The Diversification of the US Airline Pilot Career Field: Perceptions of Collegiate Flight Students.

There will be a tremendous need for commercial pilots over the next ten years. To maintain a pipeline of pilots, a US airline announced a diversity initiative in March 2021 to operate their own flight school with the goal of hiring thousands of pilots, at least 50% of them women or people of color. In December 2021, 80% of the airline’s inaugural class of 30 flight students were women or people of color. In 2022, several other airlines launched similar initiatives. The purpose of this study was to identify perceptions of collegiate flight students regarding these airlines’ new training and hiring initiatives focused on race and gender. There were 225 flight students from seven collegiate flight programs who participated in this study. Some of the findings indicated that only 48% of students agreed that airlines should diversify their pilot ranks and create new opportunities for women and people of color, only 26% agreed white pilots are perceived as a racial barrier and males are considered a gender barrier for potential pilot candidates, 78% agreed passengers want airlines to hire pilots based upon aptitude and competency and not gender and ethnicity, 83% agreed airlines that discriminate against applicants violate the Civil Rights Act, and 89% agreed airlines operating their own flight schools will negatively impact a collegiate flight student’s employment opportunity. The dissemination of findings will foster needed dialog regarding the diversification of the flight deck and the effects these new training and hiring initiatives have on the collegiate flight environment

Success of Achieving Student Learning Objectives: Compressed vs. Traditional Courses

Institutions of higher learning are offering varying course modalities to accommodate the changing needs of students. Notably, institutions of higher learning are offering an increasing number of compressed courses to meet student demand and remain competitive in higher education. The increase in the number of compressed classes presents the challenge of ensuring that similar academic rigor and breadth of knowledge are maintained in comparison to the traditional 16-week semester. The purpose of this research study was to determine if students enrolled in off-campus classes with compressed schedules are receiving a similar quality of instruction and achieving the equivalent student learning objectives (SLOs) as students enrolled in traditional on-campus 16-week courses. This study compared the course performance assessments of two groups of undergraduate students enrolled in the same SIU course delivered in two different modalities. The courses used the same course content and were taught by the same instructor. The data consisted of course grades associated with student performance assessments and student information collected using a student pre-course survey completed at the beginning of both courses and post-course survey completed at the end of both courses. Both the on-campus and off-campus students demonstrated a moderate to strong positive correlation between the final course grades. The statistical results from the study provided no evidence that suggests the delivery format of the course (traditional 16-week format or compressed weekend format) resulted in meaningful differences in the final course grades for the participating students. However, a closer analysis of grades on specific performance assessments, achievement of SLOs, and qualitative data yielded greater insight to determine the level of educational quality of the two modalities

Development of Critical Thinking Skills In Collegiate Aviation Programs

Critical thinking requires an individual to gather and interpret data, develop conclusions based upon relevant findings, and implement the best solution. The dynamic aviation industry requires these skills of its pilots, maintainers, and managers for companies to remain successful. Collegiate aviation programs need to teach critical thinking and cognitive skills to allow students entering the workforce to become these successful aviation managers, maintainers, and pilots. Since August 2021, Southern Illinois University has been conducting a study to inform the development of these techniques for promoting critical thinking skills in the classroom and determine their efficacy. SIU will provide the preliminary findings of the study so attendees can begin to formulate a framework allowing for the integration of critical thinking and cognitive skills into their existing curriculum

Strengthening Oklahoma’s Aviation Maintenance Workforce Pipeline through Collaborative Efforts of CareerTech, Educational Institutions and Industry Partners

As the needs of the 21st century aviation/aerospace workforce change and in-demand job skills evolve, it becomes increasingly important to cohesively bring industry and education together to produce a well-trained, qualified aviation maintenance technical workforce for the state of Oklahoma. The primary focus of this FAA-funded project is to establish a sustainable pipeline that addresses the needs and priorities of the aviation maintenance workforce, a significant sector of the aviation/aerospace industry that drives Oklahoma’s economic growth. This sustainable pipeline will be built with a broad array of educational and industry partners. This pipeline will be designed to recruit, train, and retain a diverse and talented workforce, including underrepresented and disadvantaged populations, into the aviation maintenance industry. This workforce group will consist of high school students and adult learners, including military personnel and aviation/aerospace workers displaced as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. As the students matriculate through the pipeline, each one of them will have various learning opportunities to obtain maintenance certificates, academic scholarships, industry apprenticeships and internships, and an associate degree in applied technology and a bachelor’s degree in aviation management; ensuring that all students receive the academic and professional experiences required for industry employment and advancement. When successfully created and maintained, the use of collaborative agreements among high schools, career techs and colleges/universities will reduce the cost of skills training and higher education opportunities and enable students to graduate with little or no debt and the pipeline of skilled aviation maintenance technicians is increased within the state of Oklahoma

Draft Genome Sequences of Four Saccharibacter sp. Strains Isolated from Native Bees.

