A public health crisis in the university: Impact of crisis response strategies on universities’ transparency and post-crisis relationships during COVID 19 pandemic

During the COVID 19 pandemic, one of the most critical tasks of the university was to effectively communicate with students, faculty, and staff members. This study aims to explore perceived universities’ crisis response messages during the pandemic and examine the effectiveness of each response strategy on public relations outcomes. A survey with 346 university students in the U.S., results showed how defensive and accommodative response strategies differently affected PR outcomes. Accommodative strategies generated higher OPR and greater perceived transparency efforts among students, while several defensive strategies affected students’ negative evaluations on post-crisis OPR and perceived transparency of their universities. Such results revealed valuable insights that make significant contributions to theory and practices in university crisis communication and management, especially when dealing with public health crises that are seen as external locus of control.     

Social networks and student activism: on the politicising effect of campus connections

In the first part of this paper I present original survey data which suggests that the transition from further to higher education, or more specifically the process of becoming a university student, has a politicising effect upon some students. In particular, university students are more likely that their 6th form counter‐parts to have engaged in some of the forms of protest activity associated with social movements. This holds even during periods when levels of social movement mobilisation are low both on and off campus. In the second part of the paper I review several of the key theoretical explanations of student politicisation to be found in the social movements literature. Having criticised these theories and noted that they are challenged by my survey findings, I outline an alternative which focuses upon campus‐based social networks. University campuses, I suggest, facilitate the formation of a critical and connected mass of previously politicised actors who then use their further networks to recruit political novices into activism. It is this recruitment activity, which is greatly enhanced by the network structure of campus life, which explains the politicising effect of campus life. Moreover, insofar as new recruits go on to become recruiters this forms part of a self‐perpetuating dynamic of politicisation.     

When managerialism meets professional autonomy: The university ‘budget update’ as genre of governance

Through analysis of 178 texts posted online by university leaders during a severe budget shortfall, I explore the tensions that arise as managerialist practices are recontextualized within university governance. I identify 64 texts constitutive of a hybrid genre, which I call the ‘budget update’. The structure and linguistic features of this genre are described. Interdiscursive and intertextual analysis demonstrate hybridities that emerge when leaders enact, negotiate, and resist managerialism.     

The effect of marriage on fertility intentions: an approximation with cross-sectional data

"Cross-sectional data are used to create a quasi-longitudinal design to explore the effect of marriage upon fertility intentions. It is found that as a result of marriage, men are likely to become more inclined towards fertility while women become less so. These results are in part due to differential values regarding marriage and the family." The data are for 800 individuals who were students at a university in the western United States in 1974.     

Incorporating disabled students within an inclusive higher education environment

This study investigated disabled students' perceptions and experiences of learning in a single university. The paper reports the views of disabled student volunteers with a range of impairments who were selected to discuss experiences of teaching and assessment that they commonly encountered. Four group interviews were organized in 2002, before the Disability Discriminants Act (DDA) part IV came on stream, in which disabled students were invited to reflect together on their experiences as learners at the case study university. In addition to teaching and assessment, the students also identified issues to do with access to, and the use of, information as important in their learning experience. We conclude that further studies will need to adopt a more integrated approach to understanding disabled students' experiences as learners.     

Why Immigrant Background Matters for University Participation: A Comparison of Switzerland and Canada

This article extends our understanding of the difference in university participation between students with and without immigrant backgrounds by contrasting outcomes in Switzerland and Canada and by the use of new longitudinal data that are comparable between the countries. The research includes family socio‐demographic characteristics, family aspirations regarding university education, and the student's secondary school performance as explanatory variables of university attendance patterns. In Switzerland, compared with students with Swiss‐born parents, those with immigrant backgrounds are disadvantaged regarding university participation, primarily due to poor academic performance in secondary school. In comparison, students with immigrant backgrounds in Canada display a significant advantage regarding university attendance, even among some who performed poorly in secondary school. The included explanatory variables can only partly account for this advantage, but family aspirations regarding university attendance play a significant role, while traditional variables such as parental educational attainment are less important. In both countries, source region background is important. Possible reasons for the cross‐country differences are discussed.     

An ideal public relations master's curriculum: Expectations and status Quo

This study provides further endorsement for a cross-disciplinary graduate public relations curriculum based on in-depth interviews with leaders in industry and education and qualitative content analysis of university Web sites. It summarizes prior research studies that have tracked master's curricula since 1985 and concludes that although there is little curriculum consistency in place, there is more vision and expectation on the part of leaders in the field for an ideal public relations master's curriculum.     

