Women Superintendents in the Rural Midwest

Women represent the majority of teachers in U. S. public schools; yet, only 26.7% of superintendents leading districts are women (Tienken, 2021, p.19). Although women have made gains in leading schools in larger districts, the same trend is not evident in smaller, rural school systems, which describe the majority of school districts in the United States (AASA: The School Superintendents Association, 2017). Scholars commonly attribute this disparity to gender bias prevalent in rural cultures (Agostine-Wilson, 2017; Quinlan, 2013; Keller, 2014). To help address gender inequalities in Department of Educational Administration., schools, districts, and educational leaders must develop an awareness of specific structural and sociocultural challenges to the superintendency faced by women in rural contexts and take proactive steps to understand and mitigate those challenges. This study focused on the narratives and lived experiences of 12 women superintendents in rural school districts. The purpose of this research was to explore, through the critical lens of intersectional feminist theory, the potential challenges to the public school district superintendency that women face in the rural Midwest. Critical narrative inquiry helped explore the challenges that women face when aspiring to the superintendency in the rural Midwest. Using intersectional feminist theory as outlined by Crenshaw (1989) and Hankivsky (2014) assisted with analyzing the stories of rural women superintendents\u27 discussing obstacles that they encountered when reaching for positions of power in rural communities. This study also explored the effects that COVID-19 had on these women\u27s experiences as rural superintendents, an important aspect of their experience since the pandemic has disproportionally affected women in the United States (AAUW, 2020; Donovan and Labonte, 2020; Hilferty et al., 2021; Karageorge, 2020). By exploring and exposing challenges to the superintendency of rural Midwestern school districts faced by women, this study can help those interested in pursuing careers as rural school district leaders to learn about those obstacles and thus prepare themselves better to overcome them. The findings can potentially help aspiring women educational leaders devise strategies to overcome those challenges, such as using allies, mentors, and networks, as well as means to address gender bias. Additionally, this study can help policymakers and professional organizations develop courses of action to assist aspirants and districts with overcoming or dismantling those obstacles. This study\u27s findings offer insights to rural school district leadership and boards of education to help them advance gender equity in their districts, ensuring that they have the best leadership possible. This study\u27s findings can also serve as a springboard for more research on overcoming specific challenges to the superintendency, help graduate programs to incorporate curricula that would assist rural districts with these barriers, and provide suggestions to prospective superintendents of all genders for navigating rural contexts while serving as educational leaders. This study also provided an avenue for rural women superintendents to celebrate their surmounting these challenges. Finally, this study aims to promote gender equity in rural K-12 systems to support women serving in district-level leadership roles with providing leadership models for all students, especially those who identify as female

Merging symmetry projection methods with coupled cluster theory: Lessons from the Lipkin model Hamiltonian

Coupled cluster and symmetry projected Hartree-Fock are two central paradigms in electronic structure theory. However, they are very different. Single reference coupled cluster is highly successful for treating weakly correlated systems but fails under strong correlation unless one sacrifices good quantum numbers and works with broken-symmetry wave functions, which is unphysical for finite systems. Symmetry projection is effective for the treatment of strong correlation at the mean-field level through multireference non-orthogonal configuration interaction wavefunctions, but unlike coupled cluster, it is neither size extensive nor ideal for treating dynamic correlation. We here examine different scenarios for merging these two dissimilar theories. We carry out this exercise over the integrable Lipkin model Hamiltonian, which despite its simplicity, encompasses non-trivial physics for degenerate systems and can be solved via diagonalization for a very large number of particles. We show how symmetry projection and coupled cluster doubles individually fail in different correlation limits, whereas models that merge these two theories are highly successful over the entire phase diagram. Despite the simplicity of the Lipkin Hamiltonian, the lessons learned in this work will be useful for building an ab initio symmetry projected coupled cluster theory that we expect to be accurate in the weakly and strongly correlated limits, as well as the recoupling regime.This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Computational and Theoretical Chemistry Program under Award No. DE-FG02- 09ER16053. G.E.S. is a Welch Foundation Chair (No. C- 0036). Computational resources for this work were supported in part by the Big-Data Private-Cloud Research Cyberinfrastructure MRI-award funded by NSF under Grant No. CNS- 1338099 and by Rice University. J.D. acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and FEDER through Grant No. FIS2015-63770-P.Peer Reviewed10 pags., 6 figs., app

One‐Year Landmark Analysis of the Effect of Beta‐Blocker Dose on Survival After Acute Myocardial Infarction

Background Although beta‐blockers are recommended following myocardial infarction (MI), the benefits of long‐term treatment have not been established. The study's aim was to evaluate beta‐blocker efficacy by dose in 1‐year post‐MI survivors. Methods and Results The OBTAIN (Outcomes of Beta‐Blocker Therapy After Myocardial Infarction) registry included 7057 patients with acute MI, with 6077 one‐year survivors. For this landmark analysis, beta‐blocker dose status was available in 3004 patients and analyzed by use (binary) and dose at 1 year after MI. Doses were classified as no beta‐blocker and >0% to 12.5%, >12.5% to 25%, >25% to 50%, and >50% of target doses used in randomized clinical trials. Age was 63 to 64 years, and approximately two thirds were men. Median follow‐up duration was 1.05 years (interquartile range, 0.98–1.22). When analyzed dichotomously, beta‐blocker therapy was not associated with improved survival. When analyzed by dose, propensity score analysis showed significantly increased mortality in the no–beta‐blocker group (hazard ratio,1.997; 95% CI, 1.118–3.568; P 0% to 12.5% group (hazard ratio, 1.817; 95% CI, 1.094–3.016; P 25% to 50% group (hazard ratio, 1.764; 95% CI, 1.105–2.815; P 12.5% to 25% dose group. The mortality in the full‐dose group was not significantly higher (hazard ratio, 1.196; 95% CI, 0.687–2.083). In subgroup analyses, only history of congestive heart failure demonstrated significant interaction with beta‐blocker effects on survival. Conclusions This analysis suggests that patients treated with >12.5% to 25% of the target dose used in prior randomized clinical trials beyond 1 year after MI may have enhanced survival compared with no beta‐blocker and other beta‐blocker doses. A new paradigm for post‐MI beta‐blocker therapy is needed that addresses which patients should be treated, for how long, and at what dose