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Adding Libraries to the Equation: Mathematical Sciences’ Underutilization of Academic Librarians
No full textAcademic librarians do not engage with all disciplinary departments equally. Despite equal or even greater efforts, some departments are less responsive to librarian outreach. One such department is mathematics. To understand mathematics departments’ relationships with their academic librarians, three mathematics librarians created a 20-question survey that was disseminated to mathematics faculty, instructors, and instructional staff in the United States and Canada. Of the 188 survey participants, more than a third reported that they never engage with their librarians, approximately half only do so occasionally, and a mere eight percent of participants collaborated with librarians to provide information literacy instruction (IL) to their students. Participant responses revealed that mathematics faculty and instructors find librarian support unnecessary, often do not understand what librarians do or what services they offer and have limited time to include IL in course curricula. Participants also provided information about the resources they use for instruction, the university services and centers they use for their research, and the resources they would like to have in their library
Repairing Activist-Academic Relationships: Defining Methods to Improve Reciprocity and Movement Building in Degrowth
Full text linkThe degrowth movement, advocating for an eco-socialist restructuring of world economies, has failed to find a political foothold in American politics. This is despite growing support in Europe and positive, yet limited, reception in Canada. Previous literature diagnoses the American degrowth movement with confused and ineffective rhetoric, inhospitable intramovement politics, and too little scholarly support. In this article, I argue differently. I focus on the relationships between academics and activists within American degrowth, understanding academic-activist relationships to be historically extractive but also generative and didactic. Using semistructured interviews with academics and activists, and discourse analysis of the press coverage of degrowth, I define the state of academic-activist relationships as severely underdeveloped and uncooperative. Finally, I find that significant reforms to higher education’s opacity, exclusivity, and extractive productivity, and that encouraging activists to proactively center their narratives in the movement, may improve the lax reciprocity and slow movement building of American degrowth
Where Does the Belt Belong? Examining if the Indiana Southern Baptist Convention Belongs in America\u27s Bible Belt
Full text linkAmerica is known for its Bible Belt, a region known for conservative, fundamentalist Protestantism in the southeast portion of the United States. Though this conservative culture is often associated with the south and their history of conservative politics and racial discrimination, there lies a question of if the Bible Belt is geographically limited or dependent more on culture, history, and the politics within this setting. The Indiana Southern Baptist Convention holds a highly conservative viewpoint on Christian religion, similarly to the southeast portion of the U.S., as well as a controversial history with racism and politics that is linked to religion. In this thesis, I seek to prove that the Southern Baptist Convention of Indiana adheres to the cultural, historical, and religious aspects of the traditional Bible Belt and deserves recognition as part of the region. Through analyzing the Southern Baptist Convention\u27s intersection of politics and religion, voting history, and migration patterns to the State, it becomes that the Southern Baptist Convention of Indiana and the Bible Belt are more similar than previously thought
The Economic Impact of Fitness and Recreational Sports Centers on the U.S. Economy Using State-Level Data
Full text linkThis study utilizes state-level data to investigate the effect of fitness and recreational sports centers on the United States economy. Personal per capita income and the employment rate serve as the dependent variables. The explanatory variables consist of three fitness and recreational sports center sector proxies: the number of establishments, employees, and total annual payroll. The study will use a pooled regression model that includes fixed effects to examine the impact of the three explanatory variables on each dependent variable. The analysis showed positive and significant effects on the personal per capita income for each of the three explanatory variables. At the same time, the results were insignificant and unreliable when analyzing the employment rate
The Island of Lost Things
Full text linkThe Island of Lost Things is a speculative fiction novel following a man named Maurice. He is a long-time resident of the titular island. His life changes forever when a mysterious young girl washes up on his shores. As he gets to know her, Maurice realizes that he must make a choice between staying in the place he has lived for most of his life or leaving to make sure she gets home. Along the way, they make friends in unlikely places and learn about the extraordinary goodness in everyday people. This novel explores heavy themes of grief and social anxiety through Maurice’s character as he works through his past and tries to determine how it connects to his present
College Students and Wearable Health Technology: A Study on Digital Health Literacy
Full text linkThe market for wearable devices has seen significant growth in the last decade and is only expected to increase as the world enters a new age of health literacy known as digital health literacy. Digital health literacy, or eHealth literacy, is defined as “the ability to seek, find, understand, and appraise health information from electronic sources and apply the knowledge gained to addressing or solving a health problem.” The issue with this new age is that most consumers have access, but lack the ability to apply the knowledge that they must improve their health. The goal of this study is to understand how college students understand and interpret their wearable technology data. To investigate this question, two focus groups with a total of 16 participants were used as the primary methodology for this research, providing a dynamic platform to explore the reasoning behind people’s interactions with their digital health. Using phronetic iterative analysis, we analyzed the data informed through the lens of digital health literacy. From the focus groups conducted, three themes emerged: the usage of wearable technology to understand their sleep patterns, compete with friends, and help individuals stay disciplined in their health. Many participants also stated that they struggled to understand some of the complex health metrics, such as HRV, causing them to ignore or not consider certain major health metrics due to the lack of knowledge. These findings matter because the use of digital technologies is only going to grow and expand. It is important to see how people use and understand this technology now so it can improve the health outcomes of the future
