Volunteer Management Practices and Retention of Volunteers

This report is the second in a series of briefs on a 2003 survey of volunteer management capacity among public charities in the United States. It focuses on charities' adoption of nine volunteer management practices: supervision and communication, liability coverage, screening and matching, regular collection of volunteer numbers and hours written policies and job descriptions, recognition activities, measurement of volunteer impacts, training and professional development, and training for paid staff in working with volunteers. We report on the extent of adoption of these practices by charities with different characteristics, and the relationship between volunteer management practices and retention of volunteers

Fundamental studies in geodynamics

Research in fundamental studies in geodynamics continued in a number of fields including seismic observations and analysis, synthesis of geochemical data, theoretical investigation of geoid anomalies, extensive numerical experiments in a number of geodynamical contexts, and a new field seismic volcanology. Summaries of work in progress or completed during this report period are given. Abstracts of publications submitted from work in progress during this report period are attached as an appendix

Prefazione: Di giuseppe conte

Nata in Italia, Laura Stortoni-Hager ha ricevuto un'educazione internazionale.Si è laureata all'Università di California a Berkeley in Letteratura Comparataed ha insegnato per molti anni in diverse università nella West Coast degliStati Uniti. Ha pubblicato due libri di traduzioni di poetesse del Rinascimentoitaliano, ed ha fondato Hesperia Press per la diffusione della poesia italianamoderna. Ha tradotto e pubblicato Maria Luisa Spaziani e Giuseppe Conte.Vive a Milano e a Berkeley, California.Quelle che seguono sono poesie tratte dalle prima sezione della raccolta,Ti riprendo. Altre poesie dalla stessa raccolta apparvero nel n. 1/2000

Massachusetts Health Reform: A Social Compact and a Bold Experiment

This is the published version

Performance of a 1380-foot-per-second-tip-speed axial-flow compressor rotor with a blade tip solidity of 1.3

Aerodynamic design parameters are presented along the overall and blade element performance, of an axial flow compressor rotor designed to study the effects of blade solidity on efficiency and stall margin. At design speed the peak efficiency was 0.844 and occurred at an equivalent weight flow of 63.5 lb/sec with a total pressure ratio of 1.801. Design efficiency, pressure ratio, and weight flow 0.814, 1.65, and 65.3(41.1 lb/sec/sq ft of annulus area), respectively. Stall margin for design speed was 6.4 percent based on the weight flow and pressure ratio values at peak efficiency and just prior to stall

The Relationship of Reading Self-Efficacy and Reading Achievement in Second Grade Students

Academic self-efficacy has been positively related to academic achievement in previous studies with middle school, high school, and undergraduate students. This small-scale study investigated the relationship between student reading self-efficacy and student reading achievement with second grade students in central Montana. Participating students completed a Reading Self-Efficacy Questionnaire and benchmark assessments for reading. The 2011 Dibels Next Reading End of Year Benchmark test was used to measure fluency and the Northwest Evaluation Association Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) Reading for Primary grades test was used to measure the related reading skills of language and writing, foundational skills, literature and information skills, and vocabulary use and functions. Results showed a non-significant positive relationship between student reading self-efficacy and student reading achievement. The findings were not conclusive about the abilities of students in this age group to accurately assess their own reading self-efficacy and achievement capabilities

Professional development in the field of education

The process of continual growth and development in the teaching profession represents a common value among education professionals. Federal and state laws maintain that teachers must continue to study. These mandates, pronounced at federal, state, and local levels to create high academic standards for students, must be met through quality instruction. Both the profession and the public expect that teachers have the willingness and the ability to engage in continuous learning that will impact instruction. The process by which educators keep their knowledge base current typically is referred to as professional development. Professional development is an ongoing process of continuous improvement, not an isolated event or series of events. The culture of the school must support continuous inquiry and reflection on the protecting and nurturing of research-based approaches to ensure that all students will achieve. If the goal of high academic standards and achievement for all students is to be realized, effective continuous professional development must be maintained as a systemic process.;Although professional development influences the organizational context in which it takes place, it also impacts the individual learner. Effective models of professional development must consider current knowledge of adult learning. Adults need to know that their efforts will result in the opportunity to achieve competency and that the process will respect their intellectual potential and capacity. Educators must have the opportunity to self-regulate their learning opportunities enabling participants to engage in mindful, intentional, and thoughtful behaviors.;The purpose of this study is to evaluate facilitators and barriers to educators\u27 participation in professional development and to assist in developing quality learning opportunities for educators. This report (1) summarizes the perspectives that teachers place on professional development; (2) discusses the possible facilitators and barriers, based on teachers\u27 perceptions, to educators acquiring the skills and engaging in the activities that characterize quality professional development, and (3) identifies a general approach to addressing the delivery of quality professional development.;According to the survey analysis used for this study, the data clearly reports that high percentages of teachers view themselves as continuous learners. Collaboration and collegiality are themes that the pilot study identified as strong, quality characteristics of professional development. Teachers\u27 responses to the survey indicate that learning in groups is a facilitator to learning, along with attending conferences, strong information seeking skills, enjoyment and change of pace, easy access to learning opportunities, encouragement from family members and other teachers, and application to classroom and student achievement. The most highly named barriers are time, financial obligations, family responsibilities, and professional choice in programming.;The study offers recommendations for learners and providers of professional development opportunities. Educators have a responsibility to encourage and nurture their own love of learning, and educational organizations have the responsibility to create conditions and provide tools and procedures for helping teachers experience learning situations. There is also a call for additional research on the topic of participation in professional development

Computational Methods for Task-Directed Sensor Data Fusion and Sensor Planning

In this paper, we consider the problem of task-directed information gathering. We first develop a decision-theoretic model of task-directed sensing in which sensors are modeled as noise-contaminated, uncertain measurement systems and sensing tasks are modeled by a transformation describing the type of information required by the task, a utility function describing sensitivity to error, and a cost function describing time or resource constraints on the system. This description allows us to develop a standard conditional Bayes decision-making model where the value of information, or payoff, of an estimate is defined as the average utility (the expected value of some function of decision or estimation error) relative to the current probability distribution and the best estimate is that which maximizes payoff. The optimal sensor viewing strategy is that which maximizes the net payoff (decision value minus observation costs) of the final estimate. The advantage of this solution is generality--it does not assume a particular sensing modality or sensing task. However, solutions to this updating problem do not exist in closed-form. This, motivates the development of an approximation to the optimal solution based on a grid-based implementation of Bayes\u27 theorem. We describe this algorithm, analyze its error properties, and indicate how it can be made robust to errors in the description of sensors and discrepancies between geometric models and sensed objects. We also present the results of this fusion technique applied to several different information gathering tasks in simulated situations and in a distributed sensing system we have constructed