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The State Of Black Omaha 1994: Health Care And Criminal Justice: Executive Summary, Center For Public Affairs Research (Cpar)

Publications

This report touches on two critical areas of concern: Health Care and Criminal Justice. Its purpose is to identify areas of disproportionate impact which hinder civil rights objectives and obstruct an open society.

Effectiveness Of A Homophobic Intervention Upon Graduate Counseling Students, Bryce Thull

Student Work

This study compared the homophobic attitudes of graduate level counseling students before and after a presentation exploring homophobia. The attitudinal scores of both the control and experimental groups were pre-tested and post-tested by the Index of Attitudes toward Homosexuals (IAH) and compared by an Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). The outcome indicated that the IAH post-test scores of the experimental group receiving the homophobic intervention were significantly reduced (p < .001) compared to the IAH post-test scores of the control group that did not receive the intervention. The results demonstrate that a specific presentation about homophobia may be effective in reducing negative attitudes toward homosexuals.

The Economics Of Fertility: The Case Of Norway, Terje Christiansen

Student Work

Economic theories of fertility are tested on Norwegian time series data for the period 1962-1991. The Easterlin hypothesis receives the most attention, and generally little evidence is found to support this hypothesis. Large relative cohort size ratios, however, seem to support the Easterlin hypothesis more than small ones. A New Home Economics model with a special emphasis on male income and female wages is also estimated, and results are obtained favoring this model. Finally, the problem with effective time lags in economic fertility models is tested, and in general an effective time lag of two years is favored. Since women's …

School-To-Work: A Larger Vision, Samuel Halperin

Project Summaries

Thank you for your invitation to help develop Rhode Island's plans for implementation of the School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994 (hereafter STWOA). I have no doubt that you will soon win one of the federal implementation grants, grants already awarded to eight other states.

Racial Barriers To African American Entrepreneurship: An Exploratory Study, Joe E. Feagin, Nikitah Imani

Black Studies Faculty Publications

Much has been written in the ethnic entrepreneurship literature about the contrasting business performance of African American entrepreneurs and those from other minority and immigrant groups. Yet very little research has been conducted by social scientists on the business experiences of black entrepreneurs. In this exploratory study we examine the situation of black contractors in the U.S. construction industry, utilizing 76 in-depth interviews in one of the South's metropolitan areas. We document the nuanced character of the racial barriers faced by black contractors in several areas of the construction industry. We find racial discrimination in unions, in white general contractors' …

The Constitutionality Of Public School Community Service Programs, Marie Bittner

Special Topics, General

The Third Circuit has affirmed the constitutionality of mandatory community service programs for students in public schools. The ruling came in the Steirer case where two students in Bethlehem, P A, challenged the right of their school to require them to perform community service work.

Linking Traditional And Service-Learning Courses: Outcome Evaluations Utilizing Two Pedagogically Distinct Models, Jerry Miller

Higher Education

University students in two advanced introductory classroom-based courses in psychology were offered the opportunity for simultaneous enrollment in a content-related section of a large community service learning course. Students selecting the option did not substantially differ from students who did not select it. Participating students rated the experience as being significantly more valuable than did non-participating students. Students did not differ either in their reports concerning gains in personal development or general mastery of course concepts, or in final course grades received, but participants did report an enhanced ability to apply concepts outside of the classroom. Differences in reports between …

Promoting Family Literacy: An Opportunity For Suburban University-Inner City Agency Resource Exchange, Judith Primavera, June Gellis Malone, Anne K. O'Donnell, Kathleen R. Mcguigan

Higher Education

The Family Literacy Project is a preventive program designed to increase lower income children's language readiness for school. The project's approach to literacy enhancement involves both tutoring the children and training the parents to be more effective "first teachers" of the types of emergent reading skills that are prerequisites to formal elementary school reading instruction. Forty-five undergraduates were trained as literacy facilitators and met on a weekly basis with ninety preschoolers enrolled in Head start or with participating parents (N=20) . The specific tutoring of the children varied according to the child's specific areas of language strengths and weaknesses. The …

Teaching Empowerment, Helen Fox

Higher Education

The contradiction inherent in "teaching empowerment" is that students need to learn specific, empowering ways to understand and interact with community people while at the same time feeling empowered, themselves, by the way the service-learning course is designed and taught. This requires a delicate balance between "starting with students where they are" and insisting they confront issues that make them uncomfortable. The author describes her attempt to do this in a new community service learning seminar for freshmen focusing on empowerment education.

