Sophomore Year Of College Research Articles

“Clowdily Enwrapped in Allegorical Deuices”: The Joys and Perils of Teaching Spenser's Epic

My introduction to Edmund Spenser came in my sophomore year in college during a survey class, when my professor announced: “If you’ve read one page of The Faerie Queene, you’ve read more than enough.” Since I had never heard of the epic, let alone read a word of it, I had no reason to doubt this proffered wisdom. That same semester, however, I encountered Spenser again, albeit vicariously, from a very different perspective. A group of my friends were enrolled in the senior honors seminar, which was focused on a single author. To their horror, they discovered that they would be spending the semester working on Spenser’s writings. Why they were appalled, I cannot remember, but I do recall that they spent countless meal hours complaining about the fate they believed awaited them. The professor listened to their objections and offered a compromise, which they accepted: they agreed to read and discuss The Faerie Queene for three weeks. At the end of that time they were free to request a change in topic for the rest of the term. But by the time Spenser’s probationary period was over, they were hooked, and as the semester passed they became more and more obsessed. They wrote and

Outcomes and Aging

To the Editor: I am writing to you regarding the report on anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) rehabilitation by Fitzgerald et al and your subsequent discussion with Mark DeCarlo, James Irrgang, and Kevin Wilk in the February 2000 issue of the Journal. I read the report with great interest that is not only clinical in origin but also personal in origin, about which I will explain shortly. I have reason to suspect that the long-term outcome of the “successful” participants of the study may not be as positive as the short-term outcome. This suspicion is based on my personal experience and leads me to wonder about the status of the patients who participated in the nonoperative ACL rehabilitation programs as they age. I am a physical therapist currently practicing in an outpatient clinic with a mixed patient population in terms of ages and diagnoses. I will tell you a succinct version of my own story in chronological order, as it is easier to explain. I played soccer competitively beginning in junior high school and throughout high school and college. At the beginning of my sophomore year of college (early in the fall soccer season), I tripped one night over a ball and tore my ACL. At the time, I had moderate swelling and pain that lasted 2 …

HISTORIES OF MASS CULTURE: FROM LITERARY TO VISUAL CULTURE

VICTORIAN STUDIES has always been, for me, a form of cultural studies. As early as my sophomore year in college, while reading Raymond Williams’s Culture and Society for a modern humanities course, I was fascinated to learn that a case could be made for the nineteenth century as the period during which notions of culture were constructed. Williams’s work was presented without much contextualization and it was only much later that I came to associate it with either British cultural studies or Marxism. My somewhat unconscious interest in forging connections between culture and politics, which I would argue is the founding mission of cultural studies, was matched by another unconscious interest in Victorian studies, and more specifically, studies of the novel, as a field in which to pursue feminism. By the time I reached graduate school in the 1980s, feminism had become a field and a methodology, and within English departments, Victorian studies produced a rich range of scholars, including Elaine Showalter, Ellen Moers, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, and Nina Auerbach, who dominated the interdisciplinary field of women studies, which, like cultural studies, also sought to explain the relations between culture and politics. Their work on women authors and revising the canon was followed by that of an equally powerful group of feminist Victorianists, including Nancy Armstrong, Mary Poovey, Catherine Gallagher, and Eve Sedgwick, who explored not only how categories of gender and sexuality were integral to nineteenth-century social formations, but how they were invented in the modern period.

A LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF EATING DISORDERS AMONG COLLEGE WOMEN

This study provides insight into factors that determine whether women in the college population who exhibit eating-disordered behavior during their college years recover during their postcollege years. The study assessed changes in the eating patterns of 21 women across a six-year time period, from sophomore year in college to two years postcollege. Eleven of the women get better during their postcollege year, whereas 10 of the women continue to struggle with disordered eating. The major differences between the two groups revolve around the relationship between autonomy and relation. Women who get better negotiate the tension between autonomy and relatedness and are more likely to have higher selfesteem based on a more positive self-concept; this, in turn, leads to healthier relationships with food and body image. Two factors that appear to influence this negotiation include (I) one's history of chronic physical or sexual abuse and (2) the quality of familial messages about food, body image, relationship, and autonomy.

