The Relationship Between College Football Success and College Admissions

In a 2010 paper, Yiming Wang attempted to use mathematical methods of evaluation to examine the advertising affect issue yet again, arguing that many previous studies which found positive relationships between football programs’ success and incoming SAT scores were flawed and statistically insignificant. Using quantitative linear regression, Wang specifically reexamines the data from Tucker’s 2005 study and concludes that there is, in fact, no statistically significant evidence for the advertising effect of college football on universities’ academic success. He concludes that the perceived improvements from Tucker’s research are a result of other factors and rely on school-specific factors, such as culture and tradition, alumni giving, and perceived reputation, rather than actual on field performances of the football program. 
Wang's research is important in that he uses statistical evidence (which is getting harder for me to decipher with time) to prove no advertising affect with a single great season. He does say in his conclusions that there is potential for change if there is a culture of winning for an athletic department. This research will be important in helping me develop a cost model for athletic programs.

·      Wang, Yiming Benjamin. (2010). “The Relationship Between College Football Success             and College Admissions.” Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences,             Northwestern University. 

Big-Time Pigskin Success: Is there an Advertising Effect?

Irvin Tucker, in a 2005 study, reexamined this issue by attempting to compare a school’s success in the modern era BCS system with the SAT scores of incoming freshmen applying to those schools. Tucker compared 78 colleges and universities around the United States by using a least squares regression method to compare and contrast their level of football success with their level of SAT scores. He concludes that there is a positive correlation and even goes so far as to make claims about how much a program’s football success can impact their academic future. Tucker, citing the data collected for the 78 institutions in his study, argues that 10% increase in a school’s winning percentage over a 5 year period will raise the average SAT scores of that school’s incoming freshmen by 14 points. Also, he claims that just one additional bowl appearance by that school’s football team in the same 5 year period will increase incoming average SAT scores by another 12 points.  
These findings are exciting to me because they establish an advertising effect with successful football programs and higher quality students. Tucker's research will be a very important resource for me in the future.

·      Tucker, Irvin B. (2005). “Big-Time Pigskin Success: Is There an Advertising Effect?”             Journal of Sports Economics 6(2): 222-229.

A Reinvestigation of the Relationship Between Big-Time Basketball Success and Average SAT Scores

In 1993, Irvin Tucker and Louis Amato expanded on McCormick and Tinsley’s research, looking at similar institutions to draw their own conclusions. They found that McCormick and Tinsley’s article was valid, and reaffirmed their findings, concluding that universities with higher ranked basketball programs saw applications from freshman with higher SAT scores than those universities with lower ranked programs. They concluded that there is a valid advertising effect if there is a tradition of major hoop success over time that creates a wider and higher quality applicant pool (which gives universities more opportunity to select the best). 
This is important to my research because it draws a positive correlation to long term basketball success and higher quality applicants. I hope to see this same finding with football.

·      Tucker, Irvin B., and Louis Amato. (1993). “Does Big-Time Success in Football or             Basketball Affect SAT Scores?” Economics of Education Review 12(2): 177-181.

College Football and Student Quality: an Advertising Effect or Culture and Tradition?

In 2009, D. Randall Smith published an article in which he proposed that the previous studies were all too broad in their scope and arrived at different interpretations because they were all using different data and could not agree on standard measures of academic or athletic success. Attempting to remedy this, Smith proposed a more methodological approach by breaking down “success” into measureable categories, such as “December bowl appearance, “season winning percentage”, “national championship victories”, etc,  compared data for all these individual categories with SAT scores of incoming freshmen. Smith found statistical support for every category but one, appearing on the surface to support the claim that football programs have a real, measurable impact on the average SAT scores of incoming applicants. However, he also presents some different ideas to think about and claims that other factors may be attributable to this rise in SAT scores. Smith points out that schools who pay their profesors an average salary of $90,000 a year increase their incoming class’ SAT profile by 130 points, schools who keeps costs under $35,000 have a 32 point increase, and institutions classified nationally as research universities receive another 129 point increase in their SAT profile. According to his findings, he determines that while some students chose schools based on athletics, most are driven by more traditional evaluations of factors such as academic reputation, faculty, and cost of attendance. Smith concludes that while some earlier data and even his own research appears to show a correlation between football success and academic prosperity on the surface, investing in academic measures rather than athletics is a much better way for universities to raise the stock of their students and creates much stronger results for them in the long run. 

