Program Evaluation: Bring Change to Mind High School Club

Introduction. Mental illness (MI) stigma is common and causes adverse consequences such as reduced self-esteem and discrimination in housing and employment. Bring Change to Mind (BC2M), a national non-profit organization, strives to reduce this stigma through their high school club program. The evaluation goals were to assess the program’s operations and measure club members’ and advisors’ attitudes and perceptions around mental health (MH) and MI. Methods. Qualtrics surveys were used to gather information from general club members (GCMs) (N=645), club advisors (N=97), and graduating seniors (N=57). BC2M staff held 52 small group discussions with club leaders. Data analysis was conducted in R and NVivo. Results. As a result of the clubs’ work, positive benefits were reported for both GCMs and non-member students (e.g., perceived improved empathy/understanding, increased MH conversations and awareness, reduced MI stigma). Participants reported that the club increased knowledge of both general MH and of specific MIs. GCMs viewed their club as a safe space where they could discuss MH without judgment. The main challenges that clubs faced included needing more physical resources and guidance/tips for club operations (e.g., member recruitment and engagement, general student body awareness). Discussion. GCMs view their clubs as communities where they can discuss and learn about MH and MI. Through activities/events, BC2M’s high school clubs are affecting perceived change across their campuses, normalizing MH and MI, and destigmatizing MI. Suggestions were provided for how BC2M could improve their clubs, such as increasing member diversity and supplying additional resources (e.g., recruitment tips, community connections)

Recovering Grammar

Three major reasons have been proposed for why legal writing professors do not—or should not—teach grammar. First, the argument goes, teaching grammar would take valuable time away from more important, higher-order writing concerns. Second, some legal writing professors do not feel comfortable teaching grammar because, while they can certainly spot grammar problems in their students’ writing, they never learned technical grammar terms themselves. Third, legal writing professors steer clear of grammar because it is perceived to be associated with remedial writing and “mere” skills teaching—associations that further confine legal writing professors to a lower academic status than their clinical and doctrinal peers. In this article, I argue that a broader, rhetorical approach to grammar minimizes the negative associations with grammar teaching. I make the case that we shouldn’t divorce grammar from the “rest” of legal writing because grammar itself is rhetorical: necessary for and deeply tied to meaning-making and social practices. I contend that a rhetorical approach to grammar can actually enhance our field’s language-focused disciplinary identity. Moreover, I argue that a rhetorical approach to grammar will help ensure that students with diverse language practices feel included and supported, while at the same time providing all students with the linguistic-convention awareness that will allow them to write for successful legal practice. Ultimately, because grammar is foundational—constitutive of and integral to all other components of legal writing—I encourage legal writing professors to embrace grammar from a rhetorical perspective and center it as an important and intellectual part of the first-year legal writing course

Living up to their name: Profamilia takes on gender-based violence

This issue of Quality/Calidad/Qualité describes the evolution of Profamilia through its work on gender-based violence in the Domincan Republic.Their project was conceived along two simultaneous paths: providing support services directly to women and girls who had experienced violence and initiating advocacy in the wider policy arena. Profamilia joined the commission that ultimately designed and promoted a law to increase protection against violence, especially domestic violence against women and children. Although the clinics now run a dynamic service program, the agency has also sustained its advocacy activities. Most of Profamilia’s advocacy work is undertaken in partnership with other NGOs or with government agencies and has converted the organization from a family planning organization to a sexual and reproductive health organization that truly serves women

ARLISS Competition Canister Vehicle

For our project, we designed a canister vehicle that fits the design specifications of the ARLISS competition. For the ARLISS competition, the vehicles are loaded into a rocket, launched approximately 10,000 feet into the air, released, and then must autonomously navigate to a predetermined target on the ground. Because of our time restraint, we are focused on designing a vehicle of the correct dimensions (a maximum mass of 1050g, a maximum diameter of 146mm, and a maximum height of 240mm) that can simply travel on the ground over multiple types of terrain. Additionally, we designed a parachute release mechanism so that the vehicle would be able to land safely on the ground after falling from thousands of feet in the air. We began by conducting research for product design by analyzing existing product concepts as well as conducting an interview with the customer, Dr. Potter. After analyzing the user needs, we generated four different potential concept designs and evaluated them based on our selected criterion. Upon choosing a concept, we applied various engineering relationships and arrived at the concept embodiment. We then developed three performance goals before working on our prototype. Our goals were: the vehicle can withstand a 1 meter drop on surface of the turf, the vehicle can travel one mile without needing to recharge the battery, and the vehicle can travel at 3 mph. Our final prototype met all three of these performance goals

Levels of Influence: How Teacher Self-Efficacy Reflects Individual, School, and Country Level Variables

This study investigates relationships between teacher self-efficacy and associated factors not previously studied at an international level. This study used the data gathered through the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) assessment conducted in 2018, with an initial sample size of 107,367 participating teachers from 6,128 schools across 19 countries to gain a global perspective regarding the individual and environmental factors that impact teacher self-efficacy. A blocked hierarchical regression model was chosen to support the theoretical structure of the analysis by examining the relationships between three levels of independent variables and teacher self-efficacy. The model predicted over 30 percent of teacher self-efficacy based on the full Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale (Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2001) and a subset of questions related to classroom instruction and student engagement, exemplifying the strength of the inclusion of indicators specific to classroom instruction and student engagement when measuring teacher self-efficacy. Confirming prior research, demographic variables were weak predictors of teacher self-efficacy, while professional development participation was a stronger predictor. New to the extant body of research were the positive relationships between school leadership, school, and country-level student achievement, which served as the strongest predictors of teacher self-efficacy. Student achievement by country served as the most significant predictor of teacher self-efficacy, with an inverse relationship at the school- and country-level between student achievement and teacher self-efficacy. The study findings suggest that the external context is a significant factor in teacher self-efficacy