In scientific misconduct cases, justice isn't always blind

I've subscribed to the New Yorker since my sophomore year in college, when I first noticed that all those gray words surrounding the cartoons make for interesting reading. Over the years I've been in turns amused, informed, provoked, and moved to tears. But I have never reacted as strongly to a New Yorker article as I did to a May 27 piece by Daniel J. Kevles entitled Assault on David Baltimore. Kevles is a respected historian of science who heads California Institute of Technology's Program in Science, Ethics & Public Policy. The article is his take on the 10-year-old controversy surrounding a paper by Nobel Laureate Baltimore, Tufts University immunologist Thereza Imanishi-Kari, and four others on the workings of the immune system in transgenic mice [Cell , 45, 247 (1986)]. Imanishi-Kari's former postdoc Margot O'Toole challenged the paper's validity after data she discovered in the lab and her own experiments didn't jibe with what Imanishi-Kari had reported. ...

From High School to College: Changes in Women's Self-Concept and Its Relationship to Eating Problems

A longitudinal panel study of a sample of college women was undertaken to assess changes in women's self-concept from high school to college and during their college years and the relationship between changes in self-concept ratings and eating disorders. Self-concept was measured at Time Change 1 (senior year of high school to sophomore year of college), Time Change 2 (sophomore year of college to senior year of college), and Time Change 3 (senior year of high school to senior year of college) using Brownfain's (1952) self-rating scale. Eating behavior in college was measured at two points, sophomore and senior year, by the Eating Attitudes Test (Garner, Olmsted, Bohr, & Garfinkel, 1982). The women were placed into three eating groups: Group 1 (eating pattern becomes or remains abnormal). Group 2 (eating pattern gets better), and Group 3 (eating pattern remains normal). Results revealed that all women's self-concept ratings declined in Time 1 with only a slight increase on a few traits in Time 2. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that Group 1 experienced a significant overall decline in self-concept ratings between Time 1 and Time 3 compared with Group 2 and Group 3. Group 2 reported significantly greater increases in assertiveness at Time 1 compared with Group 3. We suggest an interactional model for understanding the relationship between self-concept and eating problems.

The Pediatrician as Team Physician

Sports have been an integral part of my life since early childhood. I participated competitively until the end of my sophomore year in college when I realized that there was not much demand for a 68-in 180-lb foot-ball guard. My interest in sports continued, and in my medical school senior yearbook I am pictured reading the sports page. My dad, a family practitioner and sports enthusiast, was the physician for our local high school. I witnessed the joy and satisfaction he obtained from the job. After I married and left home, there were weekends he could not visit because he "had to" be at a game. When the opportunity arose in our school district, I applied and obtained the job of school physician.

The pediatrician as team physician.

Sports have been an integral part of my life since early childhood. I participated competitively until the end of my sophomore year in college when I realized that there was not much demand for a 68-in 180-lb foot-ball guard. My interest in sports continued, and in my medical school senior yearbook I am pictured reading the sports page.My dad, a family practitioner and sports enthusiast, was the physician for our local high school. I witnessed the joy and satisfaction he obtained from the job. After I married and left home, there were weekends he could not visit because he

College-level testing in Florida

The faculties of the post-secondary institutions in Florida, utilizing the authority of the State Board of Education, have implemented a testing program which greatly increases the assurance that all students who complete their sophomore year in college have achieved the communication and computation skills expected of them.

The influence of college on women's choice of teaching as a career

The purpose of this study was to estimate the effects of college on undergraduate women's choice of school teaching as a career. A causal model was proposed and tested on a sample of 2,730 nonminority women attending 74 four-year colleges and universities. The model posited that teaching career choice at the end of the sophomore year of college was a function, not only of aptitude, family background, secondary school experiences, and precollege career choice, but also of college characteristics, institutional environmental dimensions and measures of the college experience. The model, as operationalized in this study, explained 26% of the variance in teaching career choice at the end of the sophomore year. With precollege career choice held constant, both the selectivity/prestige of the institution attended and the strength of the environmental press for academic/intellectual competition had negative effects on teaching career choice. The results tend to confirm expectations that college has a significant, unique influence on women's teaching career choice which is not simply the result of differences among the students enrolled. Compared with the effects of precollege variables, however, this influence is quite small.

