Building Resilience Through Strengths-Based Learning During Graduate Study Abroad: An Exploratory Study

Resilience has been identified as an essential skill for leaders (Basso, Gruendel, Key, MacBlaine, & Reynolds, 2015) and as crucial for navigating both school and life challenges (Yeager & Dweck, 2012). Research indicates that there are a variety of ways to build resilience, including in educational settings (Yeager & Dweck, 2012). Higher education institutions utilize pedagogical practices to maximize student learning and growth opportunities (Rennick, 2015). One pedagogical frame often employed is experiential education. College and university faculty have embedded experiential learning pedagogy in the curriculum to facilitate learning outside the classroom (Liang, Caton, & Hill, 2015; Jordan, Gagnon, Anderson, & Pilcher, 2018; Towers & Loyness, 2018). Additionally, experiential education principles have been integrated with study abroad curriculum to support student learning (Harper, 2018; Pipitone and Raghaven, 2017; Pipitone, 2018). Educators are interested in learning more about the potential effect of strengths-based initiatives in higher education (Soria & Stubblefield, 2015a). While scholars have reported on the benefits of utilizing a strengths-based curriculum for personal development (Passerilli, Hall, & Anderson, 2010), much work is still needed to explore the potential outcomes of strengths-based education on resilience development. This research sought to address the gap in the literature using a short-term graduate study abroad program embedded with experiential education practices to examine how the pedagogy design contributed to students’ perceived growth in resilience. The strengths-based curricular design included approximately sixty hours of strengths-based instruction prior to the trip and fourteen days of applying the common strengths language to enhance learning experiences and mitigate challenges

Surface-directed dewetting of a block copolymer for fabricating highly uniform nanostructured microdroplets and concentric nanorings

International audienc

Reporting guidelines for human microbiome research: the STORMS checklist

The particularly interdisciplinary nature of human microbiome research makes the organization and reporting of results spanning epidemiology, biology, bioinformatics, translational medicine and statistics a challenge. Commonly used reporting guidelines for observational or genetic epidemiology studies lack key features specific to microbiome studies. Therefore, a multidisciplinary group of microbiome epidemiology researchers adapted guidelines for observational and genetic studies to culture-independent human microbiome studies, and also developed new reporting elements for laboratory, bioinformatics and statistical analyses tailored to microbiome studies. The resulting tool, called 'Strengthening The Organization and Reporting of Microbiome Studies' (STORMS), is composed of a 17-item checklist organized into six sections that correspond to the typical sections of a scientific publication, presented as an editable table for inclusion in supplementary materials. The STORMS checklist provides guidance for concise and complete reporting of microbiome studies that will facilitate manuscript preparation, peer review, and reader comprehension of publications and comparative analysis of published results. The STORMS tool provides guidance for concise and complete reporting of microbiome studies to facilitate manuscript preparation, peer review, reader comprehension of publications, and comparative analysis of published results