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A meeting of veterinary school faculty and partners, many associated with shelter medicine, and/or community medicine programming, was convened at the 2019 Shelter Medicine Veterinary Educators Conference in Pullman, WA to discuss challenges with shelter medicine program sustainability and defining the future. The discussion was facilitated by an outside consultant and is summarized in this manuscript. The goal of the meeting was to identify challenges and issues concerning the needs and goals for shelter medicine curricula to have long-term success in academic training. Four themes were identified in the transcripts including external pressure from leadership and other stakeholders, funder expectations, time horizons, and perceptions of shelters and shelter veterinarians. Addressing these challenges will be critical to ensuring stability in academic training in shelter medicine, a critical tool for both learning outcomes for general graduates and specific for veterinarians pursuing shelter medicine as a career.

IntroductionThe perinatal–postnatal family environment is associated with childhood outcomes including impacts on physical and mental health and educational attainment. Family longitudinal cohort studies collect in-depth data that can capture the influence of an era on family lifestyle, mental health, chronic disease, education and financial stability to enable identification of gaps in society and provide the evidence for changes in government in policy and practice.Methods and analysisThe Queensland Family Cohort (QFC) is a prospective, observational, longitudinal study that will recruit 12 500 pregnant families across the state of Queensland (QLD), Australia and intends to follow-up families and children for three decades. To identify the immediate and future health requirements of the QLD population; pregnant participants and their partners will be enrolled by 24 weeks of gestation and followed up at 24, 28 and 36 weeks of gestation, during delivery, on-ward, 6 weeks postpartum and then every 12 months where questionnaires, biological samples and physical measures will be collected from parents and children. To examine the impact of environmental exposures on families, data related to environmental pollution, household pollution and employment exposures will be linked to pregnancy and health outcomes. Where feasible, data linkage of state and federal government databases will be used to follow the participants long term. Biological samples will be stored long term for future discoveries of biomarkers of health and disease.Ethics and disseminationEthical approval has been obtained from the Mater Research Ethics (HREC/16/MHS/113). Findings will be reported to (1) QFC participating families; (2) funding bodies, institutes and hospitals supporting the QFC; (3) federal, state and local governments to inform policy; (4) presented at local, national and international conferences and (5) disseminated by peer-review publications.

Some undergraduate programmes require evidence of baseline numeracy skills as a condition of entry. With a widened entry gate into higher education and a recognised ‘mathematics problem’ in society, students wishing to enrol onto degree programmes that require evidence of numeracy often find it difficult to provide such evidence. Numeracy skills of pre‐registration nursing students are an issue of particular concern. Some undergraduate nursing programmes require prospective students who are applying for places to undertake a numeracy entrance test as part of the selection process. Evidence from numeracy selection tests conducted at one university indicated that many applicants struggled to demonstrate competence in basic numerical concepts. On the basis of this evidence, the School of Nursing at Kingston University/St George’s University of London (KU/SGUL), in partnership with Merton College of Further Education, designed and delivered an innovative pre‐entrance test numeracy development programme for pr...

A study was conducted to determine the level of perceived similarity by consumers among college students viewing two products with similar trade dress—the recently litigated Kendall-Jackson “Vintner’s Reserve” and Gallo “Turning Leaf” brands of Chardonnay table wine. Using an Internet-based data collection method, this study found only one significant difference out of several variables in a comparison between groups defined by their wine purchase frequency and wine knowledge. Perceived similarity is substantially apparent; consumers did not identify differences between the two brands based on their various components of trade dress. Based on these findings, the authors suggest that brand loyalty is less likely and switching behavior may become common in a market that includes such competitive behavior.

Corporate Strategy (CS) has traditionally played a pivotal role in the undergraduate business curriculum and is normally a required final year course. While the managerial experience of students at postgraduate level provides a clear justification for requiring students to study CS, the decline of work experience and the massification of UK higher education raises question marks regarding the relevance of CS in undergraduate business education. CS may also be criticised as being overly concerned with simplified and abstract theories inappropriate in a rapidly changing post‐Fordist economy. In response to these challenges there needs to be a re‐conceptualisation of CS as a preparation for empowered and informed employees rather than as a preparation for potential senior managers. The teaching of CS also needs to take greater account of changes in the economic environment such as the growth of smaller businesses and the importance of ethics.

This paper explores the development, delivery and evaluation of a pilot programme in academic literacy skills to help students make the transition from year 1 of their undergraduate nursing programme (level 4) to year 2 (level 5). Although there is a good deal of literature available about supporting students in year 1 to develop academic literacy skills, there is a dearth of literature on supporting students as they move from level to level during their university programmes. The pilot programme comprised five 1½ hr sessions on different aspects of literacy skills in the transition period between year 1 and year 2. Students from one cohort were invited to participate on a voluntary basis. Students undertook a pre-test before starting the programme and a post-test at the end. However, only a small number chose to sit the post-test making comparative analysis impossible. However, results of the student questionnaires showed that student confidence in their literacy skills increased and their perceptions of their literacy skills were that they were improved as a result of the programme. Importantly, marks on semester 2 written assignments were improved compared with year 1 work for those who had attended the programme. This study is important for both the progression of students from year 1 to year 2 of their nursing programme and for their ability to develop the kinds of literacy skills required for nursing practice.

This exercise introduces students to nanotechnology through the fabrication and analysis of a unique type of nanostructure called a nanofilm. Students prepare self-assembled monolayers (i.e., SAMs) of a series of alkylsiloxanes of differing chain lengths onto glass slides and compare the overall structural quality of these nanofilms as a function of alkyl chain length using FTIR. By monitoring the peak frequencies of certain vibrational bands and through the calculation of vibrational-band ratios, students determine that the overall structural order of alkylsiloxane SAMs decreases as the alkyl chain length of the adsorbed molecule becomes shorter. The use of FTIR for structural analysis is a new concept for undergraduate students who are used to only the qualitative and quantitative capabilities of this analytical technique. In this experiment, students also monitor the durability and wettability of one of the SAM structures.