Leading School Improvement: What Research Says

Examines practices that promote student achievement through school leadership. Looks at strategies and programs that improve student engagement and motivation, and organizational and management practices that support student learning

Knowledge Transfer and Teaching Public Administration: the Academy Model

Since the beginnings of Public Administration in the US and its accompanying education in other parts of the world, government and policy have become more complex. The education in Public Administration created a professional pathway to public service. The addition of education to Public Administration came out of the Progressive Movement in the United States to make knowledge in Public Administration more important in the face of corruption brought on by patronage appointments. When nonprofits became part the US public sector as elsewhere along with nonprofit healthcare, the complexity expanded enormously, requiring professionals to know more in what has become a multidisciplinary field of study. Given the diversity and complexity of the public sector and the need for Public Administration to embrace more knowledge from many disciplines, it stands to reason that an earlier start on the education portion of Public Administration or a pathway would be beneficial. A model of early Public Administration knowledge transfer is described and illustrated below. The Academy described is based on the US career pathways and high school academies as part of the school to work educational movement. The success of the combination of these two areas will also be pointed out in the academy described. Translation of lessons learned from the Acdemy to Europe and Asia are also considered

The biochemical mechanism of Rho GTPase membrane binding, activation and retention in activity patterning

Rho GTPases form plasma membrane-associated patterns that control the cytoskeleton during cell division, morphogenesis, migration, and wound repair. Their patterning involves transitions between inactive cytosolic and active membrane-bound states, regulated by guanine nucleotide exchange factors (GEFs), GTPase-activating proteins (GAPs), and guanine nucleotide dissociation inhibitors (GDIs). However, the relationships between these transitions and role of different regulators remain unclear. We developed a novel reconstitution approach to study Rho GTPase patterning with all major GTPase regulators in a biochemically defined system. We show that Rho GTPase dissociation from RhoGDI is rate-limiting for its membrane association. Rho GTPase activation occurs after membrane insertion, which is unaffected by GEF activity. Once activated, Rho GTPases are retained at the membrane through effector interactions, essential for their enrichment at activation sites. Thus, high cytosolic levels of RhoGDI-bound GTPases ensure a constant supply of inactive GTPases for the membrane, where GEF-mediated activation and effector binding stabilize them. These results delineate the route by which Rho GTPase patterns are established and define stage-dependent roles of its regulators.</p