·      Smith, D. Randall. (2009). “College Football and Student Quality: An Advertising Effect or

Culture and Tradition?” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 68(2): 553-579.

EPA Advisories for Fish Containing Mercury

This website discusses the amount of fish a person should consume and which fish a person should avoid. Pregnant women are advised to severely limit their intake of fish. There is a list of commonly asked questions as well so that people understand how dangerous mercury is and where more information could be found. The EPA also has links for state advisories, which may be stricter than the Federal advisories. This article explains in common language bioaccumulation and that larger fish are more likely to contain larger amounts of mercury. It is a good reference point for quick knowledge. Since the Environmental Protection Agency is considered an extension of the Federal Government and therefore the advice contained on this website should be held in a high regard.


"What You Need to Know about Mercury in Fish and Shellfish | Outreach & Communication | US EPA." Index | Water | US EPA. Environmental Protection Agency, 11 Mar. 2011. Web. 11 May 2011. <http://water.epa.gov/scitech/swguidance/fishshellfish/outreach/advice_index.cfm>

Literature Review

            In her article “The Winnowing of Wildness: On First Book Contests and Style,” poet Beth Ann Fennelly points out that having a mature, unified voice has value in the poetic world. As first book contests take over the publishing of first books, books that project that single, consistent voice have a better chance of catching the eye of a judge. Fennelly makes an interesting comparison between chefs, who have ten years to master their craft and another ten to develop a signature style, and poets, who have the amount of time that it takes to get their degree to master their craft, and now seem to be expected to have developed a unique voice in their first book. As a young poet, this presents a problem. Should I hurry to develop a cohesive voice to meet the pressures of the poetry world, or should I resist those pressures for as long as possible to avoid “winnowing [my] style before it has fully developed” (Fennelly 54)? I believe that I should, as Fennelly advises, “learn to demand the time necessary for style to emerge naturally and fully” (54). Experimenting with various styles and forms will expand my knowledge and mastery of my craft, and through spending time mastering the craft of poetry, a true innate voice will arise naturally.

            One of the major pressures on young poets to narrow their diversity so quickly comes from the first book contest. When a young poet submits a book to a first book contest, the book goes through several rounds of readings. First, the contest host will hire other young poets, often grad students, to perform the first round of readings. Fennelly believes that “first books that can be grasped quickly by those doing the preliminary judging. . . are more likely to be passed on to the final judge,” who is usually an established poet (54). This means that, in order to successfully begin their book publishing career with a first book contest, young poets often must spend years working on their first book until, as Eavan Boland points out in her article “Warning, Witness, Presence,” that book “is not truly a first book at all. It is a second book. It may even have elements of a third in it” (55). Boland believes that losing the true first book is actually a problem, since the first book “says so much about the resources of a poetic moment” (55). Beyond simply the loss of truly mature voices that Fennelly warns against, Boland fears that this trend among young poets toward project books has the potential to impoverish the entire movement of young poets.

