Undergraduate participation in research provides opportunities for students to develop their research and technical skills, network with other students/professors, raise their awareness of graduate studies, and understand the social context of research. While undergraduate students are often able to participate in research at their own institution or nationally in the US (through available Research Experiences for Undergraduates sites), it is also possible for undergraduates to complete research internationally. In addition to the domestic benefits of research experiences, this provides an opportunity to network with international students/professors, learn about a different country and culture, and learn new perspectives on how professionals from other countries approach research. In support of this mission an International Research Experiences for Undergraduates (IRES) site is providing research experiences for students from the XXXX at the YYY in the Czech Republic. Each of the projects students supported were focused on fractional-order circuits and systems. This is an emerging field that is exploring how to import topics from fractional calculus into circuit design techniques to realize designs with greater design flexibility than is easily achieved with traditional methods. For the first iteration of this IRES site, five students from electrical and computer engineering were recruited and participated in 12-weeks of summer research focused on fractional-order circuits and systems under the mentorship of faculty at YYYY. Prior to their summer research, students participated in a one-semester course at XXXX which introduced them to fractional calculus, fractional circuits, design methodologies, approximation techniques, and design tools (MATLAB, LTSpice). Additionally, this course included training to support students in their international travel (e.g. passport & medical requirements, currency, food culture, inter-city and inter-country buses/trains) and collaboration with international faculty (e.g. communication strategies, documentation, project requirements). To understand participants satisfaction with the program, their research, and specific program elements their feedback was solicited using an online survey (using quantitative and open-ended questions) and a focus group facilitated by the program evaluators on their return to XXXX. This work will provide an overview of the IRES site, specific program elements, and detail the reported student satisfaction with the program and their research, and their perceived learning gains. These details will inform the design and execution of the 2nd iteration of the IRES site at YYYY and help other IRES coordinators identify successful program elements that could support their own site goals.

Concern for teaching ethics in engineering has existed for some time, with research supporting that active learning strategies are useful instruction methods for teaching ethical reasoning in STEM fields. Active learning approaches, such as case studies or problem-based learning (PBL), are shown to increase student exam scores and decrease student failure rates when compared to instruction using lecture methods alone. However, there is not sufficient information to show that active PBL is effective for teaching ethical reasoning and decision making in college-level engineering courses. The guiding question for this project is: Is PBL an effective pedagogy to teach ethical reasoning in support of social responsibility to freshman electrical and computer engineering (ECE) students during their primary introduction to the discipline? To answer this research question, the introductory course for electrical and computer engineering at XXX has been redesigned to center ethics as a core feature in electrical and computer engineering. This course has an accelerated delivery with 15, 1-hour classes delivered over a 5-week period. For the redesign, it was offered in two styles, a PBL style and the other a traditional lecture focus. To date, three sections (two PBL and one lecture style) were delivered in the Fall 2021 and Spring 2022 semesters. Across these three sections, 135 (PBL = 70, Lecture = 65) enrolled students participated. To evaluate students ethical reasoning and changes in ethical reasoning a pre-course survey, post-course survey and submissions for ethics focused assignments were collected. The pre/post course surveys used the Engineering and Science Issues Test (ESIT) to measure moral judgement and decision making in technical dilemmas and the Engineering Professional Responsibility Assessment (EPRA) to evaluate student attitudes towards different dimensions of engineering. Scoring of student work was done by 3 study personnel (with backgrounds in electrical engineering, education, and information science) using the Pittsburgh-Mines (PM) Engineering Ethics Assessment rubric which evaluates the recognition of dilemma, information, analysis, perspective, and resolution aspects of the assignment. This work will provide an overview of the introductory course (course-structure, topics, assignments), differences in the PBL and lecture styles, comparison pre/post ESIT and EPRA scores between groups, comparison of PM scores between groups, and lessons learned during the first year of the program that informed revisions for the second iteration.

