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Speech of Hon. W.S. Oldham, of Texas, on the subject of the finances. Senate, December 23, 1863
No full textBrevard College: Advancement Services in the Wake of an Institutional Transition
No full textLeadership Policy and Organizations Department Capstone ProjectDepartment of Leadership Policy and OrganizationsPeabody College of Education and Human Developmen
An Investment in Social Identity: Making Language Learning Meaningful and Effective for Adult ESL Learners
No full textTeaching and Learning Department Capstone ProjectTraditionally, adult ESL education has been dominated by rote memorization of cultural and language facts, audio-lingual drillings, and delivery of frequent daily conversations, while students’ social identities and their motivation of learning have not always been linked to their language learning (Saito, 1994). As early as the 1990’s, Bonny Norton has recognized that the individual English language learner is not ahistorical and unidimentional but has a complex and sometimes contradictory social identity, changing across time and space (Norton, 1995). As an English learner and aspiring ESL teacher, I am particularly interested in how students’ social identities, which are formed through social interactions outside and inside classroom, influence the language learning that takes place inside the classroom. The purpose of this essay is to explain how social identities are closely related to language learning of adult ESL learners, why motivation or investment of adult ESL learners is vital for their language learning, and to suggest key elements to attend to when designing community-based learning for adult ESL learners. To do this I compare adult learner’s major purposes of learning English, discuss theories from both sociocultural and language learning perspectives for building a meaningful context, outline the design framework for creating a community-based learning curriculum, and make practical suggestions for educators wishing to assess their teaching by considering social identity and motivation/investment of adult second language learners.Department of Teaching and LearningPeabody College of Education and Human Developmen
The Slant; Vol. [14] Issue 6 Feb 5, 2014
No full textStudent humor newspaper at Vanderbilt University
Developing a Writer’s Identity in Upper Elementary Students through a Writing Workshop Model
No full textTeaching and Learning Department Capstone ProjectThe purpose of this capstone essay is to synthesize the literature on teaching writing through a process-oriented approach—specifically a writing workshop model—and to draw connections between this type of writing instruction and how it can help build the writer’s identity that teachers hope their students develop as a product of their education. First, I will examine how the elements of a writing workshop model, when implemented in a classroom setting, can foster development of a writer’s identity in students. I will also explore the developmental characteristics common of a young person in the upper elementary grades and how these influence an individual’s self-perception. I will discuss several aspects of an ideal learning context through which educators can provide students with meaningful and authentic writing opportunities to foster development of a writers’ identity. Through an overview and brief analysis of one writing workshop curriculum used by some educators, I will discuss how these models align with state standards despite lacking explicit connections. Finally, I will discuss practical implications for the classroom as well as potential “next steps” to be made before a writing workshop approach can be most effective.Department of Teaching and LearningPeabody College of Education and Human Developmen
Student Handbook 2014-2015: Third Edition
No full textThe Vanderbilt University Student Handbook is produced by the Office of the Dean of Students for student reference. This document contains policies and guidelines for students at the University
Designing Administrative Law for Adaptive Management
No full textarticle published in law reviewAdministrative law needs to adapt to adaptive management. Adaptive management is a structured decision-making method the core of which is a multi-step iterative process for adjusting management measures to changing circumstances or new information about the effectiveness of prior measures or the system being managed. It has been identified as a necessary or best practices component of regulation in a broad range of fields, including drug and medical device warnings, financial system regulation, social welfare programs, and natural resources management. Nevertheless, many of the agency decisions advancing these policies remain subject to the requirements of either the federal Administrative Procedure Act or the states’ parallel statutes. Adaptive management theorists have identified several features of such administrative law requirements — especially public participation, judicial review, and finality — as posing barriers to true adaptive management, but they have put forward no reform proposals.
