The Effects of Character Education on Student Behavior.

Character education has been a part of public schooling in the United States since its beginning. It has undergone dramatic changes over the years, from didactic instruction to service learning; it continues to evolve as more and more schools become involved in teaching students right from wrong. The current emphasis on character education in schools began in the early 1990s as an attempt to alleviate the increasingly violent behavior of students as reported in the media. The purpose of this study was to determine how character education affected the behavior of students. The study involved: observing student behavior; interviewing teachers, students, and parents to determine their perceptions of the effects of the character education program on student behavior; and reviewing disciplinary records to identify behavioral patterns. The findings from this study suggested that character education programs may have a positive effect on student behavior. Furthermore, the findings led to recommendations regarding the implementation of character education programs in elementary schools. Character education should be an integral part of the curriculum, not taught as a separate subject. This includes not only academic subjects but also specialty areas such as art, music, and physical education. Classroom rules should be based on the principles of good character and teachers should model good character for the students to observe. Additionally, students should be taught character through hands-on service activities that contribute to the school, the community, and society in general. This will help the students develop a sense of ownership of the program and should help to improve student behavior

Curricular Optimization: Solving for the Optimal Student Success Pathway

Considering the significant investment of higher education made by students and their families, graduating in a timely manner is of the utmost importance. Delay attributed to drop out or the retaking of a course adds cost and negatively affects a student’s academic progression. Considering this, it becomes paramount for institutions to focus on student success in relation to term scheduling. Often overlooked, complexity of a course schedule may be one of the most important factors in whether or not a student successfully completes his or her degree. More often than not students entering an institution as a first time full time (FSFT) freshman follow the advised and published schedule given by administrators. Providing the optimal schedule that gives the student the highest probability of success is critical. In efforts to create this optimal schedule, this thesis introduces a novel optimization algorithm with the objective to separate courses which when taken together hurt students’ pass rates. Inversely, we combine synergistic relationships that improve a students probability for success when the courses are taken in the same semester. Using actual student data at the University of Kentucky, we categorically find these positive and negative combinations by analyzing recorded pass rates. Using Julia language on top of the Gurobi solver, we solve for the optimal degree plan of a student in the electrical engineering program using a linear and non-linear multi-objective optimization. A user interface is created for administrators to optimize their curricula at main.optimizeplans.com

Wall Street Scandals: The Curative Effects of Law and Finance

This Article studies three scandals that embroiled U.S. financial markets during the past decade or so, including the Nasdaq market-makers\u27 use only of odd-eighths quotes, the abuse of specialist power on the New York Stock Exchange, and the mutual fund scandal. We attempt to attribute the resolution of these situations to the curative effects of markets versus regulation. We argue that the intervention of the legal system through regulation and/or litigation is often necessary to help resolve the misalignment of incentives needed for markets to accomplish their goal of maximizing value. The Article suggests that there exists an important synergy between financial markets and law that is often overlooked