The Great Recession and Serving Dislocated Workers with Disabilities: Perspectives from One-Stop Career Centers and Rapid Response Coordinators

Recognizing the scope of long term unemployment and the consequences it exerts on all jobseekers, but especially people with disabilities, the report seeks to gain a better understanding of the extent to which people with disabilities who had lost their jobs in the Great Recession were seeking services from the public workforce system. The report also seeks to identify strategies, if any, being used at the state and local levels to help job seekers with disabilities reconnect with the labor market

An exploration into the use of the digital platform Slack to support group assessments and feedback and the impact on engagement - Working Paper

Funded by Teaching Innovation Project (DMU)Assessment and feedback is consistently highlighted as an area where students feel Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) could improve and regularly scores lowest of the key criteria for student satisfaction (Grove, 2014). Furthermore, group assessment, where students not only need to learn assessment requirements, but also social skills required to work collaboratively (Reiser, 2017), can create additional challenges. The majority of university students have grown up as digital natives, with 81% of students reporting use of mobile devices whilst studying (Al-Emran, Elsherif & Shaalan, 2016). There is a requirement to consider more brave and innovative technological approaches to supporting students. This working paper explores whether adopting an industry tool Slack, a Computer-Mediated Communication platform, can be an effective tool in group assessments. More specifically, can Slack facilitate an innovative and collaborative group learning community for mediating and supporting group assessments amongst level 5 undergraduate marketing students and additionally develop graduate competencies. Proposing a programme of qualitative inquiry, using a multi-method case study approach, data will be collected through six focus groups of 8-10 students and two semi-structured individual interviews with members of the teaching team in order to evaluate the use of Slack in supporting and engaging students in group assessments

Evaluating Workforce Programs: A Guide to What Policymakers Need to Know to Structure Effective, User-Friendly Evaluations

This brief discusses the value and purpose of program evaluations, highlights different evaluation tools and techniques, and illustrates how policy makers and program managers can structure and implement evaluations of workforce development programs

Suprasellar

Months after they found it, they still couldn’t figure out what it was. My mother consulted with a group of doctors at Johns Hopkins who told her that I won the award for longest debate over a brain tumor. I imagined them all gathered like ancient Roman astrologers staking out their claims about space. About stars. But instead of a star, it was my brain up on the screen. Its gray folds, tight around a mass sitting square in the middle of my brain. Perfectly spherical..

Findings from the Evaluation of the Newark/Essex Construction Careers Consortium

This PowerPoint presentation highlights the findings from the Heldrich Center's assessment of the Newark/Essex Construction Careers Consortium program

Two-Stage Multi-Objective Meta-Heuristics for Environmental and Cost-Optimal Energy Refurbishment at District Level

Energy efficiency and environmental performance optimization at the district level are following an upward trend mostly triggered by minimizing the Global Warming Potential (GWP) to 20% by 2020 and 40% by 2030 settled by the European Union (EU) compared with 1990 levels. This paper advances over the state of the art by proposing two novel multi-objective algorithms, named Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II) and Multi-Objective Harmony Search (MOHS), aimed at achieving cost-effective energy refurbishment scenarios and allowing at district level the decision-making procedure. This challenge is not trivial since the optimisation process must provide feasible solutions for a simultaneous environmental and economic assessment at district scale taking into consideration highly demanding real-based constraints regarding district and buildings’ specific requirements. Consequently, in this paper, a two-stage optimization methodology is proposed in order to reduce the energy demand and fossil fuel consumption with an affordable investment cost at building level and minimize the total payback time while minimizing the GWP at district level. Aimed at demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed two-stage multi-objective approaches, this work presents simulation results at two real district case studies in Donostia-San Sebastian (Spain) for which up to a 30% of reduction of GWP at district level is obtained for a Payback Time (PT) of 2–3 years.Part of this work has been developed from results obtained during the H2020 “Optimised Energy Efficient Design Platform for Refurbishment at District Level” (OptEEmAL) project, Grant No. 680676

Ensaio visual

ensaio gráfico de Mabe Bethônico, sobre a obra do artista John Stezaker

The Appalachian Other: Struggles of Familial and Cultural Assimilation in Fred Chappell\u27s Kirkman Tetralogy.

In his Kirkman tetralogy, Fred Chappell refutes ill-conceived Appalachian stereotypes via his refreshingly intelligent and sophisticated cast of mountaineer players. However, Chappell’s characters do not exist without flaws. Jess Kirkman, the tetralogy’s narrator, is a particularly tortured figure. Perpetually struggling to assimilate into his native mountain culture, Jess represents the Appalachian Other, an individual who is born into Southern Highland society, but who is, ironically, treated like an outsider by his peers. Throughout Chappell’s first novel, Jess’s inability to connect with his own family members becomes evident. In books two and three, readers see that, although several of Jess’s male relatives share his assimilative struggles, the women in his family are warmly embraced members of Appalachian society. While Jess desperately attempts to win the approval of his peers in novel four, he ultimately accepts his otherness, thus embracing the permanency of his outsider status