University In Fall Research Articles

Knowledge of Human Papillomavirus and Perceived Barriers to Vaccination in a Sample of US Female College Students

Objective: To assess knowledge of human papillomavirus (HPV) and perceived barriers to being vaccinated against the virus. Participants: Three hundred ninety-six undergraduate women enrolled at Penn State University in Fall 2008. Methods: A random sample of students were invited to participate in a Web-based survey. Results: Awareness of HPV and the vaccine was high, but knowledge of HPV-related facts averaged only 65% overall. Knowledge was significantly predicted by frequency of media exposure and physician encouragement to be vaccinated, but not by the number of sex partners nor the frequency of condom/dental dam use. On average, women indicated that 2 of the 10 barriers listed applied to them. Physician encouragement negatively predicted barriers at p = .066. No other predictors approached significance. Conclusions: Serious misconceptions remain about specific aspects of the diseases and how they are acquired. Health education efforts are needed to improve knowledge in college populations and counteract perceived barriers.

Healing the World's Children: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Child Health in the Twentieth Century (review)

Reviewed by: Healing the World's Children: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Child Health in the Twentieth Century Gretchen Krueger Cynthia Comacchio, Janet Golden, and George Weisz, eds. Healing the World's Children: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Child Health in the Twentieth Century. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2008. xv + 307 pp. Ill. $85.00 (cloth, 978-0-7735-3399-8), $32.95 (paperbound, 978-0-7735-3400-I). In Healing the World's Children, Cynthia Comacchio, Janet Golden, and George Weisz offer readers diverse perspectives on the state of child health. The volume is a product of the "Comparative and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Child Health in the Twentieth Century" colloquium held at the McCord Museum and McGill University in fall 2004 and includes a wide range of authors and disciplines. Historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and scholars in film and cultural studies reach beyond their primary subjects of study to consider problems in childhood studies. The result is somewhat uneven, but interested readers will find broad reviews and updated scholarship and will, perhaps, be provoked by a number of contributors who offer fresh insights as they reach across fields. The collection opens with an introduction that traces major declarations issued about the health and protection of the young over the course of the twentieth century, evidence of a recent awareness toward child-centered issues. Through new policies and practices, landmark improvements have been made in children's lives. The editors caution, however, that the story of child health has been one of stagnation and decline if considered from a global perspective. It is only by widening our scope to address all populations in need, they claim, that high rates of morbidity, mortality, and disability will be brought under management. The landscape the editors set out to cover is ambitious, yet it is difficult to skillfully reframe such a range of conference papers into a single, cohesive volume. The authors explicitly acknowledge the difficulties of such a project, saying that the field is too large for them to capture all of its complexities. Thus, they have aimed for a "kaleidoscopic" image of child health or, in other words, a "swirl" of "elements in a state of motion" (p. 7). Yet one theme that the scholars share is that of restoring children's voices and recognizing their agency in shaping policy and their environment. All of the authors seek to put children at the center of their work—a goal of much recent scholarship in childhood studies. The essays, broken into five interrelated sections, begin with lengthy reviews of three geographic areas—North America, Europe, and Latin America. Neil Sutherland's essay on North America treads familiar ground, but the Latin American essay, in particular, is a rich contribution for both its new perspectives and rich bibliography. The second section explores the meanings and representations of children. The essays focus on the "selling" of disability and the trope of "child as victim" in modern AIDS coverage in Africa. Much has been written about the use of images and narratives of ill children by hospitals and voluntary agencies, but this essay stands apart because of the author's personal experience as a parent of a child with a disability. The third section explicitly centers on capturing children's voices. Myra Bluebond-Langner has long used interviews to explore children's experiences of cancer and their own interpretations of diagnosis, [End Page 531] treatment, and death. Her essay is a thoughtful continuation of this extended study. Mona Gleason's essay is focused on interpretation mediated through the body but adds memories of Canadian adults to compare "expert sources" with lived experiences. It is a concern that children's voices have been "mediated by memory or the interview process" in both essays, yet there are limited methods for capturing and interpreting children's experiences without these tools. Finding original sources remains a work in progress for many scholars in the field. The fourth section attempts to address the problems of defining and measuring children health and its consequences for policy making. In contrast, the two essays in the final section discuss qualitative representations of children—in paintings and photographs. Healing the World's Children is a valuable addition...

