Are Federal Dollars Bearing Fruit?

Migrant children are considered one of the most at-risk populations in the United States. They face multiple obstacles of poverty, poor health, mobility, and limited English proficiency, which contributes to the difficulties that migrant children may encounter in the educational system. Limited research has been conducted regarding migrant students with disabilities. The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which the migrant student population was identified as having disabilities in Texas. Analyses were conducted on a state level, district level, and disability category level. Data were obtained from the Texas Education Agency. The sample consisted of 223 districts that had a total of 9,078 migrant special education students. The state-level analysis found that migrant students, collectively, were not disproportionately represented in special education when compared to the overall state percentage of migrant student representation in general education. The district-level analysis, however, ...

Migrant children are considered one of the most at-risk populations in the United States. They face multiple obstacles of poverty, poor health, mobility, and limited English proficiency, which contributes to the difficulties that migrant children may encounter in the educational system. Limited research has been conducted regarding migrant students with disabilities. The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which the migrant student population was identified as having disabilities in Texas. Analyses were conducted on a state level, district level, and disability category level. Data were obtained from the Texas Education Agency. The sample consisted of 223 districts that had a total of 9,078 migrant special education students. The state-level analysis found that migrant students, collectively, were not disproportionately represented in special education when compared to the overall state percentage of migrant student representation in general education. The district-level analysis, however, indicated that there was a disproportionate representation of migrant students that received special education services in many school districts in Texas. Moreover, the disability category-level analysis indicated that there was a higher percentage of migrant students that received services under the learning disability category than would be expected.

The transient nature of educational migration locates Indian student migrants ambivalently in the United States, rendering them illegible as diasporic subjects. However, by historically situating the movements of these students across borders, this essay illuminates how the liminality of student migrants’ positioning made their presence formative to Indian diasporic life. Offering a postcolonial American studies perspective, this essay examines educational migration in two key moments of US immigration history: the exclusionary era of the early twentieth century and the period following the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. Attention to these moments reveals how the circulation of student migrants between India and the United States is part of a longer history of colonial, postcolonial, and imperialist investments in education. Indian student migrants were embedded in struggles for global power, with contentions over nationhood and modernity serving as a crucial feature of their entanglements in these struggles. Embodying the possibilities for a future India, these youth carried a particular responsibility to the pursuit of Indian modernity and, as such, shaped the diasporic gaze back to an Indian homeland. Yet, forged through the confluence of race, class, surveillance, and nationalism, Indian student migrants’ negotiations of this sense of responsibility informed their political alignments in unexpected ways at key moments. Centring student migrants as important agents of diaspora-making, this essay examines these negotiations and their place in the production of Indian diasporic imaginaries in the United States.

Early college entrance programs have existed in the United States since the 1950s, but in-depth research on academic success in these programs is lacking. Every year, early college entrance programs utilize a variety of data-gathering and candidate-screening techniques to select hundreds of students for admission into these accelerated programs. However, only a smattering of research articles has discussed the factors that predict academic success in these programs. This exploratory study investigated commonly-relied-upon admissions data points—such as high school GPA and ACT scores—and demographic information—such as sex, ethnicity, and locality—to see if any of these factors predicted academic success: namely, graduation and early college entrance program GPA. Secondary data from nearly 800 students admitted over an 11-year period to a state-supported, residential early college entrance program located at a large Southern university in the United States were utilized for this study. Logistic regression failed to yield a model that could accurately predict whether or not a student would graduate from the program. Multiple regression models showed that high school GPA and ACT scores were predictive of performance, and that factors like locality and ethnicity can have predictive power as well. However, the low variance in performance explained by the variables included in this study demonstrates that high school GPA, standardized test scores, locality, sex, and ethnicity can only tell us so much about a student's likelihood of success in an early college entrance program.

