The hybrid and dualistic identity of full-time non-tenure-track faculty

Colleges and universities rely on full-time non-tenure-track (FTNT) faculty to achieve their teaching, research, and service missions. These faculty are deemed both symptomatic of and partly responsible for academe's shortcomings. The ascriptions, however, are made with little attention to the faculty themselves or to their consequences for FTNT faculty. Through analysis of interview data of university faculty, the authors present and explain FTNT faculty self-representations of professional and occupational identity. Assumptions drawn from institutional and professional theory contextualize the research, and narrative analysis infuses the application of the framework of cultural identity theory. These FTNT faculty are found to possess hybrid and dualistic identities. Their work and roles are a hybrid and contain some elements of a profession and some of a "job." Their identity is dualistic because as teachers, they express satisfaction, whereas as members of the professoriate, they articulate restricted self-determination and self-esteem. This troubled and indistinct view of self-as-professional is problematic both for FTNT faculty as they go about their daily work and for their institutions, which are in no small part responsible for the uncertain conditions and identities of FTNT faculty. © 2011 SAGE Publications

Lightweight Data Integration Frameworks for Clinical Research

Research data from a single clinical study is often spread across multiple applications and systems. We present a reusable, lightweight, secure framework for automatically integrating and querying study data from heterogeneous sources in order to answer routine, operational questions for researchers

I give at the office: A review of workplace giving research, theory, and practice

Workplace giving is a widely used philanthropic tool. Although it may have great unmet potential, it is also facing a number of challenges, including competition from informal crowdfunding campaigns. In the face of such challenges, we take stock of the extant research to better understand the value and future of workplace giving, emphasizing employee actions and preferences in our review. Workplace giving studies can also augment knowledge about contextual giving or bounded settings for exploring basic philanthropic questions (e.g., donor control or gift elasticity). We use a three‐part conceptual framework to synthesize and discuss research on individual workplace giving in the context of broader giving behaviors. We address what researchers know, do not know, and need to know on the topic of workplace giving

Survey on Data-Centric based Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

The great concern for energy that grew with the technological advances in the field of networks and especially in sensor network has triggered various approaches and protocols that relate to sensor networks. In this context, the routing protocols were of great interest. The aim of the present paper is to discuss routing protocols for sensor networks. This paper will focus mainly on the discussion of the data-centric approach (COUGAR, rumor, SPIN, flooding and Gossiping), while shedding light on the other approaches occasionally. The functions of the nodes will be discussed as well. The methodology selected for this paper is based on a close description and discussion of the protocol. As a conclusion, open research questions and limitations are proposed to the reader at the end of this paper

Micro finance in Palestine: issues, performance, and trajectories

Despite the growing interest in the subject of micro finance very little, if any, academic research on the Palestinian case exists. This paper starts filling this gap by analysing the development of the micro credit industry in Palestine between 2000 and 2008. This paper shows that at macro level the industry has a strong potential for growth, but its full development is frustrated by inefficiencies in credit allocation and high level of risk, whose most evident sign being the problem of late or no re-payment of loans. By using data from one of the most important micro credit agencies, the Arab Centre for Agricultural Development (ACAD), we analyse the determinants of late payment. The most important results are that high interest rates increase the probability of late repayment, loan size, when above the “micro” threshold has no impact, while female customers and the one with banks guarantees are less likely to pay late. The policy implications are that while going towards a more “market-based” approach might provide some advantages in terms of risk reduction, it will not per se solve the problem while will certainly expose the most vulnerable sectors of the population to further credit rationingPalestine; micro finance; economic development