Persistence of mental health problems and needs in a college student population

Background Cross-sectional studies indicate a high prevalence of mental health problems among college students, but there are fewer longitudinal data on these problems and related help-seeking behavior. Methods We conducted a baseline web-based survey of students attending a large public university in fall 2005 and a two-year follow-up survey in fall 2007. We used brief screening instruments to measure symptoms of mental disorders (anxiety, depression, eating disorders), as well as self-injury and suicidal ideation. We estimated the persistence of these mental health problems between the two time points, and determined to what extent students with mental health problems perceived a need for or used mental health services (medication or therapy). We conducted logistic regression analyses examining how baseline predictors were associated with mental health and help-seeking two years later. Results Over half of students suffered from at least one mental health problem at baseline or follow-up. Among students with at least one mental health problem at baseline, 60% had at least one mental health problem two years later. Among students with a mental health problem at both time points, fewer than half received treatment between those time points. Limitations Mental health problems are based on self-report to brief screens, and the sample is from a single university. Conclusions These findings indicate that mental disorders are prevalent and persistent in a student population. While the majority of students with probable disorders are aware of the need for treatment, most of these students do not receive treatment, even over a two-year period.

A Research Agenda for Online Teacher Professional Development

This article highlights key online teacher professional development (oTPD) areas in need of research based on a review of current oTPD research conducted in conjunction with an oTPD conference held at Harvard University in fall 2005. The literature review of this field documents much work that is anecdotal, describing professional development programs or “lessons learned” without providing full details of the participants, setting, research questions, methods of data collection, or analytic strategies. Until more rigorous oTPD research is conducted, developers are hard pressed to know the best design features to include, educators remain uninformed about which program will help support teacher change and student learning, and funders lack sufficient guidelines for where to direct their support. The authors believe that the recommendations in this article for a research agenda will guide oTPD scholarship toward an evidence-based conceptual framework that provides robust explanatory power for theory and model building.

“Use words. Not your body”: The hunger that has no name

This essay examines the competing readings of food refusal that emerged from a student hunger strike held at Columbia University in fall 2007. The invisibility of the act of food refusal forces hunger strikers to adopt performance strategies that make their (non)action visible as protest. To make the politics of their food refusal legible, advocates for the hunger strike promoted their actions as part of a 40 year tradition of student protest. However, that same invisibility allowed the protest's detractors to deride the hunger strikers as anorexic. At the center of the protest and the commentary about it was a wasting female body that confused for spectators the line between the political and the pathological. Attention to this body raises questions of how community is created and disciplined through performative acts, how easily female protest is evacuated of political meaning and the uneasy role of whiteness in popular attention to anorexia.

