Academic Articulation Among Nursing Programs In Virginia: Practices, Perceptions, And Goals

Since there is no state-wide plan for the articulation of nursing education program in Virginia and articulation practices are largely the prerogative of personnel in individual programs, a wide range of articulation policies and procedures are used in nursing programs throughout the State. The impact of recent societal factors such as changing demographics of student populations, the growing demand for nurses, and a nursing shortage has motivated leaders in the nursing profession to seek practical ways to facilitate the educational preparation of nurses. Academic articulation is recording renewed attention by nursing educators as one means of facilitating the preparation of nurses at various educational levels. The major purpose of this study was to identify the extent and nature of academic articulation practices in Virginia, Since the phenomenon of articulation includes elements of process, attitude, and goal, the study included assessment of beliefs and perceptions of nursing education administrators about articulation and about the current status of articulation among nursing programs in Virginia, A secondary purpose of the study was to assess the perceptions of nursing education administrators in Minnesota about the advantages and disadvantages of regional consortium arrangements for nursing education articulation and to compare the beliefs and perceptions about articulation held by Minnesota respondents with those held by Virginia respondents. Five major questions were posed in the study. these were directed at Virginia participants and assessed their perceptions about the nature and extent of articulation practices currently in use in Virginia nursing programs, about academic articulation in general, about the level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with current articulation practices in the State, and about what changes related to articulation needed to occur within one and five years following the study. Another question assessed the perceptions of nursing education administrators in Minnesota about the advantages and disadvantages of regional consortium arrangements for nursing program articulation in that state. Chief administrators at all nursing programs in Virginia and Minnesota comprised the study population. Names of these persons were obtained from lists provided by the respective state boards of nursing and from a list supplied by the National League of Nursing. Two questionnaires were developed to collect data for the study, one for Virginia participants and one for Minnesota participants, and were participants, and were mailed to participants for self administration. Descriptive methods were used to analyze the data. Less than half of Virginia nursing programs represented in the study had articulation arrangements in effect with other nursing programs. Beginning efforts at regional collaboration for nursing education articulation in Virginia were identified. The majority of Virginia respondents indicated acceptance of the concept of academic articulation and believed it possible to articulate nursing education through the baccalaureate level, High interest for nursing education articulation was evident among Virginia respondents, and the majority of Virginia respondents were amenable to the idea of state-wide planning for nursing education articulation. Virginia respondents indicated a need to have collaborative efforts for articulation underway within one year of the study, and many indicated willingness to be involved in such efforts. The majority of Minnesota respondents who represented nursing programs participating in regional consortia for articulation believed such arrangements had been beneficial to their students, programs, and faculty. They reported that some problems related to articulation had been resolved by consortium arrangements and that other problems had evolved. A greater percentage of Minnesota respondents expressed satisfaction with both the overall status of nursing education articulation in their state and with articulation practices used in their own programs than did Virginia respondents. Five recommendations were addressed to nursing education leaders in Virginia as a means of improving nursing education articulation in Virginia. Recommendations encouraged on-going attention to articulation issues by the nursing leadership, considerati0n of the use of regional consortia for articulation, the involvement of representatives from health care institutions in articulation efforts, and keeping counselors of nursing students informed of articulation practices

Top Management Team Diversity: A systematic Review

Empirical research investigating the impact of top management team (TMT) diversity on executives’ decision making has produced inconclusive results. To synthesize and aggregate the results on the diversity-performance link, a meta-regression analysis (MRA) is conducted. It integrates more than 200 estimates from 53 empirical studies investigating TMT diversity and its impact on the quality of executives’ decision making as reflected in corporate performance. The analysis contributes to the literature by theoretically discussing and empirically examining the effects of TMT diversity on corporate performance. Our results do not show a link between TMT diversity and performance but provide evidence for publication bias. Thus, the findings raise doubts on the impact of TMT diversity on performance

EXTERNAL VERSUS INTERNAL PERSPECTIVES IN DETERMINING A FIRM\u27S PROGRESSIVE USE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

The use of IT in a firm can vary depending on a number of factors such as atop executive\u27s perceptions and the firm\u27s industry. In this study, variables representing the organization\u27s external and internal characteristics were examined to determine whether they affect the firm\u27s progressive use of IT and, if so, which has the strongest effect. A questionnaire was mailed to the Chief Executive Officers and Chief Financial Officers of 300 small and medium-sized publicly-traded companies. Results indicate that internal factors (Chief Executive Officer\u27s perception of IT importance and the information intensity of the product), more than the external factors, influenced the firm\u27s progressive use of IT

Creep in Photovoltaic Modules: Examining the Stability of Polymeric Materials and Components

Interest in renewable energy has motivated the implementation of new polymeric materials in photovoltaic modules. Some of these are non-cross-linked thermoplastics, in which there is a potential for new behaviors to occur, including phase transformation and visco-elastic flow. Differential scanning calorimetry and rheometry data were obtained and then combined with existing site-specific time-temperature information in a theoretical analysis to estimate the displacement expected to occur during module service life. The analysis identified that, depending on the installation location, module configuration and/or mounting configuration, some of the thermoplastics are expected to undergo unacceptable physical displacement. While the examples here focus on encapsulation materials, the concerns apply equally to the frame, junction-box, and mounting-adhesive technologies

A Connectionist Approach to Embodied Conceptual Metaphor

A growing body of data has been gathered in support of the view that the mind is embodied and that cognition is grounded in sensory-motor processes. Some researchers have gone so far as to claim that this paradigm poses a serious challenge to central tenets of cognitive science, including the widely held view that the mind can be analyzed in terms of abstract computational principles. On the other hand, computational approaches to the study of mind have led to the development of specific models that help researchers understand complex cognitive processes at a level of detail that theories of embodied cognition (EC) have sometimes lacked. Here we make the case that connectionist architectures in particular can illuminate many surprising results from the EC literature. These models can learn the statistical structure in their environments, providing an ideal framework for understanding how simple sensory-motor mechanisms could give rise to higher-level cognitive behavior over the course of learning. Crucially, they form overlapping, distributed representations, which have exactly the properties required by many embodied accounts of cognition. We illustrate this idea by extending an existing connectionist model of semantic cognition in order to simulate findings from the embodied conceptual metaphor literature. Specifically, we explore how the abstract domain of time may be structured by concrete experience with space (including experience with culturally specific spatial and linguistic cues). We suggest that both EC researchers and connectionist modelers can benefit from an integrated approach to understanding these models and the empirical findings they seek to explain