Mandating International Experience: A Policy Analysis of The State University of New York (SUNY) At Geneseo Requirement for all International Relations Degree Seeking Students to Study Abroad

The prioritization of international education is gaining momentum among higher education institutions. One specific testament to this fact is the steady growth in study abroad participation. As the overall percentage of students studying abroad for credit during their undergraduate career rises, policies are being created in a variety of contexts to promote international education experiences (Open Doors). Amidst these fledgling policies, a 22-year-old major-specific study abroad requirement has thrived and continues to evolve in today’s global state. This capstone is an analysis of the State University of New York (SUNY) at Geneseo’s International Relations (IR) policy requiring all undergraduate degree seeking students to participate in a for-credit international experience in order to graduate. The policy outlines a number of options for the required international experience, including an internship and a special project, yet places the greatest emphasis on study abroad for academic credit. Using supplemental data and resources, both the history and the future of this unique policy will be examined, taking into consideration SUNY Geneseo’s Internationalization campaign. There will also be a literature review presented, which will look at various policies mandating study abroad and the way different campuses work toward increasing participation and maintaining best practices. In addition, the perspectives of key stakeholders will be presented using interview responses and day-to-day observations. With the completion of the analysis, recommendations and consistent themes will be presented on SUNY Geneseo’s IR policy, assessing the impact it has had to date as well as potential options to promote sustainability in the years ahead. Recommendations include documenting formal goals and objectives, standardizing pre-departure and re-entry processes, and conducting comprehensive assessment and evaluation

The Doctrine of Relation Back in Montana Water Law

The Doctrine of Relation Back in Montana Water La

Decision-Making for Teacher Professional Development: An Analysis of Contributing Factors

This is a sequential explanatory mixed-methods study of teachers\u27 professional development experiences within two Educational Service Agencies in the northeastern part of the United States. It examines how much and what types of professional development teachers receive, and the factors that contribute to school leaders\u27 decisions for offering professional development and teachers\u27 decisions for participating in professional development. The study was based on what the field knows about the characteristics of effective professional development, and the lack of comparison between those traits and what we know about current professional development practices. The study is composed of multiple phases, which include the analysis of a secondary data set provided by the two Educational Service Agencies. The data set provides four years of data regarding professional development offerings in two regions of the state and was analyzed for trends and patterns related to the types and amounts of offerings. This data informed a subsequent phase in which I interviewed 28 school leaders and teachers about their professional development experiences and decision-making. I used a deductive coding approach to review the data and develop my findings. The findings are presented as a descriptive narrative of the data, augmented with tables and figures. Several themes emerged from the data that helped answer four questions: 1) How much and in what types of professional development do teachers participate? 2) What factors influence the professional development that is offered to teachers? 3) What factors influence the professional development that teachers choose to take? 4) How do school leaders and teachers talk about professional development? A key idea emerges that a universally-accepted definition or typology of professional development does not exist. Implications for future research, regulations and policy, and professional development facilitators\u27, school leaders\u27, and teachers\u27 practice are discussed

Fishes of Bayou Meto and Wattensaw Bayou, Two Lowland Streams in East Central Arkansas

Bayou Meto is a low-gradient, highly turbid, warm-water stream that originates in the foothills of the Interior Highlands of central Arkansas and flows southeastward 290 km to the Arkansas River. In the 1970\u27s, Bayou Meto was contaminated with dioxins from a point source (Vertac Corp.) now recognized as a USEPA Superfund site. The present study was initiated to investigate the impact of dioxin on the fish community of Bayou Meto. Fishes were collected by backpack-electrofishing, boat-electrofishing, seines, hoopnets, minnow traps, and trot lines, at 14 sampling stations. Diversity indices (Shannon and Margalef) were used to compare diversity among sample sites. A total of 73 fish species was collected from Bayou Meto and Wattensaw Bayou (a reference stream) between May, 1991 and September, 1992. A total of 79 species had been reported from these drainages. I collected 64 species from Bayou Meto and 48 species from Wattensaw Bayou. Of the 79 species historically reported from these drainages, 17 were not collected during this study. However, of the 73 species collected, 11 (15% of the entire collection) had not been previously recorded from these drainages. There was 57% overlap in species between Bayou Meto and Wattensaw Bayou. Differences in collected species from the two drainages mostly involved rare species i.e., those species in low abundance according to the literature and/or difficult to collect. Centrarchids and castostomids dominated the fish communities of both streams. Percids were also well represented, but 50% were not previously reported from these drainages. Cyprinidae numbers were low and distributions spotty. Diversity varied among sites and was related to impacts and stream order. Diversity was highest at less impacted locations and downstream sites

Consensus Making Process in the Korean Academy of Medical Sciences Guideline for Physical Impairment: Evaluation as a Social Process

The steering committee of the Korean Academy of Medical Sciences Guideline for Physical Impairment was fully aware of the social processes of disability evaluation from the beginning and thus, developed a series of strategies to examine and incorporate social property of the evaluation into the evaluation guide. Although those strategies could not be implemented to full extent because of lack of budget and time, we believe it worthwhile to share those in this paper as an example of general framework for developing disability evaluation. A series of strategies will be introduced and discussed that views the evaluation process as social per se, and propose a scheme that is designed to obtain growing legitimacy starting from core experts to expanded experts to general public. Also preliminary analyses on surveys of public attitude and experts' opinion with regard to the relative importance of each possible disability revealed the following three facts: 1) Public had difficulty weighing relative importance of many impairments. 2) Regarding some impairments including complex regional pain syndrome many doctors had varied opinions. 3) Public attitude did not always consistent with doctor's opinion. All these findings strongly suggest the need for developing strategies to draw consensus for legitimate and effective evaluation

