Bringing Awareness to Plant Conservation at the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens

Honorable Mention Winner Environmental Center Leadership Program Project Plant conservation is essential to the survival of all species as they improve soil, water, and air quality and serve as a food source and shelter. Currently the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens (JZG) has limited information for the use of the education center about the variety of plant species that they host. Many of the plants in the zoo’s collection are representative species that play important roles in their environments from all around the world. Jacksonville Zoo and Garden’s education center has several volumes of books that contain information about all the animals in the zoo. These books are used by volunteers, educators, and exhibit guides for the purpose of programming and interacting with guests. However, no books exist for the plants in the gardens. As a part of my project for the UNF environmental center a peer and I have started to identify, research, and compile a casual grade book of the many instrumental plant species that are protected by the zoo. For my project I have chosen to focus on the plants that are in the Asia Loop. Many of these plants are unique specimens that are native to different regions of Asia but others are Florida species that provide food resources to many native species of birds that seek refuge in the zoo. My project will assist the zoo in educating volunteers, guests, and the community about the significant of the zoo’s plant conservation efforts. I plan on continuing this project until I cover every section of the JZG

Bad Rhetoric: Towards A Punk Rock Pedagogy

This research is an analysis of early 1980s American hardcore through the lens of rhetorical theory in an effort to learn lesson from punk rock that can be applied to composition pedagogy. It relies heavily on the Kenneth Burke\u27s Language as Symbolic Action and A Rhetoric of Motives, Lloyd Bitzer\u27s The Rhetorical Situation and Michel Foucault\u27s Discourse on Language. The theories are applied the genre of punk rock in an effort to expose the rhetorical strategies employed by the movement to actively question and resist the dominant norms and values of the era. Two case studies are presented - an analysis of the legendary punk rock band the Bad Brains through the lens of Pierre Bourdieu\u27s theories of social and cultural capital, and an analysis of the iconic Los Angeles punk rock band Black Flag using the theories of Michel Foucault. What emerges are strategies and techniques that can applied to the field of composition pedagogy as tools to better equip students with critical thinking abilities that actively challenge and resist dominant ideologies within our institutions and our culture

Game-based Learning Effects on NCLEX-RN Perception of Preparedness and Pass Rates

Background: The National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN) has been used to measure the quality of a nursing program’s effectiveness in preparing nursing students to pass the exam since 1988. The combined average pass rate percentage for the Hunt School of Nursing (HSON) nursing programs for the year 2021 was 88%. Method: Information on feelings of preparedness and time to test after graduation was collected via survey prior to the game-based learning (GBL) activity. This same information was collected post GBL and compared to the pre-survey results. NCLEX-RN pass rate data was collected 1 month after graduation. Results: From the pre-game survey to the post-game survey, feelings of preparedness increased and the length of time to test decreased. The pass rate 1 month after graduation was 94%. Conclusion: The use of GBL has a positive correlation to feelings of preparedness and pass rates

Evaluating the GREET-STOP-PROMPT intervention in decreasing racial disparities in school discipline

Exclusionary discipline practices are often considered to be generally ineffective and inequitable, however, they are one of the more common disciplinary practices used in schools today. Although there are many positive alternatives to school exclusion, there are limited disciplinary practices specifically intended to target discipline with racial equity in mind. The GREET-STOP-PROMPT (GSP) intervention, developed by Cook and colleagues (2018), is one intervention found in the literature explicitly created to reduce racial discipline disparities. Although there is currently limited research evaluating the GSP intervention, the results indicate it to be a potentially promising method of equitably addressing student behavior. The purpose of the current study was to extend the literature to examine the effects of the GSP intervention on racial discipline disparities, as well as students’ academic engagement and disruptive behavior in the classroom. The current study evaluated the GSP intervention across three elementary classrooms in a rural school district located in the southeastern United States. Results indicated the GSP intervention did not have meaningful effects on student exclusion, racial disparities, academic engagement, and disruptive behavior, which ultimately failed to support the current researcher’s hypotheses. However, there was limited discipline data available to draw conclusions specifically related to the intervention’s effect on student exclusion and discipline disparities. Further exploration is necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of the GSP intervention in addressing student behavior in the classroom and reducing racial discipline disparities

Dial Access Retrieval and the Adoption Process: A Study on the Success and Failures of a Technological Innovation

In an attempt to define effective procedures for theadoption of technological innovations, the authorconducted a study of the successes and failures of dialaccess retrieval systems. Because of the interesting andcontroversial history of this medium, the study sought todetermine why some schools chose this medium, how it wasutilized and modified, and why it failed in some instances.The survey instrument used in this study was sent to schoolsusing their systems and to schools where the systems hadbeen discarded. The 68% rate of return did producevaluable data for a multiple regression analysis