Digital Commons Network^™

Editorial, Teresa R. Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

The Colorado Trust’S Healthy Communities Initiative: Results And Lessons For Comprehensive Community Initiatives, Ross Conner, Doug Easterling

The Foundation Review

· This article summarizes how 29 diverse communities throughout Colorado implemented the Colorado Healthy Communities Initiative (CHCI), which was conceived and funded by The Colorado Trust to engage community residents in the development of locally relevant strategies to improve community health.

· In line with the World Health Organization’s Healthy Cities model, CHCI emphasized (a) inclusive, representative planning; (b) a broad definition of “health”; (c) consensus decision making; and (d) capacity building among local stakeholder groups.

· Communities implemented an array of projects (on average, six per community) that extended well beyond traditional health promotion and disease prevention. The most …

Scope, Scale, And Sustainability: What It Takes To Create Lasting Community Change, Tina R. Trent, David M. Chavis

The Foundation Review

· This article examines success factors that relate specifically to the ability of a comprehensive community initiative (CCI) to achieve the scope and scale required to generate community-level outcomes and to sustain those positive impacts over time.

· The CCIs selected for study represent a wide range of goals, strategies, and organizational structures.

· Six factors were found to cut across scope, scale, and sustainability. These factors include having a single broker or entity that holds the vision of the change effort; clearly defined roles; alignment among interventions, resources, and geography; meaningful community engagement; competent leadership and staff; and strategic, …

Using Community-Based Participatory Evaluation (Cbpe) Methods As A Tool To Sustain A Community Health Coalition, Leslie Aldrich, Daniel Silva, Danelle Marable, Erica Sandman

The Foundation Review

· Participatory evaluation has set the standard for cooperation between program evaluators and stakeholders. Coalition evaluation, however, calls for more extensive collaboration with the community at large.

· Integrating principles of community based participatory research and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Strategic Prevention Framework, which guides much coalition work, into coalition evaluation has proved useful to foster community affiliations and support reciprocal relationship building. The resulting evaluation method, named community based participatory evaluation (CBPE), takes time, money, and skilled personnel but can lead to more accurate results and coalition sustainability.

· The CBPE method has proved essential …

The Challenges Of Place, Capacity, And Systems Change: The Story Of Yes We Can!, Pennie Foster-Fishman, Robert Long

The Foundation Review

· Yes we can!, a comprehensive community initiative (CCI) funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, was designed to improve educational and economic outcomes within the foundation’s hometown of Battle Creek, Mich. Since 2002, Yes we can! has supported five core strategies designed to trigger the systems changes needed to reduce educational and economic inequities in Battle Creek.

· Yes we can! has achieved some important wins to date; for example, more residents are involved, more neighborhoods have stronger neighborhood associations, and more organizations are engaging residents in their decision-making processes. However, the scale of wins remains small, and the …

Philanthropy’S Civic Role In Community Change, Patricia Auspos, Prudence Brown, Anne C. Kubisch, Stacey Sutton

The Foundation Review

· This article describes six key roles for philanthropic organizations’ engagement in communities. It draws on Living Cities, a consortium of financial organizations, private foundations, and public sector organizations that has been working since 1991 to improve distressed neighborhoods in 23 cities.

· The six civic roles described are (a) convening and leveraging diverse networks of relationships, (b) developing local data and plans for community change, (c) leveraging new resources on behalf of communities, (d) mobilizing political will, (e) framing new messages about community development and communicating more strategically, and (f) generating and testing new ideas and building and sharing …

Foundation Readiness For Community Transformation: Learning In Real Time, Prudence Brown, Marie Colombo, Della M. Hughes

The Foundation Review

· This article describes the internal structures and processes adopted by The Skillman Foundation to support the iterative practice of “learning and doing” in the first phase of a rapidly evolving, ambitious community change enterprise in six Detroit neighborhoods.

· The foundation invested in its own and its partners’ capacity to learn in real time so that together they could adjust and readjust their strategies in response to initial results and, in doing so, deepen their working relationships and build further capacity for effective implementation.

