Academic literature on the topic 'University of Texas at Austin – Faculty – Research grants'

140 Background: The University of Texas has six health institutions and Industrial and Systems Engineering faculty throughout university locations across the state. These academic medical centers, including MD Anderson Cancer Center, and schools of engineering, business, and medicine are partnering to implement Systems Engineering in healthcare throughout the UT system. The “systems approach to implementing Systems Engineering” is an opportunity to serve as a world-class model for collaboration across academic institutions for engineering, business, medicine, and healthcare organizations to implement Systems Engineering and systems thinking in healthcare. The objective of the collaboration is not just to produce successful projects, but to achieve transformational change. Methods: This presentation will provide an overview of Systems Engineering and provide examples of the different tools and strategies from the discipline including lean, six sigma, mathematical simulation, optimization and operations research, human factors, facility design layout, statistical process control, design of experiments, scheduling, supply chain and inventory management, staffing models, etc. Funding, leadership, training, and communication efforts associated with the effort will be reviewed including the grant application process for transformational efforts. (The implementation follows the PDSA process.) Results: Currently nine grants have been awarded in the UT system for implementing Systems Engineering. Results will be shared (in terms of cost savings and/or avoidance and patient satisfaction) from specific projects such as a lean effort in the Diagnostic Center and simulation models to schedule nurses in the OR and to determine resource requirements in the ICU. Conclusions: Systems Engineering is a valuable discipline that is relatively new to healthcare. Practicing clinical oncologists can increase efficiency, patient flow, and patient and physician satisfaction by applying Systems Engineering tools and strategies.

This is an ambitious year for Frontiers. In addition to this eclectic volume of articles, we will be collaborating with the Forum on Education Abroad on two Special Issues: A History of Study Abroad, Beginnings to 1965 and our second Undergraduate Research volume. We are grateful to the IFSA Foundation for providing the funding that helps to make these publications possible. 
 Both the History of Study Abroad and the Undergraduate Research volume will debut at the Forum Conference in Austin, Texas, March 1–3, 2007. The History is written by Bill Hoffa, and it is landmark publication that provides insight into the development of study abroad as a field. Bill’s research and writing makes our work more meaningful, and we are pleased to be able to publish it.
 The second Undergraduate Research volume contains a wide range of examples of student research conducted as part of study abroad. In this volume we are pleased to provide another perspective on this example of student learning: that of the on-site faculty advisor. We have asked faculty who advised and supervised the student research on-site to discuss the meaning of the research within the context of the local community in which it was conducted. The introduction to this volume by Paul Houlihan, President of the School for Field Studies, discusses the importance of considering the needs and perspectives of the communities in which our students conduct their research.
 Our partnership with the Forum continues to produce important results that benefit the field of education abroad. We look forward to publishing a third volume featuring Undergraduate Research (2008) as well as Part Two of the History of Study Abroad in this ongoing collaboration. Other special projects are also being planned to benefit both Frontiers readers and Forum members. 
 This volume at hand reflects our commitment to publishing a wide variety of approaches to understanding study abroad. The lead article by J. Kline Harrison, “The Relationship between International Study Tour Effects and the Personality Variables of Self-Monitoring and Core Self-Evaluations” provides more data on the outcomes of short-term study abroad, in this case business study tours that are embedded within home campus courses. Harrison investigates the perceived effectiveness of these tours and the associated impact on two personality variables: “self-monitoring” and “core self-evaluations.” The results of this research inform us about the benefits of this type of study abroad and also about instruments that may be useful to employ in other studies assessing the impact of study abroad.
 Our second article is from colleagues at the Lienhard School of Nursing at Pace University, Sophie R. Kaufman, David N. Ekstrom, and Lillie M. Shortridge-Baggett. Their article, “Assessing International Opportunities in Higher Education: A Matrix-based Assessment Tool,” presents a means to evaluate strategically international program opportunities on our campuses and within our organizations. The authors draw on their implementation of this assessment tool on their own campus to make a case for it. At a time when many of us are faced with often competing ideas for study abroad expansion, this tool may very well prove to be useful for helping us to make strategic decisions.
