Time to Get Real: A Food Assessment of Dining at Pomona College

Pomona College is an institution deeply committed to sustainability and student well being; however these commitments are not reflected in the College’s food purchases. Before this study, an assessment of purchasing had not been conducted at Pomona College. Using the Real Food Calculator – a metric designed to evaluate food purchasing at academic institutions – I tracked all food purchased by one of the College’s dining halls over the course of one month. Each food item was assessed based on the potential health concerns of its ingredients and whether the item was locally produced, ecologically sound and/or humane to determine whether it should be considered Real. The assessment metric also lists ingredients with potential health concerns (including trans fats, high fructose corn syrup, MSG, and others), which if present in the food item mean it cannot be considered Real. Of the over $150,000 worth of food purchases made during the study, 8.9% qualified as Real Food. Each food that qualified as Real Food met the standards for at least one of the attributes (local, ecologically sound, or humane). A total of 2.1% of all food purchases qualified for two attributes. Of the foods assessed, over one third contained ingredients considered harmful to human health. If Pomona is serious about its commitments to sustainability and student well being, it is time to include food purchasing in these discussions. The study concludes with a series of recommendations to improve food purchasing at Pomona College

Oral history interview with Marisue Meyer

Abstract provided by interviewer Samantha Butke. Marisue Meyer attended Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas in the 1960s. Abilene Christian prides itself on providing a Christian education to all of its students and has a reputation of students meeting their future husbands, wives, or partners while at school. Marisue explains her dorm life at Abilene Christian University, the expectations of women at the time, her education, and her experience growing up. She explains the rules dormitories at ACU had while she was a student there and how it related to dating, she also goes into the role women were expected to take on in marriage and outside of marriage. Marisue also goes into her education and how she admired her female teachers’ examples, she also explains how technology has changed some aspects of everyday life, and marisue explains how she is not, what is considered to be a “typical woman” and how that may or may not have affected her in the past or present. She explains some of her philosophy on life and how when times change, you have to change with them, she also goes into self-confidence as she gives advice to the next generation of ACU women students. This interview provides a primary source on ACU’s student life, the gendered expectations of the time, how things were done, what was taught at the time, what was thought of at the time, and how things have changed over time. It provides a non-typical woman’s outlook of women’s role in society and how, who she was as a woman was not affected by outside influences

Do your patients trust you? A sociological understanding of the implications of patient mistrust in healthcare professionals

The trust that patients invest in healthcare professionals and their advice has been shown to facilitate positive clinical outcomes, although there is evidence that patient trust in expertise, including healthcare professionals, has been declining over the years. Questions about whether or not to trust healthcare professionals have been raised recently in international media by Australian pop icon Kylie Minogue, who spoke of her alleged initial misdiagnosis with breast cancer and went on to tell women that they should ‘follow their intuition’ rather than placing unquestioning trust in doctors or medical advice. Given the power of the media in shaping public opinion, there is a potential for such stories to further impact on the already potentially friable doctor-patient relationships, with questions of trust taking centre-stage. Therefore, an understanding of the nature of trust, in addition to the reasons for the decline in patient trust, is exceedingly important for health professionals. This paper presents an overview of social theories of trust that provide a lens through which we can analyse the development of mistrust in healthcare, and identifies ways in which healthcare professionals may aim to facilitate and sustain patient trust

Reworking the sociology of trust: making a semantic distinction between trust and dependence

Trust, as a sociological construct, has become increasingly important in recent times but an agreed definition is yet to be found. A potentially useful way of ‘defining’ trust is by distinguishing it from other semantically similar concepts. Niklas Luhmann has provided semantic distinctions between trust and familiarity, and trust and confidence. The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence of a further semantic distinction between trust and dependence. This distinction allows us to further define trust and also to investigate the difference between ‘trust’ and ‘dependence’

Accessible Customer Service Practices

Grand Valley State University and University Libraries (UL) are committed to inclusion and diversity. Additionally, University Libraries has a shared service philosophy—Steps to Giving Great Service—to guide how we deliver customer service across the Libraries. The following practices are meant to provide employees with practical tips on how to provide accessible customer service. These practices align with our larger service philosophy and support the university’s values of inclusion and equity. Accessibility is defined by the University Libraries IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility) committee as: “Ensuring our tools, devices, services, and environments are available to and usable by as many people as possible.” These leading practices seek to help us provide accessible service that promotes the principles of dignity, independence, integration, and equal opportunity

