CECP GSO Research Exchange Conference 2011

The following literature review discusses potential non-medical benefits that may result from child and adolescent interaction with animals, and the practitioner or educator preferences regarding animal species used in Applied Animal Therapy. Discussed below are a variety of research study findings regarding the potential relationships between human-animal interactions and the various social, cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and personality developmental aspects in children and adolescents. These studies looked at human-animal interactions in the school setting, in therapy settings using AAT, and in the family home settings regarding companion animals/pets. The animals involved in these studies include horses, dogs, cats, rabbits, fish, and other aquarium-dwelling species. Interaction with and preference for horses yielded the most significant benefits with child/adolescent development, followed closely by interaction with and preference for dogs. These studies address multiple factors including the owner attachment levels to the animals, child/adolescent preferences for specific species or no animals at all, and past/present history of household pet ownership. The research also addresses many aspects to child and adolescent development including, memory, focus/distractibility, self-confidence, self-esteem, social skills, attachment issues, depression, aggressiveness, and most notably empathy. The findings relay the positive impact that human-animal interactions can and do have on many aspects of child and adolescent development in many different circumstances. These studies showed that there is a positive relationship between child-animal interactions and child development, which is supported by researches, parents, and teachers

Durations of repeated non-words for children with cochlear implants

Durations of syllables for repeated non-words were calculated for 76 children with cochlear implants (CIs) and 16 children with normal hearing (NH). Average syllable durations did not differ significantly between the groups, however a final syllable lengthening ratio in CI children was significantly shorter than for their NH peers. Measures of hearing related demographics were not correlated with CI syllable measures

PROGRAM EVALUATION OF THE LARGE LECTURE RETENTION ENHANCEMENT INITIATIVE PILOT PROGRAM AT NORTHERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY 2012-2015

The Northern Michigan University Large Lecture Retention Enhancement Initiative (LLREI) three-year pilot program ran from Fall 2012 to Winter 2015. The LLREI served 52 sections of courses consisting of 4,336 students over six semesters. Of that total, 1,390 were freshmen targeted for retention. Between 629-882 total students enrolled in participating courses depending on the semester. The three-year pilot program cost approximately $180,000. The main goal was to reduce the historically high failure and drop rates in large lecture introductory courses by revamping the content with active learning and supporting the courses with push-in style undergraduate teaching assistants. Eighty-eight percent of the course sections achieved that goal. The program designers hoped that reducing the failure and drop rate would increase the overall institutional retention rate. The LLREI’s unintended outcomes included professional development experiences for the teaching assistants, collaboration between faculty and teaching assistants, and new ways to communicate with and support struggling students. Participating faculty, teaching assistants, and students said they valued the program and expressed their desires to institutionalize it. In spite of the positive feedback and success reducing failure and drop rates, university administrators eliminated the program to save money as the university weathered an enrollment crisis (Rowles, 2015). This post-hoc program evaluation assessed the intended and unintended outcomes of the LLREI. It considered the decision to eliminate the program in the context of institutional leadership, policy and culture. This program evaluation recommended possible considerations for future similar retention programs utilizing undergraduate teaching assistants

After the Noise of Public Protest Subsides: Case Studies of Oppositional Gender Consciousness and Practices in San Francisco Bay Area Second-Wave Feminist Activists in the Autonomous Women’s Movement

My dissertation addresses the issue of the biographical consequences of activism and its role in social movement persistence and continuity. Apart from micromobilization studies, social movement scholars neglect individual activists’ roles as precursors of collective action. My study explores how the institutional workplace and domestic arrangements of former feminist activists affected their ability to translate their beliefs into oppositional gender practices that function as bridges between protest cycles. This project is a qualitative case study using in-depth, semi-structured interviews with respondents chosen and compared on the basis of their sexual preferences and their post-movement career choices.Comparisons of the workplace practices of respondents in different occupational categories demonstrate the influence of institutional arrangements. Those in male-dominated fields implemented their practices during their working hours. Those in female-segregated jobs could only implement their practices after hours or in the community. Together, their practices produced feminist knowledge and pedagogy, women’s rights advocacy, hierarchal inversion, democratization, and workplace islands of community and care. For respondents working outside of bureaucratic organizations, institutional arrangements were less influential than lesbian identity, inherited wealth, a totalist mindset, and personal qualities.In the domestic arena, cultural rather than structural factors influenced my respondents’ oppositional practices. Emotional ties created the glue sustaining communal living. Households with a core couple, relatives, and friends were the most stable, followed by households without a couple core or blood ties, but based on friendships, shared work, or political interests, and lastly, by households relying on the rental market for communards.My respondents’ practices contributed to women’s movement persistence through their individual acts and through the impacts their practices had and continue to have on those around them. Like Whalen’s and Flacks’s new left activists (1989), my respondents found partners, had children, and added activities that met emotional and spiritual needs ignored during the movement’s heyday, but did not become apolitical, and all continued to contribute to feminism. My respondents’ practices initiated an ever-widening two-way “bridge,” enabling individuals in their orbits of influence to adopt their beliefs, emulate their behaviors, identify like-minded others, including the social movement organizations they might join. These practices’ existence helped those organizations send a resonating message to potential recruits.As my contribution to social movement scholarship, I introduce the concepts of “not fitting” to characterize respondents’ grievances; “ feminist dilemmas” and “oppositional gender practices” to describe respondents’ translation process; “islands of care” as a type of free space; and “institutional arrangements” as political opportunities, and “interim practices” to describe the strategic role of practices