The relation of instructor emotional intelligence with classroom climate in evening masters' programs for adults

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on May 21, 2012).The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Dissertation advisor: Dr. Joe DonaldsonVita."July 2011"Ph. D. University of Missouri--Columbia 2012.With the increase of adult students on college campuses in masters' level programs, instructors and administrators need to respond sensitively to a diverse, blended population of students. The study explored if there was a relationship between instructor Emotional Intelligence (EI) and adult evening masters students' perception of classroom climate, using the subscales of the Adult Classroom Environment Scale (ACES) and the instructor's total emotional intelligence (TEI) as measured by the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). Associations between instructors' TEI and the following five variables were also explored: program type (cohort or non-cohort), student age, course content, class size, and student gender. The classroom was the unit of analysis. Only two of the seven ACES subscales had statistically significant relationships with TEI: Organization and Clarity, and Affilition. This study rests on three foundations: the construct of emotional intelligence (EI), the idea of the connecting classroom, and the construct of a supportive adult classroom climate. The EI framework is based on the work of Mayer and Salovey (1990). This study was also based on the theoretical framework of Donald et al. (2000), whose research offers evidence that the connecting classroom is the center state of the collegiate experience for adults. The third framework, classroom climate/environment, is based on works by Moos (1979), Knowles (1980), Darkenwald (1987), Donaldson and Graham (1999), and Graham, Donaldson, Kasworm, and Dirx (2000).Includes bibliographical reference

Implementation and Analysis of Respondent Driven Sampling: Lessons Learned from the Field

Those who engage in illegal or stigmatized behaviors, which put them at risk of HIV infection, are largely concentrated in urban centers. Owing to their illegal and/ or stigmatized behaviors, they are difficult to reach with public health surveillance and prevention programs. 1 These populations include illicit drug users, sex workers and men who have sex with men. Development and implementation of adequate prevention services targeting hidden populations requires data on risk behaviors and disease prevalence from non-biased samples. In the last two decades, a number of sampling methods have been used to collect risk behavior and disease prevalence data from highly at-risk populations and to direct survey participants to prevention services. These include venue-based time–space sampling, targeted sampling, and snowball sampling. Time–space (also called time–location or venue–day–time) and targeted sampling provide coverage limited to population members who are readily accessible; those who are missed may differ from those who are Bcaptured[. 2 Targeted sampling fares well when compared to other forms of convenienc

Cultic Studies Cultivate Libertory Language

Coercive abuse at its most extreme manifests in cultic groups. These groups abuse their members using the same tactics that a domestic abuser or totalitarian government would to make their victims completely dependent on and subservient to them. Cultic studies investigate these tactics to define cults, coercive control, thought reform, indoctrination, and group psychological abuse behaviors. This fairly recent area of study has significant overlap with abolition feminist studies, which compare interpersonal and systemic abuse to liberate oppressed Americans, such as Black and Indigenous people, queer and disabled people, and women. This thesis combines cultic studies and abolition feminist studies to discuss the importance of relationship literacy and coercive abuse education to create sustainable American communities. Reviewing abolition feminist and cultic studies\u27 literature illustrates the importance of providing language to describe behavior as abusive or healthy in the process of relating. A focus on the linguistics of cultic recruitment and coercive abuse at interpersonal, familial, group, and government levels creates a framework for sustainable relationships in a post COVID-19 United States

A Model for Patron-Driven Acquisition of Print Music Scores: From Conception to Reality

This paper and presentation will explore the process of developing a unique patron-driven acquisition program for print music scores and monographs from concept to reality at an American Association of Research Libraries institution. Areas to be discussed include collection development considerations, information technology infrastructure needs, acquisitions workflows, and plan evaluation. The paper and the presentation will examine how partnering with a vendor to implement an innovative collection development plan can support the needs of the library users and the goals of library collection development officers and increase access to music scores and monographs in a fiscally responsible way. Readers can expect to learn about the opportunities and challenges that the library and vendor faced in implementing the plan, outcomes and evaluation, and steps for the future

Respondent-Driven Sampling in a Study of Drug Users in New York City: Notes from the Field

Beth Israel Medical Center (BIMC), in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH), used respondent-driven sampling (RDS) in a study of HIV seroprevalence among drug users in New York City in 2004. We report here on operational issues with RDS including recruitment, coupon distribution, storefront operations, police and community relations, and the overall lessons we learned. Project staff recruited eight seeds from a syringe exchange in Lower Manhattan to serve as the initial study participants. Upon completion of the interview that lasted approximately 1 h and a blood draw, each seed was given three coupons to recruit three drug users into the study. Each of the subsequent eligible participants was also given three coupons to recruit three of their drug-using acquaintances. Eligible participants had to have: injected, smoked or snorted an illicit drug in the last 6 months (other than marijuana), aged 18 or older, adequate English language knowledge to permit informed consent and complete questionnaire. From April to July 2004, 618 drug users were interviewed, including 263 (43%) current injectors, 119 (19%) former injectors, and 236 (38%) never injectors. Four hundred sixty nine (76%) participants were men, 147 (24%) were women, and two (<1%) were transgender. By race/ethnicity, 285 (46%) were black, 218 (35%) Hispanic, 88 (14%) white, 23 (4%) mixed/not specified, and four (<1%) native American. Interviews were initially done on a drop-in basis but this system changed to appointments 1 month into the study due to the large volume of subjects coming in for interviews. Data collection was originally proposed to last for 1 year with a target recruitment of 500 drug users. Utilizing RDS, we were able to recruit and interview 118 more drug users than originally proposed in one quarter of the time. RDS was efficient with respect to time and economics (we did not have to hire an outreach worker) and effective in recruiting a diverse sample of drug users