The Effectiveness of Probation in West Virginia: A Study Examining the Practices and Views of Probation Officers in West Virginia

Probation across America is in turmoil and its effectiveness is under scrutiny. In this paper, probation will be examined, more specifically the effectiveness of probation and the opinions of probation officers in West Virginia and the techniques they utilize in supervising offenders. Research will be presented from various experts across the country that have examined probation in America. Some of these experts report that probation is failing; however, judges have not given up hope on the effectiveness of probation and are willing to look at alternatives to traditional practices. To determine the efficiency of probation in West Virginia surveys were administered to adult probation officers in West Virginia in an attempt to uncover practices utilized by probation officers and their beliefs about probation’s effectiveness

Faculty Learning Communities are a positive way for libraries to engage academic staff in scholarly communication.

The stakes and politics of research and scholarship are different depending on discipline, department, and institution, and as such, increasing awareness of scholarly communication is fraught with difficulty. Librarians Jennifer Bazeley and Jen Waller share their experience developing a Faculty Learning Community (FLC) in order to address the issues. Cultivating awareness of the entire scholarly communication landscape created stronger faculty advocates for change, but key differences emerged between longer established and newer faculty members

Engrossed, Enraged, Engaged: Empowering Faculty in Transforming Scholarly Communication

Librarians are deeply invested in the scholarly publishing lifecycle. This investment, in tandem with an evolving scholarly communication system, has encouraged librarians to become advocates for transformation in this landscape. At the same time, some faculty members have been slower to understand the complexities of the current system and its evolution. At Miami University, traditional communication methods weren’t sufficient to meaningfully engage faculty in these evolving trends. As a response, several librarians designed and cofacilitated two Scholarly Communication Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) for two academic years. These FLCs have been the most successful method of increasing faculty understanding about scholarly communication and academic publishing issues. The FLCs brought together university community members comprised of faculty, staff, and graduate students interested in learning more about scholarly communication. Each group spent two semesters doing readings, attending panel presentations, and meeting for seminar‐style discussions about current issues and trends in scholarly publishing. Over the course of the year, FLC members became more aware of the nuances in the lifecycle of scholarly publication and learned which scholarly communication issues affected them most. As a result, the cofacilitators saw a rapidly growing understanding about problems inherent in the current system of scholarly publishing, a substantial increase in faculty discussions on scholarly communication, and greater faculty‐led advocacy for open access publishing. Additionally, community members appreciated the crossdisciplinary nature of the FLC, which afforded them the opportunity to escape traditional disciplinary silos. This article will discuss how the facilitators used the learning community format to successfully change faculty behavior about issues in scholarly communication and how these experiences altered librarian perceptions and improved interactions with faculty

Teaching Communities of Faculty About Scholarly Communication

This article by Jennifer Bazeley and Jen Waller originally appeared on the LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog as “Faculty Learning Communities are a positive way for libraries to engage academic staff in scholarly communication” and was re-posted under the Creative Commons license (CC BY 3.0).The stakes and politics of research and scholarship are different depending on discipline, department, and institution, and as such, increasing awareness of scholarly communication is fraught with difficulty. Librarians Jennifer Bazeley and Jen Waller share their experience developing a Faculty Learning Community (FLC) in order to address the issues. Cultivating awareness of the entire scholarly communication landscape created stronger faculty advocates for change, but key differences emerged between longer established and newer faculty members

Engrossed, Enraged, Engaged: Empowering Faculty in Transforming Scholarly Communication

Conference Proceedings - Charleston Library Conference 2014Librarians are deeply invested in the scholarly publishing lifecycle. This investment, in tandem with an evolving scholarly communication system, has encouraged librarians to become advocates for transformation in this landscape. At the same time, some faculty members have been slower to understand the complexities of the current system and its evolution. At Miami University, traditional communication methods weren’t sufficient to meaningfully engage faculty in these evolving trends. As a response, several librarians designed and co-facilitated two Scholarly Communication Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) for two academic years. These FLCs have been the most successful method of increasing faculty understanding about scholarly communication and academic publishing issues. The FLCs brought together university community members comprised of faculty, staff, and graduate students interested in learning more about scholarly communication. Each group spent two semesters doing readings, attending panel presentations, and meeting for seminar‐style discussions about current issues and trends in scholarly publishing. Over the course of the year, FLC members became more aware of the nuances in the lifecycle of scholarly publication and learned which scholarly communication issues affected them most. As a result, the co-facilitators saw a rapidly growing understanding about problems inherent in the current system of scholarly publishing, a substantial increase in faculty discussions on scholarly communication, and greater faculty‐led advocacy for open access publishing. Additionally, community members appreciated the cross-disciplinary nature of the FLC, which afforded them the opportunity to escape traditional disciplinary silos. This article will discuss how the facilitators used the learning community format to successfully change faculty behavior about issues in scholarly communication and how these experiences altered librarian perceptions and improved interactions with faculty

Intersecting Philosophies: A Qualitative Study of Student Conduct Administrators and Their Decision Making Utilizing the Concepts of Justice and Care