Cross-Cultural Competency Through Service-Learning

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the development of cross-cultural competency within the context of service-learning. The need to integrate cross-cultural competency into the academic curriculum has risen dramatically with the sharp increase in resident Hispanics and their families. Service-learning addresses the demand for culturally competent graduates who can address the paradigms of inequality and invisibility as well as the language barrier. Service-learning develops cultural competency through weekly direct contact and journal writing exercises. By venturing into the community, students see beyond the cultural walls that often divide neighborhoods, and they also make connections between economics, anthropology, history, political science, and other disciplines. Through service-learning, many university students develop maturity and ingenuity that they would not acquire in the classroom. Community partners—the families, students, and teachers—discover how to complement and advocate for each other to help ensure well-being and academic success. This article analyzes and evaluates the service-learning experience through a community practicum course in which students spend 40 hours working with Hispanic migrant families. It includes the evolution in service-learning in a university program and the value in the shift from a focus on language acquisition to the development of cultural competency as an integral part of the program. Working with a population that is culturally different from themselves and the textbook knowledge they have received has become a cornerstone of university language and teacher-training programs.     

The ‘First Generation’ in Historical Perspective: Canadian Students in the 1960s

Over the past few years a number of studies have focused on the disadvantages confronted by students who are the first in their families to attend university. Their liabilities include relatively low levels of preparedness, a lack of involvement in campus activities, and low levels of academic achievement. Rather than accepting the universality of this characterization, in this article, these negative characteristics and experiences were viewed as one ‘ideal type.’ Using this ideal type as a reference point, the current study focused on a period in Canadian history in which first generation students were the norm. In an examination of Glendon College, York University, located in Toronto Canada, in the mid 1960s, it was found that the experiences of the first generation did not fit the ideal type. Those who likely were the first in their families to attend university were prepared for their studies, involved in campus activities, and earned good grades. Possible explanations for this deviation from the ideal type include the buoyancy of the economy in the mid-sixties, an expanding university sector, the size and relative intimacy of the College, the way in which high schools prepared students for university, and stringent admission requirements.     

大学生网络非理性行为探析

大学生作为网民队伍中的中坚力量,是网络平台最活跃的群体。大学生的网络非理性行为对大学生群体、大学生思想政治教育以及整个社会稳定产生很大影响。因此,要将媒介素养教育纳入大学文化建设的范畴,开设媒介素养教育课程,树立大学生选择和使用网络媒介的自我教育意识,发挥意见领袖的引导作用。     

A new scalable leader-community detection approach for community detection in social networks

Studying social influence in networks is crucial to understand how behavior spreads. An interesting number of theories were elaborated to analyze how innovations and trends get adopted. The traditional view assumes that a minority of members in a society possess qualities that make them exceptionally persuasive in spreading ideas to others. These exceptional individuals drive trends on behalf of the majority of ordinary people. They are loosely described as being informed, respected, and well connected. The leaders or influential are responsible for the dissemination of information and the propagation of influence. In this paper, we propose a new scalable and a deterministic approach for the detection of communities using leaders nodes named Leader-Community Detection Approach LCDA. The proposed approach has two main steps. The first step is the leaders’ retrieval. The second step is the community detection using similarity between nodes. Our algorithms provide good results compared to ground truth membership community.     

大学生领导力发展的影响因素研究

目前,学术界虽然对大学生领导力还没有完全统一的定义,但是在对价值观对大学生领导力作用上的认识上却十分一致。价值观被视为大学生领导力发展的核心。价值观之所以重要至此,是因为领导过程是一个影响别人的过程,领导者比其追随者更有权力,因此要对他们影响追随者的方式承担巨大的道义责任。领导者在建立组织的伦理氛围中扮演了关键角色,这也要求他们能特别敏锐地察觉他们所推崇的价值观和理念。所以价值观是大学生领导力发展关键的部分,在大学生领导力的发展中起到统领作用,有抱负的领导者需要发展伦理思考能力、批判性分析道德的能力、整合不同价值观传统的能力、沟通能力和与下属建立信任的能力。     

Schools must include faculty and staff in sexual violence prevention efforts

Creating a normative campus environment intolerant to sexual violence is important for prevention. While prevention initiatives focusing on students are vital, faculty and staff have a central role in supporting and sustaining a comprehensive strategy for preventing campus sexual violence. Nationwide, colleges and universities recently implemented campus climate surveys. At Emory, we decided to survey faculty and staff as well as students, motivated by our use of an ecological framing of campus sexual violence. Faculty and staff are long-term members of the community, and can provide stability and continuity that reinforces prevention efforts prioritized for students. We recommend that schools use a trauma-informed approach to guide the involvement of faculty and staff in prevention. We encourage colleges and universities to consider the experiences and needs of their faculty and staff, as professionals who serve as leaders on campus and as those who guide students through their academic experiences.     