College Students Indicate Stigma Is in Retreat

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Professional NewsFull AccessCollege Students Indicate Stigma Is in RetreatEve BenderEve BenderSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:2 May 2008https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.43.9.0006Stigma may not be as big a barrier to help seeking by college students as previously thought, according to a study published in the April Psychiatric Services. Researchers at the University of Michigan found that perceived stigma was not associated with students' mental health service utilization.“There is limited evidence of the long-term effectiveness of antistigma programs, and while our study is far from definitive, it does suggest that perceived stigma may not play as important a role in help seeking as many assume,” lead author Ezra Golberstein, a doctoral candidate in health policy at the University of Michigan, told Psychiatric News.Many programs targeting college students as well as the general public are based on the assumption that stigmatizing attitudes surrounding mental illness keep many from seeking help. Yet Goberstein asserted that perhaps such assumptions should not be made so readily.Golberstein and his colleagues randomly chose 2,782 graduate and undergraduate students enrolled at the university in fall 2005 and surveyed them about their attitudes toward seeking treatment for mental health problems, their perceived need for help, and whether they took psychotropic medications or received psychotherapy in the preceding year.Using the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ), Golberstein also gathered information on whether the students were experiencing current symptoms of anxiety or depression.Of those surveyed, 475 respondents screened positive for anxiety or depression on the PHQ. Among that group of respondents, 302 perceived a need for help over the prior year, and 156 of those did receive mental health services during that time.As measured by the five-item Stigma Scale for Receiving Psychological Help, which ranges from 0 (very little perceived stigma associated with receiving mental health treatment) to 15 (high levels of perceived stigma), the mean score for the students surveyed was 5.8.The scale features statements such as, “Receiving treatment for emotional or mental problems carries social stigma,” and students were asked to indicate their level of agreement with such statements on a continuum.Men, Asian or Pacific Islanders, international students, and those who classified themselves as growing up “poor” perceived higher levels of stigma associated with mental illness treatment than did women, whites, U.S. students, or those who considered themselves “comfortable” or“ well-to-do” while growing up.When the sample was stratified by age, 18- to 22-year olds who perceived more stigma attached to the use of mental health services were less likely to perceive a need for help, but this finding did not hold for those older than age 22. Among students with probable depressive or anxiety disorders, perceived stigma was not found to be associated with service use.The researchers noted that one of the most surprising findings for the full sample of respondents was the lack of association between perceived stigma concerning mental health treatment and actual use of treatment.According to Golberstein, one explanation for this finding is that the sample represents “a segment of society with relatively high socioeconomic status and education, and perceived stigma may not affect this specific population that much.”Study limitations include a lack of generalizability of the results to the general population and the fact that researchers could not gather information about students' attitudes toward mental illness itself with the instrument used, which measured attitudes toward treatment for mental illness only.“ Although our study suggests that perceived stigma does not explain much of why students who might benefit from treatment do not use it, this is only one cross-sectional data point at one school,” Golberstein said, noting that he is currently gathering longitudinal data from students at a number of U.S. colleges to overcome that limitation.The findings do not mean, however, that antistigma programs are not necessary.Golberstein emphasized that antistigma programs targeting college students and adults “are very valuable even if they do not increase service use, since stigma is a form of discrimination that has been shown to have negative consequences for those with mental disorders.”Prior research by Golberstein and colleagues published in the July 2007 Medical Care indicated that college students often face other barriers to getting mental health care, he noted. These barriers include inadequate knowledge about available services such as that the college offered free mental health care, having poor impressions of the effectiveness of treatment, and not knowing whether their health insurance covered mental health services.“It might be more efficient to first focus on some of [these] barriers to care,” he told Psychiatric News, “although more research in this area is needed.”“Perceived Stigma and Mental Health Care Seeking” is posted at<http://ps.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/59/4/392>.▪ ISSUES NewArchived

Faculty Perceptions of a Professional Development Seminar

A web-enhanced seminar was provided to address the pedagogical needs of professional faculty educators at a college of dentistry in a research-intensive university in fall 2006. In this qualitative report, the authors describe the participants' (n=12) perceptions and evaluation of the seminar. An evaluation of the seminar journals showed documented improvement in the participants' confidence and an enhanced awareness of their teaching practices. Six themes (new knowledge, planned change, awareness, changes made, current practice, and challenges to learning) ranging from 5.3 percent to 35.5 percent among four to twelve participants emerged across their learning journals. Participants also rated the course 4.9 on a five-point scale in helping them understand a variety of teaching modalities other than lecture and the sole use of multiple-choice tests as insufficient. When we invest resources in our faculty, progress is made towards ensuring quality teaching, as well as increased understanding and enhanced communication in the teaching and learning environment. This recursive process not only influences the faculty and those they teach but the patients they care for as well.

Play by Play: Theater Essays &amp; Reviews, 1993-2002 (review)