            However, the project book itself is not necessarily a bad thing. There are wonderful project books out there. Joel Brouwer collected a list of some of them for his blog post “Boox”: Installations, by Joe Bonomo; Centuries, by Joel Brouwer; Overlord, by Jorie Graham; Bellocq’s Ophelia, by Natasha Trethewey; and many more. A good project book can be incredibly difficult to write and very rewarding to read. Young poets who attempt to write a project for the sake of winning a first book contest face the prospect of writing a book that feels gimmicky instead of well developed and full. A gimmicky book would be the result of coming up with several arbitrary rules for a manuscript in an attempt to be noteworthy and stand out. Yet Brouwer finds that “poets more and more these days conceive of writing projects and then write poems to fulfill these projects, as opposed to writing poems and later attempting to discern what projects, if any, the poems have made manifest.” If I sacrifice poem quality for the sake of a project, that is not a good thing. This does not simply mean that I should not worry about the way that I construct a collection. Robert Frost supposedly once said that in a book of twenty-four poems, the book itself is the twenty-fifth poem. He was not talking about concept books, but instead meant that collections of poems should be ordered in a way that gives every individual poem a reason for being in the collection.

Aging Well

Here is my Abstract for Scholars Day, any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!


Currently, the elderly population is receiving more attention due to the aging of the baby boomer population. Innovative ways of enhancing the elderly’s wellness have been introduced with research and services focusing on improving physical activity, nutrition, and increasing social interaction and involvement. A gap in service delivery for the elderly and thus absent from current research efforts is the impact of service learning and charitable work by elders. Data will be collected using survey methodology to determine the impact of this important and beneficial activity. The purpose is to determine the impact of these activities on the elderly’s wellness. By allowing them to be involved in their community, through this involvement it may lead them to have a more positive outlook on life, spark their interest in continuing to learn, and also reduce certain stressors that come with aging. 

Study of Thermal Properties of Irradiation-induced Stainless Steels Used in the Development of Nuclear Reactors

This is my abstract for scholars day. Please, feel free to add any comments or corrections. Thank you!

In the development of nuclear power reactors, the use of metals able to withstand high temperatures and induced radiation is paramount. Molecular decomposition, embrittlement and swelling at the grain level of such materials are a consequence of intense neutron bombardment. Materials such as stainless steel T91 and oxide dispersed steel (ODS) are widely used in nuclear reactors. Mechanical and thermal properties at the grain level of these materials under irradiation have not been sufficiently demonstrated, for which the understanding and modeling of such parameters may lead to better maintenance of nuclear power plants, further development of newer materials and alloys, and material failure prediction. The purpose of this research is to further investigate the conduction of stainless steels at the grain level when subjected to intense radiation and high temperatures for efficient heat exchanger design and prediction of material failure.

Cultural competency in the learning environment: promoting the development of diversity training for pre-service educators

Introduction/Abstract

            Anti-gay bias among teachers within early stages of education can have lasting effects on students identifying as LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, and Questioning), particularly in terms of hate crime victimization.  Pre-service teachers throughout the country currently have no regulated courses within their curriculum that focus specifically on diversity issues, specifically LGBTQ individuals and the sexual minority as a whole.  Moreover, teachers do not receive diversity training to promote a culturally competent learning environment.  This creates a gap in that the students they teach are not challenged to embrace diversity and the teachers are not equipped to deliver such an environment.  This study will utilize a Systematic Research Synthesis methodology to explore two themes in the literature: victimization and education.  The purpose is to develop a literature search that supports the need for pre-service teachers to be educated on diversity and to identify evidence-based educational practices with this population.

LGBTQ Youth

            Although gaps exist regarding pre-service educator knowledge of minority groups in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, and religion, the sexual minority remains one of the most prominently overlooked minority groups within diversity education (Wyatt, Oswalt, White, & Peterson, 2008).  Because of this lack of education regarding the everyday personal struggles of LGBTQ youth, administrators and teachers are often incapable of providing needed support to those students who are most often victims of bullying and hate crimes due to their perceived sexual orientation.  In a study conducted to synthesize statistics of bullying and victimization of LGBTQ youth, researchers found that LGBTQ youth are twice as likely to be both sexually and physically abused by family members than heterosexual youth between middle school and high school (Saewyc,et al, 2006).  Abuse within schools as well as in the community often leads to LGBTQ youth being most prominent among populations of runaways, homeless, juvenile delinquents, foster kids, and have an increased risk of poor mental health; these individuals tend to experience higher rates of depression, anxiety disorders, behavior problems, drop-out rates, and sexual promiscuity as well.  (Chesir-Teran & Hughes, 2009).  As schools continue to be the setting in which LGBTQ students are most vulnerable to attacks from their peers, the importance of educating future teachers and administrators regarding victimization intervention techniques as well as recognizing “red flags” of abuse continues to rise as sexual minority teens continue to come to terms with their sexual orientation.

