Campus Participants Research Articles

Heart Rate Response to Vinyasa Yoga in Healthy Adults

Background: Yoga is a popular exercise, but the heart rate (HR) response to specific styles of yoga is unknown. Primary Study Objective: To determine if vinyasa yoga is an aerobic physical activity based on the HR response of participants. Methods/Design: Observational study using a convenience sample Setting: Exercise room on a university campus Participants: Forty-two adults aged 21-54 years with prior yoga experience completed the yoga session with no adverse events. Equipment malfunction precluded data analysis for 4 participants. Intervention: A 50-minute vinyasa yoga class that included 10 minutes of pre-activity rest, 35 minutes of asanas, and 5 minutes of meditation. Participant HR was recorded continuously during the class. Primary Outcome Measures: Mean HR response and time spent at each intensity level during asanas. Results: The data of 38 participants were analyzed. Mean (SD) HR for all participants during asanas was 107 (23) beats per minute (bpm), and 44% of the asana time was considered light-intensity aerobic physical activity. The mean response (expressed as a percent of maximal HR or %HRmax) was considered very light intensity (<50% of HRmax) for 6 participants, light intensity (50-63% of HRmax) for 21 participants, moderate intensity (64-76% of HRmax) for 10 participants, and vigorous intensity (77-93% of HRmax) for 1 participant. Conclusions: In the current study, vinyasa yoga was primarily a light-intensity aerobic physical activity, but individual responses varied. This information adds to the body of literature regarding the physiological response to yoga and specifically addresses the aerobic response to vinyasa yoga.

Unplanned Educational Obsolescence: Is the ‘Traditional’ PhD Becoming Obsolete?

Unplanned Educational Obsolescence: Is the ‘Traditional’ PhD Becoming Obsolete?

Community College Institutional Effectiveness

This study addresses a campus institutional effectiveness (IE) process and its influence on faculty and staff. Although a comprehensive, rational IE process appeals to campus leaders, this study found that it creates significant faculty and staff challenges. Campus leaders, faculty, and staff differ in their (a) knowledge and support of IE; (b) participation in IE process activities; and (c) perceptions of IE strengths, weaknesses, and usefulness. Needed IE data are typically available to campus stakeholders except for student learning outcomes data across all academic programs. Administrators, faculty, and staff agree that a lack of time is the major IE impediment. IE expectations may be too challenging for campus participants, and faculty and staff need more institutional support to analyze and use existing data. Future research should focus on faculty and staff aspects of community college effectiveness.

Meningococcal Meningitis in Critical Care

Meningococcal meningitis (MM) is a disease process that can become insidious and deadly in a short amount of time if not properly diagnosed. New and effectively known treatments and preventions are the key to improve recovery. The Neisseria meningitidis (NM) bacteria is the culprit in the MM discussed in this article. The pathophysiology, symptoms, and assessment are important to review, as well as typical antibiotic therapy and other treatments. Morbidity and mortality is affected by the improvement of these therapies. Critical care nurses must correctly and prudently assess their patients quickly for rapid response to treatment. The vaccine for the NM bacteria associated with the serotype B is not available at this time. College freshmen are the most vulnerable population in contracting the disease because of small living spaces and lifestyle habits that increase their association with the disease. The issue of prophylactically giving the vaccine is controversial but may become necessary because of the increase in incidence in the last 5 years on college campuses. Chemoprophylaxis efficacy may also be of help to those healthcare workers exposed as well as to those individuals at high risk for contracting the disease after an exposure. Public health concerns with community and college campus participation and education can be key to a sense of well-being among those possible individuals who may be exposed. Steroid, coagulapathy, and immunotherapy, as well as other new treatments, are worth investigating and pursuing in these times of increased risk to certain vulnerable populations of people.

Pluralistic Leadership

Various studies have illustrated the inability of hierarchical models (i.e., chain of command, top-level decision making, control, etc.) of leadership for meeting the challenges facing higher education institutions (Bensimon & Neumann, 1993). Challenges, such as cost containment, accountability to the public, globalization, integrating technology, and measuring of student outcomes, require more participatory forms of leadership than have existed in the past (Rosener, 1990). As institutions have realized this and expanded leadership to include more individuals, there has been limited examination of how leadership might be interpreted differently by groups and individuals on college campuses, in particular, faculty, other levels of administration, and staff. Participatory leadership models, which rely on interdependence and collective efforts, necessitate that campus participants feel included in the leadership process and emphasize communication throughout the organization as critical for organizational success (Astin & Leland, 1991; Bensimon & Neumann, 1993; Rosener, 1990; Tierney, 1989). Similar to hierarchical leadership models, participatory models assume a common leadership reality for all individuals within the organization. However, recent research illustrates that the assumption of a common understanding of leadership will result in significant challenges for organizations. For example, a growing body of scholarship provides evidence that women enact, think about, and interpret leadership differently

Context, Cognition, and Culture: A Case Analysis of Collegiate Leadership and Cultural Change

This article, presented as an interpretive case study, examines how members of an established college culture experienced change related to the entry of a new college president and how the new president changed as a result of his entry experience. The study analyzes the evolving relationship between the new president and campus participants in five phases: (a) the president entering and making sense of the new setting, (b) the president selectively adjusting the setting, (c) the president stirring the setting, (d) campus participants discovering and responding to changes the president makes in their shared setting, and (e) the president addressing these responses, including their effects on him.

Faculty development via field programs for middle-aged, disillusioned faculty

This paper reviews reasons why traditional faculty development programs have neglected middle-aged, disillusioned faculty (colleagues who are chronically depressed or angry about their jobs, who are inactive and unenthusiastic as teachers and researchers, and whose campus participation is passive at best). It then describes a format for engaging field-based developers, including chairpeople, in stepwise programs that help reestablish communication and reinvolvement of these “problem” faculty in meaningful activities and rewards. Data from ongoing field programs of the sort advocated here include survey-based portrayals of middle-aged, disillusioned faculty (e.g., 22% of all older faculty were rated as explosive with students/colleagues), of usual failings in communicating academic reward processes to faculty, of faculty's and administrators' reservations about reengaging “problem” colleagues, and of benefits accruing to field-workers themselves. Thus far, of the 45 middle-aged, disillusioned faculty involved in programs with their chairs acting as field-based developers, 84% have shown significant progress in preliminary stages of reestablishing communication and departmental activity, 69% have renegotiated for more meaningful roles as teachers/scholars/colleagues, and 47% have earned public rewards for meeting the goals set in their recontracting.