Chairing Change: What You Should Know About University Consolidations

University consolidations present department chairs with unique challenges. This session will examine, from a department chair perspective, key points to consider and posit best practices to help ensure a smooth transition. With examples from a recent consolidation, this presentation will help chairs frame their role during this critical time

Defining and characterising structural uncertainty in decision analytic models

An inappropriate structure for a decision analytic model can potentially invalidate estimates of cost-effectiveness and estimates of the value of further research. However, there are often a number of alternative and credible structural assumptions which can be made. Although it is common practice to acknowledge potential limitations in model structure, there is a lack of clarity about methods to characterize the uncertainty surrounding alternative structural assumptions and their contribution to decision uncertainty. A review of decision models commissioned by the NHS Health Technology Programme was undertaken to identify the types of model uncertainties described in the literature. A second review was undertaken to identify approaches to characterise these uncertainties. The assessment of structural uncertainty has received little attention in the health economics literature. A common method to characterise structural uncertainty is to compute results for each alternative model specification, and to present alternative results as scenario analyses. It is then left to decision maker to assess the credibility of the alternative structures in interpreting the range of results. The review of methods to explicitly characterise structural uncertainty identified two methods: 1) model averaging, where alternative models, with different specifications, are built, and their results averaged, using explicit prior distributions often based on expert opinion and 2) Model selection on the basis of prediction performance or goodness of fit. For a number of reasons these methods are neither appropriate nor desirable methods to characterize structural uncertainty in decision analytic models. When faced with a choice between multiple models, another method can be employed which allows structural uncertainty to be explicitly considered and does not ignore potentially relevant model structures. Uncertainty can be directly characterised (or parameterised) in the model itself. This method is analogous to model averaging on individual or sets of model inputs, but also allows the value of information associated with structural uncertainties to be resolved.

Chikuni Parish Taonga: IRI School Assessment & Recommendations

The Fellows research accomplished three objectives in order to improve the Chikuni Parish Taonga (CPT) program. The first objective was to understand the barriers to education. The Fellows conducted surveys to discover what teachers and community members thought were the biggest obstacles to keep children from going to school. Understanding the root causes of school absenteeism is the first step to fixing it. The second goal was to outline and understand the training and monitoring system of both the schools and the mentors. The third goal was to find the best ways to support the mentors, schools, and communities to create a positive and productive learning environment

Mental health, ethnicity and the UK armed forces:Historical lessons for research and policy

BackgroundUK armed forces have recruited from other races and ethnicities at times of crisis. To meet diversity targets, they have also recruited indigenous groups of non-White British heritage. Considered at greater risk of mental health problems generally, these populations are likely to suffer more in combat and in transition to civilian life. Yet, there is little data on how they fare.MethodsA scoping review was conducted of peer-reviewed studies of psychological illnesses suffered by racial and ethnic minority soldiers from World War One to the present, together with research at the National Archives, Wellcome Trust Archives and the Imperial War Museum for unpublished studies.ResultsBritish commanders and psychiatrists argued that ‘martial races’ were protected against post-traumatic illnesses because of an innate resilience related to a rural heritage. Consequently, low morale and breakdown were interpreted as malingering to avoid combat. Indian troops received lower levels of psychiatric care than provided for British soldiers delivered with limited cultural understanding. Inferior terms and conditions were offered to Indian soldiers with lesser opportunities for promotion. These practices, established in both World Wars, continued for Gurkha and Commonwealth soldiers recruited to meet manpower and diversity targets. Disproportionate complaints of discrimination may explain why ethnic minority status is a risk factor for mental illness.ConclusionManagement patterns laid down during the Imperial era continue to influence current practice for ethnic minority service personnel. Yet, armed forces can play a positive role in fostering diversity and integration to provide protective factors against mental illness

