The Politics of Dissertation Advising: How Early Career Women Faculty Negotiate Access and Participation

Dissertation committees are complex social arenas that underscore expertise, image, and peer relationships—all of which affect professional identity and advancement. This study presents a sampling of how early career women faculty members learn about and negotiate their participation on dissertation committees. Research questions focused on participants’ concerns about the social and political aspects of participation viz à viz peer relationships and faculty rewards. We analyzed interview data using both holistic and constant comparative methods, resulting in a working model of active participation across three domains: knowledge, access, and membership. We also identified developmental trends of dissertation committee engagement across the early career.     

An Intergenerational E-mail Pal Project on Attitudes of College Students Toward Older Adults

Intergenerational interactions have demonstrated some success at improving attitudes of college students toward older adults. This quasiexperimental study involved undergraduate college students paired with older adults for a six-week e-mail exchange. Student attitudes toward older adults were measured pre- and posttest with Polizzi's revised version of the Aging Semantic Differential (ASD). Students were assigned to an intervention group (n = 23) or a control group (n = 20). The intervention group demonstrated significant improvement in attitude toward older adults as compared to the control group (F 14.694, p < .05). This educational approach holds promise for using readily accessible technology to connect the generations.     

Exploring ancestral phenotypes and evolutionary development of the mammalian middle ear based on Early Cretaceous Jehol mammals

We report a new Cretaceous multituberculate mammal with 3D auditory bones preserved. Along with other fossil and extant mammals, the unequivocal auditory bones display features potentially representing ancestral phenotypes of the mammalian middle ear. These phenotypes show that the ectotympanic and the malleus-incus complex changed notably during their retreating from the dentary at various evolutionary stages and suggest convergent evolution of some features to extant mammals. In contrast, the incudomalleolar joint was conservative in having a braced hinge configuration, which narrows the morphological gap between the quadroarticular jaw joint of non-mammalian cynodonts and the incudomalleolar articulations of extant mammals. The saddle-shaped and abutting malleus-incus complexes in therians and monotremes, respectively, could have evolved from the braced hinge joint independently. The evolutionary changes recorded in the Mesozoic mammals are largely consistent with the middle ear morphogenesis during the ontogeny of extant mammals, supporting the relation between evolution and development.