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An Analysis of the Effects of Temperature and Other Environmental Factors on Microorganismal Productivity within Aquatic Ecosystems using Long-Term Data from Various Lter and Ilter Sites
Get PDFGlobal climate change is a phenomenon resulting in more extreme weather patterns and species diversity loss. In this study, I explore the impacts of climate change on regional patterns of microbial productivity. Variation in microbial productivity was explained using temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen as predictors in regression models with data from the LTER and iLTER network of sites that ranged from the poles to the equator. I found a positive relationship between temperature and productivity. Antarctica and Arctic sites exhibited the strongest positive relationships supporting prior research demonstrating temperature as one of the driving forces of productivity change in polar ecosystem composition and productivity. In addition to the temperature-productivity relationship, I found a positive relationship between chlorophyll concentration and productivity, a negative relationship between salinity and productivity, and a negative relationship between light irradiance and productivity indicating how other environmental factors affect productivity at the microscopic level. To compare microbial productivity among regions, I merged the data from the different sites into a single analysis of productivity. Productivity change in Antarctica was significantly different from the other sites based on the interaction between time, temperature, and location that indicated temperature effects on productivity were increasing faster in Antarctica than at other latitudes, confirming the single site analysis results. This study adds to a growing body of literature demonstrating that the impacts of climate change are stronger near the poles
Interdisciplinary Perspectives in Lifetime Wellness
Get PDFInterdisciplinary Perspectives in Lifetime Wellness, 1st Edition.
Interdisciplinary Perspectives in Lifetime Wellness is an open educational resource developed under a grant through Affordable Learning Georgia for use in health and well-being education courses at Columbus State University. It is available under a non-commercial, share-alike creative commons license for use by educators and other individuals.https://csuepress.columbusstate.edu/textbooks/1003/thumbnail.jp
An Analysis of Retention through the Perceptions of Teachers in a Middle Georgia School District
Get PDFThe purpose of this study was to assess the initiatives and incentives preferred by certified teachers employed by a Middle Georgia school district with the goal of formulating a plan to retain teachers. This quantitative study looked at factors such as race, gender, age, and grade level of teachers and the statistical significance to initiatives and incentives and the effect on teacher retention. The data from the study was obtained using a survey administered to teachers in the district with various levels of experience
A Qualitative Investigation into the Academic Advisors’ Perceptions of Best Advisement Practices
Get PDFThis study aimed to better understand academic advising by examining the perspectives of academic advisors at a Georgia Research 1 institution located in a large city. Initially, the purpose of this case study was to learn more about how academic advisors view effective strategies for boosting their students\u27 performance. Nine academic advisors from a multi-campus institution in the southeastern United States were interviewed for this qualitative study. The participants were asked to complete 30 to 60-minute interviews with the researcher. By evaluating the personal responses used throughout the study, the researcher could identify frequent themes during data collection and analysis. The themes found through the data collection process were interpersonal relationships, progression to graduation, and challenges. The themes related to effective advising strategies were interpersonal relationships and progression to graduation and the themes for barriers were the challenges: department cohesiveness, lack of advisor training, staff retention, and additional advisors. The findings of this research could be used by educational institutions to enhance their academic advising services
Exploring the Effectiveness of the Grizzly Success Program at Georgia Gwinnett College: A Quantitative Study
Get PDFResearch suggests that summer bridge programs are a successful strategy for helping at-risk students succeed in college by offering additional tutoring, mentoring, and advising (Slade et al., 2015). Bridge programs are effective for increasing student success (Bir & Myrick, 2015). However, summer bridge programs may challenge at-risk first-generation students due to limited access and additional fees (Mullen, 2010). The additional costs associated with summer programs combined with the summertime commitment needed for summer bridge programs may present a barrier to enrollment and prove difficult for at-risk students to overcome. Grizzly Success is a program that provides additional academic support, social opportunities, and student mentoring to academically at-risk freshmen college students. This quantitative study measured the effectiveness of the Grizzly Success at Georgia Gwinnett College. A quasi-experimental research design with a control group and no pretest was the most accurate method to measure the control group against the treatment group. First to second-semester retention rates, first-semester GPA, and first-semester credits earned were measured for students who did not participate in Grizzly Success (control group) against those with similar academic backgrounds who participated in Grizzly Success (treatment group). Analysis included using independent t-tests and binary logistical regression with a sample size of 852. Results of independent t-tests indicated that those students that participated in the Grizzly Success Program (2020–2021) had a lower mean GPA and credits earned compared to those that did not participate (2018-2019). Regarding persistence rates, an increase in first-term GPA and credits earned corresponded to the likelihood of persistence in both the control group and those enrolled in the Grizzly Success Program. Implications of this study provide insights to college administrators interested in improving retention through a similar fall bridge progra
Building Resilient Business Students: Faculty as Servant Leaders
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the normal cadence of life. These disruptions affected students in higher education in many ways as well increasing the stress and anxiety levels of college students and having a considerable negative impact on their mental health. Business students were not exempt from the negative mental health impact of COVID-19.
Aware of the stress its students are experiencing, higher education can play a role in creating environments which support learning and the development of skills to rebound from that adversity. This is particularly true for business schools who are also monitoring how business itself is being affected and conducted during this pandemic Business schools are not only positioned to support the mental health of their students but also to prepare them to be successful in a business world that is transforming at the same time (Krishnamurthy, 2020).
