Reading Beyond Our Comfort Zones

When I go to a restaurant, I always order the same thing. At the theater, I always choose the same type of movies. When I go in a bookstore, I always head in the same direction: first, new paperbacks (because the heft of a hardback makes reading in bed awkward); then the sale tables and mysteries; followed by adult fiction, occasionally history, then finally, the children\u27s department. When I read reviews, or look at advertisements I focus on the types of books - fantasy, historicai fiction, contemporary literature, mystery - I already enjoy. I have favorite authors, like Kristin Heitzmann,J. K. Row ling, and Donna Jo Napoli, and I always look forward eagerly to their next publication. But reading only what you like can be kind of like the Atkins\u27 Diet: steak and salad are great, but I couldn\u27t eat them every day. (Couldn\u27t afford it either, but that\u27s another story.) Don\u27t nutritionists say you should eat from a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, proteins, and grains in order to get all the nutrients you need to ensure good health? Well, I\u27m not a nutritionist and I don\u27t play one on TV. But I am a librarian\u27 which makes me (in a way) a genre-nutritionist: maybe even an idea-nutritionist. (Bear with me.) And I have become convinced over the last few years that we need to be reading beyond our comfort zones. So what \u27cha eatin\u27? Why We Need Variety in Our Die

Leadership Under Fire: A Phenomenological Study of Senior Administrator’s Perceived Leadership Identity and Crisis Response at Higher Education Institutions in the United States

The spontaneous nature of crises on college campuses, and the difficulty in predicting or preparing for such occurrences, has created a challenge for campus leadership and their execution of crisis management plans. Current research explores the effectiveness of these crisis management plans, however, a gap of knowledge exists in understanding individual leaders’ experiences and the challenges they face. The intent of this qualitative, phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of higher education administrators who have led through an unexpected crisis that impacted their institution. Research was conducted using qualitative methodology consisting of one-on-one semi-structured interviews. Data retrieved from these interviews were coded into meaning units to help better understand crisis phenomena impacting senior level higher education administrators. Findings revealed administrators that have experienced a crisis often struggle with the balance between their institutional responsibilities and their personal convictions as leaders. The recommendations set forth in this study include: dedicating time for reflection and processing after a crisis event, and engaging in activities that help leaders to better understand and develop their leadership identity

What Have We Done? An Analysis of Student Handbooks of Public High Schools in a Suburban County in the Wake of Illinois Senate Bill 100

This study presents the findings of a content analysis of student handbooks from 23 public high schools in a suburban Illinois county. A checklist was utilized to compare discipline policy information between handbooks published in the school years prior to and following implementation of Illinois Senate Bill 100. The results included 20 of the 23 schools\u27 handbooks demonstrating an increase in their reflection of Senate Bill 100 requirements from the 2015-16 to 2016-17 school years with approximately half of the schools modifying handbook language from pre- to post-implementation years to remove zero-tolerance policies and reflect policies aligned with the Senate Bill 100 requirements for make-up work and re-engagement following student exclusion. While these initial results appear promising, much is left to be known regarding how the modifications reflected in the handbooks are applied in practice and the impact on student outcomes in order to fully understand whether the goals of Senate Bill 100 will be realized. In order to take significant steps toward combatting the negative outcomes and disproportionality associated with exclusionary discipline, a recommendation is offered for school personnel to continue to examine alignment with Senate Bill 100 while committing to collaborative actions to improve systemic practices

The effects of temperature on fungal symbionts in the mountain pine beetle-fungus multi-partite symbiosis

The mountain pine beetle is an economically and ecologically important insect in western North American forests capable of killing millions of trees during outbreaks. This beetle depends on two fungi, Grosmannia clavigera and Ophiostoma montium, to provide the nutrients required for the beetle to develop and reproduce. Competition between these two fungal associates is expected because they use similar resources. Strong competition should lead to the eventual destabilization of the three-way symbiosis and fixation for the most competitive fungus. However, strong direct competition has not been observed, indicating that some mechanism likely allows the two fungi to coexist in a multi-partite symbiosis with the mountain pine beetle. These fungi exhibit different temperature tolerances, indicating that temperature may play a major role in determining the relative prevalence of the two associates over time as well as the outcome of competition between the two species. This, in turn, may support the long-term stability of the three-way symbiosis with the mountain pine beetle. To investigate the effects of temperature on the fungal symbionts, I collected 88 isolates from three locations in two states (50 G. clavigera and 38 O. montium) and measured their growth rates and sporulation at 5, 10, 15, 21, 25, 30, and 35˚C on artificial media. I also measured the growth rates of, and percent resource capture by, each fungus at 10, 15, 21, and 25˚C in the presence of the other species (inter-specific competition) or in the presence of the same species (intra-specific competition). My results indicate that G. clavigera excels at resource capture at 10˚C, while at 30˚C O. montium dominates. There was no significant effect of geographic origin on growth or sporulation of G. clavigera, supporting the findings of previous studies showing low genetic diversity in this species. In contrast, O. montium isolates from different locations exhibited significant differences in growth rate when grown alone and during competition, indicating population sub-structuring. G. clavigera sporulation was greatest at 30˚C while O. montium sporulated similarly across all temperatures. G. clavigera captured more resources than O. montium at most temperatures, and was able to capture a greater percentage of resources at a greater rate during inter-specific competition than during intra-specific competition at 10 and 15˚C. The reverse was true for O. montium which captured resources better during intra-specific competition, and captured a greater percentage of resources at the lower temperatures during intra-specific competition. These results show that temperature affects growth, sporulation and resource capture by these fungi and thus may influence the stability of the three-way symbioses between the fungi and the host beetle in a variable environment

Historicising Historical Theory's History of Cultural Historiography

Historical theory, as a mode of theoretical criticism, engages in both descriptive and prescriptive readings of historiographic practices, with a view to interpreting and evaluating their meaning as epistemological moves. But it also, often implicitly, situates these practices within its own historical narrative, replete with its own telos of rupture, revolution, and the loss of innocence. As such, historical theory has elaborated its own history of cultural historiography. But these elaborations too have a history. This paper considers a number of theory-driven accounts of cultural historiography, which situate it within a specific historical narrative about its origins. That narrative consists in vision of radical rupture, distinguishing the ‘new cultural history' both from prevailing modes of historical ontology and epistemology up until the end of the twentieth century, and most importantly, distinguishing it from earlier variants of cultural historiography as it was practiced in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This paper describes the narrative of rupture that has imbued theoretical views of cultural historiography and examines the history of their elaboration; Secondly, it proposes that this narrative may itself be inappropriate, and suggests an alternative narrative about why earlier forms of cultural historiography have not commonly been seen as continuous with its current expressions. It argues that several genealogical tentacles connected older forms of cultural historiography to the newer variants, and that these connections cannot be assimilated within the telos of epistemological rupture that is typically invoked to describe the "linguistic turn". Finally, a set of geo-political and institutional contexts are elaborated to explain the sensation of rupture reported by many cultural historians as, alternatively, the product of a series of nationalist hostilities and disciplinary exclusions from the late nineteenth century until after World War Two. Cultural historiography's apparent ‘newness' can better be understood as a late-twentieth-century myth generated by both historical theorists and by cultural historians themselves, which has served to instantiate a new scholarly identity for historians as theory-sophisticates in the ambiance of post-structuralist university humanities cultures of the western world