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You Can\u27t Go Home Again ...Until You Do
Get PDFIn March 2020, when the COVID-19 outbreak was declared a global pandemic, I feared that I would never see my parents - who are 79 and 81 - again. Grappling with my fears of this novel disease, I decided to drive from my current home in Iowa to my original home in Buffalo, NY, where they live. The next three months were a challenge that ultimately proved to be rewarding. This essay is a creative nonfiction piece about the experience of going back to my original home and accompanying my parents through the first three months of the pandemic; themes discussed include our conflicts over politics and ideology, the difficulties of an adult only child in individuating from parents, and the familial love that endures despite these obstacles
When the Good Times Gave Out: The Community Impacts of the 1980s Farm Crisis in Central Minnesota
Get PDFThe farms and rural communities of Stearns County Minnesota were not spared from the 1980s farm crisis. People in this region experienced the strain of financial stress and reacted to it in distinct ways. This affected the long-term sentiments and societal functioning of these communities long after the economic numbers improved.
These collective and individual experiences of the farm crisis have been inadequately studied therefore scholars have incorrectly assumed that the effects of the crisis ended in 1986 when the economic market showed an upturn. Instead, the effects continued to cause stagnation and a diminishing of rural communities and people in these areas continued to struggle and took much longer to heal from the economic downturn. For many rural residents, they experienced a whole decade of financial and economic turmoil instead of a five-year span from 1981 to 1986.
Scholarship on the 1980s farm crisis is not new, however it has been studied in a very disproportionate manner both geographically and as a field of study. Most existing scholarship focuses on the economic impacts of the crisis at a national level or they narrow down to Iowa. The fields of sociology and community history, which this study will focus on, are lacking on the 1980s farm crisis, particularly in Minnesota. This study will use interviews with local farmers, business owners, and auctioneers to support its analysis. It will also incorporate local newspapers and material at the Stearns County History museum archives
Supporting Students Through Online Learning
Get PDFWith the onset of a pandemic, there were opportunities and challenges for supporting learners. Schools and universities were physically closed while interaction shifted to a distance learning modality. In some instances, courses became asynchronous, while other courses met synchronously using video conferencing. Educators were adaptable when the pandemic occurred, quickly setting up home offices to meet their learners’ needs. This occurrence showed that it was in educators’ best interest to understand distance best practices. Distance learning has been utilized at institutions in the United States for the past two decades. However, it has not been widely adopted as mainstream because of the inequities that arise for learners. This chapter will address solutions for systematically addressing inequity from the educator’s perspective, maintaining academic rigor, building a community of learners, creating a workflow for educators to interact with learners, and how to amplify learner engagement in the online learning environment
Assessing Change in Terrestrial Invasive Flora Populations Affected by Prescribed Fire in Native Settings
Get PDFThis thesis study addressed the effectiveness of prescribed fire to control invasive plant populations in native habitats within various Camp Ripley Training Sites of Morrison County, Minnesota. Three invasive species, prevalently abundant across the base, were assessed for their reaction to fire. Spotted knapweed (Centaurea stoebe ssp. micranthos) , common tansy (Tanacetum vulgare L.), and baby’s breath (Gypsophila paniculata L.) are all problematic for habitat managers because they rapidly reproduce, erode and degrade soil integrity, inhibit native vegetation, and expend costly resources. The purpose of this study was to evaluate prescribed fire’s effectiveness in managing several types of invasive flora populations and the response native plant populations have in the presence of invasive species. Using two types of experimental techniques, cover and density were analyzed among the different plant communities before and after fire was prescribed to the sites. Each plant species was classified by their vegetative strategy and native status to categorize the various types of flora. To quantify cover in spotted knapweed and common tansy study areas, a systematic sampling design using a gridded-quadrant frame was utilized. In the baby’s breath study area, a semi-quantitative technique using an open frame was used to evaluate cover and density. From prefire to postfire observations in the spotted knapweed plot, means of native status and competitive strategists declined while means of introduced species, ruderal strategists, and bare soil counts increased. Among the common tansy study site, flora of a native status and invasive status demonstrated a mean increase from prefire to postfire observations. Stress-tolerant and CSR vegetative strategists also showed a mean increase as well. In the baby’s breath study area, measurements analyzed fire’s effect on the entire area and was also differentiated by the types of fire behavior applied to the site. From prefire to post fire observations, the means of invasive and native flora rose and the means of ruderal and stress-tolerant strategists increased as well. When comparing head fire to backfire plots, means of native plants and ruderal strategists also increased. Results of this study indicate that there is still much to learn on how fire affects invasive and native flora populations. Ecologists and land managers play a critical role in evaluating different techniques used for habitat management and restoration. It is recommended that future research focuses on how fire can be used as a control method combined with chemical application
Parallelizing Dijkstra\u27s Algorithm
Get PDFDijkstra’s algorithm is an algorithm for finding the shortest path between nodes in a graph. The algorithm published in 1959 by Dutch computer scientist Edsger W. Dijkstra, can be applied on a weighted graph. Dijkstra’s original algorithm runtime is a quadratic function of the number of vertices.
