Northwestern State University

ABSTRACT Elite youth sport increasingly demands year-round participation, yet family-level impacts remain under-researched. This study examined the impact of elite club volleyball on key areas of family functioning among 446 parents nationwide. Nearly all athletes (96%) specialized in volleyball, with 90% starting before age 14. Most families (88%) reported substantial time demands and 62% spent over $5,000 annually. While parent-athlete relationships strengthened (81%), spousal relationships (12%) and sibling activities (41%) were negatively affected. Higher parental stress correlated with perceived excessive club expectations and negative family outcomes. Financial burden predicted relationship strain independently of stress. Findings reveal that elite club volleyball restructures family systems, strengthening some relationships while straining others. Critical gaps remain in coach education programs. As youth sport continues to evolve, coach education programs should be intentional about broadening the scope of their curriculum to address the challenges of today’s elite youth sport parent.

Instructional supervision has become more developmentally oriented, and coaching focuses on supporting teacher professional growth and instructional improvement. This qualitative study explored the lived experiences of instructional leaders and teachers in implementing the GROW Model (Goal, Reality, Options, Way Forward) as a framework for instructional supervision. Anchored in Moustakas' transcendental phenomenological approach, the study investigated how participants perceived and experienced GROW Model based supervision in relation to professional growth, reflective practice, instructional performance and implementation challenges. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with purposively selected instructional leaders and teachers from public schools of Division of Tangub City implementing GROW-based supervision. Phenomenological data analysis involved epoche, horizonalization, thematic clustering, and the development of textural, structural, and composite descriptions. Findings revealed that the GROW Model was experienced as (a) a structured and systematic supervisory process, (b) a shift from evaluative to reflective and collaborative dialogue, (c) a catalyst for professional growth and teacher empowerment, (d) a mechanism for evidence-based instructional decision-making, and (e) a driver of instructional improvement with perceived positive learner engagement. Despite challenges related to time constraints, workload demands, and initial resistance, participants employed adaptive strategies such as flexible scheduling, trust-building, and integration of supervision into existing school structures. These strategies informed the development of transformative Action Plan aimed at sustaining reflective and context-responsive instructional supervision. The study concludes that the GROW Model offers a viable and meaningful framework for strengthening reflective supervision and continuous professional learning across diverse school contexts.

Cities are immense and extremely difficult to conceptualize, let alone model, and previousdigitally based efforts have often failed to capture the complexity and indeterminacy of urbanorganizations. Architects and designers have had trouble conceiving of techniques for examiningthese systems due to their large number of interacting micro-parts that evolve over time. We’vealso had difficulty finding workable planning strategies that operate in a more decentralizedmanner to accommodate the multiplicity of (often autonomous) urban decision makers. To thisend, an interdisciplinary team composed of an architect and urban designer, a computer scientist,and a mathematician, educator and learning technologist are researching and formulatingmethods of examining cities using the agent-based digital modeling program NetLogo.

Fuzzy logic is widely used in unmanned systems for reasoning and decision-making under uncertainty, but it has significant limitations. In particular, fuzzy logic violates the law of noncontradiction, the law of the excluded middle, and the Idempotent Laws when the relevant statements are nondichotomous. These violations suggest that fuzzy logic is not fully aligned with human intuition. We introduce a newly developed system called Earthling Logic, specifically designed to better mirror human reasoning, into the domain of unmanned systems technology. A comparative analysis shows that the difference in truth assignments between fuzzy logic and Earthling Logic can be as large as 0.5, highlighting substantial disparities. We argue that adopting Earthling Logic in unmanned systems could improve their reasoning abilities, making decision-making processes more intuitive and robust in uncertain conditions.

Microcontrollers have become an integral part in the areas of engineering and technology.These are being used in almost every application that requires a certain amount of intelligence.The application areas are expanded to industrial, medical, automotive, battery powered small devices and consumer electronics.This reinforces the essence of making sure that all engineering and technology students receive a basic understanding of microcontrollers.The students need to view it as a crucial hardware component.The industries are increasingly seeking graduates with appropriate background and training in microcontroller technology.Knowledge in this vital field will broaden the undergraduate experience of technology and significantly enhance the students' employment opportunities.Viewing the fact that there is and will be an ever-increasing demand for engineers and technologists in this field, Northwestern State University, at Natchitoches, Louisiana, introduced a one semester (3 credit-hour class and 1 credit-hour lab) course on Microcontrollers.In both our instruction and lab experiments we have selected the Microchip's PIC 16 & PIC18 microcontroller family devices, namely 16F84A, 16F54, 16F870 and 18F452 for obvious reasons.We have attempted to provide our graduates adequate knowledge to design, test and analyze basic microcontroller-based circuits using both assembly and high-level language programming.But it is neither sufficient nor in pace with our industry's latest state of development.Most notable reasons are the: nonavailability of (a) Text Book, (b) Experiment Book, and (c) Development Tools for both educators and students.Therefore, an educator must search here and there to complete and deliver each of his lessons adequately; thus, leaving the student feeling frustrated and unfulfilled in this course of study.This paper will intend to highlight difficulties and problems being faced in producing engineers & technologists who can be readily and respectfully absorbed in the careers as well as the plans and suggestions to overcome those problems.The course outline along with laboratory experiments will also be discussed.

