Lane Community College

How does this project help to understand the challenges of workforce development in the commercial building energy management industry? The purpose of this project was to create a replicable, scalable, and portable apprenticeship program for building energy management and controls. This paper will demonstrate how local processes can be more adaptable and inclusive than federal processes in achieving workforce development goals. Our work provides insights into the technical effectiveness of the program, enabling others to achieve greater success in their workforce development initiatives. The project required more time and financial resources than initially anticipated and spent a year in a no-cost extension working to accomplish the Statement of Project Objectives. The original goal was to create an Industry Related Apprenticeship Program (IRAP). The development of this apprenticeship presented challenges due to the lack of existing programs for reference and the absence of relevant industry classification codes by the Department of Labor (DOL). Notably, the role of a commercial building energy analyst is not recognized by the DOL. The SIC (industry codes) do not have a good description of this job. There are many that may fall into related categories, but none are the actual duties of an energy analyst. Discussions with the DOL indicated that substantial groundwork was necessary before a national apprenticeship program could be implemented, causing delays in the program’s commencement. As a result, students experienced longer wait times before starting their apprenticeship component. The apprenticeship program officially launched on September 14, 2021. The success of the State of Oregon’s apprenticeship program, the first of its kind in the state, underscored the flexibility and effectiveness of local initiatives compared to federal efforts. The COVID-19 pandemic also significantly impacted the project’s success. Beginning in March 2020, the pandemic led to widespread closures of schools and colleges by fall 2020. By September 2021, when the apprenticeship option became available, enrollment in colleges and universities nationwide had decreased, affecting student participation in the program. Moreover, as employers transitioned their employees to remote work, there was limited interaction with external personnel, influencing the willingness of training agents (employers) to integrate additional workers into their teams. This paper addresses several challenges encountered during the project, with the hope that future workforce development efforts will benefit from these experiences. We Final Technical Report 4 | Page encourage others to engage with state and federal agencies to enhance and update pathways for workforce development and apprenticeship programs.

Combinatorial proofs of binomial identities involve establishing an identity by arguing that each side enumerates a certain set of outcomes. In this paper, we share results from interviews with experienced provers (mathematicians and upper-division undergraduate mathematics students) and examine one particular aspect of combinatorial proof, namely the kinds of contexts that experienced provers used to establish combinatorial proofs of binomial identities. Our findings show that overall, our participants used a variety of contexts in their work; we also demonstrate ways in which previous experiences influenced the contexts they chose, and we offer some instances in which features of a context supported their combinatorial proof production. We offer some theoretical implications of our work, and we conclude with a discussion of limitations and avenues for future work.

More often than not, faculty have limited opportunities to interact with colleagues that teach similar classes at nearby institutions. Particularly in regions with many institutions and institution types within a close geographic area, these interactions can be important to support student transfer between institutions. Increasingly, our students do not go to just one institution for the UG degrees but transfer from one to many different institutions over the course of their degree. The development of a regional network was our solution to this problem. The aim of the Northwest Biosciences Consortium (NWBC) was a broad implementation of the Vision & Change recommendations with two emphases: (1) incorporation of Vision and Change recommendations into the introductory biology curriculum for majors and non-majors, and (2) curricular support for students transitioning between and within institutions. We describe how these objectives shaped the development of the NWBC along with other formative factors, the lessons we learned from this work, and recommendations regarding the development of a regional faculty network.

Higher education often implements tightly controlled group interventions to help support struggling student groups succeed in college. Insulation of underprepared students for “academic benefit” is prevalent and isolates students until they fulfill a defined curriculum. Evidence for invasive, targeted, and culturally relevant interventions in student learning certainly exists. However, colleges need a balanced approach to student academic progress. Insular/Integration outlines the strength in identifying and implementing strategies that support student needs, insulating at-risk students from the shocks and strains of entering college underprepared, while deliberately integrating students into college resources for success and engagement. This chapter focuses on using the insular/integration framework to develop network maps, success contracts, and policy additions/revisions for a purposeful retention configuration that strategically supports students and improves interdependence.

Student engagement can encompass many different levels of interaction. Whether it be between student and instructor, among students themselves, with the actual subject matter, or with the various resources and departments on campus, getting and keeping students engaged is a challenging proposition. Frequently, students say they fear speaking in public, being called upon in class, going to the whiteboard, and being singled out by an instructor. Collectively, these fears could be conceptualized as a wish or need for anonymity. Faculty have cited student actions such as participation, question asking, volunteering, office hour visits, and favorable body language as preferred behaviors. These preferences could be conceptualized as a wish or need for engagement.

Poster on the effect of math prerequisite courses on student success in introductory biology. Presented at the 2020 BIOME Institute: Cultivating Scientific Curiosity

Poster on math skill instruction in community colleges presented at the 2019 BioQUEST & QUBES Summer Workshop

This chapter explores how poetry engages our imagination in a manner that can facilitate caring. The argument here is that poetry may help some people develop habits of imagination that can be used to offer more effective and responsive caring action. The chapter’s journey begins with an exploration of what we mean by imagination and how it relates to the previous chapter on knowledge as well as how it connects to the concept of “play” and “playfulness.” We then address the role of imagination in care ethics with an emphasis on empathy and our selection of caring actions. Next, we discuss the role of imagination in poetry. The conclusion explores how poetry contributes to habits of identification, sustained uncertainty, and playfulness that altogether can lead to caring tact as the improvisational skill of responding to needs in new and varied circumstances.

In natural language processing, attention mechanism in neural networks are widely utilized. In this paper, the research team explore a new mechanism of extending output attention in recurrent neural networks for dialog systems. The new attention method was compared with the current method in generating dialog sentence using a real dataset. Our architecture exhibits several attractive properties such as better handle long sequences and, it could generate more reasonable replies in many cases.