical school: a longitudinal study of common Australian student selection tools

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background: Medical student selection and assessment share an underlying high stakes context with the need for valid and reliable tools. This study examined the predictive validity of three tools commonly used in Australia: previous academic performance (Grade Point Average (GPA)), cognitive aptitude (a national admissions test), and non-academic qualities of prospective medical students (interview). Methods: A four year retrospective cohort study was conducted at Flinders University Australia involving 382 graduate entry medical students first enrolled between 2006 and 2009. The main outcomes were academic and clinical performance measures and an indicator of unimpeded progress across the four years of the course. Results: A combination of the selection criteria explained between 7.1 and 29.1 % of variance in performance depending on the outcome measure. Weighted GPA consistently predicted performance across all years of the course. The national admissions test was associated with performance in Years 1 and 2 (pre-clinical) and the interview with performance in Years 3 and 4 (clinical). Those students with higher GPAs were more likely to have unimpeded progress across the entire course (OR = 2.29, 95 % CI 1.57, 3.33). Conclusions: The continued use of multiple selection criteria to graduate entry medical courses is supported, with GPA remaining the single most consistent predictor of performance across all years of the course. The national admissions test is more valuable in the pre-clinical years, and the interview in the clinical years. Future selections research should develop the fledgling research base regarding the predictive validity of the Graduate Australian Medical School Admissions Test (GAMSAT), the algorithms for how individual tools are combined in selection, and further explore the usefulness of the unimpeded progress index

Evaluation of Spatio-Temporal Patterns of Predation Risk to Forest Grouse Nests in the Central European Mountain Regions

We evaluated the spatiotemporal patterns of predation risk on black grouse nests using artificial nests that were monitored by camera traps in mountain areas with a small extant (Ore Mts.) and already extinct (Jeseníky Mts.) black grouse population. The overall predation rate of artificial nests was 56% and we found significant differences in survival rate courses over time between both study areas (68% Ore Mts. vs. 41%, Jeseníky Mts.). Within the time required for successful egg incubation (25 days), nest survival probability was 0.32 in the Ore Mts. and 0.59 in Jeseníky Mts. The stone marten (Martes foina) was the primary nest predator in both study areas (39% in total), followed by common raven (Corvus corax, 25%) and red fox (Vulpes vulpes, 22%). The proportion of depredated nests did not differ between habitat types (i.e., open forest interior, clearing, forest edge), but we recorded the effect of interaction of study area and habitat. In Ore Mts., the main nest predator was common raven with seven records (37%). The Eurasian jay (Garrulus glandarius) was responsible for most predation attempts in Jeseníky Mts. (five records, i.e., 83%), while in the Ore Mts., most predation attempts were done by red fox (six records, i.e., 38%publishedVersio

Accumulation and detoxication responses of the gastropod Lymnaea stagnalis to single and combined exposures to natural (cyanobacteria) and anthropogenic (the herbicide RoundUp® Flash) stressors.

Freshwater gastropods are increasingly exposed to multiple stressors in the field such as the herbicide glyphosate in Roundup formulations and cyanobacterial blooms either producing or not producing microcystins (MCs), potentially leading to interacting effects. Here, the responses of Lymnaea stagnalis to a 21-day exposure to non-MC or MC-producing (33μgL−1) Planktothrix agardhii alone or in combination with the commercial formulation RoundUp®Flash at a concentration of 1μgL−1glyphosate, followed by 14days of depuration, were studied via i) accumulation of free and bound MCs in tissues, and ii) activities of anti-oxidant (catalase CAT) and biotransformation (glutathione-S-transferase GST) enzymes. During the intoxication, the cyanobacterial exposure induced an early increase of CAT activity, independently of the MC content, probably related to the production of secondary cyanobacterial metabolites. The GST activity was induced by RoundUp®Flash alone or in combination with non MC-producing cyanobacteria, but was inhibited by MC-producing cyanobacteria with or without RoundUp®Flash. Moreover, MC accumulation in L. stagnalis was 3.2 times increased when snails were concomitantly exposed to MC-producing cyanobacteria with RoundUp®, suggesting interacting effects of MCs on biotransformation processes. The potent inhibition of detoxication systems by MCs and RoundUp®Flash was reversible during the depuration, during which CAT and GST activities were significantly higher in snails previously exposed to MC-producing cyanobacteria with or without RoundUp®Flash than in other conditions, probably related to the oxidative stress caused by accumulated MCs remaining in tissues