Does Sex Really Matter?

The sex variable has been discussed at great length in economic education research reports, because it so often appears that males learn more than females in the college introductory course. The authors of this study go beyond idle speculation as to the reasons for this puzzling phenomenon, however, and attempt to determine the point at which the male-female differential first appears. They note that significant sex differences rarely occur at the precollege level, and report the results of their own study of some 2,000 pupils in elementary and secondary schools. Asserting that the sex-linked differences in learning begin to occur “between the late high school years and the sophomore year of college,” the authors assume that the differences are “wholly cultural in origin” and present several possible explanations.

An Introspective Approach to Study Problems

THE INSIGHTFUL analysis of written introspections of students on how they view problems of studying is one method of ascertaining factors that facilitate or hinder learning. From their firsthand experience students can report di rectly on factors that aid or interfere with effective study. In freely w r i tten compositions on the topic, What makes studying easy or difficult for me, they give psychologically sound insights, down to earth and practical. Such compositions were obtained from 536 students whose grade levels ex tended from the fifth grade to the sophomore year of college. The writers of these compositions represent a wide range of intellectual ability and socio economic backgrounds. Their responses, totaling 2,285 separate statements, were classified into forty-five different categories. This analysis may serve three purposes. First, it shows how certain fac tors affecting study are viewed by individual students as especially potent in fluences for them. These individual differences are shown i n the compo s i tions as a whole and in especially insightful excerpts from them. Second, by the relative frequency of mention of the various factors, one may obtain an in dication of how students in general view the factors that affect their study. Third, by partitioning the data into different grade levels, one may acquire some evidence of the increase or decrease in influence of a particular factor as the individual passes through certain developmental stages. The individuality of response is impossible to present adequately in a short article. However, a few excerpts from the compositions** will show the vari ety of conditions uppermost in the writer's mind. Many emphasize the impor tance of privacy:

A Suggested Procedure for the Selection of Prospective Teachers at the End of the Sophomore Year of College

During the Spring of 1945 the shortage of teachers for elementary schools in the Los Angeles City School District became so acute that the possibility of selecting teachers at the end of the second year of college was considered. Since such prospective teachers would have completed neither the requirements for a major field nor the requisite courses in elementary education for a California State credential, the development of a new selection procedure was necessary. Efforts were directed toward the planning of a selection procedure based upon pertinent information and objective measures which would help to insure success both in teaching and in grad uating from college at some later date to qualify for a regular credential. A review of the literature in education revealed that various factors, some measurable, some not, had been found to be important in the selection of students who would be successful in graduating from college and in teaching.

The Great Lakes College Plan

T OWARD the end of the last century the colleges and universities of this country began adding to their curriculums, professional or, more likely, vocational courses in business. The natural tendency was to blend the practical with the classical, and as a newly acquired relative of Plato business administration remained within the liberal-arts college. Then, with the twentieth-century influx of thousands of youngsters into college halls, schools of business administration on the fouryear basis developed and matured. The four-year college of commerce had not been fully oriented into academic surroundings when it was decided that professional preparation for business could not be fully appreciated without first one year of work in the liberal arts, then two, and now, alas, without a baccalaureate degree in the arts and sciences. A few educators have seen in this trend a vain attempt to professionalize business, and many more have decried a philosophy of education that postpones a young man's entry into business until he is twentyfive or twenty-six years of age. Such a philosophy is most frequently defended on the grounds that prebusiness work provides the classical background so necessary for success in a business career and that it matures the student for his serious work in business administration. It is time that we question an educational formula that burdens institutions of higher learning with problems of elementary educational skills and graces. In other countries and here, too, in earlier times, the lower school assumed its responsibility of developing the abilities of reading and understanding, of computing and expressing, and of introducing its charges to the accomplishments and visions of the sciences and the arts. Now there are among us many who advocate extending the formal period of general education to the end of the sophomore year of college, to the exclusion therein of other studies. This is unconscious condonation of the inefficiencies of lower educational units and can, sequentially, lead to four and even more years devoted to the sole pursuit of basic educational aims and the development of social graces. Cognizant perhaps that an increasing age expectancy and temporary general unemployment have reduced the economic value of youngsters twenty and twenty-one for the present, they have advocated the permanent