Water availability, light, management practices, and harvest time impacts on Coffea arabica L. yield and bean quality remain uncertain. It was hypothesized that the soil water and light availability could impact berry distribution, yield, and bean chemical attributes within the plant canopy. Therefore, it was aimed to study berry yield, berry distribution, and bean chemical traits along the canopy strata of four coffee genotypes (Iapar 59, Catuaí 99 and two Ethiopian wild accessions, ‘E083’ and ‘E027’), cultivated with (IRR) and without irrigation (NI) in the two initial harvest years. The maximum height of berry occurrence was lower in NI than in IRR plants in both harvest years. In the 2nd harvest year, higher leaf-to-fruit ratio was found under NI than under IRR for all genotypes, except for Catuaí 99, while the most regular berry distribution among canopy strata was obtained in IRR ‘E083’, the highest bean yield in IRR ‘E083’ and Iapar 59, and the highest percent of useful bean biomass in NI Catuaí 99. The reduced lipid content under IRR was more important in the 1st (all genotypes) than in the 2nd harvest year (Iapar 59 and ‘E027’). As a novelty, chemical bean composition was additionally impacted by light availability along the canopy strata. Proteins declined from bottom (shaded) to upper (highly light exposed) strata, regardless of genotype and harvest year. Similar stratification was observed in caffeine in the 2nd year. Although some traits were somewhat changed among strata, no substantial quality changes occurred, thus allowing that harvest might include the entire plant and not only some specific strata. Iapar 59 and ‘E083’ showed chemical composition usually associated with high bean quality, with the highest lipid, sucrose, and soluble sugar contents, and the lowest caffeine, chlorogenic acids, and phenolic components among four genotypes, but Iapar 59 plants were less affected in their yield under NI. Based on additional responses from space occupation and yield only under IRR, the wild accession ‘E083’ must be considered in future breeding programs as promising material for intensive input conditions. High bean quality and the less variated yield under lower soil water availability qualified the Iapar 59 as the most prominent among the four genotypes.

Certified organic production is challenging in the southeastern United States due to high weed, insect, and disease pressure. Maintaining and building soil organic carbon in midscale organic production systems can also be difficult due to the warm, moist conditions that promote decomposition. Focusing on cool-season cash crops paired with warm-season cover crops may help alleviate these production problems. This 3-year study (2011–13) evaluated two vegetable rotations of cool-season crops with cover crops for their productivity, disease management, and soil building potential in Watkinsville, GA. In the first rotation, cool-season cash crops included onion ( Allium cepa ), strawberry ( Fragaria × ananassa ), and potato ( Solanum tuberosum ). These crops were rotated with green bean ( Phaseolus vulgaris ), oats/austrian winter pea ( Avena sativa / Pisum sativum ssp. arvense ), southernpea ( Vigna unguiculata ), and sunn hemp ( Crotalaria juncea ). In the second rotation, cool-season cash crops included onion, broccoli ( Brassica oleracea Italica group), lettuce ( Lactuca sativa ), and carrot ( Daucus carota ssp. sativus ). These were rotated with millet ( Urochloa ramosa ), sunn hemp, egyptian wheat/iron clay pea ( Sorghum sp./ Vigna unguiculata ), and sorghum × sudangrass ( Sorghum bicolor × S. bicolor var. sudanese )/iron clay pea. Onion yields in both rotations were at least 80% of average yields in Georgia. Lettuce yields were at least double the average yields in Georgia and were comparable to national averages in the 2nd and 3rd years of the study. Strawberry yields in these rotations were lower than Georgia averages in all 3 years with a trend of lower yields over the course of the study. By contrast, potato, although lower than average yields in Georgia increased each year of the study. Broccoli yields in the first year were substantially lower than average Georgia yields, but were comparable to average yields in the 2nd year. Carrot remained less than half of average Georgia yields. Green bean were half of average Georgia yields in the 2nd year and were comparable to average yields in the 3rd year. As expected from what is observed in cool-season organic vegetable production in Georgia, disease pressure was low. Cover crops maintained soil organic carbon (C) with a small increase in active C; however, there was a net loss of potentially mineralizable nitrogen (PMN). Active C averaged across both rotations at the beginning of the study at 464 mg·kg −1 and averaged 572 mg·kg −1 at the end of the study. On the basis of this study, using cover crops can maintain soil carbon without the addition of carbon sources such as compost. Finally, longer term work needs to be done to assess soil management strategies.

