How do conservatoire graduates manage their transition into the music profession? Exploring the career-building process

This thesis seeks to investigate the career-building process for conservatoire graduates. Life transitions of any type are often anxiety-inducing, and graduation from a degree is no exception. Although conservatoires frequently return DLHE statistics suggesting that graduate employment rates approach 100%, other studies indicate that conservatoire graduates have inadequate career preview, and are consequently unprepared for the realities of a career in music. Despite conservatoires’ attempts to educate their students for varied future careers, the problem persists, and some students avoid careers advice completely. Therefore, this project aims to gain a more nuanced understanding of conservatoire graduates’ experiences of this transition with respect to their experiences whilst studying. The project took a qualitative approach, to capture rich experiential data. In the first part of the project, 21 written accounts were analysed, to investigate participants’ lasting memories of their transitions. The following interview study, with 19 respondents, aimed to build on the findings. Establishing and graduating musicians’ perspectives were compared, to examine the ways in which graduates are (un)prepared for their future careers. The findings suggest that a development in aspirations is central to the conservatoire-to-workplace transition. This came about as a result of enacting a wide variety of work roles during and after the conservatoire degree. Conservatoire education enabled respondents to enact orchestral and operatic roles ‘as standard,’ meaning that many new graduates aspired towards those job roles without considering their competencies outside of performance. Therefore, a great deal of aspirational development took place post-graduation. Respondents developed their aspirations through greater self-knowledge and assessment of their values, requiring many of them to shed fixed ideas and attitudes pertaining to ‘ideal’ musicians’ careers. A wider range of musical experiences and increased opportunity to engage with values may aid conservatoire graduates to make a ‘smoother’ transition into the professional world

Advanced gamma ray balloon experiment ground checkout and data analysis

A software programming package to be used in the ground checkout and handling of data from the advanced gamma ray balloon experiment is described. The Operator's Manual permits someone unfamiliar with the inner workings of the software system (called LEO) to operate on the experimental data as it comes from the Pulse Code Modulation interface, converting it to a form for later analysis, and monitoring the program of an experiment. A Programmer's Manual is included

Development of an improved gaseous oxygen impact test system Final report, 10 Jun. 1969 - 10 May 1970

Improved gaseous oxygen impact test system development and consultative service

Through ‘the Gauntlet’: creating multi-representative practices of community and ‘dialogic gaze’ using compassion-based exercises in a feminist actor training

This thesis explicates a practice as research exploration of how we can create multirepresentative (‘inclusive’) practices in ensemble actor training through the use of compassion-based practices. The main argument is that compassion-based practices in ensemble actor training create community as a transformative entity per bell hooks’s and Audre Lorde’s definitions. The understanding of self and others’ similarities and differences are necessary for community and enabled through reciprocal exchange, which Mikhail Bakhtin calls ‘dialogic’. Understood in this way, community both enables and requires a practice I offer called the ‘dialogic gaze’, a critical perspective that interrogates rehearsal and performance communications and interactions on behalf of the representation of the identities and experiences of all members. My practice-based methodology explores compassion-based exercises for their potential to create community and dialogic gaze. The through-line of these explorations is ‘the Gauntlet’, an exercise focusing on voiced acknowledgments of similarity that I have adapted to also recognize difference. I locate myself as a pedagogic practitioner-researcher and thus facilitate these practices in three different training workshops with three various ensembles. Using qualitative methods, I garner and analyse behaviours, communications, and feedback from ensemble members during rehearsal and performance of a subsequent group devised piece. Through moments of dialogic gaze and community, these practices support multi-represented ensemble work towards autonomy in theatre making that challenges ingrained patterns of cultural production and process, and aid practice in the dissolution of wider social oppressions that may evidence in rehearsal and training rooms. My research has both conceptual and practical contributions: in the dialogic gaze as a named, multi-representative practice, and in the compassion-based practices that create and perpetuate both dialogic gaze and community in ensemble actor training. These can be extrapolated to ensemble practice in industry and societal groups beyond

Are you sure?: using the error-related negativity to examine adult L2 learning

Previous investigations of second language (L2) learners’ proficiency have focused on explicit measures of overt responses. Recent data have shown discrepancies between L2 learners’ overtly measured behaviors and covertly measured implicit processes (McLaughlin, Inoue, & Loveless, 2000). Event-related potentials (ERPs) have been used as a covert measure of implicit sensitivity. Prior studies have focused on the P600 component as a measure of sensitivity to syntactic violations in L2 (Tokowicz & MacWhinney, 2005; Tolentino & Tokowicz, 2012). Tokowicz and MacWhinney (2005) used the P600 to index cross-language similarity effects, and found that GJT accuracy scores were lowest in conditions with features unique to L2, however, the ERP responses were the strongest to unique features. This suggests that L2 learners possess implicit sensitivity to L2 violations that is not always indicated by their overt behaviors. The present study looks at another ERP component, the error-related negativity (ERN), which is elicited in response to error processing (Sebastián-Gallés, Rodríguez-Fornells, Diego-Balaguer, & Díaz, 2006). We reprocessed previously collected ERP data from Tolentino and Tokowicz (2012; unpublished data) to see if an ERN is present, which would indicate that L2 learners are sensitive to L2 violations. The ERN will be investigated as a function of stimulus grammaticality, response accuracy, electrode site and laterality. We found a significant four way interaction between these variables, as well as significant contrasts in mean amplitudes at certain electrodes. Additionally, we found a positive component elicited in response to errors made in the judgment on ungrammatical stimuli, suggesting the context and the type of error influences how errors are processed. Overall, our data indicate that L2 learners are sensitive to L2 violations, and are at some level aware, not only of what is grammatical, but also what is ungrammatical

KIF1Bβ and Neuroblastoma: Failure to Divide and Cull

Neuroblastomas are associated with KIF1Bβ mutations within tumor suppressor region 1p36. In this issue of Developmental Cell, Li et al. (2016) show that KIF1Bβ binding releases calcineurin autoinhibition, leading to dephosphorylation of the DRP1 GTPase and subsequent mitochondrial fragmentation. KIF1Bβ impairment causes mitochondrial hyperfusion, impairing developmental apoptosis and promoting tumorigenesis

Workplace Harassment: Conceptualizations of Older Workers

Drawing from theories and empirical work on gender in the workplace, aging, and sociolegal studies, this study of workplace harassment will assess how the power that older workers hold across a variety of domains including work, family, and community life shapes their harassment experiences and responses to those experiences. The study involves collecting and analyzing survey data on the workplace harassment experiences of 800 Maine workers aged 62 and above. These results will then be used to create a generalized theoretical model which outlines how age and other dimensions of power operate together to shape victimization and mobilization experiences. Four fundamental questions frame the proposed study: 1) What is the content of older workers? harassment experiences?; 2) Within the current social context, which older workers are most likely to become targets of workplace harassment?; 3) How do older workers come to label their experiences with potentially harassing behaviors as harassment and how do they go on to respond?; and 4) What general model of age, power, victimization, and mobilization can be drawn from this study? In addition to bringing together several areas of sociological inquiry to present a unified model of age, power, victimization, and mobilization, this study will provide new information relevant to public policies on harassment and discrimination in the workplace. Given evidence of an aging workforce now is an especially important time to become familiar with the workplace experiences of older adults. Broader Impacts. Study results will be used to develop a larger-scale comparative investigation of workplace harassment over the life cycle. The research will also promote teaching, training, and learning by involving research assistants at both the undergraduate and graduate level, offering them experience with data collection, analysis, writing, and collaboration with local agencies