Using data from a unique series of surveys collected between 1963 and 2013, this study examines racial attitudes among young white adults in the Deep South over a 50year period. Repeated surveys of University of Alabama students in 1963, 1966, 1969, 1972, 1983, 1988, and 2013 measured racial stereotypes, support for racial segregation, and in the 2013 study, racial resentment and support for ameliorative racial policies. Analyses show that in the 1960s endorsement of racial stereotypes was a powerful predictor of support for racial segregation. By the early 1970s, racial integration became a reality in the Deep South and, paralleling broad trends in U.S. society, endorsement of racial stereotypes and support for racial segregation declined. Simultaneously, threats to whites' position in the form of ameliorative racial policies (including affirmative action) emerged along with racial resentment. By 2013, racial resentment, rather than racial stereotyping, was the primary determinant of white students' opposition to racial change. Our findings support Herbert Blumer's (1958) argument that racial prejudice exists in a sense of group position, and that it functions to preserve the advantaged position of the dominant group regardless of changes in the form that prejudice takes.

PURPOSE:The effectiveness of a novel intervention for increasing health and safety behaviors of older farmers was tested. Blending didactic and readers' theater techniques, Farm Dinner Theater (FDT) engages farmers in discussions of health and safety in a nonthreatening social atmosphere supportive of potential changes.METHODS:Through community collaborations, farmers 45 years and older were recruited in 8 communities for the FDT. For each site, 3 scripts were prepared highlighting health and safety issues especially relevant for older farmers. The brief plays were performed in a dinner theater format, with group discussion following each play. Printed educational packets (EPs) addressing the same topics were mailed to comparison groups of participants in 9 communities. In telephone interviews conducted 2 weeks and 2 months later, 870 participants (553 FDT and 317 EP) reported health and safety-related changes they had made in their farm operations.FINDINGS:FDT participants were more likely than EP participants to report having made any changes and reported making more changes on both the 2-week and 2-month follow-up assessments. This outcome occurred when analyzing all farms and when considering only farms with at least 1 participant who spent 10 or more hours per week farming.CONCLUSIONS:FDT is a fun, relaxing intervention; it is acceptable to farming communities; and it is more effective in producing health and safety-related changes than the common approach of providing printed materials. FDT not only had a greater impact than EP, but it has the potential to reach larger audiences due to its greater appeal.

To address the challenges facing racial minority students majoring in STEM during the transition from high school to college, NSF funded Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) programs throughout the country implement summer bridge programs. Bridge programs vary in their focus on professional development, academic support, research experiences, social activities, and in other areas, but all share an intention to support students during their transition to college. Beyond retention, little is known about how these varied summer bridge experiences impact student outcomes in the first year of college. This study first describes the variability in the summer bridge programs in the Alabama LSAMP Alliance and then examines how differences in students’ satisfaction with their experiences are associated with feelings of belonging and STEM self-efficacy, two factors associated with STEM retention. Students ( N = 145) who attended an LSAMP summer bridge program were surveyed at three time points over the first year of college. Findings indicated that bridge programs varied in their offering of academic classes, academic support (e.g., study skills), research experiences, professional development, and planned social activities. Students attending HBCUs scored more favorably than students at PWIs on some measures; however, these differences could be accounted for by satisfaction with bridge experiences. Satisfaction with specific aspects of the bridge programs, especially orientation activities and getting to know other students, were associated with feelings of belonging and STEM self-efficacy. These relations were stronger for belonging. Over the course of the academic year, the relations between bridge satisfaction and belonging and self-efficacy weakened.