One important way universities can support their students and enhance the students’ positive response to adversity is to focus on the development of resilience. The problem this article will address is how business school faculty can help students develop resiliency so that they can be successful now and in their future careers. Specifically, how faculty exhibiting servant leadership characteristics can improve the resilience of their students and better prepare them to respond to adversities like the COVID-19 pandemic
Conceptualization of STEAM Education in the Elementary Classroom
Get PDFScience, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics (STEAM) education is an instructional approach to education in which students demonstrate creative approaches in experiential, inquiry-based learning within the STEM disciplines. Despite the national focus on STEAM education, there exists considerable uncertainty as to what constitutes STEAM education and how classroom educators make sense of their conceptualization of STEAM in their classroom within the state of Georgia.
The method of conceptualization is the internal processing of thoughts that produce new ideas or knowledge. This descriptive case study offers thoughtful new insights on how educators in a STEAM-certified elementary school in a school district located in Georgia conceptualize STEAM education. The study employed three instruments to gain authentic insight into participants’ conceptualizations of STEAM education in their elementary classroom settings. The data from this descriptive case study suggest STEAM education is a distinctively different approach to instruction beneficial for student success in the 21st-century landscape. The data indicated STEAM education is socially constructed and most effectively implemented in a transdisciplinary manner. This descriptive case study findings offers intersubjective knowledge for enhanced collective knowledge of STEAM in the elementary classroom setting and advances the understanding that one, singular conceptualization of STEAM implementation in the classroom setting may not be an appropriate goal or target. Instead, the basic tenets of culture, change, and context need to be considered on an individual basis if STEAM education continues to progress as a widely used curricular approach for student success in the 21st century landscape
The 1969 Atlanta International Pop Festival and the Beginning of the End of the Festival Era
No full textIn July 1969, a month before the famed Woodstock Festival kicked off in upstate New York, 100,00 people gathered at the Atlanta International Speedway in Hampton, Georgia, for the first annual Atlanta International Pop Festival. The event was the first of its kind in the Deep South, drawing music fans from across the United States. A veritable cross-section of the nation\u27s youth packed into the infield of the 1.5 mile oval track to listen to an incredible lineup of performers that included Janis Joplin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Joe Cocker, Grand Funk Railroad, and Led Zeppelin. For two days and nights, in some intolerable conditions, the attendees built a community of sorts, sharing what they had with their neighbors, avoiding the internecine conflicts that had become all too familiar in the late 1960s. If the attendees did have a common enemy, it was the festival organizers, who seemed bent on sacrificing basic human necessities, like food, water, and proper bathroom facilities, to turn a quick buck. The Atlanta Pop Festival was the perfect example of the pig, capitalism, in microcosm, wrote David Doggett, the editor of Kudzu, a Mississippi-based underground newspaper. The callous exploitation of the musicians and the crowd\u27s love for music, the criminal negligence of the human condition of the people, and the backstage privilege of the ruling class were not accidents. That is the way the system works. Such criticism had become quite common in the summer of 1969. In the pages of the Great Speckled Bird, the Chicago Seed, and other underground publications, festival organizers were demonized as pigs and tools of the establishment. The festival organizers became convenient targets. They charged exorbitant ticket prices. They treated festival goers with contempt. They stood in between the people and the music they loved. They were, according to the Great Speckled Bird, the greedy middlemen who derived their existence from the [same] capitalist system that jails in Atlanta, bloodies heads in Chicago, murders in Berkeley. My paper will argue that the accumulated effect of such rhetoric inspired thousands of music fans to begin demanding free entrance to festivals like Woodstock, leading to huge financial losses for the promoters. It may have even contributed to a premature end to the festival era itself
The Mythological Foundation of Haitian Voodoo: Peasant Myths of Nation and Messiah, 1791-1806
No full textThe Haitian Revolution produced two great myths among the post-war peasantry that are both ideological and spiritual-the epic Vodou ceremony at Bwa Kayiman and the legendary figure of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the revolutionary general and founding father of independent Haiti. The Bwa Kayiman myth is the Haitian myth of national origin. It serves to establish the spiritual basis and the moral justification, for the war to come. It is the myth that anchors emergent Haitian religion to the African and creole spiritualities that antedated the development of Vodou in the mid-nineteenth century. The second great myth is that of the larger-than-life general Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the instrument of divine justice, but also the betrayed messiah whose blood changed the Haitian soil into demanbre, both a Lwa (spirit) and the spiritual holy land of Haitian Vodou. The connections between myth, lakou (community courtyard), and demanbre led to the rise of both an organic grassroots nationalism among the peasantry concomitantly with the development of an equally organic national religion, Vodou
Emergent, First-Time Leadership in Patient Advocacy Organizations
No full textThis presentation shares primary and secondary research for a chapter on first-time leadership in patient advocacy organizations, published in February 2021 by IGI Global, Matthew Guah, editor, and entitled Handbook of Research on Innate Leadership Characteristics and Examinations of Successful First-Time Leaders. The purpose of my chapter is to focus on leadership as it emerges in not-for-profit patient advocacy organizations in both the U.S. and Europe by examining case studies of first-time leaders among them in recent decades. This chapter resists the argument, especially in the era of patient-centered care, that patient/client advocacy belongs under the auspices of the professional nurse, or clinicians in general. Instead, it presents a novel perspective, grounded in case studies offered as examples and supported by established leadership theories, that leadership in effecting change and transformation of the health care landscape on behalf of patients today resides chiefly in patient advocacy organizations in the not-for-profit sector headed by a variety of leader types, or categories. The ethical challenges to secure mission-driven funding confronting the leader in not-for-profit are also raised, as full disclosure of sources and appropriate transparency are safeguards against potential loss of credibility and the public trust. Since the chapter concludes with social entrepreneurism as a new pathway for not-for-profit leadership, it also suggests entirely new initiatives and possibilities given the sustainable value as a model that it contributes, whether at the local community or global, societal level. The chapter, therefore, opens the door for a rich array of new graduate research and study