Management of change in higher education.

The project concentrates on the issues facing Intercollege in its move towards university status. The purpose here is to establish a methodology that will assist the process of gaining university status whilst addressing the change management issues. The project provides evidence that indicates successful application of change management techniques through the use of communication and presentation skills, exercising responsibility, leadership and delegation of authority so that plans can be successfully implemented through both transformational and evolutionary change mechanisms. The main themes that emerged from the research are contextualised in a model. Substance considers the external influences impacting on a complex institution such as a university and what senior managers should do in order to enact change. In context the external environment is significant with regard to how the individual stakeholders perceive higher education and how its services may be utilised by them. Stewardship of the institution is focused on leadership and ensuring that all managers fully engage with staff. To support this action learning activities are employed to determine the underlying concepts that require addressing. The overlap applies in different forms throughout the research to reveal that by employing action research techniques, leaders and change agents instigate action learning sets as a development tool to overcome these aspects. The research indicates that it is difficult to become a successful change agent without being an effective leader and that those successful leaders are successful change agents. The project concludes that a praxis of leadership development programme is implemented for managers and that action learning be used to support this in order to achieve a successful outcome during the transformation from college to university status. This will allow individuals to focus on the transfer of learning to the live challenges of the change process

Influence of the Yukon River on the Bering Sea

The distribution of near-surface, turbid water, discharged by the Yukon River, was studied based on analysis of satellite imagery. The interannual analyses indicates that the net flow of near-surface, turbid water is northward of the delta across the entrance to Norton Sound. Only turbid water to the east enters Norton Sound and consists of 25% of the total area. Approximately 10% of the water circulates into the sound along the southern coast and is lost to view in the vicinity of Unalakleet. Suspended sediments transported by this southern circulation are primarily deposited along the southern coast. Three distinct zones within the turbid water were identified based on relative brightness levels. These zones appear to be primarily related to differences in suspended-sediment concentrations and position of the sediments in the water column. The extent of turbid water varies seasonally. It is most extensive June through October even though discharge of the Yukon River decreases substantially after July

Influence of the Yukon River on the Bering Sea

Physical and biological oceanography of the northern Bering Sea including the influence of the Yukon River were studied. Satellite data acquired by the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), the LANDSAT Multispectral Scanner (MSS) and the Thematic Mapper (TM) sensor were used to detect sea surface temperatures and suspended sediments. Shipboard measurements of temperature, salinity and nutrients were acquired through the Inner Shelf Transfer and Recycling (ISHTAR) project and were compared to digitally enhanced and historical satellite images. The satellite data reveal north-flowing, warm water along the Alaskan coast that is highly turbid with complex patterns of surface circulation near the Yukon River delta. To the west near the Soviet Union, cold water, derived from an upwelling, mixes with shelf water and also flows north. The cold and warm water coincide with the Anadyr, Bering Shelf and Alaskan coastal water masses. Generally, warm Alaskan coastal water forms near the coast and extends offshore as the summer progresses. Turbid water discharged by the Yukon River progresses in the same fashion but extends northward across the entrance to Norton Sound, attaining its maximum surface extent in October. The Anadyr water flows northward and around St. Lawrence Island, but its extent is highly variable and depends upon mesoscale pressure fields in the Arctic Ocean and the Bering Sea

Leading change in higher education

This article considers the situation in the UK higher education system and investigates specifically the leadership practice in a cluster of UK institutions as they changed their status. The research goes further to advocate a form of contextualized leadership that is relevant to higher institutions under change

On the biology of eelgrass in Alaska

Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 1970A collection of essays is presented that are a contribution toward a biology of eelgrass (Zostera marina L.) in Alaska. Eelgrass is the most abundant seagrass on the coast of Alaska. The distribution of the plant in Alaska is disjunct and extends from Kotzebue Sound to the southern border of the state. The present circumboreal distribution is thought to be the result of dispersal from a west Pacific origin around the Pacific rim and through the Arctic into the Atlantic. Ten widely scattered eelgrass populations in Alaska have been sampled for quantitative comparison. The highest standing stocks (1510 g dry wt/m²) were found in Kinzarof and Izembek lagoons on the Alaska Peninsula. The caloric content, chlorophyll a concentration, turion density, and leaf size varied greatly among the populations. The eelgrass in Safety Lagoon survives the arctic winter under one meter of sea ice in conditions of extremely low light intensity and anoxic water. In chemical composition, eelgrass is similar to other angiosperms, but it also reflects adaptation to the marine environment. Trace elements are accumulated in the plant in proportion to their concentration in the sea. The roots as well as the leaves function as the sites for the uptake of phosphate. Using radioactive phosphate it was shown that phosphate was absorbed greatest in the light and transported throughout the plant; a portion of the phosphate removed from solution by the roots was lost across the leaves. The metabolism of eelgrass in the dark is extremely dependent on temperature. Physiological differences exist between shallow water and deep water plants and between summer and winter plants. A depressed rate of respiration in winter is an adaptation enhancing survival in high latitudes

Using Gestures to Resolve Lexical Ambiguity in Storytelling with Humanoid Robots

Gestures that co-occur with speech are a fundamental component of communication. Prior research with children suggests that gestures may help them to resolve certain forms of lexical ambiguity, including homophones. To test this idea in the context of human-robot interaction, the effects of iconic and deictic gestures on the understanding of homophones was assessed in an experiment where a humanoid robot told a short story containing pairs of homophones to small groups of young participants, accompanied by either expressive gestures or no gestures. Both groups of subjects completed a pretest and post-test to measure their ability to discriminate between pairs of homophones and we calculated aggregated precision. The results show that the use of iconic and deictic gestures aids in general understanding of homophones, providing additional evidence for the importance of gesture to the development of children’s language and communication skills

Breakout Sessions: Child Welfare/ DCF Workers

Following lunch, attendees will break into 5 groups, indicated below. These group meetings will each be co-facilitated by persons familiar with Dr. Fisher\u27s work and with the needs to adoptive parents and adopted children. The goal of sessions will be to continue the discussion of the implication of Dr. Fisher\u27s work in very practical terms, and relating the discussion to the audience for that breakout. The goal of the afternoon groups will be to identify how people in the group can take that knowledge back to their settings and use it

Neuropsychological Functioning of Homeless Men

Numerous biological and psychological factors associated with impaired neurological functioning have been identified as common among the homeless, but there has been relatively little systematic examination of the cognitive functioning of homeless people. This study explored the neuropsychological functioning of 90 homeless men. There was great variability in their test scores, but the presence of possible cognitive impairment was detected in 80% of the sample. Average general intellectual functioning and reading abilities were found to be relatively low, and the incidence of impairments in reading, new verbal learning, memory, and attention and concentration was high. These findings suggest that the homeless men in this study had considerable assessment and treatment needs that were not being met by most of the health and social services offered to them