In recent years beekeepers have faced significant losses to the population of managed honey bees due to various causes. Some research efforts have focused on the analysis of beehive audio and video recordings to better understand the behavior of bees and the health status of the hives. To provide data for such research, it is important to have a means of capturing audio, video, and other sensor data, using a system that is reliable, inexpensive, and causes minimal disruption to the bees’ behavior. Beemon was designed and built in the Visual and Image Processing lab at Appstate for data collection and analyses. This system automatically captures sensor data and sends it to our server for analysis. With the ability to operate continuously in an outdoor apiary environment, it allows for constant, near real-time data collection. The results of several years of real world operation and studies using image processing, signal processing, and machine learning will be presented.

Early Learning and Development Standards (ELDS) identify important milestones for young children’s learning and development. Despite these documents’ central position in early childhood education, little is known about teachers’ knowledge and use of ELDS, particularly in early literacy. The interview protocol used in this study was designed to investigate teachers’ ability to identify evidences of early literacy learning depicted in children’s play and relate those to broad areas of literacy development and specific early literacy milestones, also referred to as developmental indicators identified in one state’s ELDS.

To answer these questions, we interviewed eight preschool teachers and presented them with two scenarios depicting young children engaging with literacy at play. We also shared a list of areas of literacy development and related developmental indicators (DI) and subdomains (S) from the state’s ELDS. We then asked the teachers “where do you see any evidence of literacy development in this play?” Lastly, we asked teachers how they would extend children’s learning based on the milestones identified in play.

Our findings indicate that teachers were able to identify approximately half of the evidences of literacy development in these play scenarios. Teachers struggled most to identify evidence of Comprehension and Use of Information in Books and were most successful with associating examples of Phonological Awareness with the accurate subdomain. Perhaps most importantly, when teachers were asked ways they would support children’s development, all teachers were able to offer ideas of ways to do so but there was variability in the effectiveness of these extensions.

The primary purpose of this opportunity is for people to get trained in public health preparedness skills including mitigation, planning, response, and recovery competencies like case investigation and contact tracing through the experience of scholars at Appalachian State University. We will explore a yearlong opportunity for undergraduate students to be trained with a collaborative team focused on public health preparedness. Through an interactive platform we will explore the use of a Mastermind platform to spark engagement and provide opportunities for undergraduate students in public health to broaden their knowledge around the COVID-19 global pandemic and public health preparedness. We will walk through an interactive website, virtual platforms, and reflect on scholars' experience.

QR code link from poster: https://sites.google.com/appstate.edu/phpfellowship

Paying taxes allows people to directly relate to their governments. By contributing their share, taxpayers become the ultimate sponsors of the government and should be motivated to hold authorities accountable for their (mis)spending decisions. But here is the rub. As research has repeatedly shown, ordinary citizens lack basic knowledge about taxation, which makes it possible for policy makers to obscure the origin of the government funds. For example, they can refer to taxpayers’ money as “government spending.” As a result, citizens may underestimate the leverage they have in claiming greater accountability from those in power. Indeed, this tactic is used by government officials and can subsequently make its way into media discourse. Yet, although previous research has repeatedly suggested that the news coverage of government spending may facilitate taxation’s effect on citizens’ demands for government accountability, these effects have never been put to empirical test. This project contributes to filling this gap. In a series of experiments on nationally representative adult samples of the U.S. population, made possible thanks to a URC grant, this study tested if various ways to describe government expenditures in the news (as either “government funds/ spending,” “public funds/ spending” or “spending taxpayers’ money”) can influence citizens’ demands for government accountability. The findings show that the mere rhetorical changes in describing the funds can increase the perceived ownership of “taxpayers’ money” (but not “public funds”) as opposed to “government funds,” which makes citizens more motivated to hold the government accountable for its spending decisions.

allay (2020): a composition for solo piano (composition and performance by Nicholas Cline)

I began composing this work shortly after the birth of my son in December 2019. It began as a simple work for left hand alone (one hand playing with the other arm holding my son). The title "allay" or "to make quiet, to quell, to calm" seemed fitting for the moment. Over the months that followed and the tragedies of 2020, this piece became a tonic that might - if only for a moment - alleviate fear and grief.

In this short work (4:30), a melody traverses the range of the piano. Slowly, the melody condenses to form a series of chords beginning with a warm Eb major triad. The progression repeats again and again, searching for a place to settle until it finds a lightness and floats away.

Background

Nurse educators encounter challenges when facilitating students’ development of confidence in the home healthcare setting (Richards et al., 2010; Wheeler & McNelis, 2014). Palliative/hospice care is often provided at home, and students have expressed lack of confidence with this type of care (Valen et al., 2020). Home health simulations increase students' perceived self-efficacy and knowledge of applying the nursing process during community health encounters (Gotwals & Yeager, 2014) and positive student outcomes occur with both hospice and home health simulations (Eaton et al., 2012).

Purpose

1. Engage students in unique home health experiences to gain competence in compassionate, patient/family-centered care.

2. Provide a safe environment to experience/respond to home/hospice challenges.

Methods

A simulation lab was transformed into a home health space. Faculty played standardized roles (patient or family member). Students role-played home health nurses or patients' spouses during two sequential home health scenarios. Simulation activities focused on therapeutic communication, the incorporation of cultural and religious considerations in end-of-life care, and holistic and comprehensive pain management techniques in the home.

Results

Students identified ways to empower and support family members providing care in their homes, resources for addressing unmet needs, and the social determinants of health impacting both the development of health conditions and the subsequent care provided. Ethical and legal responsibilities to the patient and family members were discussed, and students reported new insight and understanding of the variety of scenarios they may encounter in the nursing profession.

I wrote a play entitled: Kent State, Then and Again. This play begins with the announcement by President Nixon to invade Cambodia on April 30, 1970 and concludes with the killing of four students and the wounding of nine others on the Kent State University campus on May 4, 1970. I was a student and witness to these events. In the spring of 2021, I directed a zoom production of this play with 20 actors and 10 designers and technicians. I would like to discuss the process of the historical research that culminated in this production. Equally important, however, is to discuss the impact on the students who participated in this production. Their experience coming out of the pandemic, the economic challenges of some of their families and their concerns and engagement with Black Lives Matter fueled their engagement with this project. Faulkner's famous quote: "The past is never dead. It's not even past" echoed throughout the writing, directing and performance of this play. The student actors, designers and technicians were integral in learning how to create a meaningful zoom theatrical presentation of this play. Their familiarity and past experience with creating zoom theatre throughout the year came to bear on the creative choices made in this production. It wasn't just their technical expertise that was important, it was also their emotional response to the world they were experiencing for themselves that was crucial in doing this production.

According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association 2019 Member Counts (ASHA, 2019), 8.3% of ASHA-certified Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists identify as racial minorities and 5.8% identify as Hispanic or Latin. Our field has been identified by The Atlantic (2013) as being one of the “whitest jobs in America.” This is a problem for any field, but especially one that treats and interacts with a diverse population every day. Increasing practitioner diversity has been a goal for many years, but little has changed. The goal of our project is to reach out to those who are most likely to have the solution to the problem: Speech language pathologists (SLPs) and audiologists who identify as racial and ethnic minorities.

Method

Our project has two parts. Part One is the recruitment and phenomenological interview of 10 SLPs or audiologists who identify as racial or ethnic minorities. Participants will be asked to share their own experiences as undergraduate and graduate students and what they believe are the important changes that Communication Sciences & Disorders (CSD) programs could make to recruit and retain more students like themselves. Part Two of our study is to add those 10 participants into our research team to create a community-based participatory research (CBPR) team focused on increasing diversity in communication sciences and disorders. Utilizing CBPR principles, the team will formulate the goals of the group and initial steps needed to achieve them.

Current progress and initial findings will be shared. Implications will be discussed.

People’s stories are expressions of their lives. By making connections to others’ stories, we come closer to understanding how they experience the world. This community education project sought to create space for Latinx immigrants and their children to share their roots and routes with one another. Immigrants to North Carolina have helped to build our roads, grow our food, and care for our elders, but their stories and humanity often remain marginalized or invisible. These histories deserve to be heard. Through a series of workshops, participants shared their stories and produced digital stories to document their journeys and identities. Facilitators and participants collaborated to create spaces for reflection, empathy, and consciousness raising. We used activities and techniques from popular education alongside technology instruction to support participants in reflecting on their experiences and developing their story projects.