Pernicious Letter

A play in three acts set in the cattle country of Wyoming

Comparison of Two Diet and Exercise Approaches on Weight Loss and Health Outcomes in Women

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of following either the Curves® Fitness and Weight Management Plan or the Weight Watchers® Momentum™ Plan on body composition and markers of health and fitness in previously sedentary obese women. Fifty-one women (age 35±8 yrs; height 163±7 cm; weight 90±1 kg; BMI 34±5 kg/m2; 47±7% body fat) were randomized to participate in the Curves® (C) or Weight Watchers® (W) weight loss programs for 16-wks. Participants in the C group (n=24) followed a 1,200 kcal/d diet for 1-wk; 1,500 kcal/d diet for 3 wks (~30%:45% CHO:PRO); and 2,000 kcals/d for 2-wks (45:30) and repeated this diet while participating in a supervised Curves® with Zumba program 3-d-wk. Remaining subjects (n=27) followed the W point-based diet program, received weekly group counseling, and were encouraged to exercise. Body composition, anthropometrics, resting energy expenditure (REE), lipid biomarkers, and hormone concentrations were assessed at 0, 4, 10, and 16 weeks. Maximal cardiopulmonary exercise capacity and upper and lower body isotonic strength and endurance were assessed at 0 and 16 weeks. Data were analyzed using multivariate analysis of variance for repeated measures. MANOVA analysis of body composition data revealed overall time (Wilks’ Lamda p=0.001) and time by diet effects (Wilks’ Lamda p=0.003). Subjects in both groups lost a similar amount of total mass (C -2.4±2.0, -4.1±3.4, -5.1±3.9; W -2.3±2.3, -4.5±3.0, -5.5±4.6 kg, p=0.78). However, subjects in the C group tended to have a greater reduction in percent body fat (C -3.3±5.2, -3.2±4.6, -4.7±5.4; W 0.6±6.7, -0.6±8.3, -1.4±8.1%, p=0.10) and body fat mass (C -3.9±5.5, -4.6±5.3, -6.4±5.9; W -0.4±5.7, -2.1±6.7, -2.9±7.8 kg, p=0.09), while maintaining FFM (C 1.5±4.3, 0.52±3.7, 1.3±4.0; W -1.8±5.4, -2.4±5.8, -2.5±5.1, p=0.01). While both groups had increases cardiovascular fitness, the C group experienced improvements in upper body muscular endurance (C 1.4±3.9; W -1.2±2.4 repetitions, p=0.006). Both groups experienced improvements in lipid biomarkers; however, only the C group experienced a moderate increase in HDL-c. Results indicate that participants following the C program experienced more favorable changes in body composition and markers of fitness and health than participants in the W program

Predicting Housing Abandonment in Minneapolis' Central Neighborhood: Creating an Early Warning System.

Prepared for the Central Neighborhood Improvement Association. Sponsored by Neighborhood Planning for Community Revitalization, Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, University of Minnesota

Variation Within the “New Latino Diaspora”: A Decade of Changes Across the United States in the Equitable Participation of Latina/os in Higher Education

This study problematizes the common discourse that rapid and widespread Latina/o demographic growth in the United States is a driving force in realizing higher education equity gains. Using equity indices for students, faculty, and administrative leaders at the state level, we present a portrait of changes in Latina/o participation in higher education over the last decade and propose a classification scheme for understanding variation across states at the intersection of changes in both demographics and equitable participation. En este estudio se problematiza el discurso común del veloz y extendido crecimiento demográfico latino en los Estados Unidos como promotor de mayor equidad en la educación terciaria. A través de índices de equidad al nivel estatal de estudiantes, profesores y funcionarios administrativos, se presenta un retrato de los cambios en la participación de latina/os en la educación terciaria en la última década y se propone una clasificación esquemática de estados que facilita la comprensión de variantes que surgen de la confluencia entre cambios demográficos y participación equitativa