Training Needs of the Paraprofessional

Non

Embodying Sporty Girlhood: Health and the Enactment of "Successful" Femininities

This paper focuses on young women’s embodiment of health discourses and how these are “played out” in education and sporting contexts where varying physical cultures are enacted. We draw on data from three qualitative projects that considered girls’ understandings of PE, football, and running within the context of their active schooling subjectivities. Health concerns increasingly frame young people’s participation in sport and physical activity and “girls” in particular have been encouraged to be more physically active. Influential “healthism” discourses continue to construct compelling ideas about “active citizenship” as moral responsibility and within broader, fluid and neoliberal societies young women are seen as the “magic bullet” (Ringrose, 2013) to overcome social issues and complex health problems such as obesity. Through critical feminist inquiry into the material-discursive rationalities of healthism in postfeminist times our analysis demonstrates that health and achievement discourses form powerful “body pedagogies” in relation to young women’s engagement with sport and physical activity. The body pedagogies we analysed were multifaceted in that they focused on performative potential of sport and physical activity in the quest for the ever “perfectible self” (McRobbie, 2007, p. 719), and were also imbued with fear, anxiety and risk related to failure and ‘fatness’. These findings are significant as they show that current responses to “tackle” ill health that mobilise sport and physical activity as simplified and rationalised responses to the “threat” of obesity are problematic because they do not contend with this complexity as young women assemble their postfeminist choice biographies

Embodying Sporty Girlhood:Health & the Enactment of Successful Femininities

This paper focuses on young women’s embodiment of health discourses and how these are “played out” in education and sporting contexts where varying physical cultures are en- acted. We draw on data from three qualitative projects that considered girls’ understand- ings of PE, football, and running within the context of their active schooling subjectivities. Health concerns increasingly frame young people’s participation in sport and physical activity and “girls” in particular have been encouraged to be more physically active. In- fluential “healthism” discourses continue to construct compelling ideas about “active cit- izenship” as moral responsibility and within broader, fluid and neoliberal societies young women are seen as the “magic bullet” (Ringrose, 2013) to overcome social issues and complex health problems such as obesity. Through critical feminist inquiry into the mate- rial-discursive rationalities of healthism in postfeminist times our analysis demonstrates that health and achievement discourses form powerful “body pedagogies” in relation to young women’s engagement with sport and physical activity. The body pedagogies we an- alysed were multifaceted in that they focused on performative potential of sport and phys- ical activity in the quest for the ever “perfectible self” (McRobbie, 2007, p. 719), and were also imbued with fear, anxiety and risk related to failure and ‘fatness’. These findings are significant as they show that current responses to “tackle” ill health that mobilise sport and physical activity as simplified and rationalised responses to the “threat” of obesity are problematic because they do not contend with this complexity as young women assem- ble their postfeminist choice biographies

The Iowa Homemaker vol.15, no.2-3

Just When You’re Ready… By Laura Christensen Move Out the Walls… By Sarah Field For Temperamental Sinks… By Isabella Palmer Be Cool and Calculative… By Hazel Moor

Continental breakup and UHP rock exhumation in action: GPS results from the Woodlark Rift, Papua New Guinea

We show results from a network of campaign Global Positioning System (GPS) sites in the Woodlark Rift, southeastern Papua New Guinea, in a transition from seafloor spreading to continental rifting. GPS velocities indicate anticlockwise rotation (at 2–2.7°/Myr, relative to Australia) of crustal blocks north of the rift, producing 10–15 mm/yr of extension in the continental rift, increasing to 20–40 mm/yr of seafloor spreading at the Woodlark Spreading Center. Extension in the continental rift is distributed among multiple structures. These data demonstrate that low-angle normal faults in the continents, such as the Mai'iu Fault, can slip at high rates nearing 10 mm/yr. Extensional deformation observed in the D'Entrecasteaux Islands, the site of the world's only actively exhuming Ultra-High Pressure (UHP) rock terrane, supports the idea that extensional processes play a critical role in UHP rock exhumation. GPS data do not require significant interseismic coupling on faults in the region, suggesting that much of the deformation may be aseismic. Westward transfer of deformation from the Woodlark Spreading Center to the main plate boundary fault in the continental rift (the Mai'iu fault) is accommodated by clockwise rotation of a tectonic block beneath Goodenough Bay, and by dextral strike slip on transfer faults within (and surrounding) Normanby Island. Contemporary extension rates in the Woodlark Spreading Center are 30–50% slower than those from seafloor spreading-derived magnetic anomalies. The 0.5 Ma to present seafloor spreading estimates for the Woodlark Basin may be overestimated, and a reevaluation of these data in the context of the GPS rates is warranted