Raising awareness of diversity and social (in)justice issues in undergraduate research writing: understanding students and their lives via connecting teaching and research

Inspired by my own experiences as an undergraduate writing student who did not see a connection between my life and the topics of the courses, this article details my first ventures into designing and teaching sections of a research writing class, entitled Researching Writing: Raising Awareness of Diversity and Social Justice Issues within and Beyond our Lives. The purpose of this course was to promote issues of diversity and social (in)justice in a required liberal studies course. Interview data from undergraduate women students who participated in this research writing course from 2009-2011 were explored in order to uncover their experiences in the class and understand what they found effective or ineffective. The findings indicated that most of the students appreciated being able to choose their own research topic, and also found chunking parts of the research project more effective for understanding the research process. Although engaging students in research and course activities related to controversial issues is difficult, there is a need for more liberal studies courses to incorporate topics related to diversity and social (in)justice

‘If you learn about these issues, you're going to learn...more about yourself and things that you come in contact with every day’: Engaging undergraduate students in meaningful literacy in a research writing course

This study explores the experiences of undergraduate students enrolled in a required research writing class that focused on the topics of social (in)justice and diversity and which allowed students to conduct their own empirical research. In order to investigate their experiences with the topics and with the empirical research project, we employed the use of interviews and analyzed the data by organizing it by themes. Short narrative profiles of eight of the participants that we focus on for this study are provided. From the participants’ experiences, we also explore two themes: students’ engagement with social (in)justice in a required undergraduate writing course and incorporating empirical research in a required research writing course. Finally, we provide implications for teaching and teaching writing

Helping students connect: architecting learning spaces for experiential and transactional reflection

Given the complex and varied contexts that inform students’ consciousness and occasion their learning, learning spaces are more than physical and virtual spaces. Learning spaces are also a range of situations sedimented in our continuum of experiences that shape our philosophical orientations. As such, this article, written from the perspectives of two faculty members in an English department at a four-year public university, describes our efforts to do the following. First, to draw upon models of instructional design we have experienced in our own educational backgrounds; and equally importantly, to develop learning spaces that support learning that is continuous, situated, and personal. Specifically, we critique the ways in which learning has been segregated from the rest of our life contexts for us throughout our educational histories. The irony is that this de-segregation has motivated us to create diverse learning spaces that provide our students with a more realistic set of tools and techniques for integrative life-long learning

Characterization of immune cell distributions in mouse models of spontaneous breast tumors

As immunotherapy grows in popularity as a cancer treatment option, we need to further understand how immune cells interact with the tumor microenvironment and influence tumor progression. The goal of this thesis was to characterize the different immune, cellular, and structural components within the breast tumor tissues of two orthotopic (MCaP0008 and M3C) and one spontaneous (MMTV-PyVT) murine models of immunogenic breast cancer. Identification of the tumor components in question, including CD3+ lymphocytes, CD11b+ myeloid cells, CD31+ endothelial cells, αSMA+ cancer associated fibroblasts, Ki67+ cells, cleaved caspase-3+ cells, collagen-1, and hyaluronan, were done by immunohistochemistry (IHC)-immunofluorescence (IF) staining of frozen tumor tissues with appropriate antibodies and imaging with multispectral confocal microscopy. Quantification and further data analysis were performed using a custom MATLAB program designed by Dr. Mei Rosa Ng. Gaining understanding of these stromal compositions will allow for better utilization of these breast cancer mouse models in future experiments.2019-10-3

Low-temperature nucleation in a kinetic Ising model under different stochastic dynamics with local energy barriers

Using both analytical and simulational methods, we study low-temperature nucleation rates in kinetic Ising lattice-gas models that evolve under two different Arrhenius dynamics that interpose between the Ising states a transition state representing a local energy barrier. The two dynamics are the transition-state approximation [T. Ala-Nissila, J. Kjoll, and S. C. Ying, Phys. Rev. B 46, 846 (1992)] and the one-step dynamic [H. C. Kang and W. H. Weinberg, J. Chem. Phys. 90, 2824 (1989)]. Even though they both obey detailed balance and are here applied to a situation that does not conserve the order parameter, we find significant differences between the nucleation rates observed with the two dynamics, and between them and the standard Glauber dynamic [R. J. Glauber, J. Math. Phys. 4, 294 (1963)], which does not contain transition states. Our results show that great care must be exercised when devising kinetic Monte Carlo transition rates for specific physical or chemical systems.Comment: 14 pages RevTex, 6 embedded figures. Minor revisions. J. Chem. Phys., in pres

A Comparison of Atomic Oxygen Degradation in Low Earth Orbit and in a Plasma Etcher

In low Earth orbit (LEO) significant degradation of certain materials occurs from exposure to atomic oxygen (AO). Orbital opportunities to study this degradation for specific materials are limited and expensive. While plasma etchers are commonly used in ground-based studies because of their low cost and convenience, the environment produced in an etcher chamber differs greatly from the LEO environment. Because of the differences in environment, the validity of using etcher data has remained an open question. In this paper, degradation data for 22 materials from the orbital experiment Evaluation of Oxygen Interaction with Materials (EOIM-3) are compared with data from EOIM-3 control specimens exposed in a typical plasma etcher. This comparison indicates that, when carefully considered, plasma etcher results can produce order-of-magnitude estimates of orbital degradation. This allows the etcher to be used to screen unacceptable materials from further, more expensive tests