The Role of the Educator

            The general knowledge of pre-service educators in regards to the sexual minority and LGBTQ students has been brought to light due to the immense impact educators have upon their students based on their own viewpoints.  The issue at hand is simply if educators do not have a full understanding of LGBTQ students, is it possible for them to educate their own students in cultural diversity and ideas of acceptance. Within a study among pre-service educators in Central and Southern Texas, the candidates showed fairly negative attitudes toward homosexuals - primarily toward gay men rather than lesbian women – yet 69.2% felt they were “moderately informed and educated” regarding the sexual minority (Wyatt, Oswalt, White, & Peterson, 2008).  With educators entering school systems possessing what they feel is a moderate understanding of the sexual minority, LGBTQ students are placed into unsafe situations within schools as  the administrators and teachers expected to provide protection and support for them are unaware of the threat of bullying and victimization faced everyday by a majority of LGBTQ youth. 

A study of attitudes and beliefs of pre-service educators and counselors throughout America revealed that 83% of those surveyed found it “acceptable to ignore slurs against LGBT youngsters” and most completely lacked the experience and knowledge to deal with social issues within schools in general (Rogers & O’Bryon, 2008).  This resulted in 3 out of every 4 students surveyed reporting they had experienced some form of verbal or physical harassment within the past year but felt administrators and teachers did not find it necessary to intervene.  With new educators possessing little to no knowledge of the sexual minority and daily struggles of LGBTQ youth, these students are essentially losing the support system most important in regards to keeping them in school and working toward attaining an education.

The Viewpoint of a Student

            Educators may be expected to maintain a fully unbiased classroom environment, however students identifying as LGBTQ often report their teachers not abiding by anti-bullying standards corresponding directly with victimization of homosexual students.  In a study of students’ perceptions of their school’s administration in regards to general anti-bullying policies, awareness programs, and follow-through with preventing victimization, a majority of those surveyed responded that they were unaware of specific policies targeted toward creating a supportive environment for LGBTQ students.  Participants reported having experienced an array of harassment and abuse ranging from verbal to physical that correlated directly with the existence (or perceived existence) of anti-bullying policies focused on LGBTQ students (Chasir-Teran & Hughes, 2009).  In this sense, bullying occurred at a lower rate within schools that upheld anti-victimization rules and policies as well as within schools in which students believed these policies existed, regardless of whether or not they were actually intact and upheld.

            The idea of “heterosexism” refers to the general process of privileging heterosexual individuals (particularly students) over their homosexual peers.  This ideal stems from a lack of LGBTQ support within administrative staff and educators alike, as well as a failure to promote support from peers through programs such as the Gay-Straight Alliance clubs found within some high schools.  (Chesir-Teran, 2009) In various areas of the country, GSA groups are banned from being created completely due to a lack of support from the community as well as the parents of a majority of students attending the schools.  Heterosexism has the power to create a rift between heterosexual and homosexual students which can disillusion heterosexual youth with stereotypes and stigmas while isolating LGBTQ students that need support while making decisions regarding their own lifestyles and personal identities.

Existing Policies and Procedures Regarding Diversity Training

            Various programs have been attempted within the past decade in order to educate future teachers about the sexual minority and LGBTQ students, but few have resulted in a noticeable change in the knowledge possessed by pre-service educators.  A majority of these diversity programs have specifically focused on the at-risk population of LGBTQ students – those just coming to terms with their sexual orientation and experiencing frequent bullying – rather than general prevention of victimization and bullying of sexual minority students.  Research has began to uncover various “setting-level predictors” which can be used to prevent anti-LGBTQ victimization and harassment by taking into account what causes the bullying and therefore what can be done to prevent it from occurring in the future (Chesir-Teran & Hughes, 2009).  The main observed issue is that either schools have relatively no policies regarding anti-LGBTQ bullying, or they have the policies intact but do not follow through with them with the creation of inclusive school programs and groups which would provide students with necessary support to stop victimization and begin accepting LGBTQ students.