Service Learning: A New Approach In Higher Education, Barbara W. Carpenter, Jacqulin S. Jacobs

Higher Education

Southern University is rare, if not unique, among public institutions in requiring undergraduates to complete sixty-clock hours of community service before graduation. The purpose of this initiative was to heighten the sensitivity of graduates to the indispensable role that volunteerism must play in our society. We also envisioned collectively addressing some of the ills of the State of Louisiana by having a pool of 16,000 students in the Southern University System contributing to the alleviation of human suffering and social decay. In this paper, we describe some of the noteworthy accomplishments that the program has made over the past three …

Fact Book 1994, Uno Office Of Institutional Effectiveness

Fact Book

This thirteenth edition of the University of Nebraska at Omaha Fact Book has been designed to present a variety of information and data, about the University, in a concise, easily used format. I hope this provides a profile of UNO that will expand your understanding of our institution.

Addressing School Board And Administrative Concerns About Service-Learning, Carolyn S. Anderson, Judith T. Witmer

Special Topics, General

Community service learning as a philosophy and a program has been driven at the school level largely by the knowledge, enthusiasm, and commitment of individual teachers. Recently community agencies, politicians and government agencies, professional organizations, and various resource centers around the country have joined in promoting these programs, which help students use service opportunities as a source of significant learning.

Social Conditions Of Nebraska's Elderly, F. C. Powell, James A. Thorsen

Publications

In 1991, the authors conducted a study of 500 older Nebraskans, comparing 300 people in Omaha and its surrounding counties with a sample of 200 who lived in the very rural Sandhills counties. The purpose of that study was to compare health and health care experience and satisfaction between urban and rural-dwelling elders. Random samples of older people were identified and interviewed by trained telephone operators; each interview took about a half hour. People were asked about their experiences with health and illness, the distance to their primary source of medical care and the distance to the hospital they use, …

National Service Getting Grants Done, Joshua Shenk

Service Learning, General

Early on the morning of September 12, 800 new national service corps participants strode onto the White House grounds, anticipating a noon ceremony in which they'd be sworn in by President Clinton, as thousands of others joined in via satellite. One catch, though. Earlier that morning, Frank Eugene Corder had also entered the grounds-over the gates, not through them-in his Cessna 150 aircraft, which crashed just short of his apparent target, the president's bedroom.

In addition ro guaranteeing himself a distinguished spot on history's roster of would-be assassins, Corder - who perished on impact-had also made himself one giant pain …

The Theoretical Roots Of Service-Learning In John Dewey: Toward A Theory Of Service-Learning, Dwight E. Giles Jr., Janet Eyler

Service Learning, General

As interest in service-learning research multiplies. there is a concomitant need fora theoretical base for service-learning. In this article the authors review aspects of John De1wy 's educational and social philosophy that they identify as relevant to the development of a theory of service-learning, including learning from experience, reflective activity, citizenship, community, and democracy. The article concludes with a set of key questions for research and theory development.

Critical Reflection, Richard Battistoni, Beverly Roberts

Evaluation/Reflection

In this workshop, we wanted to convey the importance of tying critical reflection activities to the learning objectives of the service experience and/or course. We started by asking participants to define critical reflection and then to list some common learning objectives associated with service-learning courses and co-curricular service. Finally, participants described many of the activities they use with their participants and students. The result is a thorough list of activities that service-learning practitioners find effective in achieving their course objectives.

Community Service In Arizona Schools: "A State-Of-The-State" Report, Linda Sadler, Judith A. Vandegrift

School K-12

Volunteerism is not new, but the idea of volunteerism as part of one's formal education is receiving increased attention as a result of the National and Community Service Act of 1990 and National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993. Under the auspices of these acts, a number of community service and service learning projects are being implemented in Arizona communities. To date, the Serve-America program has provided limited funding for community service/service learning programs intended for students in grades K-12. Administered by the Arizona Department of Education, Arizona's Serve-America projects capture only a small portion of what students are …

Demanding Good Deeds Breeds Performance Anxiety: Students And Families Who Are Challenging Requirements To Perform Voluntary Community Services, Eric Felton

Special Topics, General

Students are beginning to challenge in court school districts that force children to work in community projects as part of the requirements for graduation. They object on grounds of involuntary servitude stipulated in the 13th amendment and on moral principles of mandatory giving.

University Of Nebraska At Omaha, Commencement, University Of Nebraska At Omaha

Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

Community Service And The Hospitality Curriculum, Florence Berger, Marc Ackerman

Higher Education

Voluntary community service and human-relations courses should be an integral part of hotel administration courses. Such courses allow students to see how their actions can affect other people, appreciate service, dismantle stereotypes, become aware of social issues and develop other skills which they can apply as members the hospitality industry. To become effective, however, these courses should first instill in students the value of initiative, self-motivation and commitment.

Samaritan Leadership, Terrance M.I. Egan

Service Learning, General

Whatever one's code of ethical or religious belief, the notion of service to others is an ideal common to all cultures and civilizations. For this reason, the story of the Good Samaritan is one of the most poignant, and universally-appealing parables of the New Testament.

