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The study’s purpose was to determine Extension agents’ (n= 111) perceived level of importance, knowledge, and training needs for leadership skills. Mean Weighted Discrepancy Scores were calculated to determine training needs. Participants’ perceived responses were average to above average importance for all skills; however, the participants’ perceived responses were varied concerning knowledge for most skills. The five highest rated training needs were resolve conflict, efficiently manage time, assess community needs, effectively lead a team, and prioritize tasks. The only common training need by Agriculture & Natural Resources (ANR), Family & Consumer Sciences (FCS), and 4-H agents was resolve conflict. Create vision was a training need only identified by FCS agents. The 4-H role needs were handle emotions and handle criticism.

The purpose of this study is to explain how the quality of teacher-student relationships and the gap of cognitive styles between teachers and students impact student achievement. The population for the study was comprised of 11 career and technical education (CTE) teachers and 210 CTE students, representing six disciplines within CTE. The study occurred in a suburban high school in western North Carolina. Leader-member Exchange (LMX) theory and Adaption- innovation theory guided the research. Dyadic intensity between teachers and students predicts the quality of teacher-student relationships from both the teacher’s perspective and the student’s perspective. The quality of teacher-student relationships from the teacher’s perspective predicts the quality of teacher-student relationships student’s perspective. Further research is recommended to understand how leader-member exchange manifests in classroom settings and impacts student achievement.

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), careful plotter of the fictional region of “Wessex,” is a novelist both acutely aware of the role of space in his works and remarkably fascinated by violence. Bringing these two significant elements of his fictional method together, this chapter examines the numerous violent spaces created by Hardy throughout his fiction. It focuses in particular on the ways in which different spaces, at first presumed to be safe, become invaded by extreme acts of violence. In the course of the chapter, I ask: How does this perversion of space by violence contribute to Hardy's literary aims? How do spatial relationships and boundaries intersect with his characterization? And does Hardy leave his readers with any hope for future spaces?

I suggest that Hardy's situation of acts of violence in a range of spaces, natural and domestic alike, is purposefully disorientating. It allows him to interrogate defined social ideas of “moral” indoor spaces and “wild” outdoor landscapes during the late Victorian period. There is, in fact, no such thing as a safe space in Hardy – spaces are ambiguous, changing and shaped by their inhabitants. The effect of violent spaces in Hardy, therefore, provides a challenge both to the conventional settings of nineteenth-century realist writing and any presumed knowledge of these environments. It might be tempting to see such spatial aesthetics as rather pessimistic, yet I argue that by dispelling the illusory link between space and safety, Hardy promotes a more sensitive awareness of everyday environments and our interactions with/within them.

Successful National Security Special Events (NSSE) have several critical components that will ensure success; one key component is collaboration among various and distinctive organizations. During the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, 11,000 public safety officers came together from federal, state, and local agencies and successfully protected the games. In subsequent years following the 9/11 terror attacks and the Olympic Games, however, law enforcement and public safety agencies at every level have, at times, struggled to successfully implement collaborations on a continuing and consistent basis.

Creating collaborations that endure throughout a national security event is an important issue for public safety organizations. What are the key factors that foster an environment in which collaborations can be sustained? Based on research and numerous interviews with law enforcement and public safety leaders involved in the 2002 Winter Olympics, several factors were identified that impact the effectiveness and endurance of collaborations. The enablers for effective collaborations before, during, and after the 2002 Winter Olympics included leadership, trust, social capital, and felt need.

Two primary approaches have been used to study employment brands and branding. First, there is a long history of the study of organizational attraction. Second, in the past 10–15 years, there has been growth in a hybrid stream of research combining branding concepts from the consumer psychology literature with I/O psychology frameworks of organizational attraction and applicant job search behavior. In this chapter, we take an entirely different approach and suggest that the theoretical models built around product/service brand knowledge can readily accommodate employment brands and branding without hybridizing the framework with I/O psychology. This merging of employment brand with product and service brands is accomplished simply by recognizing employment as an economic exchange between workers and employers and recognizing workers as cognitive and emotional beings that vary in their talents and have their own vectors of preferences for the employment offering. After developing a testable model of the components, antecedents, and consequences of employment brand knowledge, we review the existing employment brand and organizational attraction literature and identify multiple opportunities for additional research.

The demographics of rural America are rapidly changing and concerns about mental health are growing. This study examined relationships between individual, family, and community factors and depressive symptomology among rural low-income Latina and non-Latina White mothers.

The sample for this study was drawn from the study, Rural Families Speak about Health. Data from interviews with 371 rural low-income mothers (36% Latina; 64% non-Latina White) were analyzed and descriptive and multivariate analyses were performed.

One-third of mothers experienced clinically significant depressive symptomology; non-Latinas experienced twice the rate as Latinas. Limitation in daily activities due to poor physical health predicted clinically significant depressive symptomology among both groups. Among non-Latinas, high levels of financial distress and lack of healthcare insurance predicted clinically significant depressive symptomology, and use of WIC and high levels of healthful eating and physical activity routines were protective factors. Age, single marital status, unemployment, transportation barriers, food insecurity, and inadequate health insurance predicted clinically significant depressive symptomology among Latinas.

Program administrators should consider factors associated with depression among specific populations as they design programs and services.

Factors not accounted (e.g., nativity of mothers) should be explored to more fully understand predictors of depressive symptomology among rural Latina and non-Latina mothers.

This original research considers how the relationships between individual, family, and community factors and depressive symptomology differ between rural low-income Latina and non-Latina White mothers. The authors discuss potential factors and outcomes related to depressive symptomology and provide suggestions for research, programs and services.

As emerging adults on college campuses, undergraduates are at a key stage of developing their identities and deciding the role that intimacy and sexuality will play in relationships for the rest of their lives. Experimentation through casual sex, which modern researchers have dubbed the hookup culture, plays a part in this development. While hooking up has been linked with sexual gratification and value clarification, there are negative aspects of the culture as well, including a lack of communication leading to regret, shame, and sexual assault. This chapter proposes looking to the bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism (BDSM) community as experts in the field of sexual communication and consent, and utilizing skills developed by this community to fill in the gaps where hookup culture has failed emerging adults. Through the use of a novel intervention called the Hookup Card, emerging adults could be empowered to increase their communication skills and see more positive outcomes as they navigate their sexual and identity development.

As they say, “Change is the only constant.” Thriving and surviving during a period of extraordinary collision of technological advances, globalization, and climate change can be daunting. At any given point in one’s life, a transition can be interpreted in terms of the magnitude of change (how big or small) and the individual’s ontological experience of change (whether it disrupts an equilibrium or adapts an emergent way of life). These four quadrants represent different ways to live in a highly dynamic and complex world. We share the resulting four-quadrant framework from a quantitative and a mixed methods study to examine responses to various ways we respond to transitions. Contingent upon these two dimensions, one can use a four-quadrant framework to mobilize resources to design a response and hypothesize a desired outcome. Individuals may find themselves at various junctions of these quadrants over a lifespan. These four quadrants provide “requisite variety” to navigate individual ontology as they move into and out of fluid spaces we often call instability during a time of transition. In this chapter, we identified social, cognitive, psychological, and behavioral factors that contribute to thriving transition experiences, embracing dynamic stability. Two new constructs were developed, the first measures the receptivity to change, Transformation Quotient (TQ) and second measures the range of responses to transitions from surviving to thriving, Thriving Transitional Experiences (TTE). We hope our work will pave the way for Thriving to become a “normal” outcome of experiencing change by transforming the lexicon and expectation of engaging with transitions.

This paper deals with the process followed to select investment projects within the construction industry with emphasis on the characteristics of infrastructure projects in developing countries. It presents an overview of the current practices in the main areas concerned with the process, namely project evaluation and decision‐making. The research carried out shows a process with a narrow scope and a lack of integration between the different techniques. The methodology described in this paper is developed to overcome such diffi culties and reduce some of the uncertainty that surrounds the selection of engineering projects. The proposed methodology has been tested and validated and results of the testing have been discussed and conclusions are drawn.