Understanding the Liberal Arts Experience: Developing Leadership Skills from Classical Education

This descriptive case study seeks to determine how public high school students perceive the value of participating in liberal arts activities and how they believe these activities influence their academic success and future choices after their high school graduation. Participants were selected from students who participated in both a liberal arts and leadership activity at the research site during the 2018 spring semester. The eight selected participants were asked to complete an initial interview and a member checking interview. The researcher also observed each participant’s leadership activities twice. Themes emerging from the collected data included participant’s access to leadership development opportunities, enhanced self-confidence, increased self-efficacy, and improved interpersonal communication skills. The results of this qualitative research will add to the academic literature concerning the benefits of liberal arts participation. The implications of this research suggest that high schools need to include a variety of liberal arts programs in their curriculum and that liberal arts teachers can use the results of academic research to serve as stronger advocates for the inclusion of liberal arts programs in their schools

Understanding the Liberal Arts Experience: Developing Leadership Skills from Classical Education

This descriptive case study seeks to determine how public high school students perceive the value of participating in liberal arts activities and how they believe these activities influence their academic success and future choices after their high school graduation. Participants were selected from students who participated in both a liberal arts and leadership activity at the research site during the 2018 spring semester. The eight selected participants were asked to complete an initial interview and a member checking interview. The researcher also observed each participant’s leadership activities twice. Themes emerging from the collected data included participant’s access to leadership development opportunities, enhanced self-confidence, increased self-efficacy, and improved interpersonal communication skills. The results of this qualitative research will add to the academic literature concerning the benefits of liberal arts participation. The implications of this research suggest that high schools need to include a variety of liberal arts programs in their curriculum and that liberal arts teachers can use the results of academic research to serve as stronger advocates for the inclusion of liberal arts programs in their schools

Peptide vaccination activating Galectin-3-specific T cells offers a novel means to target Galectin-3-expressing cells in the tumor microenvironment

Galectin-3 (Gal3) can be expressed by many cells in the tumor microenvironment (TME), including cancer cells, cancer-associated fibroblasts, tumor-associated macrophages, and regulatory T cells (Tregs). In addition to immunosuppression, Gal3 expression has been connected to malignant cell transformation, tumor progression, and metastasis. In the present study, we found spontaneous T-cell responses against Gal3-derived peptides in PBMCs from both healthy donors and cancer patients. We isolated and expanded these Gal3-specific T cells in vitro and showed that they could directly recognize target cells that expressed Gal3. Finally, therapeutic vaccination with a long Gal3-derived peptide epitope, which induced the expansion of Gal3-specific CD8(+) T cells in vivo, showed a significant tumor-growth delay in mice inoculated with EO771.LMB metastatic mammary tumor cells. This was associated with a significantly lower percentage of both Tregs and tumor-infiltrating Gal3(+) cells in the non-myeloid CD45(+)CD11b(−) compartment and with an alteration of the T-cell memory populations in the spleens of Gal3-vaccinated mice. These results suggest that by activating Gal3-specific T cells by an immune-modulatory vaccination, we can target Gal3-producing cells in the TME, and thereby induce a more immune permissive TME. This indicates that Gal3 could be a novel target for therapeutic cancer vaccines