· Challenges to supporting this learning culture included increased visibility and pressures to produce results …

Evaluating A Voter Outreach Initiative, Amy Dominguez Arms

The Foundation Review

· This article describes an initiative designed to increase voting rates among low-income and ethnic groups in southern and central California communities.

· A rigorous evaluation demonstrated that participation rates could be increased by up to 10% among these groups.

· Using local, well-trained canvassers and making contact during the four weeks preceding the election were some of the more effective practices.

A Road Made By Walking: Participatory Evaluation And Social Change, Janet Rechtman

The Foundation Review

· This article describes how participatory evaluation was used in a Ford Foundation–funded project to promote mixed-income housing in Atlanta.

· The project resulted in an increase in mixedincome housing, but also in social outcomes such as increased knowledge about housing issues.

· Validity and reliability of the findings are demonstrated through feedback from the community members, rather than through statistical methods.

Youth Civic Engagement For Dialogue And Diversity At The Metropolitan Level, Barry Checkoway

The Foundation Review

· Youth civic engagement can take various forms, of which intergroup dialogue is one. Some forms – such as electoral participation – are inappropriate for young people.

· This article describes Youth Dialogues on Race and Ethnicity in Metropolitan Detroit, the nation’s most segregated metropolitan area.

· High-school-age students participated in intraand intergroup dialogues, metropolitan tours, residential retreats, and community action projects.

· Youth participants increased their knowledge of their own racial and ethnic identities and those of others, increased their awareness and understanding of racism and racial privilege, and developed leadership skills and took actions to challenge racism in …

Setting The Table For A Sustainable And Just Food System, Kien Lee, Kolu Zigbi, Marjorie Nemes

The Foundation Review

· As consumers and producers, people of color have been affected disproportionately by systemic problems in the food system.

· This article describes the Diversifying Leadership for Sustainable Food Policy initiative, a joint effort of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to build the capacity of organizations led by people of color to engage in policy and advocacy work.

· Grantees successfully built their capacity to engage in policy work (e.g., increased capacity to identify policy targets), increased their organizational capacity (e.g., diversified boards), improved their communities’ capacity (e.g., created opportunities for dialogue and improved …

New Voices At The Civic Table: Facilitating Personal And Social Change, Laura T. Pinsoneault, Linda Nguyen

The Foundation Review

· This article describes six pilot initiatives of the Alliance for Children and Families -- New Voices at the Civic Table (New Voices), a philanthropy-funded effort to challenge human service organizations to integrate civic engagement as a permanent part of their infrastructure.

· All six New Voices models included common elements: leadership training, civic education, experiential learning, participatory decision-making, networking, and reflective evaluation.

· Each also reflected one of four primary variations to civic engagement based on their community needs and demands: self-efficacy, constituent involvement, mobilizing, and organizing.

· Results demonstrate that civic engagement in human services not only produces …

Finding The Win In Wicked Problems: Lessons From Evaluating Public Policy Advocacy, John Sherman, Gayle Peterson

The Foundation Review

· Many of the social issues private foundations and other philanthropies attempt to address — poverty, homelessness, global climate change — are wicked problems. That is, they defy easy definition, lack permanent solutions, and have multiple stakeholders.

· The wicked problems framework helps make explicit the challenging nature of the issue to be addressed, requires an inclusive style of leadership that seeks stakeholder involvement, and demands candid exchange among stakeholders about the nature of the problem and effectiveness of efforts to address it.

· A wicked problems framework provides a set of criteria and questions for evaluators of advocacy efforts …

Leveraging Grantmaking: Understanding The Dynamics Of Complex Social Systems, David Peter Stroh

The Foundation Review

· The nonobvious interrelationships among elements in a complex system often thwart people’s best intentions to sustainably improve system performance.

· The complex, nonlinear problems that most foundations address can be solved most effectively by thinking systemically instead of linearly about these problems.

· Systems thinking offers a range of analytic tools to improve our capacity to think systemically, including ways to distinguish problem symptoms from root causes, reinforcing and balancing feedback, system archetypes, mental models, and system purpose and goals.

· Applying these tools enables us to target highleverage interventions that can lead to sustainable, system-wide improvement.