 In her article, “Re-Reading Student Texts: Intertextuality and Constructions of Self and Other in the Contact Zone,” Karen Rodriguez, a Resident Director in Guanajuato, Mexico, expands our understanding of study abroad texts, identities, pedagogy and student learning. Using a student’s poem as her starting point, Rodriguez applies insights from critical theory to analyze the study abroad learning environment. Her article prompts us to consider the multiple ways in which our students are engaged in an ongoing textual interplay in which they are simultaneously writers, co-writers, and texts being written. 
 Jacqueline McLaughlin and Kent Johnson offer a fruitful way to frame the short-term study abroad experience in order to maximize student learning and the assessment of learning outcomes. In their “Assessing the Field Course Experiential Learning Model: Transforming Collegiate Short-term Study Abroad Experiences into Rich Learning Environments,” the authors aim to present a program model that facilitates critical thinking while engaging students in active scientific inquiry. Presenting a case study of their three-week course in Costa Rica, McLaughlin and Johnson provide an example of how to integrate curricular design with assessment practice.
 In his “Ethnographic Inquiry: Reframing the Learning Core of Education Abroad,” Anthony Ogden uses case studies and theories about intercultural competency in order to propose that ethnographic inquiry become the core of our education abroad programs. Ogden takes us through the various facets of education abroad programs and discusses the value of integrating an ethnographic approach into each one to yield more effective learning outcomes. He emphasizes that to incorporate this learning paradigm does not require a complete overhaul of programs, but rather a reframing of them.
 The final two articles in this volume offer differing viewpoints on study abroad in non-traditional locations. In his “Non-traditional Study Abroad Destinations: Analysis of a Trend,” Ryan Wells defines and discusses study in non-traditional locations by comparing the benefits of and rationales for these programs with those of study abroad programs in traditional locations. Wells concludes that based on his analysis study abroad in non-traditional locations appears to help individuals, institutions, and society to meet their respective goals for education abroad.
 Michael Woolf presents a different view in his “Come and See the Poor People: The Pursuit of Exotica.” He argues that study abroad in non-traditional locations is proceeding without enough thought being given to the intellectual and academic reasons for it. Woolf asserts that what is attracting the development of study abroad in non-traditional locations more often than not is a fascination with the exotic, and that this is not a desirable or realistic way to develop such programs, especially when education abroad, more than ever, needs to be taken seriously.
 I want to take this opportunity once again to thank our institutional sponsors. Their continued support of Frontiers makes it possible to publish what we hope are thought-provoking and useful articles that shed light on the work of study abroad. I want also to extend a special thanks to those colleagues who have served as reviewers of manuscripts for this volume. Frontiers is very much a collaborative effort and our continued growth and success is widely shared.
 Brian Whalen, Dickinson College
 The Forum on Education Abroad
 I n t r o d u c t i o n
 ©2015 The Forum on Education Abroad

AbstractI (JS) am currently a faculty member at The University of Texas at Austin in Mechanical Engineering. My primary research focus is rehabilitation engineering. In May 2020, a week before her fourth birthday, our daughter suffered a severe traumatic brain injury in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. The purpose of this article is to describe the current state of pediatric neurorehabilitation from technologically-adept parents’ first-person perspectives in order to inform and motivate rehabilitation engineering researchers. We describe the medical and personal challenges faced during the aftermath of the accident, the technological approaches to her recovery that my wife (LKS) and I have examined, some of which may be considered beyond standard practice, and the lessons we have absorbed during this period regarding both the state of rehabilitation research and the clinical uptake of rehabilitation technologies. We introduce a set of questions for designers to consider as they create and evaluate new technologies for pediatric rehabilitation.

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English Teaching (Anseonggun, South Korea), 58, 4 (2003), 157–176.04–281 Kiernan, Patrick J. (Tokyo Denki University, Japan; Email: patrick@cck.dendai.ac.jp) and Aizawa, Kazumi. Cell phones in task based learning. Are cell phones useful language learning tools?ReCALL (Cambridge, UK), 16, 1 (2004), 71–84.04–282 Kim, Eun-Jeong (Kyungpook National U., South Korea; Email: ejkbuffalo@yahoo.co.kr). Considering task structuring practices in two ESL classrooms. English Teaching (Anseongunn, South Korea), 59, 2 (2004), 123–144.04–283 Kondo, David and Yang, Ying-Ling (University of Fukui, Japan). Strategies for coping with language anxiety: the case of students of English in Japan. ELT Journal (Oxford, UK), 58, 3 (2004), 258–265.04–284 Lin, Benedict (SEAMO RELC, Singapore). English in Singapore: an insider's perspective of syllabus renewal through a genre-based approach. RELC Journal (Singapore), 34, 2 (2003), 223–246.04–285 Lu, Dan (Hong Kong Baptist U., Hong Kong; Email: dan_lu@hkbu.ac.hk). English in Hong Kong: Super Highway or road to nowhere? Reflections on policy changes in language education of Hong Kong. RELC Journal (Singapore), 34, 3 (2003), 370–384.04–286 Lui, Jun (U. of Arizona, USA). Effects of comic strips on L2 learners' reading comprehension. TESOL Quarterly (Alexandria, VA, USA), 38, 2 (2004), 225–243.04–287 Lukjantschikowa, Marija. Textarbeit als Weg zu interkultureller Kompetenz. [Working with texts as a means to develop intercultural competence.] Deutsch als Fremdsprache (Leipzig, Germany), 3 (2004), 161–165.04–288 Lüning, Marita (Landesinstitut für Schule in Bremen, Germany). E-Mail-Projekte im Spanischunterricht. [E-Mail-Projects in the Spanish classroom.] Der fremdsprachliche Unterricht Spanisch (Seelze, Germany), 6 (2004), 30–36.04–289 Lyster, R. (McGill U., Canada; Email: roy.lyster@mcgill.ca). Differential effects of prompts and recasts in form-focussed instruction. 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As the single most successful social-networking Website to date, Facebook has caused a shift in both practice and perception of online socialisation, and its relationship to the offline world. While not the first online social networking service, Facebook’s user base dwarfs its nearest competitors. Mark Zuckerberg’s creation boasts more than 750 million users (Facebook). The currently ailing MySpace claimed a ceiling of 100 million users in 2006 (Cashmore). Further, the accuracy of this number has been contested due to a high proportion of fake or inactive accounts. Facebook by contrast, claims 50% of its user base logs in at least once a day (Facebook). The popular and mainstream uptake of Facebook has shifted social use of the Internet from various and fragmented niche groups towards a common hub or portal around which much everyday Internet use is centred. The implications are many, but this paper will focus on the progress what Mimi Marinucci terms the “Facebook effect” (70) and the evolution of lists as a filtering mechanism representing one’s social zones within Facebook. This is in part inspired by the launch of Google’s new social networking service Google+ which includes “circles” as a fundamental design feature for sorting contacts. Circles are an acknowledgement of the shortcomings of a single, unified friends list that defines the Facebook experience. These lists and circles are both manifestations of the same essential concept: our social lives are, in fact, divided into various zones not defined by an online/offline dichotomy, by fantasy role-play, deviant sexual practices, or other marginal or minority interests. What the lists and circles demonstrate is that even very common, mainstream people occupy different roles in everyday life, and that to be effective social tools, social networking sites must grant users control over their various identities and over who knows what about them. Even so, the very nature of computer-based social tools lead to problematic definitions of identities and relationships using discreet terms, in contrast to more fluid, performative constructions of an individual and their relations to others. Building the Monolith In 1995, Sherry Turkle wrote that “the Internet has become a significant social laboratory for experimenting with the constructions and reconstructions of self that characterize postmodern life” (180). Turkle describes the various deliberate acts of personnae creation possible online in contrast to earlier constraints placed upon the “cycling through different identities” (179). In the past, Turkle argues, “lifelong involvement with families and communities kept such cycling through under fairly stringent control” (180). In effect, Turkle was documenting the proliferation of identity games early adopters of Internet technologies played through various means. Much of what Turkle focused on were MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) and MOOs (MUD Object Oriented), explicit play-spaces that encouraged identity-play of various kinds. Her contemporary Howard Rheingold focused on what may be described as the more “true to life” communities of the WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link) (1–38). In particular, Rheingold explored a community established around the shared experience of parenting, especially of young children. While that community was not explicitly built on the notion of role-play, the parental identity was an important quality of community members. Unlike contemporary social media networks, these early communities were built on discreet platforms. MUDs, MOOs, Bulletin Board Systems, UseNet Groups and other early Internet communication platforms were generally hosted independently of one another, and even had to be dialled into via modem separately in some cases (such as the WELL). The Internet was a truly disparate entity in 1995. The discreetness of each community supported the cordoning off of individual roles or identities between them. Thus, an individual could quite easily be “Pete” a member of the parental WELL group and “Gorak the Destroyer,” a role-player on a fantasy MUD without the two roles ever being associated with each other. As Turkle points out, even within each MUD ample opportunity existed to play multiple characters (183–192). With only a screen name and associated description to identify an individual within the MUD environment, nothing technical existed to connect one player’s multiple identities, even within the same community. As the Internet has matured, however, the tendency has been shifting towards monolithic hubs, a notion of collecting all of “the Internet” together. From a purely technical and operational perspective, this has led to the emergence of the ISP (Internet service provider). Users can make a connection to one point, and then be connected to everything “on the Net” instead of individually dialling into servers and services one at a time as was the case in the early 1980s with companies such as Prodigy, the Source, CompuServe, and America On-Line (AOL). The early information service providers were largely walled gardens. A CompuServe user could only access information on the CompuServe network. Eventually the Internet became the network of choice and services migrated to it. Standards such as HTTP for Web page delivery and SMTP for email became established and dominate the Internet today. Technically, this has made the Internet much easier to use. The services that have developed on this more rationalised and unified platform have also tended toward monolithic, centralised architectures, despite the Internet’s apparent fundamental lack of a hierarchy. As the Internet replaced the closed networks, the wider Web of HTTP pages, forums, mailing lists and other forms of Internet communication and community thrived. Perhaps they required slightly more technological savvy than the carefully designed experience of walled-garden ISPs such as AOL, but these fora and IRC (Internet Relay Chat) rooms still provided the discreet environments within which to role-play. An individual could hold dozens of login names to as many different communities. These various niches could be simply hobby sites and forums where a user would deploy their identity as model train enthusiast, musician, or pet owner. They could also be explicitly about role-play, continuing the tradition of MUDs and MOOs into the new millennium. Pseudo- and polynymity were still very much part of the Internet experience. Even into the early parts of the so-called Web 2.0 explosion of more interactive Websites which allowed for easier dialog between site owner and viewer, a given identity would be very much tied to a single site, blog or even individual comments. There was no “single sign on” to link my thread from a music forum to the comments I made on a videogame blog to my aquarium photos at an image gallery site. Today, Facebook and Google, among others, seek to change all that. The Facebook Effect Working from a psychological background Turkle explored the multiplicity of online identities as a valuable learning, even therapeutic, experience. She assessed the experiences of individuals who were coming to terms with aspects of their own personalities, from simple shyness to exploring their sexuality. In “You Can’t Front on Facebook,” Mimi Marinucci summarizes an analysis of online behaviour by another psychologist, John Suler (67–70). Suler observed an “online disinhibition effect” characterised by users’ tendency to express themselves more openly online than offline (321). Awareness of this effect was drawn (no pun intended) into popular culture by cartoonist Mike Krahulik’s protagonist John Gabriel. Although Krahulik’s summation is straight to the point, Suler offers a more considered explanation. There are six general reasons for the online disinhibition effect: being anonymous, being invisible, the communications being out of sync, the strange sensation that a virtual interlocutor is all in the mind of the user, the general sense that the online world simply is not real and the minimisation of status and authority (321–325). Of the six, the notion of anonymity is most problematic, as briefly explored above in the case of AOL. The role of pseudonymity has been explored in more detail in Ruch, and will be considered with regard to Facebook and Google+ below. The Facebook effect, Marinucci argues, mitigates all six of these issues. Though Marinucci explains the mitigation of each factor individually, her final conclusion is the most compelling reason: “Facebook often facilitates what is best described as an integration of identities, and this integration of identities in turn functions as something of an inhibiting factor” (73). Ruch identifies this phenomenon as the “aggregation of identities” (219). Similarly, Brady Robards observes that “social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook collapse the entire array of social relationships into just one category, that of ‘Friend’” (20). Unlike earlier community sites, Ruch notes “Facebook rejects both the mythical anonymity of the Internet, but also the actual pseudo- or polynonymous potential of the technologies” (219). Essentially, Facebook works to bring the offline social world online, along with all the conventional baggage that accompanies the individual’s real-world social life. Facebook, and now Google+, present a hard, dichotomous approach to online identity: anonymous and authentic. Their socially networked individual is the “real” one, using a person’s given name, and bringing all (or as many as the sites can capture) their contacts from the offline world into the online one, regardless of context. The Facebook experience is one of “friending” everyone one has any social contact with into one homogeneous group. Not only is Facebook avoiding the multiple online identities that interested Turkle, but it is disregarding any multiplicity of identity anywhere, including any online/offline split. David Kirkpatrick reports Mark Zuckerberg’s rejection of this construction of identity is explained by his belief that “You have one identity … having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity” (199). Arguably, Zuckerberg’s calls for accountability through identity continue a perennial concern for anonymity online fuelled by “on the Internet no one knows you’re a dog” style moral panics. Over two decades ago Lindsy Van Gelder recounted the now infamous case of “Joan and Alex” (533) and Julian Dibbell recounted “a rape in cyberspace” (11). More recent anxieties concern the hacking escapades of Anonymous and LulzSec. Zuckerberg’s approach has been criticised by Christopher Poole, the founder of 4Chan—a bastion of Internet anonymity. During his keynote presentation at South by SouthWest 2011 Poole argued that Zuckerberg “equates anonymity with a lack of authenticity, almost a cowardice.” Yet in spite of these objections, Facebook has mainstream appeal. From a social constructivist perspective, this approach to identity would be satisfying the (perceived?) need for a mainstream, context-free, general social space online to cater for the hundreds of millions of people who now use the Internet. There is no specific, pre-defined reason to join Facebook in the way there is a particular reason to join a heavy metal music message board. Facebook is catering to the need to bring “real” social life online generally, with “real” in this case meaning “offline and pre-existing.” Very real risks of missing “real life” social events (engagements, new babies, party invitations etc) that were shared primarily via Facebook became salient to large groups of individuals not consciously concerned with some particular facet of identity performance. The commercial imperatives towards monolithic Internet and identity are obvious. Given that both Facebook and Google+ are in the business of facilitating the sale of advertising, their core business value is the demographic information they can sell to various companies for target advertising. Knowing a user’s individual identity and tastes is extremely important to those in the business of selling consumers what they currently want as well as predicting their future desires. The problem with this is the dawning realisation that even for the average person, role-playing is part of everyday life. We simply aren’t the same person in all contexts. None of the roles we play need to be particularly scandalous for this to be true, but we have different comfort zones with people that are fuelled by context. Suler proposes and Marinucci confirms that inhibition may be just as much part of our authentic self as the uninhibited expression experienced in more anonymous circumstances. Further, different contexts will inform what we inhibit and what we express. It is not as though there is a simple binary between two different groups and two different personal characteristics to oscillate between. The inhibited personnae one occupies at one’s grandmother’s home is a different inhibited self one plays at a job interview or in a heated discussion with faculty members at a university. One is politeness, the second professionalism, the third scholarly—yet they all restrain the individual in different ways. The Importance of Control over Circles Google+ is Google’s latest foray into the social networking arena. Its previous ventures Orkut and Google Buzz did not fare well, both were variously marred by legal issues concerning privacy, security, SPAM and hate groups. Buzz in particular fell afoul of associating Google accounts with users” real life identities, and (as noted earlier), all the baggage that comes with it. “One user blogged about how Buzz automatically added her abusive ex-boyfriend as a follower and exposed her communications with a current partner to him. Other bloggers commented that repressive governments in countries such as China or Iran could use Buzz to expose dissidents” (Novak). Google+ takes a different approach to its predecessors and its main rival, Facebook. Facebook allows for the organisation of “friends” into lists. Individuals can span more than one list. This is an exercise analogous to what Erving Goffman refers to as “audience segregation” (139). According to the