Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Do You See The Signs? Evaluating Language, Branding, And Design In A Library Signage Audit, Amy F. Stempler, Mark Aaron Polger

Publications and Research

Signage represents more than directions or policies; it is informational, promotional, and sets the tone of the environment. To be effective, signage must be consistent, concise, and free of jargon and punitive language. An efficient assessment of signage should include a complete inventory of existing signage, including an analysis of the types of signs, its location, language, and its design. This article outlines the steps involved in a comprehensive signage audit, which along with a literature review, provides the foundation for creating a signage policy, best practices guidelines, and a branding strategy for future signage.

Clags Fellowships And Awards, Noam Parness

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

This past fall, CLAGS awarded two fellowships: The Paul Monette-Roger Horwitz Dissertation Prize, and the CLAGS Fellowship Award. Our fantastic fellowship winners are profiled in this newsletter, and on our website. Please check out our current winners to read more about their scholarly endeavors! Additionally, we are excited by all of the applications that we have received for the three fellowships that CLAGS will be awarding this spring: The Martin Duberman Fellowship, The Robert Giard Fellowship and the Joan Heller–Diane Bernard Fellowship in Lesbian and Gay Studies.

Performing Que(E)Ries, Charles Busch, James Wilson

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Charles Busch, renowned New York performer, playwright, director, and drag extraordinaire, participated in the second iteration of this new CLAGS series in the Fall. He discussed his astonishing career in the theatre and on film, as well as the changes he has seen in LGBTQ performance over the last four decades in New York and beyond. The conversation was moderated by CLAGS Executive Director James Wilson.

Letter From The Executive Director: An Accidental Protester, James Wilson

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

This past January, I spent a cold, wet, and fabulous week in Paris. One evening while strolling along the Left Bank, sauntering in the shadows of the imposing grandeur of L’Hôtel national des Invalides, I found myself caught up in a massive wave of protesters, who were dispersing from a demonstration in front of the Eiffel Tower. The crowd moved like a protean organism through the narrow Parisian streets, growing in immensity as other protest groups siphoned into the throng from criss-crossing thoroughfares.

Citizenship Status And Patterns Of Inequality In The United States And Canada, Sofya Aptekar

Publications and Research

Objective: This study investigates inequalities in the distribution of citizenship status among immigrants in Canada and the US between 1970 and 2001. It is motivated by a desire to probe deeper into the gap in citizenship rates between the two countries.

Methods: Logistic regression analysis of Census data is used to predict the odds of citizenship among the foreign-born, controlling for a range of factors.

Results: There has been a growing inequality in the distribution of citizenship in the US, but not in Canada. Low rates of citizenship hide the appearance of a large disparity in citizenship …

Clags Events And Outreach, Spring 2013, Benjamin Gillespie

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

This past semester, CLAGS held many successful and provocative events that effectively supported our mandate as a platform for historical and contemporary issues affecting the LGBTQ community. We hosted the book launch for Born This Way: Real Stories of Growing up Gay by Paul Vitigliano, featuring such guest speakers as Noah Michelson (Huffington Post Gay Voices) and Michael Musto (Columnist, Village Voice).

Performing Que(E)Ries: Nina Arsenault With J. Paul Halferty, Benjamin Gillespie

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

This exciting conversation and performance demo with one of Canada’s leading queer performance artists took place on October 26th, 2012 in the Segal Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center. The event featured two short films made by Arsenault and filmmaker Jordan Tannehill, Plane of Immanence and Guadalajara, as well as an extended monologue by Arsenault retelling an autobiographical story on her quest for feminine beauty entitled The Ecstasy of Nina Arsenault: a surgical pilgrimage through a waking facelift.

The Battle Of Brooklyn: World City And Space Of Neighborhoods., Benjamin C. Shepard

Publications and Research

Throughout Brooklyn, regular people are fighting off the negative dynamics of urban experience, including uneven development, speculative gentrification, displacement, and police brutality long seen in global cities. Yet, little of the global cities literature considers the ways local actors impact global forces shaping world cities. Instead, observers of globalization suggest local actors have been relegated the sidelines as passive spectators of larger social and economic forces. Many wonder, is there a space for agency in global cities? Can regular people shape the dynamics of life in cities? For many, the answer is clearly affirmative. Throughout the borough of Brooklyn, people …

Global Futures And Government Towns: Phosphates And The Production Of Western Sahara As A Space Of Contention, Mark Drury

Publications and Research

The study of natural resources lends itself to theorizing the politics of nature and the politics of time. The space of Western Sahara, where both remain highly contested, provides an opportunity to consider the ramifications of resources in political conflict at different historical moments. Drawing from environmental histories of North Africa and the Sahara, as well as the anthropology of time, the author focuses on two historical moments. The first, from 1945 to 1972, concerns the discovery of phosphate deposits during the Spanish colonial period and the implications of this discovery for political authority in the Sahara more broadly. The …

Cuny Librarians And Faculty Status, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Although the libraries in what were then known as the City Colleges of New York were made academic departments in 1938, all of the librarians did not have faculty status until 1946, and faculty rank did not come until 1965.

An Accounting Exercise For The Shift In Life-Cycle Employment Profiles Of Married Women Born Between 1940 And 1960, Sebastien Buttet, Alice Schoonbroodt

Publications and Research

Life-cycle employment profiles of married women born between 1940 and 1960 shifted upwards and became flatter. We calibrate a dynamic life-cycle model of employment decisions of married women to assess the quantitative importance of three competing explanations of the change in employment profiles: the decrease and delay in fertility, the increase in relative wages of women to men, and the decline in child-care costs. We find that the decrease and delay in fertility and the decline in child-care cost affect employment very early in life, while increases in relative wages affect employment increasingly with age. Changes in relative wages, in …

Lacuny Executive Council Meeting Minutes, March 2013, Lacuny

Meeting Minutes

No abstract provided.

Lacuny Cataloging Roundtable Meeting Minutes, March 2013, Lacuny

Meeting Minutes

No abstract provided.

Lacuny Interlibrary Loan Roundtable Meeting Minutes, March 2013, Lacuny

Meeting Minutes

No abstract provided.

Is The Decline In Juvenile Incarceration Due To Reform Or Falling Crime Rates?, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

FBI crime data show a decline in juvenile incarceration while placement patterns have not changed since 1995. The per capita youth incarceration in 2010 was more than 40 percent lower than in 1995. This databit shows the rate of juvenile crime since 1995, how incarceration trends mirror arrests and referrals, and juvenile placement patterns.

Unconscious Processing Of Unattended Features In Human Visual Cortex, Tatiana Aloi Emmanouil, Philip Burton, Tony Ro

Publications and Research

Unconscious processing has been convincingly demonstrated for task-relevant feature dimensions. However, it is possible that the visual system is capable of more complex unconscious operations, extracting visual features even when they are unattended and task irrelevant. In the current study, we addressed this question by measuring unconscious priming using a task in which human participants attended to a target object's shape while ignoring its color. We measured both behavioral priming effects and priming-related fMRI activations from primes that were unconsciously presented using metacontrast masking. The results showed faster RTs and decreases in fMRI activation only when the primes were identical …

Lacuny Executive Council Meeting Minutes, February 2013, Lacuny

Meeting Minutes

No abstract provided.

Lacuny Multimedia Roundtable Meeting Minutes, February 2013, Lacuny

Meeting Minutes

No abstract provided.

Searching Mindfully: Are Libraries Up To The Challenge Of Competing With Google Books?, Amrita Dhawan

Publications and Research

Traditional research tools used by libraries, such as encyclopedias and catalogs (OPACs) were created in an age of print and information scarcity. They have not kept up with changes in the information world which assume an abundance of online information in different formats and interdisciplinary topics which attempt to solve ‘real world’ messy problems and not traditional theoretical questions. The traditional tools rest on an unwieldy and somewhat outdated collaboration between OCLC, LOC, private aggregators, librarians and faculty. The search results they deliver offer excessive information with very little guidance on how to systematically sift through them. This makes the …

Cuny's Critical Thinking Skills Initiative: Redesigning Workforce Education Through Information Literacy Learning, Irene Gashurov, Ann Matsuuchi

Publications and Research

In the wake of the recent financial upheaval, there is a feeling in academia that colleges should pay more attention to what employers are saying; and the common concern of employers is that many new hires are coming out of college unprepared.

In job situations that demand approaching problems from a variety of perspectives, using innovative approaches to find solutions, and communicating effectively, employers said these recent graduates were coming up short. They called on educators “to teach [students] the analytical skills, the critical thinking skills and the communication skills that are necessary for almost every job in today’s economy.”

Youth Development Through Service: A Quality Assessment Of The Youthbuild Americorps Program, Kathleen A. Tomberg

Publications and Research

The YouthBuild AmeriCorps program serves youth facing a multitude of challenges, including a lack of education and job skills, community disengagement, and economic disadvantage. This program assessment found that after engaging with the YouthBuild AmeriCorps model, participants made significant, positive changes in their outlook on service, personal responsibility, and community orientation. More specifically, after participating in the program, they deepened their personal commitments to service, began to develop a sense of personal worth and reliability, became more connected with their communities, and started to develop more trust in larger social institutions. These encouraging findings suggest that YouthBuild AmeriCorps is succeeding …

Sexual Orientation And Functional Pain In U.S. Young Adults: The Mediating Role Of Childhood Abuse, Andrea L. Roberts, Margaret Rosario, Heather L. Corliss, David Wypij, Jennifer R. Lightdale, S. Bryn Austin

Publications and Research

Objective: Pain without known pathology, termed ‘‘functional pain,’’ causes much school absenteeism, medication usage, and medical visits. Yet which adolescents are at risk is not well understood. Functional pain has been linked to childhood abuse, and sexual orientation minority youth (gay, lesbian, bisexual, ‘‘mostly heterosexual,’’ and heterosexual with same-sex sexual contact) are more likely to be victims of childhood abuse than heterosexuals, thus may be at greater risk of functional pain.

Methods: We examined sexual orientation differences in past-year prevalence of functional headache, pelvic, and abdominal pain and multiple sites of pain in 9,864 young adults (mean age = …

Allometric Scaling And Resource Limitations Model Of Tree Heights: Part 1. Model Optimization And Testing Over Continental Usa, Yuli Shi, Sungho Choi, Xiliang Ni, Sangram Ganguly, Gong Zhang, Hieu V. Duong, Michael A. Lefsky, Marc Simard, Sassan S. Saatchi, Shihyan Lee, Wenge Ni-Meister, Shilong Piao, Chunxiang Cao, Ramakrishna R. Nemani, Ranga B. Myneni

Publications and Research

A methodology to generate spatially continuous fields of tree heights with an optimized Allometric Scaling and Resource Limitations (ASRL) model is reported in this first of a multi-part series of articles. Model optimization is performed with the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) waveform data. This methodology is demonstrated by mapping tree heights over forested lands in the continental USA (CONUS) at 1 km spatial resolution. The study area is divided into 841 eco-climatic zones based on three forest types, annual total precipitation classes (30 mm intervals) and annual average temperature classes (2 °C intervals). Three model parameters (area of single …

Allometric Scaling And Resource Limitations Model Of Tree Heights: Part 2. Site Based Testing Of The Model, Sungho Choi, Xiliang Ni, Yuli Shi, Sangram Ganguly, Gong Zhang, Hieu V. Duong, Michael A. Lefsky, Marc Simard, Sassan S. Saatchi, Shihyan Lee, Wenge Ni-Meister, Shilong Piao, Chunxiang Cao, Ramakrishna R. Nemani, Ranga B. Myneni

Publications and Research

The ultimate goal of this multi-article series is to develop a methodology to generate continuous fields of tree height and biomass. The first paper demonstrated the need for Allometric Scaling and Resource Limitation (ASRL) model optimization and its ability to generate spatially continuous fields of tree heights over the continental USA at coarse (1 km) spatial resolution. The objective of this second paper is to provide an assessment of that approach at site scale, specifically at 12 FLUXNET sites where more accurate data are available. Estimates of tree heights from the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) waveform data are used …

Effects Of Texture Component Orientation On Orientation Flow Visibility For 3-D Shape Perception, Michelle L. Fowler, Andrea Li

Publications and Research

In images of textured 3-D surfaces, orientation flows created by the texture components parallel to the surface slant play a critical role in conveying the surface slant and shape. This study examines the visibility of these orientation flows in complex patterns. Specifically, we examine the effect of orientation of neighboring texture components on orientation flow visibility. Complex plaids consisting of gratings equally spaced in orientation were mapped onto planar and curved surfaces. The visibility of the component that creates the orientation flows was quantified by measuring its contrast threshold (CT) while varying the combination of neighboring components present in the …

From Toxic Tours To Growing The Grassroots: Tensions In Critical Pedagogy And Community Development, Celina Su, Isabelle Jagninski

Publications and Research

Structural inequalities in American public education are inextricably tied to deep-seated patterns of racial and economic segregation. Children in poor neighborhoods are less likely to have the household resources, neighborhood institutions, or school amenities necessary for a good, challenging education. In response, a growing number of organizations have launched initiatives to simultaneously revitalize neighborhoods and improve public education, emphasizing youth participation as an essential component in their efforts. We draw upon ethnographic data from two such organizations to examine their practice of place-based critical pedagogy in community development. We focus on how they engage marginalized, “hard-to-reach” youth via (1) experiential …

Open Access To Scholarly Articles: The Very Basics, Jill Cirasella

Open Educational Resources

This handout provides a brief overview of open access to scholarly literature. It looks at the problems with traditional journal publishing, the promise of open access as a solution, and the different paths to open access.

The Role Of Philanthropy In Furthering And Preserving Harmony In International Relations; Reducing Cross-Border, Conflict Spillover By Bolstering Economic Conditions Through Innovative Philanthropic Practices, Mia Lui

Dissertations and Theses

"This study examines the relationship between the lack of economic development and unemployment against the eruption of civil unrest and political instability. I illustrate how political instability in one country is a cause for concern for neighboring countries within the region, thereby creating an incentive for the larger, international community to promote, support, and bolster economic activities and growth in said country. Within the field of international relations (IR), the efforts of governments, international organizations, and grassroots, non-governmental organizations in addressing development are the primary focus. However, the role of philanthropic organizations in promoting development and economic development abroad is …

Seen It All, Heard It All, Done It All. Is It All Worth It?, Julie Lim

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Google Vs. The Library: Student Preferences And Perceptions When Doing Research Using Google And A Federated Search Tool, Helen Georgas

Publications and Research

Federated searching was once touted as the library world’s answer to Google, but ten years since federated searching technology’s inception, how does it actually compare? This study focuses on undergraduate student preferences and perceptions when doing research using both Google and a federated search tool. Students were asked about their preferences using each search tool and the perceived relevance of the sources they found using each search tool. Students were also asked to self-assess their online searching skills. The findings show that students believe they possess strong searching skills, are able to find relevant sources using both search tools, but …