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Objective: Vertical community college transfer has become an essential pathway for many students who hope to attain bachelor's degrees. Prior literature indicates that institutional supports, like transfer articulation agreements and transfer advising, have a positive influence on transfer success. Yet, spatial inequality theory indicates that these resources may be distributed unevenly over geographic context. The purpose of this paper is to understand the relationship between spatial context and transfer student success. Methods: Using data from the University of North Carolina System, we estimate a series of regression models, to determine the relationship between county-level measures of rurality, economic distress, and access to broadband internet and the number of credits transferred from the community college to the 4-year institution, excess credits at graduation, and number of major changes at 4-year colleges. Results: The results of our analyses indicate that that the spatial context in which colleges are situated has a relationship to transfer student success. In particular, students transferring from counties that are more rural and economically distressed and have less access to broadband internet may experience worse transfer outcomes. Conclusions: The results of our study indicate that spatial inequality is complex and can be defined in many ways, which has implications for those who use geographic boundaries to identify areas for inquiry or intervention. Additionally, this study highlights the importance of considering variation in resources across spatial context when addressing educational inequality. Further study is necessary to understand the mechanisms driving our results, as well as other ways to measure spatial inequality.

This study examined the effectiveness of the Carolina College Advising Corps (CCAC) on two college readiness outcomes: advanced college preparatory course enrollment and SAT test-taking behaviors. The focus of this study is on concrete college readiness measures beyond mere college aspirations, as these measures more accurately predict college success. We utilized a difference-in-differences research design, which compares treatment and comparison schools over time using pre- and post-intervention panel data. The treatment group consisted of partner high schools in North Carolina that received the CCAC treatment, and the comparison group included public schools in the state that do not have this resource. We found that the introduction of a CCAC adviser increased schools' SAT participation rate but lowered their overall average score. The results of this work add to the growing literature on the impact of college advising professionals and may help inform goal-setting for the CCAC and similar interventions.

Access to financial aid is crucial in ensuring that students can afford college. Students must file the FAFSA to access federal financial aid and usually the FAFSA is also required for state and institutional aid (U.S. Department of Education, n.d). Prior research has shown, however, that the FAFSA is complicated and burdensome to complete and often acts as a barrier instead of an entry point to college (Bettinger et al., 2012; Bird & Castleman, 2016; Dynarski & Scott-Clayton, 2006, 2008; Dynarski et al., 2013). Given these barriers in accessing aid, some high schools employ college advisers or other school staff to assist students in the financial aid process (Civic Enterprises, 2011; Dunlop Velez, 2016). This single case study explores how College Advising Corps (CAC) advisers perceived their role in the financial aid process and how they discuss college expenses, financial aid, and debt with students. Guided by social capital theory (Coleman, 1988) and administrative burden framework (Herd & Moynihan, 2018), we find that CAC advisers, in their role as a social capital resource, experience learning, psychological, and compliance costs when assisting students to navigate the financial aid bureaucracy. They employ different strategies to overcome, manage, and cope with these costs.

Transfer articulation agreements are employed by institutions of higher education and state legislatures alike to improve transfer efficiency between two-year and four-year institutions. These agreements often aim both to increase transfer rates and baccalaureate degree completion and to decrease time to degree. Studies exploring the efficacy of articulation agreements find that, despite being successful at decreasing the number of excess credits students earned at graduation and at increasing baccalaureate degree completion, these policies often increase time to degree. While there is considerable research on articulation agreements, few studies have examined the differential impact of these policies on students of Color who, prior literature has shown, experience barriers to realizing their baccalaureate degree aspirations. The purpose of this study was to examine whether the impact of North Carolina's statewide articulation agreement varied by a student's racial/ethnic identity when examining two-year post-transfer baccalaureate degree completion, time-to-degree completion, and excess credit accumulation.

