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Using interviews with 74 Korean undergraduate students at ten elite U.S. colleges, I explore how intersections of gender and class decide who pursues transnational mobility and cosmopolitan life more successfully. Men from highly-transnational families tried to exert 'agency for becoming' while mapping out their 'choice biographies', aspiring and expected to be high-achieving and influential worldwide, often thanks to their U.S. citizenship or permanent residency. By contrast, women across class and legal statuses tended to accommodate 'normal biographies', prioritising their (future) responsibilities as mothers, wives, and daughters. Regarding class limitations, both women and men from less-transnational families tended to expect to return to Korea upon graduation, feeling culturally and legally limited to utilising their degrees across national borders. Yet, across class lines, men were more ambitious and career-oriented than women, implying gender-based constraints among the skilled diaspora. These findings shed light on multiple forms of inequalities among high-achieving Asian student migrants.

A fundamental and contemporary issue in higher education is how to encourage global awareness, professional development, and accountability within constraints of curriculum and scarce resources. This is an evaluation of student experiences with a 1 1/2-year cross-cultural partnership that included a team project, public presentations, publications, and 2-week travel exchanges. Data were collected from the participant's project outcomes, from interviews pre- and posttravel, and survey questions at the end of the experience and 1 year later. The public face to the project allowed for partners to learn of the professional standards of the other culture while representing their own. Partner synergies were evidence of a personal, professional, and cultural awareness that provided a pathway to encourage cross-cultural learning among students in similar fields. Such cross-cultural experiences will help to ensure professional survival in the 21st century.

This study investigated US firefighters’ perceptions and lived experiences with their station uniform worn when they were involved in non-fire activities in the public domain. We developed an online survey questionnaire that included close- and open-ended questions, which allowed to obtain both quantitative and qualitative data, and it was administered to 342 US firefighters. The findings of this study demonstrated the phenomenon associated with US firefighters’ appearance and public confusion in non-fire occupational contexts. The narratives collected from the open-ended questions offered in-depth insights into the confused public identity and challenged occupational safety experienced by US firefighters in their work uniform. This study suggested the findings must be carefully examined to improve the public identity of US firefighters by creating a distinctive look of their work uniform, as well as to establish national regulations, to address the increased risks of potential threats in the contemporary workplace for firefighters. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examined how obese individuals acquire their motivation to undergo weight loss surgery and characterized the motivations within the framework of the self-determination theory (SDT). Participants expecting to have bariatric surgery were recruited and participated in semi-structured interviews. Interview accounts characterized different types of motivation for individuals seeking surgical weight loss treatments on the SDT continuum of relative autonomy. This study demonstrated that the more one's motivation was internally regulated, related to one's personal life and supported for competency, the more personal and hopeful were the anecdotes participants mentioned in accounts, thus the more positive the surgical outcomes were anticipated. Study limitations and future research were discussed as was the need for a systematic scheme to categorize types of motivation within the SDT, a longitudinal approach to measure actual weight loss outcomes based on the patient's presurgical motivation, and a further investigation with a larger sample size and balanced gender ratio. Practical implications of the study findings were also discussed as a novel strategy to internalize bariatric patients' motivation, further helping to improve their long-term quality of life post-surgery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]