Effectiveness of Peer Mentoring in First-Year Program Classrooms

First-year programs (FYPs) for college students offer extended orientation to campus resources and provide first-time freshmen with essential skills for academic success, and many believe that the effectiveness of FYPs increases with the presence of peer mentors. The present study measured the added effectiveness of peer mentoring in FYP classrooms with knowledge of campus resources as a dependent measure. Ninety one first-year students in nine sections of FYP classes participated in this quasi-experimental study. Seven of the classes had peer mentors (n = 70), and the two control classes (n = 21) did not have peer mentors in the classroom. A 30-item questionnaire regarding the use and location of several campus resources was administered in the first two weeks of the Fall 2009 semester and again in the last two weeks of the semester. A repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed a main effect of time (change between Testing Time 1 and Testing Time 2) and an interaction effect of time and group (students with peer mentors, controls without peer mentors), on knowledge of campus resources. Students with a peer mentor started out with less knowledge of campus resources, and finished the semester with a similar level of knowledge, when compared to controls. The results only partially supported the research hypothesis that students with peer mentors in their FYP classes learned more about campus resources when compared to students without peer mentors. GPA scores for the first semester at the university did not differ between groups

Struggling Readers and Dyslexic Readers: A Comparative Study of Student Intervention Files

This qualitative study framed in the Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990) examined similarities and differences between students labeled struggling readers and those labeled students with or at risk for dyslexia. The study utilized document analysis to analyze the clinical reading intervention files of 44 students, kindergarten through grade 3, from two afterschool literacy clinics, an urban, community-based clinic and a suburban, private clinic. Document analysis of the files of 21 students with or at risk for dyslexia and 23 struggling readers provided data for thematic analysis of the labels used to describe readers in need of clinical intervention and comparative content analysis of the reasons parents sought clinical reading intervention, reading comprehension levels, language comprehension levels, phonological awareness skills, decoding skills (including sight word recognition, decoding, and fluency), and encoding skills. Content analysis of parent responses to multiple-choice prompts found all parents sought clinical reading intervention because of their children’s struggles with decoding. In addition, one-quarter sought support for comprehension. Thematic analysis of open-ended prompts revealed three themes: concern about children’s academic decline despite their effort to learn and the parents’ effort to support them; concerns about children’s mental health; and, concerns about children’s deteriorating attitudes toward reading. Content analysis of assessment data, clinician notes, and parent and teacher comments indicated a number of similarities in the patterns in the reading behaviors of struggling readers and dyslexic readers. These patterns were evident in both factors that affect reading comprehension, namely linguistic comprehension and word recognition skills. There were identifiable differences that distinguished dyslexic readers from struggling readers in the areas of phonemic awareness and spelling errors. The findings of this research study amplify the importance of using a universal screener in kindergarten and first grade to identify at-risk students. Findings suggest implications for professional development for kindergarten to grade 3 teachers on several topics. Also, findings suggest future research on the combination of the students’ phoneme segmentation deficiencies coupled with their encoding errors is important to understand differences between dyslexic and struggling readers

We’ve Come a Long Way Maybe: Reflections of Women in The Academy

This essay provides narratives of five women in academy – specifically within the communication studies professoriate. They share experiences of equity (or lack thereof), motherhood, identity management, work-life balance, youthfulness, and illness. Overall, the stories presented seek to problematize ongoing difficulties for women in the academy with the hopes of sparking discussion and ongoing debate

Reshaping Institutions: Evidence on Aid Impacts Using a Pre-Analysis Plan

Although institutions are believed to be key determinants of economic performance, there is limited evidence on how they can be successfully reformed. Evaluating the effects of specific reforms is complicated by the lack of exogenous variation in the presence of institutions; the difficulty of empirically measuring institutional performance; and the temptation to “cherry pick” a few novel treatment effect estimates from amongst the large number of indicators required to capture the complex and multi-faceted subject. We evaluate one attempt to make local institutions more egalitarian by imposing minority participation requirements in Sierra Leone and test for longer term learning-by-doing effects. In so doing, we address these three pervasive challenges by: exploiting the random assignment of a participatory local governance intervention, developing innovative real-world outcomes measures, and using a pre-analysis plan to bind our hands against data mining. The specific program under study is a “community driven development” (CDD) project, which has become a popular strategy amongst donors to improve local institutions in developing countries. We find positive short-run effects on local public goods provision and economic outcomes, but no sustained impacts on collective action, decision-making processes, or the involvement of marginalized groups (like women) in local affairs, indicating that the intervention was ineffective at durably reshaping local institutions. We further show that in the absence of a pre-analysis plan, we could have instead generated two highly divergent, equally erroneous interpretations of the impacts—one positive, one negative—of external aid on institutions.