Reviewed by: Play by Play: Theater Essays & Reviews, 1993–2002 Tom Smith Play by Play: Theater Essays & Reviews, 1993–2002. By Jonathan Kalb. New York: Limelight Editions, 2003; pp. vii + 274. $30.00 cloth, $17.95 paper. Jonathan Kalb's excellent collection of essays illuminates the one area of theatre often relegated to mean-spirited punchlines or dismissed entirely: theatre criticism. With this compilation, Kalb—former drama critic for The Village Voice and New York Press as well as a regular contributor to American Theatre and The New York Times—has proven himself an important documentarian of American [End Page 163] theatre production history and deserves to be regarded as an important theatre practitioner. Kalb's first section, "Critical Mess," begins with a transcript of a lecture given to students at Barnard College and New York University in fall 2002. "The Death (and Life) of American Theatre Criticism: Advice to the Young Critic" is a fascinating and charming discussion of both the author's own journey and "words of practical advice, offered with all the recklessness of love" (14). Kalb offers valuable insights such as "Write journalism—Read beyond it" and "Ground your work in knowledge, not style." The author is passionate about the need for and development of critics rather than stylists, and encourages open and public discourse that allows give-and-take between critics and readers to avoid the too-common megalomania of many critics. This essay is followed by "The Critic In Extremis," a rather short piece that tackles the decline of criticism while lionizing Gordon Rogoff, critic and author of Vanishing Acts: Theater Since the Sixties. Rogoff, challenges Kalb, is the type of critic whose work is overlooked primarily because of America's inclination towards anti-intellectualism and embrace of recycled culture. Including witty gems such as Rogoff's reaction to David Mamet's work: "short-winded plays keep playing into the hands of the monsters he's putting down" (26), Kalb makes a valid point about our current obsession with entertainment over analysis. Part 1 ends with the direct and insightful "The Critic as Humanist," which scrutinizes the struggle of the critic to respond to the work not only as a universal audience member but also an elite one. Kalb's next section, "Something the Dust Said," focuses specifically on the work and legacy of Samuel Beckett. The five essays within explore everything from Beckett's work on film to the recently published Eleuthéria, the play that Beckett wanted never to be published. A critical look at Deirdre Bair's biography on Beckett, a performance review of a revival of Waiting for Godot, and a look at Bill Irwin's performance in Texts for Nothing complete the section. In all five essays, Kalb proves himself an informed and opinionated defender of Beckett's intent while providing the reader with a strong sense of the range of approach to dramatic criticism. "American Dreams" sheds light on solo performance pieces. In his essay "Documentary Solo Performance: The Politics of the Mirrored Self," Kalb makes the case that the rise of solo pieces isn't merely a matter of economics, but, rather, the reaction to the lack of political theatre that thrived in early periods of American history. Solo artists such as Anna Deavere Smith, Marc Wolf, Danny Hoch, and Sarah Jones, claims Kalb, represent a modern version of Brecht's expounding of topical narratives and documentary style. It is a fascinating and insightful discourse; by representing the role of the critic as respondent not only to the work but also the historical context in which the work fits, Kalb proves himself a remarkably authoritative and discerning voice. Four essays compose part 4, "German Questions." Beginning with a review of Peter Stein's twenty-one-hour production of Faust I and Faust II in July 2000 and progressing to a discussion on the Berliner Ensemble's decline as Germany's "official" theatre, Kalb's work takes a sharp turn in "You Can Go Home Again." In this personal essay on being an American Jew living in West Berlin for a few years, Kalb offers a refreshingly personal reaction in his critiques of German plays. While never crossing...

Awakening to a New Dawn: Perspectives of the Future of School Psychology

The Invitational Conference on the Future of School Psychology held at Indiana University in Fall 2002 included a number of paper presentations and group discussions. Toward the end of the conference, four participants were asked to present their reactions, reflecting input from a practitioner, a graduate student in school psychology, a faculty member at a university program educating school psychologists in the United States, and a school psychologist/faculty member at a university from a different country (Greece). The purpose of this article is to share their combined perspectives of the future of school psychology. This article also includes their suggestions for the future direction of school psychology, and encourages all school psychologists to awaken to a change in the field. The article considers the educational and mental health needs of students, and offers a prospectus for the field including (a) data-supported services; (b) group-focused practices; (c) collaboration and partnerships with professionals, families, and schools; and (d) multicultural considerations.

Getting Help from Course Management Software to Teach a Large-Enrollment Introductory Geology Class

Course management software allows instructors to introduce an Internet-based component to their classroom teaching even without any prior knowledge of HTML language. I used one of the most widely available software, WebCT, for two introductory geology classes of approximately 250 students each at Iowa State University in fall 2001. The software is easy to use and I established a variety of content and communication tools in less than a day, using the procedure described in the paper. Student responses to the use of WebCT were in general positive and they especially liked the opportunity to communicate with me, to keep track of their assignments with the “Calendar” tool, and to view their grades online. Students who earned good grades in the class are also the ones that made more extensive use of WebCT, especially with the “Discussion” tool. However, it cannot yet be demonstrated that the use of WebCT helps learning in a measurable way.