Future Work and Prospects

            School programs used to spread an anti-bullying message are being rewritten and reprogrammed in order to become up-to-speed with the ever changing social culture of varying levels of school and the changing populations of students.  A newly-developed anti-harassment program focuses on the specific needs of students at varying levels of harassing others or being harassed themselves rather than blanketing a program to effect only at-risk LGBTQ students.  Within this program, the Primary Prevention focuses on all students and creates a general knowledge and understanding of the sexual minority, the Secondary Prevention targets at-risk students who may have experienced victimization but not to a great extent, and the Tertiary Prevention focuses on students already experiencing a great deal of bullying and harassment due to their sexual orientation (Fisher et. al, 2008).  With this education program, students are grouped according to their individual needs rather than being compiled into a group of generalized youth, resulting in a more cohesive school environment encouraged by knowledge of social issues and bullying threats that affect not only the at-risk sexual minority students but their heterosexual counterparts as well.

 

Oesterle, S, Hawkins, J, Fagan, A, Abbott, R, & Catalano, R. (2010). Testing the universality of

 the effects of the communities that care prevention system for preventing adolescent

 drug use and delinquency. Society for Prevention Research, 11, 411-423.

(Oesterle, Hawkins, Fagan, Abbott & Catalano, 2010)

Rubin, A, & Babbie, E. (2008). Research methods for social work. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole,

 Cengage Learning.

Wyatt, T, Oswalt, S, White, C, & Peterson, F. (2008). Are tomorrow's teachers ready to deal with

             diverse students?. Teacher Education Quarterly, 171-185

Kosciw, J. G. and Diaz, E. M. (2006). The 2005 National School Climate Survey: The

experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth in our nation's schools. New York: GLSEN.

Rogers, M, & O'Bryon, E. (2008). Advocating for social justice: the context for change in school

 psychology. School Psychology Review, 37(4), 493-498.

Fisher, E, Komosa-Hawkins, K, Saldana, E, Thomas, G, & Hsiao, C. (2008). Promoting school

            success for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning students: primary,

            secondary, and tertiary prevention and intervention strategies. The California School

            Psychologist, 13, 79-91.

Woodiel, K, Angermeier-Howard, L, & Hobson, S. (2003). School safety for all: using the

            coordinated school health program to increase safety for lgbtq students. American

             Journal of Health Studies, 18(2/3), 98-103.

Chesir-Teran, D, & Hughes, Diane. (2009). Heterosexism in high school and victimization

among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and questioning students. J. Youth Adolescence, 38, 963-975.

Saewyc, E, Skay, C, Pettingell, S, Reis, E, & Bearinger, L. (2006). Hazards of stigma: the sexual

and physical abuse of gay, lesbian, and bisexual adolescents in the united states and canada. Child Welfare League of America, 195-213.

The Lack of Knowledge Concerning the Empididae of Navarino Island

The Lack of Knowledge Concerning the Empididae of Navarino Island

            The flies of the family Empididae and the aquatic invertebrates of Navarino Island, Chile, are researched far less in comparison to other aquatic flies and vertebrate species, respectively. By studying the Empididae of Navarino Island, new information could be acquired both for the fields of taxonomy and freshwater ecology.

