Sustainability at Jesuit Institutions: How are we teaching the next generation to care forour common home?

As environmental degradation becomes harder and harder to ignore, institutions are beginning to take notice and put into place specific steps to take action. The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) is offering a way for higher education institutions (HEIs) to promote sustainability through participating in the Sustainability Tracking and Rating System (STARS). This report evaluates the participation in the STARS by the eight Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) schools that have an unexpired STARS rating and submitted information under STARS version 2 or later. Using publicly-available STARS data, I analyzed the scores of the AJCU institutions in the sample as well as conducted a content analysis on the descriptions of the main programs under each category in which schools are ranked. The findings are organized by the different categories of the STARS report: Academics, Engagement, Operations, and Planning & Administration. In each section, I provide a data visualization of how each Jesuit institution in my sample compares to the others. Some standouts are Santa Clara University’s sustainability research, Loyola Marymount University\u27s campus engagement programs, Gonzaga University\u27s water efficiency, and Boston College’s commitment to diversity and affordability. Key recommendations include encouraging more Jesuit institutions to participate in the STARS program to indicate a commitment to sustainability and transparency, as well as investing more into academic programs with a sustainability focus

An Outcomes Assessment of Two Therapeutic Group Homes Serving Children with Reactive Attachment Disorder in a Rural Community

Archival data collected on 35 4-12-year-old children, each of whom completed treatment for reactive attachment disorder (RAD), was used to evaluate a treatment program in a rural northwestern community. The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) (Achenbach, 1991) and Youth Outcomes Questionnaire (Y-OQ) (Burlingame, Wells, & Lambert, 1996) were completed by coding behaviors early in treatment and late in treatment from behavioral records. A correlational design was used, and t-test, repeated measures and fixed factor analyses of variance were conducted. Results showed that there was an overall decrease in the amount of maladaptive behaviors at the conclusion of residential treatment for attachment related problems on both the CBCL and Y-OQ. Males had significantly more externalizing behaviors than females and had the greatest amount of change over time. Children with the greatest number of risk factors had the best outcomes, contrary to what was expected. Future research directions and limitations to the study are discussed

Finding a Place: Involvement in College Social Justice Organizations and its Impacts

In this research, we aim to answer the question: How does being involved in social justice organizations at SCU impact students’ experience in higher education? We were interested in this because we are also students at SCU, and we wanted to be able to provide knowledge to our peers about the benefits of being involved. Involvement in student groups is often encouraged in college, and we wanted to learn more about the specific benefits of participation. We conducted eight interviews and eight observations at Santa Clara University using convenience sampling to collect the data. We find that being involved in social justice organizations has a positive impact on students’ experience in higher education by developing their sense of identity and a sense of community. We also find that our results correspond to the sociological theories of Robert Merton’s theory of manifest and latent functions, Emile Durkheim’s social solidarity, and Pierre Bourdieu’s social capital. This study is not only important to understand the direct benefits that students attain but also implies that institutions of higher education should invest in student organizations for the improvement of their communities

Contemplating library instruction: Integrating contemplative practices in a mid-sized academic library.

In recent years there has been growing interest in the integration of contemplative practices into higher education, but little has been published regarding contemplative practices or contemplative pedagogies in academic libraries. Nor have explicit links been made to critical librarianship (critlib), particularly regarding the stress associated with the profession and the “resilience narrative” of “doing more with less”. In this paper, we review the literature and describe our experiences introducing a variety of contemplative elements into our library instruction program, most recently in the virtual environment. Building on the three levels of “intervention” modeled by Barbezat and Bush (2014) to include librarians, and incorporating critlib theory, we describe the contemplative practices we have used to alleviate librarian, student, and faculty stress and burnout, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic

Can Skeuomorphic Design Provide a Better Online Banking User Experience for Older Adults?

With the prevalence of digital technologies and internet connectivity, combined with the reduction in footfall on high streets, banks have taken steps to move most of their customer base online. This has left many older adults behind, trying to keep up with the changes and having to learn to use sometimes complex online banking interfaces. In this work we investigate whether skeuomorphic design can create a more usable online banking system for older adults, compared to the more commonplace flat design. This work took a user-centered approach, beginning with interviews with older adults that were conducted to gather data to be used in the production of prototype user interfaces. Two prototypes were then created: a flat user interface and a skeuomorphic one. We evaluated these interfaces with 15 older adults, gathering a combination of data, including data from the System Usability Scale, observations, and interviews. Results of the experiments showed that our older users preferred the flat prototype to the skeuomorphic one, but raised some potentially useful guidelines for the design of future skeuomorphic user interfaces for older adults. A validation experiment with 17 younger adults (aged 20–25) also showed that the skeuomorphic interface was more usable for older adults than younger ones

Fidelity protocol for the Action Success Knowledge (ASK) trial: A psychosocial intervention administered by speech and language therapists to prevent depression in people with post-stroke aphasia