Apesar da escassez de trabalhos sobre o tema, pesquisas apontam para a importância de se considerar as trajetórias escolares dos estudantes brasileiros, tanto em termos das transições entre anos de estudo como os movimentos migratórios. Assim, o objetivo principal deste artigo é analisar os fluxos migratórios intermunicipais de estudantes do ensino médio no Brasil, entre os anos de 2007 e 2015, a partir de uma base de dados longitudinais do Censo Escolar, elaborada pelo INEP. Para períodos 2007-2008, 2010-2011 e 2014-2015, foram selecionados os fluxos dos alunos migrantes intermunicipais entre o 9º ano do Ensino Fundamental e o 1º ano do Ensino Médio; entre o 1º ano do Ensino Médio e o 2º ano do Ensino Médio; e entre o 2º ano do Ensino Médio e o 3º ano do Ensino Médio. Em média, pouco mais de 420 mil alunos migravam a cada ano, entre 2007 e 2015, nos anos escolares e períodos considerados (em torno de 5,0% do total de estudantes). Os padrões migratórios diferem: os migrantes promovidos apresentam maior diversidade de deslocamentos de curta distância e maior número de fluxos de longa distância quando comparados aos repetentes e evadidos. Em contrapartida, as trajetórias dos evadidos, por vezes, são opostas àquelas dos promovidos ou repetentes. Nossos resultados indicaram aspectos pouco conhecidos da realidade dos estudantes, servindo como ponto de partida para análises mais específicas sobre os diferenciais de trajetórias escolares e as dificuldades encontradas por alunos migrantes de todo o país. Palavras-chave: Educação, Migração, Brasil. Intermunicipal migration from Basic Education students in Brazil between 2007 and 2015 Abstract Despite the dearth of studies on the subject, researches point out to the importance of considering the school trajectories of Brazilian students, both in terms of the transitions between years of study and the migratory flows. Thus, the main objective of this paper is to analyze the intermunicipal migratory flows of upper secondary students in Brazil, between the years 2007 and 2015, from a longitudinal database of the school censuses, elaborated by INEP. For periods 2007-2008, 2010-2011 and 2014-2015, the flows of the intermunicipal migrant students were selected between the 9th grade of lower secondary and the 1st year of the upper secondary; Between the 1st year School and the 2nd year of the upper secondary; And between the 2nd year and the 3rd year of the upper secondary. On average, just over 420,000 students migrated each year, between 2007 and 2015, in the periods and grades considered (around 5.0% of the total students). Migratory patterns differ: Promoted migrants have a greater diversity of short-distance movements and a greater magnitude of long-distance flows when compared to repeating and dropout students. Also, the dropout trajectories are sometimes opposed to those of the promoted or repeating students. Our exploratory results indicated unknown aspects of the reality of the students, being a starting point for more specific analyses on the differentials of school trajectories and the difficulties faced by migrant students from all over the country. Keywords: education, migration, Brazil. Migración intermunicipal de estudiantes de enseñanza básica de Brasil entre 2007 y 2015 Resumen: A pesar de la escasez de estudios sobre el tema, las investigaciones señalan la importancia de considerar las trayectorias escolares de los estudiantes brasileños, tanto en términos de las transiciones de años de estudio como movimientos migratorios. Por lo tanto, el objetivo principal de este artículo es analizar los flujos migratorios de los estudiantes intermunicipales de la escuela secundaria en Brasil, entre 2007 y 2015 años, de un Base de datos longitudinales del censo escolar, elaborado por el INEP. Para los períodos 2007-2008, 2010-2011 y 2014-2015, los flujos de estudiantes migrantes intermunicipales fueron seleccionados entre el noveno grado de la escuela primaria y el primer año de la escuela secundaria; entre el primer año de la escuela secundaria y el segundo año de la escuela secundaria; y entre el segundo año de la escuela secundaria y el tercer año de la escuela secundaria. En promedio, poco más de 420.000 estudiantes migravan cada año, entre 2007 y 2015, en los períodos y años de estudio considerados (alrededor del 5,0% del total de estudiantes). Los patrones migratorios difieren: los migrantes promovidos presentan mayor diversidad de desplazamientos de corta distancia y mayor número de flujos de larga distancia en comparación con los repetidores y evadidos. En cambio, las trayectorias de los evadidos, a veces, son opuestas a aquellas de los promovidos o repetentes. Nuestros resultados indicaron aspectos poco conocidos de la realidad de los estudiantes, sirviendo como punto de partida para análisis más específicos sobre los diferenciales de trayectorias escolares y las dificultades encontradas por alumnos migrantes de todo el país. Palabras clave: educación, migración, Brasil.

