University of Massachusetts Boston
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How Families and Employment Professionals can Form Partnerships to Support Youths and Young Adults with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD)
Get PDFThis brief highlights the perspectives and experiences of family members of four young adults with IDD who shared their employment and community engagement stories. The brief outlines the roles families played to support the youth adults to find and maintain competitive, integrated employment and to engage meaningfully with their communities. It draws from in-depth, semi structured interviews with young adults with IDD, their family members, and job coaches
Moving Ahead and Keeping it Safe
No full textOur poster will demonstrate the innovative ways in which The Kiosk for Living Well is a place where people explore opportunities around maintaining mobility and making wise choices around safe driving.
The Kiosks for Living Well will be our focal point. Since 2012, the Kiosks have engaged more than 6,000 people on the North Shore. Consumers are invited to assess driving skills by testing spatial awareness, coordination, and memory. We will highlight those Kiosk activities and ways people can modify their environments to create a safe road experience -- whether it means a car seat pillow to see better or an appointment with a CarFit specialist.
We’ll demonstrate the development of our Driver Discernment program which, through listening sessions and education addresses some of the most delicate and difficult challenges related to Driver Cessation.
The poster will highlight Falls Prevention with our MoveSafe counselor. Sylvia focuses on environmental factors that often create unsafe conditions for pedestrians and drivers, including car mats that interfere with brake and accelerator pedals or uneven curbs and slippery surfaces.
The poster will also emphasize the ways a driver’s journey is made unsafe if psychological changes emerge, or if a person develops hearing or visual impairments.
Our Travel Counseling and Travel Training programs will be included. Counselors and trainers provide information ranging from names of transportation companies to businesses that install ramps. Our Travel Trainer offers instruction on how to safely take a bus from one’s home to a new doctor’s office, for example.
Our poster will be bright and inviting and will reflect the best practices around driver safety currently implemented at the Kiosks for Living Well
Stem Department Chairpersons as Scholar Educators: How Stem Department Chairpersons Support Student Success and Navigate the Added Complexities of Hiring Non-Tenure-Track Faculty
No full textThe rise in numbers of non-tenure track faculty (NTTF) and the impact on student success is not a simple causal relationship. Rather, it is a complex formula of academic supports, strategic staffing, and professional socialization that drives student retention and, inevitably, graduation. At the center of the administration, policies, students, and the faculty is the department chairperson. STEM department chairpersons are tasked with the monumental responsibility of making hiring decisions and designing program offerings that also support STEM student degree completion. Yet, how they have responded to these staffing shifts and how they have supplemented STEM socialization practices is not yet clearly understood by scholars or institutions themselves. Exploring how chairpersons hire NTTF, whom they hire, and how departments address the STEM education needs of undergraduates contributes to knowledge about the type of faculty involved in the early postsecondary education of STEM undergraduate students and its effects, if any, on student success. This study concentrated on STEM departments featuring laboratory components within public 4-year institutions in Massachusetts, the majority of which have experienced a positive trend in degree completion rates in recent years. The perspectives of nine department chairpersons within these institutions served as the primary source of data for this research, and three main themes emerged from this study. The findings of this study align closely with existing literature on the employment of NTTF in STEM departments, highlighting challenges such as low pay, job insecurity, resource disparities, and the prevalence of NTTF holding multiple positions. Despite these concerns, department chairpersons demonstrate innovative strategies to counteract the negative repercussions of the shift toward hiring more NTTF over tenure-track faculty. Department chairpersons, acting as scholar-educators, play a central role in Kezar and Maxey’s model for the future of the faculty, embodying key dimensions such as mission, goals, responsiveness to external forces, values, and re-professionalization. Their leadership is particularly evident in navigating NTTF hiring, exercising academic freedom to strategically address unmet needs within STEM departments, and actively shaping the roles and qualifications of faculty members in response to evolving demands and student needs
Meeting the Emotional Needs of Hospice Patients: A Mixed-Methods Study