            The family Empididae is composed of small, predaceous flies, commonly referred to as “dance flies” due to their courtship displays. While not all of the species have aquatic life stages, around 660 species do have aquatic larvae and pupae (Wagner, 2008).  These aquatic larvae are important to their ecosystems both as predators and prey, feeding on smaller insects and being eaten by larger organisms. While these larvae have potential to be used as indicators for the health of the streams they live in, so few larvae have been linked to their adult forms that there is almost no way to identify them to the species level (MacDonald, 1999). Due to this, the family does not appear in nearly as much literature as other aquatic flies such as Chironomidae which are well described in all stages. Because this is coupled with the decline of taxonomists specializing in aquatic flies (Wagner, 2007), the family Empididae seems unlikely to be seen as useful for stream ecologists to study unless major developments are made in the identification of its species.
            Navarino Island, Chile, is part of the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve and contains the Robalo watershed, one of the most pristine watersheds in the world (Anderson, 2007). This island contains the southernmost city in the world, Puerto Williams, and is considered to be in the sub-Antarctic ecoregion. While the vertebrates of the region, both native and invasive, have been heavily researched, little is currently known about the freshwater invertebrates (Moorman, 2006). This difference in attention may be attributed to the vertebrates being more “charismatic” and gaining the researchers more funding, but it creates problems due to the invertebrates typically playing a larger role in the healthy functions of streams than vertebrates do.

While the Empididae of the general area around Navarino Island area have been described (Collin, 1933), it has been a long time and the phylogeny of the family has greatly changed in recent years (Plant, 2011). The area is not predicted to have a large species diversity (Plant, 2011), and recent studies that identified down to the genus level found only one genera among several watersheds (Moorman, 2006). But, several new species have been identified in the last ten years around the world and it is possible that, due to the number of endemic aquatic insect species that are found in the area, some species of Empididae there may have been misidentified.

The matching of known adult species to their corresponding larvae could turn the Empidiade of the region into potential tools for stream quality assessment. It may be possible to match the adults and larvae using genetic tests, as this has been successful in the past (MacDonald 1999).Samples have been gathered for the last three years from the Robalo watershed to be analyzed and used as baseline data to compare against in the future (Contador, unpublished). If the Empididae from these samples can be identified to all developmental levels, they can be used as references for species diversity along with the better-known families.

Anderson, C.B. and Amy D. Rosemond, 2007. Ecosystem Engineering by invasive exotic beavers reduves in-stream diversity and enhances ecosystem function in Cape Horn, Chile. Ecosystem Ecology, 154: 141-153.

Collin, J. E., 1933. Diptera of Patagonia and South Chile, Based Mainly on Material in the   British Museum (Natural History); Part IV -- Empididae.

Contador, Tamara. Unpublished Material.

MacDonald, John F., and James R. Harkrider. Differentiation of Larvae of Metachela Coquillett and Neoplasta Coquillett (Diptera:Empididae:Hemerodromiinae) Based on Larval Rearing, External Morphology, and Ribosomal DNA Fragment Size. Journal of the North American Benthological Society 18: 414-419.

Moorman, M.C., C.B. Anderson, A. Gutiérrez, R. Charlin, & R. Rozzi, 2006. Watershed
conservation and aquatic benthic macroinvertebrate diversity in the Alberto D’Agostini
National Park, Tierra del Fuego, Chile. The Anales 34: 41-58.

Plant, Adrian R., 2011. Hemerodromiinae (Diptera: Empididae): a tentative

phylogeny and biogeographical discussion. Systematic Entomology, 36: 83-103.

Wagner, R., Bartàk, M., Borkent, A., Courtney, G., Goddeeris, B., Haenni, J.-P.,

Knutson, L., Pont, A., Rotheray, G.E., Rozkosny, R., Sinclair, B., Woodley, N.,

Zatwarnicki, T., Zwick, P., 2008. Global diversity of dipteran families (Insecta

Diptera) in freshwater (excluding Simulidae, Culicidae, Chironomidae, Tipulidae

and Tabanidae). Hydrobiologia 595, 489-519.

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This paper has been a challenge for me, mostly because of the lack of information out there about the region/family. That lack of information has become the topic of the paper, more or less, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing. If I can find more information in the next few weeks, this paper could change quite a bit. If not, I'll just be expanding on this.