This qualitative case study examines the college choice decisions of rural students enrolled in engineering majors to understand what conditions and experiences led rural students to pursue engineering at their institution. We found four themes that help illuminate rural engineering students' college choice journeys (1) The Inextricable Nature of College, Major, and Career Choice (2) "The Smart Person Thing to Do:" The Power of Prestige, (3) "Are You Sure You Don't Want to Change your Major?" Dissonance Between Aspirations and Expectations, and (4) School and Community as Crucial Resources in College and Major Exploration. These findings have implications for those working with rural high school students seeking engineering degrees and admissions processes at four-year colleges and universities.

What happens when campus units come together to create both a shared physical space and a shared mission space? This case study highlights a unique cross-campus partnership between the UCLA Science Libraries and two academic support programs to create a STEM Collaborative Learning Center. This space serves to help decrease achievement gaps in STEM courses through peer-to-peer active learning and collaborative study. The results of the collaboration have helped to promote student success, increase the value and visibility of the library, inform space design decisions, and innovate new ways campus partners can work together to achieve shared goals.

In 2016, the North Carolina legislature implemented the North Carolina Fixed Tuition Program. This policy ensures that, once enrolled, an undergraduate student's tuition rate at any of the state's four-year public colleges will not increase for eight consecutive semesters of enrollment. While touted as an effort to increase affordability by helping students financially plan for college, prior research has found that these policies prompt institutions to raise the cost of attendance for undergraduate students. This study expands previous work on institutional pricing responses to tuition guarantee programs by both extending inquiry to another state context and by examining changes to revenue streams not included in prior work. Using differences-in-differences and event study approaches, I found that institutions in North Carolina increased in- and out-of-state graduate tuition rates and out-of-state undergraduate tuition rates in the wake of the Fixed Tuition Program.

Beginning with the revision of the existing Comprehensive Articulation Agreement (CAA) in 2014, North Carolina policymakers have implemented several articulation agreements that create structured pathways between two- and four-year colleges. The purpose of this article is to detail the demographic makeup and post-transfer outcomes of transfer students in North Carolina. This article will help policymakers and practitioners identify areas in which they can help facilitate successful transfer and eventual bachelor's degree attainment.

Summer melt occurs when a student who intends to go to college does not enroll in the fall semester after senior year. The purpose of this study was to examine why high school graduates, who in the spring of their senior year of high school had intentions to go to college, did not enroll in college the fall semester immediately after graduation (i.e., melted). Guided by the research questions, we wanted to understand "why" these students did not enroll in college directly after high school and "how" they went through the decision-making process. This qualitative study adds to the existing summer melt literature, which is primarily quantitative. Interviews with students who were classified as having "melted" revealed that all but one student were enrolled in college within a year after high school graduation. These findings suggest traditional methods of defining summer melt may lead researchers to overestimate the extent of melt, as most students in this study purposefully delayed enrollment to pursue other opportunities before college (e.g., work, gap year) or to accept spring admission offers.

Community college transfer pathways, whereby students begin their postsecondary enrollment at a 2-year institution, are an increasingly popular option for students looking to complete a bachelor's degree. Designed to increase transfer efficiency, articulation agreements between community colleges and 4-year institutions provide structured pathways for students to transition between colleges while minimizing excess credits earned and time to degree. This study examines the early effects of North Carolina's statewide credit articulation agreement on students' credit-earning behaviors. Using difference-in-differences and event study analyses, we use administrative data from the 16 University of North Carolina (UNC) System institutions to examine how the implementation of the Comprehensive Articulation Agreement (CAA) impacts credit accumulation for students transferring from North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS) institutions into the UNC system. We find that, in the first 4 years after implementation, the CAA decreased credit accumulation upon graduation by two to five credits for some students who were enrolled in CAA-eligible degree programs. Additionally, we found that the policy had a delayed effect with no discernable reduction in credit accumulation until 1-2 years after policy implementation.

