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The Economic Impact of Benton Solar
Full text linkBenton Solar is a planned solar energy project in Minden Township, Benton County, with a 100-megawatt solar field and 100-megawatt battery storage facility. It is projected to be built in 2026-27 at a total cost of 77.7 million in additional GDP in the St. Cloud Metropolitan Statistical Area, with 406 jobs created, paying 718,627 in labor income and an impact of $3.4 million to area GDP
Secondary building administrators\u27 perspectives and perceptions around processes and procedures when implementing a building-wide cellphone policy.
Full text linkThis qualitative study explores leadership behaviors and decision-making from the perspective of secondary administrators as they develop, implement, and evaluate building-wide cellphone policy processes and procedures. The increasing presence of cellphones in schools has prompted administrators and district leaders to develop policies that balance engagement and the challenges of cellphone management. Key findings highlight the influence of external guidance, consistency in enforcement, and collaborative decision-making on policy development. Administrators emphasized the importance of communication with stakeholders, professional development sessions, and flexible strategies for policy adaptation. The study also highlights importance of fostering trust, school climate, and proactive communication to ensure successful outcomes. Insights gained from this research offer best practices for administrators seeking to create equitable, impactful, and sustainable cellphone policies in secondary education settings
Practicing Praxis: Composing a Teaching Identity Through Musical Autobiography
Full text linkDespite a disciplinary shift toward social-epistemic pedagogy, college composition remains entrenched in paradigmatic assumptions that tend toward an implicit enforcement of English as correctness and compliance rather than critical engagement. Students in the classroom have learned throughout their academic careers how to perform the role of “student,” which seems a continuously difficult paradigm to disrupt, especially as a new instructor. To challenge this static paradigm in the classroom, I investigate how my assumptions and biases inform my teaching. Am I doing the work necessary to live up to the pedagogical values I claim to hold? Stephen Brookfield offers autobiography as a way for teachers to better understand their students by reflecting on their own experiences as learners. By investigating moments of vulnerable learning, instructors can occupy a similar role to their students. Through autobiographies supplemented by teaching journals, this thesis will examine my experiences as a writer, tutor, and teacher, exploring how my biases contribute to maintaining rigid classroom dynamics. To better encounter vulnerability, I engage with a central aspect of my journey as a learner: my experience as a music performer. By investigating my autobiography as a musician, a space where I have embraced vulnerability, I find ways to similarly embrace the vulnerable performance of being a teacher. This thesis will model the multifaceted process of exploring one’s autobiography as a tool for critical reflection and connection in the classroom
St. Cloud State Magazine [Spring/Summer 2025]
Full text linkhttps://repository.stcloudstate.edu/magazines/1187/thumbnail.jp
Educational Leadership and English as a Second Language (ESL) Teaching in the K-12 Setting
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AN OVERVIEW OF THE ACOUSTIC PHONETIC PROPERTIES OF BETINE FRICATIVES AND AFFRICATES
Full text linkThe endangered Betine language, spoken by the Beti people of Côte d\u27Ivoire, is unstudied despite its critical status. With its classification as a moribund language, urgent efforts are needed to document and preserve its linguistic heritage. Furthermore, the subset of consonants known as fricatives and affricates suffer from a lack of comprehensive data, particularly in African languages. This paper addresses these gaps by conducting an acoustic analysis of Betine fricatives and affricates. The correlates F0, F1, F2, F3, F4, intensity, duration, and CoG are measured from a running speech sample from a native Betine speaker. A total of 416 frication tokens are extracted in order to uncover which correlates are robust for auditory intelligibility. All in all, this paper is a significant contribution to the study of fricatives and affricates of endangered languages
Proffering Teacups and Talismans: How Breast Care Policy Is Failing Women
Full text linkThis medical narrative illuminates the ways in which the standard of clinical breast care provided to women today is insufficient; through personal narrative and health research, I spotlight the gaps in care practices that inhibit women from optimizing breast health. In short, there are innovative tools and practices that, according to evidence-based data, would improve breast care for women. But these alternatives to the current standard of care have yet to be sanctioned by bureaucratic medical regulatory agencies. In other words, despite studies that show the promise of these tools and practices to help women to mitigate a breast cancer diagnosis, they are seldom readily available to patients. This is a critical concern since more and more women are thought to be at a substantial risk for breast cancer today.