Neither wasted nor wanted: theorising the failure to dispossess objects of ambiguous value

peer-reviewedConsumer research has traditionally presented the consumption process in three stages – acquisition, consumption and disposition (de Coverly et al. 2008; Jacoby, Berning, and Dietvorst 1977) and it is assumed that consumers will naturally move through the process (Cross, Leizerovici, and Pirouz 2017). Whereas commodity acquisition and utilisation have been researched extensively, disposition has received scant attention – a curiosity given its ubiquity and significance in consumer’s lives (Arnould and Thompson 2005). Disposition is a significant issue. Whether it is a painful process, during which individuals endure an experience akin to the death of some piece of themselves or the joyful shedding of objects imbued with an unwanted self, disposition is an integral part of modern life (Lastovicka and Fernandez 2005; Price et al. 2000). There are exceptions to this process, for example, hoarders, collectors and particularly frugal consumers retain commodities beyond their expected life cycle (Belk, Wallendorf, and Sherry 1989; Coulter and Ligas 2003; Haws et al. 2012; Lastovicka et al. 1999). Indeed, there are certain categories of goods which are retained indefinitely either due to their emotional or financial value (Belk et al. 1989; Jacoby et al. 1977). Epp and Price (2010) ask why some valued items are banished to storage while others remain in active use. Items which are no longer useful may also be kept, living indefinitely in nooks and crannies around the home. These items are particularly interesting for consumer researchers because their retention in consumer homes reveal that assumptions regarding disposition processes need to be re-examined. As such, this paper asks what happens to things when they are neither wasted nor wanted, when the little meaning they initially held was tied to another, more valuable object or when they have been replaced. This paper stems from a larger project exploring technological waste disposition. Analysis revealed a kind of object which is retained indefinitely, which does not hold special meaning, is not particularly valuable or personal. These objects are of ambiguous value to the owner (including obsolete cell phones, laptops, unused cables, lockless keys, long paid bills) – objects that seem to hover between being wanted and wasted - they hold the ghost of meaning or the possibility of (re)use.PUBLISHEDpeer-reviewe

Giuga\u27s Primality Conjecture for Number Fields

Giuseppe Giuga conjectured in 1950 that a natural number n is prime if and only if it satisfies the congruence 1n-1+2n-1+ ... + (n-1)n-1 = -1 mod n. Progress in validating or disproving the conjecture has been minimal, with the most significant advance being the knowledge that a counter-example would need at least 19,907 digits. To gain new insights into Giuga\u27s conjecture, we explore it in the broader context of number fields. We present a generalized version of the conjecture and prove generalizations of many of the major results related to the conjecture. We introduce the concept of a Giuga ideal and perform computational searches for partial counter-examples to the generalized conjecture. We investigate the relationship between the existence of a counter-example in one number field with the existence of counter-examples in others, with a particular focus on quadratic extensions. This paper lays the preliminary foundation for answering the question: When does the existence of a counter-example in a number field imply the existence of a counter-example in the integers

Control and Measurement of A Single-Ion Quantum Harmonic Oscillator

A trapped-ion harmonic oscillator represents a rich and well-controlled platform for tests of quantum physics, with applications to quantum simulations, quantum sensing, and quantum information processing. Owing to its net charge, the ion's motion is affected by changes in the electric potential. Consequently, electric field and potential curvature noise will limit the coherence of the ion's harmonic oscillation. While in some respects, this serves as a limitation in the performance of the trapped ion system (for example, in the fidelity of two-qubit gates or quantum simulations with motional quanta), it also opens an opportunity to use the ion as a precise field sensor and to use engineered quantum states of motion to enhance the sensitivity to these fields beyond the standard quantum limit (SQL). This thesis describes the implementation of such applications on a single beryllium ion confined in a Paul trap. In the thesis, I present the theory of an ideal harmonic oscillator and the implementation of this system using the motion of a single trapped ion, including producing special quantum states of motion; these states include the energy eigenstates of the harmonic oscillator, called number states, up to n=100, superpositions of number states of the form (1/&radic;2)(|0&gt; + |n&gt;), with n up to 18, and coherently displaced number states with an average occupation up to approximately 300. I describe how we use these quantum states of motion for precise sensing of fluctuations of the harmonic oscillator frequency. The sensitivity of the (1/&radic;2)(|0&gt; + |n&gt;)&nbsp;state ideally follows the 1/n Heisenberg scaling for frequency sensitivity. Additionally, I describe investigations of the spectrum of motional frequency noise using a series of coherent displacements of the motion of the ion, with features similar to Ramsey and dynamical decoupling sequences for two-level systems. While these displaced states don't improve sensitivity over the SQL, they can be simply and rapidly implemented with trapped ions. I discuss extensions to all of these experiments, including to multiple ions in a new trap designed to confine 3 or 4 ions in individually tunable potential wells.</p