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Sheryl Sandberg: A look at Women in the C-Suite
Get PDFThis study set out to understand the ways that society discursively constructs female leaders in the workforce. Although women currently make up a little under half the workforce, very few women are at top-level positions in hierarchical businesses. This project used semiotic analysis, discourse analysis, and intersectional analysis to deconstruct texts centering Sheryl Sandberg. By deconstructing multiple texts, this study uncovers explicit and implicit messages that persist in the conversation about women in the workplace. This study found that while women are welcome in the workplace today there are still deep-rooted cultural oppressions at work that must be addressed and even affect the career and experiences of women in powerful leadership positions
Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) and CUDA
Get PDFComputers almost always contain one or more central processing units (CPU), each of which processes information sequentially. While having multiple CPUs allow a computer to run several tasks in parallel, many computers also have a graphics processing unit (GPU) which contains hundreds to thousands of cores that allow it to execute many computations in parallel. In order to complete a larger task, GPUs run many subtasks concurrently. Each core performs the same instruction on different sets of data, making it useful for performing tasks such as calculating what each individual pixel displays on a screen. The purpose of this research was to learn how GPUs work, how to write CUDA programs to utilize GPUs, and to determine if GPUs could be used to increase the speed of algorithms used to determine the pebbling properties of graphs. In addition, we developed a class module on GPU computing with CUDA for the Advanced Algorithms class in Hope College’s Computer Science department
The Fitzgeralds in France: A Life of Splendor and Tragedy
Get PDFF. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda Sayre are well-known for the glamorous life they lived as they roamed throughout America and Europe. They met and befriended many other writers and artists during their travels, but never as many as they met in Paris, the center for expatriate Americans of the Lost Generation. This project is composed of three parts that focused on the Fitzgeralds’ lives through specific lenses. The first part is a Pecha Kucha presentation summarizing the lives of the Fitzgeralds and detailing their time in Paris. Part two is a Wordpress website analyzing the relationships that the Fitzgeralds developed with other American expatriates in Paris, accompanied by a story map of their most frequented locations. The artists and authors that we researched were Ernest Hemingway, E. E. Cummings, Gertrude Stein, Edmund Wilson, Sylvia Beach, and Pablo Picasso. The final part of our project is an analysis and comparison of novels written by Scott and Zelda, respectively. Zelda’s Save Me the Waltz is a fictional recollection of her time with Scott leading up to her mental illness and institutionalization, while Scott’s Tender is the Night displays his perspective. We each focused on one of the two novels in a ten-page essay, and then together compared our analyses, arriving at a conclusion we had not anticipated: Scott censored Zelda’s novel in order to use the material himself. Our project as a whole helped us to understand that the Fitzgeralds’ lives were not simply full of frivolity, but of sadness and pain that derived from their own marriage as well as their backgrounds, personalities, and ambitions
Mixed Mood State Behaviors and Circadian Dysfunction following Homocysteic Acid Treatment: Potential Animal Model for Bipolar Disorder
Get PDFBipolar disorder is a neuropsychiatric disease characterized by cyclical fluctuations of mood states between mania and depression. Circadian rhythm abnormalities and inconsistent sleep patterns are two common symptoms of bipolar disorder (Millar, Epsie, & Scott, 2004). Elevated levels of homocysteine, in the blood or cerebrospinal fluid, commonly occurs in patients with neuropsychiatric illnesses, including bipolar disorder (Bell et al., 1992; Boushey, Beresford, Omenn, & Motulsky, 1995). Homocysteic acid (HCA), an endogenous metabolite of homocysteine, has been implicated as a harmful neurotoxin and agonist of NMDA receptors. We have previously shown that postnatal administration of HCA (from postnatal day 3-21) in Sprague Dawley rats results in both mania-like and depressive-like behaviors, suggesting that this may serve as a novel animal model for bipolar disorder. The purpose of the present study was to characterize any circadian abnormalities that may be present in HCA-treated rats, as sleep and circadian dysfunction are common symptoms of bipolar disorder. In addition, we also characterized the developmental onset of the mania-like and depressive-like behaviors in this model. Prior to puberty, we found that HCA-treated rats exhibited no manic-like behaviors and only a trend toward depressive-like behaviors. After puberty, however, HCA-treated rats presented a mixed mood-state of both manic-like and depressive-like behaviors, along with significant dysfunction in the circadian clock. Specifically, both the free-running period and the amplitude of the rhythm were significantly reduced following HCA treatment. We are currently using microarray analyses to determine differences in circadian gene expression levels between HCA treated animals and controls. Additionally, we are examining the therapeutic role of lithium for reversing the circadian disruptions exhibited by the HCA-treated animals. Altogether, the findings of the present study provide strong evidence in support of the HCA model’s face validity for bipolar disorder, allowing us to better understand the mechanisms underlying the development of this disease
The Anchor, Volume 133.01: September 18, 2019
