PANEL: Changing Expectations from Department Chairs in the Dynamic Environment of Higher Education

The dynamic environment of higher education defines and redefines roles of faculty and administrators. Department chairs have a unique position in colleges as they are part of the faculty as well as administrators. Expectations from department chairs include a long list of activities. They have to deal with a variety of tenured and tenure track faculty at different levels, such as instructors, senior instructors, assistant, associate, full professors, and per-course faculty (adjuncts). Students are another group for them to manage, including undergraduate, graduate students with different concentrations, majors and minors as well as transfer, study-away, study abroad students besides graduate assistants, work-study, and regular student workers. They also must interact with the staff in their department along with other departments or units in their college and other units of their universities. Most importantly, they have to get along and work with other administrators. What’s counted so far involve direct and indirect internal stakeholders. There are also external stakeholders that consist of corporate executives, small business owners and advisory boards that have numerous roles from internships, student placement opportunities, fundraising engagements, guest speaking, client projects, etc. While department chairs need to take all internal and external stakeholders into consideration, they have to perform many departmental activities from curriculum and program development and review, class scheduling, faculty, staff, student evaluations, to recruitment, enrollment and retention management, budgeting and control. Furthermore, they are expected to stay transparent, diverse, collegial, and productive while managing these complex relationships for hitting multiple moving targets in a very dynamic environment. To further complicate the situation faced by chairs, many are finding that their paperwork and administrative responsibilities have proliferated. Indeed, while attempting to navigate the increasingly complex and multi-faceted environment discussed above, many chairs are faced with increasing paperwork and administrative responsibilities that can easily consume 20-30+ hours a week. In conclusion, this panel will discuss best practices of becoming a department chair and sustaining that role over number of years successfully. Specifically, it will help benchmark best practices for department chairs in implementing their visionary leadership for data driven decision making without losing sight of human touch

PANEL: Are Students Our Customers? Perils and Pitfalls of Students as Customers

Customer service has been a part of marketing for years. A common definition is: “Customer service is the act of taking care of the customer\u27s needs by providing and delivering professional, helpful, high quality service and assistance before, during, and after the customer\u27s requirements are met.” This approach has been main streamed in higher education by Neal Raisman in his four books on the subject. This panel will present and discuss the perils and pitfalls of this approach in higher education along with a summary of an informal survey of marketing Professors

Three patients with homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia: Genomic sequencing and kindred analysis.

BackgroundHomozygous Familial Hypercholesterolemia (HoFH) is an inherited recessive condition associated with extremely high levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol in affected individuals. It is usually caused by homozygous or compound heterozygous functional mutations in the LDL receptor (LDLR). A number of mutations causing FH have been reported in literature and such genetic heterogeneity presents great challenges for disease diagnosis.ObjectiveWe aim to determine the likely genetic defects responsible for three cases of pediatric HoFH in two kindreds.MethodsWe applied whole exome sequencing (WES) on the two probands to determine the likely functional variants among candidate FH genes. We additionally applied 10x Genomics (10xG) Linked-Reads whole genome sequencing (WGS) on one of the kindreds to identify potentially deleterious structural variants (SVs) underlying HoFH. A PCR-based screening assay was also established to detect the LDLR structural variant in a cohort of 641 patients with elevated LDL.ResultsIn the Caucasian kindred, the FH homozygosity can be attributed to two compound heterozygous LDLR damaging variants, an exon 12 p.G592E missense mutation and a novel 3kb exon 1 deletion. By analyzing the 10xG phased data, we ascertained that this deletion allele was most likely to have originated from a Russian ancestor. In the Mexican kindred, the strikingly elevated LDL cholesterol level can be attributed to a homozygous frameshift LDLR variant p.E113fs.ConclusionsWhile the application of WES can provide a cost-effective way of identifying the genetic causes of FH, it often lacks sensitivity for detecting structural variants. Our finding of the LDLR exon 1 deletion highlights the broader utility of Linked-Read WGS in detecting SVs in the clinical setting, especially when HoFH patients remain undiagnosed after WES

Using smart‐messaging to enhance mindfulness‐based cognitive therapy for cancer patients: A mixed methods proof of concept evaluation

Objective Depression and anxiety lead to reduced treatment adherence, poorer quality of life, and increased care costs amongst cancer patients. Mindfulness‐based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is an effective treatment, but dropout reduces potential benefits. Smart‐message reminders can prevent dropout and improve effectiveness. However, smart‐messaging is untested for MBCT in cancer. This study evaluates smart‐messaging to reduce dropout and improve effectiveness in MBCT for cancer patients with depression or anxiety.MethodsFifty‐one cancer patients attending MBCT in a psycho‐oncology service were offered a smart‐messaging intervention, which reminded them of prescribed between‐session activities. Thirty patients accepted smart‐messaging and 21 did not. Assessments of depression and anxiety were taken at baseline, session‐by‐session, and one‐month follow‐up. Logistic regression and multilevel modelling compared the groups on treatment completion and clinical effectiveness. Fifteen post‐treatment patient interviews explored smart‐messaging use.ResultsThe odds of programme completion were eight times greater for patients using smart‐messaging compared with non‐users, controlling for age, gender, baseline depression, and baseline anxiety (OR = 7.79, 95% CI 1.75 to 34.58, p = .007). Smart‐messaging users also reported greater improvement in depression over the programme (B = ‐2.33, SEB = .78, p = .004) when controlling for baseline severity, change over time, age, and number of sessions attended. There was no difference between groups in anxiety improvement (B = ‐1.46, SEB = .86, p = .097). In interviews, smart‐messaging was described as a motivating reminder and source of personal connection. ConclusionsSmart‐messaging may be an easily integrated telehealth intervention to improve MBCT for cancer patients