The purpose of this research was to identify the difficulties faced by the Mexican migrant students when incorporated into the Mexican education system after having studied in the United States of America. Thirty migrant middle school students, two principals, two social workers and one teacher participated in the study. The study (conducted in two phases) collected information regarding: school admission, adjustment to the school organization, adaptation to learning situations and the perception of school belonging.The main problems found during the admission and enrolment procedures in Mexican schools are: language use, diagnostic assessment, didactic processes that take place in the classroom, complementary support activities, grade repetition, very little family involvement and the separation of the students from their migrant parents.

Background/Context Among the children of immigrants, one of the populations placed at greatest risk of not finishing high school are the children of migrant farmworkers. Although it is difficult to track graduation rates for migrant students because of their mobility, the U.S. Department of Education estimates that only half of all migrant children finish high school. These children face many of the same obstacles as children of immigrants whose families must cope with severe economic hardships, but they also must deal with additional challenges associated with their families’ migratory lifestyles and living situations. Purpose This article offers some background on the barriers that migrant youth face in school; describes the services provided to these young people by the federally funded Migrant Education Program, focusing on the authors’ research on the role of migrant education resource teachers; and discusses the implications of study findings and related research for improving educational opportunities for low-income children of immigrants. Research Design Findings are drawn from 4 years of ethnographic research in one Northern California high school, where 80% of the Mexican-descent migrant students in the Class of 2002 completed 12th grade, and from a set of comparative interviews carried out with migrant education resource teachers in four additional high schools. The analysis centers on the nature of the relationships that develop between migrant students and migrant teachers, including the teachers’ multiple roles as mentors, counselors, advocates, and role models, and on the kinds of support provided to students that help them navigate successfully through high school. Conclusions/Recommendations Study findings suggest that the migrant students’ school persistence and academic success were due at least in part to the supplemental services they received from the Migrant Education Program and, in particular, to the support provided to them by the migrant resource teachers. A key to the teachers’ effectiveness was the holistic nature of their relationships with students and their ability to connect students with the resources and networks needed for school success. In addition, the migrant teachers’ own identities as academically successful Mexican Americans, many of them the children of migrant farmworkers, increased their ability to serve as role models and to help students build bridges between their multiple worlds. Findings support many of those reported in the literature on successful college outreach programs. Unlike these programs, the Migrant Education Program is not selective; it serves all eligible students. Sometimes you're a teacher, sometimes you're a counselor, sometimes you're a social worker, sometimes you're a health consultant. It's so rewarding and the beauty of this job. — Migrant education resource teacher They are like the symbol that you can do it, too. When I see them, I think: “They did it. Why can't I do it?” — Migrant student

This article casts light on how one public school system in the United States minoritizes migrant students by perpetuating systemic class and racial biases. Migrant students are the children of migrant workers who migrate across the United States seasonally to work in agriculture or fisheries. Based on in-depth interviews with 20 educators, we identified three main areas of class and racial biases that we call the not-so-hidden curriculum: First, the school system presumes (and rewards) English competency from migrant families, an expectation we call expectation of English language competency. Second, the system expects entitled and intensive learning from students. This type of learning assumes that students can advocate for themselves in their interactions with teachers and peers. The schools in the school system expect students to spend most of their time and energy on academic activities. Third, the system expects entitled and intensive educational parenting. In this parenting approach, parents are supposed to act as co-educators and co-decision makers with teachers and focus their energy and time on their children’s education. The interviews illustrate several incompatibilities among these ideologies and migrant students’ realities, especially their economic, social, and linguistic challenges. We discuss the implications of our findings on migrant students’ social mobility, future research, and migrant education policy.

