Reframing Library Student Employment as a High-Impact Practice: Implications from Case Studies

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how academic libraries can directly contribute to campus student success initiatives through student employment programs. Case studies from the perspectives of two supervisors demonstrate how library student employment programs can intentionally incorporate the characteristics of High-Impact Practices. This paper builds upon a previously published systematic review of the academic library literature on student employment, which found a significant gap in the discussion of employment as a mechanism for learning and retention. This paper aims to address this gap by focusing on practical applications for creating more learner-centered student employment programs

Responding to Hate: How National and Local Incidents Sparked Action at the UNLV University Libraries

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe how an academic library at one of the most diverse universities in the country responded to the 2016 election through the newly formed Inclusion and Equity Committee and through student outreach. Design/methodology/approach: This paper details the context of the 2016 election and the role of social justice in librarianship. It offers ideas for how library diversity committees can address professional development, recruitment and retention efforts and cultural humility. It highlights student outreach efforts to support marginalized students, educate communities and promote student activism. Finally, it offers considerations and suggestions for librarians who want to engage in this work. Findings: This paper shows that incorporating social justice, diversity, equity and inclusion requires individuals taking action. If institutions want to focus on any of these issues, they need to formally include them in their mission, vision and values as well as in department goals and individual job descriptions. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas University Libraries fully supports this work, but most of the labor is done by a small number of people. Unsustainable practices can cause employee burnout and turnover resulting in less internal and external efforts to support diversity. Originality/value: Most of the previous literature focuses either on internal activities, such as professional development and committees, or on student-focused activities, such as outreach events, displays and instruction. This paper is one comprehensive review of both kinds of activities

Convolutional Radio Modulation Recognition Networks

We study the adaptation of convolutional neural networks to the complex temporal radio signal domain. We compare the efficacy of radio modulation classification using naively learned features against using expert features which are widely used in the field today and we show significant performance improvements. We show that blind temporal learning on large and densely encoded time series using deep convolutional neural networks is viable and a strong candidate approach for this task especially at low signal to noise ratio

Creating an Outreach Story: Assessment Results, Strategic Planning, and Reflection

Academic library outreach and student engagement initiatives often strive to connect students to learning spaces, resources, and experts. Librarians do this work to raise awareness of services and to remove barriers so students feel more comfortable seeking help. Additionally, these activities promote the academic library as a hub of engagement, innovation, and continual learning to various user groups. Unfortunately, because these learning experiences can often be unique or serendipitous, measuring how these efforts are contributing to the library’s teaching, learning, and research missions can be difficult. This paper focuses on how academic librarians can align their outreach to strategic goals and utilize assessment data to evaluate and share the impact of their work. Case studies from two institutions will provide a structure for other institutions. Additionally, this paper will share examples of qualitative and quantitative assessment, which can be adapted and modified for a variety of uses

Building a Culture of Collaboration and Shared Responsibility for Educational Equity Work through an Inclusive Teaching Community of Practice

For libraries to be equitable spaces as educational institutions and places of employment, it is necessary that educational equity be a shared, collaborative goal. Unfortunately, equity and inclusion work in libraries has historically been an individual pursuit that falls disproportionately on the shoulders of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) library workers. Communities of practice employ social learning principles to facilitate praxis and offer opportunities to develop shared goals, language, and responsibility. This article explores how we developed and implemented an inclusive teaching community of practice with members of our instruction department in order to foster a culture of discussing inequity in higher education, develop and implement inclusive teaching practices, and cultivate a shared responsibility to be equitable instructors and colleagues. We highlight the importance of library workers from majority groups, especially white library workers, to engage meaningfully in educational equity work to lessen the burdens faced by those with marginalized identities, particularly BIPOC library workers, and to ultimately foster educational equity for all by creating inclusive workspaces, libraries, and learning experiences

Bridging the Skills Gap: Enhancing the Student Employee Experience

Academic libraries have a unique opportunity to contribute to the success of their student employees by teaching and developing skill sets necessary for students to be successful throughout their academic careers. A co-curricular workshop program was developed and implemented to prepare student employees for the real world challenges they will face during their academic careers as well as after graduation. Through participation in a series of one-hour workshops, students acquire skills that aid them in accomplishing academic, personal and professional goals. This workshop series also provides opportunities for the library to engage in the development of their employees in a culture of mentorship, and student participants gain intellectual and practical skills including teamwork, problem solving, and critical/creative thinking

