The Influence of Enrollment Management Transition Strategies on College Student Success

Enrollment management practices clearly influence college student success. Retention and graduation rates are critical measures for institutions of higher education, particularly measures involving increased first-year retention rates, four-year graduation rates, and six-year graduation rates. Improving student success is paramount concern for college and university leaders. This concern has yielded a body of literature addressing the role of enrollment management in higher education as well as the development of various college student success programs. Specifically within the overarching concept of enrollment management are transition strategies which influence college student success. The purpose of this study was to understand the influence of enrollment management transition strategies on college student success at large, public U.S. higher education institutions as categorized by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education (2010). Minimal research exists regarding the use of enrollment management transition strategies on the first-year retention rate and the four- and six-year graduation rates. Therefore, this study was intended to further higher education\u27s understanding of these strategies. Data for this quantitative study were derived from an online survey which was disseminated to chief enrollment officers at large, public U.S. higher education institutions as categorized by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education (2010). The number of respondents was 87, which was a 45% response rate. An analysis of variance, Pearson\u27s Product Moment Coefficient, Dependent t-test for Paired Samples, and descriptive statistics were used for statistical analysis. All data were self-reported by the chief enrollment officer or their designee at these surveyed higher education institutions. While the findings did not clearly indicate statistically significant findings regarding the relationship of enrollment management transition strategies on college student success, the data garnered from the study was indicative of a relationship between the enrollment management transition strategy employed and the change in the first-year retention rate and the four-year graduation rate at these institutions surveyed. Further, the study indicated that additional research with students and faculty should be conducted so as to capture the full breadth of the influence of enrollment management transition strategies on college student success

Root Cause Analysis to Improve Incident Reporting in an Ambulatory Care Setting

Problem: The subject organization (SO) is a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) with an internally developed incident reporting system. The SO wanted to improve patient and employee safety using data from incident reports, but the incident reporting system did not give enough information to recognize patterns and develop countermeasures. Context: Supervisors welcomed the opportunity to learn more about incident report follow-up and conducting root cause analysis (RCA). Members of the Safety Committee were eager for data to use to develop countermeasures to improve patient and employee safety. Decreases in employee injuries can save the SO from increases in the cost of worker’s compensation coverage, so the SO leadership supported the project. The organization is covered by the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) for malpractice insurance, but there is always a cost to preparing a defense against claims, so the Chief Financial Officer was supportive of a project that could reduce the chance of claims. Interventions: The project was conducted in three stages. The first stage was to design a data collection tool for supervisors to use to guide incident report follow-up and document RCA. The second stage was to conduct training sessions for supervisors to teach them about organizational fairness, using a human-factors approach to evaluate incidents, how to conduct an investigation, and how to perform RCA. The third step was to send the data collection tool to supervisors to collect additional information about incidents. The data were extracted from the completed tools and presented to the Safety Committee. Measures: The project measured effectiveness of the class in increasing confidence with doing RCA and conducting IR follow-up. The project also measured the effectiveness of the class in training supervisors to use the data collection tool correctly. A third measure was whether the training and use of the tool improved the rate of RCA documentation in IRs when it was assigned to supervisors. Results: The emphasis of the class training shifted due to the need to do remedial incident report training with the supervisors, therefore completion of the data collection tool was de-emphasized. Of the returned responses, most (95.7% for general incident and 98.4% for employee incident) respondents completed the section requesting an analysis of accident causes. Just over half of the respondents (54.3% and 51.6%) completed the analysis of workflow variance, and few (17.4% and 20.3%) provided a root cause. The comfort level with collecting additional information after an incident increased 24.9% and the agreement with understanding how to conduct RCA increased 46.5%. The completion rate of RCA documented in the IRs themselves increased slightly from 61.5% in the 24-week period before the intervention to 67.9% in 24-week intervention period. Conclusions: While the project has not yet provided a direct benefit to the SO by producing countermeasures for incidents, the work done by the project lead and the Senior Vice President and General Counsel (SVPGC) will enable the SO to improve the incident reporting system. The project implies that more training is needed for supervisors to conduct follow-up investigations and to do RCA after an incident. The findings also imply that the organization needs to spread a culture of safety to all departments and to all levels. In addition to improving patient care by decreasing errors, establishing a culture of organizational fairness and safety may support other quality improvement efforts and help with employee retention