Background: Medical societies in emergency medicine (EM) have recommended teaching EM topics in the preclinical years of medical school. However, the magnitude of integrating an EM curriculum into the 1st and 2nd year of medical school is unknown. Purpose: The purpose of this survey was to determine the extent and type of exposure to EM in the 1st and 2nd years of medical schools in the United States. Methods: The deans of all allopathic and osteopathic medical schools in the country were surveyed by mail. The survey took the form of a questionnaire and had seven questions that included type of exposure, number of students, length of the exposure, learning objectives, lecturers, laboratory, textbook, evaluation process and grades, departmental status, board certification, emergency department volume, and size of the medical school class. The data were analyzed with SPSS software. Results: The survey was returned by 84 of the 125 (67.2%) medical schools in the country. The average class size was 129.0 students. As many as 63.9% of the medical schools responding provided EM exposure in the 1st year and 54.3% in the 2nd year. The 1st-year exposure most frequently used more than one type of teaching activity (47.4%), observation (12.3%), cardiopulmonary resuscitation training (15.8%), universal precautions (7.0%), and other (17.5%). None taught physical diagnosis. The various teaching activities lasted anywhere from hours (27.5%), to days (25.3%) or weeks (52.5%), with a mean of 2.25 weeks. Second-year exposure most frequently included multiple activities (49.0%), observation (16.3%), or other activities (14.3%); a few taught physical diagnosis (8.2%), cardiopulmonary resuscitation training (6.1%), or universal precautions (6.1%). These teaching activities lasted from hours (20.6%), to days (14.7%) or weeks (64.7%), with a mean of 2.44 weeks. Conclusions: Most U.S. medical schools provide EM exposure in the first 2 years of medical school, lasting slightly more than 2 weeks in length most frequently covering multiple topics.

A recurrent complaint of members who attend ESA Annual Meetings is that the large number of concurrent sessions make it impossible to attend all the ones of interest. Symposium Reports from the ESA Annual Meeting is one response to this dilemma. They provide, for those who could not attend, an overview of the symposium presentations and the resulting discussion, as well as a convenient means to identify the presenters. And attendees can review the session! The Editor hopes these Reports are useful, and encourages future Symposium organizers to write Reports for the Bulletin when the presentations are given. For detailed instruction for contributions see: 〈http://esapubs.org/esapubs/journals/Bulletin.htm#Typ〉. Until recently if one were to ask "who is a scientist?" a common response would be, someone who works at a university or a government agency or in a laboratory. In other words, many of us tend to think of scientists as professionals who have been academically trained and conduct research through the auspices of a research institution, agency, nonprofit organization, or academic institution. Historically, though, individuals from outside this circle of professionals have been instrumental in shaping and contributing to science. In fact, some of the most renowned scientists and ecologists could be considered citizen scientists (e.g., Charles Darwin, Harold Mayfield, Alexander Skutch). But the view that the public could actively contribute to science faded greatly over the course of the 20th century (particularly in the United States) to such an extent that we were left with the view that only someone who was professionally trained could be a scientist. Recently, however, we have witnessed an increase in the extent and acceptability of public participation and engagement in science. In particular, over the past decade we have seen a marked increase in such "citizen science" (Fig. 1). Although explanations of citizen science vary slightly, they converge on this definition: the involvement of citizens from the nonscientific community in academic research (Trumbull et al. 2000, Lee et al. 2006). Historical trend of citizen science articles. Data represent peer-reviewed articles as identified in ISI Web of Science using the search term "citizen science" from 1980 through 2008. The number of unique articles (n = 55) published is indicated by "articles," and the number of unique citations (n = 353) is indicated by "citations." Because citizen science has seen a dramatic increase in recent years, both in terms of the number of participants and its spread into new disciplines, a symposium was held at the 2008 Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting to address the role of such activity in ecology. Eleven speakers from around the world converged in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to share their work in "Citizen Science in Ecology: The Intersection of Research and Education," a symposium organized by Christopher Lepczyk, Owen Boyle, and Timothy Vargo. The goals of the symposium were to explore the following questions: (1) Is citizen science a new discipline, sub-discipline, or tool, relative to ecology? (2) Are data collected by citizen scientists valid, and if so, comparable to data collected by professional ecologists or their assistants? (3) Can citizen science be an effective tool to help bridge the gap between ecological research, communities, and education, both for the public and students? (4) Is citizen science the same as or different from ecological monitoring, or is one a subset of the other? (5) Are citizen scientists actively participating in the scientific process as ecologists, thus increasing their ecological literacy? To address these questions, speakers discussed citizen science both in general conceptual terms and in case-specific contexts from around the world. Rick Bonney of Cornell University opened the symposium with an overview of the