Get PDFThe Anchor began in 1887 and was first issued weekly in 1914. Covering national and campus news alike, Hope College’s student-run newspaper has grown over the years to encompass over two-dozen editors, reporters, and staff. For much of The Anchor\u27s history, the latest issue was distributed across campus each Wednesday throughout the academic school year (with few exceptions). In recent years The Anchor moved to monthly print issues and a more frequently updated website. The Anchor is now published in print twice per academic semester. Occasionally, the volume and/or issue numbering is irregular
Hope College and Ready for Life: Kate\u27s Story
Get PDFIn an effort to merge social science and humanities methodology, I undertook an ethnographic case study of Ms. Kate Veldink, a student in the Ready for Life (RFL) program at Hope College. My research question is: What are the day-to-day experiences of a RFL student on Hope College’s campus? I obtained consent from Ms. Veldink and her family, enabling us to embark as research partners in this query. Through the Mellon Scholars Program of Hope College, we created an inquiry-into-research project as an extension to the class Human Behavior and the Social Environment in the Department of Sociology and Social Work. We investigated accessibility and awareness for students with disabilities on-campus in the RFL program. Under the mentorship of advisor Dr. Dennis Feaster, we developed a project to showcase Ms. Veldink’s vision for greater integration between Hope College and RFL. We used oral history methodology to conduct a series of interviews with Ms. Veldink and her family, friends, and community supports. Both the Grounded Theory and Cooley’s looking-glass self concept further informed our process as these interviews were then analyzed and compiled into a short documentary that brings to light the story of Ms. Veldink and her peers as they navigate Hope College through the RFL program, and calls to action the administration of Hope College to recognize and react to these students’ realities. A central theme that emerged from this process is the paradox between accessibility and barriers for RFL students. Hope College welcomes RFL students into the campus community, but inviting these students into our daytime routine is not enough. Rather, we must embrace the challenge of Hope College’s core values of “being a caring community” that “fosters the development of the whole person - intellectually, spiritually, socially, and physically.
Who I Am: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Guatemalan Adolescents\u27 Identity Development
Get PDFIdentity development is the paramount task of adolescent development and globalization seems to shape identity. Recent research with the world’s adolescents suggests that adolescents hold culturally traditional view of self while adopting some self-identifications of other cultures. Remote acculturation contributes to formation of a remixed identity, and it occurs when an individual internalizes cultural values and identities from a region in which they have never lived. Indirect exposure to other cultures, especially through the media, facilitates the adoption of a remixed identity and the process of remote accultural. Remote acculturation and adolescent identity formation was examined in 129 sixth through twelfth grade students (47.3% male, 52.7% female), at a bilingual school on the south coast of Guatemala. Adolescents completed an open-ended 20 item “I am” test and a remote acculturation measure in English. “I am” responses were coded using an adaptation of Cheek & Cheek’s (2018) identity typology; the codes included personal identity orientation, relational identity orientation, public identity orientation, collective identity orientation, and personal hobbies/activities. For each participant, the number of responses per category was recorded. Across all participants, personal identity was the most commonly endorsed orientation (M = 9.91, SD = 3.71) followed by public identity (M = 3.41, SD = 2.43), then hobbies/activities (M =3.08, SD = 2.93) and collective identity (M =2.16, SD =1.96), and finally, relational identity (M = 2.06, SD =1.57). A series of Analyses of Variance (ANOVAs) were used to compare gender and age differences across the identity domains and revealed a main effect of gender in the hobbies/activities domain; boys were more likely to identify with hobbies/activities than girls. The higher prevalence of responses from the personal identity domain over relational or collective domains suggests potential acculturation among the Guatemalan adolescent sample
Public Opinion
Get PDFPrevious research has found that many U.S. college students believe that politics is not about solving problems; rather, research has found that such students see politics as complicated, untrustworthy, pressuring, and often counterproductive to acting on the ills of society. There has been an array of survey research, policy analysis, and commentary that attempts to define, understand, and document the political engagement of young people since this portrayal of college students’ views of politics in the early 1990s. Some additional research has found that, among the greatest dangers for American political stability, is that politics in the minds and actions of the youth has become a nothing more than a negative, uninteresting topic that typically lacks significant representation. Furthermore, some argue that part of increasing political interest is focused towards the global political arena, the US engagement in a number of foreign wars, and the global economic crisis. Additional findings suggest that US college students have turned dramatically more negative in their view of the political trajectory of the United States, due to a feeling of higher connectivity between one another and a lack of faith in traditional politics. When focusing on US college student views on US foreign policy, students were dissatisfied and skeptical. We are assessing these findings in the context of a small, liberal arts, faith based institution. Thus, we consider the views of Hope College students on the issue of the immigration of Syrian refugees to the United States