From Access to Opportunity: The Evolving Social Roles of Community Colleges

This paper looks at the social role played by community colleges, the students they serve, and some of the current challenges they face. Community colleges have always been multi-mission institutions and in recent decades have been leaders in enrolling students from diverse family backgrounds. “Nontraditional” students make up the majority of community college students. This paper looks at the diversity of students in terms of race and ethnicity, first-generation college-goers, and students who are academically underprepared. The paper concludes with a discussion of the strengths of the community college experience for students coming from diverse backgrounds.     

The intersections of race,immigrant status,and university confirmations in Toronto

Although the number of students attending university has been steadily increasing over the past 20 years, discrepancies remain across racialized student groups. Students who immigrate to Canada also face a number of barriers to university participation. However, few studies investigate variations in university participation across racialized immigrant student groups. We draw on an intersectional approach to analyze student data from the Toronto District School Board. We employ multilevel logistic regression to examine if there are interactive effects of being both racialized and having an immigrant status on confirming a university enrollment. Looking at self-identified race and immigrant status of students in combination reveals that there are important differences in the likelihood of confirming and offer of university admission between several self-identified racial categories, depending on if they were foreign-born.     

A study on the relationship between commitment of club activity and vocational readiness among university students

The purpose of this study was to clarify the relationship between commitment of club activities and the vocational readiness among juniors at university. In this study, organizational commitment questionnaire (Mowday, 1979) and vocational readiness scale (Wakabayashi, Goto, and Shinkai, 1983) were tested with 178 (120 men, 58 women) juniors at one physical education university in the metropolitan area. According to correlation analysis, the relation between commitment of club activities and the vocational readiness was positive significant correlation (r = .303, p < .01). Moreover, we executed t-test. As the combined results, this study provided the following three conclusions; 1) Vocational readiness score of students who belonged to the club were higher than that of other students. 2) Vocational readiness score of students who were committed to club activities were higher than that of students with low commitment to club activities. 3) Students who were committed to club activities tended to increase the score of vocational readiness. It was not able to be declared that there were positive influences of the club activities in university education from the viewpoint of vocational readiness acquisition. Therefore, it is necessary to consider what the club activities should be from the viewpoint of university student's career education.     

Leader as performer; leader as human: A discursive and retrospective construction of crisis leadership

The study of crisis in higher education remains an important area of research for scholars and a relevant area of interest for higher education leaders who must anticipate and effectively address the ever-increasing and wide-ranging crisis situations. Using Weick’s notion of retrospective sensemaking, this project attempts to theoretically reframe crisis as a discursive opportunity for university leaders to engage in identity construction. By approaching issues of crisis leadership through a communicative framework, this article proposes four discursive themes and two tensions related to academic leadership identity during times of crisis based on interviews with college and university presidents.     

Navigating uncertainty,employment and women’s safety during COVID-19: Reflections of sexual assault resistance educators

COVID-19 affects women in ways unique to the impacts of structural inequalities related to gender, sexuality, disability, race and socioeconomic status. In this article, we reflect on our own experiences of the pandemic, as feminist students, workers and sexual assault resistance educators located in a Canadian post-secondary setting. Situating ourselves within feminist responses to sexual violence prevention, as facilitators of the Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, and Act (EAAA) sexual assault resistance education programme for university women, we reflect on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on our work as EAAA facilitators in our Canadian university. We explore the theoretical possibilities that critical disability theory and queer theory present to the EAAA programme, and argue that incorporating concepts from these frameworks will complement the goals of the EAAA programme and improve inclusivity of queer, trans and disabled participants. We conclude with a look into the future by anticipating the impacts of COVID-19 on our future work.     

Trauma screening in students attending a medical university

Clinicians seldom assess trauma history in patients who seek treatment for psychological problems, yet trauma exposure is often related to psychological distress. Assessing trauma history can provide valuable information for treatment conceptualization and provision, although patients may not spontaneously share their histories because of embarrassment, avoidance, or other concerns. The authors compared 73 students at a southeastern US medical university who sought counseling and psychological services and completed intake paperwork without a trauma screen with 130 students whose intake procedures included trauma screening. They found that (a) patients who were specifically asked about trauma history were more likely to report such events, (b) previous physical assaults with a weapon were related to current psychological distress, and (c) physical assaults with or without a weapon were related to clinically significant psychological distress. These findings suggest that screening for lifetime trauma history should be a standard part of mental health screenings in similar medical university counseling centers.     

The Role of Emotional Response during an H1N1 Influenza Pandemic on a College Campus

This study investigates how both positive and negative emotions relate to stakeholders' attributions of crisis responsibility, relational trust, and willingness to engage in crisis-related information seeking from the organization. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze data obtained from a survey of 429 students in a university that experienced a large H1N1 influenza outbreak. Students felt several positive emotions more frequently than negative emotions during a flu pandemic. Crisis responsibility was associated with both negative and positive emotions, and these emotions were significant mediators between crisis responsibility and both relational trust and willingness to seek information from the organization in a crisis. Implications of these findings are discussed.