history and evolution of citizen science in academic research. He explained that citizen science began as a series of monitoring projects designed to put the findings of hobbyists, such as bird watchers and star gazers, to meaningful scientific use. Following these early monitoring projects were ones designed with educational goals and even some set up as experiments. Eventually citizen science started to become an accepted technique for data collection in several scientific disciplines. Today, new citizen science efforts are involving participants in data analysis as well as data collection, and some are even starting to collect data from online images such as nestcams (readouts from recorders aimed at birds' nests). Following on the heels of the history of citizen science was a series of four case studies describing ecological research and monitoring projects that rely upon volunteers for their success. These case studies were arranged along a continuum from large-scale national projects with thousands of volunteers to regional and local projects. In addition, each case study represented varying degrees of interaction between researchers and volunteers. Leading off the case studies was David Ziolkowski of Patuxent Wildlife Refuge, who discussed how citizens drive the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS). Specifically, the BBS protocol conducts annual bird surveys along >4000 routes (Fig. 2) across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, using a highly skilled volunteer workforce. Part of the success of the BBS program has been its relatively straightforward field protocol and standardized design. Moreover, the BBS program has resulted in over 400 bird species being surveyed annually at a cost of less than $900 per species per year. Without citizen scientists, such accomplishments could not be achieved. Similarly, in the United Kingdom, a long-running insect monitoring project has been led by citizen scientists in conjunction with Rothamsted Research, the oldest agricultural research station in the world. Philip Gould highlighted how the Rothamsted Insect Survey has used light traps (Fig. 3) to capture insects across 460 sites in the UK for the past 50 years. This survey takes about five minutes each day to collect insects, which are then sent to Rothamsted Research for sorting and identification of the macro-moth fraction of the catch. To ensure a robust monitoring project, volunteers are reimbursed for any trap maintenance and provided with annual summaries of the moths collected from their trap. The success of the program has been built upon: (1) keeping the monitoring system simple; (2) ensuring that the volunteers are trained; (3) knowing when to discontinue sites; and (4) providing all volunteers with feedback on their work. The value of the insect survey was demonstrated in recent findings that two-thirds of common moth species across the UK have declined over the last 35 years, with 20% declining so fast that they should be considered threatened. As a result, several more species have now been added to Biodiversity Action Plans in the UK. Both the BBS and the Rothamsted Insect Survey demonstrate how large-scale monitoring can be used to denote changes in diversity and abundance over time. Furthermore, they both use protocols to filter data, thereby allowing for robust data set production. Locations of breeding bird survey routes. Figure credit: Curtis Flahter and Mike Knowles. Examples of (A) a light trap station in use, and (B) placement in a back yard. Photo credits: (A) Syd Wright MBE, and (B) Philip Gould. At the regional scale, Susanne Masi, manager of Chicago Botanic Garden's Plants of Concern Program, presented an overview and findings from the garden's rare plant monitoring project. The Chicago Botanic Garden established this program to monitor listed and rare plants in the greater Chicago metropolitan area. Initiated in 2001, the program involves ~250 trained volunteers each year in collecting plant data (Fig. 4), and has now accumulated 8+ years of standardized data on 205 plant species at 245 sites. Aside from simply monitoring rare plants, the program has demonstrated several key findings related to using citizen scientists. First, a two-year volunteer data validation study comparing randomly selected volunteer data to professional data showed a high degree of correlation between the two groups. For example, there was >80% correspondence between the two groups in critical data fields such as population numbers and presence of threats. Second, the results of a Plants of Concern citizen science focus group showed that volunteers participated actively in, and understood critical elements of, the scientific process. Furthermore, participants unanimously experienced an increase of their involvement in stewardship and conservation activities as a result of the program, and reported sharing this scientific understanding and enhanced conservation commitment with the broader public. Volunteers (A) determining plot locations and conducting rare and listed plant inventories (B–D) as part of the Chicago Botanic Garden's Plants of Concern Program. Photo credits: (A) Peter Jacobs, (B) Robin Carlson, (C) Emily Kapler, and (D) Dani Drekich. Capping off the case studies was a presentation by Bill Mueller, who introduced the Milwaukee County Avian Migration Monitoring Partnership (MCAMMP), an avian monitoring study focused on migratory bird stopover ecology in the urban parks of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. To date the project has utilized the assistance of >140 citizen scientists over six migrations (three years) to help address the major goals of assessing habitat use and quality in both riparian and upland sites, and quantifying habitat use by migratory birds. Citizen science volunteers involvement includes training for transect counts, assistance with bird-banding operations, vegetation sampling and analysis, and recording of data. One major