Ready Educators Quality Improvement Pilot: Linking Program Improvement to Child Outcomes

This report is an evaluation of the first year of the Ready Educators Quality Improvement Pilot (REQIP), part of Thrive in 5's city-wide Ready Educators strategy. The pilot provided technical assistance and support to early education and care programs in centers and family child care homes that serve children from birth to age five. The REQIP theory of change posits that, to meet the goal of improved child outcomes, programs need to build "sustainable independent capacity to operationalize a continuous quality improvement process (CQI)." As the Pilot was envisioned, CQI involved the development of a Program Improvement Plan (PIP) through an assessment based on child-level and program data and with support from a Quality Improvement Partner (QIP). The PIP would then serve as the basis for technical assistance to meet the goals of the PIP, followed by a re-assessment using program and childlevel data. This CQI process would be sustained over time, in an ongoing continuous loop. In July 2013, after a competitive RFP process and with funding from the Barr Foundation, Thrive in 5 selected Wellesley Centers for Women to serve as the QIP

Trends In The Selection, Evaluation, And Compensation Of University Presidents In The Florida State University System

Recent literature suggested that while the discussion of presidential selection, evaluation, and compensation was common to both private and public institutions, special attention was paid to public university presidents. They and their presidencies were subject to intense public debate and scrutiny. Florida\u27s public university presidents have contended with the same issues as their counterparts in other states. However, the 2001 changes in the state\u27s higher education governance created distinct challenges and opportunities for the 11 presidents in the Florida State University System. The purpose of this study was to analyze the trends in the selection, evaluation, and compensation of the 11 university presidents in the Florida State University System (SUS) from 1996-2006, the period five years before and five years after the changes in governance. Interviews with university presidents, members of boards of trustees, and members of the Florida Board of Governors, members of the Florida Legislature, and salary histories from seven of the 11 Florida institutions were used to analyze the trends in light of the shift in perceptions of the presidents\u27 roles and the changes in higher education governance. Since 2001, and the establishment of boards of trustees and by Florida statute, presidents were seen as the chief executive officer of their institutions, a change from an academic to a business model. Trustees, who primarily came from a business background, viewed them as CEOs and chose to compensate presidents at a higher level than they had previously been paid. The Board of Governors, a majority of whose members also had corporate backgrounds, implied the need for a CEO-type leadership style and more corporate-style accountability. In 2003, the Florida Legislature responded to the salary surge at the chief executive level and placed a $225,000 salary cap from appropriated funds on the university presidents\u27 salaries. The legislation did not place any restrictions on university foundations or other sources for supplementing the compensation package

Research & Action Spring/Summer 2013

In this issue: Commentary: Women, Employment, & Health by Nancy Marshall Open Circle: Celebrating 25 Years of Getting to the Heart of Learning Q&A with Nan Stein, Ed.D.https://repository.wellesley.edu/researchandactionreport/1022/thumbnail.jp

A Descriptive Profile of Physical Education Teachers and Related Program Characteristics in Alberta

A survey of teachers and principals in Alberta was conducted to gain a descriptive profile of who is leaching physical education (PE) and to assess the relationship between PE specialists and variables associated with program delivery. A probability-sampling procedure was used to obtain a representative sample of schools. In these schools nonprobability procedures were used to recruit teachers. A total of'480 teachers' and 162 principals' questionnaires were returned. Although 50% (n=236) of PE teachers in the sample were classified as PE specialists (i.e., had either a degree, major or minor, in PE or a closely related area), there was a significant gap in the number of PE classes being taught by division. Of the 1,219 PE classes surveyed in this study, PE specialists taught 49% and 55% of classes at the elementary levels (Divisions I & 11) compared with 91% of junior high (Division III) and 90% of secondary (Division TV) PE classes. Significant differences were found between PE specialists and non-PE specialists on a number of items including perceptions of preparedness, teaching enjoyment and competence to teach PE, the number of PE specialists across grade levels, and the percentage of time devoted to PE in the timetable. Implications with respect to implementing PE specialists across all grades and the need for future pedagogical research to investigate the effect of PE specialists are also discussed.Une enquête a été entreprise auprès d'enseignants et de directeurs d'école en Alberta dans le but d'établir un profil descriptif des enseignants d'éducation physique (EP) et d'évaluer le rapport entre les spécialistes en EP et les variables associées à l'exécution de programmes. On a eu recours aune méthode d'échantillonnage au hasard pour obtenir un échantillon représentatif des écoles. Par la suite, on y a employé des procédures non probabilistes pour recruter des enseignants. En tout, 642 questionnaires (480 provenant d'enseignants et 162 de directeurs) nous ont été renvoyés. Alors que 50% (n=236) des enseignants de EP de l'échantillon se classaient comme spécialistes en EP (c'est-à-dire qu'ils avaient soit un diplôme, une majeure ou une mineure en EP ou dans un domaine connexe), un écart notable existait dans le nombre de cours de EP enseignés par division. Des 1 219 cours de EP inclus dans l'enquête, à l'élémentaire, 49% (Division I) et 55% (Division II) d'entre eux étaient enseignés par des spécialistes en EP. Au secondaire premier cycle (Division III), 91% des cours étaient enseignés par des spécialistes en EP; au secondaire (Division IV), 90% des cours l'étaient. Des différences importantes distinguaient les spécialistes en EP des non spécialistes, y compris leurs perceptions quant à leur état de préparation, le plaisir qu'il retirait de l'enseignement de l'EP, leur compétence à le faire, le nombre de spécialistes en EP à tous les niveaux scolaires et le nombre d'heures consacrées aux cours de EP. Une discussion portant sur les implications de la mise en place de spécialistes en EP à tous les niveaux scolaires et sur la nécessité d'étudier l'effet qu'exercent ceux-ci, termine l'article