Introduction: Treatment fidelity is a complex, multifaceted evaluative process which refers to whether a studied intervention was delivered as intended. Monitoring and enhancing fidelity is one recommendation of the TiDIER (Template for Intervention Description and Replication) checklist, as fidelity can inform interpretation and conclusions drawn about treatment effects. Despite the methodological and translational benefits, fidelity strategies have been used inconsistently within health behaviour intervention studies; in particular, within aphasia intervention studies, reporting of fidelity remains relatively rare. This paper describes the development of a fidelity protocol for the Action Success Knowledge (ASK) study, a current cluster randomised trial investigating an early mood intervention for people with aphasia (a language disability caused by stroke). Methods and analysis: A novel fidelity protocol and tool was developed to monitor and enhance fidelity within the two arms (experimental treatment and attention control) of the ASK study. The ASK fidelity protocol was developed based on the National Institutes of Health Behaviour Change Consortium fidelity framework. Ethics and dissemination: The study protocol was approved by the Darling Downs Hospital and Health Service Human Research Ethics Committee in Queensland, Australia under the National Mutual Acceptance scheme of multicentre human research projects. Specific ethics approval was obtained for those participating sites who were not under the National Mutual Agreement at the time of application. The monitoring and ongoing conduct of the research project is in line with requirements under the National Mutual Acceptance. On completion of the trial, findings from the fidelity reviews will be disseminated via publications and conference presentations. Trial registration number ACTRN12614000979651

flexsdm: An r package for supporting a comprehensive and flexible species distribution modelling workflow

Species distribution models (SDM) are widely used in diverse research areas because of their simple data requirements and application versatility. However, SDM outcomes are sensitive to data input and methodological choices. Such sensitivity and diverse applications mean that flexibility is necessary to create SDMs with tailored protocols for a given set of data and model use. We introduce the r package flexsdm for supporting flexible species distribution modelling workflows. flexsdm functions and their arguments serve as building blocks to construct a specific modelling protocol for user's needs. The main flexsdm features are modelling flexibility, integration with other modelling tools, simplicity of the objects returned and function speed. As an illustration, we used flexsdm to define a complete workflow for California red fir Abies magnifica. This package provides modelling flexibility by incorporating comprehensive tools structured in three steps: (a) The Pre-modelling functions that prepare input, for example, sampling bias correction, sampling pseudo-absences and background points, data partitioning, and reducing collinearity in predictors. (b) The Modelling functions allow fitting and evaluating different modelling approaches, including individual algorithms, tuned models, ensembles of small models and ensemble models. (c) The Post-modelling functions include tools related to models' predictions, interpolation and overprediction correction. Because flexsdm comprises a large part of the SDM process, from outlier detection to overprediction correction, flexsdm users can delineate partial or complete workflows based on the combination functions to meet specific modelling needs.Fil: Velazco, Santiago José Elías. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Nordeste. Instituto de Biología Subtropical. Instituto de Biología Subtropical - Nodo Puerto Iguazú | Universidad Nacional de Misiones. Instituto de Biología Subtropical. Instituto de Biología Subtropical - Nodo Puerto Iguazú; Argentina. University of California; Estados Unidos. Universidade Federal da Integração Latino-Americana; BrasilFil: Rose, Miranda Brooke. University of California; Estados UnidosFil: de Andrade, André Felipe Alves. Universidade Federal de Goiás; BrasilFil: Minoli, Ignacio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Nordeste. Instituto de Biología Subtropical. Instituto de Biología Subtropical - Nodo Puerto Iguazú | Universidad Nacional de Misiones. Instituto de Biología Subtropical. Instituto de Biología Subtropical - Nodo Puerto Iguazú; ArgentinaFil: Franklin, Janet. University of California; Estados Unido

First results on the performance of the CMS global calorimeter trigger

The CMS Global Calorimeter Trigger (GCT) uses data from the CMS calorimeters to compute a number kinematical quantities which characterize the LHC event. The GTC output is used by the Global Trigger (GT) along with data from the Global Muon Trigger (GMT) to produce the Level-1 Accept (L1A) decision. The design for the current GCT system commenced early in 2006. After a rapid development phase all the different GCT components have been produced and a large fraction of them have been installed at the CMS electronics cavern (USC-55). There the GCT system has been under test since March 2007. This paper reports results from tests which took place at the USC-55. Initial tests aimed to test the integrity of the GCT data and establish that the proper synchronization had been achieved both internally within GCT as well as with the Regional Calorimeter Trigger (RCT) which provides the GCT input data and with GT which receives the GCT results. After synchronization and data integrity had been established, Monte Carlo Events with electrons in the final state were injected at the GCT inputs and were propagated to the GCT outputs. The GCT output was compared with the predictions of the GCT emulator model in the CMS Monte Carlo and were found to be identical