Sex Differences in Speed of Reading

It appears from Table II that only two (not four as formerly reported) of the ob tained differences are reliable statistically, and these favor the girls. The differences favoring the girls at the high school level in the tenth and eleventh grades are reliable. There are no statistically reliable differences appearing at the college level. The greatest difference in reading speed was found in the sophomore subjects and this difference favored the girls. The difference at the sopho more level is quite similar to that found by Berman and Bird1 in testing a group of 463 sophomores. When all the male subjects are compared with all the female subjects in the present study, the difference in reading speed favors the girls and is statistically reliable. Summary of Results.?Girls appear to be consistently more rapid readers than boys at each grade level from the eighth grade in junior high school through the sophomore year in college. This superiority is apparent, even though the sampling of girls was more positively skewed than was that of the boys. The difference between the means in the number of paragraphs read by the boys and by the girls was statistically reliable in only two (not four as previously stated) of the nine comparisons, but both instances favored the girls. When all the girls' scores are com bined into one distribution and compared with the combined scores of the boys, the mean score of the girls excels that of the boys and the difference is statistically reliable. Boys surpassed girls in the number of paragraphs read at the junior and senior years in college, but this difference was not great enough to be statistically reliable. 1 Isabelle Berman and Charles Bird, Sex Differences in Speed of Reading, Journal of Applied Psychology, XVII (1933), 221-26.

The Honor System

It was the purpose of this study(1) to discover the nature of and variations in attitudes toward academic honesty among students and faculty members of a certain institution where an honor system had been recognized for about twenty-five years. Academic honesty is here used to refer to honesty and integrity in respect to preparing assignments, writing examinations, and other exercises directly related to class or learning activities. A blank called a Personal Opinion Blank was constructed, using as a basis an early form of the Character Education Inquiry. It contained thirty-six descriptions of concrete situations involving academic honesty. The respondent was asked to indicate for each item whether he thought the described action was justified, unjustified, or doubtful. Evidence showed that the blank was sufficiently reliable and valid to justify conclusions concerning groups. The limits of space do not permit reproducing the entire blank, but the two descriptions which follow illustrate the concreteness of the situations presented in the test. 2. I had not been feeling well for a week. My theme was due on Friday. On Thursday night I had such a headache I couldn't think. But in order to come through with my work, I got my roommate to write it for me. 36. I used a crib on the examination because I felt that if I memorized the crib and then forgot it all after the examination it would be no worse than copying from the crib. I see no difference between copying from a crib and then destroying it, and copying from mental pictures and then letting them fade away. In Table I a brief statement summarizes each of the thirty-six situations as described. The figures are percentages of 494 representative students [TABULAR DATA FOR TABLE I OMITTED] and 46 faculty members, respectively, who were unable to justify the actions described. It can be seen that the faculty members did not justify these actions so often as the students did. The only exception to this general tendency was in the item, Used suggestion accidentally seen on neighbor's paper, toward which the faculty members were more lenient than the students. The faculty members agreed completely on only one item, Ill pupil had roommate write theme for him; all agreed that the action was unjustifiable. The wide variations within each group and the differences between the two groups raise interesting questions concerning the efficacy of an honor system based on any one set of standards. Table II shows the average percentage of responses given by various groups. There is a real difference shown between the attitudes of men and of women students toward actions involving honesty. Men seem to be able to justify more of these actions than women. A detailed study of responses by classes shows that there is no reliable difference between Freshmen and Sophomores or between Juniors and Seniors, but the differences between the two lower classes and the two upper classes are significant. They show, moreover, that the two upper classes are less strict in their attitudes toward academic honesty than the two lower classes. The question might well be raised, Is the college environment such that it tends to stimulate more lenient attitudes in respect to academic honesty? Some idea of growth in respect to attitudes toward academic honesty may be obtained by comparing the responses of groups of public-school pupils with those of college students on 20 of the 36 items previously submitted to pupils in public schools. In Table III it will be noticed that there is a gradual increase in the percentage of responses marked unjustified up to the sophomore year in college. From that point, the curve starts downward again. It would be interesting to know whether this is typical of conditions in most colleges. So far as is known, there is no factor in the selection of students for this particular investigation which would account for this phenomenon. …