Does Employer Learning Vary by Schooling Attainment? The Answer Depends on How Career Start Dates Are Defined

We demonstrate that empirical evidence of employer learning is sensitive to how one defines the career start date and, in turn, measures cumulative work experience. Arcidiacono, Bayer, and Hizmo (2010) find evidence of employer learning for high school graduates but not for college graduates, and conclude that high levels of schooling reveal true productivity. We show that their choice of start date - based on first-observed school exit and often triggered by school vacations - systematically overstates experience and biases learning estimates towards zero for college-educated workers. Using career start dates tied to a more systematic definition of school exit, we find that employer learning is equally evident for high school and college graduates

Employer learning and the "importance" of skills

We ask whether the role of employer learning in the wage-setting process depends on skill type and skill importance to productivity. Combining data from the NLSY79 with O*NET data, we use Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery scores to measure seven distinct types of pre-market skills that employers cannot readily observe, and O*NET importance scores to measure the importance of each skill for the worker's current three-digit occupation. Before bringing importance measures into the analysis, we find evidence of employer learning for each skill type, for college and high school graduates, and for blue and white collar workers. Moreover, we find that the extent of employer learning - which we demonstrate to be directly identified by magnitudes of parameter estimates after simple manipulation of the data - does not vary significantly across skill type or worker type. Once we allow parameters identifying employer learning and screening to vary by skill importance, we find evidence of distinct tradeoffs between learning and screening, and considerable heterogeneity across skill type and skill importance. For some skills, increased importance leads to more screening and less learning; for others, the opposite is true. Our evidence points to heterogeneity in the degree of employer learning that is masked by disaggregation based on schooling attainment or broad occupational categories

Fighting Zoom Fatigue: Keeping the Zoombies at Bay

The coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused much disruption in early 2020 to educational processes around the world. Traditional classroom experiences transitioned to emergency remote ones, and, with little guidance or preparation, time many educators simply moved their lessons to an online video format using video conferencing systems. The methods that effective online teaching requires differ from the methods that traditional lecture formats require, and, as such, students often found themselves fighting online video meeting fatigue. To combat online meeting fatigue, we tested and employed several strategies that we discuss in this paper. We found activity switching, online small groups, and asynchronous lectures particularly effective techniques

Racial Formation in Perspective: Connecting Individuals, Institutions, and Power Relations

Over the past 25 years, since the publication of Omi & Winant's Racial Formation in the United States, the statement that race is socially constructed has become a truism in sociological circles. Yet many struggle to describe exactly what the claim means. This review brings together empirical literature on the social construction of race from different levels of analysis to highlight the variety of approaches to studying racial formation processes. For example, macro-level scholarship often focuses on the creation of racial categories, micro-level studies examine who comes to occupy these categories, and meso-level research captures the effects of institutional and social context. Each of these levels of analysis has yielded important contributions to our understanding of the social construction of race, yet there is little conversation across boundaries. Scholarship that bridges methodological and disciplinary divides is needed to continue to advance the racial formation perspective and demonstrate its broader relevance

Environmental Peacebuilding and the Transferability of EcoPeace Middle East’s Strategy

Environmental peacebuilding is a theory of conflict management used by EcoPeace Middle East in the Jordan River Valley. The theory posits that despite a seemingly intractable conflict, communities that come together for the protection of their common natural resources can simultaneously build a foundation for peace while also helping the environment. This study assessed the potential transferability of EcoPeace’s environmental peacebuilding model to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in the Hindu Kush Himalayas (HKH). Two primary questions were proposed: What organizational, strategic, and contextual factors enable or constrain each organization's activities and progress?" and "What factors should EcoPeace consider when assessing the transferability of their environmental peacebuilding model to the HKH region?” In-person interviews were conducted with nine interviewees in Kathmandu, Nepal at the ICIMOD headquarters. A semi-structured interview guide was used to better understand staff perceptions of organizational, contextual, and strategic factors that influence the work being done. Additionally, publicly available information was collected to understand how those three broad factors influence the work of EcoPeace Middle East. Key limiting factors of the transfer of the environmental peacebuilding model include the genesis of the organizations, the geography and scope of the conflict being operated within, the existing international policies, and the broader strategies pursued. Additional organizational factors identified in the study include the focus of the work, funding, staffing decisions, and short-term vs. longterm progress. Other contextual factors identified include the sense of urgency in the region and additional strategic factors include data-sharing and collaboration with private industry. Despite limitations in scope, this study highlights the important organizational, contextual, and strategic factors that an organization should consider when transferring a model to another conflict or region.Master of ScienceSchool for Environment and SustainabilityUniversity of Michiganhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154782/1/Light_Andrew_Practicum.pd

Contrasting Sea-Ice Algae Blooms in a Changing Arctic Documented by Autonomous Drifting Buoys

Novel observations of the seasonal evolution of an ice algal bloom on the Chukchi shelf were collected by two autonomous buoys deployed 180 km apart in first-year drifting sea ice. High attenuation of blue light in the bottom of the ice indicated considerable accumulation of ice algae biomass with derived Chlorophyll-a concentrations (Chl a) up to 184 mg m−2. Differences in the magnitude and persistence of ice algae biomass under each buoy appear to have been driven by differences in snow thickness, as ice thickness was similar between the sites. Minimal snow cover (0.02 m) around one buoy was associated with algae growth beginning in mid-May and lasting 70 days. The second buoy had notably more snow (0.4 m), causing ice algae production to lag behind the first site by approximately 4 weeks. The delay in growth diminished the peak of ice algae Chl a and duration compared to the first site. Light attenuation through the ice was intense enough at both buoys to have a potentially inhibiting impact on water column phytoplankton Chl a. Modeling ice algae growth with observed light intensities determined that nutrients were the limiting resource at the low snow site. In contrast, the algae at the high snow site were light-limited and never nutrient-limited. These data point toward changes in ice algae phenology with an earlier and longer window for growth; and nutrients rather than light determining the longevity and magnitude of production