Interinstitutional Student Success

Transfer students make up 37.2% of college students in the United States (NSCRC 2015), but often aren’t considered in our design of instruction and outreach programs. They quickly blend in with the rest of the campus upon arrival, potentially causing libraries to fail in serving them appropriately. What services and resources do transfer students need? What knowledge and experiences are they bringing to the university? How can libraries collaborate with on- and off-campus partners? In Fall 2017 and Spring 2018, we surveyed and interviewed transfer students at various points in their academic career. We focused on gaining an understanding of their diverse experiences as well as their past, current, and potential library use. We hoped to discover who these students are and what their lives are like in order to create partnerships engineered for them. This session will share initial results from our research and our upcoming plans to better serve transfer students at UNLV Libraries. Participants will: describe the variety of experiences of transfer students. outline technological and in-person approaches for reaching transfer students. identify potential on- and off-campus partnerships to explore at their own institutio

Nitric oxide modulates the angiogenic phenotype of middle-T transformed endothelial cells.

The role of nitric oxide (NO) in the induction of angiogenesis was evaluated in a murine heart endothelioma cell line (H.end.FB) carrying the mT oncogene. Two clonal derivatives of H.end.FB, H80 and H73, exhibiting different NO synthase (NOS) activities were selected and used in the study. The relationship among NOS activity and tumor cell behaviour (growth, and angiogenic capacity) and the molecular control of gene expression were investigated. H.end.FB and H80 on one side and H73 on the other side exhibited the highest and lowest NOS activity, respectively. Cell growth was inversely correlated to the amount of NO produced by the cell lines. Conversely, in the avascular rabbit cornea assay, H.end.FB and H80 cells were strongly angiogenic, while H73 were poorly angiogenic, indicating that the ability of the cells to induce neovascularization was associated with the extent of NO produced. Consistently, systemic administration to rabbits of the NOS inhibitor N(w)-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME) significantly reduced the angiogenicity of H.end.FB cells. RT-PCR evidenced that H.end.FB expressed mRNA for TGF-beta1 and all VEGF isoforms, VEGF165 being predominantly expressed. NOS inhibition reduced the basal expression of VEGF isoforms, while it markedly potentiated TGF-beta1 expression. These results indicate that the endogenous production of NO in tumor cells can serve as an autocrine/paracrine signalling mechanism of progression, by controlling angiogenic factor/modulator expressio

An analysis on decentralized adaptive MAC protocols for Cognitive Radio networks

The scarcity of bandwidth in the radio spectrum has become more vital since the demand for more and more wireless applications has increased. Most of the spectrum bands have been allocated although many studies have shown that these bands are significantly underutilized most of the time. The problem of unavailability of spectrum and inefficiency in its utilization has been smartly addressed by the Cognitive Radio (CR) Technology which is an opportunistic network that senses the environment, observes the network changes, and then using knowledge gained from the prior interaction with the network, makes intelligent decisions by dynamically adapting their transmission characteristics. In this paper some of the decentralized adaptive MAC protocols for CR networks have been critically analyzed and a novel adaptive MAC protocol for CR networks, DNG-MAC which is decentralized and non-global in nature, has been proposed. The results show the DNG-MAC out performs other CR MAC protocols in terms of time and energy efficiency

Modeling and Simulation of VEGF Receptors Recruitment in Angiogenesis

Angiogenesis, the process of new blood vessel formation from preexisting ones, plays a pivotal role in tumor growth. Vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-2 (VEGFR2) is the main proangiogenic tyrosine kinase receptor expressed by endothelial cells (ECs). VEGFR2 binds different ligands triggering vascular permeability and growth. VEGFR2-ligands accumulate in the extracellular matrix (ECM) and induce the polarization of ECs as well as the relocation of VEGFR2 in the basal cell membrane in contact with ECM. We propose here a multiphysical model to describe the dynamic of VEGFR2 on the plasma membrane. The governing equations for the relocation of VEGFR2 on the membrane stem from a rigorous thermodynamic setting, whereby strong simplifying assumptions are here taken and discussed. The multiphysics model is validated against experimental investigations