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Governmental repression: the cases of China
Get PDFThis thesis explores what factors can explain why the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) response to two pro-democracy movements – 1989 Tiananmen Square and the 2014 Umbrella Movement – had varied repression levels. Specifically, this thesis will explore the impact of social media, breakdowns in government cohesion, and the type of protest on governmental responses. This research finds that a breakdown in government cohesion during the 1989 protest caused the declaration of martial law and the use of tanks followed by infantrymen. Although the 2014 protest was regime-threatening, social media constrained the government’s ability to use alternative media and harsh repression. Especially due to a large number of users live posting uncensored information. Furthermore, there was not a breakdown in government cohesion during the 2014 protest which is why the CCP’s response utilized soft repression
Counselors\u27 experiences of a virtual summer camp
Get PDFYouth with developmental disabilities (DD) often have limited opportunities for social support and community engagement. Summer camps to meet their specific needs - physical, social or emotional - are intended to help reduce this limitation and provide youth with DD the same opportunities as typical children. The COVID-19 pandemic caused many camps and organizations to prohibit in-person or face-to-face activities, and as a result, Camp Ability created a virtual platform for campers to still engage in a summer camp experience. Camp Ability’s counselors (n = 5) were interviewed at the conclusion of the camp session, and three major themes were revealed: Camp Planning/Processes, Experiences, and Lessons Learned. Through these themes, successes and challenges were identified, modifications for future virtual experiences were discussed, and counselor experiences were reflected on. The study concluded that despite counselors’ concerns, participation was not an issue, and many counselors enjoyed seeing their campers interact in a different setting. One of the greatest issues for counselors was not being able to assist campers hand-over-hand in activities. Additionally, technology created a limitation gap that prevented Camp Ability from serving its typical camp population. Overall, counselors deemed Camp Ability virtual a success, but with room for future improvements
Amateur photography: finding new perspectives and seeking authenticity
Get PDFThis paper acts as a detailed research and understanding of amateurism within the photographic medium and practice. The research serves to unveil the influence that the turn of the 19th century amateurs in America and beyond have on contemporary photographers utilizing aspects of amateurism. The history of amateur photography is discussed as a precursor to the introduction of two contemporary photographers who utilize amateurism to varying degrees. This paper exists as a way to learn from the amateur mindset and embrace the spontaneity and magical whim of pointing and shooting. In order to satisfy the varying elements of amateurism in photography, an analysis of the amateur tones in work made by photographers Nancy Rexroth and Daido Moriyama is included after a historical discussion. Following the written portion is a series of original photographs I made. These reflect on the history of amateurism and photographic tools, as well as the examined techniques of deskilling. By reimagining amateur-esque work through my own personal lens, I encounter the moments contemporary photographers Rexroth and Moriyama seek through their practice
Artist Archive: Qiu Xiaofei
Get PDFhttps://scholar.utc.edu/global-contemporary-artists/1007/thumbnail.jp
Creative Activity Sustainability Flow April 2021
No full textStudents from Beyond the Classroom Public Speaking sections reviewed the Ted Global Countdown and Sustainability Flow zooms about UTC sustainability. Groups participated in a creative process to combine ideas about UTC Office of Sustainability goals. Creative Advocacy student, Sarah Smith, participated in this creative process and gathered 19 agenda items to share in a discussion during UTC ReSEARCH Dialogues, 2021. The Director of the UTC Office of Sustainability and members of UTC partner organization, green/spaces, attended to help process ideas connected to the Integrated Community Sustainability Plan, newly adopted by UTC
Ardent Health Services organizational development team internship experience