Mindfulness-based interventions: The implications for stress management and academic performance in undergraduate students

Johnson, K. Mindfulness-Based Interventions: The Implications for Stress Management and Academic Performance in Undergraduate Students (2019). Mindfulness activities and programs are becoming increasingly popular in post-secondary settings. At the same time, stress and mental health of students is an increasing concern at institutions of higher learning. This capstone sought to answer the research question: how do mindfulness-based intervention programs impact students’ stress management and academic performance? The culminating project is a website that provides an overview for post-secondary educators interested in implementing a mindfulness program with undergraduate students. The website includes information on mindfulness programs, ways of implementing a mindfulness program, best practices, resources for training, and information on research regarding mindfulness and college students. The conclusion is that mindfulness programs can help students in managing their stress and can positively impact academic performance

Misinformation of Mental Health on Social Media and How it Affects Those Who View it

Social media’s prevalence has grown through the years with 4.63 billion users around the world as of January 2022 (Global Social Media Stats). With the prevalence of social media, the question of the information, or in this case, the misinformation, that is on media platforms, especially about mental health, is one that needs to be brought to light. Mental health issues and disorders have become more of an open topic recently, and with the outreach on social media around mental health, the spread of misinformation can reach many audiences. This study analyzes just how potent the misinformation on mental health within a specific social media app, TikTok, is and how people’s perceptions of that mental disorder change or vary due to the information. The research involves a survey through Qualtrics with two TikTok videos created by the researcher about the disorder Major Depression with both having a mix of misinformation and information. Each video has six statements that fall into specific categories about depression, with one video having the misinformation and the other having the correct information. The participants answered questions along the Likert scale about their belief of depression before and after the videos and were given the correct information at the end of the survey. The survey was sent out to UNC Greeley students through the SONA program and given to some professors to show to their class. The results with 73 UNC student respondents, showed that some already strong beliefs can be boosted while already weak beliefs can decrease no matter the information shown, but some beliefs can be drastically changed based off the information one sees through social media

Induction and repression of mammalian achaete-scute homologue (MASH) gene expression during neuronal differentiation of P19 embryonal carcinoma cells

MASH1 and MASH2, mammalian homologues of the Drosophila neural determination genes achaete-scute, are members of the basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) family of transcription factors. We show here that murine P19 embryonal carcinoma cells can be used as a model system to study the regulation and function of these genes. MASH1 and MASH2 display complementary patterns of expression during the retinoic-acid-induced neuronal differentiation of P19 cells. MASH1 mRNA is undetectable in undifferentiated P19 cells but is induced to high levels by retinoic acid coincident with neuronal differentiation. In contrast, MASH2 mRNA is expressed in undifferentiated P19 cells and is repressed by retinoic acid treatment. These complementary expression patterns suggest distinct functions for MASH1 and MASH2 in development, despite their sequence homology. In retinoic-acid-treated P19 cells, MASH1 protein expression precedes and then overlaps expression of neuronal markers. However, MASH1 is expressed by a smaller proportion of cells than expresses such markers. MASH1 immunoreactivity is not detected in differentiated cells displaying a neuronal morphology, suggesting that its expression is transient. These features of MASH1 expression are similar to those observed in vivo, and suggest that P19 cells represent a good model system in which to study the regulation of this gene. Forced expression of MASH1 was achieved in undifferentiated P19 cells by transfection of a cDNA expression construct. The transfected cells expressing exogenous MASH1 protein contained E-box-binding activity that could be super-shifted by an anti-MASH1 antibody, but exhibited no detectable phenotypic changes. Thus, unlike myogenic bHLH genes, such as MyoD, which are sufficient to induce muscle differentiation, expression of MASH1 appears insufficient to promote neurogenesis