The Cultivation of Administrative and General Suppport for Individual Events Programs: Some Practiceal Suggestions

In the proceedings for both the first and second developmental conferences on forensics, a number of issues were raised regarding administrative support or lack thereof for forensic programs. Six of the topics discussed in those proceedings are appropriate to the focus of this paper regarding administrative support and publicity: (1) Administrative support needs to be cultivated through enhanced awareness of forensic programs and their benefits for students (McBath, 13; Parson, 42); (2) the forensic community must work together to promote the activity (Parson, 48); (3) professional organizations must serve their members in a variety of ways (Parson, 39); (4) additional research should be done to determine the levels of support for forensic activities that currently exist among chief administrative officials (McBath, 13, 19); (5) increased attention must be given to programs that cultivate support for forensics at the grass roots (i.e., elementary) level (McBath, 19; Parson, 39); and (6) forensic educators need to do a better job of helping administrators to understand the unique creative dimension of the activity (Parson, 95). Each of these areas reflected the need for an additional developmental conference, as was called for in the first conference (McBath, 46), to provide a forum for the discussion of aspects unique to individual events programs. This paper will address each of these areas and provide suggestions in the form of resolutions for the attention of the work group on Administrative Support/Publicity

An expert system for scheduling requests for communications Links between TDRSS and ERBS

An ERBS-TDRSS Contact Planning System (ERBS-TDRSS CPS) is described which uses a graphics interface and the NASA Transportable Interference Engine. The procedure involves transfer of the ERBS-TDRSS Ground Track Orbit Prediction data to the ERBS flight operations area, where the ERBS-TDRSS CPS automatically generates requests for TDRSS service. As requested events are rejected, alternative context sensitive strategies are employed to generate new requested events until a schedule is completed. A report generator builds schedule requests for separate ERBS-TDRSS contacts

Operational aspects of a spacecraft planning/scheduling expert system

Various operational aspects of the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS) Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) are described. The ERBS-TDRSS Contract Planning System is an expert system which has been used operationally since June 1987 by the ERBS Flight Operations Team (FOT) at Goddard Space Flight Center to build weekly schedules of requests for service from the TDRSS. The basic operation of the system and significant enhancements and changes are discussed

Bioenergy harvesting impacts on ecologically important stand structure and habitat characteristics

Demand for forest bioenergy fuel is increasing in the northern forest region of eastern North America and beyond, but ecological impacts, particularly on habitat, of bioenergy harvesting remain poorly explored in the peer-reviewed literature. Here, we evaluated the impacts of bioenergy harvests on stand structure, including several characteristics considered important for biodiversity and habitat functions. We collected stand structure data from 35 recent harvests in northern hardwood-conifer forests, pairing harvested areas with unharvested reference areas. Biometrics generated from field data were analyzed using a multi-tiered nonparametric uni-and multivariate statistical approach. In analyses comparing harvested to reference areas, sites that had been whole-tree harvested demonstrated significant differences (relative negative contrasts, P \u3c 0.05) in snag density, large live-tree density, well-decayed downed coarse woody debris volume, and structural diversity index (H) values, while sites that had not been whole-tree harvested did not exhibit significant differences. Classification and regression tree (CART) analyses suggested that the strongest predictors of structural retention, as indicated by downed woody debris volumes and H index, were silvicultural treatment and equipment type rather than the percentage of harvested volume allocated to bioenergy uses. In general, bioenergy harvesting impacts were highly variable across the study sites, suggesting a need for harvesting guidelines aimed at encouraging retention of ecologically important structural attributes. © 2012 by the Ecological Society of America

The Speech of Diversity: A Tool to Integrate Cultural Diversity Into the Basic Course

The Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education (1991) documented the demographics of the changing university population and supported the earlier findings of the American Council on Education\u27s study that within the next fifteen years, one-third of the nation will be people of color. As representatives of these diverse groups enter higher education, institutions will be forced to transform their curricula to address and meet the needs of this growing constituency. As Garr (1992) suggested: The question is no longer whether students should learn about diverse cultures, but how (p. 31). Cultural diversity is one of the largest, most urgent challenges facing higher education today. It is also one of the most difficult challenges colleges have ever faced (Levin, 1991, p. 4). This paper addresses cultural diversity as it relates to communication using a series of five questions as a framework for discussion. We offer specific suggestions on integrating cultural diversity into speaking assignments in the basic course later in the paper

A National Profile of Experiential Education Trends in Communication Master\u27s Degree Programs

This article seeks to provide a profile of internships used in communication master\u27s degree programs in the U.S. An internship is defined as receiving graduate credit for practical experience gained outside the classroom, with some degree of supervision by a faculty member. Based upon the data presented, experiential opportunities in communication serve to connect theory and practice. The nature of an internship at the graduate level appears to be more complex than at the undergraduate level. The formal paper appears to be the most common means for evaluating graduate internships. Formal papers are consistently used in academia to measure student understanding of concepts and experiences. The size of the institution and graduate program seems to have no affect on the option of offering internships or graduate students electing to use them in their programs of study