LOBBYING TACTICS EMPLOYED IN HIGHER EDUCATION AT THE STATE LEVEL: A TWO-STATE STUDY

This study sought a better understanding of lobbying tactics used in higher education at the state level. Given the economic recession the United States experienced in recent years, it is now more important than ever for public higher education to maintain its current funding levels and effectively communicate needed policy changes. To advance all public institutions, there must be communication with legislative officials and state-level higher education governing board members. The primary research question for this study was: What strategies and tactics are used in higher education lobbying at the state level, and how do these strategies influence the decisions made by legislative decision makers? Through semi-structured interviews in North Carolina and South Carolina, the researcher coded and analyzed information using the framework for public policy development established by the work of Gabel and Scott. The researcher developed a case study for each state, extracted common themes, compared them through a cross-case analysis, and then used triangulation to help validate the results, mostly using newspapers and periodicals to back up what was discovered during the interviews. The analysis revealed the common strategies and tactics that guide lobbying activities in North Carolina and South Carolina. The researcher also conducted interviews with campus-based lobbyists at public institutions, elected officials, and higher education governing board members in North Carolina and South Carolina. This study identifies the most important state priorities in public higher education. This study went beyond previous studies as it examined two states with differing higher education governing structures. Further, this study involved interviews with elected officials, campus-based lobbyists, and higher education governing board members. The strategies and tactics identified will help higher education institutions advocate for funding and policy changes, and increase the body of knowledge of public higher education lobbying at the state level

Sorority and Fraternity Attitudes Towards Initiation and Hazing

This study assessed students’ attitudes towards fraternity and sorority intake processes at a regional Mid-Atlantic University (MU) to gain an understanding of overall attitudes and discern whether students distinguish differences between hazing and initiation procedures. Study results indicated that students understand the general purpose of initiation and the dangers of hazing; however, a general understanding may not translate to an understanding of the specifics activities involved in new member initiation processes. Study results specified differences in understanding initiation and hazing are greatest by gender and fraternity/ sorority council. Implications for higher education research and student affairs practice are discussed

Elicitation of US and Chinese expert judgments show consistent views on solar geoengineering

Expert judgments on solar geoengineering (SG) inform policy decisions and influence public opinions. We performed face-to-face interviews using formal expert elicitation methods with 13 US and 13 Chinese climate experts randomly selected from IPCC authors or supplemented by snowball sampling. We compare their judgments on climate change, SG research, governance, and deployment. In contrast to existing literature that often stress factors that might differentiate China from western democracies on SG, we found few significant differences between quantitative judgments of US and Chinese experts. US and Chinese experts differed on topics, such as desired climate scenario and the preferred venue for international regulation of SG, providing some insight into divergent judgments that might shape future negotiations about SG policy. We also gathered closed-form survey results from 19 experts with >10 publications on SG. Both expert groups supported greatly increased research, recommending SG research funding of ~5% on average (10th–90th percentile range was 1–10%) of climate science budgets compared to actual budgets of <0.3% in 2018. Climate experts chose far less SG deployment in future climate policies than did SG experts

Last millennium northern hemisphere summer temperatures from tree rings: Part I: The long term context

Large-scale millennial length Northern Hemisphere (NH) temperature reconstructions have been progressively improved over the last 20 years as new datasets have been developed. This paper, and its companion (Part II, Anchukaitis et al. in prep), details the latest tree-ring (TR) based NH land air temperature reconstruction from a temporal and spatial perspective. This work is the first product of a consortium called N-TREND (Northern Hemisphere Tree-Ring Network Development) which brings together dendroclimatologists to identify a collective strategy for improving large-scale summer temperature reconstructions. The new reconstruction, N-TREND2015, utilises 54 records, a significant expansion compared with previous TR studies, and yields an improved reconstruction with stronger statistical calibration metrics. N-TREND2015 is relatively insensitive to the compositing method and spatial weighting used and validation metrics indicate that the new record portrays reasonable coherence with large scale summer temperatures and is robust at all time-scales from 918 to 2004 where at least 3 TR records exist from each major continental mass. N-TREND2015 indicates a longer and warmer medieval period (∼900–1170) than portrayed by previous TR NH reconstructions and by the CMIP5 model ensemble, but with better overall agreement between records for the last 600 years. Future dendroclimatic projects should focus on developing new long records from data-sparse regions such as North America and eastern Eurasia as well as ensuring the measurement of parameters related to latewood density to complement ring-width records which can improve local based calibration substantially

LOBBYING TACTICS EMPLOYED IN HIGHER EDUCATION AT THE STATE LEVEL: A TWO-STATE STUDY

This study sought a better understanding of lobbying tactics used in higher education at the state level. Given the economic recession the United States experienced in recent years , it is now more important than ever for public higher education to maintain its current funding levels and effectively communicate needed policy changes. To advance all public institutions , there must be communication with legislative officials and state-level higher education governing board members. The primary research question for this study was: What strategies and tactics are used in higher education lobbying at the state level , and how do these strategies influence the decisions made by legislative decision makers? Through semi-structured interviews in North Carolina and South Carolina , the researcher coded and analyzed information using the framework for public policy development established by the work of Gabel and Scott. The researcher developed a case study for each state , extracted common themes , compared them through a cross-case analysis , and then used triangulation to help validate the results , mostly using newspapers and periodicals to back up what was discovered during the interviews. The analysis revealed the common strategies and tactics that guide lobbying activities in North Carolina and South Carolina. The researcher also conducted interviews with campus-based lobbyists at public institutions , elected officials , and higher education governing board members in North Carolina and South Carolina. This study identifies the most important state priorities in public higher education. This study went beyond previous studies as it examined two states with differing higher education governing structures. Further , this study involved interviews with elected officials , campus-based lobbyists , and higher education governing board members. The strategies and tactics identified will help higher education institutions advocate for funding and policy changes , and increase the body of knowledge of public higher education lobbying at the state level

Urbanism past & present

Climate change directly affects the suitability of habitats for species, but also indirectly alters natural disturbances such as fire, which can negatively impact species’ persistence. Developing accurate predictions of climate change impacts requires estimates of the interactive effects of climate and disturbance regimes at both population and landscape scales. Here we couple a habitat suitability model with a population viability model to examine the interactive effects of climate change and altered fire regimes on a fire-responsive frog species across its geographic range in south-eastern Australia. By 2100, we predict expected minimum abundances (EMA) to decline by 66% (under GFDL-CM2 A1FI climate projections) or 87% (CSIRO Mk3.5 A1FI) in the absence of fire. Increased frequency of low-intensity fires reduced EMA by less than 5%, whereas increased frequency of high-intensity fires reduced EMA by up to 40% compared with the no-fire scenario. While shifts in fire regimes are predicted to impact metapopulation viability, these indirect effects of fire are far less severe than the direct impact of climate change on habitat suitability. Exploring the interactive impacts of climate change and altered disturbance regimes can help managers prioritize threats across space and time.12 page(s