An Analysis of Writing Across the Curriculum

Between 1900 and 1925 several changes took place which modernized American universities. One of the most significant involved a different curriculum. The new program was, in part, geared toward preparing students for specialized careers. This approach, however, made it possible for teachers outside of English to eliminate writing from their courses and, more generally, to develop distorted and limited views of the uses of writing. Today, Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) programs are being incorporated into many colleges and universities across the country in an attempt to correct misperceptions and to bring writing back into non-English courses. WAC stresses the advantages of using writing as a way to learn and to communicate in all disciplines. For the business discipline, more specifically, WAC means combining efforts with teachers in other disciplines in order to learn how best to use writing to teach course material and business-specific communication skills. Teachers who already have brought writing into their courses found that it is an excellent way to improve students comprehension and analytical skills while improving their writing ability. Voluntary WAC workshops are the most common and effective way to educate faculty on the meaning, practices, and benefits of WAC. Leaders of a WAC workshops usually clearly outline the writing process and show how it involves several recursive steps: invention, drafting, and revision. An explanation of evaluation is also included in a WAC workshops. WAC workshops are intended to dispel common misperceptions so that participants see that writing is an excellent way to improve students\u27 learning ability and to turn them into more fluent and confident writers

Paying for the Privilege of Punishment: Reinterpreting Excessive Fines Clause Doctrine to Allow State Prisoners to Seek Relief from Pay-to-Stay Fees

Across the country, the criminal justice system is becoming both more private and more expensive. Some prison systems have come to rely on private contractors for electronic monitoring, probation, pretrial services, and incarceration services. At the same time, criminal justice fees are exploding, including fees charged to inmates for their “room and board” while in prison. These fees, sometimes called “pay-to-stay,” are imposed at the state and county level, and how they are applied varies widely. Some take into account inmates’ ability to pay the fees, or the effect on their families. Some do not. Some only apply to prisoners with paying jobs. Some apply to every prisoner. What they all have in common is this: these fees are imposed on convicted offenders who are statistically likely to be low income, and therefore less likely to be able to pay. Because of this reality, the effects of pay-to-stay systems can be devastating, even when the crime is comparatively minor and the sentence is relatively short. Take the example of George Richey, a Missouri man who spent three months in jail after a misdemeanor conviction. The county charged him thirty-five dollars per day for his stay in jail, leaving him with a bill of $3150 just for room and board. Richey’s only income was a$600-per-month disability payment, and over two years after his release from jail, he still owed the county more than half his bill. In an absurd twist, because Richey could not pay the room and board fees for his jail sentence, the county put him back in jail for failure to pay and charged him an additional $2,275 in daily fees for his new jail time. By the time Richey was released again, his debt was higher than it had been before he began paying it down. He still could not afford to pay it. Describing the difficulty of breaking out of this cycle of criminal justice debt, Richey lamented that “[i]t’s like trying to shovel in a blizzard.” Finally, the court told him “his bill would only be dismissed if he agreed to serve a second 90-day jail stay.” In other words, the only way to escape his pay-to-stay debt was to volunteer to serve double the time for his original crime. When pay-to-stay fees prove ruinous, as they sometimes can, prisoners like Richey may finally have a practical constitutional remedy. In 2019, the Supreme Court turned its attention to a long ignored clause of the Constitution, the Excessive Fines Clause, which prohibits the government from imposing excessive fines on its citizens. In Timbs v. Indiana, the Court declared this Clause of the Eighth Amendment was a “safeguard [that] ... is ‘fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty’” and that it must apply to the states. This Note argues that in the aftermath of Timbs, current Excessive Fines Clause doctrine can be interpreted to grant state and county prisoners increased opportunities to bring challenges to pay-to-stay fees. Bearing in mind the Clause’s historical background and purpose, it is consistent with the current doctrine for prisoners to argue that these daily fees constitute fines and that those fines are excessive. Part I explains pay-to-stay fees at the state and local level throughout the United States, providing a specific example through “subsistence fee” statutes in Florida. Part II then discusses the history of the Excessive Fines Clause and reviews the Court’s jurisprudence, drawing doctrinal lessons from each of the four cases in which the Court has interpreted the Clause. Part III argues that prisoners should be able to seek relief from pay-to-stay fees under the Excessive Fines Clause. Part III.A argues that these fees can constitute fines under the Clause, and that those fines can be excessive, particularly if the Court incorporates an “ability to pay” consideration into the evaluation of excessiveness. This Section argues that this slight modification is consistent with the purpose and history of the Clause, and that moral and procedural process concerns support the change. Finally, Part III.B argues that a doctrinal limitation on fines— that they must be paid to the government to qualify for Clause protection—should be reinterpreted to allow prisoners to seek relief for payments made to private prison contractors. This can be done by reinterpreting this requirement consistently with the Court’s dicta in Paroline v. United States, to say that a fine does not need to be paid to the government if the imposition of the fine sufficiently “implicates ‘the prosecutorial powers of government.’” Alternatively, the Court could address the increasing privatization of the criminal justice system by adding a new requirement to the doctrine: that qualifying fines must be paid to the government or to an “entity performing an essential government function at the government’s behest.