aim of training the citizen scientists is that they will be able to establish a long-term, urban avian monitoring project that can expand in the future. The second main portion of the symposium was devoted to a set of talks on the issues of the philosophy, policy, and technology of citizen science. Rebecca Jordan began this second portion with a discussion of a framework for promoting ecological literacy within the context of citizen science programs. She stressed that program design must balance both the scientific goals, which include ensuring data accuracy, and educational goals. Together these goals promote conceptual knowledge about the system of study, epistemological knowledge about science processes, and behavioral change with respect to environmental and civic action. While there is much evidence to support the promotion of conceptual knowledge, the latter two areas warrant further investigation. Integrating cognitive and environmental action theory will likely prove useful as practitioners seek to broaden program impact. David Bonter of Cornell's Laboratory of Ornithology next discussed the issue of data validation processes for large citizen science databases, such as Project FeederWatch. Currently, Project FeederWatch receives >100,000 checklists from >14,000 citizen scientists annually, yielding over 5,000,000 bird observations of ~500 individual species. Thus, it is critical that such large volumes of data be inspected for any problems; this requirement has led to the development of a quality control and quality assurance protocol. This protocol uses a review system, whereby unusual observations or potential errors are flagged and sent to experts for follow-up with the citizen scientists. Unverified reports remain flagged and are excluded from data analyses and web-based data output. The system also allows researchers to identify volunteers who are in need of support and to focus educational efforts accordingly, ultimately improving data quality and integrity. Moving from data editing to data collecting, Louis Liebenberg, founder of CyberTracker Conservation, presented a talk on how technology can be used to get people back in touch with nature. Specifically, Louis has developed the free software program CyberTracker (available at 〈http://www.cybertracker.org/〉), which enables volunteers of all ages to collect biodiversity data on simple portable devices, such as smartphones and PDAs (Fig. 5). CyberTracker is already in active use for both citizen science projects and environmental education around the world. For instance, in the United States, NatureMapping, BioKIDS, and BioBlitz are using PDAs with CyberTracker software to enable volunteers of all ages to collect biodiversity data. Similarly, in South Africa, the NaturalWorld web site allows participants to share and view bird sightings, and in the Kalahari trackers from local communities are being employed to survey wildlife conservation corridors. Finally, the WhaleForce project involves yachtsmen around the world using CyberTracker to monitor whales. Ultimately, the software allows for easy data collection by citizen scientists and helps to promote people who engage the outdoors by collecting field data. Bushmen in Africa using CyberTracker. Photo credit: Louis Liebenberg. Michelle Prysby next discussed more efficient ways for interested citizens to find a project, and for projects to find interested volunteers. One partnership for scientists and educators interested in reaching trained citizen scientists consists of the Master Naturalist programs. These programs are volunteer training and service programs that involve the public in natural resource education, citizen science, and stewardship. Currently there are >25 Master Naturalist programs in the United States that represent a ready pool of volunteers who have been trained in core citizen science skills, such as recording field observations and using taxonomic keys to identify organisms. These volunteers are well connected to their local environments, and are part of an existing infrastructure that can support their citizen science volunteer activities. (For more information on natural resource education and stewardship programs such as Master Naturalists, Watershed Stewards, and Conservation Stewards, please see the Alliance of Natural Resource Outreach and Service Programs 〈http://www.anrosp.org〉). The final presentation of the morning was by Hague Vaughan, of Canada's Ecological Monitoring and Assessment Network (EMAN), who wove together the themes of the morning's talks. He described how citizen science fosters a desperately needed means to better link ecological monitoring to policy development and decision-making. His argument was that the emphasis on certainty in ecological monitoring leaves decision-makers lacking sentinel and feedback information where timeliness is a key factor. If focused on outcomes, complementary citizen science can be a means of enhancing effectiveness. To illustrate how to integrate citizen science into policy, Vaughan discussed a project that combined citizen data with targeted research and air quality monitoring stations in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada to identify pollution and lichen hot-spots that was used to deliver feedback on municipal and industrial choices (Fig. 6). A map of arboreal lichens in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, based upon citizen science data. Darker green locations represent greater numbers of lichens, and points represent sampling locations. The symposium concluded with a round table discussion of the morning's talks. Following the symposium, an additional workshop on citizen science was held over the weekend at the Urban Ecology Center of Milwaukee. At this workshop many of the symposium speakers gave an additional talk during the morning portion, with an afternoon of hands-on activities designed to train and educate citizen scientists. Overall, the symposium sought to address