While changes to care practices continue to pend indefinitely, breast cancer diagnoses continue to climb. And researchers predict that in the next few decades, the increase in breast cancer diagnoses will be most pronounced among the populations of women living in industrialized nations, nations that have the potential to utilize advanced medical technologies.
The central theme of this medical narrative is that outdated care practices—like teacups and talismans-- must be replaced: healthcare policymakers—those tasked with the responsibility to review and sanction innovations in clinical care—must work to expedite policy reform so that the standard of breast care is fortified by the evolving technologies that promise superior protections against breast cancer.
Among the many outdated care practices impacting patients, there are two that I underscore as particularly constraining when it comes to helping women to optimize breast health. One of these is clinical provider reliance upon overly simple patient histories to quantify breast cancer risk, a practice that fails to provide patients with dependable and accurate appraisals of breast cancer risk. Software-based risk assessment tools provide a better method of comprising risk; and experts contend that more accurate risk assessments would reduce breast cancer mortality by improving the protocols provided to patients as they manage individual risk. Despite the prevalence and promise provided by the risk assessment software, policymakers have yet to mandate that care providers use these tools as a standard component of clinical care.
Another outdated care practice is the standard reliance on mammographic imaging to screen patients for breast cancer; this customary screening practice—often regarded as an important screening for the early detection of breast cancer—is of arbitrary value since up to 50% of women have dense breast tissue which makes cancerous abnormalities almost impossible to detect. More advanced imaging techniques have the potential to provide more reliable screenings; however, these techniques are often restricted to individuals with either a family history of breast cancer or the inheritance of a BRCA mutation.
By committing my personal medical journey to paper, I hope to cast a light on the shortcomings and deficiencies of clinical care and to advocate for the expedition of reform policies to better provide women with access to the technologies that, despite their promise to fortify breast health, remain vastly underutilized across clinical breast care practices
Out of Darkness - The Road to Recovery
Full text linkI made a near-fatal suicide attempt shortly after being on call overnight during my first week as a junior internal medicine resident. What follows are my reflections as I explored the origins of my mental health struggles and navigated the road to recovery
Using Twitter as a Teaching Tool in a College English Classroom
No full textFinding ways to keep students engaged is a common struggle for most teachers. One way to reach today’s students is through a platform they currently use and understand: X, formerly known as Twitter. For the purpose of clarity in this thesis, X will be used as its former name, Twitter. By incorporating Twitter (specifically tweeting) as a writing tool in the classroom, students are engaged with writing while staying current with technology, cell phones, and computers that they already rigorously use. This also enhances teaching for the future because research shows internet technology will only become more present. Adapting teaching activities to today’s internet technology, specifically writing platforms like Twitter, helps current students and future students stay engaged by using a social media platform that’s a part of their everyday lives. In this paper the research will show how Twitter can be used to help student engagement. However, teaching for engagement, and specifically teaching with technology for engagement, happens with today’s current, rhetorical issues. Therefore, teaching with technology must also include teaching rhetoric along with technology. In addition, because technology is rapidly changing, teaching with technology must also be adaptable to changes within and beyond these platforms. While this paper focuses specifically on Twitter, the research could be adapted to evolving versions of Twitter and new, emerging platforms. To begin, the research in this paper will first explain what rhetoric is, and it will specifically look at digital rhetoric. The information presented will show how digital rhetoric is used in everyday communication. Once the digital rhetoric background is established, the research will explain how it can be used on Twitter and in tweets. The digital rhetoric found on Twitter is presented in the research through a few key examples. The research will establish how Twitter is present in students’ everyday lives. Because Twitter is so present in students\u27 lives, it makes it a well-known tool to then be used in the classroom and learning environment. Lastly, this paper will note what future research might need to be done on this topic as it continues to be studied
St. Cloud Area Quarterly Business Report, Vol. 27, No. 2
No full textBusiness leaders reported a strong spring in the latest St. Cloud Area Quarterly Business Survey. Thie hired more workers, increased wages, spent more on capital goods, and received higher prices. However, headwinds from tariffs and national economic conditions dampened their view of the next six months. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said they intended to pass most or all of their tariff cost increases to their customers. Significant concerns were expressed about paid family and medical leave policy in Minnesota, but less than 20% had taken actions such as adjusting employment, discussing the policy with employees, or revised company policy on leave and/or paid time off