No full textThe Medicare Hospice Benefit Policy dictates that the emotional needs of hospice patients must be met, however does not provide a definition or guidelines as to how these needs may be met. The purpose of this study was to explore how nurses working for Medicare-certified hospice organizations across the United States meet the emotional needs of hospice patients. The primary aim was to explore how nurses employed by Medicare-certified hospice organizations define and meet the emotional needs of hospice patients in accordance with the Medicare Hospice Benefit Policy. The secondary aim was to explore and document the domain of emotional needs as perceived by Medicare-certified hospice organization nurses and patients through definition of terms and concepts. This mixed-methods study utilized a convergent design to explore the phenomenon of defining and meeting emotional needs of hospice patients. Discrepancies between perceived and actual emotional needs were recognized, leading to implications for policy and practice
After the Disaster: Environmental Harm and Cultural Change
No full textThe climate crisis has created an environmentally precarious new normal for people living in America. This includes exposure to more frequent and less predictable severe weather events. Though, there exists an unresolved empirical question: has cultural life in America adapted to an environmentally precarious new normal? My dissertation fills this gap in the literature by examining effects severe weather exposure and perceived climate risk have on climate and environmental attitudes among people living in the United States. In tune with modernist theories in sociology, one expectation is that cultural life in America is adapting to precarious weather by accepting scientifically informed expertise for managing and calculating climate risk. Conversely, mass polarization and paradox theories suggest that climate change will be evaluated along partisan lines regardless of proximity to harm caused by climate change. I advance this debate with three empirical studies. In my first empirical study, I looked at long-term aggerate level change by examining if support for environmental initiatives was positively associated with exposure to severe weather, cohort replacement, or both. In my second empirical study, I looked at long-term individual level change by examining if hurricane exposure was associated with increased concern for climate change and support for environmental initiatives among people disproportionately exposed to hurricanes. My final empirical study looked at short-term individual level change by using results from a novel nationally representative survey experiment entitled Culture of the Climate Crisis. This survey incorporated two direct interventions to test effects of varying levels of perceived proximal risk from climate change on a range of climate and environmental attitudes. My research shows that exposure (including perceived exposure) to climate risk is motivating cultural support for environmental initiatives and acceptance that climate change is happening. Additionally, findings give context for how Americans think about the climate crisis, as well as have important implications for implementing efficient climate change mitigation and adaption initiatives
New Technologies in Wars, Old and New
Get PDFWars are often marked by technological advances and while the front line in the confrontation in the Russia-Ukraine War is between the two countries concerned, many other countries are also involved in bringing a range of weapons to bear. Some, such as drones and satellite communications, are not entirely new, but are playing a greater role than before. They are also being combined with more definitively new technologies such as artificial intelligence. However, the older ways of warfare are still center stage. Not only has there been a return of war in Europe between major powers, but even the trench and tank warfare that some had thought were consigned to military history have returned with brutal consequences. The faltering of the post-war international structures that had given stability and a foundation for international law, has also undermined confidence in the peacebuilding processes based on them and so the author proposes a new set of foundational principles
Aging in North Andover: A Community Needs Assessment
Get PDFThis report describes research undertaken by the Center for Social & Demographic Research on Aging (CSDRA) within the Gerontology Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston, on behalf of the Town of North Andover. The goal of this project was to identify, describe, and prioritize the needs and preferences of North Andover residents age 60 and older as they relate to aging well in the community. In 2023, North Andover opened a new Senior Community Center. The contents of this report are intended to be used for planning for the new Senior Community Center space and to inform strategic planning and priorities of the Council on Aging as they plan for and coordinate programs and services for current and future cohorts of older residents. As well, the information in this report can be useful to other Town departments and organizations that work with and on behalf of older residents of North Andover
Latinos in Massachusetts Selected Areas: Attleboro
Get PDFThis is a publication of the Mauricio Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy
Summary of the Third Symposium: Trauma and Positionality—Japan as Victim and Perpetrator of the War
Get PDFSummary of the Third Symposium: Trauma and Positionality—Japan as Victim and Perpetrator of the War. Volume 36, Issue 2 of the New England Journal of Public Policy