Objective: This study examined the effects of offering proactive student-success coaching, informed by predictive analytics, on student academic performance and persistence. Specifically, this study investigated semester grade point average (GPA) and semester-to-semester persistence of community college students as outcomes. Methods: This study involved two stages of analysis. First, we used inverse probability of treatment weighting to create appropriately balanced samples of the students offered proactive assistance and students not offered proactive assistance to approximate a randomized control trial with observational data. Then, we applied regression analyses with weights and covariates to the balanced samples to estimate outcomes. Results: Using regression analyses with weights and covariates, we estimated few statistically significant results in sample subgroup models and no statistically significant results for whole-group samples. Generally, our analyses found that the offer of the intervention had no effect on students' persistence and semester GPAs. Conclusions/Contributions: This study contributes empirical results to the emerging literature regarding student-success coaching, predictive analytics, and student-monitoring systems. The results demonstrate the necessity of performing rigorous analyses on these predictive-analytic systems and reveals ethical concerns that should be considered in designing interventions.

Epidemiologic studies link increased autism spectrum disorder (ASD) risk to obstetrical conditions associated with inflammation and steroid dysregulation, referred to as prenatal metabolic syndrome (PNMS). This pilot study measured steroid-related biomarkers in early second trimester maternal serum collected during the first and second trimester evaluation of risk study. ASD case and PNMS exposure status of index offspring were determined through linkage with autism registries and birth certificate records. ASD case (N = 53) and control (N = 19) groups were enriched for PNMS exposure. Higher estradiol and lower sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) were significantly associated with increased ASD risk. Study findings provide preliminary evidence to link greater placental estradiol activity with ASD and support future investigations of the prenatal steroid environment in ASD.

Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of bubonic and pneumonic plague, has undergone detailed study at the molecular level. To further investigate the genomic diversity among this group and to help characterize lineages of the plague organism that have no sequenced members, we present here the genomes of two isolates of the "classical" Antiqua biovar, strains Antiqua and Nepal516. The genomes of Antiqua and Nepal516 are 4.7 Mb and 4.5 Mb and encode 4,138 and 3,956 open reading frames respectively. Though both strains belong to one of the three classical biovars, they represent separate lineages defined by recent phylogenetic studies. We compare all five currently sequenced Y. pestis genomes and the corresponding features in Y. pseudotuberculosis. There are strain-specific rearrangements, insertions, deletions, single nucleotide polymorphisms and a unique distribution of insertion sequences. We found 453 single nucleotide polymorphisms in protein coding regions, which were used to assess evolutionary relationships of these Y. pestis strains. Gene reduction analysis revealed that the gene deletion processes are under selective pressure and many of the inactivations are probably related to the organism s interaction with its host environment. The results presented here clearly demonstrate the differences between the two Antiqua lineages and support the notion that grouping Y. pestis strains based strictly on the classical definition of biovars (predicated upon two biochemical assays) does not accurately reflect the phylogenetic relationships within this species. Comparison of four virulent Y. pestis strains with the human-avirulent strain 91001 provides further insight into the genetic basis of virulence to humans.

Background: The modification of performance following conflict can be measured using conflict adaptation tasks thought to measure the change in the allocation of cognitive resources in order to reduce conflict interference and improve performance. While previous studies have suggested atypical processing during nonsocial cognitive control tasks, conflict adaptation (i.e. congruency sequence effects) for social-emotional stimuli have not been previously studied in autism spectrum disorder. Methods: A total of 32 participants diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and 27 typically developing matched controls completed an emotional Stroop conflict task that required the classification of facial affect while simultaneously ignoring an overlaid affective word. Results: Both groups showed behavioral evidence for emotional conflict adaptation based on response times and accuracy rates. However, the autism spectrum disorder group demonstrated a speed-accuracy trade-off manifested through significantly faster response times and decreased accuracy rates on trials containing conflict between the emotional face and the overlaid emotional word. Conclusion: Reduced selective attention toward socially relevant information may bias individuals with autism spectrum disorder toward more rapid processing and decision making even when conflict is present. Nonetheless, the loss of important information from the social stimuli reduces decision-making accuracy, negatively affecting the ability to adapt both cognitively and emotionally when conflict arises.