· These …

Effective Advocacy Evaluation: The Role Of Funders, Johanna Morariu, Kathleen Brennan

The Foundation Review

· This article addresses the role of funders in supporting advocacy and advocacy evaluation work.

· The growth and strengthening of the advocacy evaluation field has lessened the “hard to measure” stigma attached to advocacy grantmaking.

· An increasingly broad array of evaluation designs and methods better capture advocacy data, enable rapid analysis and learning, and foster accountability.

· Based on a study of advocacy grantees and a study of advocacy grantmakers, the authors conclude that supporting evaluation and capacity building, providing multi-year funding commitments and core support, and creating custom reporting requirements and timelines are strategies that funders can …

Tools To Support Public Policy Grantmaking, Martha Campbell, Julia Coffman

The Foundation Review

· This article provides guidance on how foundations can frame, focus, and advance efforts to achieve public policy reforms.

· Five essential steps for developing public policy strategy are described: choosing the public policy goal, understanding the challenges, identifying influential audiences, determining how far those audiences must move, and deciding how to move them.

· Two tools developed specifically to support foundations during the strategy development process are presented.

Measuring The Impacts Of Advocacy And Community Organizing: Application Of A Methodology And Initial Findings, Lisa Ranghelli

The Foundation Review

· The increasing emphasis by funders on strategic grantmaking and measurable outcomes may be a disincentive to support policy and advocacy work, because of the perception that outcomes can be difficult to assess.

· A tool for measuring impact can reduce the barriers to funding advocacy and policy work.

· The tool draws upon the literatures on evaluating advocacy and organizing, social capital building efforts, and return on investment approaches to evaluation.

· The tool was applied in two sites, where funders found it useful to understand advocacy impacts and learn how advocacy can enhance their grantmaking goals.

The Emerging Dichotomy Of The Educational Institution: Expression And Authority In Public Schools Under Morse V. Frederick, 127 S. Ct. 2618 (2007), Joanna S. Thomas

Nebraska Law Review

Tension has emerged from the United States Supreme Court's review of student speech. This tension, between the importance of protecting the right of the student and the authoritative role of the educator, is emphasized in Morse v. Frederick. The examination of this conflict in light of First Amendment history in public schools is necessary to properly understand how future cases will be affected. The Court has noted that "education is perhaps the most important function of our local governments." The conflict of liberty and social order in education requires a delicate balance of interests. It is not necessarily the Court's …

The Effects Of An Educational Intervention On Nurse -Physician Collaboration And Compliance Rates With Quality Indicators For Cardiac Patients In Critical Care Settings, Sara L. Clutter

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Purpose. The purposes of this study were to investigate the effects of an educational intervention on knowledge, nurse-perceived nurse-physician collaboration, and compliance with quality indicators and to assess the relationship between collaboration and compliance. This study also investigated the difference in collaboration and knowledge between and within nurses from intensive care (ICU) and intermediate care (IMCU) settings.;Research questions. Six research questions guided this study. The questions compared knowledge, collaboration scores, and compliance with quality indicators between and within intermediate and intensive care unit nurses before and after an educational intervention. Questions also addressed the relationship between collaboration scores and compliance …

The Role Of Nadph Oxidase In Blood -Brain Barrier Dysfunction Following Stroke In Aged Rats, Kimberly Kelly

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Stroke is the leading cause of long-term adult disability and the third leading cause of death in the United States. More that 72% of stroke victims are over the age of 65, yet most studies utilize young animals. Aged rats suffer exacerbated stroke volume and inflammation, as well as worsened functional outcome when compared to young adult rats. While the blood brain barrier (BBB) remains intact with age, it becomes more susceptible to external factors. BBB permeability in the penumbra appears acutely, 20 min after middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) in aged rats. Importantly, BBB permeability is earlier and more …

Investigating Distribution And Treatments For Effective Mechanical And Herbicide Application For Controlling Oriental Bittersweet (Celastrus Orbiculatus Thunb.) Vines In An Appalachian Hardwood Forest, Amanda L. Lynch

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This document discusses two exotic-invasive plant species related research studies that were conducted in an Appalachian hardwood forest in north central West Virginia. The first study characterizes the distribution of oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus Thunb.) in a timber harvested area in north central West Virginia. Canopy profiles were used to create a visual picture of distribution of C. orbiculatus vines from the forest edge transition to the interior of the forest. In the second study, the efficacy of herbicides triclopyr and glyphosate were tested using basal bark, cut-stump, mechanical cut, and deer fencing to control C. orbiculatus.

