Letter from the Director

There is limited empirical evidence on the extent to which perceived public stigma prevents individuals from using mental health services, despite substantial recent policy interest in this issue. This study investigated associations between perceived public stigma and mental health care seeking. This study used cross-sectional survey data from a representative sample of undergraduate and graduate students (N=2,782) at one university. A five-item scale was used to assess perceived public stigma toward mental health service use. Perceived need for help in the past 12 months and current presence of depressive and anxiety disorders were also assessed. Perceived stigma was higher among males, older students, Asian and Pacific Islanders, international students, students with lower socioeconomic status backgrounds, and students with current mental health problems. Perceived stigma was also higher among those without any family members or friends who had used mental health services and among those who believed that therapy or medication is not very helpful. Perceived stigma was negatively associated with the likelihood of perceiving a need for mental health services, but only among younger students. Among those with probable depressive or anxiety disorders, there was no evidence that perceived stigma was associated with service use. These results suggest that, at least in this population, perceived stigma may not be as important a barrier to mental health care as the mental health policy discourse currently assumes.

This research explores how child protection is constructed through performance measurement, and how the selection and reporting of performance indicators influences policy and practice. Performance measurement is now a mainstay of public sector management. At one level, it has a role in addressing ever-present questions about the quality and effectiveness of child protection services. However, there are concerns about assessing performance within a management framework, rather than a professional or client-centred framework. Therefore, the thesis aims to critically engage with the problems and potential of performance measurement in child protection with a view to maximising its capacity to promote better outcomes for children and families. It focuses particularly on the role of family support, because despite its proclaimed importance in legislation and policy, in practice family support work remains marginalised, situated 'outside' core child protection work. The research approaches performance measurement from a critical policy perspective, in which indicators have both technical and policy functions. While performance measurement may be viewed rationally as a means for government to manage resources, from a broader policy perspective the way it is conceptualised and implemented has major consequences for service delivery. The policy significance of performance measurement is explored through two studies. The first study analyses developments in policy and practice in three jurisdictions: England, Victoria (Australia) and Queensland (Australia). This analysis contrasts the prominent position of family support in child protection legislation and policy, with its marginal position in both practice and performance measurement. It outlines the socio-political context for performance measurement in child protection, drawing out the values and power relations embedded in performance indicators that give them a role in communicating policy intent. The study concludes that performance measurement in all three jurisdictions is directing policy attention (and therefore resources) towards investigation and out-of-home care, largely ignoring family support. The second study moves beyond the policy critique to more concrete concerns about how to reconstruct performance measurement in child protection to encompass family support indicators. Using a survey method, it seeks to describe and analyse the practice of family support in one jurisdiction (Queensland) according to a performance measurement model of inputs, outputs, processes and outcomes. It concludes that useful performance data can be collected to aid understanding of the contribution of family support to the overall child protection system. Such data will help to move family support beyond assumptions about its value, towards empirical scrutiny of its methods and results. It suggests that family support will command greater policy attention if included in the child protection performance measurement effort. The thesis concludes that viewed from a critical policy perspective, performance measurement can be harnessed in the interests of good practice. It can assist with the repositioning of family support, moving it from the realm of unproblematic moral goodness to more critical inquiry. It argues there is nothing inherently wrong with measuring effectiveness and efficiency, but it is important to examine the manner in which performance measurement is developed and implemented, its methods and consequences. Performance indicators are not neutral or merely technical. Establishing indicators can influence how social problems such as child abuse and neglect are defined, where resources are placed, what service types are funded, and how outcomes for children and families are defined. It questions the privilege performance indicators may be given within managerial approaches to government, as if they somehow provide an objective and unbiased account of how services are performing. However, this is not to suggest that performance indicators are worthless or meaninglessmrather that their meaning should be explicit, and their underpinning value stances debated within policy processes. Such debate will enhance the congruency between child protection research and indicators, and democratise the processes by which performance measures are developed, used and reported.