Production agriculture ranks as one of the most hazardous occupations in the United States, with older producers suffering 3.5 times the fatalities compared with their younger counterparts. Previous interventions have not significantly improved the health or work behaviors of farmers. Through careful collaboration among academics and Cooperative Extension agents, we developed, tested, and expanded a unique educational experience, Farm Dinner Theater (FDT), for farmers aged 45 years and more and their families across three states ( n = 8 communities, 573 participants). More than 50% of the participants made health or safety changes following the theater. Communities requested more theater events, noting the realism and applicability of the content and the engaging atmosphere for discussion. Participants remarked that the theater should be used across all age-groups. The FDT project created a community of “champions” that synergized the initial research project and fostered expansion and sustainability of the intervention. Process evaluation guided refinement of the theater intervention and built trust, respect, and further cooperative work among all collaborators. Members of the FDT partnership have received national recognition and funding to upscale the concept. The number of FDTs has expanded under local leadership. A toolkit that resulted from the project is available to the public and is constantly updated as more adopters contribute insight and scripts. This article describes the collaborative theater concept and demonstrates how sustained translation from research to practice can be accomplished through continued community engagement, collaboration, and outreach.

Guided by the principles of critical race theory, we sought to understand how race and racism help explain differences in White and Black students' assessments of race relations on a predominantly White college campus. The authors employed data from a campuswide survey conducted in Spring 2013 at the University of Alabama; the sample numbered 3,219 students. For Blacks and Whites, a strong relationship was observed between perception of campus race relations and a measure of symbolic racism, such that higher symbolic racism scores predicted a more positive perception of race relations.

OBJECTIVE:To explore predictors of intention of college students to use calorie labels on fast-food menus and differences in calories ordered after viewing calorie information.DESIGN:Quasi-experimental design. Participants selected a meal from a menu without calorie labels, selected a meal from the same menu with calorie labels, and completed a survey that assessed demographics, dietary habits, Theory of Planned Behavior constructs, and potential barriers to use of calorie labeling.SETTING:A southern university.PARTICIPANTS:Undergraduate university students (n = 97).MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES:Predictors of intention to use calorie labels and whether calories selected from the nonlabeled menu differed from the labeled menu.ANALYSIS:Confirmatory factor analysis, exploratory factor analysis, multiple regression, and paired t tests.RESULTS:Participants ordered significantly fewer calories (P = .02) when selecting from the labeled menu vs the menu without labels. Attitudes (P = .006), subjective norms (P < .001), and perceived behavioral control (P = .01) predicted intention to use calorie information but did not predict a difference in the calories ordered. Hunger (P = .03) and cost (P = .04) were barriers to using the calorie information.CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS:If students can overcome barriers, calorie labeling could provide information that college students need to select lower-calorie items at fast-food restaurants.

While CDC reports on the health and economic burden of smoking in the United States, state-specific data are not readily available. We estimated the health and economic consequences of cigarette smoking in Alabama to provide the state legislature with the state-specific data that reveal the direct impact of smoking on their constituents. We estimated that in 2009, almost 7,900 adult deaths (18% of all adult deaths) and approximately 121,000 years of potential life lost among Alabama adults aged 35 years and older were attributable to cigarette smoking. Productivity losses due to premature death and smoking-attributable illness were estimated at $2.84 billion and $941 million, respectively. Our findings support a strong need for tobacco control and prevention programs to decrease the health and economic burden of smoking in Alabama. These results are being used by the State Health Officer to illustrate the real costs of smoking in Alabama and to advocate for improved tobacco control policies.