Three Mothers in Academia: Looking Inwards, Taking Stock, and Moving Forward

Grounded in relational cultural theory (RCT) as an approach for developing women’s sense of self and maintaining connections with one another and with all women across racial, ethnic, and age divides, three mothers in the academy come together to restory our experiences of being and becoming mothers while navigating the higher educational landscape. We focus on critical incidents (Farrell) to create our collective autoethnography. Critical incidents are events that are unplanned and unanticipated and allow one to think about “what happened, why it happened and what else could have been done to reach their goals” (Farrell 3). Sharing our experiences means prioritizing the stories that are often overlooked in higher education institutions, where whiteness and male superiority abound. Specifically, we focus on what it means to navigate institutional expectations, given the mothering norms and responsibilities facing women of colour, who already exist on the margins. Coming together across racial, ethnic, and age divides in the academy led us to disclose specific events that challenged our professional and mothering responsibilities. Although we differ in terms of ethnicity, age, as well as academic and marital status, we still discussed the challenging nature of balancing home and academic lives both before and during the pandemic. We conclude with implications that focus on specific strategies for ourselves as well as others in the academy to support and nurture the development of mothers in academia

Unsilencing the Silenced: The Journeys of Five East Asian Women with Implications for TESOL Teacher Education Programs

The study focused on five East Asian women matriculated in U.S. TESOL teacher education programs. Han Nah Jung, Liu Li, Xia Wang, Yu Ri Koh, and Shu-Ming Fung recounted journeying through their educational experiences in their native countries as well as in the United States. The purposes of this study were to (1) deepen and enrich our understanding of the women?s diverse educational journeys, (2) uncover the ideological nature of the lives of these women who may have become marginalized due to the issues of race, gender, and language, (3) look at their experiences as juxtaposed to my own as a person with both insider and outsider perspectives, and (4) use the women?s narratives to make recommendations for improving TESOL teacher education programs. This study explored the lived experiences of five East Asian women, utilizing a past-present-future timeline (e.g., Looking Back, Reflecting On, and Thinking Forward), grounded in critical and feminist perspectives, to examine how those experiences shaped their identities in different learning and teaching communities. This was accomplished through the utilization of electronic reflective autobiographical questions, electronic educational journal entries, in-depth interviews, and informal/formal conversations. The analysis of their narratives, as grounded in critical and feminist perspectives, revealed the interconnectedness between language, race, gender, and social class which were all deeply embedded in their educational journeys. Specifically, the women, despite being from primarily privileged backgrounds, experienced varying degrees of marginalization within their TESOL programs as a result of issues pertaining to language, gender, and race. However, their pre-service and/or volunteer teaching experiences served to heighten their identities as burgeoning English (Korean) language teachers. Findings from the studies such as this should serve to begin dialogues around renewing and reconceptualizing better TESOL curricula and teacher education programs and provide some momentum for instituting improvements in these TESOL programs over the coming years

Global Analysis of Serine-Threonine Protein Kinase Genes in Neurospora Crassa

Serine/threonine (S/T) protein kinases are crucial components of diverse signaling pathways in eukaryotes, including the model filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa. In order to assess the importance of S/T kinases to Neurospora biology, we embarked on a global analysis of 86 S/T kinase genes in Neurospora. We were able to isolate viable mutants for 77 of the 86 kinase genes. Of these, 57% exhibited at least one growth or developmental phenotype, with a relatively large fraction (40%) possessing a defect in more than one trait. S/T kinase knockouts were subjected to chemical screening using a panel of eight chemical treatments, with 25 mutants exhibiting sensitivity or resistance to at least one chemical. This brought the total percentage of S/T mutants with phenotypes in our study to 71%. Mutants lacking apg-1, an S/T kinase required for autophagy in other organisms, possessed the greatest number of phenotypes, with defects in asexual and sexual growth and development and in altered sensitivity to five chemical treatments. We showed that NCU02245/stk-19 is required for chemotropic interactions between female and male cells during mating. Finally, we demonstrated allelism between the S/T kinase gene NCU00406 and velvet (vel), encoding a p21-activated protein kinase (PAK) gene important for asexual and sexual growth and development in Neurospora

In This Issue [of \u3ci\u3eTESOL Quarterly\u3c/i\u3e, on Language Teacher Identity]

Our decision to propose a special issue of TESOL Quarterly on language teacher identity (LTI) grew out of our growing recognition of the profound embeddedness of LTI within the research, teaching, and policy practices of (multi)lingual professionals and the immense interest generated by LTI work within the disciplines that engage with language education. We use (multi) in (multi)lingual to underscore our desire to move beyond a monolingual lens in TESOL and to highlight potential extensions to the notion of multilingualism, such as (pluri), (trans), (ethno), and (racio). This allows us to complicate the ever-changing, situated, and fluid nature of LTI beyond the essentialist categories often associated with the profession. These extensions, in particular, acknowledge language teachers (LTs) as denizens and creators of conversational borderlands (Anzaldúa, 1987). As such, each of us came to our individual understandings of this embeddedness in our personal and professional lives by different paths, as illustrated by the following narratives from each co-editor. ... Exploring our language teacher identities means understanding our lived and living history. It is to understand and unravel the complexities that are at the core of who we are on all levels—for instance, as multilinguals, scholars, children, teachers, parents, community members, language users, and activists and their intersectionality, all of which shape our classroom practices and pedagogy, which in turn fuel and circle back to shape our language teacher identities. After taking initial steps toward this end, this special issue and the articles herein are intended as an invitation for our readers to join us as we take further steps forth