Get PDFArdent Health Services is a healthcare investment company. It includes 30 geographically dispersed hospitals and a corporate office, totaling approximately 26,000 employees. I worked on the corporate organizational development team, which is responsible for performance management, employee surveys, and training. I found the position through a master’s program alumni connection and underwent an interview process. The two major projects I contributed to are an employee experience pulse survey and a voluntary turnover project using exit survey data. For the survey, I created a communications plan targeting various groups in the organization and including multiple communications methods. These were intentionally spread over time and tailored to particular groups of employees to encourage participation and assure employees of response confidentiality. The survey was a shift for Ardent because it was the first of shorter, quarterly pulse surveys as compared to the organization’s typical longer, annual survey. The communications plan was edited by team members, the marketing team, and leaders in the organization. I was responsible for implementing it and ensuring communications were sent properly. I also assisted with survey implementation and dashboard design by attending meetings and providing feedback. To encourage and assist leaders in the organization, I edited and created action planning resources. For the voluntary turnover project, I reviewed exit survey data from the previous year. I summarized the qualitative results and created visualizations of the data. Then, I coded responses to open-ended questions for subsets of employees who had high turnover rates compared to others in the organization. Using this information, I created a summary presentation that included recommendations for reducing turnover in the organization. This was presented to the executives in the company. During my internship, I improved my ability to handle ambiguous direction and work independently. I found that it is helpful to ask clarifying questions and find reliable resources yet trust personal instinct and experience. Working in a large organization showed me the importance of communication, paying attention to detail, and making materials you develop user friendly. Effective communication helps to address and prevent skepticism and gain support for organizational initiatives. Paying attention to detail is necessary for thorough, high quality work and adds to your credibility. Working on the survey, particularly the results dashboards and action planning resources, made me realize the importance of making materials user friendly to increase the likelihood that people will understand and use the information you present them
Engagement, perceived leadership effectiveness, and performance as predictors of voluntary and involuntary turnover among nurses
Get PDFTurnover is costly to organizations due to lost productivity and employee replacement expenses. Nurses have particularly high voluntary turnover rates and are in high demand. The purpose of the research project is to examine predictors of voluntary and involuntary turnover among nurses. Hypotheses are that engagement and positive perceptions of leadership will be negatively related to voluntary turnover and stronger predictors of voluntary than involuntary turnover. Additionally, performance rating will be negatively related to involuntary turnover and a stronger predictor of involuntary than voluntary turnover. Data will be collected from several thousand nurses at geographically dispersed hospitals owned by a healthcare investment company. Engagement, perceptions of leadership, and performance data will be collected from records from the 2019 employee survey and performance appraisal process. Employee engagement and perceptions of leadership will be measured at the team level to maintain survey response confidentiality, meaning turnover will be measured as team turnover rate. Performance will be measured at the individual level in relation to individual turnover. Turnover will be captured using human resource records and linked to employees or teams using identification numbers. The data will be analyzed using logistic regression. There will be separate analyses with combinations of engagement, leadership perceptions, and performance with voluntary and involuntary turnover. It is expected that engagement and leadership perceptions will have significant negative relationships with voluntary turnover and will be more strongly related to voluntary turnover than involuntary turnover. It is also expected that performance will have a significant negative relationship with involuntary turnover and will be more strongly related to involuntary turnover than voluntary turnover. Findings will contribute to the scientific literature about predictors of turnover. Strengths of the proposed research are that it examines turnover rather than turnover intention and the data for the predictor and criteria variables will be measured approximately two years apart, allowing time for the turnover process to occur. Practitioners could use the findings to inform their efforts to predict and reduce organizational turnover, particularly among nurses
Retaining employees through and beyond pregnancy: The importance of career encouragement and career engagement
