Middle-out approaches to reform of university teaching and learning: Champions striding between the top-down and bottom-up approaches

In recent years, Australian universities have been driven by a diversity of external forces, including funding cuts, massification of higher education, and changing student demographics, to reform their relationship with students and improve teaching and learning, particularly for those studying off-campus or part-time. Many universities have responded to these forces either through formal strategic plans developed top-down by executive staff or through organic developments arising from staff in a bottom-up approach. By contrast, much of Murdoch University's response has been led by a small number of staff who have middle management responsibilities and who have championed the reform of key university functions, largely in spite of current policy or accepted practice. This paper argues that the "middle-out" strategy has both a basis in change management theory and practice, and a number of strengths, including low risk, low cost, and high sustainability. Three linked examples of middle-out change management in teaching and learning at Murdoch University are described and the outcomes analyzed to demonstrate the benefits and pitfalls of this approach

Using Laboratory Experiments For Policy Making: An Example From The Georgia Irrigation Reduction Auction

In April 2000, the Georgia legislature passed a law requiring that the state use an unspecified "auction-like process" to pay some farmers to suspend irrigation in declared drought years. In response, we conducted a series of laboratory and field experiments to test a variety of auction procedures. This paper reports the results of these experiments, and how they were used by the policy makers who determined the auction procedures. Experimental results are compared with farmers' bidding behavior in the state-run irrigation auction conducted in March 2001. Working Paper # 2002-00

Global Studies Internship Experience and Evaluation

The thesis examines the new, transitioning Global Studies internship that is required of all GLST majors during their spring semester of Junior year. The paper evaluates the GLST internship through interviews of students who have completed their internship, those who were supervisors of an intern, and those in the GLST office. The interviews of the students and former supervisors are administered through e-mailed questionnaires and the GLST staff were interviewed personally. The purpose is to provide feedback and suggestions in hopes of bettering the internship for future interns and supervisors. Several issues were identified in the areas of the office’s communication, organization, and debriefing. The changes made since the spring of 2013 have noted within the thesis

East-West Center degree student alumni : report of a survey reviewing the alumni from the first twenty-five years

For more about the East-West Center, see http://www.eastwestcenter.org/</a

SLS Processing Studies of Nylon 11 Nanocomposites

Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) is widely used for rapid prototyping/manufacturing of nylon 11 and nylon 12 parts. This processing technique has not been explored for nylon nanocomposites. This study investigates the technicalities of processing nylon 11-clay and nylon-carbon nanofiber nanocomposites with SLS. Microstructural analyses of the SLS powders and parts were conducted under SEM. Results suggest that SLS processing is possible with the new nylon 11 nanocomposites. Yet the SLS parts built have inferior properties relative to those of injection molding, suggesting that more fine tuning for the processing is required.Mechanical Engineerin

Elinor Glyn

Perhaps most remembered in the United States for her best-selling 1907 novel of exotic sensuality Three Weeks and her brainchild “It,” that enigmatic characteristic embodied in actress Clara Bow and dramatized in the silent motion picture It (1927), English-born journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and actress Elinor Glyn, born Elinor Sutherland, embarked on her American career in 1920 during her second visit to the United States. In October of 1907, at forty-two, Glyn, traveling as Elinor Glyn, the authoress of romantic fiction, boarded the Lusitania and set sail for New York on her first American tour in order to promote Three Weeks. According to her British biographer, Joan Hardwick, “the reception of Three Weeks in the States had renewed [Glyn’s] confidence and she decided to try her hand at dramatizing it” (133). Before that version materialized, however, Glyn returned to England, but only after lengthening her stay with a journey by rail through the American West to California. Her 1907 tour of the United States and her introduction to American culture and way of life may very well have laid the fertile groundwork for her 1920 return and subsequent work as writer, director, producer, and actress in Hollywood

High Flux Femtosecond X-ray Emission from the Electron-Hose Instability in Laser Wakefield Accelerators

Bright and ultrashort duration X-ray pulses can be produced by through betatron oscillations of electrons during Laser Wakefield Acceleration (LWFA). Our experimental measurements using the \textsc{Hercules} laser system demonstrate a dramatic increase in X-ray flux for interaction distances beyond the depletion/dephasing lengths, where the initial electron bunch injected into the first wake bucket catches up with the laser pulse front and the laser pulse depletes. A transition from an LWFA regime to a beam-driven plasma wakefield acceleration (PWFA) regime consequently occurs. The drive electron bunch is susceptible to the electron-hose instability and rapidly develops large amplitude oscillations in its tail, which leads to greatly enhanced X-ray radiation emission. We measure the X-ray flux as a function of acceleration length using a variable length gas cell. 3D particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations using a Monte Carlo synchrotron X-ray emission algorithm elucidate the time-dependent variations in the radiation emission processes.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Accel. Beam

Optical properties of cesium tetracyanoquinodimethanide, Cs2(TCNQ)3

Journal ArticleRoom-temperature polarized reflectance measurements have been made on cesium tetracyanoquinodimethanide, Cs2(TCNQI3, over the frequency range between the far infrared and the near ultraviolet. The optical properties of the compound were obtained by Kramers-Kronig analysis. These properties are dominated by vibrational features at low frequencies and by electronic excitations at high frequencies. The observed vibrational features include ordinary intramolecular modes and "anomalous" infrared activity of the totally symmetric vibrations