In this paper, I will investigate the parallel formulation of Dijkstra’s algorithm and its speedup against the sequential one. The implementation of the parallel formulation will be performed by Message Passing Interface (MPI) and Open Multi-Processing (OpenMP). The results gained indicated that the performance of MPI and OpenMP to be significantly better than sequential for a higher number of input data scale. And the smaller number of processors/threads give the fastest result for MPI and OpenMP implementation. However, the results show that the average speedup achieved by parallelization is not satisfied. The parallel implementation of Dijkstra’s algorithm may not be the best option
A Quantitative Study of Gender-Stereotypical Perception of Women’s Leadership Styles Among Employees in Non-Governmental Organizations in Kabul, Afghanistan
Get PDFThis research aimed to investigate the relationship between various leadership styles; transformational, transactional, Laissez Faire, task-oriented, and/or relationship-oriented styles, and stereotypical perception of women’s leadership, by surveying male and female employees in non-governmental organizations in Kabul, Afghanistan. Differences in leadership scores based on participants’ gender and stereotypical beliefs helped identify how gender-based stereotypes can affect Afghan employees\u27 perception of women’s leadership styles. This study found that there is no statistically significant difference between men and women in their transformational leadership dimensions. However, women had higher mean scores on both relationship orientation and task orientation, opposite to the hypothesis that men would be higher on task-oriented leadership behavior than women. Furthermore, it was found that gender cannot predict employees’ gender-role attributes, while gender-role role attributes can predict employees’ leadership styles. Employees higher on agentic attribute were higher on transformational and transactional leadership than employees with higher communal attribute. Employees with higher communal attributes were higher on task and relational leadership than those higher on agentic attributes. Finally, this study found that regardless of gender, employees with agentic attributes rate a female leader as more transactional and task-oriented, while employees’ communal attributes cannot predict a female leader’s leadership styles
The Effect of Wellness Coaching on Sense of Belonging Index Scores
Get PDFThe purpose of this study was to examine whether not wellness coaching, as implemented at St. Cloud State University, has a measurable impact on participant belonging, as operationalized by the SCSU Belonging Initiative\u27s periodic Sense of Belonging Index (SBI) surveys, which are administered at the beginning of each semester (Davis et al., 2019). Contemporary research indicates that a sense of belonging, or a lack thereof, is a key component in whether or not students continue to enroll on higher education, and is a stronger prediction of retention than GPA (Davis et al., 2019; O\u27Keeffe, 2013). Moreover, interventions designed to increase belonging may have an impact on reducing achievement gaps between majority and minority groups (Silver Wolf et al., 2017; Walten & Cohen, 2007). Wellness coaching is an intervention that can impact known factors of belonging (ACHA, 2020; Cemalcilar, 2010; Chiu, 2016; Clark et al., 2016; Duran et al., 2020; Krumrei-Mancuso et al., 2013; Masika, 2016; Pearson, 2012; Samura, 2016; Sforzo et al., 2017; Slaten et al., 2016; Swarbrick et al., 2011; Tachinea et al., 2017; Vaccaro, 2015). This study was designed to explore the relationship between belonging and wellness coaching by examining SBI survey scores before and after wellness coaching and determine if the process of using SBI scores was feasible as a method of evaluation. This study concluded that, while not enough data exists to determine the efficacy of wellness coaching in increasing SBI scores, this method of program evaluation is feasible and can be used again in the future as more data becomes available
St. Cloud Area Quarterly Business Report, Vol. 23, No. 2 - Podcast
No full textSt. Cloud State University School of Public Affairs Dean King Banaian and Professor Richard MacDonald provided a virtual review of the June 2021 Quarterly Business Report in lieu of the normal in-person meeting. The report shows the St. Cloud economy experienced rapid growth in 3 areas most hit by the pandemic: retail sales; leisure and hospitality; and other services such as gyms, theaters, and beauty salons. The St. Cloud Area Quarterly Business Survey showed that wages were risking with expectations of rising prices. Survey respondents reported on both hiring and supply side issues. Discussion of pandemic unemployment insurance assistance programs was also offeredhttps://repository.stcloudstate.edu/scqbr_video/1005/thumbnail.jp
The Lasting Impacts of the NICU Experience and How a Community Supports the Premature Infant and Their Family
Get PDFEvery year, approximately 500,000 babies in the United States are born before 37 weeks gestation. Often premature birth results in a stay in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) for some length of time. A literature review shows that there are lasting impacts on both the parents and the premature infant due to a stay in the NICU. These impacts can affect the parents’ mental health, the attachment between parents and infant, and the infant’s overall development for years to come. Findings from two qualitative questionnaires completed by previous parents of infants who stayed in the St. Cloud Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, and St. Cloud area agencies show how the St. Cloud community supports the parents and the premature infant after discharge from the NICU. The parents shared that the biggest support while in the NICU was the March of Dimes, but after discharge, there was limited support from previous supports or local agencies. With limited responses to the questionnaire from local agencies, it became apparent that it may be difficult to get into contact with the agencies. These findings showed the disconnect between supports while in the NICU and supports once discharged from the NICU. The connection between the St. Cloud Hospital NICU and local agencies needs to be an item of focus to increase support for parents and infants born prematurely
PRE-CONTACT SETTLEMENT PATTERNS WITHIN THE THAMES RIVER DRAINAGE BASIN, EASTERN CONNECTICUT
Get PDFThis thesis analyzed sites within the Thames River drainage basin to determine settlement patterns throughout the Pre-Contact period. The goal of this thesis is to further understand the landscape archaeology of eastern Connecticut and apply this information to probability models used to guide future archaeological investigations. Two hundred and ninety-five sites, representing 510 temporal occupations, were analyzed to determine patterns in site selection specific to hydrologic and topographic features. The Late Archaic period is the most represented time period of those analyzed within the study area. This is followed by the Late Woodland, Transitional Archaic, and indeterminate Woodland periods. There appears to be a preference for sites near quaternary streams, regardless of the temporal association. Landforms associated with site selection are varied, though there was an increase in sites selected along terraces spanning the Early Archaic through Late Woodland periods and an increase in sites selected along benches during the Paleoindian period