Get PDFWith the influx of women into the workplace over the past few decades, researchers have often focused on how women struggle at work due to pregnancy and the physical changes their body goes through (Draper, 2006). Working women who become pregnant are often perceived as not dedicated, distracted from their work, and more likely to not return to work. Furthermore, they are often overlooked for promotions, bonuses, and awards because they are perceived as uncommitted (Wiese & Ritter, 2012). However, researchers have often overlooked the extent to which career encouragement and career engagement can impact a women’s career, especially for working women who plan to become pregnant while working or have returned to work post-partum. I believe the career encouragement women receive over the course of their pregnancy can affect their career engagement along with many other factors including job satisfaction. This survey will ask participants to complete a variety of scales including the ISA Engagement Scale (Soane et al., 2012), a career engagement scale (Ragins & McFarlin, 1990), a job satisfaction scale (Warr et al., 1979), a pregnancy identity scale (Little at al., 2015), and a return-to-work regret scale (for those who are post-partum; Wiese & Ritter, 2012). The participants will be recruited through social media and flyers at various doctor’s offices. The options for participants will include: “pregnant but not disclosed to supervisor”, “pregnant and disclosed to supervisor”, “on maternity leave”, and “have returned to work and within two years of most recent birth”. The scales will be followed by a series of demographic questions, also including how visible their pregnancy is (i.e., are they working from home where it is often forgotten because the pregnancy isn’t visible). I expect to see a positive correlation between the perceived supervisor support and the participant’s engagement in their work. I also expect to see differences across the stages of pregnancy, with those who are pregnant and disclosed to boss experiencing the least amount of career encouragement. I believe understanding perceptions of and changes to career encouragement and career engagement for pregnant women can be translated into workplace policies to best support women who have children or want to have children. Along with translating these findings into the workplace, I believe this study provides a basis for future studies of pregnant women in the workplace and what changes take place throughout the course of a pregnancy in an office place. The study is currently being reviewed by the IRB
The Effect of Perceived Discrimination on Mental Health and Cognitive Functioning
Get PDFResearch has revealed links between perceived discrimination (PD), mental health, and cognition. The present study sought to understand the moderational role of PD in the relation of mental health to cognition. Our sample consisted of 11,878 9–12-year-olds across 21 study sites. We conducted linear mixed effects models to analyze child internalizing/externalizing problem behaviors, cognitive ability, and PD. Higher PD related to worse internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Further, worse cognitive abilities generally related to worse internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Moreover, PD moderated the relation of internalizing/externalizing to cognition. Future longitudinal research should seek to establish the temporality of the relationships addressed in this cross-sectional analysis, in addition to investigating mechanisms underlying the role of PD in mental health and cognition
Machine Learning for Lifespan Inference from Time-Lapse Microfluidic Images of Dividing Yeast Cells
Get PDFHigh-throughput microfluidics-based assays can potentially increase the speed and quality of yeast replicative lifespan measurements that are related to aging. One major challenge is to efficiently convert large volumes of time-lapse images into quantitative measurements of yeast cell lifespan measurements. To address these issues, we developed several deep learning methods to analyze a large number of images collected from microfluidic experiments. First, we compared three deep learning architectures to classify microfluidic time-lapse images of dividing yeast cells into categories that represent different stages in the yeast replicative aging process. Second, we evaluated convolutional neural networks for detecting cells from microfluidic images. The YOLO and Mask R-CNN are trained with yeast microfluidic images and tested for object detection, and features extraction. The results indicate that YOLO had better performance in terms of object detection and accuracy. In contrast, the Mask R-CNN had better performance in terms of cell area and better detection when the number of cells inside the trap is less than 3 cells. Third, prototyping an algorithm that can evaluate cell division events through family trees of cells. We generated a null distribution using single cells inside microfluidic traps. Based on this null distribution, we prototyped a likelihood algorithm for cell tracking between images at different time-points. We inferred cell family trees through a trace-back method. The replicative lifespan of a mother cell can be counted as the number of bifurcating branches of its family tree. Linear regression showed that predictions of our prototype correlated with experimental observations. Forth, since it is challenging to visualize and interpret the time-series data gathered through time-lapse microscopy images, we have developed a circular plotting software tool, mPolar, to visualize the trends and patterns of the cell movements, and cell division events in a time-series. Overall, our methods have the potential to accelerate the efficiency and expand the range of quantitative measurement of yeast replicative aging experiments. This work lays a useful framework for sophisticated deep-learning processing of microfluidic-based assays of yeast replicative aging