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Exploring the Attitudes of the Hope Campus Community towards the Ready for Life Program
Get PDFExploring the attitudes of the Hope College campus community towards the Ready for Life Program was a topic first researched for a fall Genius Hour Showcase, as social inclusion is a primary area of interest for this researcher and her team. Ready for Life is a program that provides post-secondary educational experiences for college-aged individuals diagnosed with cognitive, learning, or social disabilities. Instructors at Ready For Life assist each student in daily instruction and support, and partners with Hope College professors to adapt the academic materials from the courses each student is enrolled in. As a partner with Hope College, Ready for Life students have access to many of the things that Hope students enjoy. However, there are also significant barriers to full inclusion on Hope’s campus that could be resolved if Ready for Life was a Hope College program. The research question that was developed was, “What are the attitudes of Hope College stakeholders about students with disabilities from the Ready for Life program?” A survey was designed and then distributed during the lunch hour in Phelps Hall. 52 surveys were provided to a convenience sample of students, staff, and guests. Questions were asked about attitudes toward the Ready for Life program, and their opinions about whether people with special needs should attend college. Following the distribution of the surveys, data were collected and organized by survey question. The initial findings were positive, suggesting that the Hope community would be open to more fully including Ready for Life students into campus life and academics
Graph Pebbling: Doppelgangers and Lemke Graphs
Get PDFGraph pebbling is a mathematical game played on a connected graph. A configuration places a nonnegative number of pebbles on each vertex. A move between a pair of adjacent vertices removes two pebbles from one vertex and places one pebble on the other. A configuration is solvable if a sequence of pebbling moves can be made to place a pebble on any given vertex. The pebbling number of a graph is the minimum number of pebbles so that any configuration is solvable. A graph satisfies the two-pebbling property if any configuration of more than twice the pebbling number minus the number of vertices with pebbles allows for placing two pebbles on any vertex after applying a sequence of pebbling moves. If a graph does not have the two-pebbling property, it is a Lemke graph. We say that two vertices are doppelgangers if they are adjacent to the same vertices. By adding vertices to a graph that are doppelgangers of existing vertices, the pebbling number does not decrease and does not increases more than the number of added vertices. By adding any number of doppelgangers to previous Lemke graphs in a particular manner, we are able to construct another graph that is also a Lemke graph. Additionally, we have created new algorithms to determine solvabilty. Using this along with four nondeterministic algorithms, we have been able to find all Lemke graphs with up to nine vertices
“Dear Diary, I’m Feeling...”: Within- Country Diversity in Guatemalan Adolescents’ Gratitude and Hassles
Get PDFGratitude is associated with subjective well-being in adolescents while hassles or everyday irritants likely detract from well-being. In Guatemala, a country with one of the highest rates of economic inequality in Latin America, adolescents’ experiences with gratitude and hassles may differ depending on socioeconomic status (World Bank, 2015). In the current qualitative study, we analyzed the within-country diversity of Guatemalan adolescents’ gratitude and hassles. The sample (N = 80) included data from two Guatemalan schools as part of a larger study. The first school served underprivileged youth (n = 37, Mage = 14.35, SD = 1.11, 48.6% girls), and the second served a middle-class population (n = 43, Mage = 15.77, SD = 1.15, 51.2% girls). Participants were randomly assigned to write about either their daily “gratitude” or “hassles” for 10 days. Journal responses were coded using thematic analysis (based on Braun & Clarke, 2006). Regarding gratitude, participants from both samples displayed appreciation for relationships with others and the support linked with those friendships, family members, and teachers, among others. However, hassles results showed distinct patterns between the samples. Students from the middle class school were often hassled by less severe hassles (e.g., waking up early) or by enduring the betrayal of false friends. Adolescents with few resources frequently mentioned feeling left out, ignored, and disrespected. Furthermore, distinct from the higher resource group, students with fewer resources mentioned feeling upset that close others experienced unkindness. Both groups shared negative experiences with peers, but the adolescents with more resources frequently reported indirect or relation aggression (e.g., gossiping, fakeness), versus the direct forms of unkindness (e.g., teasing) experienced by the adolescents with fewer resources. Such implications should be considered by school administrators to assess the needs of their students, and construct sample-specific interventions to foster gratitude and reduce hassles, thus promoting well-being
News from Hope College, Volume 50.2: Winter, 2018
Get PDFhttps://digitalcommons.hope.edu/news_from_hope_college/1249/thumbnail.jp
Spera: 2018
Get PDFYearly publication that serves as a spotlight on faculty research and scholarly work .https://digitalcommons.hope.edu/spera/1000/thumbnail.jp
Smart Sentencing Guidelines: The Effect of Marginal Policy Changes on Recidivism
Get PDFPublic appeals regarding criminal justice have shifted somewhat from “tough on crime” to “smart justice” that is more lenient when tradeoffs merit it. Among other considerations, smart sentencing policy depends on how sentence severity affects recidivism. Using administrative data on two common non-violent felonies committed by adults in Michigan, we measure the effect of sentences on offenders\u27 future criminal activity. Discontinuities in the legislative guidelines that constrain sentences chosen by Michigan judges provide exogenous variation in sentence severity. Harsher sentences generated by sentencing guidelines significantly reduce recidivism by felony shoplifters but not repeat drunk drivers. Recidivism falls most for young, male offenders from Southeast Michigan and varies non-monotonically with prior criminal record. Because of such heterogeneity, any empirical strategy measures a local average treatment effect relevant to a particular population of offenders. Contrary to our main results, we find no evidence that harsher sentences induced by judge assignments reduce recidivism in our sample. When sentencing guidelines provide the primary practical policy lever, “smart justice” should incorporate directly relevant empirical evidence that accounts for offense- and offender-specific tradeoffs between public safety and the public budget
Game Spirituality: How Games Tell Us More than We Might Think
Get PDFWhile we often see games as less serious or at least less transcendental than religion there is reason to believe that games can evoke similarly meaningful narratives that allow us to learn a great deal about ourselves and our world. And games do so often using the same symbolic and metaphorical mechanisms that generate meaning in religious experience. In this paper, I explore some of the ways in which game myths—the myths created from and through games—generate meaning in our lives. People experience myths in games very similarly to how they might in religion. I first explain what myth means in contemporary literature and then show how the very make up of games opens them to a mythical reality. I highlight two ways in particular. I will argue that the inefficiencies within games promote a deep engagement with the world, and this gratuitous nature provides a system for creating myths and actualizing mythical potential
Prognosis, Treatment, Recovery, and Future for a Collegiate Male with a Spinal Cord Injury: A Case Study
Get PDFSome injuries that we see in athletic populations are not strictly orthopedic. This is the case for a 19-year-old male who had plans to play lacrosse in college. The summer before his freshman year, a construction accident left him with a spinal cord injury that paralyzed him from the waist down. This case study will not go from surgery to rehabilitation to return to play. Instead there will be an analysis of the injury and the mechanisms used to repair and stabilize the spinal cord. A discussion of the on-going psychological recovery of the injury and the changed outlook on life will be focused on. Now, about two years post-injury, future goals and self-projections by this individual will be reviewed from a medical perspective and from his perspective. Many pathologies seen in athletic populations are not this severe, but nonetheless every athlete needs to be addressed from all aspects of a person. The physical injury should be addressed, but the psychological aspect of the injury cannot be absent from the recovery process
The Anchor, Volume 131.17: February 21, 2018
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
The Anchor, Volume 132.04: September 26, 2018
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