Pilot Study expert, guest artist education experiences for music students at the university level.

Many Universities have opportunities to work with guest and visiting artists of every musical genre and instrumentation. The University of Alaska Fairbanks, mainly because of the extreme distance between peer and aspirational universities, does not often host a visiting artist. We wanted to gather data on how UAF music majors, students, and community members and Fairbanks high school students would respond to a visiting artist. Vijay Singh, currently on faculty at Central Washington University, has visited Fairbanks in the past. He has presented at UAF Jazz Fest and the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival. Mr. Singh is also versed in several genres of music from jazz to choral and composition. After a performance by Vijay Singh on Saturday, April 28, we will survey attendees to garner data on how the performance was received. Our hope is that Fairbanks will grow and flourish from visiting artists and such visits will become common at UAF

Epistemic authority and the gender lens

Researching 'hidden' forms of social inequality such as gender often poses particular challenges. Not least of these is how to uncover such dimensions of social life whilst preserving the perspectives of research participants, who may not consider such matters relevant to their lives, particularly if other forms of identity or oppression are more prominent for them. Here, I reflect on these issues in the context of researching user involvement in mental health services from a feminist perspective. I show how `uncovering' gender and other forms of social inequality in the field was aided through adopting a wide analytical lens focusing on power, along with reflexivity and openness in discussing my own political analysis and commitments in relation to the study area with the researched. I also describe how I attempted to resolve the epistemological-ethical issues involved through conceptualising these in terms of `situatedness' and gender salience and adopting a feminist standpoint which emphasised what researchers can, and indeed should, bring to the research enterprise. Related issues of power and empowerment in the research process are discussed

Who Should Parent? Parenting Fitness as Determined by the Five-factor Personality Module

The majority of parents in the United States engage in good enough parenting, which allows children to develop into functional and well-adjusted adults. However, as the Juvenile court system knows well, some parent\u27s do not engage in good enough parenting; some parents are very abusive or neglectful in their parenting styles. In 2012, and estimated 686,000 children were victims of child maltreatment. Can child abuse be prevented? Yes, it can. There is a strong correlation between an individual\u27s personality make up and the way they parent. Additionally, personality follows a predictable maturation trend and significant deficits within an individual\u27s personality will remain relatively constant unto that individual as he or she ages, if steps are not taken to intentionally alter those deficits. This indicates that a person\u27s ability to parent, and his or her likelihood of being a good enough or neglectful and abusive parent can be determined long before a person even has children, such as in late adolescence. This researcher sought to determine if the Five-Factor Personality module could be used to screen for individuals at risk of engaging in child maltreatment during late adolescence to prevent future child abuse and neglect

Some useful sources on mental health and human rights

Contributors to this themed section have referred to a range of sources on mental health and human rights, particularly those offering social policy and sociological perspectives. The sources below offer an elaboration of some key citations and some additional references and web sites on this theme which may be of particular interest to a social policy readership

D/H ratios of the inner Solar System

The original hydrogen isotope (D/H) ratios of different planetary bodies may indicate where each body formed in the Solar System. However, geological and atmospheric processes can alter these ratios through time. Over the past few decades, D/H ratios in meteorites from Vesta and Mars, as well as from S- and C-type asteroids, have been measured. The aim of this article is to bring together all previously published data from these bodies, as well as the Earth, in order to determine the original D/H ratio for each of these inner Solar System planetary bodies. Once all secondary processes have been stripped away, the inner Solar System appears to be relatively homogeneous in terms of water D/H, with the original water D/H ratios of Vesta, Mars, the Earth, and S- and C-type asteroids all falling between δD values of −100‰ and −590‰. This homogeneity is in accord with the ‘Grand tack’ model of Solar System formation, where giant planet migration causes the S- and C-type asteroids to be mixed within 1 AU to eventually form the terrestrial planets

Chance in a Created World: How to Avoid Common Misunderstandings about Divine Action

In the article ”Against Physicalism-plus-God: How Creation Accounts for Divine Action in the World’, I defined a framework which allows us to make some progress in our understanding of how God acts in the world. In the present article, I apply this framework to the specific question of chance events. I show that chance does not provide an explanation for special divine action. Nevertheless, chance does not hamper God’s ability to act in the world, and creation provides a framework for the understanding of chance, which is akin to what we see in modern science

A 'novel' approach to leadership development : using women's literary fiction to explore contemporary women's leadership issues : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Business Studies in Management at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

The central aim of this thesis is to investigate how women’s literary fiction can be harnessed for the purpose of exploring contemporary women’s leadership issues. This thesis argues that literary fiction is a valuable source of interdisciplinary and ‘artful’ consciousness-raising material for proactively addressing at the interpersonal level a wide range of critical concerns related to women’s leadership experiences. Having identified a significant ‘gap’ in the extant literature – the underutilisation of women’s novels, short-stories and plays in leadership studies – this thesis adopts an interdisciplinary approach to demonstrate how literary works can be used to examine women’s contemporary leadership issues. For this research project I adopted an interpretive qualitative research paradigm informed by critical leadership studies and a multiplicity of feminist perspectives. I developed a systematic method for long listing and short listing appropriate texts and analysed selected works in response to a five-point conceptual framework of critical concerns arising from a review of the women and leadership literature. I also kept a reflective blog to track the iterative nature of the research process and to record my learning during this study. The findings demonstrate that women’s literary fiction offers a rich repository of thought-provoking illustrations of women’s leadership concerns, including gender binaries, power-play, socially constructed perceptions and gendered expectations, and women’s diverse range experiences as both leaders and followers. The extended analysis provides a number of in-depth examples and reflective questions, revealing myriad opportunities for critical theorising, illustrative analysis and critical reflection. Subsequently, this thesis argues that fictional stories are a viable and potentially transformative ‘artful’ intervention for addressing complex leadership issues concerned with gender within the context of women’s leadership development programmes. My recommendations for future studies include a focus on ethical leadership, the evaluation of participant ‘book club’ interventions and an extension of the reading lists to include more culturally relevant New Zealand authors. To my knowledge, there are no studies that utilise women’s literary fiction for the purpose of exploring contemporary women’s leadership concerns and questions. Consequently, my thesis makes an original contribution to the leadership and humanities field, as well as providing an innovative and creative product that can be used for critical and interdisciplinary approaches to women’s leadership development