Despite the importance of recruiting highly qualified individuals into the science teaching profession, little is known about the effectiveness of particular recruitment strategies. Over 3 years, 34 college science majors and undecided students were recruited into paid internships in informal science settings to consider secondary science teaching as a career. Analysis of interns' subsequent career plans revealed the internships were not effective in recruiting the interns into the secondary science teacher education program, although many interns thought they might consider becoming teachers later in their lives. Reasons for not pursuing teaching included continued indecisiveness, inflexibility of required plans of study, and concerns about teachers' pay and classroom management.

On January 3, 2012, the "New York Times" featured an article announcing the emergence of the new interdisciplinary field of animal studies, which is spreading across college campuses in new course offerings, new majors, and new undergraduate and graduate programs. This new field grows out of, on the one hand, a long history of scientific research on animals whose cumulative results (animal cognition, animal emotions, animal communication, animal morality) have now decisively blurred the "once-sharp distinction" between human and nonhuman animals, and, on the other hand, the field of cultural studies, which has been focused on "ignored and marginalized humans"--for example, women and minorities who were once considered "outsiders," not quite fully human, and often closer to animals. In the context of violence and trauma, the field of animal studies emerges in recent years not as the latest academic curiosity to be reported, somewhat smugly, in the "New York Times" or as the most recent challenge from within the university to business-as-usual in the crisis-prone humanities. The interdisciplinary field of animal studies emerges as a call to relinquish the habit and the hubris of anthropocentrism and humanism and to broaden the sense of "our time" to include the catastrophe that is the systematic and relentless and ongoing exploitation, abuse, and killing of nonhuman animals. Moreover, the author points out that animal studies calls on individuals to see the deep and abiding connection between how they interact with and treat each other and how they interact with and treat nonhuman others. In this article, the author talks about understanding the problem of human violence by focusing on cultural studies, animal studies, and the promise of posthumanism. (Contains 29 notes.)

This article focuses on the experience of "Desirae," a young mother who participated with her children in services at The Children's Ark, an attachment-based intervention for families in foster care. The story of Desirae and her children highlights both the sometimes paradoxical truths about families fractured by addiction, abuse, and neglect and the nature of lasting change that challenge the current child welfare system. Informed by attachment theory and other psychodynamically oriented perspectives as well as Buddhist psychology and mindfulness, the authors stimulate further thinking about how professionals can manage challenges with creativity and compassion, by keeping relationships at the center of care for families in crisis.

Using an attachment theory framework, this article explores several critical issues in foster care as reflected in the case of Barbara and her 9-month-old son, Nathan. Barbara and Nathan participated in The Children's Ark, an innovative intervention for families in foster care that allowed mothers who had lost custody of their children to live, full time, with them. Barbara's experience at the Ark powerfully illustrates the intergenerational effects of early maltreatment as well as the pain of confronting that past. Nathan's experience demonstrated the critical need for security, which, because of her past, Barbara struggled to provide. Over time, Barbara came to realize that it was in Nathan's bests interests to relinquish custody so that he could be moved to a permanent placement, another critical need. Finally, this article illustrates how a carefully planned transition allowed Nathan, at age 2, to have some understanding of what was happening and to eventually claim his new caregiver.

Presents an interview with Slavoj Zizek. Notes that what makes Slavoj Zizek so exhilarating to read (and to listen to) is the overwhelming range of subjects - both popular and technical - at his command. Discusses many of his works including books on philosophy and psychoanalytic theory, books and articles on popular culture, and newspaper articles on current affairs. (SG)

Considers how a fundamental shift has taken place in the rhetoric of composition studies. Examines the way a given idea, such as postmodernism or theory, becomes an effective force in history. Defines critical interference as the goal to slow (rather than to simply oppose) the process by which postmodernism passes into the common sense of composition studies. (SC)

Presents an interview with postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha, who sees writing as a highly political activity. Discusses: critical literacy as an essential step toward agency, self-representation, and an effective democracy; the role of postcolonial theory; and cultural difference. (RS)