Net Gains? Pacific Studies in Cyberspace

The paper explores how the Internet can be used to enhance the quality of teaching and learning in Pacific Islands studies. It does so with reference to an experimental web-based interactive module that linked classes at University of Hawai'i and Canterbury University in fall 2000 as part of the Ford-funded project, Moving Cultures: Remaking Asia-Pacific Studies. The paper argues that such interactive pedagogies can be used to redress some of the power imbalances apparent in the field of study and help accelerate an ongoing process of decolonization.

Awakening to a New Dawn: Perspectives of the Future of School Psychology.

The Invitational Conference on the Future of School Psychology held at Indiana University in Fall 2002 included a number of paper presentations and group discussions. Toward the end of the conferen...

Native Faculty, Higher Education, Racism, and Survival

My first ten years at a state university in the Midwest were horrible years! In this time I experienced much hostility and racism in a "college culture," which to me was "distinctly alien and unfriendly." The message, as stated by Jon Reyhner, was "subtle but clear, you are not welcome here."1 It had reached the point, after a number of years, where I was consulting attorneys for a possible racial discrimination lawsuit against the university. Then, a new president took over and reinstated my program, American Indian Studies and Dakota Studies (aisds) and my position as associate professor. What I propose to do in this article is recite and comment on some of the horrible racist acts that happened to me over the past ten years; mention the sources of support for my program, positions, and for me personally; and discuss what it is like now in the year 2003. Another purpose of this account is to serve as encouragement for younger Native faculty and to convey the message that it is possible for Indigenous faculty to survive in a hostile and racist environment such as higher education institutions are. Litany of Lamentations In my first ten years at the university I have undergone the following experiences: two grievance processes; two close votes, one involving program status by the faculty assembly, and the second involving tenure by the Social Science Department; [End Page 349] two cuttings of my program; two cuttings of my position; one denial of tenure; and, numerous instances of racism, intimidation, and harassment by two different university administrations and by faculty First Grievance Complaint—Fall 1992 In my first quarter (fall 1992) at the university, I was the focus of a grievance complaint filed by the local faculty union against the then university president. Apparently, the president had violated several provisions of the contract between the faculty union and the state's university system in bringing me to the campus. Hence, the grievance complaint was filed. Thus, I was embroiled in controversy right from the beginning of my employment at the university It was not an auspicious beginning! I think that the president acted courageously in bringing me, a Native faculty member, a faculty person of color, to campus. In my opinion, most higher education institutions, including this university, have carefully insulated themselves against "those people" and the "problems" they cause. In spite of the lofty rhetoric espoused by faculty and administration in general regarding rational thought, objectivity, and the intellectual process, and in spite of the lip-service paid to diversity and multiculturalism, there would be no change or opportunities for faculty persons of color at this university or at other institutions unless direct action, in-your-face action, was and is taken, as the president did. So, I owe a debt of gratitude to him. In addition, I think that the university owes a debt of gratitude to the president. I say this because the university is surrounded by four Dakota communities and/or reservations, so it is appropriate to have a Dakota studies program and Native studies program at the university. First Close Vote—Spring 1994 The first of the two close votes I experienced regarding my program's status was taken in spring 1994 at a meeting of the university's faculty association. It involved the question of granting "program status" to aisds, which meant getting a specific program number. The vote was thirty-seven faculty for granting program status to AISDS and thirty-one against. [End Page 350] When the program first began with my coming to the university in fall 1992, my position was funded with "soft" money, that is, from a grant. This grant was concerned with diversity and hiring faculty of color. My position was funded from this grant for two years. In 1994 the funds ran out, and a decision had to be made as to the fate of AISDS.2 There was much discussion among...