Research experiences for undergraduates have increased in availability at universities and government laboratories throughout the nation. Government agencies, universities and private donors support these activities with a variety of expectations, including providing a more skilled workforce, creating a greater emphasis on graduate education and increased retention of students in highly technical fields. While the value of these programs has been well-established, there is a paucity of empirically-based research on the various models and practices of these experiences that have the greatest impact on the students. The focus of this study was a National Science Foundation funded Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) program at a 4-year college in the Midwest funded for over 7 years. In a previous study we found that REU students interacted more frequently with graduate students than their faculty advisor while in the program. In this study we examined more closely the role of the graduate student mentors and how it directly influenced the REU student experience. Two data sources analyzed in this study were preand post-program surveys and semi-structured interviews, both administered to the REU students. Three main themes emerged from the data, including: 1) Academics and Careers, 2) Teaching and Learning, and 3) Building Relationships. When examining the nature of these interactions, 75% of REU students reported having influential experience with their graduate student mentors related to Academic Programs and Careers and 100% reported influential experiences related to Teaching and Learning and Building Relationships. In exploring Academic Programs and Careers further, many of the experiences were related directly to the undergraduates’ academic and career paths and exposure to graduate school and laboratory careers. In Teaching and Learning, REU students described various methods and strategies (i.e., demonstration, questioning, and discussion) the graduate students used to teach them about their research project. In regards to Building Relationships, the graduate students were described as mentors, collaborators, and supervisors. In summary, this research provides insight into role of the graduate student mentors in an REU program and how they directly influence undergraduate students experiences with engineering research, graduate school and careers while in the program.

Graduate students experience heightened levels of stress, compromising their well-being and predisposing them to mental health disorders. Graduate students are over six times more likely to experience depression and anxiety than the general population. Despite the presence of counseling services on college and university campuses, graduate students are less likely to access these services and more prone to utilize alternative institutional supports (i.e., faculty advisors or peer counselors). This pilot study assessed the effectiveness of a six-week solution focused wellness (SFW) group intervention with a graduate program cohort using a pre-post, mixed-methods design. A total of twenty-seven (N = 27) participants were included in the study. Results demonstrated significant differences in well-being, mental health, and perceived wellness between baseline and six-weeks for both the cohort group (n = 9) and the general wellness group (n = 18). ANCOVA revealed significant between-group differences for well-being and perceived wellness indicating that the cohort group improved more across wellness-specific variables. Three primary themes emerged from the qualitative data including: awareness of wellness needs, peer support, and multidimensional wellness. The aggregated results support the effectiveness of a cohort approach to graduate student wellness group implementation.

Edited by Olle Selinus, Brian Alloway, Jose A. Centeno, Robert B. Finkleman, Ron Fuge, Ulf Lindh, and Pauline Smedley Burlington, MA:Elsevier Academic Press, 2005. 812 pp. ISBN: 0-1263-6341-2, $99.95 cloth Emerging disease, pesticides, antibiotic resistance, heavy metals—every time we turn around it seems we face frightening new threats to the health of every living organism on our planet. In response, we have seen a dramatic increase in the development of new, transdisciplinary approaches including environmental medicine, conservation medicine, health social science, and One World, One Health—but medical geology? Readers will not have to get far into this book to become convinced that geologic expertise has much to contribute to our understanding of and response to global health issues. Medical geology, which examines the impacts of geologic materials and processes on human and ecosystem health including both natural and anthropogenic sources of potential health problems, includes animal and plant diseases. The editors set ambitious goals for this book, noting in the preface that this volume could be used as both a reference and a general textbook for a diverse audience including students, geoscientists, medics, decision makers, and the general public. The first section, “Environmental Biology,” builds from individual inorganic reactions to cells, organisms, and ecosystems, laying a sound foundation for the concepts to follow. For those with medical backgrounds, one of the most useful aspects is the very different view that geologists bring to health issues. This section builds a firm foundation for the subsequent chapters, intertwining geologic and biologic chapters. The second section, “Pathways and Exposures,” focuses primarily on “natural sources” of pollutants and their transport through air, water, and food chains and demonstrates the importance of unifying and integrating themes for understanding long-term, large-scale processes in ecosystem dynamics. Ecologic concepts are integrated with the epidemiologic and illustrated by real-world examples and experiments. Most chapters are fundamentally strong, but biologists may wish for deeper discussions of topics such as biologic magnification and effects on predatory species. The third section, “Environmental Toxicology, Pathways and Medical Geology,” includes a significant focus on epidemiology. This section is strong but repeats many basic principles (e.g., the metabolic handling of exogenous chemicals) and specific examples (e.g., discussions of arsenic, mercury, and lead) discussed in early chapters. The presence of contrasting explanations, opinions, and viewpoints can serve important didactic functions. Given that medically oriented authors wrote most of these chapters, this section may hold the most exciting ideas for the geologic readership. The last section, “Techniques and Tools,” is an excellent reminder of the breadth of applications included in medical geology. The discussions span imaging techniques from cellular to global and analytic methodologies from the molecular to tissue, watershed, and continental scales. Necessarily, many abstruse or cutting-edge techniques have not been included, but the medical audience will find relevance in those that are focused upon. This wide-ranging and challenging introduction is filled with wonderful and frightening examples from around the world. The amalgam of theoretical, ecologic, and clinical cases with discussions of policy is one of the book’s strongest points. The focus is primarily on human health, and although some examples involve domestic animals or plants, almost none address nonmammalian (especially nonvertebrate) species. Some chapters assume a fair degree of quantitative sophistication, so instructors should ensure that the text matches student abilities. Much of the material will excite students and involve them in analysis and discussion. Most chapters include a useful summary or conclusions, a list of related topics in other chapters, and a list of further reading, and many chapters emphasize a significant problem faced by researchers and policy makers working on the natural world. This tour de force has several great strengths, including the marvelously international contributors. More than a theoretical approach, this volume is packed with real-world examples, cases, and information from research, clinical, and policy perspectives. Excellent illustrations, graphs, and photographs also complement many chapters and add markedly to the value of the book. Unfortunately, repetition of key examples throughout the text has made the book a bit less useful than some readers might wish; more diversity might be desirable in later editions. For health specialists, graduate students, and the technically inclined, this book will be an invaluable resource. But it is a bit too large, technical, and imposing to be called “Essentials.” The editors might consider preparing an abbreviated introductory text to attract a wider audience. The book is a forceful reminder that we need more geologic input incorporated into health assessments, environmental toxicology studies, and planning and policy initiatives—as recent events on the Gulf Coast of the United States so strongly demonstrate.

