Transforming the Civic Engagement Leader Program to Create Sustainable Leadership

The Clearinghouse for Volunteers, part of the Feinstein Civic Engagement Program, runs a Feinstein Experience every fall to provide service opportunities to all URI 101 freshmen and other student volunteers. Before fall 2012, URI 101 students were required to participate in service projects chosen by their professors together with their URI 101 class. In fall 2012, the Feinstein Experience changed to fit student preferences and passions. Now, URI 101 students and other student volunteers can sign up for any project that matches their interests and/or schedule. Civic Engagement Leaders (CELs) lead the community service experiences for the Feinstein Experience. My honors project worked on transforming the Civic Engagement Leader program to better suit the new Feinstein Experience model and developing successful future servant leaders through a sustainable leadership training model. CELs were required to attend a leadership class as part of their experience. As the teaching assistant, I helped implement many new changes to the class structure. One of the biggest changes was fall training. We changed it from a one-day training to a two-day training to ensure leaders understood concepts the first day and saw the concepts executed the following day. Smaller class changes included more in-depth reflection activities through a forum discussion, critical thinking activities that showed the importance of resources, a quiz to assess their knowledge of the program, and more skills acquisition through various trainings such as first aid and Safe Zone. The main objective was creating more confident and competent servant leaders by developing a leadership toolbox. Many CELs are natural leaders while others need time to embrace their inner servant leader. We wanted to improve on four main areas in the “toolbox” including knowledge, skills, values, and motivation so that all CELs walk away with greater depth in each category. We want them to have knowledge about civic engagement, skills to execute civic engagement projects, deeper understanding of their values as it pertains to civic engagement, and motivation to continue being leaders in their communities

Local linear spatial regression

A local linear kernel estimator of the regression function x\mapsto g(x):=E[Y_i|X_i=x], x\in R^d, of a stationary (d+1)-dimensional spatial process {(Y_i,X_i),i\in Z^N} observed over a rectangular domain of the form I_n:={i=(i_1,...,i_N)\in Z^N| 1\leq i_k\leq n_k,k=1,...,N}, n=(n_1,...,n_N)\in Z^N, is proposed and investigated. Under mild regularity assumptions, asymptotic normality of the estimators of g(x) and its derivatives is established. Appropriate choices of the bandwidths are proposed. The spatial process is assumed to satisfy some very general mixing conditions, generalizing classical time-series strong mixing concepts. The size of the rectangular domain I_n is allowed to tend to infinity at different rates depending on the direction in Z^N.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/009053604000000850 in the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Foreign Language Anxiety: A Systematic Review

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ENTREPREURIAL SELF-EFFICACY AND THE LIKELIHOOD OF BEING SELF-EMPLOYED – A COMPARISON OF URBAN AND RURAL AREAS IN VIETNAM

A large body of entrepreneurship research has focused on the relationship between entrepreneurial self-efficacy and start-up activity. Yet, little is known about how the interplay of these mechanisms is moderated by informal institutional conditions (e.g., social traits in rural and urban regions). Particularly, Vietnam, a country with a socialist-oriented market economy, has emerged as one of the world’s most entrepreneurial countries. This study examines how the effects of individuals’ entrepreneurial self-efficacy on being self-employed are contingent on institutional environments (e.g., rural and urban areas). Statistical analyses of 2013 to 2015 data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) project for Vietnam provide empirical evidences that entrepreneurial self-efficacy is significantly and positively associated with being self-employed, and that this effect is more pronounced for individuals in rural than those in urban areas. Moreover, the findings show that people in rural Vietnam are more willing to be self-employed than their peers in urban areas. This difference is explained by the distinct impact of the informal institutional variable, entrepreneurial self-efficacy (e.g., the knowledge, skills, and experience required to start a new business) that individuals living in rural areas may gain from entrepreneurship promotion and start-up programs supported by the Vietnamese leadership. Our findings have implications for national entrepreneurship programs and financial support for start-up projects in rural areas

Local maxima of the sample functions of the N-parameter Bessel process

AbstractIn this paper we show that almost every sample function of the N-parameter Bessel process associated with the N-parameter Wiener process has a local maximum. In addition some properties related to the local maxima are investigated

Structural features of geostrophic circulation in open region of the South China Sea

On the basis of observation data of water temperature and salinity the mean seasonal geostrophic circulation in open region of the South China Sea (SCS) was computed by the dynamic method relative to the 800 decibar reference surface. The results of computation let go to following notices: In both main monsoons (winter and summer) there are two main geostrophic eddies: the anticlockwise eddy in the northern and northwestern part, and the clockwise eddy in the southern part of the SCS with corresponding divergent and convergent zones. The main frontal zones go along the middle latitudes of the sea from the southern continental shelf of Vietnam to the area west of Luzon Island. The strength and stability of the current in winter are higher than in summer. The Kuroshio has an enough strong branch intruding into the SCS through Bashi Strait in winter creating in the sea the water structure similar to that of the Northwest Pacific subtropical and tropical regions. In summer the Kuroshio water can intrude directly only into the area southwest of Taiwan

Experiment on an Integrated Ricefish Polyculture System (6 Species, 1- 2 fish/m2) in the Mekong Delta

Our ricefish polyculture (6 species) results at two stocking densities (1 and 2 fish/m2) show that: The water quality in a ricefish polyculture system, such as water temperature (29.1 – 29.0 °C), water pH (6.6 – 6.7), water transparency (18.0 – 20.8 cm), dissolved O2 (4.7 – 4.6 ppm), CO2 (22.8 – 23.1 ppm), COD (11.9 – 12.7 ppm), are similar at both densities and acceptable for the 6 tropical fish species. Ammonium and phosphorus concentrations are statistically higher at 1 fish/m2 (0.4 and 0.2 ppm). The primary productivity is similar for both densities (6.5 – 6.8 g O2/m3/day) and suitable for fish culture. The phytoplankton biodiversity is relatively high and at the same level for both treatments (74 – 63 taxa), but the densities of phytoplankton, of zooplankton, and the biomass of zoobenthos are lower at the highest density (2 fish/m2), probably due to a higher predation by fish.The fish yield (808 kg/ha) at 2 fish/m2 is higher than at 1 fish/m2 (482 kg/ha). The cost ratio benefit (1.84) and the cost ratio profit (1.81) for farm households at 1 fish/m2 are lower than those values at 2 fish/m2 (2.1 and 2.05 respectively). Regarding the aquaculture extension program, the model of the ricefish polyculture (6 species) system with the stocking density of 2 fish/m2 could be extended in the rice fields to improve farmer's income in the Mekong delta

The Composition of Syngas and Biochar Produced by Gasifier from Viet Nam Rice Husk

Nowadays, biomass has become one of the renewable energy sources might be filled for the lack of energy in the world. Gasification of biomass in general and of rice husk in particularly has attracted many researchers in Viet Nam. The rice husk gasification experimental study has been done with the GEK 20 kW device which is developed by All Power Labs, USA. The air flow rate from 2 to 4 m3/h is applied in gasifier. A portable infra-red syngas analyzer is used for simultaneous measurement the concentrations of CO, CO2, CH4, H2 and O2 of the syngas and for calculation of the heating energy. The effect of air flow rate on temperature, syngas composition, and biochar is analysed and it indicates that the temperature in the combustion area and the content of hydrogen and carbon monoxide in the gas increase when the air-flow rate rises.  In contrast, the yield of biochar is decreased