Evaluating EuroMET ‐ a Web‐based resource for meteorologists

Euro MET has been created to address the education and training needs of professional meteorologists and students in tertiary education throughout Europe and beyond Two module libraries have been developed for the WWW which are available in English, French, Spanish and German. The modules have been evaluated during their development and after completion. All the project partners used them in courses and training programmes within their institutions. This paper describes the formative and sum‐mative evaluation strategies used and some of the results obtained The efficacy of the evaluation approach adopted with respect to the size of the project is also discusse

Stay in School, Kids

This paper presents an analysis of the effects of football wins percentage on universities’ retention rates. Using an OLS model we determine the causal relationship between football wins percentages, other independent variables, and universities’ retention rates. Throughout the paper we will define all relevant independent variables and present an overview of the data gathered in order to formulate our results. A theoretical framework will be presented followed by a thorough analysis of the OLS estimation results

Chinese export porcelain and global spaces of imagination

This is the published version, made available with the permission of the publisher.This article was published in the Fall 2015 issue of the Journal of Undergraduate ResearchThis paper will examine a Chinese porcelain plate from the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The plate was produced in Jingdezhen, China ca. 1785-90 and acquired in Iran in 1888. It is painted in pink enamel with a landscape scene in the center and a double border around the edges. The landscape depicts pagoda houses interspersed with rocks, flowers, and trees. It is heavily stylized so as to seem “exotic” and “oriental” to the European eye. The double border consists of a diaper border outlined with a spearhead border. While the plate was manufactured at the site of the imperial kilns, it was intended for export to Europe as part of Chinese porcelain trade. This is made evident in the English transfer-print decoration with its clear, crisp lines and decallike look. Its purchase in Iran reflects British influence in Persia, which was a colonial subdivision of the British Empire from 1783 to 1971. This paper will consider the Chinese porcelain plate from the perspective of material culture and globalization as well as a limited amount of post-colonialism. Lines of questioning will include: the original setting in English dining customs and culture, its situation within the World Ceramics galleries of the Museum, and the role of British imperialism and its influence on those who used and consumed the Chinese porcelain plate. This will allow for a more detailed and nuanced understanding of the artificial construction of China in the British Empire

A Critical Access Pharmacy Program

With much light on rural hospital closures and healthcare workforce shortages, a sect of rural healthcare rarely discussed is the availability and accessibility of rural independent pharmacies. Pharmacies are a vital part of healthcare delivery in rural communities, with many not only supplying medications but also offering clinical services such as immunizations, blood pressure and glucose monitoring, medication counseling, and more. As funds are available, Congress should designate the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to establish a Critical Access Pharmacy Care Program to ensure the sustainability of critical access pharmacies throughout the United States. Specifics of the proposed program are included in this brief

Engineering Curriculum Redesign: Is My School Ready For This?

As humanity keeps facing grand challenges engineers are expected to be at the forefront and keep providing sustainable solutions to extremely complex problems. In the meantime, we have reached an era where technological advancement moves at a very rapid speed. That poses a big question to academia. “How should we educate engineers to ensure that they are best prepared for a complex world?” For an engineering curriculum to remain effective and relevant frequent redesign is critical. Despite this generally agreed upon understanding, universities sometimes operate under great pressure and move into initiating curricular change without having considered how multifactorial this process can be. At the same time there are little to no tools to help them determine institutional readiness for engineering curriculum redesign. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has placed quality engineering education at the core of its mission since its founding in 1861. Since then, MIT has not only founded a great number of very advanced forward-thinking engineering programs, but has also collaborated with a big number of international governments and schools in order to guide and support their engineering curriculum change. The Abdul Latif Jameel World Education Lab (J-WEL) is a global consortium within MIT working on this exact topic. J-WEL staff are currently working with experts on said matter to develop a tool that universities could use in order to self-assess their initial readiness as well as their progress as they move on with their curriculum redesign process. This practice paper presents the first iteration of said tool