PurposeThis paper aims to apply integrated academic literacies and threshold concepts constructs to the development of graduate student literacies. Western Washington University has developed a graduate peer-tutors program to advance integrated academic literacies and graduate student agency. Graduate peer-tutors are expert-outsiders (Nowacek and Hughes, 2015): expert in conversations about literacies and outsiders to disciplinary expertise. Peer-tutors augment a support ecosystem that includes faculty advisors, subject librarians and others. Libraries should lead innovative programs to develop integrated literacies, and librarians should leverage both subject and literacies expertise as part of an ecosystem of support.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on library, writing center and higher education scholarship, the author draws on research methodologies from writing center scholarship to explore models for integrated graduate student literacies. The author collaborates with graduate peer-tutors to connect theory and practice in the Graduate Research & Writing Studio (GRWS).FindingsPeer-tutor models offer a valuable layer of support for graduate students engaged in thesis-writing. Peer-tutors, faculty advisors and subject librarians play important roles in advancing development of integrated literacies. The role of peer-tutors is unique in advancing integrated literacies, and addressing affective barriers and equity concerns.Practical implicationsEconomic pressures have transformed higher education, ushering new populations into graduate programs. Opportunities to enhance inclusivity cannot be realized without support for development of literacies. Libraries should lead with innovative services that address barriers to graduate student success.Originality/valueThe author leverages the unique laboratory offered by the GRWS and engages graduate peer-tutors in connecting scholarship and practice. Drawing on contemporary theoretical lenses on literacies, she argues for libraries’ leadership of programs that support integrated graduate student literacies.

This paper applies narrative inquiry to the organising metaphors for reading and writing a qualitative thesis in adult education. Three perspectives are featured: methodologists and theorists; graduate students writing adult education theses; and faculty advisors who read and respond to graduate students' theses. My autobiographical account of writing two adult education theses and reading many graduate students' theses shapes my narrative inquiry into the interplay of metaphors between reader and writer. Practice-based exemplars explicate the dominant narrative genre and journey metaphors for organising theses. The inquiry traces readers and writers in a responsive, dialogical relationship characterised by restorying each other's metaphors using in-kind and different metaphors. I propose different organising metaphors for reading and writing qualitative research in the postmodern era. I re-place the journey-narrative genre of ‘beginning to ending’ with cartographies and storying/re-storying ‘in the middle’. Cartographies re-metaphorise the writing and reading of adult education theses and in the process adult educator authors are re-metaphorised as situated, bodily works-in-process.