Poets, Pioneers, Sci Fi Authors and Arctic Explorers: Deaccessioning Audiovisual Materials in the Archives

In 2017 the University of Arizona Libraries Special Collections (UALSC) conducted a survey of audiovisual materials in its collections. The Multimedia Archivist collected data on the content, quantity, format and condition of these materials. Deaccessioning collections was not a practice UALSC had routinely implemented in the past. However with the additional information collected during this survey obvious candidates for deaccessioning arose. The Multimedia Archivist was concerned about the long term preservation of these collections so it was imperative that UALSC take action. The backlog for the reformatting of audiovisual materials was large and the budget limited. The collections identified for deaccessioning were a low priority for preservation and returning these collections to their institutions increased their chances of timely attention. The determination to deaccession these audiovisual materials was based on three criteria: content, copyright ownership and condition. Collections that fell outside our collection development scope were prime candidates. A few collections that did fall within our scope contained audiovisual materials whose copyright ownership was clearly held by other institutions. Finally, collections that contained formats that UALSC had limited ability to adequately preserve were also considered. Ultimately five collections that met these criteria were selected for deaccessioning. UALSC had not developed formal deaccessioning processes so in order to proceed policies and practices for deaccessioning were developed by the department. The five collections included materials that were also held at the University of Arizona Poetry Center, the University of New Mexico, the Arizona Historical Society and the Pacifica Network. To the UA Poetry Center UALSC returned deposited copies of the UA Poetry Reading Series that were now held in the UA Poetry Center’s archive and readily available on the UA Poetry Center’s streaming site. Another collection contained copies of oral histories that were dubbed from master copies held at the University of New Mexico. Third, UALSC acquired a fanzine collection of a science fiction writer which included copies of a radio show he hosted on the Pacifica Network who holds the copyright for this program. Fourth, in the mid-1970s, the Arizona Historical Society funded an oral history project to document the history of Arizona. Copies of many of these interviews were found in UALSC’s Oral History collection. The Arizona Historical Society retains the master tapes and copyright for these materials. Finally, UALSC holds a small collection of a famous Arctic explorer which includes a 16 mm film of his voyages. The condition of this film is of particular concern as it was in an advanced state of deterioration. Another repository holds a large collection of his films and their return would reunite a split collection. The archivists began a discussion with these institutions about the possible return of materials. Ultimately, deaccessioning these materials returns them to their rightful institutions and highlights the time sensitive nature for preservation of many audiovisual formats. It allows the Multimedia Archivist to focus on the unique audiovisual materials prioritized for preservation and migration within UALSC and it strengthens relationships with repositories within the state and forms new relationships with other repositories

Long term outcomes in men screened for abdominal aortic aneurysm : prospective cohort study

PMID: 22563092 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] PMCID: PMC3344734 Free PMC ArticlePeer reviewedPublisher PD

To the Moon and Mars and Back to the Archives: Working with Modern Space Collections at the University of Arizona Libraries

With a long history at the University of Arizona with excellence in the lunar and planetary sciences, the University of Arizona Libraries Special Collections has increased its collecting of the History of Science and Technology. These large, modern space collections pose unique challenges and require specific needs to be addressed in order for the collections to be stored, processed and made available for access. It is essential for archivists working with these collections to ask their donors the right questions and learn the limitations and restrictions that often come with acquiring modern space collections. Archives around the country have started tackling the issues unique to space collections, particularly with the conference To Boldly Preserve in 2018. Special Collections has encountered these processing and access issues with the Peter Hollingsworth Smith papers (MS 605) including the heavy reliance on acronyms and abbreviations, special restrictions form ITAR and export control that affect access and the effects of grant funding on archiving of materials. While the acquisition of modern space collections can be complicated, the preservation of modern space missions is vital to document the development of the exploration of space and being prepared for these common issues can ease the transition of collections to the archives

