Legacies in Black and White: The Racial Composition of the Legacy Pool

Selective universities regularly employ policies that favor children of alumni (known as legacies') in undergraduate admissions. Since alumni from selective colleges and universities have, historically, been disproportionately white, admissions policies that favor legacies have disproportionately benefited white students. For this reason, legacy policies lead to additional costs in terms of reductions in racial diversity. As larger numbers of minority students graduate from colleges and universities and have children, however, the potential pool of legacy applicants will change markedly in racial composition. This analysis begins with a review of the history and objectives of the preference for children of alumni in undergraduate admissions. We then consider the specific case of the University of Virginia and employ demographic techniques to predict the racial composition of the pool of potential legacy applicants to the University. Significant changes in the racial composition of classes that graduated from the University of Virginia from the late 1960s through the 1970s foreshadow similar changes in the characteristics of alumni children maturing through the next two decades.

Combating Invasive Species Through the Removal of Pollution

The purpose of my project is to bring awareness to the issues of pollution on campus as well as encourage others to be more involved on campus through volunteerism. My time with the National Residence Hall Honorary (NRHH) and the Arboretum was very valuable. Not only was I able to learn how to identify/properly remove invasive species from an environment as well as how to generally help maintain the gardens at UCF but I was also able to learn about the value of community and working towards a common goal such as cleaning up Greek road. A Key activity that i was involved in when collaborating with NRHH was cleaning up Greek road which allowed me to foster connections with members of the RSO as well as get first hand experience in removing plastic debris among various trash. In addition some Key activities when volunteering with the Arboretum involved raking, weeding, removing invasive plants, mulching, and in general helping maintain the overall biodiversity within UCF\u27s gardens.https://stars.library.ucf.edu/hip-2023fall/1029/thumbnail.jp

The effects of speaking rate manipulations on the perception of voicing contrasts

Phoneme-level research involving speaking rate has typically relied on a single method of synthetically manipulating rate of speech by compressing the vowel portion of a syllable. This does not mimic what occurs during natural speech production, and therefore could be influencing the perception of voicing contrasts. An experiment was conducted to address this problem by constructing a continuum of voice onset times for the velar place of articulation and then subsequently altering the rate of speech using three methods of manipulation: compressing the vowel, compressing the consonant and vowel proportionate to what occurs naturally, and compressing the total duration of the syllable. Each method of rate manipulation was evaluated at three speeds. The original continuum served as a control condition reflecting normal speed. Medium and fast versions of the continua were also presented, where utterances following the aspiration noise that specified voice onset time were .75 and .50 times the length of the original production at normal speed, respectively. Participants rated each stimulus on a scale of one to six (1 = most /ga/-like - 6 =most /ka/-like). As expected, categorical functions were obtained across continua. There was an observed tendency for stimuli with short VOTs at faster speeds under consonant-vowel and total compression conditions to be rated/categorized as more /ka/-like relative to stimuli at the normal speaking rate. This pattern was not apparent for the vowel manipulation condition, which suggests that vowel compression is an appropriate method to manipulate the speaking rate of voicing contrasts. Total compression did produce consistent responses across speeds around the phonemic boundary and voiceless region of the continua, indicating that total compression could be appropriate for manipulating voiceless consonants with longer voice onset times. Taken collectively, the data seem to show that compressing the consonant portion of a syllable, even to a small degree, can limit the perceptual information that is necessary for categorization

Creating in a Participatory Culture: Perceptions of Digital Tools Among Teachers

The following embedded case study examines teachers’ perceptions of using digital and Web 2.0 tools for literacy instruction. These perceptions are important if teachers hope to enact a more participatory culture of creation rather than consumption called for by scholars such as the New London Group and the New Media Literacies scholars. Case study participants were teachers involved in a NWP site’s Invitational Summer Institute (ISI), with embedded cases of rural teachers in a high-poverty school district. The findings suggest teachers still face extrinsic barriers to enacting a participatory culture, and professional development is needed to help teachers effectively use digital and Web 2.0 tools in their literacy instruction

Identifying Stuttering in Arabic Speakers Who Stutter: Development of a Non-word Repetition Task and Preliminary Results

