Building a Community Around the Writing Center

Recruitment and retention are important issues on every campus but especially so on small campuses like that of Casper College. My predecessor, Bob Mittan, believed as I do that the Writing Center should serve as a community as well as a campus resource. His reasons focused on how the community could be involved with the writing center while my reasons focus on how the writing center can be involved with the community. In becoming a community resource, our center serves to demystify academe both for those in the community who feel they are too old or incapable to succeed in college and for young writers in high school who may not have decided to attend college yet. As a result, we are acquiring something of a reputation for helping students and community members with résumé cover letters and creative writing projects as well as scholarship letters and essays.University Writing Cente

The Facebook Project - The Missing Box: The Racial Politics Behind the Facebook Interface

There is no race, ethnicity or nationality category available the default Facebook profile. This, combined with the fact that Facebook is a visually-driven website, suggests that Facebook serves to inadvertently or covertly perpetuate two racist or discriminatory norms: the colorblind mentality and racialized visual classification of others. This paper quickly traverses through a basic theory of identity that dictates that persons incur an on-going dialectic between individual and social identity, both on and offline. It contends that Facebook is an advantageous place to perform and portray one???s social identity and is largely visually-driven, therefore the interface is of paramount importance. Racial, ethnic, or national identity is of significance to many individuals and the lack of a place to express this is a form of discrimination. Such a category should be added to Facebook???s set of basic identity options. Guidelines for a successful implementation are provided.unpublishedis peer reviewe

Intellectual Property Paranoia and the Writing Center

The current atmosphere of numerous academic institutions is one of suspicion regarding intellectual ethical transgressions. Universities that have longstanding honor systems, like Southwestern University, dismiss this paranoia as being unrelated to their establishment because the honor code system protects them. The honor code incites additional thought regarding consultation methods in writing centers like Southwestern’s Debbie Ellis Writing Center (DEWC). One must question what Southwestern students are truly affirming when writing “I have neither given nor received aid on this examination, nor have I seen anyone else do so” on an assignment they have taken to the writing center (Southwestern University 58). Are they saying they did not benefit from their visit to the writing center, or are they merely affirming that they did not engage in unethical behavior? According to Stephen North, “Nearly everyone who writes likes–and needs–to talk about his or her writing…. A writing center is an institutional response to this need” (North 71). In addition to fulfilling the needs of the university’s writers by creating a place for discussions about writing, the writing center complicates the supposedly clear ethical and non-ethical dichotomy of the honor code system by being an institutionalized exception to that system. As an exception to the honor code system, the DEWC calls into question the viability of that system and the ideas of intellectual property that serve as its foundations.University Writing Cente

Living on the Edge: Against Epistemic Permissivism

Epistemic Permissivists face a special problem about the relationship between our first- and higher-order attitudes. They claim that rationality often permits a range of doxastic responses to the evidence. Given plausible assumptions about the relationship between your first- and higher-order attitudes, it can't be rational to adopt a credence on the edge of that range. But Permissivism says that, for some such range, any credence in that range is rational. Permissivism, in its traditional form, cannot be right. I consider some new ways of developing Permissivism to avoid this argument, but each has problems of its own

How Strong Is a Counterfactual?

The literature on counterfactuals is dominated by strict accounts and variably strict accounts. Counterexamples to the principle of Antecedent Strengthening were thought to be fatal to SA; but it has been shown that by adding dynamic resources to the view, such examples can be accounted for. We broaden the debate between VSA and SA by focusing on a new strengthening principle, Strengthening with a Possibility. We show dynamic SA classically validates this principle. We give a counterexample to it and show that extra dynamic resources cannot help SA. We then show VSA accounts for the counterexample if it allows for orderings on worlds that are not almost-connected, and that such an ordering naturally falls out of a Kratzerian ordering source semantics. We conclude that the failure of Strengthening with a Possibility tells strongly against Dynamic SA and in favor of an ordering source-based version of VSA

Providers and women's perspectives on person-centered maternity care: a mixed methods study in Kenya.

BackgroundGlobally, there has been increasing attention to women's experiences of care and calls for a person-centered care approach. At the heart of this approach is the patient-provider relationship. It is necessary to examine the extent to which providers and women agree on the care that is provided and received. Studies have found that incongruence between women's and providers' perceptions may negatively impact women's compliance, satisfaction, and future use of health facilities. However, there are no studies that examine patient and provider perspectives on person-centered care.MethodsTo fill this gap in the literature, we use cross-sectional data of 531 women and 33 providers in seven government health facilities in Kenya to assess concordance and discordance in person-centered care measures. Additionally, we analyze 41 in-depth interviews with providers from three of these facilities to examine why differences in reporting may occur. Descriptive statistical methods were used to measure the magnitude of differences between reports of women and reports of providers. Thematic analyses were conducted for provider surveys.ResultsOur findings suggest high discordance between women and providers' perspectives in regard to person-centered care experiences. On average, women reported lower levels of person-centered care compared to providers, including low respectful and dignified care, communication and autonomy, and supportive care. Providers were more likely to report higher rates of poor health facility environment such as having sufficient staff. We summarize the overarching reasons for the divergence in women and provider reports as: 1) different understanding or interpretation of person-centered care behaviors, and 2) different expectations, norms or values of provider behaviors. Providers rationalized abuse towards women, did not allow a companion of choice, and blamed women for poor patient-provider communication. Women lacked assurance in privacy and confidentiality, and faced challenges related to the health facility environment. Providers attributed poor person-centered care to both individual and facility/systemic factors.ConclusionsImplications of this study suggests that providers should be trained on person-centered care approaches and women should be counseled on understanding patient rights and how to communicate with health professionals