Student discipline has been issue for higher education administrators in the founding of college campuses. Today’s student conduct administrator is faced with complex issues that require an understanding of the legal requirements of due process while supporting the education mission of the institution. However, little research has addressed student conduct administrators as professionals and no research has explored their decision-making process. This qualitative study examined eight student conduct administrators and how they make decisions in their positions through the concepts of justice and care. These individuals were employed at large public research institutions at mid-level, working full time in student conduct. In-depth interviews were utilized to collect data that were categorized and evaluated through the lenses of justice, based on the framework of Kohlberg, and care, based on the framework of Gilligan. The findings indicated that student conduct administrators used both justice and care in their decision making. Justice was seen primarily through the findings phase of the student conduct process, when a student conduct administrator must determine whether the student code of conduct has been violated. Care was seen primarily through the sanctioning phase, when a student conduct administrator must decide what outcome should occur if the student has violated the code of conduct. The findings suggest that gender had no impact on the use of justice and care, as all participants used both concepts

Peer Victimization and Rejection Sensitivity in Adolescents with Major Depressive Disorder: The Role of Daily Emotional Functioning with Peers

While both peer victimization and rejection sensitivity are associated with a greater risk for depressive symptoms among adolescents (Bond et al., 2001; Marston et al., 2010), not all adolescents who have social difficulties develop depression. This study examined affective experiences with peers as possible moderators of the associations between victimization or rejection sensitivity and depression. Participants were adolescents ages 10-17 years, 29 of whom were currently experiencing a Major Depressive Episode at the time of the study and 31 of whom were age- and gender-matched controls with no lifetime history of Axis I psychopathology. A three-week ecological momentary assessment (EMA) protocol was used to assess daily affective responding in peer contexts. Negative affect, positive affect, and feelings of closeness and connectedness with peers were tested as possible moderators of the associations between victimization or rejection sensitivity and 1) depressive symptoms or 2) Major Depressive Disorder diagnosis. Additionally, group differences in peer victimization, rejection sensitivity, and affective responding in peer contexts were also examined. The study makes several contributions to the field: 1) finding differences in reports of peer victimization and rejection sensitivity for youth with MDD versus healthy controls, 2) finding consistent associations between peer victimization or rejection sensitivity and both depressive symptoms and MDD diagnostic status, 3) finding differences in intensity of negative affect experienced during interactions with peers for youth with MDD versus healthy controls, and 4) identifying unique associations between NA during peer interactions and depression, beyond the effects of rejection sensitivity or peer victimization. Also, exploratory analyses indicated that victimization, rejection sensitivity, and negative affect were also associated with anxiety symptoms across both groups and with anxiety disorder comorbidity among youth with MDD. Results suggest that adverse peer experiences, such as peer victimization, social-cognitive factors (e.g., rejection sensitivity), and negative emotional experiences in peer contexts are important factors in adolescent depression and anxiety and should be targets for further research and intervention

Density Estimation of Spatio-Temporal Point Patterns Using Moran’s Statistics

Moran’s Index is a statistic that measures spatial autocorrelation, quantifying the degree of dispersion (or spread) of objects in space. When investigating data in an area, a single Moran statistic may not give a sufficient summary of the autocorrelation spread. However, by partitioning the area and taking the Moran statistic of each subarea, we discover patterns of the local neighbors not otherwise apparent. In this paper, we consider the model of the spread of an infectious disease, incorporate time factor, and simulate a multilevel Poisson process where the dependence among the levels is captured by the rate of increase of the disease spread over time, steered by a common factor in the scale. The main consequence of our results is that our Moran statistic is calculated from an explicit algorithm in a Monte Carlo simulation setting. Results are compared to Geary’s statistic and estimates of parameters under Poisson process are given

Peer Relationships of Children With Cancer: Homophily and Social Acceptance

Children undergoing treatment for malignancies may be at risk for adjustment difficulties as a result of physical symptoms or treatments related to their condition (e.g., missed school, lack of participation in extracurricular activities or sports, changes in appearance, fatigue). Children generally associate with peers who have similar social characteristics (e.g., aggressive children often befriend other aggressive children). By interrupting children's participation in social activities, cancer may disrupt these typical patterns of friendship. This study compared 84 children with cancer, ages 8-15 years, to 84 behaviorally similar, gender-, race-, and sex-matched, non-chronically peers, with regard to differences in patterns of peer affiliation, social acceptance and friendships. Sociometric data (Like Rating Scale, Revised Class Play, 3 Best Friends) were collected in children's classrooms from peers. Results did not confirm our hypothesis that the friendships of children with cancer would be less homophilious than friendships of non-chronically ill children with regard to gender, social acceptance, or behavioral reputation. There were group differences in similarity for gender, sensitive-isolated behavior, and friend nominations. However, in all instances, homophily was greater for children with cancer. Results provided mixed support for the hypothesis that children with cancer would have more social problems than comparisons. Children with cancer were more well liked than comparisons, but received fewer friend nominations and had fewer reciprocated friendships. Overall, these results suggest that children undergoing treatment for cancer have difficulty maintaining friendships during treatment and that friendships they do maintain are primarily with peers who are more similar to them