Stuttering and other conditions that affect speech fluency need to be identified at an early age in order that effective interventions can be given before the problems becomes chronic. This applies in countries where several languages are spoken including those in which English and Arabic are both widely used which calls for assessment procedures that work across these languages. The 'universal' non-word repetition task (UNWR) has been established as an effective screening tool for discriminating between children who stutter (CWS) and children with word-finding difficulty for a number of languages. However, the UNWR does not apply to languages such as Arabic and Spanish. The present study aimed to: (1) introduce an Arabic English NWR (AEN_NWR); which was developed based on the same phonologically informed approach used with UNWR; (2) present preliminary non-word repetition data from Arabic-speaking CWS and adults who stutter (AWS). The AEN_NWR items comprises twenty-seven non-words that meet lexical phonology constraints across Arabic and English. The set of items includes non-words of two, three and four syllables in length. Preliminary non-word repetition data were collected from ten CWS between the ages of 6;5 and 16;7 (M age = 12:1) and fourteen AWS between the ages of 19;2 and 31;0 (M age = 24). Participants performed the non-word repetition task and provided a sample of spontaneous speech. The spontaneous speech samples were used to estimate %stuttered syllables (%SS). To validate that AEN_NWR performance provides an alternative way of assessing stuttering, a significant correlation was predicted between %SS and AEN_NWR performance. Also, word length should affect repetition accuracy of AEN_NWR. As predicted, there was a significant negative correlation between the AEN_NWR and %SS scores (r (25) = -0.5), p < 0.000). Overall, CWS were less accurate in their repetition than AWS at all syllable lengths. The AEN_NWR provides a new assessment tool for detecting stuttering in speaker of Arabic and English. Future studies would benefit from a larger sample of participants, and by testing a population-based sample. These studies would allow further investigation of the AEN_NWR as a screening measure for stuttering in preschool children

Socio-spatial authenticity at co-created music festivals

From the early days of hippie counter-culture, music festivals have been an important part of the British summer. Today they are commercialised offerings without the counter-cultural discourse of earlier times. Drawing on participant observation, interviews and focus groups conducted at a rock festival and a smaller boutique festival, the paper examines how their design, organisation and management are co-created with participants to produce authentic experiences. The paper contributes to research on authenticity in tourism by examining how authenticity emerges and is experienced in such co-created commercial settings. It presents the importance that the socio-spatial plays in authenticity experiences and how socio-spatial experience and engagement can also be recognised as a form of aura

Observations of Trip Generation, Route Choice, and Trip Chaining with Private-Sector Probe Vehicle GPS Data

This paper presents an exploratory study of GPS data from a private-sector data provider for analysis of trip generation, route choice, and trip chaining. The study focuses on travel to and from the Indianapolis International Airport. GPS data consisting of nearly 1 billion waypoints for 12 million trips collected over a 6-week period in the state of Indiana. Within this data, there were approximately 10,000 trip records indicating travel to facilities associated with the Indianapolis airport. The analysis is based the matching of waypoints to geographic areas that define the extents of roadways and various destinations. A regional analysis of trip ends finds that travel demand for passenger services at the airport extends across a region spanning about 950 km. Local travel between land uses near the airport is examined by generation of an origin-destination matrix, and route choice between the airport and downtown Indianapolis is studied. Finally, the individual trips are scanned to identify trip chaining behavior. Several observations are made regarding these dynamics from the data. There is some sample bias (types of vehicles) and opportunities to further refine some of the land use definitions, but the study results suggest this type of data will provide a new frontier for characterizing travel demand patterns at a variety of scales

Re/formulating Ethical Issues for Visual Research Methods

This paper discusses six categories of key ethical issues that are important to consider when using visual methods in social research. The categories were identified during workshop discussions with researchers working across disciplines and using a range of visual methods. They have been used to inform guidelines for the ethical conduct of research using visual methods. The categories represent both familiar and emerging ethical challenges. They include widely accepted strategies for meeting ethical obligations to ensure participants’ informed consent, to maintain confidentiality, and to design and conduct research that minimises harm. Three further categories represent more novel ethical issues that are particularly prominent in visual methods: managing fuzzy boundaries around the multiple purposes that visual research may serve, addressing questions of authorship and ownership of visual products generated during research, and dealing with representation and audiences when disseminating research findings. In this paper we reflect on the tensions and challenges these issues raise for researchers working with visual methods, and consider potential strategies to address these challenges. By identifying and critiquing ethical issues that are prominent in visual methods, this paper contributes to a growing body of work that aims to ensure the ethical conduct of visual research