F21RS SGR No. 8 (W Policy)

A Resolution To Urge and Request LSU to allow students seven (7) total withdrawals (W\u27s) throughout their undergraduate caree

Parental Incarceration and Stigma: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Children\u27s Books

Children of parental incarceration are often forgotten victims and have been noted to experience collateral consequences such as stigma, poor mental health, and isolation. Since children are often forgotten, there is a lack of information regarding their experiences, what resources are available to them, and whether or not these resources intended to be beneficial. One of the resources that are available to children, caregivers, and other adults are children’s books regarding parental incarceration. To determine whether or not these children\u27s books act as a guide, this study examined the content and illustrations of 19 children’s books on parental incarceration. The goal of this study was to see how these books aligned with theory. More specifically, stigma theory played an important role as it provided concepts when I theorized my data so that I could evaluate whether, how, and to what extent the content of the children’s books seeks to counteract the stigmatizing process that children experience. Based on my analysis, the stories and illustrations in the children’s books served a purpose of educating children, caregivers, and other adults on what parental incarceration is like and the different types of strategies used to help children cope with their experiences. However, based on my analysis, there also seems to be gaps from real-life negative experiences with parental incarceration. As such, these books are a starting point for children, caregivers, and other adults but is not the only support that children need to deal with parental incarceration. Therefore, this research contributes to the existing research on parental incarceration and the resources available to children to help them cope

Youth Perceptions of a School-Based Mentoring Program

Academic mentoring programs promote high school completion for at-risk youth. The purpose of this study was to hear the voice of youth in order to inform program services and develop best practices for meeting their academic needs. Using a grounded theory approach, we conducted 14 focus groups to examine high school students’ perceptions and experiences in the Avenue Scholars Foundation program. This study supported previous findings: students’ comments reflected on the importance of the relationships built in the program, the knowledge they gained, and their experiences regarding higher education and careers. The students shared that these experiences were increasingly meaningful because of the relationship built with their Talent Advisor and classmates. These relationships instilled hope for the future, created a pathway to college and career, and confirmed a belief that the students could accomplish their goals

North 14th Street Corridor Improvements Project

The following project report was a study of the North 14th Street corridor ranging from Adams Street to Virginia Street conducted by University of Nebraska-Lincoln students for a senior design capstone project. Main focuses of the project were the intersection of Adams and 14th Street and the 14th Street bridges over Cornhusker Highway and Oak Creek. Study of this area included work in transportation, traffic, structural, geotechnical, water resources, and environmental engineering. However, this report done by students should not take the place of work done by licensed professional engineers. This project was done in collaboration with engineers for the City of Lincoln, who acted as clients looking for engineering consulting. Research was conducted to find the applicable design requirements for each of the civil engineering subdisciplines. These requirements were obtained through GIS data, maps, and certified design manuals. After obtaining the proper data and design requirements, it was concluded that the signalized intersection of Adams and 14th Street would be left alone, the bridge over Cornhusker Highway would be removed and designed as an at-grade roundabout, and the bridge over Oak Creek would be removed and completely replaced. The multi-phase project came to a total cost of about $30,759,090

Integrating Practical and Epistemic Actors: Co-Constructing a Knowledge Organization System to Address Housing Insecurity in West Philadelphia

In response to colonial legacies of divisiveness and paternalism underpinning the development of knowledge organization systems (KOS) and thus impeding their appeal, accessibility, and usefulness to diverse stakeholders (Castleden, Morgan, and Lamb, 2012), this case study explores the challenges and opportunities inherent to the design of a malleable, sustainable KOS as part of an mHealth tool called Map the Gap. Map the Gap intends to reduce the burden of housing insecurity in West Philadelphia. By examining the active cultivation of communal ties between the “epistemic” and “practical” actors (Callon, 4, 2004) who substantiate Map the Gap, as well as the sociotechnical infrastructure which shapes and is shaped by such ties, the processes of collaboration underpinning functionality decisions are delineated. This paper reflects on the way KOS sociotechnical structures defy and challenge traditional academic and community models of research and development, thus requiring a unique, temporally-conscious embracement of select and dynamic collaborations. By elucidating and evaluating the considerations and practices central to Map the Gap, we seek to yield a template for cultivating healthy KOS sociotechnical structures

Map The Gap: Iteratively Bridging Theory and Practice to Address Housing Insecurity in the Urban Environment

According to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission to Build a Healthier America, health and well-being depend more on where we live, learn, work and play than on medical care, which accounts for only an estimated 10 to 15 percent of preventable early deaths (Brawer, R. et al., 2016). Housing insecurity, marked by uninhabitable living conditions, uncertainty regarding capacity to pay rent, and multiple relocations, threatens the physiological and mental health of individuals and overburdens infrastructure (Sandel et al., 201S). Our current research reveals that housing insecurity is exacerbated via disconnects between legal affordances, community-based organization (CBO) responsibility misconception, and a lack of resources. This paper will examine the research and development philosophies and processes which substantiate Map the Gap, a transdisciplinary, in-development mobile-Health intervention/prevention tool intended to reduce the burden of housing insecurity in Philadelphia. The tool takes its name from several efforts currently underway to consider the gap in income required for families to avoid eviction. This research group has developed an emerging framework to approach the community work required to cultivate efficient, effective relationships between Philadelphia residents and the built environment. It is anticipated that Map the Gap will play a critical role in health care and wellness promotion. In addition to enabling Philadelphia residents to access resources which improve the built environment, the human-centered accessible architecture of the Map the Gap system itself will lay the foundation for a Culture of Health, transforming determinants of health into constituents of health, and thus creating new imperatives for design of sociotechnical structures which transcend relational and environmental spaces

S22RS SGR No. 13 (Syllabus Database)

A Resolution To urge and request LSU to remind and encourage faculty members to upload their syllabus to the syllabus database before the start of the semester to allow students better star

PEG-Phosphorylcholine Hydrogels As Tunable and Versatile Platforms for Mechanobiology

We report here the synthesis of a new class of hydrogels with an extremely wide range of mechanical properties suitable for cell studies. Mechanobiology has emerged as an important field in bioengineering, in part due to the development of synthetic polymer gels and fibrous protein biomaterials to control and quantify how cells sense and respond to mechanical forces in their microenvironment. To address the problem of limited availability of biomaterials, in terms of both mechanical range and optical clarity, we have prepared hydrogels that combine poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) and phosphorylcholine (PC) zwitterions. Our goal was to create a hydrogel platform that exceeds the range of Young’s moduli reported for similar hydrogels, while being simple to synthesize and manipulate. The Young’s modulus of these “PEG-PC” hydrogels can be tuned over 4 orders of magnitude, much greater than commonly used hydrogels such as PEG-diacrylate, PEG-dimethacrylate, and polyacrylamide, with smaller average mesh sizes and optical clarity. We prepared PEG-PC hydrogels to study how substrate mechanical properties influence cell morphology, focal adhesion structure, and proliferation across multiple mammalian cell lines, as a proof of concept. These novel PEG-PC biomaterials represent a new and useful class of mechanically tunable hydrogels for mechanobiology