THE DIFFERENCES IN SPINAL KINEMATICS AND LOADING IN HIGH PERFORMANCE FEMALE ROWERS DURING ERGOMETER AND ON WATER ROWING

Low back pain (LBP) is the most prevalent injury in rowing. The high use of ergometers have been associated win increased LBP and sliding ergometers has proposed to reduce this stress. The purpose of this study was to examine the lumbar flexion angles on fixed and sliding ergometers versus on water conditions. Four elite female adult rowers volunteered for this study and completed a 1,000 meter maximal test on the stationary and fixed ergometers and then on water. Lumbar curvature (% flexion) was calculated) for the first 0.47 s following the catch position. Standardized mean differences (effect size) were calculated to examine differences in %ROM over time for each condition and between conditions. Results found that fixed rowers ergometers induced the greatest amount if lumbar flexion, with some reduction for sliding ergometers compared to on water

Investigating speech and language impairments in delirium: a preliminary case-control study

<div><p>Introduction</p><p>Language impairment is recognized as as part of the delirium syndrome, yet there is little neuropsychological research on the nature of this dysfunction. Here we hypothesized that patients with delirium show impairments in language formation, coherence and comprehension.</p><p>Methods</p><p>This was a case-control study in 45 hospitalized patients (aged 65–97 years) with delirium, dementia without delirium, or no cognitive impairment (N = 15 per group). DSM-5 criteria were used for delirium. Speech was elicited during (1) structured conversational questioning, and (2) the "Cookie Theft" picture description task. Language comprehension was assessed through standardized verbal and written commands. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed.</p><p>Results</p><p>Delirium and dementia groups scored lower on the conversational assessment than the control group (p<0.01, moderate effect sizes (r) of 0.48 and 0.51, resp.). In the Cookie Theft task, the average length of utterances (i.e. unit of speech), indicating language productivity and fluency, distinguished patients with delirium from those with dementia (p<0.01, r = 0.50) and no cognitive impairment (p<0.01, r = 0.55). Patients with delirium performed worse on written comprehension tests compared to cognitively unimpaired patients (p<0.01, r = 0.63), but not compared to the dementia group.</p><p>Conclusions</p><p>Production of spontaneous speech, word quantity, speech content and verbal and written language comprehension are impaired in delirious patients compared to cognitively unimpaired patients. Additionally, patients with delirium produced significantly less fluent speech than those with dementia. These findings have implications for how speech and language are evaluated in delirium assessments, and also for communication with patients with delirium. A study limitation was that the delirium group included patients with co-morbid dementia, which precludes drawing conclusions about the specific language profile of delirium.</p></div

FEH Local: improving flood estimates using historical data

The traditional approach to design flood estimation (for example, to derive the 100-year flood) is to apply a statistical model to time series of peak river flow measured by gauging stations. Such records are typically not very long, for example in the UK only about 10% of the stations have records that are more than 50 years in length. Along-explored way to augment the data available from a gauging station is to derive information about historical flood events and paleo-floods, which can be obtained from careful exploration of archives, old newspapers, flood marks or other signs of past flooding that are still discernible in the catchment, and the history of settlements. The inclusion of historical data in flood frequency estimation has been shown to substantially reduce the uncertainty around the estimated design events and is likely to provide insight into the rarest events which might have pre-dated the relatively short systematic records. Among other things, the FEH Local project funded by the Environment Agency aims to develop methods to easily incorporate historical information into the standard method of statistical flood frequency estimation in the UK. Different statistical estimation procedures are explored, namely maximum likelihood and partial probability weighted moments, and the strengths and weaknesses of each method are investigated. The project assesses the usefulness of historical data and aims to provide practitioners with useful guidelines to indicate in what circumstances the inclusion of historical data is likely to be beneficial in terms of reducing both the bias and the variability of the estimated flood frequency curves. The guidelines are based on the results of a large Monte Carlo simulation study, in which different estimation procedures and different data availability scenarios are studied. The study provides some indication of the situations under which different estimation procedures might give a better performance