Time-varying broadband interference patterns in the acoustic field during a shallow water, fixed-fixed experiment

During a joint experiment between the Marine Physical Laboratory and the Applied Research Lab, Penn State University in Fall, 2000, continuous-broadband signals in the 100–400 Hz band were transmitted from a moored source to a large-aperture horizontal hydrophone array on the ocean bottom in 175-m water. Spectrograms over a 24-hour period were created from the data from several array elements. These long-duration spectrograms show sinuous interference patterns formed by the regions of modal constructive interference that can be easily traced throughout the entire 24-hour period. The time dependence of the amplitude and center frequency of these individual serpentine structures are correlated with variations in environmental conditions. In particular, their frequency-meandering nature is associated both with tidally driven changes in water depth and the watch circle of the moored source. Temporal oscillations in their amplitude occur with the same periods as those of internal waves. Abrupt jumps in their frequency content occur at the same time as rapid thickening of the upper mixed layer. A simple analytical model is used to predict many of these characteristics. [Work supported by ONR, Code 321US.]

Prediction of Successive Terms Performance in College from Tests and Grades

Colleges follow an almost universal practice of administering ability tests to new students. These tests are used initially for purposes such as admission, placement, and counseling. The test scores then remain in the files and undoubtedly continue to influence decisions as to whether a given student with marginal initial attainment should be retained in college, be admitted to upper school, and so forth. In a previous paper (Juola, 1963) the applicability of these freshmanlevel ability tests to decisions made in later terms was questioned. Here, correlations between ability test scores and attainment in the student's initial quarter in college were found to be in excess of .60.. owever, these correlations decreased to .30 and lower by the fourth, fifth, and sixth terms. Other data indicated that a portion of this decrease in predictive validity was due to restriction in the range of abilities for the sample of students available in later terms, but even beyond this, the correlations successively decreased term by term. This tendency is shown in Table 1, which presents correlations between test scores and term grades over a seven-quarter span for a sample of 290 male and 250 female students selected randomly from the total freshman class that entered Michigan State University in Fall, 1960. The test scores reported are for the MSU Reading Test and the three subscores and total score of the College Qualification Tests, (CQT) Form B (Bennett, et al.). This table shows that the correlations between the CQT-Total Score, for example, and the first term grade point average were .52 for males and .50 for females. These predictive validities decrease progressively by term to but .27 and .28 for males and females respectively, by the seventh term. In contrast to this general pattern of decrease in precision of prediction, Table 1 also provides data which show that the cumulative GPA immediately preceding each of these terms provides a considerably better basis for prediction of future grades. The cumulative six term GPA, for example, correlates .66 with the seventh-term GPA for men; the cumulative five-term GPA correlates .68 with the sixth-term GPA; and the cumulative fourth-term GPA correlates .69 with the fifth-term GPA. One can now ask an additional

Intensive German at Syracuse

ArrFTER the impressive array of reports on intensive language courses in the last January issue of the GERMAN QUARTERLY this brief contribution might seem to be superfluous. However, as a perhaps typical reaction to that stimulating Symposium and because of some original features, the following lines may be of interest. The first intensive German course in the modern sense1 was introduced at Syracuse University in fall 1945. During the first semester, 9, contact hours were offered, 6 hours in Conversation and 3 in Analysis carrying 6 credits. Mimeographed material was used containing the essentials of grammar, a number of exercises, dialogues, songs, and poems. Shortly before mid-term, Zeydel's Graded Reader for Beginners was introduced and comfortably finished by the end of the semester. Needless to say, the aural-oral method was used throughout and a modified direct method applied. Whenever possible, the meaning of new words was acquired by means of associations, e.g. through symbols, synonyms, antonyms, defiinitions, illustrations, action, objects, pictures, etc. Spelling was always done in German. Zeydel's text was read for comprehension and served as a basis for conversation in the shape of questions and answers, reports, and dialogues. Frequent oral tests and several written examinations were given and one recording was made. The attitude of the students was excellent throughout the course, but care had to be taken with the memorization of dialogues. All students enjoyed especially one aspect of the aural-oral method, namely, talking in pairs on prepared topics with the instructor acting as a guide and critic while walking from group to group. A feeling of ease was thus obtained which resulted in a faster acquisition of a speaking ability than was possible otherwise. Frequent mistakes were discussed in front of the class. The final examination consisted of three parts: