Project Reconnect Program: Engaging Truant Adolescents through Pre-Court Diversion

The current literature on truancy diversion court programs has failed to examine middle and high school truants’ perceptions regarding how well truancy diversion court programs improve school attendance and performance. As a result, the purpose of this study was to examine participants’ perceptions regarding how well the Project Reconnect Diversion Program empowered their improved school attendance, compliance with school rules, and completion of classroom assignments. The researcher used a case study design to investigate the participants’ perceptions of the Project Reconnect Diversion Program. Purposive sampling was employed to select the participants who completed the Project Reconnect Diversionary Program during the 2010-2011 school year. Data were collected through individual interviews and small group meetings. The Project Reconnect Diversionary Program was found to employ practices that reportedly influenced the participants’ school attendance, completion of class assignments, and improved grades. Moreover, the weekly check-in meetings with the social worker were reported to be beneficial and empowering. The findings from this study permitted the researcher to make several recommendations regarding truancy diversion program evaluation as well as middle and high school models for retention and graduation

To boldly gulp: standard metabolic rate and boldness have context-dependent influences on risk-taking to breathe air in a catfish

The African sharptooth catfish Clarias gariepinus has bimodal respiration, it has a suprabranchial air-breathing organ alongside substantial gills. We used automated bimodal respirometry to reveal that undisturbed juvenile catfish (N=29) breathed air continuously in normoxia, with a marked diurnal cycle. Air breathing and routine metabolic rate (RMR) increased in darkness when, in the wild, this nocturnal predator forages. Aquatic hypoxia (20% air saturation) greatly increased overall reliance on air breathing. We investigated whether two measures of risk taking to breathe air, namely absolute rates of aerial O2 uptake (ṀO2,air) and the percentage of RMR obtained from air (%ṀO2,air), were influenced by individual standard metabolic rate (SMR) and boldness. In particular, whether any influence varied with resource availability (normoxia versus hypoxia) or relative fear of predation (day versus night). Individual SMR, derived from respirometry, had an overall positive influence on ṀO2,air across all contexts but a positive influence on %ṀO2,air only in hypoxia. Thus, a pervasive effect of SMR on air breathing became most acute in hypoxia, when individuals with higher O2 demand took proportionally more risks. Boldness was estimated as time required to resume air breathing after a fearful stimulus in daylight normoxia (Tres). Although Tres had no overall influence on ṀO2,air or %ṀO2,air, there was a negative relationship between Tres and %ṀO2,air in daylight, in normoxia and hypoxia. There were two Tres response groups, ‘bold’ phenotypes with Tres below 75 min (N=13) which, in daylight, breathed proportionally more air than ‘shy’ phenotypes with Tres above 115 min (N=16). Therefore, individual boldness influenced air breathing when fear of predation was high. Thus, individual energy demand and personality did not have parallel influences on the emergent tendency to take risks to obtain a resource; their influences varied in strength with context

Visualising project interdependencies for enhanced project portfolio decision-making

Project management (PM) and project portfolio management (PPM) communities face challenges in the management of complex and highly interdependent project portfolios, as these interdependencies must be understood and managed for best project and portfolio outcomes. The research reported in this paper provides benefits to the global PM and PPM community by introducing a new tool and by providing insights into the factors affecting an organisationâs ability to understand project interdependencies (PI). Visual project mapping (VPM), the creation of graphical displays of projects and their interdependencies as a network of nodes and arrows, is shown to provide benefits by supporting communication and strategic portfolio decision making. The research also highlights the importance of the environment and culture as well as processes and tools and indicates that they work together to improve an organisationâs understanding of project portfolio interdependencie

Cues: How power influences behaviour in project portfolio management

Project portfolio management (PPM) is a dynamic management activity that seeks to align an organisation’s strategy with its portfolio of projects by selecting and delivering a suitable combination of projects. Though PPM processes are often adopted, outcomes vary and poor decisions are common. While there are many reasons why this might occur, we focus on the influence of power on PPM decision making, in particular the effects of indirect power. We examine models of decision making and argue that power shapes context, and provides actors with cues that encourages behaviour in frame appropriate ways. Specific behavioural cues are identified, and the need for further research is made

Time to make space for practice-based research in project portfolio management

Practice-based research is extending understanding in the disciplines of strategy and project management, in part as a result of strong advocacy of research from ‘strategy-as-practice’ and ‘projects-as-practice’ perspectives. Such perspectives provide holistic contextual information and reveal the evolutionary and responsive nature of project and strategy processes. As environments shift and become more complex, dynamic capabilities are required for projects to flourish. Normative project management approaches are being challenged and practice-based project portfolio management (PPM) research is emerging. Increasingly, PPM defines the space between strategy and project management, with a key project focus on temporality. There is a need for further development and encouragement of practice-based approaches in PPM research that are alert to the becoming of projects as spatial manifestations that unfold in (different conceptions of) time. We identify three themes in project and portfolio management research that employ practice-based and strategically anchored perspectives. We illustrate the trajectory of early work on strategy and the front end of projects through to the development and application of increasingly sophisticated theoretical perspectives in project portfolio management (PPM) research. The dynamic capabilities perspective is shown to provide a strong theoretical foundation for investigating PPM and its role in implementing and informing strategy through projects. Theoretically grounded and practice-based research represents the interplay between structure and practice, with these reciprocally and recursively shaping each other over time. Building on these examples we call for practice-based research in PPM, and we suggest a convergence of strategy-as-practice perspectives and practice-based PPM research

Improved spatial resolution of the sodium distribution on Mercury

The distribution of sodium emission over the surface of Mercury is non-uniform, and changes over time. These non-uniformities and time-dependent changes give clues to the processes that produce the sodium. However, observations of the distribution of sodium on Mercury are hampered by the bad seeing that accompanies the need to observe either in daytime, or at extremely large air masses in twilight. In an effort to improve this situation, we have developed an image stabilizer utilizing a piezoelectric driven tip-tilt correction mirror for daytime spectral imaging of Mercury. The system is a modification of one that was originally developed for solar observations at the McMath-Pierce solar telescope. Use of image stabilization results in a noticeable improvement in spatial resolution of our Mercury sodium images. A series of sodium images taken over an eight-day period show changes in which an emission peak in high southern latitudes disappears, and is replaced by an emission peak at high northern latitudes. Further systematic observations and improvements are planned for the image stabilizer system, as well as experimental observations with a low-order adaptive optics system incorporating a commercially available 37-actuator deformable mirror

Towards Project Portfolio Management for Sustainable Outcomes in the Construction Industry

It is imperative that organisations improve their sustainability and there is a global push to reduce the environmental impact from project activities. This is especially true in construction, yet there is no ex1stmg framework to guide decision making and project portfolio management (PPM) for sustainable construction. This paper discusses the application of project portfolio management to the area of sustainable development in the construction industry. Using the understanding gained from existing PPM practices in a range of industries and the current approaches to risk and sustainability management in the construction industry, we propose a new maturity model for PPM. The maturity model aims to guide the introduction of sustainability factors into multi-project resource scheduling and risk analysis in the coustruction industry, and can be used to make the contribution to sustainability from an overall portfolio more sustainable than the sum of the contribution from individual projects, 1

Managing project interdependencies: exploring new approaches

The interdependencies between projects create complexities for the management of project portfolios within organisations. In times of uncertainty this challenge is even greater due to the difficulties in predicting the flow-on effects from changes to projects in the portfolio. Hence, in times of disruptive change a good understanding of project interdependencies is particularly important. This paper outlines two related studies that aim to improve the understanding and management of interdependencies within project portfolios. The paper first defines project portfolio management (PPM) and highlights its growing importance for optimising organisational outcomes, especially in dynamic environments. Project portfolio complexity and interdependencies between projects in a portfolio are then overviewed, highlighting the challenges that these interdependencies create for effective PPM, and introducing some of the methods used for understanding and managing these interdependencies including the dependency matrix and the related design structure matrix. Network analysis and mapping tools are then introduced and suggested as a novel method for improving understanding and managing project interdependencies. Finally, an example of the use of this type of method is presented and the current research projects are overviewed