Adding Spirituality, Religious Diversity, and Interfaith Engagement to Student Affairs Courses

Gaduate school curricula provide the baseline knowledge for profes-sionals in the field of higher education and student affairs (HESA). Before beginning their careers, student affairs practitioners build their core competencies around a variety of relevant topics including, quite significantly, college student identity and diversity. ACPA–College Student Educators International (2018) offers an online syllabus clearinghouse as an open-access resource for faculty seeking to develop courses in HESA programs. Although 20 of the 29 clearinghouse syllabi that align with the courses discussed in this chapter mention religion, spirituality, or related top-ics, the type of inclusion ranges dramatically from a substantive element of a course, including readings, assignments, and discussions, to a mere mention of religion as one in a list of elements of student or campus diversity...https://scholarworks.wm.edu/educationbookchapters/1050/thumbnail.jp

College Student Religious Affiliation and Spiritual Identity: A Qualitative Study.

There currently exists a large gap in the literature on Faith Development Theory and college student spiritual development, which has almost entirely been posited from a Christian perspective and using Christian research participants. Given this gap, I have reconstructed a conceptual framework, which removes the Christian content predominant in Faith Development Theory, as conceived of by James Fowler and Sharon Daloz Parks, and instead makes use of the language of "mainstream" and "marginalized" religions. I utilized both developmental research and theological literature pieces to determine the spiritual paths, beliefs and values of each of the religious groups in question: Protestant Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists. Based on this conceptual framework, I gathered data from Protestant Christian, Jewish, Muslim and atheist college students through focus group sessions, written questionnaires, and interviews to determine how they talk about their spiritual identities, and how those spiritual identities are impacted by their religious affiliations. Discourse analysis and qualitative coding techniques were utilized to develop an understanding of the interplay between religious affiliation and spiritual identity. The major finding of the study was that the faith trajectory is the change over time in the religious (on nonreligious) individual’s way of framing the world through faith. This implies both a specific, unique worldview for each group, the way of framing the world, as well as something they all share in common, faith. Based on this understanding, I propose a separation of structural faith development from the newly specified Faith and Religious Marginalization Awareness Frame. The latter combines a faith frame unique to each religious or non-religious group with the growing awareness during the lifespan of the impact of Christian privilege and religious marginalization in society. There are multiple implications of this study. Higher education researchers should no longer employ developmental theories that overlook the divergent faith frames of non-Christians. Campus professionals should endeavor to include religious minorities, particularly atheists, in interfaith dialogues, as well as challenge the existence of Christian privilege. Practitioners can also employ the understanding that positive, encouraging interactions with religiously diverse others foster growth in students’ spiritual identities.Ph.D.EducationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/60817/1/jlsmall_1.pd

Validating the Essen Climate Evaluation Schema modified for people with learning disabilities in a low‐risk secure forensic setting

Background: Research has shown that an empowering and nurturing yet challenging work climate is beneficial for people receiving clinical services as it increases patient satisfaction, motivation, engagement, therapeutic alliance and functional improvement. Therefore, for inpatients, monitoring, encouraging and understanding ward climate holds considerable potential for improving forensic mental health services. To date, the most widely employed tool for ward-climate, the EssenCES, has been evidenced as useful in medium and high security hospitals, but little tested with people with learning disabilities or in low security services. Aims: To establish the internal consistency and factor validity of the EssenCES, modified for easier reading, in a low secure hospital unit for people with learning disabilities. Method: Language in the EssenCES was simplified and picture supplements added to facilitate comprehension. Patients completed the scale as part of their clinical routine, supported by NHS employed psychology assistants. The research team, entirely independent of NHS staff, extracted data form the electronic records of purposively sampled residents in a low-secure forensic hospital setting for people with learning disabilities. Findings: 276 records (70% men) were acquired. The EssenCES was shown to have good factor validity and retained the original three factor model including the subscales: therapeutic hold, safety and cohesion. One single-item from the ‘therapeutic hold’ subscale was removed to improve the internal consistency (p<0.05). Conclusions: This study adds preliminary support for the use of the EssenCES (with removal of one item) in individuals with learning disabilities within low-risk secure forensic hospital settings

Effects of 5-HT2C, 5-HT1A receptor challenges and modafinil on the initiation and persistence of gambling behaviours