An Analysis of Writing Across the Curriculum

Between 1900 and 1925 several changes took place which modernized American universities. One of the most significant involved a different curriculum. The new program was, in part, geared toward preparing students for specialized careers. This approach, however, made it possible for teachers outside of English to eliminate writing from their courses and, more generally, to develop distorted and limited views of the uses of writing. Today, Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) programs are being incorporated into many colleges and universities across the country in an attempt to correct misperceptions and to bring writing back into non-English courses. WAC stresses the advantages of using writing as a way to learn and to communicate in all disciplines. For the business discipline, more specifically, WAC means combining efforts with teachers in other disciplines in order to learn how best to use writing to teach course material and business-specific communication skills. Teachers who already have brought writing into their courses found that it is an excellent way to improve students comprehension and analytical skills while improving their writing ability. Voluntary WAC workshops are the most common and effective way to educate faculty on the meaning, practices, and benefits of WAC. Leaders of a WAC workshops usually clearly outline the writing process and show how it involves several recursive steps: invention, drafting, and revision. An explanation of evaluation is also included in a WAC workshops. WAC workshops are intended to dispel common misperceptions so that participants see that writing is an excellent way to improve students\u27 learning ability and to turn them into more fluent and confident writers

Valuing Monitoring Networks for Invasive Species: The Case of Soybean Rust

Crop Production/Industries,

A Fresh Look At Economic Value Added: Empirical Study Of The Fortune Five-Hundred Companies

Rapid and complex changes in the economic and business environment are posing serious challenges to today’s business executives. Meeting these challenges requires effective measures for control and performance evaluation. This article focuses on the uses, benefits and limitations of economic value added (EVA) as a value creation measure. Calculation of this trendy measure is complicated because of the many adjustments needed to convert the generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) based income to economic income. The article compares the performance of EVA user companies with non-user Fortune 500 companies for the years 1997 and 1998. It shows that users performance means profits as percentage of revenues, assets, and stockholders’ equity were higher than the means of non-users. However, the means for 1998 earnings per share (EPS), EPS change from 1997 and EPS growth for the years 1988-1998 were lower for the EVA user companies. EVA will become less popular in its use as an instrument of control and performance evaluation. Therefore, the conclusion of this research is not in support of EVA use as a measure of value creation to stockholders

Lesions of the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus differentially affect sign‐ and goal‐tracking conditioned responses

Recently, evidence has emerged suggesting a role for the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus (PVT) in the processing of reward‐associated cues. However, the specific role of the PVT in these processes has yet to be elucidated. Here we use an animal model that captures individual variation in response to discrete reward‐associated cues to further assess the role of the PVT in stimulus–reward learning. When rats are exposed to a Pavlovian conditioning paradigm, wherein a discrete cue predicts food reward, two distinct conditioned responses emerge. Some rats, termed sign‐trackers, approach and manipulate the cue, whereas others, termed goal‐trackers, approach the location of reward delivery upon cue presentation. For both sign‐ and goal‐trackers the cue is a predictor, but only for sign‐trackers is it also an incentive stimulus. We investigated the role of the PVT in the acquisition and expression of these conditioned responses using an excitotoxic lesion. Results indicate that PVT lesions prior to acquisition amplify the differences between phenotypes – increasing sign‐tracking and attenuating goal‐tracking behavior. Lesions of the PVT after rats had acquired their respective conditioned responses also attenuated the expression of the goal‐tracking response, and increased the sign‐tracking response, but did so selectively in goal‐trackers. These results suggest that the PVT acts to suppress the attribution of incentive salience to reward cues, as disruption of the functional activity within this structure enhances the tendency to sign‐track.Here we utilized animal models that capture individual differences in the propensity to attribute incentive salience to reward cues (i.e. sign‐trackers vs. goal‐trackers) to further elucidate the role of the PVT in cue‐motivated behaviors. We report that lesions of this structure increase the tendency for individuals to attribute incentive motivational value to reward cues. These findings suggest that the PVT is a critical part of the circuitry underlying maladaptive behavior, such as addiction.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/115973/1/ejn13031-sup-0001-TableS1-FigureS1-S5.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/115973/2/ejn13031.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/115973/3/ejn13031_am.pd