In today’s Digital Age, content is one of the strongest bridges connecting businesses and customers, helping businesses interact and build strong relationships with their customers. To achieve that, the content creation and design process play an extremely important role. This article explored the content creation and design process and the current implementation of this process at small and medium-sized fashion enterprises in Hanoi.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to see the energy relation to economic growth and find a way to solve the energy crisis for Bangladesh. Bangladesh is facing a high rate depletion of traditional energy sources. Renewable energy technology may be an alternative solution to meeting Bangladesh’s rising energy demand. Despite huge potential, Bangladesh fails to use renewable energy sources properly due to insufficient information and technical knowledge. The present research studied the current energy condition and potentiality of renewable energy with its influence on economic growth in Bangladesh.Design/methodology/approachThis study analyzes the relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth of Bangladesh for the period of 2001–2016, based on yearly data, by using multiple regression model where augmented Dickey–Fuller unit root test has been chosen for testing the viability.FindingsThe result of this study showed that economic growth of Bangladesh is influenced positively by the consumption of renewable energy.Practical implicationsIn addition, SWOT analysis has also done to develop a roadmap, and suggest some policies which will be able to accomplish the country’s climbing energy demands for a short- and long-term solution.Originality/valueThis study is an original work for Bangladesh, showing the results of the relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth. Therefore, this research will be useful to contribute to the literature review in the near future.

IntroductionUnder the background of “basic top-notch 2.0” plan, taking the graduate students of Xiangya School of Basic Medical Sciences, Central South University as an example, to explore their current situations in life, academics, scientific research, and team collaboration, thereby offering insights for enhancing the quality of basic medical graduate education in China, achieving the plan’s objectives, and shaping relevant policies.MethodsAn online anonymous questionnaire was sent to graduate students of basic medicine majors in different grades of Xiangya School of Basic Medical Sciences, Central South University. The questionnaire included 24 questions covering different aspects of graduate life, and the data of 350 valid questionnaires were analyzed. The study reveals diverse academic backgrounds among basic medical graduate students, with nearly half (50%) originating from different disciplines.ResultsOver 14% of students reported encountering learning difficulties, and many tended to seek help from peers rather than supervisors due to limited communication with their advisors. Approximately 80% of graduate students had flexible time management, yet only 26% received sufficient stipends to cover daily expenses, with an equal proportion facing inadequate research funding. Academic engagement was moderate (54.7%), though some students demonstrated low participation enthusiasm. Notably, nearly one-third (33.3%) had no prior research experience before enrollment. While overall satisfaction with supervisors’ academic and research guidance was high (96.29%), senior students exhibited a slight decline in satisfaction. A strong preference for the teamwork environment was reported (86.57%), though the satisfaction of the graduating students with the team working atmosphere was somewhat lower. Finally, 20.86% expressed dissatisfaction with their overall graduate school experience.Discussion and conclusionData analysis revealed pertinent issues, serving as a reference for educational institutions across all levels in formulating policies, such as enhancing graduate student adaptation and academic experience, guiding graduate students to adapt to their specialties, establishing effective communication channels, reasonably managing their own time, boosting funding, constructing academic platforms, facilitating early scientific research collaborations, enhancing guidance, and fostering team building, among others, in order to improve the training model and mechanism and cultivate outstanding medical innovative talents.

Now, the Industry 4.0 has changed the way works the all process in industry and engineering. These changes affect in dramatic way in the training and learning worker's process. Either because the workers need to learn new technologies or skill, or because appear new technology that change the learning process in the very important way. The mixed reality applications like a tools int the worker's training process stay at risk because the actual tools to create mixed reality experiences are very complex and expensive. DesignMe-MR is a toolbox that aim to simplify the creation process of the mixed reality learning experiences to achieve decrease the cost to make the widespread implementation of mixed reality as a tool for operator training in any industry or engineering. DesignMe-MR use the mixed reality to help the mixed reality learning experiences creation process, making it a very useful tool for creators. The tests show a high level of user satisfaction in the application of mixed reality both in the content creation process and in the execution of the resulting training