Rationale Problematic patterns of gambling are characterised by loss of control and persistent gambling often to recover losses. However, little is known about the mechanisms that mediate initial choices to begin gambling and then continue to gamble in the face of losing outcomes. Objectives These experiments first assessed gambling and loss-chasing performance under different win/lose probabilities in C57Bl/6 mice, and then investigated the effects of antagonism of 5-HT2CR with SB242084, 5-HT1AR agonism with 8-OH-DPAT and modafinil, a putative cognitive enhancer. Results As seen in humans and other species, mice demonstrated the expected patterns of behaviour as the odds for winning were altered increasing gambling and loss-chasing when winning was more likely. SB242084 decreased the likelihood to initially gamble, but had no effects on subsequent gambling choices in the face of repeated losses. In contrast, 8-OH-DPAT had no effects on choosing to gamble in the first place, but once started 8-OH-DPAT increased gambling choices in a dose-sensitive manner. Modafinil effects were different to the serotonergic drugs in both decreasing the propensity to initiate gambling and chase losses. Conclusions We present evidence for dissociable effects of systemic drug administration on different aspects of gambling behaviour. These data extend and reinforce the importance of serotonergic mechanisms in mediating discrete components of gambling behaviour. They further demonstrate the ability of modafinil to reduce gambling behaviour. Our work using a novel mouse paradigm may be of utility in modelling the complex psychological and neurobiological underpinnings of gambling problems, including the analysis of genetic and environmental factors

Reservoir theory for studying the geochemical evolution of soils

[1] Linking mineral weathering rates measured in the laboratory to those measured at the landscape scale is problematic. In laboratory studies, collections of minerals are exposed to the same weathering environment over a fixed amount of time. In natural soils, minerals enter, are mixed within, and leave the soil via erosion and dissolution/leaching over the course of soil formation. The key to correctly comparing mineral weathering studies from laboratory experiments and field soils is to consistently define time. To do so, we have used reservoir theory. Residence time of a mineral, as defined by reservoir theory, describes the time length between the moment that a mineral enters (via soil production) and leaves (via erosion and dissolution/leaching) the soil. Age of a mineral in a soil describes how long the mineral has been present in the soil. Turnover time describes the time needed to deplete a species of minerals in the soil by sediment efflux from the soil. These measures of time are found to be sensitive to not only sediment flux, which controls the mineral fluxes in and out of a soil, but also internal soil mixing that controls the probability that a mineral survives erosion. When these measures of time are combined with published data suggesting that a mineral’s dissolution reaction rate decreases during the course of weathering, we find that internal soil mixing, by partially controlling the age distribution of minerals within a soil, might significantly alter the soil’s mass loss rate via chemical weathering. Citation: Mudd, S. M., and K. Yoo (2010), Reservoir theory for studying the geochemical evolution of soils, J. Geophys. Res., 115, F03030, doi:10.1029/2009JF001591. 1

Use of Individual-Level Covariates to Improve Latent Class Analysis of Trypanosoma Cruzi Diagnostic Tests

Statistical methods such as latent class analysis can estimate the sensitivity and specificity of diagnostic tests when no perfect reference test exists. Traditional latent class methods assume a constant disease prevalence in one or more tested populations. When the risk of disease varies in a known way, these models fail to take advantage of additional information that can be obtained by measuring risk factors at the level of the individual. We show that by incorporating complex field-based epidemiologic data, in which the disease prevalence varies as a continuous function of individual-level covariates, our model produces more accurate sensitivity and specificity estimates than previous methods. We apply this technique to several simulated populations and to actual Chagas disease test data from a community near Arequipa, Peru. Results from our model estimate that the first-line enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay has a sensitivity of 78% (95% CI: 62-100%) and a specificity of 100% (95% CI: 99-100%). The confirmatory immunofluorescence assay is estimated to be 73% sensitive (95% CI: 65-81%) and 99% specific (95% CI: 96-100%)

The Effects of City Streets on an Urban Disease Vector.

With increasing urbanization vector-borne diseases are quickly developing in cities, and urban control strategies are needed. If streets are shown to be barriers to disease vectors, city blocks could be used as a convenient and relevant spatial unit of study and control. Unfortunately, existing spatial analysis tools do not allow for assessment of the impact of an urban grid on the presence of disease agents. Here, we first propose a method to test for the significance of the impact of streets on vector infestation based on a decomposition of Moran’s spatial autocorrelation index; and second, develop a Gaussian Field Latent Class model to finely describe the effect of streets while controlling for cofactors and imperfect detection of vectors. We apply these methods to cross-sectional data of infestation by the Chagas disease vector Triatoma infestans in the city of Arequipa, Peru. Our Moran’s decomposition test reveals that the distribution of T. infestans in this urban environment is significantly constrained by streets (p,0.05). With the Gaussian Field Latent Class model we confirm that streets provide a barrier against infestation and further show that greater than 90% of the spatial component of the probability of vector presence is explained by the correlation among houses within city blocks. The city block is thus likely to be an appropriate spatial unit to describe and control T. infestans in an urban context. Characteristics of the urban grid can influence the spatial dynamics of vector borne disease and should be considered when designing public health policies