Two-parameter Perturbation Theory for Cosmologies with Non-linear Structure

PhDWe propose and construct a two-parameter expansion around a Friedmann-Lemaitre- Robertson-Walker geometry which uses both large-scale and small-scale perturbations analogous to cosmological perturbation theory and post-Newtonian gravity. We justify this observationally, derive a set of fi eld equations valid on a fraction of the horizon size and perform a detailed investigation of the associated gauge problem. We fi nd only the Newtonian gauge, out of the standard gauges used in cosmological perturbation theory, is applicable to post-Newtonian perturbations; we can identify a consistent set of perturbed quantities in the matter and gravity sectors and construct corresponding gauge-invariant quantities. The fi eld equations, written in terms of these quantities, takes on a simpler form, and allows the effects of small-scale structure on the large-scale properties of the Universe to be clearly identified and discussed for different physical scenarios. With a defi nition of statistical homogeneity, we find that the cosmological constant and the average energy density, of radiation and dust, source the Friedmann equation, whereas only the inhomogeneous part of the Newtonian energy density sources the Newton-Poisson equation { even though both originate from the same equation. There exists eld equations at new orders in our formalism, such as a frame-dragging eld equation a hundred times larger than expected from using cosmological perturbation theory alone. Moreover, we fi nd non-linear gravity, mode-mixing and a mixing-of-scales at orders one would not expect from intuition based on cosmological perturbation theory. By recasting the field equations as an effective fluid we observe that these non-linearities lead to, for example, a large-scale effective pressure and anisotropic stress. We expect our formalism to be useful for accurately modelling our Universe, and for investigating the effects of non-linear gravity in the era of ultra-large-scale surveys

Adolescent Relationship Quality: Is There an Intergenerational Link?

Objective:This study examines intergenerational continuities in relationship instability, general relationship quality, and intimate partner violence (IPV) between mothers and adolescents. Background:A growing body of literature has observed similarities in relationship quality between parents and their adult offspring. Less attention has focused on whether intergenerational continuities are present in adolescent relationships. Method:Using age 3, 5, 9, and 15 data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing birth cohort study (N=3,162), the authors examined associations between maternal reports of relationship instability, general quality, and IPV in early and middle childhood and similar adolescent reports at age 15. Variations based on timing and persistence of exposures were considered. Results:In general, exposures to low-quality maternal relationships were associated with higher risk of forming adolescent partnerships and lower relationship quality. Intergenerational links in quality were predominantly construct-specific, consistent with observational learning processes. Adolescents exposed to maternal relationships of poor general quality in middle childhood were less likely to report high-quality relationships themselves, and those exposed to any maternal physical IPV victimization during childhood were more likely to perpetrate IPV in their own relationships. Exposure to maternal relationship instability in both early and middle childhood was associated with more adolescent romantic partners. Conclusion:The study illuminates additional pathways through which healthy and unhealthy relationships are reproduced across generations

Migration Experience and Premarital Sexual Initiation in Urban Kenya: An Event History Analysis

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/91327/1/j.1728-4465.2012.00309.x.pd

Kinetics and cellular site of glycolipid loading control

CD1d-restricted natural killer T cells (NKT cells) possess a wide range of effector and regulatory activities that are related to their ability to secrete both T helper 1 (Th1) cell- and Th2 cell-type cytokines. We analyzed presentation of NKT cell activating α galactosylceramide (αGalCer) analogs that give predominantly Th2 cell-type cytokine responses to determine how ligand structure controls the outcome of NKT cell activation. Using a monoclonal antibody specific for αGalCer-CD1d complexes to visualize and quantitate glycolipid presentation, we found that Th2 cell-type cytokinebiasing ligands were characterized by rapid and direct loading of cell-surface CD1d proteins. Complexes formed by association of these Th2 cell-type cytokine-biasing αGalCer analogs with CD1d showed a distinctive exclusion from ganglioside-enriched, detergent-resistant plasma membrane microdomains of antigen-presenting cells. These findings help to explain how subtle alterations in glycolipid ligand structure can control the balance of proinflammatory and antiinflammatory activities of NKT cells

Stability and outcome of interracial cohabitation before and after transitions to marriage

Background: Barriers to intermarriage are more formidable than barriers to interracial cohabitation. Relative to same-race couples, a higher share of interracial couples cohabits with their nonmarital partners. This raises the question: Does the social significance of cohabitation differ for interracial and same-race couples? Objective: We compared the stability and outcome of first cohabitations prior to any marriage and the association between premarital cohabitation and subsequent marriage by couples' joint race/ethnicity. Methods: Using data from the 2002 and 2006-2019 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), we estimated discrete-time event history models to predict differences in the stability of cohabitations and subsequent marriages by couples' joint race/ethnicity. Results: The stability and outcomes of White-Black cohabitations were similar to those of same-race Black cohabitations, whereas the stability of White-Hispanic cohabitations fell in between those of their same-race White and Hispanic counterparts. Premarital cohabitation was generally positively associated with higher odds of marital dissolution, but it was negatively associated with the odds of marital dissolution for White-Black couples. Contribution: Considerable heterogeneity exists in the social significance of interracial cohabitation. The challenges of crossing racial barriers in union formation may contribute to distinct union trajectories for interracial couples