This innovative practice WIP paper describes a novel metric for evaluating students' communication skills in engineering technology programs and provides guidance of how to improve them further. The ultimate objective of any academic engineering program is to prepare students to be ready for future industrial roles and challenges. According to the Engineering Competence Model [1]which was released by the American Association of Engineering Societies and the Department of Labor, this model describes the engineering competence that includes the personal effectiveness competencies, academic competencies, workplace competencies, industry-wide competencies, and industry-sector competencies. On one hand, the Zoomers (Generation Z) were born during the peak of internet and connectivity revolution era and live with tendency to and dependency on virtual sphere. Thus, this might be problematic once those students move to the next phase of their lives and commence their industrial career where performing different tasks requires excellent communication skills and involves full engagement in teamwork, client surveys, and feedback. On the other hand, the engineering technology workplace hosts a wide array of professionals who may be inhomogeneity and/or different in one way or another. Effective communication skills entail meticulous attention to details across all aspects, including forms, style, and context of communication, such as, high context vs low context communication, introvert vs extrovert communication, one directional vs rhetorical communication, virtual vs face-to-face communication, hierarchy communication consideration, and human factors (for example, emotions and psychology) vs machine factors. Thus, gaining informative awareness about all these topics is significantly beneficial. The main goal of this research is to develop an evaluation metric that can be systematically used to continuously assess and develop the students' communication skills in the Engineering Technology programs. The proposed metric may include self-reported surveys and/or structured case scenarios interviews. In addition, the integration and utilization of the gained skills will be investigated, and the best practices shall be recommended. These practices will be shared with the workforce and their feedback sought for further refinement.

PURPOSE: To investigate the effects of short-term Hatha Vinyasa yoga on musculoskeletal adaptations of the upper body and trunk in healthy adults. METHODS: Twenty-five healthy adults (X̅ ± SD; Yoga: N = 13, age = 23 ± 4 yrs, body mass = 78.4 ± 15.2 kg; Con: N = 12, age = 23 ± 5 yrs, body mass = 77.2 ± 17.6 kg) volunteered for this study. Pre and Post 8 weeks of the yoga (2, 1-hour classes/week) or control (Con) period of activity maintenance, participants performed the ACSM pushup test and Dual-energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DXA) measured right arm bone mineral content (BMC) and trunk lean mass (LM). Repeated measures ANOVAs (2x2; group x time) were used for analyses. When appropriate, follow-up analyses included paired and independent samples t-tests with Bonferroni corrections. Effect sizes were reported as partial eta squared (ηp2) and Cohen’s d. Alpha was set at 0.05. RESULTS: There was an interaction for right arm BMC (p = 0.047, ηp2 = 0.16). The yoga group improved from Pre to Post (200.5 ± 37.9 to 204.7 ± 39.6 g; p = 0.049, d = 0.11), but not the Con group (199.0 ± 50.0 to 198.0 ± 49.5 g; p = 0.527, d = -0.02). There was an interaction for trunk LM (p = 0.001, d = 0.37). The yoga group improved from Pre to Post (27.5 ± 5.7 to 28.2 ± 5.8 kg; p = 0.001, d = 0.13), but not the Con group (28.2 ± 7.3 to 27.9 ± 7.1 kg; p = 0.213, d = -0.04). For the ACSM pushup test, there was no significant interaction (p = 0.077), but there was a medium effect size (ηp2 = 0.13). There was no group effect (p = 0.452), but there was a time effect (Pre = 23.6 ± 13.9 reps, Post = 26.8 ± 11.4 reps; p = 0.012, ηp2 = 0.25). Although there was no group effect, the effect size was moderate for the Yoga group from Pre to Post (20.8 ± 13.4 to 25.9 ± 10.5 reps; d = 0.43), but trivial for the Con group (26.7 ± 14.4 to 27.7 ± 12.6 reps; d = 0.07). CONCLUSIONS: Positive musculoskeletal improvements, such as improved right arm BMC and increased trunk lean mass, were observed in healthy adults following a short 8-week Hatha Vinyasa yoga intervention that incorporated repeated upper body loading and controlled dynamic movements with isometric postures that required trunk stability. Although groups were not different at post testing for the ACSM pushup test, the larger effect sizes for the yoga group compared to the Con group may suggest Hatha Vinyasa yoga practice has the ability to improve upper body physical performance.

The restoration of culturally significant landscapes poses formidable challenges given more than 160 years of settler‐colonial land use change and a rapidly changing climate. A novel approach to these challenges braids Indigenous and western scientific knowledge. This case study braids Indigenous plant knowledge, species distribution models (SDMs), and climate models to inform restoration of the Bear River Massacre site in Idaho, now stewarded by the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation. MaxEnt SDMs were used to project the future spatial distribution of culturally significant plant species under medium (SSP2‐4.5) and high (SSP5‐8.5) emissions scenarios. These results support Tribal revegetation priorities and approaches, identified by tradeoffs between each species' current and future suitability. This research contributes to a knowledge‐braiding approach to the analysis of climate risks, vulnerabilities, and restoration possibilities for Indigenous‐led restoration projects by using the Wuda Ogwa ecological restoration site as a case study.

Intelligent control techniques are increasingly assuming vital roles in contemporary unmanned systems. While Boolean logic, probability theory, and fuzzy logic stand out as widely used reasoning methods for intelligent control, they do come with their own set of limitations. To address these constraints associated with existing reasoning methods, we introduce a novel inference system called Earthling Logic (EL) into the domain of intelligent control. Within the framework of EL, all events are treated as statements with varying degrees of truth, referred to as credibility or truth value, which accommodates both vagueness and randomness as specific attributes. We can establish the existence of this credibility under broad and general conditions. Furthermore, we have developed analytically simple and computationally efficient techniques for deducing the credibility of statements based on the credibility of their premises. To illustrate the practical applicability of EL, we propose the Earthling Logic Control framework for unmanned systems.