Building Connections Through Contextualized Learning in an Undergraduate Course on Scientific and Mathematical Literacy

With increasing demands for universities to create graduates that are numerically and scientifically literate, it is important to determine effective ways to engage students so that they can acquire these literacies. Using an undergraduate, interdisciplinary course that focused on scientific and mathematical literacy, I examined how contextualization influenced students’ abilities to build connections between their learning and their lives. In their written reflections, students connected course concepts with their social lives, academic pursuits and global or societal issues without specific prompting. I suggest that contextualization combined with reflection allows students to illustrate their understanding and apply this knowledge to novel scenarios

Hardiness as a Career Transition Resource

The relationship of hardiness to career transition resources was examined. Hardiness scores were obtained through the use of the Cognitive Hardiness Scale (CHS)(Nowack, 1996) and transition resources were measured by the Career Transitions Inventory (CTI) (Heppner, Multon, & Johnston, 1994). The study included 120 male and female adult participants from multiple settings (primarily from a local university, technical college, and job agency) who had a career transition in the last 15 months. Most participants had experienced multiple career-related changes. The general hypothesis for this study was that certain constructs measured by the CTI correlate with hardiness (the Personal Control factor of the CTI with the element of control in hardiness; the Readiness and Confidence factors of the CTI with the challenge element in hardiness: and the Independence and Support factors of the CTI with the commitment element in hardiness). Additional hypotheses were that people who underwent a voluntary career transition would score more highly on the CTI and the CHS than people who experienced an involuntary career transition. The data were analyzed through correlations, MANOVA, and factor analyses. Hardiness scores were positively correlated (ranging from r = .298 to .616, p = .01) with four subscales of the CTI: Readiness, Confidence, Control, and Support. CHS and CTI scores were not affected by type of career transition. While CHS and CTI scores correlated to some extent, the main factor analysis did not reveal the hypothesized overlaps between the CTI subscales and the CHS elements. Instead, one large factor emerged that lent some support for the conceptualization of hardiness as a career transition resource. Implications for practice and future research are discussed

Global Citizenship in Canadian Universities: A New Framework

The value and importance of global learning is widely promoted and debated in the literature but, without a common language to frame this discussion, we cannot accurately assess its effectiveness or value. One term frequently used in these conversations, and extolled by universities, is the idea of global citizenship; however, there is no consistent definition of this concept. In this article, we describe the philosophical traditions surrounding the term global citizenship and explain the roots of the debate over its use. To further understand how this term is used among institutions of higher education, we investigated how select Canadian universities discuss global citizenship and identified some of the key terms used as proxies for global citizenship. By bringing together the existing academic literature, the available statistics, and a survey of mandates and practices across Canadian universities, we have developed a framework that defines a global citizen in a Canadian context. This shared framework that universities can adapt and modify to meet their own institutional needs is necessary to enhance their ability to develop the next generation of global citizens. A consistent language and vision will better shape the experiences students have, ensure the evaluation of university programs is both possible and effective, and creates common goals that can be shared among industry, government, and universities

Combined carbonate carbon isotopic and cellular ultrastructural studies of individual benthic foraminifera : method description

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2010. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Paleoceanography 25 (2010): PA2211, doi:10.1029/2009PA001846.Carbon isotopes of foraminiferal tests provide a widely used proxy for past oceanographic environmental conditions. This proxy can be calibrated using live specimens, which are reliably identified with observations of cell ultrastructure. Observations of ultrastructures can also be used for studies of biological characteristics such as diet and presence of symbionts. Combining biological and isotopic studies on individual foraminifera could provide novel information, but standard isotopic methods destroy ultrastructures by desiccating specimens and observations of ultrastructure require removal of carbonate tests, preventing isotope measurements. The approach described here preserves cellular ultrastructure during isotopic analyses by keeping the foraminifera in an aqueous buffer (Phosphate Buffered Saline (PBS)). The technique was developed and standardized with 36 aliquots of NBS-19 standard of similar weight to foraminiferal tests (5 to 123 μg). Standard errors ranged from ± 0.06 to ± 0.85‰ and were caused by CO2 contaminants dissolved in the PBS. The technique was used to measure δ13C values of 96 foraminifera, 10 of which do not precipitate carbonate tests. Calcareous foraminiferal tests had corrected carbon isotope ratios of −8.5 to +3.2‰. This new technique allows comparisons of isotopic compositions of tests made by foraminifera known to be alive at the time of collection with their biological characteristics such as prey composition and presence or absence of putative symbionts. The approach may be applied to additional biomineralizing organisms such as planktonic foraminifera, pteropods, corals, and coccolithophores to elucidate certain biological controls on their paleoceanographic proxy signatures.Support was provided by NSF grants OCE‐0550396 (to J.B.M.), OCE‐0551001 (to J.M.B.), and OCE‐ 0550401 (to A.E.R.)

Channel delineation datasets associated with "River channel response to invasive plant treatment across the American Southwest"

The dataset contains river channel delineations in the form of an ArcGIS PRO shapefile. The shapefile contains polygons that were generated for each study site. There are fifteen study sites. Each study site contains a treated and untreated reach, and each of these reaches has pre- and post-treatment delineations. One study site, Chinle Creek, contains four treated reaches and four untreated reaches.Invasive riparian plants were introduced to the American Southwest in the early 19th century and contributed to regional trends of decreasing river channel width and migration rate in the 20th century. More recently efforts to remove invasive riparian vegetation (IRV) have been widespread, especially since 1990. To what extent has IRV treatment reversed the earlier trend of channel narrowing and reduced dynamism? In this study, paired treated and untreated reaches at 15 sites along 13 rivers were compared before and after IRV treatment using repeat aerial imagery to assess long-term (~10 year) channel change due to treatment on a regional scale across the Southwest U.S. We found that IRV treatment significantly increased channel width and floodplain destruction. Treated reaches had higher floodplain destruction than untreated reaches at 14 of 15 sites, and IRV treatment increased the rate of floodplain destruction by a median factor of 1.9. The effect of treatment increased with the stream power of the largest flow over the study period. Resolving observations of channel change into separate measures of floodplain destruction and formation provided more information on underlying processes than simple measurements of channel width and centerline migration rate. Restoration practitioners who perform IRV treatment projects often focus on wildlife or vegetation response; however, geomorphic processes should be considered in restoration planning because they drive aquatic habitat and vegetation dynamics, and because of the potential for damage to downstream infrastructure. Depending on the restoration goal, management practices can be used to enhance or minimize the increase in channel dynamism caused by IRV removal