This Article represents the first effort in adaptive management theory to go beyond complaining about the handcuffs administrative law puts on adaptive management and to suggest a solution. The Article begins by explaining the theory and limits of adaptive management to emphasize that it is not appropriate for all or even most agency decision making. For its appropriate applications, however, we argue that conventional administrative law has unnecessarily shackled effective use of adaptive management. We show that the core values of administrative law can be implemented in ways that much better allow for adaptive management through a specialized “adaptive management track” of administrative procedures. Going further, we propose and explain draft model legislation that would create such a track for the specific types of agency decision making that could benefit from adaptive management
Making Patents Useful
No full textarticle published in law reviewIt is axiomatic in patent law that an invention must be useful. The utility requirement has been a part of the statutory scheme since the Patent Act of 1790. But what does it mean to be useful? The abstract and imprecise nature of the term combined with the lack of objective criteria for assessing it make utility the most malleable patentability requirement. As the invention landscape has evolved over time, the Patent Office and the courts have exploited this malleability to create technologically specific utility standards — de minimis for some inventions, but considerably more stringent for others. This has led to a bias against granting patents for entire categories of inventions. But this bias has come at a price. The extant utility requirement disconnects patent law from many of the technical communities that it serves and frustrates fundamental goals of the patent system.
This Article calls for the elimination of a standalone utility requirement. It proposes a new theory of usefulness based on the normative premise that patent law should be less concerned with useful inventions and more concerned with ensuring that the public gets a useful disclosure. This objective is best obtained not through utility, but rather through compliance with enablement and nonobviousness — patentability requirements rooted in objective, technical factors. This is the first Article to both harshly criticize utility and — by seeking to eliminate it — urge a radical rethinking of what should be included in (or removed from) the patentability calculus. It will hopefully inform the ongoing debate over patent reform and spark further discussions about the extent to which basic patent doctrines actually promote technological progress
Empirical Desert and Preventive Justice: A Comment
No full textarticle published in law reviewThis essay is a response to an article by Paul Robinson, Joshua Barton, and Matthew Lister in this issue of New Criminal Law Review that criticizes an article I authored with Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein entitled Putting Desert in Its Place, which was itself an analysis ofseveral works published by Robinson and various coauthors making the case for "empirical desert." Robinson's suggestion that utility can be optimized by a focus on desert as it is viewed by the average citizen opens up a new line of inquiry that could lead to a better appreciation of the influence desert should have on the criminal law. Where
we disagree is how much utility a system founded on empirical desert is likely to have. Robinson appears to hold that failing to subscribe to empirical desert in most cases will result in noticeable disutility, whereas I am inclined to believe, consistent with the studies in Putting Desert in Its Place, that only significant, continuous and highly publicized departures from lay views will occasion the loss of compliance and cooperation that Robinson describes. This article also defends the punishment scheme that I have called "preventive justice" against some of the claims made by Robinson, Barton, and Lister
The Case for a Market in Debt Governance
No full textarticle published in law reviewScholars have long lamented that the growth of modern finance has given way to a decline in debt governance. According to current theory, the expansive use of derivatives that enable lenders to trade away the default risk of their loans has made these lenders uninterested, even reckless, when it comes to exercising creditor discipline. In contrast to current theory, this Article argues that such derivatives can prove a positive and powerful
influence in debt governance. Theory has overlooked those who sell credit protection to lenders and assume default risk on the borrower. These protection sellers are left holding the economic risk of a loan without any legal control rights to safeguard their exposure. This Article demonstrates that the interests of lenders and protection sellers are not necessarily adversarial, as theory conventionally assumes. Rather, each side has considerable incentive to cooperate as a way to reduce its own costs of participating in the debt market and to preserve reputational capital. Recognizing this potential for cooperation, this Article proposes a market for creditor control as a cure to the crisis in debt governance. Such a market would allow lenders and protection sellers to trade control rights in debt to ensure that they are held by those with real economic skin in the game. This market aims to offer a fix to an otherwise difficult and costly problem: the
misalignment seen in modern markets between those who bear the economic risk in debt and those best able to control it