Asked, "Who is my neighbor?", Jesus replied with the parable of a Samaritan who took pity on the half-dead victim of brigands. A priest and a Levite passed by, but it was the socially inferior Samaritan who proved to 'be the epitome of neighborly service. The Good Samaritan displayed qualities of leadership that the designated …

Community Service-Learning At Augsburg College: A Handbook For Instructors (Version 1.0), Victoria Littlefield

Guides

In August of 1994, the Office of Community Service-Learning at Augsburg College offered a weeklong institute on service-learning for faculty members from Augsburg College. The institute was funded by a grant from the Minnesota Higher Education Coordinating Board under the Youth Works Higher Education Program of the Minnesota Youth Works Act of 1993. During the first part of the week, faculty members who had previously used service-learning in their classes met to discuss the philosophical and practical aspects of service-learning and to design the remainder of the workshop for others who were developing course-related service components. The institute participants spent …

Nebraska Pact Action Plan To Prevent Youth Violence, Center For Public Affairs Research (Cpar)

Publications

Nebraska is one of four jurisdictions selected to participate in Project PACT (Pulling America's Communities Together). Nebraska PACT is a state- federal initiative to empower communities to reduce crime and violence. Through this program, the state and federal governments will assist communities as they build coalitions to develop broad-based, fully-coordinated initiatives to reduce violence by and against youth.

The Reliability Of Self-Reported Drug Use Measured Through The Drug Use Forecasting Program: A Multi-Trait Assessment, Charles M. Katz

Student Work

The majority of drug use data obtained by researchers thus far has been generated through the use of self-reports and urinalyses. In fact, such methods are often the only way to accurately identify individuals who use drugs. There has only been a minimal amount of research concerning the reliability of the self-reported drug use among arrestees in the Drug Use Forecasting (DUF) program. The purpose of this paper is to present initial evidence on the reliability of self-reported interview data when compared to urinalysis, and to give a detailed description of the variables associated with the accuracy of self-reports. The …

Midlands Institute For Non-Profit Management - Building A Solid Foundation, 1994, Center For Public Affairs Research (Cpar)

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Reliability Of Self-Reported Drug Use Measured Through The Drug Use Forecasting Program: A Multi-Trait Assessment, Charles M. Katz

Student Work

The majority of drug use data obtained by researchers thus far has been generated through the use of self-reports and urinalyses. In fact, such methods are often the only way to accurately identify individuals who use drugs. There has only been a minimal amount of research concerning the reliability of the self-reported drug use among arrestees in the Drug Use Forecasting (DUF) program. The purpose of this paper is to present initial evidence on the reliability of self-reported interview data when compared to urinalysis, and to give a detailed description of the variables associated with the accuracy of self-reports. The …

New Keynesian Economics: Between Equilibrium And Disequilibrium, Adriana Gafencu

Student Work

In an attempt to explain and forecast the behavior of economic variables and of the economy as a whole, each school of economics creates its own system of paradigms, premises and models. The New Keynesian school of thought developed from the traditional Keynesian insights tries to offer additional explanations, based on microeconomic foundations, for such phenomena as economy-wide fluctuations of output and prices and for the persistent high levels of unemployment that economies experience. The task of New Keynesian economics is to explain the rigidities of prices and wages that keep the economy from reaching a full-employment equilibrium. The essential …

Occasional Paper No. 094-1: Improving Nebraska's Job Statistics: Learning From The Annual Revision To Nebraska's 1991 Employment Figures, E. David Fifer

Publications

Nebraska looked to be one of the leading states in the nation, if not the leading state, in job growth during much of 1991. Each month, reports of Nebraska's continued job growth made it appear that the state had somehow managed to escape the national recession.

Nebraska's apparent economic vitality caught the attention of the national media. The Wall Street Journal, citing Arizona State University, noted that "Nebraska increased non-farm employment at a faster pace than any state during March and April. ... From January through April, the state added 34,000 non-farm jobs-a 4.8 percent increase over the same period …

A Marriage Made In Heaven: Community Colleges And Service Learning, Judith S. Berson

Higher Education

Today's college student is changing. As America's social problems continue to grow exponentially, more and more students are seeking solutions to those problems through community service. A graduate journalism class examining the rise of student community service referred to it as "a quiet phenomenon taking place on campuses across the country--a surge in volunteerism among a generation of Americans dismissed for their self-interest, apathy, and nihilism" (Shapiro, 1994, p. 85). President Bill Clinton's inaugural address called upon Americans to demonstrate concern for one another when he said, "By fate, the fortunate and the unfortunate could have been each other." With …

Epidemiology Of Gambling And Depression In A Random Adult Sample, James A. Thorson, F. C. Powell, Michael L. Hilt

Communication Faculty Publications

Presents a study of the relationship between gambling and depression in a sample of adults in the United States. Absence of relationship.