The genus Saccharibacter is currently understudied, with only one described species, Saccharibacter floricola, isolated from a flower. In an effort to better understand the microbes that come in contact with native bee pollinators, we isolated and sequenced four additional strains of Saccharibacter from native bees in the genera Melissodes and Anthophora These genomes range in size from 2,104,494 to 2,316,791 bp (mean, 2,246,664 bp) and contain between 1,860 and 2,167 (mean, 2,060) protein-coding genes

A STRAIN MODEL OF THE ILIOTIBIAL BAND

The purpose of this study was to investigate mechanical strain in the iliotibial band as a possible causative factor in the development of iliotibial band syndrome. This syndrome is the leading cause of lateral knee pain in runners. In this syndrome, it is thought that pain develops from friction of the iliotibial band sliding over the lateral femoral epicondyle. The onset of the syndrome may be exacerbated by increasing strain of the iliotibial band. From a large prospective study, female runners who incurred iliotibial band syndrome during the study were compared to a control group who were injury free. Strain, strain rate and impingement were determined from a SIMM model of the lower extremity. The results indicated that iliotibial band syndrome subjects exhibited greater strain throughout the support period but particularly at touchdown and at midsupport. However, there were no differences in strain rate or impingement between the groups

Dynamics of Wolbachia pipientis gene expression across the Drosophila melanogaster life cycle

Symbiotic interactions between microbes and their multicellular hosts have manifold impacts on molecular, cellular and organismal biology. To identify candidate bacterial genes involved in maintaining endosymbiotic associations with insect hosts, we analyzed genome-wide patterns of gene expression in the alpha-proteobacteria Wolbachia pipientis across the life cycle of Drosophila melanogaster using public data from the modENCODE project that was generated in a Wolbachia-infected version of the ISO1 reference strain. We find that the majority of Wolbachia genes are expressed at detectable levels in D. melanogaster across the entire life cycle, but that only 7.8% of 1195 Wolbachia genes exhibit robust stage- or sex-specific expression differences when studied in the "holo-organism" context. Wolbachia genes that are differentially expressed during development are typically up-regulated after D. melanogaster embryogenesis, and include many bacterial membrane, secretion system and ankyrin-repeat containing proteins. Sex-biased genes are often organised as small operons of uncharacterised genes and are mainly up-regulated in adult males D. melanogaster in an age-dependent manner suggesting a potential role in cytoplasmic incompatibility. Our results indicate that large changes in Wolbachia gene expression across the Drosophila life-cycle are relatively rare when assayed across all host tissues, but that candidate genes to understand host-microbe interaction in facultative endosymbionts can be successfully identified using holo-organism expression profiling. Our work also shows that mining public gene expression data in D. melanogaster provides a rich set of resources to probe the functional basis of the Wolbachia-Drosophila symbiosis and annotate the transcriptional outputs of the Wolbachia genome.Comment: 58 pages, 6 figures, 6 supplemental figures, 4 supplemental files (available at https://github.com/bergmanlab/wolbachia/tree/master/gutzwiller_et_al/arxiv

To Be or Not To Be: an Academic Library Research Committee

The rise of faculty status for librarians at The Ohio State University (OSU) is reviewed. Faculty status eventually leads to greater emphasis on research and publishing as requisites for tenure and promotion. The Advisory Committee on Research (ACR) was formed in response to the research emphasis in order to: (1) promote research; (2) fund research; (3) establish a communication network; and (4) develop a policy for Assigned Research Duty (ARD), a policy which eventually led to non-assigned time. The article concludes the primary role of ACR is to promote a climate conducive to research among the faculty of OSU Libraries

Fostering spirituality in a pluralistic secular society

With the advent of the postmodern era, a heralding of a renewed and energetic interest in spirituality is being announced globally throughout many facets of society. This revival in spirituality has adopted diverse forms of expression, which generate an interest and intellectual quest to discover the nature and reasons for this phenomenon. This study will examine the history and development of Christian spirituality, as well as the concepts and values which emerge as enduring and intrinsic to the nature of spirituality. The goal of this thesis is to study the influence of pluralism and secularism on spirituality, and the resulting modern and postmodern concepts of spirituality, which have emerged because of this cultural trend in postmodern society. In discovering the essential elements of authentic spirituality, this thesis will justify and propose reasons and methods for fostering spirituality in a pluralistic secular society