In virtual organizations, such as Open Source Software (OSS) communities, we expect that the impressions members have about each other play an important role in fostering effective collaboration. However, there is little empirical evidence about how peer impressions form and change in virtual organizations. This paper reports the results from a survey designed to understand the peer impression formation process among OSS participants in terms of perceived expertise, trustworthiness, productivity, experiences collaborating, and other factors that make collaboration easy or difficult. While the majority of survey respondents reported positive experiences, a non-trivial fraction had negative experiences. In particular, volunteer participants were more likely to report negative experiences than participants who were paid. The results showed that factors related to a person's project contribution (e.g., quality and understandability of committed codes, important design related decisions, and critical fixes made) were more important than factors related to work style or personal traits. Although OSS participants are very task focused, the respondents believed that meeting their peers in person is beneficial for forming peer impressions. Having an appropriate impression of one's OSS peers is crucial, but the impression formation process is complicated and different from the process in traditional organizations. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Background . In spite of cost-saving tobacco-dependence treatments, many state Medicaid programs offer only limited coverage for these treatments. This report builds a case for state-level financial benefits from funding smoking cessation treatment for Medicaid-eligible populations. Methods . Applying published cost estimates to state-specific data, we assessed potential health care savings from tobacco-dependence treatments for pregnant women, mothers exposing young children to secondhand smoke, and other adult Medicaid beneficiaries. Results . Across all three populations there was evidence for short-term positive returns on investment. Including counseling and nicotine replacement therapy, estimated net savings were $157,000 annually for pregnant women and their newborns, $33,000 annually within four years for children exposed to smoke at home, and $5 million annually within two years for the general adult Medicaid population in Alabama. Conclusions . Findings suggest that making tobacco-dependence treatment freely available to low-income smokers can produce net savings for state governments within a short period of time.

In the electrical and computer engineering (ECE) curriculum at The University of Alabama, freshmen are introduced to fundamental electrical concepts and units, DC circuit analysis techniques, operational amplifiers, circuit simulation, design, and professional ethics. The two credit course has both lecture and laboratory components that address these topics. The laboratory has been used, in this project, to provide students an experience in design. In one of the laboratory assignments, students work in teams to design and build products giving attention to both function and aesthetics. Creativity is an important attribute for engineers practicing their profession in a global society. The creative process was exercised in the design lab by progressively engaging students through various stages including: brainstorming, formation of a construction plan, producing schematic representations, and implementing their design. In a two- year period, four laboratory exercises were developed to provide design experiences in our introductory ECE course. Assessment results show that the majority of students enjoy several aspects of the laboratory on design and creativity. At the same time, they consider this lab to be one of the most difficult ones due to its open-ended nature. Students who experienced the creative lab were somewhat more likely to state they would continue in their major. Overall, the project team concluded that the creative lab was valuable and did raise awareness of the creative process.

IntroductionIn 2011, the Mobile County Health Department began a 12-month antismoking educational media campaign to educate citizens on the dangers of secondhand smoke. The campaign overlapped with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's 3-month national antismoking Tips from Former Smokers media campaign. We aimed to evaluate the effect of these campaigns on support for smoke-free environments and knowledge of the dangers of secondhand smoke.MethodsCross-sectional precampaign and postcampaign telephone surveys collected data from a random sample of Mobile County adults in the summers of 2011 and 2012. Outcome measures included changes in support for smoke-free environments and knowledge of the dangers of secondhand smoke. The participation rate among the households that were successfully reached was 45% in 2011 and 44% in 2012.ResultsOn the postcampaign survey, 80.9% of respondents reported seeing a television advertisement, 29.9% reported hearing a radio advertisement, and 49.0% reported seeing a billboard. Overall, support for smoke-free bars increased significantly after the intervention (38.1% to 43.8%; P = .01) but not for workplaces or restaur-ants. Self-reported exposure to the media campaign was associated with higher levels of support for smoke-free workplaces, restaurants, and bars.ConclusionEducational mass media campaigns have the potential to increase support for smoke-free protections and may increase knowledge about the dangers of secondhand smoke among certain populations.

In the context of a research skills class for undergraduates, we find that providing students background on the scientific method, literature review, writing an abstract, etc. leaves little time for exposing students to actual research. Previously in this class, one assignment involved student teams of four brainstorming for a short time before conducting an experiment that could be performed over a 1-hour period. Some of the experiments included: counting the number of cars of a particular color to estimate an entire population, characterizing the skittish behavior of squirrels, monitoring coffee preferences at a local Starbucks, and estimating the chance of receiving a ticket while parked illegally on campus. While the students enjoyed designing and performing these experiments, we felt the experience did not reflect the rigor that research and experimentation demand. To rectify this situation, we supplemented the data collection activity with a new project; an educational kit was used to provide a systematic procedure for fabricating a dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC). The kit presents an opportunity for students to fabricate devices as well as design a set of experiments for testing them with several options for controlled variables in a short amount of time.

