What Is Shared Governance Anyway?

Shared governance is an ideal to which many seem eager to express allegiance. In fact, shared governance is invoked almost as frequently by administrators and administrator-dominated organizations such as the regional accrediting commissions as it is by faculty and faculty groups such as the AAUP. As with many catchphrases, however, shared governance apparently means different things to different people. All too often shared governance is used to convey the idea that a lot of conversation ought to take place within and among various campus groups—board, administration, faculty, staff, students, etc.—before the people in power make the final decision. This conception might be labeled the “stakeholder” version of shared governance. All of the stakeholders should have a place at the table; everybody, within reason, should be consulted. Once people have talked things over, those in charge make the final decision, presumably after having given serious consideration to the full range of opinions and recommendations. Because “input” is sought and wide communication takes place, governance is said to be shared

ACM / AIS IS2020: Updating the IS Model Curriculum

The Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Association for Information Systems (AIS), two global professional and academic societies with a stake in Information Systems (IS) education, are engaged in a project to revise the Information Systems Curriculum for bachelor’s degrees. A joint taskforce on the Information Systems (IS2020) Model Curriculum was created following the report and recommendation of an Exploratory Taskforce. This panel seeks to introduce the work of this taskforce as well as engage the AMCIS community in this effort. The taskforce seeks to facilitate broad feedback during the IS2020 development process through surveys and open feedback requests. Panelists will introduce key components of this process and seek input and feedback. This session should be of interest to all attendees, especially faculty developing college level curricula in Information Systems

The Variant rs1867277 in FOXE1 Gene Confers Thyroid Cancer Susceptibility through the Recruitment of USF1/USF2 Transcription Factors

In order to identify genetic factors related to thyroid cancer susceptibility, we adopted a candidate gene approach. We studied tag- and putative functional SNPs in genes involved in thyroid cell differentiation and proliferation, and in genes found to be differentially expressed in thyroid carcinoma. A total of 768 SNPs in 97 genes were genotyped in a Spanish series of 615 cases and 525 controls, the former comprising the largest collection of patients with this pathology from a single population studied to date. SNPs in an LD block spanning the entire FOXE1 gene showed the strongest evidence of association with papillary thyroid carcinoma susceptibility. This association was validated in a second stage of the study that included an independent Italian series of 482 patients and 532 controls. The strongest association results were observed for rs1867277 (OR[per-allele] = 1.49; 95%CI = 1.30–1.70; P = 5.9×10−9). Functional assays of rs1867277 (NM_004473.3:c.−283G>A) within the FOXE1 5′ UTR suggested that this variant affects FOXE1 transcription. DNA-binding assays demonstrated that, exclusively, the sequence containing the A allele recruited the USF1/USF2 transcription factors, while both alleles formed a complex in which DREAM/CREB/αCREM participated. Transfection studies showed an allele-dependent transcriptional regulation of FOXE1. We propose a FOXE1 regulation model dependent on the rs1867277 genotype, indicating that this SNP is a causal variant in thyroid cancer susceptibility. Our results constitute the first functional explanation for an association identified by a GWAS and thereby elucidate a mechanism of thyroid cancer susceptibility. They also attest to the efficacy of candidate gene approaches in the GWAS era

PACIS Panel - IS 2020: Developing an ACM/AIS Information Systems Model Curriculum for Undergraduate Programs

The Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Association for Information Systems (AIS) engaged in a project to revise the Information Systems Curriculum. The IS2010 model curriculum has been widely used for nearly a decade. However, its value may be decreasing as new approaches to model curricula have been introduced. The AIS and ACM established an exploratory taskforce which found there have been substantial changes in the IS field, and that current graduates’ technical skills do not appear to meet industry needs. The IS discipline must express its core in terms of a standard curriculum that meet stakeholder demands. A joint ACM/AIS taskforce on the Information Systems Model Curriculum (IS2020) was created to develop new IS curriculum guidelines. This panel will introduce the work of the IS2020 taskforce. Panelists will introduce an initial report. This session should be of interest to faculty and administrators developing college-level curricula in IS

Searching for long-lived particles beyond the Standard Model at the Large Hadron Collider

International audienceParticles beyond the Standard Model (SM) can generically have lifetimes that are long compared to SM particles at the weak scale. When produced at experiments such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, these long-lived particles (LLPs) can decay far from the interaction vertex of the primary proton–proton collision. Such LLP signatures are distinct from those of promptly decaying particles that are targeted by the majority of searches for new physics at the LHC, often requiring customized techniques to identify, for example, significantly displaced decay vertices, tracks with atypical properties, and short track segments. Given their non-standard nature, a comprehensive overview of LLP signatures at the LHC is beneficial to ensure that possible avenues of the discovery of new physics are not overlooked. Here we report on the joint work of a community of theorists and experimentalists with the ATLAS, CMS, and LHCb experiments—as well as those working on dedicated experiments such as MoEDAL, milliQan, MATHUSLA, CODEX-b, and FASER—to survey the current state of LLP searches at the LHC, and to chart a path for the development of LLP searches into the future, both in the upcoming Run 3 and at the high-luminosity LHC. The work is organized around the current and future potential capabilities of LHC experiments to generally discover new LLPs, and takes a signature-based approach to surveying classes of models that give rise to LLPs rather than emphasizing any particular theory motivation. We develop a set of simplified models; assess the coverage of current searches; document known, often unexpected backgrounds; explore the capabilities of proposed detector upgrades; provide recommendations for the presentation of search results; and look towards the newest frontiers, namely high-multiplicity ‘dark showers’, highlighting opportunities for expanding the LHC reach for these signals