Augustana Seniors Fall 1884: Olof Wilhelm Ferm

Olof Wilheml Ferm was a senior at Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois, in the fall of 1884. His name appears in the college catalog of 1884 – 1885, along with his birthplace, the year of his birth, and a few other facts. From this start, we researched the genealogy and family history of O.W. Ferm. This paper contains a short biography of Ferm, a report on his ancestors, a report on his descendants, and some open questions for further research

Constructing Masculinity in Women’s Retailers: An Analysis of the Effect of Gendered Market Segmentation on Consumer Behavior

While gender-based differences in consumer behavior have been previously investigated within the context of gender-neutral or unisex retailers, men’s behavior in women’s retailers remains largely unexplored. Furthermore, most studies frame the retail environment as a passive platform through which essential gender differences yield setting-specific bifurcated behavior, and do not address the role the commercial establishment and men’s shopping habits play in gender identity formation and maintenance. To address this gap, we analyzed men’s behavior in women’s retailers using interactionist and social constructionist theories of sex/gender. Data were collected through non-participatory observation at a series of large, enclosed shopping malls in South-Western Ontario, Canada and analyzed thematically. We found that men tend to actively avoid women’s retailers or commercial spaces that connote femininity, while those who enter said spaces display passivity, aloofness, or reticence. We suggest the dominant cultural milieu that constitute hegemonic masculinity— disaffiliation with femininity, an accentuation of heterosexuality, and a prioritization of homosocial engagement—nform the dialectical relationship between individual and institutional gender practice that manifests through consumption

Initial targeted investigation into key esters within the aroma profiles of barley and sorghum beers.

Analysis of beer aroma

L'estimation numérique dans les apprentissages mathématiques : rôles et interêts de la mise en correspondance des représentations numériques au niveau développemental, éducatif et rééducatif

Understanding the development of numerical abilities is a major issue to guide educative and reeducative practices in mathematics in young children. National and international investigations has demonstrated that the mathematical skills of students has decrease since 2003 (PISA, 2012). Nowadays, weak capacities to map numerical representations and therefore a defective « number sense » (Dehaene, 1997 ; 2001) is the most supported hypothesis. The « number sense » is contained into the analogical and non-verbal representation of number. In this work, we consider that numerical estimation is a good way to exercise this mapping and give sense to verbal and written numerical symbols. Indeed, the role of numerical estimation needs to be specified in order to lead the (re)educative practices (Dehaene, 1997 ; 2001 ; Von Aster et Shalev). During three experimental studies, we explore the role of numerical estimation, in an educative and reeducative way in children in first year and children with down’s syndrom. The acquisition of numerical representations and the complex relations they have are also explored and discussed through a spirality hypothesis in order to better specify actual models of number treatment.La compréhension du développement des habiletés numériques est un enjeu majeur pour guider les pratiques éducatives et rééducatives des jeunes enfants. Les résultats des enquêtes nationales et internationales sont unanimes à cet égard : le niveau moyen des élèves en mathématiques a chuté depuis 2003 (PISA, 2012). L’hypothèse la plus avancée à l’heure actuelle est celle d’un déficit des correspondances entre les codes numériques et le « sens des nombres » (Dehaene, 1997). Le « sens du nombre » est contenu dans la représentation analogique et non verbale des nombres. Dans le présent travail, nous cherchons à démontrer que l’estimation numérique permet ainsi d’exercer les correspondances entre les codes afin de donner du sens aux représentations symboliques écrites et orales. Malgré l’importance accordée aujourd’hui au processus d’estimation, son rôle dans les apprentissages doit encore être précisé afin d’orienter et de mieux guider les pratiques (ré)éducatives (Dehaene et Cohen, 2001 ; Von Aster et Shalev 2007). A travers trois études expérimentales, nous explorons ainsi le rôle de l’estimation numérique dans les apprentissages d’un point de vue éducatif (auprès d’enfants scolarisés en CP) et d’un point de vue rééducatif (dans le syndrome génétique de la trisomie 21). L’acquisition des différentes représentations et des relations complexes qui s’établissent entre-elles est également analysée et discutée pour mieux préciser les modèles de traitements du nombres et du calcul actuels. Les résultats obtenus corroborent ainsi une hypothèse de spiralité des apprentissages symboliques