The StrongerMemory Program: A Brain Health Intervention for Mild Cognitive Impairment

The StrongerMemory program is a brain health intervention targeting older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Approximately 20% of individuals over 65 years old have MCI and 38% will potentially develop dementia after 5 years of MCI onset. Participants in the 16-week StrongerMemory program practice exercises involving math, writing, and reading aloud for 20-30 minutes a day, stimulating the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which governs the brain’s ability to retrieve memories. The current research exploring participants’ experiences with the StrongerMemory program was approved by the University’s Institutional Review Board. A semi-structured interview was implemented with each participant and the interviews took about 15 to 30 minutes to complete. There was a total of 24 respondents associated with a local continuing care retirement community, each providing their verbal consent to be interviewed and recorded over Zoom. The respondents were mostly female ranging in age from 65 to 90. Most respondents reported having advanced degrees and were participating in the program on their own, with a spouse or friend. Each interview transcript was coded by at least two members of the Mason research team. Participants reported being motivated to participate in the program due to fearing memory loss because of experiences of family members and friends and others wanted to remain “cognitively fit.” Codes and themes representing participants’ perceptions and reactions to exercises and their challenges and lessons learned from their participation will be discussed, including participants feelings of being “less foggy” and better able to remember information.

Knowledge is em(power)ing: Historically underrepresented groups benefit from exposure to information about advanced degrees in psychology

Despite the growing interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) educationand careers, the “leaky pipeline” continues to disproportionally exclude underrepresented minorities from STEM fields. One feature of the leaky pipeline is unequal access to guidance surrounding graduate education and careers in STEM fields. Disparities in representation can be diminished by making this guidance more accessible, which may be particularly beneficial at the transition from undergraduate to post-graduate research experience and education. Here, we sought to investigate the value of large-scale, open access programming as a mechanism for achieving this objective, by using survey data from a 2020 Yale University Research Psychology Bootcamp as a case study. We found that this programming increased confidence and understanding of how to navigate the field of research psychology in all survey respondents, with a targeted benefit for Black and First Generation/Low-Income participants. Based on these findings, we argue that large-scale, open-access programming offers a unique and practical utility toward eliminating disparities in STEM higher education and STEM fields.

The situation of English speaker’s place of origin depending on Chinese dialects

This study examines the ability to identify different Chinese dialects through the English language and evaluates how often respondents pay attention to phonological features and rate of speech to explain their categorizations. The research includes 100 Chinese undergraduate students and 100 young people without advanced degrees aged 20 to 25. Discrete independent data samples collected during the interview of participants are analyzed with the help of such statistical methods as Student's t-test, Mann-Whitney U-test, and Wilcoxon's test. The obtained results indirectly show the ability of respondents to identify native and non-native English speakers around the world, as well as determine their nationality. The outcomes of the paper explicate who, in general, categorize Chinese dialects better and which dialects are the most recognizable. Research data reveal a high degree of stereotypization of various dialects, especially the Beijing and U dialects. Moreover, based on the data obtained, it can be concluded that speaking rate significantly affects the perception and classification of a speaker from a particular province of China.

How Skilled Migrants Enter and Stay in the U.S. Labor Market

This paper examines how academic, corporate and state institutions shape inequality in the flow and labor market incorporation of skilled migrants. Using two original datasets, the paper finds that where a migrant earns their degree matters more for explaining patterns of migration and employment than how many degrees they hold, challenging standard theories of human capital and migration.Logistic regression analysis of a novel dataset of LinkedIn employment histories shows that migrants with U.S. degrees are more likely to work in the U.S. at first and current job, while foreign advanced degrees have a strong negative effect on U.S. employment. 105 in-depth interviews show that U.S. universities facilitate the school-to-work transition to the U.S. labor market for international students and U.S. companies display preferences for U.S. degrees. The paper develops new data sources to study dynamic migration flows in transnational, longitudinal perspective and analyzes these data through a multi-level framework that situates migration and employment within institutional contexts driving inequality in labor market outcomes. The findings emphasize the importance of analyzing the effect country of education and level of educational attainment in shaping labor migration flows. I offer a new conceptualization of life-course transitions in the global education and labor markets as migration decisions.

