The Smith College School for Social Work anti-racism commitment : a chronology and reflections on the years 1993-1998

This research study was undertaken to examine the organizational changes involved in the establishment of the Smith College School for Social Work\u27s commitment to anti-racism during the years 1993 – 1998 in order to establish a chronology of the changes and to collect community members\u27 reflections on the process. The retrospective case study involved interviews with 12 community members – faculty, staff, and alumni – who were present at the School between the years 1993 – 1998 and who were involved in some aspect of the changes. The members were interviewed about their involvement in the changes, their recollections of the changes, and their reflections on the changes. In addition to interviews, School documents were reviewed, including the Meeting Minutes of the Anti-Racism Task Force, in order to establish the chronology of the changes. The findings are presented in two parts. Firstly, the data are organized into a chronology of the major events, interspersed with commentary from participant interviews regarding these events. Secondly, participant recollections are organized into five major themes regarding the processes of change that occurred. This study contributes to the literature regarding multicultural organizational development and methods of addressing institutional racism in higher education, and is hoped to be a contribution to the Smith College School for Social Work, as it provides an additional study of the changes that are inextricable from the School\u27s current mission

Terminology, Technology and Design Intent of 20th Century Architectural Lighting and Establishing Criteria for Guidelines for Its Preservation

The advent of advanced electrical technology by the mid 20th allowed for an architectural fusion with what was once a secondary consideration for builders, ultimately culminating in lighting design as a profession. The development of electric light, and later, lighting design in America had many influences which drew from the realms of architectural design, engineering and the theatre and performing arts. The selected case studies characterize the overall progression occurring in the realm of integrated architectural lighting, as the architects utilized electric light as a building material. With a case study from the 1930s, one from the 1940s and one from the1950s, the lighting goals, early intent of the lighting design, installation and technical considerations of each are presented. As a secondary component to the case studies, their later (and more present day) renovations or restorations are evaluated for their relative success or failures in regards to the care and consideration of the original lighting schemes. In the revisiting of many of the interiors of this era, the now-fugitive lighting systems have been disregarded or replaced with less compatible, less complementary systems, thus destroying the ambience of the original space. If we are to accurately restore or renovate these unique American interiors, the process of researching, specifying and applying the original integrity through lighting must be achieved. Addressing these in further detail, the author has developed a series of criteria for guidelines for the preservation of early twentieth century lighting systems, which are a confluence of the previous mentioned historical research, in-depth case studies and an analysis of existing relevant guidelines

Supporters and football governance, from customers to stakeholders: a literature review and agenda for research

The commercial and political development of association football (soccer) in Europe has transformed the relationship between the sport and its fans. A growing political discourse has argued that football has lost the connection with its (core and traditional) supporters; a connection that should be regained by allowing them a greater say in the governance of the game as legitimate stakeholders. This article reviews the emerging academic literature on the role of supporters. It suggests that the evidence to support a case in favour of increased supporter involvement in football governance is limited. This group of literature is theoretically and conceptually incongruent and fraught with contradictions. Academic attention thus far is broadly divided into two areas with little overlap between the two: analysis of supporter engagement at the macro (government/policy) level with a top-down focus, and sociological ‘bottom-up’ case studies of supporter engagement and activism at the micro level (individual clubs/supporter groups). The study of supporters has predominantly focused on them as customers/fans and it needs to articulate a new narrative around this ‘governance turn’ to consider supporters as stakeholders, hence responding to on going policy developments. By doing so, it will be possible to reconcile the existing disparate bodies of work to gain a greater understanding of the new demands from the supporters and, moreover, the literature will be better placed to have an impact and to contribute to better informed policy-making if public authorities decide to continue their existing political agenda in favour of greater supporter involvement in football governance

Where Do I Start? A Pathway for Personal Growth for Faculty Committed to Creating Inclusive Classrooms

This commentary offers insights into how accounting faculty can begin to create more inclusive, equitable experiences for students. Many faculty are well intentioned and desire to improve the student experience but may not know where to start. We introduce a pathway of reflection, education, and action that we believe can help faculty get started on this process. Reflection is the process of assessing one’s own identity, influences, biases, and personal experiences with diversity and privilege. Education involves seeking out information and experiences that can enhance cultural competence, particularly around gaps identified through reflection. Action refers to practical steps taken to make classrooms more inclusive, including classroom management and curricular changes. We draw upon professional experiences in academia and personal knowledge as authors with diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds to guide faculty interested in beginning to develop more inclusive classrooms

The symbiotic binary system RX Puppis: a possible recurrent nova with a Mira companion

