Doing the Right Thing: Doing Things Right

I was privileged to be a part of the “birthing” of the Learning Exchange Networks (LENs) and am a veteran participant. I sat through many superb workshops and led a piece on social justice and advocacy. I had no idea that during year three of our endeavor, I would see how my world of work would so clearly intersect with the mutual learning that was happening with my colleagues in Boston and in Haifa. In my job as Director of Community Relations at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), I am responsible for the community relations activities of a 560-bed Harvard teaching hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. My personal philosophy about how to work with the community is very simple

Literary studies and the academy

In 1885 the University of Oxford invited applications for the newly created Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature. The holder of the chair was, according to the statutes, to ‘lecture and give instruction on the broad history and criticism of English Language and Literature, and on the works of approved English authors’. This was not in itself a particularly innovatory move, as the study of English vernacular literature had played some part in higher education in Britain for over a century. Oxford University had put English as a subject into its pass degree in 1873, had been participating since 1878 in extension teaching, of which literary study formed a significant part, and had since 1881 been setting special examinations in the subject for its non-graduating women students. What was new was the fact that this ancient university appeared to be on the verge of granting the solid academic legitimacy of an established chair to an institutionally marginal and often contentious intellectual pursuit, acknowledging the study of literary texts in English to be a fit subject not just for women and the educationally disadvantaged but also for university men

Predictors of dropout in the treatment of alcohol and cocaine dependence: Tests of the stages of change

A major problem in substance-abuse treatment is the high dropout rate. If length of time in treatment is associated with better outcomes and is partly determined by motivation to quit using—or readiness for change—then finding a reliable way to measure such readiness is important. Prochaska and DiClemente\u27s transtheoretical model of behavior change has conceptualized and operationalized readiness for change as a process consisting of five stages: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance (Prochaska & DiClemente, 1992). This study tested the ability of the widely influential University of Rhode Island Change Assessment Scale (URICA; McConnaughy, Prochaska, & Velicer, 1983) to predict dropout, both on its own and in conjunction with hypothesized risk factors, in two samples of cocaine-dependent women and alcohol-dependent outpatients. Subjects\u27 reasons for dropout were taken into account when determining dropout status for survival analyses; the study also examined the URICA\u27s psychometric properties. In the cocaine-dependent sample, the URICA failed to predict dropout, but another measure of motivation, the Motivation Assessment List for Cocaine (MAL-C; Goehl, Childress, McLellan, & Gordon, 1994) significantly interacted with age and days worked. In the alcohol-dependent sample, the URICA did not predict dropout on its own, but the URICA × Psychiatric Symptoms interaction was significant; age of drinking onset and alcohol severity also significantly interacted with the URICA. In both samples, the interaction patterns were the same, with the presence of risk factors being particularly detrimental to low-readiness patients. Among the risk factors, individual predictors of early dropout were younger age and having more psychiatric symptoms, an earlier age of drinking onset, and more legal problems. The URICA\u27s internal consistency and test-retest reliability were good, and the factor and cluster structures essentially replicated previous findings, but the instrument demonstrated little convergence with other measures of readiness for change, with one exception. The study shows that the URICA interacts with other risk factors for dropout to identify individuals at risk for early termination