English-as-a-second language (L2) graduate students often face challenges in developing academic writing skills, which can be exacerbated by a lack of timely support at institutional level. To help address this concern, an original set of online academic writing tutorials with a focus on the genre of Literature Review was designed by the authors to assist international graduate students enrolled in graduate programs in Canada. This paper introduces and compares multiple assessment tools employed in the online tutorial set for international English L2 graduate students. Our project pursues two major goals: First, to address the above-identified gap in Academic Writing support to English L2 graduate students with minimal costs and faculty involvement through designing the online tutorial set; second, to contribute to the research on e-learning of Academic English as a second language (ESL) writing in terms of developing integrated tools for online tutorial building, analysis of texts produced by learners, and assessment of learners’ writing progress. The research questions are: 1. What resources can be combined to develop an online tutorial set for graduate students at minimal costs? 2. How can the learners’ progress in academic ESL writing be assessed with different assessment tools? First, the paper describes the tools employed in the tutorial construction: MoodleCloud platform, H5P interactive e-book designed by the authors, surveys, and assessment tools. Second, we present and compare assessment tools employed to evaluate learners’ writing progress: Expert assessment with an analytic rubric, self-assessments of progress by the participants, and automated text analysis with corpus-based tools as reported in Li, Makarova, and Wang (2023). A comparison of the scores across the three assessment tools shows some discrepancies, which seems to suggest that combined tools yield a more comprehensive picture. The expert assessments and self-assessments demonstrate improvement in the writing quality over the course of the tutorial series, which are partially supported with the findings from corpus-based analysis of participants’ texts. The findings are of relevance to e-learning scholars, faculty, and administrators of English-medium universities with substantial intakes of international graduate students in Social Sciences and Education whose native languages are other than English.

Starting with the core argument that dense, diverse, and well-planned American urban environments offer myriad sustainability benefits lacking in low-density suburban environments, this chapter presents a novel theoretical approach to sustainability that transcends purely technological or idealistic solutions for sustainable urban development and engages directly with urban policy and political economy perspectives. Defining sustainability specifically in terms of the “growth paradigm” that undergirds the evolution of social-ecological systems, the chapter identifies sustainability as an ongoing shift from quantitative growth to qualitative development. It reviews sustainability arguments related to the dematerialization and regionalization of economic processes, identifies sustainability’s continued debt to notions of “localism” and “sense of place,” and elaborates an ideal of “transparency” in the relationships between producers and consumers. While dense, transparent urban development is lauded as more sustainable in theory, critical perspectives on the political economy of property development illustrate the cultural, political, and structural barriers to creating such environments in practice. Entrenched policies and practices that define property value in terms of monetary transactions, rather than locally negotiated uses, enable land speculation, non-local property ownership, and private monetization of government regulatory power. The theory and real-world functioning of speculative practices in local property markets are reviewed in particular to emphasize the ways in which speculation harms the transparency of urban development processes. Sustainability and critical theory approaches to development, while fundamentally divergent, commonly emphasize the importance of tangible producer-consumer and person-place relationships, offering a compromise vision for future urban sustainability initiatives.

The European Community today is concerned by the decline of old urban regions. The problems of the traditional industrial cities and regions are social, economic, as well as environmental. Since its establishment, the European Economic Community has essentially undertaken sectoral policies whose effects on the regions are showing themselves to be increasingly dramatic. The last few years have seen the regions mobilize for institutional as well as social and economic reasons; the creation of the association of traditional industrial regions of Europe translates the importance of the new challenges facing its member regions. The present article, after a brief analysis of the principal problems, will suggest certain perspectives for new policies in face of these challenges.

The crew would like to thank the Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium (WSGC), the UW- Madison Dean of Engineering, their faculty advisor Dr. Frederick Elder, and the Mars Society Mission Support for their knowledge, guidance, and support of the mission. We could not have accomplished our goals without you. Crew 110A consisted of a team of engineers, undergraduates and graduate students, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. During our stay, we celebrated the New Year with an inaugural midnight EVA and red Martian cool-aid, we anxiously listened to the UW-Madison Badger Football Team play in the Rose Bowl, and we completed 15 EVA’s within a seven day period. The crew set out with a mission to conduct habitability, atmospheric, geologic imaging, and space suit ergonomic studies and a vision to advance the space industry’s exploration capabilities.Â