Exploring the Integration of Disability Awareness into Tertiary Teaching and Learning Activities

A desire to have every student attending our University be aware of, and reflect on, disability in their studies and future careers, initiated our project to explore how to enhance disability awareness within all our University’s papers. In this project we systematically reviewed pertinent literature and ran an action research workshop for staff. Strategies to enhance disability awareness identified in the literature and workshop were presented and verified at an interactive conference presentation. Embedding disability awareness into curricula is challenging; staff considered themselves powerless to bring about change in their departments, but thought that one way to do so would be by modelling inclusive behaviour and by introducing subtle inclusive practices into papers taught. The identified strategies may be of use to others contemplating similar curricular modifications

Influential Article Review- Issues Surrounding Immigration and Crime in Arizona

This paper examines immigration. We present insights from a highly influential paper. Here are the highlights from this paper: Using newly released detailed data on all prisoners who entered the Arizona state prison from January 1985 through June 2017, we are able to separate non-U.S. citizens by whether they are illegal or legal residents. Unlike other studies, these data do not rely on self-reporting of criminal backgrounds. Undocumented immigrants are at least 142% more likely to be convicted of a crime than other Arizonans. They also tend to commit more serious crimes and serve 10.5% longer sentences, more likely to be classified as dangerous, and 45% more likely to be gang members than U.S. citizens. Yet, there are several reasons that these numbers are likely to underestimate the share of crime committed by undocumented immigrants. There are dramatic differences between in the criminal histories of convicts who are U.S. citizens and undocumented immigrants. Young convicts are especially likely to be undocumented immigrants. While undocumented immigrants from 15 to 35 years of age make up slightly over two percent of the Arizona population, they make up about eight percent of the prison population. Even after adjusting for the fact that young people commit crime at higher rates, young undocumented immigrants commit crime at twice the rate of young U.S. citizens. These undocumented immigrants also tend to commit more serious crimes. If undocumented immigrants committed crime nationally as they do in Arizona, in 2016 they would have been responsible for over 1,000 more murders, 5,200 rapes, 8,900 robberies, 25,300 aggravated assaults, and 26,900 burglaries. For our overseas readers, we then present the insights from this paper in Spanish, French, Portuguese, and German

Paths to Learning: Teaching for Engagement in College

Edited by: Barbara F. Tobolowsky (Ed.) Published by:, Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, National Research Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, 2014. 179 pages Reviewed by: Jessica Hale, Ed.D

Men and Masculinities

Book Review of: Daniel Tillapaugh and Brian L. McGowan (Eds.). Men and Masculinities: Theoretical Foundations and Promising Practices for Supporting College Men’s Development. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 2019. 235 pp. Softcover, $30.00. ISBN 978-1-62036-931-9. Reviewed by: Jessica Hale, Ed. D., Faculty, English and College Readiness, Washtenaw Community College, Ann Arbor, M

Foraging Ecology and Population Dynamics of Northern Sea Otters (Enhydra lutris kenyoni) in Washington State

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2022Many marine mammal populations are currently recovering from population depletion after overharvest. As marine mammals are often important predators in shaping marine ecosystems, there is a need to understand the impacts of recovering populations on other species and the marine ecosystem as a whole. The depletion and subsequent recovery of these species presents biologists with natural experiments to study their ecology, including drivers of their population dynamics and the function of the species in the ecosystem. This dissertation focuses on the recovery of a translocated population of sea otters (Enhydra lutris kenyoni) in Washington State. The presence or absence of sea otters, a keystone species, can dramatically influence marine community structure. The overall aim of this dissertation was to utilize the natural experiment of sea otter translocation to Washington State to understand drivers of sea otter population dynamics as well as the ecological role that sea otters play in Washington State. In Chapter 2, my coauthors and I found that the sea otter population in Washington has grown from an estimated 21 adult sea otters in 1977 to 2,336 adult sea otters in 2019, and the population is predicted to continue to grow and expand primarily to the south of the current range over the next 25 years. We also estimated that Washington State can support twice as many sea otters than previously estimated (equilibrium abundance of 6,080 vs. 2,734 sea otters), and that estimates of mean equilibrium density in currently occupied areas had the largest impact on predictions of population growth and range expansion. In Chapter 3, we quantified how sea otter population status (i.e., sea otter cumulative density) and habitat type (i.e., sea otter foraging in open water, kelp canopy, emergent rock, or intertidal) influence sea otter diet, and found that habitat was 1.77 times more important than sea otter population status in determining sea otter diet composition. We also found that sea otter long-term average rate of energy intake and diet diversity were negatively and positively correlated with sea otter cumulative density, respectively. In Chapter 4, we demonstrated the ecological role of sea otters in the nearshore marine ecosystem in Washington as a keystone species. We found that temporal transitions in the amount of kelp canopy were related to the duration of sea otter occupation, and that this relationship was more complex than a simple linear function. We also found that sea urchins were present at higher densities at sites more recently occupied by sea otters compared to long-occupied sites. In Chapter 5, we demonstrated the impact of sea otters as a recovering predator on the Pacific razor clam (Siliqua patula). We found that the magnitude of sea otter predation effects varied over time and space, with sea otter-caused razor clam mortality surpassing natural mortality in 2018 at Kalaloch Beach, occupied by sea otters since 2005. We also found that sea otters selectively consume the larger “recruit” size razor clams, the size that is also targeted in the recreational fishery, despite the smaller pre-recruit size clams being more abundant. Collectively, these results provide a deeper understanding of sea otter recolonization in Washington State as well as the ecological consequences of this recolonization