The TCI Clinical Encounter Program for PhD Students in Cancer Biology: a Feasibility Pilot

Clinical rotations are often not included in graduate-level cancer biology curricula; however, basic insight into clinical oncology is often crucial for developing translational research that addresses unmet needs with the potential to benefit cancer patients. We describe a needs assessment, design, implementation, and descriptive evaluation of an oncology-specific pilot clinical encounter program developed for PhD students in the Cancer Biology Training Area (CAB) in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBS) and Tisch Cancer Institute (TCI) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS). Prior to the development of this pilot program, CAB students, in years 2–5 + , were surveyed to determine their interest in a structured clinical experience. Seventeen out of thirty-one students responded (55%) to the survey. Of those seventeen respondents, fifteen (88.2%) expressed that exposure to cancer patients in the clinical setting would be useful for their pre-doctoral biomedical science and cancer biology training and indicated an interest in participating in the clinical encounter program. Based on these responses, a three-session clinical encounter pilot program was designed. Two separate cohorts of 5 students participated in this pilot program. During a formal debrief, following the clinical experience, students commented on the resilience of patients and the importance of research on clinical decision making, and reported that they found the experience motivational. Five out of 10 students responded (50%) to a post-program assessment survey; all five respondents answered that they would recommend the clinical encounter program to their peers. While limited in size and scope, this pilot TCI Clinical Encounter Program proved feasible and has the potential to enrich and inform the experience of PhD students pursing advanced degrees in a cancer biology.

GOING FOR ADVANCED DEGREES? A STUDY AMONG THE CURRENTLY ENROLLED INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS IN MALAYSIA USING A SEQUENTIAL APPROACH

Malaysia has positioned itself to be a regional higher education hub and targeted to increase its number of international students to 250,000 by 2025, from 81,424 students in 2013. In the face of COVID-19, Malaysia is expected to experience stiff competitions with other countries in attracting international students. In essence, apart from attracting new students to come and study, pursuing the currently enrolled international students to stay on for advanced degrees is equally crucial to achieving the objective of the internationalisation agenda. Many studies have been done on factors affecting the decision of international students in choosing a host country. However, the retention and its sequential nature have been largely ignored. This paper aims to examine the probability of retention using a sequential approach. The descriptive statistics analysis found that Malaysia could expect that around 42% of its currently enrolled international students will remain in Malaysia. Results of the estimated sequential logit model reveal that university services are the significant factor that influences the probability of retention, whereas the education cost is found to be insignificant. Thus, consumption motives dominate the investment motives in terms of the probability of retention. Based on the findings, various policy implications are suggested to improve the retention rate of international students in Malaysia.

Academic professionals: The changing face of teaching, research, and service in the American research university

This exploratory study responds to the criticism that non-instructional faculty or “academic professionals” at American universities are the cause of “administrative bloat.” The purpose of the study was to build from the work of Rhoades (1998) and Kane (2007) to examine whether academic professionals at an R-1 (very-high research activity university) performed core university work of research, teaching, and/or public service. A survey of 1036 academic professionals suggested that many of these individuals were routinely and directly contributing to research, teaching, and public service instead of administrative work, failing to contribute to any notions of “administrative bloat.” In addition to the three areas of core work, academic professionals often had advanced degrees, published in peer-reviewed journals, had specialized skills and bodies of knowledge, applied for grants, and engaged in entrepreneurial activities. The study concludes with a discussion of academic professionals in European countries and the role of disruptive innovation and new professionalism in compelling universities to expand the use of academic professionals in order to produce cheaper degree alternatives and generate new sources of funding .