A Study of Program Offerings and Factors Effecting Instructional Salary Costs in Major Curricula at the Four State Colleges in North Dakota

The purpose of this study was to determine the differences in instructional salary costs per student credit hour of major program offerings that are common among the four state colleges in North Dakota and identify the factors which contributed to these cost differences. Dickinson, Mayville, Minot and Valley City State Colleges were the four institutions which were examined in the study. The ten major areas which were common at the four institutions were: art, biology, business education, chemistry, social science, mathematics, English, music, physical education and professional education. The data pertaining to the information on instructional salary, class enrollment records and faculty activity were taken from the information supplied by each institution to the North Dakota Higher Education Facilities Commission. The selection of different factors which contribute to the differences in costs were determined from related research. The factors with the greatest influence on cost differences within and among the colleges were determined by statistical analysis. The analysis of variance was the statistical method applied to determine significant differences in inter-institutional and intra- institutional cost comparisons. On the basis of the .01 level of significance there was no significant difference in student credit hour instructional salary cost between the four state colleges in the selected curricula. The same level of significance was used to determine a significant difference in cost between the ten major areas. The coefficient of correlation was used to determine the factors which correlated significantly with student credit\u27 hour instructional salary costs. The level of significance chosen for the analysis was the .01 with an r of .380. Five factors exceeded the determined limit. Student credit hours produced, weighted average size class, number of small classes, average size of upper division classes and hours spent on outside school activities were the five factors which exceeded the limit. The setwise regression analysis was an analytic method used to determine the set of factors which accounted for the greatest percentage of student credit hour instructional salary costs. The statistical technique eliminated one set at a time according to the effects the set had on increasing student credit hour costs in a regression procedure. Contact hours and credit hours were the set of factors with the greatest influence on student credit hour instructional costs. Student credit hour instructional salary costs and factors effecting these costs were used as the basis for recommendations. Included in the recommendations of this study were: 1. The reduction of staff in the Art Department at Dickinson and the major in art at Mayville be reduced to a minor. 2. The reduction of the major in music at Mayville to a minor and the deletion of the major in music at Minot. 3. The following faculty members should be required to return to graduate school to improve their academic preparation: the faculty on the physical education staff at Dickinson, Mayville and Minot; the business education faculty at Valley City; and the English faculty at Minot. 4. The average salary for faculty teaching in Minot\u27s Art, Physical Education and English Department and the physical education faculty at Mayville and Dickinson be raised to a level equal the salary at other institutions. A final recommendation of this study was that additional research be initiated concerning other curricula in all state institutions including the two universities by the same process used in this study. All recommendations projected in this study must be viewed in light of their limitations. It was not the intent of this study to use standard credit hour instructional salary cost as the sole criteria for the evaluation of an institution or a major area. Other variables must be considered before making final decisions

Tracking POD\u27s Engagement with Diversity: A Content Analysis of To Improve the Academy and POD Network Conference Programs From 1977 to 2011

This study examines the degree to which sessions from the annual Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network Conference and articles from To Improve the Academy engage questions of diversity. The titles and abstracts of 3,946 conference sessions and 560 journal articles were coded for presence and type of diversity. A significant variation in inclusion of diversity over time was found for the conference sessions (p \u3c 0.001) but not the journal articles. Overall, the findings suggest that the organization has been inconsistent in its scholarly engagement with diversity and should work to encourage more regular engagement with diversity by its members

Beyond entrepreneurship, raising broad academic professionals:Work-based learning in science from the employer’s perspective

The need for employees in the exact and natural sciences sector with both work experience and academic qualifications, especially combined with an entrepreneurial mindset, is rising. The University of Groningen offers an alternative Master’s program entitled Science, Business and Policy (SBP). SBP combines entrepreneurship education with the integration of a disciplinary science domain and thereby prepares students in science advising. This includes a work placement of 6 months, provided by companies, policy organisations and NGOs. To examine the impact of work placements from the perspective of the employer, this article analyses 20 semi-structured interviews with providers of placements. The results show that employers judge students who have undertaken a work placement as attractive future employees, and the quality of science advice given by students is seen as high. From a work floor perspective, work placements are a strong component in the optimal education of future employees. Integrating academic theory and experience in practice contributes to the employability of science students. The impact of work placements goes further than employability, since employers also indicate a direct effect on work dynamics and see the direct impact of advice reports in their organisation. The work-based learning approach chosen to achieve this specific entrepreneurship education fits the need of industry and other non-academic employers