We present an analysis of photometric and spectroscopic observations of the symbiotic binary system RX Pup with the aims of developing a reliable binary for the system and identifying mechanisms responsible for its spectacular activity. The binary is composed of a long-perod Mira variable surrounded by a thick dust shell and a hot white dwarf companion. The hot component produces practically all activity observed in the UV, optical and radio range, while variable obscuration of the Mira by circumstellar dust is responsible for long-term changes in the near-IR magnitudes. The observations show RX Pup underwent a nova-like eruption during the last three decades. The hot component contracted in radius at roughly constant luminosity from 1975 to 1986, and was the source of a strong stellar wind which prevented it from accreting material lost in the Mira wind. Around 1988/9 the hot component turned over in the HR diagram and by 1991 its luminosity had faded by a factor of about 30 with respect to the maximum plateau value and the hot wind had practically ceased. By 1995 the nova remnant started to accrete material from the Mira wind, as indicated by a general increase in intensity of the optical continuum and HI emission. The quiescent spectrum resembles the quiescent spectra of symbiotic recurrent novae, and its intensity indicates the hot component must accrete as much as about 1 per cent of the Mira wind, which is more or less the amount predicted by Bondi-Hoyle theory. The earliest observational records from the 1890s suggest that another nova-like eruption of RX Pup occurred around 1894.Comment: 23 pages, 12 figues, MNRAS - accepte

Using a smartphone ‘app’ in qualitative research: the good, the bad and the ugly

This paper reflects on the use of a smartphone application (‘app’) in qualitative research following the experience of the FREE (Football Research in an Enlarged Europe) project, which investigated the lives of football fans in the UK. To meet this aim, a participant-focused audio-visual methodology was designed, featuring the use of an app to collect data. Fans were asked to take photographs and keep diaries to show the role football plays in their lives. The smartphone app was developed to allow fans to use their own mobile phones, capturing qualitative data in ‘real time’. The paper reflects on our experience of using the smartphone app in this qualitative research, analysing the advantages, disadvantages and the main risks that researchers will need to take into account when using smartphone apps in their future qualitative research projects. We encourage others to build on and advance this under-researched but potentially valuable tool

A ‘healthy’ future? Supporters’ perceptions of the current state of English football

Over the last few years clear public policy support in favour of fan engagement in the governance of football has developed. This is based on the assumption that supporters are dissatisfied with the current governance structures within the sport. There is, however, no robust academic evidence of whether this is indeed the case. This article aims to contribute to the debate by presenting data from qualitative fieldwork with 21 football supporters during March-May 2013. Each participant created a photograph album over an eight-week period, and was then interviewed individually to elicit the meaning of their photographs and diaries. This group of fans used their photographs to express dissatisfaction with several aspects of current football governance, highlighting issues with the financial, physical and social health of the sport. We suggest a number of implications of this, both for the fans and for the future state of the game

Does the Missouri Safe Schools Act Past the Test - Expelling Disruptive Students to Keep Missouri\u27s Schools Safe

The Missouri Court of Appeals for Easter District of Missouri interpreted the Missouri Safe Schools Act of 1996 in Hamrick ex rel. Hamrick v. Affton School District Board of Education to require a public school to admit for enrollment a student who had been expelled from a non-public school. Shortly after the court’s decision, the Missouri General Assembly amended the dispositive language of Section 167.171.4. It is not clear that public school districts in Missouri can deny enrollment to students suspended or expelled from both public and non-public schools. This Law Summary discusses whether the statutory change furthers the goas of the Missouri Safe Schools Act and whether legislation is a sufficient mechanism for effectuating safety in Missouri’s schools

Analysis of the performance of different implementations of a heuristic method to optimize forest harvest scheduling

Research ArticleFinding an optimal solution of forest management scheduling problems with even flow constraints while addressing spatial concerns is not an easy task. Solving these combinatorial problems exactly with mixed-integer programming (MIP) methods may be infeasible or else involve excessive computational costs. This has prompted the use of heuristics. In this paper we analyze the performance of different implementations of the Simulated Annealing (SA) heuristic algorithm for solving three typical harvest scheduling problems. Typically SA consists of searching a better solution by changing one decision choice in each iteration. In forest planning this means that one treatment schedule in a single stand is changed in each iteration (i.e. one-opt move). We present a comparison of the performance of the typical implementation of SA with the implementation where up to three decision choices are changed simultaneously in each iteration (i.e. treatment schedules are changed in more than one stand). This may allow avoiding local optimal. In addition, the impact of SA – parameters (i.e. cooling schedule and initial temperature) are tested. We compare our heuristic results with a MIP formulation. The study case is tested in a real forest with 1000 stands and a total of 213116 decision choices. The study shows that when the combinatorial problem is very large, changing simultaneously the treatment schedule in more than one stand does not improve the performance of SA. Contrarily, if we reduce the size of the problem (i.e. reduce considerably the number of alternatives per stand) the two-opt moves approach performs betterinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio