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The purpose of this study is to assess environmental concern at a Midwest university, analyze trends in concern over time and determine the effect of the development of a campus sustainability office.

A multi-question survey was administered through peer-to-peer recruitment from an undergraduate environmental science class each fall from 2010–2017. This exercise was originally developed as a pedagogical exercise on the scientific method.

Over eight years, incoming freshmen have expressed more concern that humans are harming the environment and students also express greater concern as they progress through college.

The first year of the survey (2010) and the year that the lead PI was on sabbatical (2014) saw reduced response rates (∼1%–3% of the student population) compared to 6%–9% of the student population in other years.

Responses to all of the questions in the survey provide guidance for university administrations and sustainability offices about the concerns of the campus community, awareness about campus efforts and support for sustainability activities on campus.

Few studies have been published on students’ perspectives on environmental concern and sustainability activities on university campuses. These data provide an overview of environmental concern, perceived government action and empowerment to action over an eight-year period. This approach is recommended as a technique to teach the scientific method in introductory classes and as a means to collect data about student perspectives on sustainability.

The purpose of this study was to explore college students’ understanding of sustainability and, specifically, the extent to which students see social justice as being integral to sustainability.

Between fall 2015 and 2017, an online survey study was deployed to students at a Midwestern University in the USA to assess attitudes and concerns about environmental issues and awareness of the university’s activities related to these issues. This analysis included ten assessment items from a larger study, of which 1,929 participants were included in the final sample. A chi-square goodness-of-fit and variable cluster analysis were performed on the included items.

Items such as “recycling,” “economic viability” and “fair treatment of all” were identified as integral to the concept of sustainability, while items such as “growing organic vegetables” and “reducing meat consumption” had high levels of “not applicable” and “don’t know” responses, with differences arising across gender and class standing. Social justice-related items were seen as more distally connected to sustainability.

This study is limited by a non-random sample of students.

College students tend not to recognize the integral nature of social justice or the relevance of food to sustainability, providing an opportunity for universities to better prepare their students for a sustainable future.

Universities might adopt policies and curricula that address these areas of ignorance.

This study is among the first to identify specific areas of college students’ lack of understanding about sustainability.

Globalisation is generally defined as the “denationalisation of clusters of political, economic, and social activities” that destabilize the ability of the sovereign State to control activities on its territory, due to the rising need to find solutions for universal problems, like the pollution of the environment, on an international level. Globalisation is a complex, forceful legal and social process that take place within an integrated whole with out regard to geographical boundaries. Globalisation thus differs from international activities, which arise between and among States, and it differs from multinational activities that occur in more than one nation‐State. This does not mean that countries are not involved in the sociolegal dynamics that those transboundary process trigger. In a sense, the movements triggered by global processes promote greater economic interdependence among countries. Globalisation can be traced back to the depression preceding World War II and globalisation at that time included spreading of the capitalist economic system as a means of getting access to extended markets. The first step was to create sufficient export surplus to maintain full employment in the capitalist world and secondly establishing a globalized economy where the planet would be united in peace and wealth. The idea of interdependence among quite separate and distinct countries is a very important part of talks on globalisation and a significant side of today’s global political economy.

New librarians rarely feel fully prepared for academic library instruction. This could be attributed to many factors in both Master of Library and Information Science programs and work environments. Imposter syndrome or imposter phenomenon is a common way this insecurity manifests. Imposter phenomenon, first defined in 1978, is an individual’s feeling that they will be exposed as a fraud, regardless of how qualified or knowledgeable they actually are. Throughout the first year as new instruction librarians, the authors tracked their experiences with instruction and the imposter phenomenon. This paper aims to illuminate how imposter phenomenon impacts library instruction, provide suggestions for individual librarians and identify what academic libraries can do institutionally to mitigate feelings of fraudulence among their employees.

This paper outlines the history and symptoms of imposter phenomenon, focusing on its presence in libraries. The authors draw on existing literature in psychology and library science, their own experience and a survey of 172 librarians. Suggestions for best practices for easing imposter phenomenon are then discussed based on the experiences of the authors and survey respondents.

This paper suggests several ways to ease the feelings of imposter phenomenon among those employed in academic libraries.

This paper is based on the authors’ experiences, as well as a survey of 172 librarians. The survey was self-selecting, so the results may be skewed, but the themes apparent throughout the responses indicate that imposter phenomenon in libraries is pervasive and warrants further research.

The recommendations presented in this paper will provide new librarians and library administrators with concrete ways to identify and ameliorate imposter phenomenon among new instruction librarians.

Though imposter phenomenon has gained popular attention in wider society, extant research has not sufficiently addressed its role in the realm of academic library instruction. Given that most MLIS programs focus on theory rather than practice, finding ways to give new instruction librarians confidence in their positions is an area of research that warrants more exploration.

Social policy and professional practice across the island of Ireland is dominated by the WHO definition of elder abuse and national and professional interpretations of what constitutes elder abuse. Top-down, generalist knowledge of the abuse of older people have facilitated paternalistic and protectionist policies and services designed to protect older vulnerable adults across the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. However, a qualitative study involving 58 older people in six focus groups held across Ireland highlights an alternative understanding of elder abuse grounded in the subjective experiences of older people across urban and rural communities on the island. Indigenous ways of knowing offer a broader and more inclusive understanding of the experience of elder abuse (Lafferty et al., 2012; Dow and Joosten, 2012) together with opportunities for the prevention of ageism and the empowering of older people across the jurisdictions.

A description of how elder abuse is defined at the global and national level is then compared with the findings of an all-Ireland study of older people's older conceptualisation of elder abuse (Begley et al., 2012) at the local level.

Understanding indigenous perceptions of elder abuse has significant implications for the delivery of cultural relevant social policy and professional practice across Ireland.

Given the exploratory nature of this study, there are significant methodological limitations to its replication, the representativeness of the participants involved and the generalisability of the findings.

However, this study provides unique insights about how some older people conceptualised elder abuse across different cultural and political contexts across Ireland as compared with national and global definitions.

The study on older people's conceptualisation of elder abuse was the first all-Ireland attempt to contribute to the body of knowledge on indigenous perspectives on elder abuse.

The questions posed for the national reporters for this International Seminar demonstrate the wide range of issues that can be included as part of an analysis of corporate social responsibility. Even limiting the discussion of corporate social responsibility to employment issues covers a broad scope, represented by the three general questions posed for this Seminar: (1) hiring policy; (2) personnel management policy; and social protection policy. Before entering this discussion of the three questions, though, it may be useful to step back to an even broader question of the meaning of the term, “corporate social responsibility” (CSR). The term, itself, carries an underlying assumption of the legitimacy of a particular economic system and its central actors; that is, corporations are central, legitimate, and functional actors in social relations within a capitalist economic structure. The concept of CSR does not question the existence of corporations and their role in maintaining a system of private ownership and control over capital. The fundamental goal of capitalism and corporations to maximize market control and profits remains intact. Policies favoring CSR, rather, seek to shape the conduct of corporations to increase socially responsible corporate practices, but do not challenge the legitimacy of corporate power. Such social responsibility may range from curbing human rights violations by corporations, such as violence against union organizers, to influencing corporations to provide decent wages to employees, to pressuring corporations to carry out business with out harming the environment. The recent attention to CSR may be understood as an expression of concern over the reduced effectiveness of individual nations to maintain the integrity of social welfare policy within current conditions of global power exercised by transnational corporations (TNC).