The West Virginia Uncovered Etrainer; Creating An Online Multimedia Training Guide, Jessica M. Rhodes

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This professional project contains an external Web site, which serves as a multimedia journalism training guide for weekly rural newspapers in West Virginia. The training guide focuses on issues that many small rural newspapers face, including small staffs and limited budgets and resources. Small rural weekly newspapers in West Virginia serve as beacons of community journalism within their counties. Through the use of multimedia, they can enhance their Web sites to document the lives of those in their community in ways that are far more diverse than print journalism. This professional project also discusses the issues of social responsibility and …

Examining The Protective Effects Of Sesamol On Oxidative Stress Associated Blood -Brain Barrier Dysfunction In Streptozotocin-Induced Diabetic Rats, Reyna Vangilder

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Many studies point to vascular dysfunction as an underlying cause for the increased incidence of cognitive dysfunction and risk for development of Alzheimer's disease during diabetes. Vascular dysfunction is not an uncommon occurrence in patients with diabetes and microvascular dysfunction commonly leads to clinical complications such as blindness, peripheral neuropathy, and kidney failure. Microangiopathies of the retina, kidney, and peripheral nerves have been well-characterized; however, the effects of diabetes on blood-brain barrier (BBB) function have been understudied.;Pathophysiological changes defining microvascular dysfunction include basement membrane thickening, cytoskeleton rearrangement, and increased paracellular leakage. Increased paracellular leakage of the BBB suggests a functional …

Principal Perceptions Of Their Preparedness And The Preparedness Of Their Staff To Deal With Students Of Poverty In The Classroom, Lisa Anne Donmoyer

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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The Impact Of A Freshman Academy Small Learning Community On Student Achievement And Engagement, Christopher M. Fulco

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Asl, Total Communication And Oralism: Identifying Shared Characteristics Of School-Based Writing Intervention Programs For Deaf And Hard Of Hearing Students, K-6, Carolyn Mascia Reed

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Nuclear Morphometry In Relation To Tumor Grade In Canine Spontaneous Cutaneous Squamous Cell Carcinomas, Radostin Simeonov

Turkish Journal of Veterinary & Animal Sciences

In a retrospective study on cytological specimens from 17 dogs with histologically confirmed cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, the morphometric variables were studied and compared to tumors' nuclear grade. The morphometric parameters evaluated in this study were mean nuclear area (MNA, µm2), mean nuclear perimeter (MNP, µm), mean nuclear diameter (D mean, µm), minimum nuclear diameter (D min, µm), and maximum nuclear diameter (D max, µm). Associations between MNA, MNP, D mean, D min, and D max and tumors' grade were assessed using the ANOVA/LSD test (Statistica 6.0, StatSoft, USA) at a level of significance of P < 0.05. The result indicated an increase in the mean values of the nuclear parameters with increasing tumor grade. In the cases examined, significant differences in MNA, MNP, and D mean occurred between tumors in all grades. Besides, no significant differences in D max (between grade I-II and II-III) and D min (grade II-III) were found. In conclusion, nuclear morphometry could be used as an additional tool for differentiating nuclear grade in canine cutaneous squamous cell carcinomas.

Shanghai Suite And Other Poems, Glen Phillips

Research outputs pre 2011

The Shanghai Suite was written during a two month period in early 2004 while I was a visiting professor teaching a course in 'Western' Culture' at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology. This was also part of the research for my PhD in Creative Writing. During and after those months, I composed most of the poems about Shanghai and that region of China...

Taxation, Cynthia M. Ohlenforst, Sam Megally, Angela Johnson

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Recent Developments In Aviation Law, Donald R. Andersen

Journal of Air Law and Commerce

No abstract provided.