Locations of three repetitive sequence families found in BALB/c adult β-globin clones

Three different repeat sequences have been mapped within the cloned EcoRI fragments that Contain the adult β-globin genes from the BALB/c (Hd

Low plasma citrulline levels are associated with acute respiratory distress syndrome in patients with severe sepsis

INTRODUCTION: The role of nitric oxide synthase (NOS) in the pathophysiology of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is not well understood. Inducible NOS is upregulated during physiologic stress; however, if NOS substrate is insufficient then NOS can uncouple and switch from NO generation to production of damaging peroxynitrites. We hypothesized that NOS substrate levels are low in patients with severe sepsis and that low levels of the NOS substrate citrulline would be associated with end organ damage including ARDS in severe sepsis. METHODS: Plasma citrulline, arginine and ornithine levels and nitrate/nitrite were measured at baseline in 135 patients with severe sepsis. ARDS was diagnosed by consensus definitions. RESULTS: Plasma citrulline levels were below normal in all patients (median 9.2 uM, IQR 5.2 - 14.4) and were significantly lower in ARDS compared to the no ARDS group (6.0 (3.3 - 10.4) vs. 10.1 (6.2 - 16.6), P = 0.002). The rate of ARDS was 50% in the lowest citrulline quartile compared to 15% in the highest citrulline quartile (P = 0.002). In multivariable analyses, citrulline levels were associated with ARDS even after adjustment for covariates including severity of illness. CONCLUSIONS: In severe sepsis, levels of the NOS substrate citrulline are low and are associated with ARDS. Low NOS substrate levels have been shown in other disease states to lead to NOS uncoupling and oxidative injury suggesting a potential mechanism for the association between low citrulline and ARDS. Further studies are needed to determine whether citrulline supplementation could prevent the development of ARDS in patients with severe sepsis and to determine its role in NOS coupling and function

The Crabby Creek Initiative: Building and Sustaining An Interdisciplinary Community Partnership

In this article, we identify the steps and strategies that emerged through an interdisciplinary, community-based participatory research (CBPR) project—the Crabby Creek Initiative. The Initiative was undertaken jointly by Cabrini College faculty in biology and psychology, the Valley Creek Restoration Partnership (VCRP), the Stroud Water Research Center, (SWRC) and local residents of this eastern Pennsylvania region. The paper examines the phases the partners have gone through and the strategies used as the building blocks of partnerships in the process of collaboration: trust, mutual design, shared implementation, joint ownership, and dissemination of knowledge, the building blocks of sustainable partnerships. Ultimately, the lessons learned have the potential to galvanize practitioners to engage not only in citizen science, but also more broadly in the practice of applied and engaged democracy

The International Surface Pressure Databank version 2

The International Surface Pressure Databank (ISPD) is the world's largest collection of global surface and sea-level pressure observations. It was developed by extracting observations from established international archives, through international cooperation with data recovery facilitated by the Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth (ACRE) initiative, and directly by contributing universities, organizations, and countries. The dataset period is currently 1768–2012 and consists of three data components: observations from land stations, marine observing systems, and tropical cyclone best track pressure reports. Version 2 of the ISPD (ISPDv2) was created to be observational input for the Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project (20CR) and contains the quality control and assimilation feedback metadata from the 20CR. Since then, it has been used for various general climate and weather studies, and an updated version 3 (ISPDv3) has been used in the ERA-20C reanalysis in connection with the European Reanalysis of Global Climate Observations project (ERA-CLIM). The focus of this paper is on the ISPDv2 and the inclusion of the 20CR feedback metadata. The Research Data Archive at the National Center for Atmospheric Research provides data collection and access for the ISPDv2, and will provide access to future versions