Charting the Design of Community College Student Success Courses: Uncovering Their Espoused and Enacted Curricula

Community colleges increasingly turn to various types of student success courses for their potential as high-impact practices to foster college completion. Despite commonly held assumptions of what characterizes these interventions, upon close inspection there is an unscrutinized, circular confounding of their goals and means which limits the ability of educators to design, deliver, and assess them adequately. In this mixed methods study of 45 community college student success programs across the United States, we show how a sociocultural perspective helps to clarify the espoused versus enacted curriculum of student success courses and to explain the problematic tendency to continuously expand their curricular scope. Additionally, findings reveal the latent salience that instructors place on developing self-awareness and a college-going identity, notions rarely invoked as justification for student success courses to the same degree as instrumentalist notions of skills, navigation, and career planning valued by the traditional completion agenda discourse

Best Laid Plans: How Community College Student Success Courses Work

Objective: Beyond understanding whether first-year student success interventions in community colleges are effective—for which there is mixed evidence in the literature—this study’s purpose was to uncover how they work to realize observed outcomes, including at times unanticipated undesirable outcomes. Method: This qualitative multiple case study used cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) to unpack interactions and tensions among programmatic-level features and individual-level experiences and actions. We conducted classroom observation, document analysis, and interviews with instructors and students in four student success courses across diverse contexts. Results: Regardless of particular designs and course emphases, we found in all cases a blurring of activity elements, wherein learning tools and learning goals were often coterminous, or instructors effectively took on the role of learning tools themselves, in the form of object lessons and mediators, for instance. Courses had a distinctive character as rehearsal for college that simultaneously created a welcoming peer environment but an uncertain learning and assessment environment. Contributions: Because of their nature as metacourses—college courses about college-going—success courses’ means and ends ultimately may be functionally inseparable, thus helping to explain their continual evolution and contested roles. Whereas such courses are typically justified as means to teach college skills, we found this utilitarian rationale to be insufficient to describe the experiential dimensions of social learning that participants reported. Instead, we found these courses reveal how college-going is an emergent social literacy, one that a single course is insufficient to fully realize

METODOLOGIAS ATIVAS NA FORMAÇÃO DO FUTURO MÉDICO NUMA UNIVERSIDADE PÚBLICA

Este estudo buscou tratar, desde um recorte da dissertação “Política de humanização do SUS na formação médica no interior da Amazônia”, as metodologias ativas na prática humanizada durante a formação do futuro médico do curso de medicina da Universidade do Estado do Pará (UEPA), em Santarém, região Oeste do Pará. Objetiva-se analisar as contribuições destas metodologias através da percepção de discentes, docentes e coordenadora do referido curso. A metodologia é de abordagem qualitativa, descritiva, com recorte temporal de 2014 a 2017. Foi realizado estudo documental e empírico, com aplicação de entrevistas semiestruturadas com a coordenadora do curso e 09 docentes, e de questionário padrão PRAXIS com 87 discentes do referido curso, gerando uma amostra de 97 participantes, cujos dados foram tratados pela análise de conteúdo de Bardin (2011). Os resultados demonstram que o curso estudado faz uso das Metodologias Ativas desde sua implantação em 2006, na região a região Oeste do Pará. Verificou-se também que discentes, docentes e coordenadora do referido curso percebem que estas metodologias precisam ser fortalecidas através de formação continuada dos docentes, com maior engajamento nos planejamentos pedagógicos e diálogo entre a teoria do ensino e a prática pedagógica na realidade dos módulos INC e GIESC. Ainda assim, identificou-se que o PPP do curso de Medicina analisado esclarece que a missão do Curso é graduar médico com o uso de metodologias ativas no processo ensino-aprendizagem, legitimadas pela integração da realidade imediata, sendo o caminho para uma aprendizagem significativa na educação na área de saúde e a consolidação na formação médica.   Palavras-chave: Metodologias Ativas. Formação Médica. Prática Humanizada. &nbsp