How Do Institutional and Student Cohort Characteristics Affect Retention Rates at 4-Year, Private Baccalaureate Colleges?

Retention rates are crucial for colleges and universities to consider, both in an effort to maintain their student body, as well as to compete in higher education ranking systems. This research aims to use data provided by The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System to estimate the factors that affect the retention rates of private, four-year colleges classified by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education as Baccalaureate, both Arts and Sciences and Diverse Fields, using a time series cross-sectional model. Results indicated that five factors, out of the fifteen considered, were robust in determining retention rates. These were the 50th percentile ACT score of the student cohort, the student-to-faculty ratio of the college, instruction expenditures per student, the full time enrollment - or size - of the school, and if the school is an arts and sciences institution

“I See You Have Been Convicted Of A Felony; Can You Tell Me About That?” Workforce Development Challenges for Restorative Citizens Seeking Employment

Incarceration has been an issue nationwide in the United States for decades due to policies from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s that lead to mass increases in incarceration. In the past decade, several states have overhauled their criminal sentencing and prison structure to lower prison populations. This has resulted in the release of thousands of restorative citizens and has expanded the need for reentry services. Released individuals who have been incarcerated face a number of social, political, and economic barriers that prevent them from re-entering society successfully. The inability to obtain employment is often cited as one of the most important factors that contributes to recidivism, which also has negative implications for the general public. This paper examines the barriers that restorative citizens and the social workers who assist them face in helping them find suitable and sustainable employment. The author also highlights workforce instructional methods utilized in the H.I.R.E. program that have been effective in assisting restored citizens in landing job interviews and securing employment. Finally, the author also explores solutions for collaboration across criminal justice and non-profit agencies for the purposes of increasing employment opportunities for restored citizens returning back to the community

Non-governmental Organizations in Africa- the Leonenet Street Children Project in Sierra Leone

The purpose of this paper is to provide snapshots of observations, interventions, and processes in the day to day working of a child charity in Sierra Leone

Exploring the user – IT professional relationship

Drawing on theoretical developments within the innovation literature, a conceptual model has been developed that draws a distinction between the adoption and assimilation of information technology (IT). The substantive conclusions are that a number of incongruences exist between IT professionals and end-users. These cover 1) the mismatch between business needs and the technology solution 2) inability of adoption processes to address issues of a social, organizational, or user nature 3) failure to recognize the importance of the process of interaction between various parties to technology assimilation. By addressing the assimilation process, the conceptual model offers a way to reframe our understanding from a user perspective

[Review of] James Craig-Holte. The Ethnic I: A Sourcebook for Ethnic-American Autobiography

This is indeed a fascinating collection from a diverse group of ethnic-Americans. The book generally fulfills a need for the study of ethnic perspectives from the standpoint of literature and culture. Autobiographical insights, though basically personal, present us with historical, social, cultural, sexual and racial perceptions which are crucial to the interpretation of life, role, and identity in a pluralistic society. The major goal of Craig-Holte\u27s book is to provide an overview of the genre of ethnic-American autobiography and to examine the work of representative writers from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and historical periods

On the Equivalence Between Deep NADE and Generative Stochastic Networks

Neural Autoregressive Distribution Estimators (NADEs) have recently been shown as successful alternatives for modeling high dimensional multimodal distributions. One issue associated with NADEs is that they rely on a particular order of factorization for $P(\mathbf{x})$. This issue has been recently addressed by a variant of NADE called Orderless NADEs and its deeper version, Deep Orderless NADE. Orderless NADEs are trained based on a criterion that stochastically maximizes $P(\mathbf{x})$ with all possible orders of factorizations. Unfortunately, ancestral sampling from deep NADE is very expensive, corresponding to running through a neural net separately predicting each of the visible variables given some others. This work makes a connection between this criterion and the training criterion for Generative Stochastic Networks (GSNs). It shows that training NADEs in this way also trains a GSN, which defines a Markov chain associated with the NADE model. Based on this connection, we show an alternative way to sample from a trained Orderless NADE that allows to trade-off computing time and quality of the samples: a 3 to 10-fold speedup (taking into account the waste due to correlations between consecutive samples of the chain) can be obtained without noticeably reducing the quality of the samples. This is achieved using a novel sampling procedure for GSNs called annealed GSN sampling, similar to tempering methods that combines fast mixing (obtained thanks to steps at high noise levels) with accurate samples (obtained thanks to steps at low noise levels).Comment: ECML/PKDD 201

A simulator evaluation of a rate-enhanced instrument landing system display

A piloted simulation study was conducted to evaluate the effect on instrument landing system tracking performance of integrating localizer error rate information with the raw localizer error display. The resulting display was named the pseudo command tracking indicator (PCTI) because it provides an indication of any changes of heading required to track the localizer. Eight instrument-rated pilots each flew five instrument approaches with the PCTI and five instrument approaches with a conventional course deviation indicator. The results show good overall pilot acceptance of the PCTI and a significant reduction in localizer tracking error

Lone parents in Brighton & Hove: engagement with education and training

This briefing paper focuses on research on constraints and solutions for lone parents in Brighton & Hove accessing education and training. It draws on perspectives of service users and providers. Service users had accessed help through an Action 21 (A2) Project, though they were not necessarily currently doing so

High-Pressure High-Temperature Exploration of Phase Boundaries Using Raman Spectroscopy

Metastability of states can provide interesting properties that may not be readily accessible in a material’s ground state. Many materials show high levels of polymorphism, indicating a rich energy landscape and a potential for metastable states. Melt crystallization techniques provide a potential route to these states. We use a resistively heated diamond anvil cell (DAC) with fine control of a system’s pressure and temperature to explore these systems. Raman spectroscopy is used to track subtle structural changes across phase boundaries. Organic systems, such as glycine and aspirin, were our initial interest due to their high polymorphism and reported low melting temperatures; however, complications with these systems ultimately showed that they are not ideal candidates for this technique. Metallic systems with allowed Raman modes are better samples for this method. We successfully map the phase stability of β-tin under high pressure and temperature conditions using Raman spectroscopy