An Appreciative Approach to Assessing Extension Professionals’ Perceptions of Evaluation

Generating timely, honest, and useful feedback is the cornerstone of all extension program evaluation. However, historical evaluation practices, especially in the international agricultural extension context, have relied on models that emphasize external criticism. One model of evaluation that has the potential to shift the focus toward a more collaborative model of evaluation is that of appreciative evaluation. Appreciative evaluation strives towards building on existing strengths rather than criticizing weaknesses with an emphasis on identifying what an organization does well. This research note reviews the results of a recent survey given to a group of extension professionals within a large land-grant institution to examine how extension professionals view the role of evaluation within their programming from an appreciative perspective. Respondents (n = 204) expressed great professional satisfaction in their work delivering programs and a sense of self-worth stemming from the impact they have in their respective communities. Evaluation tools and techniques were enabling forces as they allowed respondents to gather timely data and make adjustments to programs in ways that were reflective of community needs. When asked to identify any structural components of the extension system that improve evaluation practices and procedures, respondents emphasized the importance of both formal and non-formal training opportunities, the development of modular evaluation tools, and collaboration both within extension and their respective community(ies). The results indicated appreciative inquiry methods have the potential to provide valuable feedback about existing programming

Photoelectron diffraction: from phenomenological demonstration to practical tool

The potential of photoelectron diffraction—exploiting the coherent interference of directly-emitted and elastically scattered components of the photoelectron wavefield emitted from a core level of a surface atom to obtain structural information—was first appreciated in the 1970s. The first demonstrations of the effect were published towards the end of that decade, but the method has now entered the mainstream armoury of surface structure determination. This short review has two objectives: First, to outline the way that the idea emerged and the way this evolved in my own collaboration with Neville Smith and his colleagues at Bell Labs in the early years: Second, to provide some insight into the current state-of-the art in application of (scanned-energy mode) photoelectron diffraction to address two key issue in quantitative surface structure determination, namely, complexity and precision. In this regard a particularly powerful aspect of photoelectron diffraction is its elemental and chemical-state specificity

Nonquasiparticle states in half-metallic ferromagnets

Anomalous magnetic and electronic properties of the half-metallic ferromagnets (HMF) have been discussed. The general conception of the HMF electronic structure which take into account the most important correlation effects from electron-magnon interactions, in particular, the spin-polaron effects, is presented. Special attention is paid to the so called non-quasiparticle (NQP) or incoherent states which are present in the gap near the Fermi level and can give considerable contributions to thermodynamic and transport properties. Prospects of experimental observation of the NQP states in core-level spectroscopy is discussed. Special features of transport properties of the HMF which are connected with the absence of one-magnon spin-flip scattering processes are investigated. The temperature and magnetic field dependences of resistivity in various regimes are calculated. It is shown that the NQP states can give a dominate contribution to the temperature dependence of the impurity-induced resistivity and in the tunnel junction conductivity. First principle calculations of the NQP-states for the prototype half-metallic material NiMnSb within the local-density approximation plus dynamical mean field theory (LDA+DMFT) are presented.Comment: 27 pages, 9 figures, Proceedings of Berlin/Wandlitz workshop 2004; Local-Moment Ferromagnets. Unique Properties for Moder Applications, ed. M. Donath, W.Nolting, Springer, Berlin, 200

Angle-resolved photoemission study of USb2: the 5f band structure

Single crystal antiferromagnetic USb2 was studied at 15K by angle-resolved photoemission with an overall energy resolution of 24 meV. The measurements unambiguously show the dispersion of extremely narrow bands situated near the Fermi level. The peak at the Fermi level represents the narrowest feature observed in 5f-electron photoemission to date. The natural linewidth of the feature just below the Fermi level is not greater than 10 meV. Normal emission data indicate a three dimensional aspect to the electronic structure of this layered material.Comment: 22 pages including figure

Surface and interface electronic structure: Final report, December 1, 1994--November 30, 1995

A year and a half ago, we terminated our operations at the National Synchrotron Light Source and moved our research program to the Advanced Light Source in Berkeley. This move was motivated primarily by the exciting possibilities and research directions made possible by operation at the newer ALS facility. The ALS facility was commissioned in October 1993. We are members of a `Participating Research Team` (PRT) associated with undulator beamline 7.0 at the ALS. This beamline was commissioned for experiments the following winter and spring of 1994. We have thus had about a year to debug the beamline and to try to get some experiments accomplished. Reportedly due to insufficient operating funds, the facility provided beam to users only nine 8-hour shifts per week. In the past year, our program has been devoted primarily to becoming operational at the ALS and to assembling experiments and experimental equipment associated with our program there