five major goals related to citizen science. In reflecting upon these five goals it is clear that there was progress made on all, but not necessarily agreement. For instance, the general view was that citizen science has new elements to offer ecology, but there was no definitive agreement among the speakers that it was a new discipline or subdiscipline. Whether or not this will change remains to be seen; citizen science is still very much an area of new ideas and growth. On the other hand, several speakers presented data from their research illustrating that the quality of data collected by citizen scientists is of the same or better quality than that collected by professional ecologists. Such quality is enhanced further with the aid of both software (e.g., Project FeederWatch and CyberTracker) and expert assistance. Similarly, there was strong evidence that citizen science can be an effective tool to help bridge the gap between ecologists and the public. In terms of the overlap with monitoring, it is clear that they share a number of similarities and will likely continue to do so in the future. However, many of the citizen science projects were much broader than monitoring alone, because they engaged the public in the scientific process or served to enhance ecological literacy. Based upon the talks and concluding discussions, citizen science is an increasing part of ecology, and has great promise for contributing knowledge, improving ecological literacy, training scientists to work with the public, and providing information for policy-makers.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsWonseon KyungWonseon Kyung was a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University, when this article was written. She is now a consultant with the Public Administration Service, McLean VA.

Emotion-based decision-making as a predictor of alcohol-related consequences in college students

Comments and Discussion [Article by Mark R. Rosenzweig] Douglas A. Irwin: This paper focuses on an important and interesting issue: the flow of students from developing countries to the developed world. As the author notes, many highly educated workers in developing countries received their training in OECD countries. In addition, student migration is one of the largest and most unregulated categories of immigrant flows into the United States and other Western countries. Thus, there are a host of questions that can be raised about this migration and its impact. The paper sets up a horse race between two competing models of student migration: the school-constrained model and the migration model. The school-constrained model suggests that foreign students come from countries with high returns to education but with few domestic opportunities to invest in human capital. In this case, students seek training in the United States and elsewhere with the ultimate goal of returning to their home country and reaping the rewards of the high return to education. The migration model suggests that students will acquire schooling abroad as means of entering and staying in the foreign country when the returns to education are low in their home country. In this case, students are simply escaping the low wages at home in search of higher incomes. The main difference between the two models is the relationship between student migration and the domestic returns to education. If the returns to education increase in the student's home country, more students will seek education abroad in the school-constrained model, but fewer students will seek education abroad in the migration model. The two models also have different implications for educational policy in the home country. In the school-constrained model, an increase in the quantity and quality of home education institutions will reduce the number of students who seek education abroad. In the migration model, an increase in schooling [End Page 87] opportunities will complement outward student flows, and may increase student outflows. Looking at U.S. data, Rosenzweig finds strong evidence that students come to the United States and stay when the return to education is low in their home country. In other words, according to the author, there is overwhelming evidence for the migration model. Part of the reason, the author suggests, is that student migrants are motivated not by the return to education in their home country, but the huge gaps in wage levels (regardless of skill level) between OECD and developing countries. In contrast, even if the local returns to education are significant, the gross wage differentials between developed and developing countries are simply enormous. The author should be commended for setting up a simple framework in which to think about and evaluate the question of student migration. But, at least to this outsider to the field of labor economics, there are some reasons for skepticism about drawing strong conclusions from the results. First, the paper notes that the apparent stay rate of students (that is, the proportion of students who stay in the United States and do not return to their home country) is low, at about 10 percent, although the author suggests that this is an underestimate because of imperfect measures of visa adjustments, among other reasons. That is close to what was found by Bratsberg who focused exclusively on the stay rate of students and found it to be about 12 percent in the early 1970s.1 He argued that this number was also improperly measured and was much too low, perhaps being just a third of the true figure. Granting the many difficulties of estimating the true stay rate, and even granting that the stay rate may be as high as 30 percent (something one would certainly like to know with greater certainty), the question remains: If students are largely motivated by the huge wage gaps between countries, as the paper contends, why do only a third stay in the United States? Furthermore, why would foreign students undertake the effort to get...