Background: Farm safety day camps are grassroots educational interventions organized and conducted by members of a local community. These events are held in an effort to promote safety knowledge and behavior in children who live on family farms or are exposed to the hazards of the agricultural industry. Since the dramatic increase in farm safety day camps beginning in the 1990s, researchers have been called upon to evaluate their effectiveness. Purpose: The current paper reviews more than a decade of research, describing what is currently known about the effectiveness of farm safety days and suggesting potential methods for addressing questions regarding gaps in what we know about their effectiveness. Conclusions: The results of these evaluations indicate that farm safety days have a positive impact on children's safety behavior and knowledge; however, much remains to be investigated regarding the effectiveness and impact of these interventions.

Social cognitive models examining academic and career outcomes emphasize constructs such as attitude, interest, and self-efficacy as key factors affecting students’ pursuit of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) courses and careers. The current research examines another under-researched component of social cognitive models: social support, and the relationship between this component and attitude and self-efficacy in math and science. A large cross-sectional design was used gathering data from 1,552 participants in four adolescent school settings from 5th grade to early college (41 % female, 80 % white). Students completed measures of perceived social support from parents, teachers and friends as well as their perceived ability and attitudes toward math and science. Fifth grade and college students reported higher levels of support from teachers and friends when compared to students at other grade levels. In addition, students who perceived greater social support for math and science from parents, teachers, and friends reported better attitudes and had higher perceptions of their abilities in math and science. Lastly, structural equation modeling revealed that social support had both a direct effect on math and science perceived abilities and an indirect effect mediated through math and science attitudes. Findings suggest that students who perceive greater social support for math and science from parents, teachers, and friends have more positive attitudes toward math and science and a higher sense of their own competence in these subjects.

Recruitment of students into engineering undergraduate programs depends to a large degree on maintaining their achievement and interest in math and science over the school years prior to college. Previous research indicates that significant declines in perceived ability and interest in math and science occur during the transitions to middle school and high school. Self-perceptions and attitudes are often reported to be lower at these points for girls than boys. We present an empirical investigation of the effect of students' perceptions of teacher support and classroom strategies on student interest and efficacy in math and science during middle school and high school transitions. Results suggest that students who perceived their teachers as practicing more effective instruction (more support for students, more engaging classroom strategies) were less likely to show declines in their interest and efficacy in math and science as they made these critical transitions.

A dissatisfaction appears to permeate the process of educating computer science students. Both students and instructors seem uninspired in the classroom, resulting in many attempts to enliven, freshen, and improve the experience. These attempts show efficacy, but the pace of improvement is slow. 100 Problems (100P) is an innovative guided discovery curriculum in which students are freed from the classroom and instead work on 100 concept- and research-related problems throughout their undergraduate careers. The 100 problems guide the students to discover the fundamental knowledge and skills required of a graduate of the degree program. Each student is free to create an individualized mode of learning and discovery. As such, the curriculum fosters deep learning among students and challenges students' intellectual growth. In this paper we introduce the 100P curriculum, describe the 100P course format and our experiences offering courses in this format, and report our early findings.

Since its inception, people have constantly found new and unexpected ways to communicate via the Internet. One such use has been the recruitment of new members by terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda (Riedel, 2007). Al Qaeda uses social influence techniques to induce individuals to become terrorist sympathizers (Burton & Stewart, 2008; Gerwehr & Daly, 2005; Al-Saleh, 2007). By starting with simple online requests and then gradually requesting increasing commitments to the cause, a terrorist organization may influence its targets to support far more extreme ideologies than they otherwise would. As proposed by self-perception theory (Bem, 1972), the new converts may form increasingly radical attitudes to be consistent with their increasingly radical behavior. At the same time, enhancing the salience of the social identity of group membership may also amplify the influence of such recruiting tactics. Implications for social influence research on online terrorist recruiting are discussed.