Sacrifice and survival: the historiographic role of indentity and mission in Jesuit higher education of the New Orleans Province

The Catholic religious order known as the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) manages an expansive network of colleges and universities with a distinct Catholic identity and mission. The Society of Jesus has, throughout the course of its existence, experienced failure and survival regarding its colleges and universities worldwide. Of particular interest for this study are Jesuit institutions in the American South, regionally known as the New Orleans Province. This study hypothesizes that the identity and mission of Southern Jesuit colleges and universities may have functioned as catalytic concepts that influenced interactions with external social environs and directly impacted the way in which these Catholic institutions survived or failed. Literature regarding institutional survival and societal interactions focuses on resource exchange and has precluded the possible effects of identity and mission as catalytic components to the survival of colleges and universities. The interaction between Jesuit institutions and surrounding Southern environments presents a unique opportunity to examine the affects of institutional identity, mission, and environmental interactions on college/university survival. To discern the affects of institutional identity, mission, and societal relationships on the survival of Jesuit institutions in the South from the 1830s through the 1930s, archival documents serve as the primary data source for this study. Documents have been acquired through several sites, including the Archives of the New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus; Loyola University New Orleans; Spring Hill College Special Collections; and the archives of Jesuit High School, New Orleans. By utilizing historical research methodology, case study construction, and case analysis, this study encapsulates the history of multiple Jesuit colleges and universities in the South and allows for a cross-comparison of their existence, development, survival, and/or failure. The findings of this study support the claim posed by the hypotheses that institutional identity and mission did catalytically affect societal town and gown relationships between these Southern Jesuit colleges and universities and thus influenced their ability to survive. As well, through the course of this study, it was discovered that the internal identity, mission, and hierarchic obedience of the Jesuit Fathers played a role in the existence and maintenance of their New Orleans Province institutions

A Ghostly Closure? The Strange History of Brinkley Female College, Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism, and the Terminal Effects of Sensationalist Journalism

In 1871, Brinkley Female College in Memphis, Tennessee, closed due to a ghost story, regional interest in Spiritualism, and sensationalist journalism that harmed the short-lived academy. Spiritualism—a religio-spiritual movement punctuated by medium-guided communications between the living and deceased—was well-followed, though often contested during the nineteenth century. Spiritualism grew in popularity in the American South due to mass deaths resulting from yearly epidemics and the American Civil War. At the same time, sensationalist print media was widespread, and newspaper firms profited from unchecked accounts of Spiritualist seances and supernatural encounters. In the midst of this, higher education had expanded across the state of Tennessee. In the early years of Memphis-based women’s higher education, newspapers stoked interest in the paranormal by publishing unverified events attributed to a local women’s college. Sensationalist, penny-dreadful newspaper accounts influenced public perceptions, caused enrollment decline at Brinkley Female College, and resulted in institutional closure. As such, this case study recounts an unusual catalytic moment within the context of heightened Spiritualistic belief and uncouth journalistic practices. Ultimately, this study seeks to detail the influence of regional religious practices and sensational journalism on institutional termination

Religion and Higher Education in the American South: Introduction to the Special Issue

This is an introduction to the special issue on religion and higher education in the American South. This special issue features five research articles and a book review that provide telling details about the role religion has played and continues to play in Southern higher education

Income Inequality and Local Government in the United States, 1970-2000

The income distribution in many developed countries widened dramatically from 1970 to 2000. Scholars speculate that inequality contributes to a host of social ills by weakening the public sector. In contrast, we find that growing income inequality is associated with an expansion in revenues and expenditures on a wide range of services at the municipal and school district levels in the United States. These results are robust to a number of model specifications, including instrumental variables that deal with the endogeneity of local expenditures. Our results are inconsistent with models that predict heterogeneous societies provide lower levels of public goods.

Humanoid Mobile Manipulation Using Controller Refinement

An important class of mobile manipulation problems are move-to-grasp problems where a mobile robot must navigate to and pick up an object. One of the distinguishing features of this class of tasks is its coarse-to-fine structure. Near the beginning of the task, the robot can only sense the target object coarsely or indirectly and make gross motion toward the object. However, after the robot has located and approached the object, the robot must finely control its grasping contacts using precise visual and haptic feedback. In this paper, it is proposed that move-to-grasp problems are naturally solved by a sequence of controllers that iteratively refines what ultimately becomes the final solution. This paper introduces the notion of a refining sequence of controllers and characterizes this type of solution. The approach is demonstrated in a move-to-grasp task where Robonaut, the NASA/JSC dexterous humanoid, is mounted on a mobile base and navigates to and picks up a geological sample box. In a series of tests, it is shown that a refining sequence of controllers decreases variance in robot configuration relative to the sample box until a successful grasp has been achieved

Housing Intervention and Neighbourhood Development: Harnessing Change in West Broadway

During the period leading to the early 1990s the West Broadway area of inner city Winnipeg experienced many signs of neighbourhood decline, such as residential fires, housing abandonment and structural deterioration. From the mid 1990s considerable amounts of volunteer energy, public funding and philanthropic resources were devoted to turning the neighbourhood around, focusing efforts through community development, employment training, arts programs, housing upgrading and other themes. Many individuals and organizations combined their capabilities in the attempt to create an inclusive and diverse community. The study Housing Intervention and Neighbourhood Development was grounded in the need to take stock of changes in the neighbourhood and to relate these to knowledge of the nature of neighbourhood change. It was intended that this would enable an informed assessment of whether dynamics such as gentrification, disinvestment and stabilization appear to be in operation in parts of the neighbourhood. This assessment, in turn, would support discussion of strategies that could be implemented to help guide how the neighbourhood would unfold

Design of MARQUIS2: study protocol for a mentored implementation study of an evidence-based toolkit to improve patient safety through medication reconciliation.

BackgroundThe first Multi-center Medication Reconciliation Quality Improvement Study (MARQUIS1) demonstrated that implementation of a medication reconciliation best practices toolkit decreased total unintentional medication discrepancies in five hospitals. We sought to implement the MARQUIS toolkit in more diverse hospitals, incorporating lessons learned from MARQUIS1.MethodsMARQUIS2 is a pragmatic, mentored implementation QI study which collected clinical and implementation outcomes. Sites implemented a revised toolkit, which included interventions from these domains: 1) best possible medication history (BPMH)-taking; 2) discharge medication reconciliation and patient/caregiver counseling; 3) identifying and defining clinician roles and responsibilities; 4) risk stratification; 5) health information technology improvements; 6) improved access to medication sources; 7) identification and correction of real-time discrepancies; and, 8) stakeholder engagement. Eight hospitalists mentored the sites via one site visit and monthly phone calls over the 18-month intervention period. Each site's local QI team assessed opportunities to improve, implemented at least one of the 17 toolkit components, and accessed a variety of resources (e.g. implementation manual, webinars, and workshops). Outcomes to be assessed will include unintentional medication discrepancies per patient.DiscussionA mentored multi-center medication reconciliation QI initiative using a best practices toolkit was successfully implemented across 18 medical centers. The 18 participating sites varied in size, teaching status, location, and electronic health record (EHR) platform. We introduce barriers to implementation and lessons learned from MARQUIS1, such as the importance of utilizing dedicated, trained medication history takers, simple EHR solutions, clarifying roles and responsibilities, and the input of patients and families when improving medication reconciliation