site’s own statistics the average Facebook user has 130 friends, we anticipate it would be time-consuming to organise one’s friends according to real life social contexts. Yet without such organisation, Facebook overlooks the social structures and concomitant behaviours inherent in everyday life. Even broad groups offer little assistance. For example, an academic’s “Work People” list may include the Head of Department as well as numerous other lecturers with whom a workspace is shared. There are things one might share with immediate colleagues that should not be shared with the Head of Department. As Goffman states, “when audience segregation fails and an outsider happens upon a performance that was not meant for him, difficult problems in impression management arise” (139). By homogenising “friends” and social contexts users are either inhibited or run the risk of some future awkward encounters. Google+ utilises “circles” as its method for organising contacts. The graphical user interface is intuitive, facilitated by an easy drag and drop function. Use of “circles” already exists in the vocabulary used to describe our social structures. “List” by contrast reduces the subject matter to simple data. The utility of Facebook’s friends lists is hindered by usability issues—an unintuitive and convoluted process that was added to Facebook well after its launch, perhaps a reaction to privacy concerns rather than a genuine attempt to emulate social organisation. For a cogent breakdown of these technical and design problems see Augusto Sellhorn. Organising friends into lists is a function offered by Facebook, but Google+ takes a different approach: organising friends in circles is a central feature; the whole experience is centred around attempting to mirror the social relations of real life. Google’s promotional video explains the centrality of emulating “real life relationships” (Google). Effectively, Facebook and Google+ have adopted two different systemic approaches to dealing with the same issue. Facebook places the burden of organising a homogeneous mass of “friends” into lists on the user as an afterthought of connecting with another user. In contrast, Google+ builds organisation into the act of connecting. Whilst Google+’s approach is more intuitive and designed to facilitate social networking that more accurately reflects how real life social relationships are structured, it suffers from forcing direct correlation between an account and the account holder. That is, use of Google+ mandates bringing online the offline. Google+ operates a real names policy and on the weekend of 23 July 2011 suspended a number of accounts for violation of Google’s Community Standards. A suspension notice posted by Violet Blue reads: “After reviewing your profile, we determined the name you provided violates our Community Standards.” Open Source technologist Kirrily Robert polled 119 Google+ users about their experiences with the real names policy. The results posted to her on blog reveal that users desire pseudonymity, many for reasons of privacy and/or safety rather than the lack of integrity thought by Zuckerberg. boyd argues that Google’s real names policy is an abuse of power and poses danger to those users employing “nicks” for reasons including being a government employment or the victim of stalking, rape or domestic abuse. A comprehensive list of those at risk has been posted to the Geek Feminism Wiki (ironically, the Wiki utilises “Connect”, Facebook’s attempt at a single sign on solution for the Web that connects users’ movements with their Facebook profile). Facebook has a culture of real names stemming from its early adopters drawn from trusted communities, and this culture became a norm for that service (boyd). But as boyd also points out, “[r]eal names are by no means universal on Facebook.” Google+ demands real names, a demand justified by rhetoric of designing a social networking system that is more like real life. “Real”, in this case, is represented by one’s given name—irrespective of the authenticity of one’s pseudonym or the complications and dangers of using one’s given name. Conclusion There is a multiplicity of issues concerning social networks and identities, privacy and safety. This paper has outlined the challenges involved in moving real life to the online environment and the contests in trying to designate zones of social context. Where some earlier research into the social Internet has had a positive (even utopian) feel, the contemporary Internet is increasingly influenced by powerful and competing corporations. As a result, the experience of the Internet is not necessarily as flexible as Turkle or Rheingold might have envisioned. Rather than conducting identity experimentation or exercising multiple personnae, we are increasingly obligated to perform identity as it is defined by the monolithic service providers such as Facebook and Google+. This is not purely an indictment of Facebook or Google’s corporate drive, though they are obviously implicated, but has as much to do with the new social practice of “being online.” So, while there are myriad benefits to participating in this new social context, as Poole noted, the “cost of failure is really high when you’re contributing as yourself.” Areas for further exploration include the implications of Facebook positioning itself as a general-purpose user authentication tool whereby users can log into a wide array of Websites using their Facebook credentials. If Google were to take a similar action the implications would be even more convoluted, given the range of other services Google offers, from GMail to the Google Checkout payment service. While the monolithic centralisation of these services will have obvious benefits, there will be many more subtle problems which must be addressed. References Blue, Violet. “Google Plus Deleting Accounts en Masse: No Clear Answers.” zdnet.com (2011). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/google-plus-deleting-accounts-en-masse-no-clear-answers/56›. boyd, danah. “Real Names Policies Are an Abuse of Power.” zephoria.org (2011). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/08/04/real-names.html›. Cashmore, Pete. “MySpace Hits 100 Million Accounts.” mashable.com (2006). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://mashable.com/2006/08/09/myspace-hits-100-million-accounts›. Dibble, Julian. My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1998. Facebook. “Fact Sheet.” Facebook (2011). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistic›. Geek Feminism Wiki. “Who Is Harmed by a Real Names Policy?” 2011. 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Who_is_harmed_by_a_%22Real_Names%22_policy› Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin, 1959. Google. “The Google+ Project: Explore Circles.” Youtube.com (2011). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocPeAdpe_A8›. Kirkpatrick, David. The Facebook Effect. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010. Marinucci, Mimi. “You Can’t Front on Facebook.” Facebook and Philosophy. Ed. Dylan Wittkower. Chicago & La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 2010. 65–74. Novak, Peter. “Privacy Commissioner Reviewing Google Buzz.” CBC News: Technology and Science (2010). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2010/02/16/google-buzz-privacy.html›. Poole, Christopher. Keynote presentation. South by SouthWest. Texas, Austin, 2011. Robards, Brady. “Negotiating Identity and Integrity on Social Network Sites for Educators.” International Journal for Educational Integrity 6.2 (2010): 19–23. Robert, Kirrily. “Preliminary Results of My Survey of Suspended Google Accounts.” 2011. 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://infotrope.net/2011/07/25/preliminary-results-of-my-survey-of-suspended-google-accounts/›. Rheingold, Howard. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993. Ruch, Adam. “The Decline of Pseudonymity.” Posthumanity. Eds. Adam Ruch and Ewan Kirkland. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary.net Press, 2010: 211–220. Sellhorn, Augusto. “Facebook Friend Lists Suck When Compared to Google+ Circles.” sellmic.com (2011). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://sellmic.com/blog/2011/07/01/facebook-friend-lists-suck-when-compared-to-googleplus-circles›. Suler, John. “The Online Disinhibition Effect.” CyberPsychology and Behavior 7 (2004): 321–326. Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Van Gelder, Lindsy. “The Strange Case of the Electronic Lover.” Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices Ed. Rob Kling. New York: Academic Press, 1996: 533–46.

This paper describes a substantive undergraduate curriculum reform effort being undertaken over a five year period at the University of Texas at Austin, with special consideration to the management issues that are being addressed. The initiative, called Project PROCEED (for Project-Centered Education), grew out of a desire to strengthen our student’s understanding of fundamental engineering theory by continuously tying it to tangible objects and systems, to strengthen our Department’s connections with its industrial stakeholders by actively involving them in the development and delivery of curriculum content, and to provide our students with a broad range of team-based experiences which will better prepare them for growth and leadership in the corporate and professional world. The rationale for PROCEED and key program elements are described. Management issues, such as logistics, promoting faculty and student buy-in, financing, industrial interaction, and program evaluation are discussed.

An outcomes-based assessment process called QQI, an acronym for Quantity-Quality-Improvement, has been developed and pilot-tested in several courses, both traditional and project-based, in mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. An online version of the QQI survey instrument has been created which automates collection of data and rapid generation of reports to faculty. The QQI process, including the instrument and report generator, research and design basis, and results of pilot testing, are described and department-wide implementation plans are discussed.

As part of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Research Library Impact Framework initiative, The University of Texas (UT) at Austin Libraries conducted a study to examine the impact of library collections on the recruitment and retention of faculty to the university, and to understand the relationship between institutional resources—especially libraries—and career decision-making of faculty. This practice brief describes the UT team’s literature review and the data gathered through an online survey and one-on-one semi-structured interviews with newly recruited and newly promoted faculty members.