Science, Business, and Policy: A long-term reflection on multidisciplinary work-based learning in a master's track for societal integration of Science

A strong theoretical approach with a specific focus on disciplinary research characterizes the common science master’s education in the Netherlands. However, a work-based learning (WBL) approach may as well be expedient and suitable for science education at master’s level. In this paper, a case study is presented of a WBL-program designed for an academic setting: the one year Science, Business and Policy (SBP) master’s track, offered at the Faculty of Science and Engineering of the University of Groningen. The paper describes the design and curriculum of the track, including its underlying theoretical framework, courses, multidisciplinary projects and work placements. Based on the SBP-track’s design we identified six possible indicators of a successful elaboration of an academic WBL-program: the SBP-track 1) is designed in response to the Bologna process; 2) is offered fully within the curriculum of a master’s program of a research university; 3) requires a sufficient academic level and disciplinary knowledge at entrée; 4) follows an educational project approach; 5) focuses on the integration and implementation of knowledge, and; 6) applies learning objectives that are specifically formulated to match the WBL educational method. A directed content analysis of SBP work placements revealed an increase in the number of SBP-students between 2003 and 2019, with an overrepresentation of life science students, as well as a large variety of real-case problems addressed for both business and policy organisations diverse in sector, size and region. Students’ grades showed a positive correlation between the initial theoretical preparation and the report made during the work placement. In conclusion, the societal interpretation of the Bologna process has been implemented successfully with SBP, by combining academic learning with gaining professional experience using a WBL-approach

Do alumni practise what you teach? Impact of Science master-tracks: preparation for academic careers versus preparation for societal-oriented careers

Career development of Science students seems dependent on more than disciplinary education, such as the nature and focus of career preparation. In this study we compare graduate outcomes of science students at the University of Groningen, completing two master-level program streams with different focal points, by using career progress surveys from alumni (n=242) with self-reported societal development data. The first program is a classical research-oriented master (ROM), that aims to prepare students for a career within academia. The second program, called Science, Business and Policy (SBP) focusses on a societal profile and aims to prepare for a career outside academia. SBP is different from ROM because it has a practical and multidisciplinary orientation (vs a theoretical and mono-disciplinary orientation in ROM) and it includes a long work-placement outside academia, a form of work based learning. The differences in the tracks translate to differences in career paths. Both profiles resulted in good but distinct career opportunities, corresponding to alumni’s discipline and sector. Although ROM-alumni felt especially prepared for an academic career, only a quarter actually continued in academia and many we employed in education. In contrast, most SBP-alumni were employed in business or policy. Targeting specific job preparation seems more successful with a societal profile. Reflecting on skills, in both groups research-related skills decreased during careers while soft skills increased. Alumni were generally satisfied with their first job and also with their current job, with SBP-alumni scoring significantly higher on satisfaction with income, status, appreciation and perspective. It can be concluded that diversification in educational profiles changes the societal career paths of science students

Peer user approval based binary whitelisting

Enterprises face challenges in monitoring execution of software binaries. This disclosure describes social voting for enterprise level binary whitelisting. Per techniques of this disclosure, a peer user driven approval process is utilized for binary whitelisting. At a time of launch of a binary that is not pre-approved, a user is provided with information associated with the binary and directed to the social voting process. The user designates a peer user and requests that the peer user approve execution of the binary. The peer user is provided with information about the requesting user and about the binary. Approval by the peer user can be used to enable local binary execution by the requesting user. If the peer user does not approve execution, the binary is flagged as blockable, and execution is denied

Emoto - visualising the online response to London 2012.

In recent years we have moved from data scarcity to data abundance. As a response, a variety of methods have been adopted in art, design, business, science and government to understand and communicate meaning in data through visual form. emoto (emoto2012.org) is one such project, it visualised the online audience response to a major global event, the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. emoto set out to both give expression to and augment online social phenomena, that are emergent and only recently made possible by access to huge real-time data streams. This report charts the development and release of the project, and positions it in relation to current debates on data and visualisation, for example, around the bias and accessibility of the data, and how knowledge practices are changing in an era of so-called 'big data.