Agents of nosocomial bacteremia and microorganisms ısolated from blood cultures in an ıntensive care unit patients

Amaç: Nozokomiyal infeksiyonlar içinde nozokomiyal bakteriyemiler önemli bir yer tutmaktadır. Biz bu çalışmada 1998 yılı boyunca reanimasyon ünitesinde izlenen hastalara ait kan kültürlerinde üreyen mikroorganizmalar ile bu hastalarda tanımlanan nozokomiyal bakteriyemi etkenlerini birlikte değerlendirmeyi amaçladık. Yöntem: 1998 yılı boyunca izlenen hastalara ait 557 kan kültürü BACTEC 9120 (Becton Dickinson, ABD) otomatize kan kültür sisteminde izlenmiştir. Kateter kültürleri ise Maki ’nin tanımladığı semikantitatif yöntemle yapılmıştır. Bulgular: Nozokomiyal bakteriyemi etkenleri içinde gram negatif basillerin % 63 oranı ile ön planda olduğu belirlenmiştir. Bu üniteden gelen kan kültürlerinde izole edilen mikroorganizmalar içinde de gram negatif basillerin oranı % 57 olarak bulunmuştur. Sonuç: Reanimasyon ünitesinde tanımlanan nozokomiyal bakteriyemi etkenlerinin dağılımında, yoğun bakım ünitelerinde beklendiği üzere gram negatif basillerin ön planda olduğu, bunu gram pozitif kokların izlediği belirlenmiştir. Kan kültürlerinde üreyen mikroorganizmalar irdelendiğinde ise (klinik olarak anlamlı bulunmayan gram pozitif koklara ait üremelerden dolayı yine ikinci sırada yer almakla birlikte) gram pozitif kokların oranı biraz daha yüksek bulunmuştur.Objective: Blood-stream infections consist a high proportion of nosocomial infections. Blood cultures and nosocomial bacteremia agents were evaluated in patients hospitalized in our reanimation unit during 1998. Material and Method: A total of 557 blood cultures were observed in automatic culture system BACTEC 9120 (Becton Dickinson, USA) whereas catheter cultures were evaluated according to Makis semi-quantitative method. Results: Gram negative bacilli constituted 63 % of all nosocomial blood-stream infection agents and 57 % of all microorganisms isolated from blood cultures. Conclusion: As expected in intensive care units, gram negative bacteria were the leading agents of nosocomial bacteremia

With a Little Help from My Friends: Peer Coaching for Refugee Adolescents and the Role of Social Media

This intervention study investigated how much impact a specific peer-coaching (Peer2Peer) for refugee adolescents has on different factors of well-being for both sides: refugee adolescents (peers, N = 16) and their local peer coaches (buddies, N = 16). Next to pre- and post-tests, four buddies reflected on the process via weekly media diaries. We found that higher peer-loneliness and lower self-esteem was reported for peers in the beginning but these differences disappeared. These results were confirmed by buddies’ media diaries: lang

Utility of EST-SNP Markers for Improving Management and Use of Olive Genetic Resources: A Case Study at the Worldwide Olive Germplasm Bank of Córdoba

Olive, the emblematic Mediterranean fruit crop, owns a great varietal diversity, which is maintained in ex situ field collections, such as the World Olive Germplasm Bank of Córdoba (WOGBC), Spain. Accurate identification of WOGBC, one of the world’s largest collections, is essential for efficient management and use of olive germplasm. The present study is the first report of the use of a core set of 96 EST-SNP markers for the fingerprinting of 1273 accessions from 29 countries, including both field and new acquired accessions. The EST-SNP fingerprinting made possible the accurate identification of 668 different genotypes, including 148 detected among the new acquired accessions. Despite the overall high genetic diversity found at WOGBC, the EST-SNPs also revealed the presence of remarkable redundant germplasm mostly represented by synonymy cases within and between countries. This finding, together with the presence of homonymy cases, may reflect a continuous interchange of olive cultivars, as well as a common and general approach for their naming. The structure analysis revealed a certain geographic clustering of the analysed germplasm. The EST-SNP panel under study provides a powerful and accurate genotyping tool, allowing for the foundation of a common strategy for efficient safeguarding and management of olive genetic resources.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio