Walden University Alumni Association Blog

Walden Ph.D. Survival Tips: Expect the Unexpected During Your Dissertation Process

Starting a Walden University Ph.D. program requires resolution, grit and determination, but students don’t make the journey on their own. Walden not only helps doctoral students navigate through milestones, academic residencies and mentoring, it encourages alumni to share their experiences.
 
At the summer 2009 academic residency in Minneapolis, Dr. Jessie Kilgore Jr., who earned a Ph.D. in Education in 2009 from The Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership, offered the following insights and dissertation tips to an audience of Ph.D. students just beginning their own dissertations.
 
Find Creative Solutions to Professional Roadblocks
Kilgore’s doctoral study—a multiple exploratory case study that examined student achievement on computerized tests—required Kilgore to collect test data from two different schools. In order to use the data he collected, Kilgore had to obtain permission from each student tested, as well as students’ parents.
 
“I had a really hard time getting students to turn in their consent forms,” said the 40-year-old Canton, Mich., resident. Knowing that the consent forms were imperative to the future of his study, Kilgore offered students incentives such as pizza parties, iPod giveaways and even Cheetos in exchange for returning their forms. (“When I promised Hot Cheetos, all these forms started coming in, like a river overflowing. It was truly unbelievable.”) Ultimately, Kilgore received the hundreds of signed consent forms he needed to continue with his study.
 
Plan for the Unexpected
Kilgore experienced unexpected setbacks when he was refused a set of test data due to privacy concerns, and again when a school administrator gave him the wrong date for a test he was planning to observe.
 
“Expect the unexpected,” said Kilgore. “That’s something that rang true throughout my dissertation process.” When faced with an unexpected setback, Kilgore said, address the problem, adjust and keep moving forward with your study.
 
Use Personal Challenges as Motivation
As Kilgore was working toward his Ph.D., his father was losing a battle with cancer. “I had a choice,” said Kilgore. “I could allow my father’s failing health to alter my focus, or I could use it as motivation.”
 
He chose the latter and set a personal goal to have his dissertation approved before his father passed away. Kilgore’s dissertation was approved on Feb. 16, 2009—his 40th birthday—and his father passed away two days later.
 
“During the dissertation process, you will have sunshine and rain. You’ve just got to keep your eyes on the prize no matter what. Just hold on throughout the entire process.”
 
Look Ahead to Completion, and Keep the Greater Goal in Mind
Despite the sleepless nights and seemingly endless sets of revisions, Kilgore encouraged Ph.D. students to keep the greater goal of social change in mind.
 
“Remember, at Walden, you become a doctor of social change. And when you walk across the stage at commencement and are hooded by your professor, it will all be worth it.”
 
Watch the video of Dr. Kilgore sharing his insights on successfully completing a Ph.D.

Walden offering M.S. in Project Management

Walden is now offering an M.S. in Project Management to help equip students with the skills they need to manage complex projects with diverse teams and help their organizations achieve strategic goals. Students can gain valuable experience in applying traditional management tools to highly technical projects while learning to communicate effectively with stakeholders and to analyze and control project risks.
 
The course content of the M.S. in Project Management is aligned with the knowledge areas of the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) and will help prepare students for the Project Management Institute’s Project Management Professional (PMP) credential exam.*
 
“Demand for managers in project-oriented occupations is growing at an extraordinarily rapid pace,” said Dr. Kathleen Simmons, director of the M.S. in Project Management program. “Walden’s M.S. in Project Management is designed specifically to provide the skills required to manage projects across functional areas, geographic locations and all levels of an organization. Using proven management tools and a range of project management processes, students can prepare to make valuable contributions that will help enhance the performance of their organizations.” 
 
*Eligibility for the PMP Credential requires individuals to first attain specific educational and project management experience, including 35 contact hours of project management education and a minimum of three years, or 36 months, of project management experience, during which at least 4,500 hours were spent leading and directing project tasks. The final step for earning the PMP Credential is passing the PMP exam. For more information, visit the Project Management Institute.

Walden Think+Up Case Study: Businesses Harnessing the Power of Complex Events Processing

A new approach to analyzing large volumes of data, something called stream processing, or complex-events processing (CEP), is changing how companies keep up with the world and react to it. The technology’s aim is to sift through large, fast-changing streams of data as quickly as possible and identify patterns and correlations in the data that signify meaningful events or opportunities to take profitable action.

In traditional database setups, which form the basis for virtually all enterprise software applications today, data first gets collected, then organized in a highly structured way, and then cross-indexed for rapid searching, and only after all that—hours or even days after its creation—is the data finally ready for any kind of analysis.

CEP systems, in contrast, are designed to analyze floods of data virtually at the moment each item is generated, with no pre-processing. That calls for highly specialized software and, in the most extreme cases, specially engineered hardware, too.

How fast is fast? Try several hundred thousand messages processed in one second using a standard, single-core microprocessor. But more processors helps: IBM recently unveiled a CEP product called System S that, running a 1,424-core computer, analyzes five million messages per second for customer TD Securities.

How it works
Potential applications for CEP run the gamut, from algorithmic trading in fast-paced financial markets to interpreting torrents of live battlefield data, from managing far-flung supply chains to enabling massive multiplayer Internet games to securing IT systems and networks against intruders. Curt Monash, principal at Monash Research, Acton, Mass., identifies two broad classes of CEP apps: one, as used in financial trading, centers on low-latency analysis of data—identifying significant data and events near-instantly—while the other focuses on filtering data to find the most significant records, which may get stored for analysis at a later time.

In technical terms, CEP achieves its high speed mainly by analyzing incoming data records entirely in main memory, a.k.a. RAM, with no need to call on comparatively slow hard disk drives. Traditional database systems, in contrast, store data on the hard disk, organized as rows and columns, and swap selected chunks in and out of high-speed memory as needed. For more speed, extra processors can be ganged together to work in parallel. And for the most extreme applications, such as analyzing data packets on a network to detect hacker activity, specialized silicon may be required—network processors designed solely for that task.

Speed, in short, is of the essence. In fact, by jacking up the speed of data analysis, CEP brings companies a big step closer to what business theorists have described as the “real-time enterprise.” Ideally, the enterprise should monitor changing business conditions moment by moment and, in response, reorient its internal operations and change its business processes on a proverbial dime. Until recently, business intelligence (BI) and data warehousing techniques, building on traditional database management, have helped managers and executives to understand and delve into a company’s past performance, but with CEP, BI tools would illuminate current performance and alert executives to situations that need immediate attention and action.
 
Business intelligence 2.0
Such tools might even fuse data from a variety of independent sources and, in effect, create entirely new information and unanticipated insights. For example, data indicating a particular combination of bad weather and unexpectedly low inventories in a certain geographic region might trigger a call for special logistics to move extra quantities of a much-in-demand product to store shelves in time to support an important retail promotion already underway.

CEP-based BI may have especially big implications for Web-based companies, such as Google, Yahoo, and Amazon. They are able to collect mind-boggling quantities of information about their visitors’ behavior—every mouse-click on every Web page. And these firms try their best to keep up. Last year, Yahoo disclosed that it had assembled a 2-petabyte (or 200,000-gigabyte) data warehouse to analyze the activities of the 500 million visitors it serves each month. The Yahoo database processes 24 billion events a day, a huge stream of data.  But with CEP technology, these events might be analyzed and acted on almost as they happen—selecting just the right content and advertising for each and every person using the site, say.

As usually happens with promising new software technologies, a handful of startup companies have been funded by venture capitalists to pursue the CEP opportunity, even as established database companies—including IBM, Oracle, Sybase, Tibco, and Microsoft—move into the arena. Among the startups are Streambase (founded by relational database pioneer Michael Stonebraker), Truviso (originally launched as Amalgamated Insight), and EsperTech. Though nobody expects CEP to rival the traditional database market in terms of size or importance, it is, for now, one of the fastest-growing and most exciting segments of the overall data management field.

More is better
One obvious reason for all the excitement is the near-exponential growth in the amount of data that’s becoming available in seemingly every sector of the economy. Thanks to advances in microelectronics, the cost of physical sensors has plummeted, making it more viable than ever to measure temperatures, pressures, and speeds on seemingly every kind of machine and vehicle. BMW, for instance, builds dozens of such sensors into its cars, along with banks of microprocessors to analyze feedback from them. One future scenario: A car might warn its driver of a dangerous driving condition, such as hydroplaning on a rainy highway, or it might alert the car’s dealer to schedule a service visit to check on what appears to be a faulty part.

What’s more, radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags are now low enough in cost to help track the movement of goods through complex supply chains—all the way from a factory in China to a distribution center in Illinois to a specific shelf in a Wal-Mart store. But with potentially millions of tagged pallets and boxes in the world, each one registering its location as it passes through a doorway or leaves a truck, traditional IT systems may easily be overwhelmed with data. That has made the RFID industry particularly interested in CEP, and companies such as SAP and Oracle are paying particular attention to the opportunity.

Another highly interested party, albeit mum on such matters, is the intelligence establishment. The National Security Agency could use some form of CEP to filter the mountains of data it gleans from phone taps and eavesdropping on global flows of email. The CIA could use the technology to find tell-tale correlations between items in the floods of data it collects from field agents, newswires, and spy satellites.

Trucking companies, as analyst Monash points out, are interested in the technology for monitoring the movement of their vehicles—each one equipped with GPS and a radio link back to HQ. “It could provide an early-warning system, discovering if a truck were off-course, lost, or involved in an accident.”

As with traditional database management, making pattern-recognition engines reasonably easy to set up and easy to modify over time is one of the major technical problems that CEP engineers have had to solve. It’s one thing to build a program that can search for a specified set of patterns at high speed. It’s quite another to produce a generalized solution whose search patterns can be altered on the fly and not lose any speed. These are difficult technical challenges that have intrigued academic researchers for many years, and it is from their projects that most of today’s CEP companies originate: Telegraph at University of California, Berkeley, for example, and The Aurora Project at Brown University.

Still, as technical problems get solved, CEP will likely weave its way into everyday life, perhaps even finding patterns in people’s daily activities and travels, second by second. After all, what is a cell phone but a potential sensor and source of rich data just waiting to be correlated with billions of others?

To read more case studies, visit Think+Up.

Walden Faculty Author: Dr. Darlington Mgbeke

Public Policy Implementation in a Democratic Governance Society: A Roadmap to Empowering Citizen Participation: An Empirical Study
Dr. Darlington Mgbeke, faculty member in the Center for Undergraduate Studies
AuthorHouse, 2009

This is a book for those with big ideas about the collaborative foundations of democratic governance, public administration and capacity building. It is a book of building and improving public service, as well as current issues and best practices in managing transformational trends in governance and democracy, employee empowerment, citizen participation and the rampant culture of corruption in the Nigerian system of government. This text, which includes thought-provoking normative arguments, is a powerful learning instrument for students of research methodology and a reference book for adult learners and researchers.

Walden Alert: Race, Gender & Class Conference call for Papers and Proposals

 The following is an open call for papers and panel proposals in 2010:

Association: The American Sociological Association, Section on Race, Gender & Class

Journal: The Race, Gender & Class journal

Conference: Race, Gender & Class 2010 conference

Location: Hampton Inn Hotel, New Orleans

Dates: February 18–20, 2010
Proposal types: Paper or panel proposals that address the state of race, gender and class with respect to the Obama presidency.

Deadline: December 1, 2009

Submission instructions: To submit paper or panel proposals, and/or volunteer to serve as a Race, Gender & Class conference organizer, contact Dr. Jean Ait Belkhir at jbelkhir@suno.edu.

Cost: $125 for students; $175 for non-students. All attendees and presenters are expected to register.

Walden Alumni Author: Dr. Martha Ward Plowden

NAACP: A Historical Perspective of the Georgia State Conference
Martha Ward Plowden '03, Ph.D in Education
Ward Plowden Publishing Company, 2009

This book was written in the observance of the last 100 years of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the accomplishments of many leaders and branches of the Georgia State Conference. The NAACP presence in Georgia begins with the founding of the Atlanta Branch in 1917. In 1941, the late Rev. Ralph Mark Gilbert convened 10 branches of the NAACP in Savannah, Ga., and organized the Georgia State Conference. Its purpose was to maintain a network of branches throughout Georgia and to work in conjunction with the national association.

Walden Think+Up Case Study: Biodiesel Moves from Backyard to Mainstream

Long gone are the days when biodiesel was something your granola-eating neighbor brewed in his backyard using recycled cooking oil. Rather, biodiesel is fast-becoming a mainstream alternative to traditional petroleum-based motor fuel—and a prime business opportunity for entrepreneurs with an eye on renewable fuels.

According to Emerging Markets Online, a global energy and utilities market research firm, in the year 2007, there were only 20 oil-producing nations supplying the needs of the rest of the world. By the year 2010, most countries will be biodiesel producers.

In the U.S., biodiesel is powering more and more cars and trucks. For example, the city of Mesa, Arizona, switched its entire fleet of more than 1,000 diesel-powered vehicles—from high-performance fire trucks to lowly street sweepers—to biodiesel last summer.

Fueling demand
The appeal of biodiesel is easy to understand. Both biodegradable and non-toxic, biodiesel is a clean-burning alternative fuel derived from natural oils from plants like soybeans as well as other renewable botanical resources. Because it contains no petroleum, biodiesel is better for the environment and has lower emissions compared to petroleum diesel.

In fact, according to the Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), a 100% soybean-based biodiesel can reduce global warming carbon dioxide pollution by more than half relative to conventional petroleum-based diesel. The emissions benefits are even higher for biodiesel produced from canola oil. In the future, non-conventional sources like algae may have the potential to provide nearly 90% reductions in global warming carbon dioxide pollution.

Josh Tickell has long recognized the benefits of biodiesel. Tickell is an environmentalist whose film FUEL won the 2008 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for Best Documentary. He is also the author of From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank—The Complete Guide to Using Vegetable Oil as an Alternative Fuel. “Biodiesel is energy positive, so no matter what you do, it contains more energy than it takes to make it,” he says. “It’s an efficient converter of solar energy into hydrocarbons so the promise is … that biodiesel will become the basis for a new generation of biofuels that can run in both gasoline and diesel engines.”

Better yet, the U.S. Department of Energy reports that some biofuels are less expensive per gallon than gasoline—slashing the average cost of gas by 20 to 35 cents per gallon. That’s good news to penny-pinching car owners: An average American family can save up to $300 per year by using pure ethanol.

Business is booming
Such eco-friendly and cost-conscious perks are opening the doors for entrepreneurs with an interest in alternative fuels. “The opportunity for entrepreneurs is a trillion-dollar-a-year industry in the U.S. alone,” says Tickell. “We’re talking about a world-wide multi-trillion-dollar-a-year industry, representing the largest single conversion of cash into jobs and infrastructure that we will see within a hundred years.”

Bob Schildgen agrees. The environmentalist behind Sierra magazine’s “Hey Mr. Green” environmental advice column, Schildgen says, “Everyone is looking for an alternative to fossil fuel. Anytime you have a new technology, you’re going to have people thinking about making money off of it.”

The promises—and pitfalls
But winning the race to bring biodiesel to the masses is tougher than many think. Because while “anything from hemp oil to soy beans to coconuts to rendering fats in meat processing” can be refined into biodiesel, finding just the right formula can be a difficult undertaking, according to Tickell.

“Biodiesel has been dismaying because it has large quality issues,” says Tickell. “There are so many different ways of making it, it has so many different producers, you never know what you’re going to get out of that pump.”

Another obstacle facing entrepreneurs is sourcing materials. After all, some critics argue that growing enough crops to meet the demand for soybean-based biodiesel may require diverting large amounts of soy crops from food use to biodiesel production and converting millions of acres of forests to agricultural land.

“If we took all the soybean acreage now and made it into biodiesel, we’d still get far less than we’d need—a fraction of the 160 billion gallons of fuel we consume,” says Schildgen. “Plus, the price of soybean oil is $3 or $4 a gallon, so it’s not economically feasible at this point.”

Even the much-ballyhooed approach of converting algae oil into biodiesel fuel has been hampered by high processing and water disposal costs. Says Schildgen, “Many times when a technology or a new idea is launched, investors put a lot of money into it, but it doesn’t necessarily pan out or fulfill its big promises.”

Even Tickell, who is driving the first algae-powered car across the U.S. for a nationwide tour promoting his film FUEL, admits that biodiesel fuel from algae “is still cutting-edge technology. It’s not as if you’re going to go up to the pump in two weeks and pump it. But it will be available for both gasoline and diesel cars within a 5–10 year period of time.”

Researchers have been hard at work making algae-based biodiesel easier on the pocketbook. Chemists at United Environment and Energy in New York have developed what they termed the first economical, eco-friendly process to convert algae oil into biodiesel fuel. Researchers say their process is at least 40% less expensive than that of others now being used.

The playing field
Innovations aside, there’s still stiff competition to consider. Earlier this summer, oil giant ExxonMobil announced that it would invest at least $600 million in algae-to-fuel research and development deals with biotech company Synthetic Genomics. Such deep pockets can make it tough for budding entrepreneurs to have any impact on the biodiesel industry.

But Tickell says heavily-funded research and development partnerships shouldn’t discourage entrepreneurs from vying for a slice of the renewable-energy pie. “As good as a large company’s research and development is, it has always been the entrepreneurs who have put forth all of the little solutions that lead to the big solutions,” he says. “There were other car manufacturers at the time that Henry Ford put the Model T on the road. He wasn’t educated; he had no engineering background; he wasn’t backed by the steel industry at that time. He was a man with a vision to put a car on the road.”

However, Schildgen says it’s important for entrepreneurs to continue looking outside the box for biodiesel opportunities. “If I were an entrepreneur, I’d put my eggs in the energy audit and conservation basket because I think that’s where you can make money the quickest,” he advises. “The real, most immediate, cheapest and lucrative solution is in conservation and efficiency. Not that we shouldn’t be looking at alternatives, too, but for the immediate future, we need to be tightening up our efficiencies to the point where we don’t need to be so concerned about developing [fuel] sources.”

In the meantime, the race continues to bring yesterday’s backyard biodiesel to the mainstream masses. “This is a wide open playing field,” says Tickell. “There will be leaders and there will be losers.” Let the games begin.

To read more case studies, visit Think+Up.

Walden Think+Up Case Study: How Biometrics Is Changing Corporate Security

Almost immediately after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, huge expectations were placed on the technology of biometrics: Political pundits, security experts, and seemingly every variety of talking head called for using computers more intensively to automatically recognize individuals and identify those who were potentially dangerous - at arrival terminals in airports, at the entrances of baseball stadiums, and at the doorways of data centers, scientific laboratories, and other such sensitive installations.

Biometrics - a collection of techniques for identifying people according to physical and behavioral traits such as fingerprints, speaking voices, and the way they walk - promised to help secure America against even the most cunning of enemies.

 But guess what? While the use of biometrics in many high-profile government applications has languished since the 9/11 attacks, corporate America, driven by the need to cut costs and boost profits, has been slowly but surely embracing biometrics for all sorts of new applications. In 2009, according to Acuity Market Intelligence, in Louisville, Colo., public sector use accounted for 60% of the total global biometric market, leaving 40% to enterprises. But by 2017, the commercial sector will account for 55% of the market. Some of the driving factors: a highly mobile population, an ongoing decentralization of the workforce, and increasing usage of cloud-based computing. In 2009, Acuity estimates, global biometric revenues will amount to slightly less than $2.6 billion, growing to $11 billion in 2017 - a 20% compound annual growth rate.

Some but not all of these are directly related to securing facilities. As visitors enter Disney World, for instance, computers scan their fingerprints to make sure that only authorized purchasers are making use of discounted multi-day tickets. In scores of corporate data centers, hand-geometry readers work alongside card-keys, badge readers, and passcodes to authenticate workers trying to enter the most secure areas. Voice authentication techniques are helping banks such as ABN AMRO, in the Netherlands, to identify customers before they’re enabled to execute transactions over the telephone.

Clocking in
Arguably the most popular corporate uses of biometrics are in non-security applications, says C. Maxine Most, principal at Acuity. One of the most compelling of these, she points out, is in tracking employees’ time and attendance on the job. “This is a real bright spot,” Most says. “It’s an unsexy app but it provides definite ROI in 12 to 18 months, sometimes in just 6 months.”

By linking each worker directly to his or her labor record, aka time-sheet, employers can enjoy a host of significant cost-savings, market researcher Most says. Traditional methods of punching into a job, with a piece of paper and time-clock, easily lend themselves to fraud. Workers can enlist colleagues to punch them in and out hours after they actually enter or leave the workplace. But by identifying each worker through a fingerprint or hand-scan, for instance, this kind of “buddy punching” can virtually be eliminated.

“The cost savings are real,” Most says, including fewer conflicts between management and workers, less payroll processing, dramatic reductions in wages for overtime, and reduced administration effort. In a recent white paper, Most estimates that intentional and error-driven “time theft” ranges as high as 10% of gross payroll and costs corporate America hundreds of billions of dollars a year. “Biometrics consistently delivers accurate, reliable, and auditable real-time labor data,” she says, and that’s “the foundation of effective labor management.”

The great advantage of using biometrics to confirm identity is that the technique does not require any special effort on the part of individuals. It’s not what a person has in their possession - a key or electronic token, for instance - or what he or she knows, as in a secret passcode, that distinguishes them from other persons. Those items are easy to forget or misplace. Instead, authenticating the person depends on some unique aspect of their physical being that can be measured or analyzed directly by a computer and accurately matched against previously-stored records.

The measure of man
Fingerprints were the first such characteristic to submit to computer analysis and matching, starting as early as the 1960s at the FBI, but since then, the field of biometrics has broadened to include almost a dozen other techniques. It turns out that there are unique patterns to be identified in the shapes of people’s hands, in the coloring that makes up their eyes’ irises, in the blood vessels of their retinas, and in the shapes and arrangement of their facial features. With the right equipment, unique patterns can be recorded even in the veins within fingers and hands. In addition, each person’s DNA, or genetic code, is unique.

Each individual also displays four unique behavioral characteristics that can be used for biometric purposes:

• the frequency characteristics of their voice, as shaped by their vocal tract
• pen pressure and speed while writing by hand
• the timing of fingers typing on a keyboard
• the dynamics of their body and limbs while walking

Choosing which of these various biometrics to use in a particular application is matter of weighing such factors as the cost of equipment, error rates, and susceptibility to fraud. Even DNA, thought to be as immutable and definitive as possible, is now suspect. The New York Times in August reported that an Israeli firm called Nucleix has shown that it is possible - indeed, easy, for “any biology undergraduate” - to fabricate DNA evidence at crime scenes. Quite likely, this has implications for using DNA as a biometric for security and other applications.

Permanence over time is another important factor. If a certain bodily characteristic changes as a person ages, it can’t be used without periodic refreshing of the master database holding biometric records. This is exactly the case with retinal blood vessels, which has become a particularly popular biometirc in science fiction movies.

Biometrician beware
Experts warn that as unique and powerful as they are, biometrics should not be adopted as substitutes for traditional security measures. Because fooling biometric systems can be as easy as tricking a facial recognition system by showing it a photograph of a face it “knows,” these technologies must be used only in conjunction with other techniques. If people are required to provide a secret passcode or secure pass-key in addition to a fingerprint, the rates of false negatives - mistaking Joe for Bob - and false positives - identifying a photo of Joe as Joe himself - may be reduced to an extremely small number.

And because biometric records are not secrets, writes Bruce Schneier, a leading security expert and blogger, they need special attention when being captured and stored. First, there must be a way to make sure that, say, the voiceprint originally associated with Mary has actually been generated by Mary. And then, once digitized, that voiceprint must be stored in a highly secure way, because a purloined copy of its data could be used - by hacking into a remote terminal, for instance - to trick the biometirc system set up to check it. Equally important, Mary can never change her voiceprint or any other biometric, as she might a pass-key or other assigned credential, and that means that once a biometric is compromised, it is compromised for good and therefore unusable.

For now, the industry sectors most heavily committed to using biometrics are healthcare and financial services, both of which are highly regulated. For instance, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), sets out a strict set of rules governing the protection and privacy of medical records. Penalties for breaking these rules are quite stiff, so hospitals tend to pay special attention to securing their IT systems. Yet, they also need to make those systems especially easy for doctors to use, especially when it comes to logging in and out of different workstations as they make their rounds. Too many passwords to remember or fiddling to log in to these systems and doctors will move on to another hospital. Biometrics, and so-called proximity badges, make it possible to quickly log in to a hospital application - and perhaps even have it “follow” the physician from terminal to terminal.

Looking to the future, Acuity’s Most sees biometrics finding widespread use with mobile devices. With a technology called Near-Field Communications (NFC), cellphones can be used as electronic wallets to make purchases of soft drinks, theater or transportation tickets. Without some form of biometrics to help associate each cellphone with its proper owner, however, the risks of losing the device would be so high that this scenario would likely remain more dream than reality. “Near-field is the application that will finally drive biometrics into corporate use in a big way,” Most says.

To read more case studies, visit Think+Up.

Walden's 2009 Educator for a Day Grants Awarded

Walden's Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership announced the recipients of its 2009 Educator for a Day Grants. Walden will award the $5,000 grants to three selected P–12 schools that host Educator for a Day events as part of this week's nationwide celebration of the National Education Association’s American Education Week. Each school will host at least one aspiring educator, who will shadow a teacher during the school day on Thursday, Nov. 19.

The 2009 Educator for a Day grant recipients are:

Colegio Radians, Cayey, Puerto Rico - Aligned with the increased focus on environmental solutions worldwide, the school will use the grant money to develop its Experimental Research Center for Sustainable Agriculture program, a “green” project where students will learn to grow several crops in a small space. The program’s goal is to also train teachers and students from other schools to extend the program’s reach.

Little Oak Middle School, Slidell, La.- Located in a community affected by major economic upheaval, emotional stress and other social issues since Hurricane Katrina, the school will use the money to establish an innovative student program to instill motivation and well-being in the school and among community stakeholders.

Sterling School, Greenville, S.C. - To increase community involvement with the school and to help its students succeed, Sterling School plans to use the grant to implement “Imagine the Possibilities,” a summer enrichment program to help students avoid setbacks in their learning during the summer. The goal is to develop a student-centered camp to reinforce basic skills and establish routines and behaviors for success. 

“Each recipient chosen for a grant this year demonstrates a sincere commitment to make an impact both inside the classroom and beyond. The work of these educators, and all our nation’s teachers and administrators, makes a profound and lasting difference in the lives of our children every day,” said Victoria Reid, vice president of The Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership.

The winning schools were selected from nominations submitted by teachers and administrators nationwide. Walden created the Educator for a Day grant initiative in 2007, and because of its impact on the honored schools and teachers, this initiative is a fitting tribute to the valuable work of educators across the country. Previous grant recipients include schools from Maine, Mississippi, New Jersey, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Washington.

Walden Student: Ann Marie Taylor, South Carolina Teacher of the Year (2008)

Walden University is proud to have more than 35 state teachers of the year—including Ann Marie Taylor, education doctoral student—currently working toward advanced degrees at its Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership.

Children in special education classes often feel that they’re on the outside looking in, but students in Ann Marie Taylor’s classes are blazing a new trail—and have other students and teachers taking notice. Taylor, who teaches at Pine Tree Hill Elementary in Camden, South Carolina, has succeeded in making her classroom such a fun place that somewhat envious students and teachers are often peeking their heads in to get a glimpse of her high-energy teaching style. Lessons are taught to music blasted from surround speakers, cheering fills the air, and units are punctuated with mock “game shows” complete with prizes and costumes.

“When you’re able to share every day with a group of kids who are so real, it’s a true blessing,” she says. “I want to work to make sure that people come to see that children with special needs are different, but still beautiful. They have as much to offer as anyone else.”

As devoted as Taylor is, it is hard to imagine that working with children was not the path she originally planned to take. In college, she majored in criminal justice, but her professors saw the nurturer in her and suggested she try interning with an organization that worked with juvenile offenders. There, she was paired with Tiffany, a 13-year-old felon who would leave an indelible impression on Taylor. “She had all these awesome gifts—she was an artist and had amazing strengths. But the papers just talked about what she couldn’t do,” she recalls. “She was mentally disabled, but I didn’t see that at all. I saw someone who was a leader and very creative, but was labeled as a ‘problem child’ because of the effect her environment had had on her. Working with her, I realized that I wanted to work to help children before they got into trouble.”

In an effort to broaden the public’s understanding about educating students with special needs, Taylor is earning her Doctor of Education. “Last year, I wrote a grant through our Office of Exceptional Children at the state level in order to help create a mentoring program for all first-year special education teachers. I think it was the Teacher of the Year program that really gave me a taste for leadership. It made me want to have an effect on the experience of other teachers,” she says. Taylor’s efforts also have involved reaching out to non-teachers: In addition to encouraging conversations about special needs students in her role as director of children’s ministry at her church, Taylor was responsible for getting the county to restart a Special Olympics program that ended nearly two decades ago.

“Teaching is a great act of service,” says Taylor. “It requires you to constantly give and to be humbled every day. It’s not just what you do, it’s who you are. ‘Teacher’ is the word that describes me before anything else—before wife, before mother. I live it out in everything I do.”

Visit ConnectEd to read other education-related articles.

Walden Alumni Author: Nick A. Fabrizio, Ph.D.

Goals Into Gold: Strategic Planning for Health Care Professionals
Nick A. Fabrizio '98, Ph.D. in Applied Management and Decision Sciences
MGMA, 2008

Designed and written for all physician practices—small or large, single specialty, multispecialty, physician-owned, hospital-owned and even academic practices—this book provides organizations with a framework for analyzing and quickly adapting to future challenges. And it helps board and staff members focus more clearly on a group’s priorities, while building commitment and promoting cooperation and innovation. Packed with real-world insights and practical pointers, this book shows how to find a unifying theme for success in the presence of physician leaders who are engaged and enthusiastic about strategically planning their futures, setting goals and putting those goals into action.

Walden Alumni Author: Marie-Laure de Shazer

Chinese for Everyone
Marie-Laure de Shazer '08, M.S. in Education
Trafford Publishing, 2007

Many people have tried to learn a language using the most typical methods: studying grammar or rote memory. While these methods work for some people, many others struggle. The structure and content of Chinese for Everyone applies the methods of learning people use every day. The research of Carl Jung and Howard Gardner is leveraged in this book to help you learn the same way you perceive the world: through sensing and intuition. To help in your journey from beginner to intermediate Chinese, your preferred style of learning will be found in each of the 31 chapters and in the different activities. The different learning tools include illustrations, vocabulary, pronunciation, dialogues, grammar notes, exercises, puzzles, creative activities and culture lessons. The activities are designed to enable you to reach the beginner-to-upper-intermediate level.

Walden Think+Up Case Study: Is There Any Solution to Plastic Marine Debris?

Do you ever wonder what happens to the litter that washes down into storm drains?

Maybe it's the cigarette butt somebody drops to the curb and leaves there, or the plastic bags that fly away in the slightest breeze. When the rain runs courses down the streets, all these bits of debris float down through metal grates and into the sewers. And then what? Peter Hill of the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative says, the water gushes through the sewers and “often runs straight into waterways, untreated.”

It's just one of the ways that trash gets into the world’s rivers and oceans, a global problem on a huge scale. In a single day in 2008, volunteers in 104 countries picked up nearly 7 million pounds of debris from beaches and waterways, including more than three million cigarettes, more than a million plastic bags, and nearly a million each of food wrappers and bottle caps.

“The thing to remember is that every single piece of trash has a face behind it,” says Seba Sheavly, an independent consultant who has worked on the problem of marine debris for more than 15 years. “I often try to get people to realize that a six-pack ring does not take itself off of a six-pack of beer, open the kitchen door, jump out into the yard, and find its way into a river.”

Just like many other pollution problems, Sheavly says people are behind marine debris. But she says, this one can be solved on a person-by-person scale—by making people aware of the consequences of their behavior, showing them how to do better, and making waste management tools readily available.

More than just an eyesore
Anyone who has shaken a slimy plastic bag off their leg during an ocean swim can tell you how they're affected by ocean litter.

But the problem has much larger consequences for aquatic wildlife, for marine navigation, and even for people, says David Osborn, who works with United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) marine and coastal ecosystem's branch.

For one thing, a huge amount of the debris littering the oceans and coasts comes from plastic. Plastics are a particular problem, Osborn says, because they don't biodegrade. Plastic just sits there, or else it breaks down into tinier and tinier pieces—eventually microscopic pieces—of plastic. These pieces create a number of problems, largely when they are ingested by wildlife or when wildlife become entangled in them. Plastic can carry invasive species, spreading another insidious environmental problem.

Osborn says plastics in the ocean have the potential to cause damage further up the food chain. “Plastics are pollutants,” he says. “They carry chemicals that can get caught in the tissue of the fish. We eat them, and we're ingesting those pollutants in their system.” Commercial fishing nets—big, bulky, and incredibly durable—are another big headache. Sometimes they get lost overboard, and sometimes there is no good way to dispose of them when they're no longer usable. When they're left in the water, all kinds of wildlife can get trapped and killed. Plus the nets can get tangled in delicate coral reefs or in the machinery of boats.

Beyond the individual impact of specific debris, the health of oceans affects everyone, says Tom McCann, who works for Ocean Conservancy. “When we're trashing our oceans,” he says, “we're really harming not only our economic well-being and our social well being, but ultimately the health of humans both here in America and abroad as well.”
 
Cleaning up the mess
McCann's organization is one of the major players working to clean up the debris. Theirs is often a fairly low tech approach: mobilize squads of volunteers and hit the beach with trash bags. But although Ocean Conservancy expends a lot of energy on cleaning up, most experts, including McCann, say the problem cannot be solved that way.

Cleanup, it turns out, can be pretty complicated. The low-tech solution is inefficient and ineffective—and doesn't really even begin to address the problem of debris that is circling far away from land in the open ocean. UNEP's Osborn says even finding the debris in deep water can be challenging. The litter doesn't show up on satellite imagery or radar, and it moves around.

Even in the case of the “North Pacific Gyre”—aka the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a region of ocean northeast of Hawaii where currents converge to concentrate marine litter—it's not so easy to clean up. Osborn says depending on the season, the location of the patch moves. Sometimes the litter cycles down far beneath the surface, and often the debris is spread out over a large enough area that litter density becomes minimal and attempting a cleanup becomes a monumental task.

Moreover, Osborn says, the cleanup itself can have an ecological toll. Anything that catches litter runs the risk of catching marine life as well, and he notes that the by-catch of a clean up can be as damaging as the litter was to begin with.

That doesn't mean some people aren't trying to tackle the problem. George Orbelian, a lifelong surfer and oceans enthusiast, helped found Project Kaisei, an organization dedicated to studying deep sea debris and trying to clean it up. Right now, Project Kaisei is in the research phase, in partnership with, among others, the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. But Project Kaisei has also partnered with large-scale recycling companies, which think all that debris out in the water has the potential to bring in some profit.

Orbelian says there are a number of recycling possibilities. “We're actually looking at four or five different technologies that turn waste plastic into fuel and other things that can be used,” he says. “So we'll see which technology is most appropriate.” In terms of collecting the plastic, he says one new possibility would be “to create a material that acts as a magnet that attracts the plastic or something that ends up connecting to the plastic bits.”

Going to the source
Osborn remains skeptical that an efficient solution can be found for collecting plastic. While he welcomes the effort—as well as the publicity and research—Project Kaisei is putting into the problem, he says finding a better solution for recapturing the waste “is extremely difficult and the primary reason why a market has not already appeared.” That's why he, like many other experts, says the real solution is prevention.

“[One step] many cities invest in is gross pollutant traps,” says Osborn. “Waste that goes into storm-water channels gets caught in effectively a big net, which stops it from going into the marine environment.”

Another technological advance that could help is to improve the composition of plastic so that it biodegrades in the marine environment. “There are a number of different variations of plastic bags,” Osborn says, such as “bags made out of corn starch or bags that biodegrade when they get wet.”

These may not be ideal from a consumer standpoint, Osborn points out—imagine walking home with your groceries in the rain—but could lead to a long-term solution that minimizes the number of bags floating around.

A less technologically advanced solution might be to use fewer plastic bags to start with. Osborn says “the UN has been calling for some time for governments to phase out those flimsy film bags, and move towards recyclable, reusable materials,” like cloth. But given that we can't eliminate plastic 100%, some marine litter programs aim to make better use of plastic waste so it won't get discarded in the first place—for example, what to do with those bulky, durable fishing nets.

In many port areas, marine litter expert Sheavly says, there is no good mechanism in place to help fishermen dispose of the nets that don't work anymore, “so sometimes fishermen have no recourse other than to let it go.” Instead, some places have turned the nets into a resource. Hawaii has developed a program where derelict nets are collected, brought back to Honolulu, processed, and, in a special waste-to-energy plant, turned into electricity.

“Putting a fishing net into landfills is kind of worthless,” Sheavly says. “Being able to convert those nets into electricity, they now have a monetary worth to them, so that it makes it worthwhile to collect the nets and then process them.” And it provides an opportunity to convert the energy that was used to make that net into something else.

What you can do
Keith Criddle, a fisheries and marine conservation professor at the University of Alaska and the lead author on a congressionally mandated study on marine debris, points out, “All of the man-made debris in the oceans and on the coasts was put there by people, willfully or by accident.”

“It is important,” he says, “to acknowledge that the marine debris problem and its solution can be boiled down to simple individual and social choices about the disposal of waste materials.”

Sheavly says better education can play a big role in helping individuals make better choices. For instance, “most people have been told the caps on a soda bottle aren't recyclable,” she says, and so they toss them. But recycling technology is now capable of sorting the bottles, which are made from one kind of plastic, and the caps, which are made from another, and capturing and reusing both.

Any real solution, she says, will attack the problem from a number of different angles, but the personal angle should always be included.

“In some pollution issues people don't see how they could affect it.” Sheavly says. “This is one where you can.”

To read more case studies, visit Think+Up.

Walden Student: Deborah Fogg, New Hampshire Teacher of the Year (2009)

Walden University is proud to have more than 20 state teachers of the year—including Deborah Fogg, education doctoral student—currently working toward advanced degrees at its Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership.

Five days a week, Deborah Fogg, a seventh grade Language Arts teacher at the Lancaster School in Lancaster, New Hampshire, takes a long lunch.

Normally, teachers at her school eat in the first five minutes of the 25-minute lunch period so they can take care of other things during the remaining time. For the last eight years, however, Fogg has devoted the entirety of lunch period to her students. Her pupils, both past and present, flock each day to a sign up to be one of the four kids to eat with her.

“It lets me feel the pulse of what's going on with the kids,” says Fogg. “It's been a great way to build relationships with them. We talk about whatever they want to talk about—basketball, school, home life. Middle school kids are like that. They will pour their hearts out if you just give them the opportunity.”

In all aspects of her teaching, Fogg strives to take advantage of the unabashed enthusiasm that can start to disappear as kids slip into adolescence. “They're not too cool yet. They'll get up and act, and they'll write reams of stuff. They're little enough so they'll still be goofy for you,” she says. She also recognizes that her students are at a malleable age where a little patience and kindness can go a long way—especially at a moment when many kids and parents leave school and work only to go home and stare at a computer some more.

“It's not just Language Arts they're getting. I'm trying to teach them about being a good citizen and being a role model. And it's about building relationships,” she says. “As [kids], we sat at the dining room table and ate together, all of us. Nowadays, kids are isolated. They go into their bedrooms and don't interact. I think they're missing out. So I try to make my classroom like a living room. I want them to come in and feel like they're coming into their home. Once I build those relationships and establish that sense of community, my kids will do anything for me.”

Fogg, who is studying curriculum education at Walden University, always dreamed of teaching. Both her parents were teachers, and she grew up listening to her mother's “Three F” teaching mantra: Be Firm, Fair, and Friendly. Her father taught science and often came home with stories about the classes he had taught that day. “Dinner conversation was always about education and lessons plans,” she said.

In the 1970s, Fogg put that dream on hold, leaving college to help put her husband through law school. Over the next many years, she stayed home to raise their two children. Then, at age 42, and after testing the waters as a substitute teacher for a few years, Fogg returned to get her bachelor’s in education.

But school wasn’t where Fogg got the charisma that keeps students coming to her lunch table every day. That, she says, comes from years of watching her father teach.

“When I would walk down the hall with him, [his students] would run up to him and say, ‘Guess what I just did?' In his classroom, he was always smiling and laughing and joking,” Fogg recalls. “He had this demeanor in the classroom that made me feel like, 'When I grow up, I wanna be a teacher just like that.'”

Fogg's daughter must have had a similar feeling watching her mother: She, too, became a seventh grade Language Arts teacher recently. “She and I are always calling each other talking about an idea or something she tried or something I tried. I'm sure we drive everyone around us nuts.”

Visit ConnectEd to read other education-related articles.

Walden students and faculty presenting at APHA Conference

Graduate students, alumni and faculty from Walden’s College of Health Sciences are among those presenting their research, best practices and public health experience at the American Public Health Association (APHA) 137th Annual Meeting & Exposition in Philadelphia this week. The APHA’s annual event is the oldest and largest gathering of public health professionals in the world, attracting more than 13,000 national and international physicians, administrators, nurses, educators, researchers, epidemiologists and related health specialists.

The poster and oral presentations will be part of APHA’s meeting program and will address current and emerging health science, policy and practice issues in an effort to prevent disease and promote health. Contributors will include:

• Nina Bell, student in Ph.D. in Public Health program, “Adolescent Alcoholism: A Literature Review of Parental/Familial Modeling and Intervention Implications”
• Tammy Chavis '09, Ph.D. in Public Health, “A Mixed-Method Study Pertaining to the Level of Knowledge about Alzheimer's Disease Among African-American Caregivers”
• Dr. Talmage Holmes, School of Health Sciences faculty, “Epidemiology Instruction in the Virtual World—Opportunities and Challenges With Online Classroom Instruction”
• Kirk Morehead, student in Ph.D. in Public Health program, “Primary Care Resource Gaps and Healthcare Reform” and "Using Epidemiologic Models to Quantify and Respond to Physician Resource Need”
• Dr. Amany Refaat, School of Health Sciences faculty, “Effects of Education on Gender-Based Violence in Egypt”
• Sarel van der Walt, student in Ph.D. in Public Health program, “Ethical Implications of Complexity Theory and Public Health Research Ethics in the 21st Century

Walden Alumni Authors: Malinda Daniel, Mary Gallagher

Fallacy or Truth: The State of American Education Today
Dr. Malinda Daniel '08, Ph.D. in Education
Highway, 2009

Many Americans have questions about the quality of education in the United States and whether it will get worse before it gets better. Many newspapers report the dire circumstances of education and the struggles that schools are facing to meet Adequate Yearly Progress. Understanding the child’s world is the place we must begin. Society can play the blame game by saying it’s their (parents’, teachers’, schools’) fault, or businesses and communities can support learning and teaching. Teachers desire to provide the best support to learners. The foundation for a solid society in the future will require more time for professional development, better community support, financial resources and innovative teaching.


Teach a Child to Read with Children’s Books, 4th Edition
Mark Thogmartin and Mary Gallagher '07, M.S. in Education
New Learning Concepts, 2009

Timing is the key to success with emerging child readers of all ages. Teach a Child to Read with Children’s Books skillfully presents and guides the reader through a process of recognition and reinforcement that customizes reading instruction to the specific child. Foundational reading skills are introduced as the child’s natural desire to learn develops. When the skill being introduced is relevant to a child’s desire to learn, both teaching and learning become exciting, even joyful experiences! Teach a Child to Read with Children’s Books approaches reading instruction from a particular perspective: nurturing lifelong learners. Written specifically for parents, tutors and teachers who work one-on-one with children learning to read, Teach a Child to Read with Children’s Books provides a comprehensive approach that provides tools to identify and implement research-based instruction strategies without dampening a child’s enthusiasm for reading and learning.

Walden Authored Books for Children

Malia and Teacup: Awesome African Adventure
Dr. Molly Barrow '98, Ph.D. in Psychology
Barringer Publishing, 2009

How can an adventure book empower children and make them safer? “A spoonful of adventure makes the psychology go down,” according to author Dr. Molly Barrow, a practicing psychotherapist. Barrow uses exciting adventure books to embed subtle positive messages about building self-esteem. “High self-esteem is psychological armor for children.” Dr. Barrow's new fiction book for children, Malia and Teacup: Awesome African Adventure, illustrates complicated problem-solving and demonstrates how to “stay safe by staying strong.” The Malia and Teacup series encourages high self-esteem, positive thinking and healthy self-image.


Matthew and the Money Tree 
Matthew Lynch, faculty member in The Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership, and Paul Loudon
Lynch Publishing, 2006

When Matthew’s father tells him a chimerical tale of a legendary money tree, Matthew decides to venture out into the woods in search of the money tree and the adventure begins. Join Matthew on his entertaining quest in which, above all, he learns the true meaning of happiness.

Walden offers new PhD in counselor education and supervision

Walden University is now offering a Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision. The degree counseling professionals with the skills and experience they need to assume leadership positions in clinical, community, nonprofit, academic or research settings.

Earning a doctoral degree in this profession is important now more than ever with national standards that require new faculty members of Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Program (CACREP)-accredited programs to hold doctoral degrees in counselor education and supervision by 2013.

Aligned with national standards for counselor education and reflecting Walden’s mission of social change, the program helps mental health professionals:

• Advance their career in clinical, community, academic, or research settings.
• Conduct effective counseling-related program evaluations.
• Gain clinical and related experience to enhance their professional development by participating in both a doctoral practicum and internship.
• Develop counseling expertise in a relevant area, including forensic mental health counseling and crisis counseling.
• Design, implement, and analyze individual research related to the counseling profession.

“Whether counseling professionals want to advance their clinical counseling supervision skills or pursue a career in academia or research, Walden’s Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision can provide them with the skills and knowledge they need to implement change in their communities and organizations,” says Dr. Carl J. Sheperis, program director for Walden’s Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision. “As the demand for doctorate-level counseling professionals increases in the coming years, this program can help students expand their career opportunities and become true leaders in the profession.”

Students can choose from the General Program or five specializations to develop expertise in a focused, highly relevant area. The General Program allows students to choose two elective courses in their area of interest with the option of applying those electives to complete a specialization:

• Consultation
• Counseling and Social Change
• Forensic Mental Health
• Nonprofit Management and Leadership
• Trauma and Crisis

Walden Student: Eric Kinkaid, West Virginia Teacher of the Year (2008)

Walden University is proud to have more than 20 state teachers of the year—including Eric Kincaid, education doctoral student—currently working toward advanced degrees at its Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership.

For some students, science education begins and ends in high school. For others, however, it's a course of study that knows no beginning or end.

For 2008 West Virginia Teacher of the Year Eric Kincaid, science was something that was part of his earliest days, even if he didn't use that word for it. “I was always collecting specimens in middle school,” says Kincaid, a biology teacher at Morgantown High School in Morgantown, West Virginia. “'Specimens' is what my mother called them. I'd come home with little bugs and rocks and stuff like that in my pocket.”

Early on, this helped him see that education was something larger than just what happened at school. Learning could clearly take place anywhere, at anytime—something Kincaid says he learned from his grandfather who, although he had to drop out of school at age 13 to work, continued to educate himself. “He read everything he could and learned everything he could,” says Kincaid, noting his admiration. “His knowledge really blows me away even though he only has an eighth grade education.”

In his classes, Kincaid tries to help students see that education isn't always about a scholastic context. He works to show them that scientists are doing research outside of the classroom walls all the time. What's more, they're often doing research that looks a lot like the genetic work he does with his AP kids—analyzing DNA, trying to diagnose genetic disorders, and even manipulating the genome.

“I like finding new articles or videos, because the kids really like getting those news stories. I like showing the kids what the potential is. A couple of times I've found things that were published the day I showed it to them, so they can see it's not just coming from their text books—this is information that is coming up all the time,” he says. “I also want to try to get kids to get the information on their own—to teach them how to use the tools that we have that will allow them to get information, and remember it, and use it, and apply it. If I can do that, then I'm pretty happy, because the amount of information we're getting now is amazing. There is no way you can actually remember it all. If we can give them the tools to get information on their own, then they have a better chance of being successful.”

Of course, there's also the learning that goes on for students after they leave his class—that's the kind of learning that may end up taking students much deeper into science than their teacher will ever go. For Kincaid, a student who can outdo him is a dream come true.

One of his favorite memories of teaching involves a very reserved pupil who had just lost her father and didn't seem engaged in class. “It was amazing what her academic ability was, but she was very quiet—never said a whole lot,” he says. “That was just as I was starting to try to teach genes and different genome studies, and she ended up taking what I taught her and going into that research on her own.”

Today, that shy, reserved student is working on a combined M.D./Ph.D. at Harvard University. “She is doing cancer research—she wanted to fight the cancer that killed her dad,” says Kincaid. And now, she's the one offering words of encouragement: “She writes, 'Keep up those genomic studies, keep looking at those techniques and all that, because that's what enabled me to get ahead,'” he says. “That's why I'm here now.”

Visit ConnectEd to read other education-related articles.

Walden Community News

Walden’s students, faculty and staff are contributing to their disciplines through publications, presentations and other professional activities.

Arthur Greenwood, a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration student, published “Health Care Reform: An Administrator’s Viewpoint” in the August 2009 issue of PA Times, the American Society for Public Administration’s monthly newspaper.
 
Dr. Reza Hamzaee, a faculty member in the School of Management, co-published “Critical Thinking: A Foundation for a Better Learning and an Effective Teaching: A Systemic Approach” (Global Business & Economics Anthology, Vol. 1, 2009) and published “An Assessment of Global Economic Recession With a Focus on Iranian Economy” (Journal of Accountancy, Vol. 12, 2009).
 
Dr. Sunil Hazari, a faculty member in the College of Management and Technology, co-published “An Empirical Investigation of Factors Influencing Information Security Behavior” (Journal of Information Privacy and Security, Vol. 4, Issue 4, 2009) and “VoIP Quality and Security Issues for Consumers and Small Businesses” (Handbook of Research on Telecommunications Planning and Management for Business, Information Science Reference, 2009).
 
Molly Hillig, a Master of Public Health (M.P.H.) student, will be serving as a nurse at the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia. She will educate Americans coming to Bolivia about health concerns and provide education and medical care to Americans living in and near the embassy.

Dr. Roberta McKnight, a faculty member in The Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership, published “The Art and Science of Instrument Design” in The Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions (Vol. 29, Issue 2, 2009).
 
Dr. Maria Rangel, a faculty member in the College of Health Sciences, co-published “Sexual and Reproductive Health of Persons Aged 10–24 Years, United States, 2002–2007” in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (Vol. 58, Issue SS06, 2009).
 
Joseph L. Ricca, a Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) student, is now superintendent of East Hanover schools, East Hanover, N.J. He formerly served as the principal of East Hanover Middle School.

Jay Spitulnik, a Ph.D. in Psychology student, is presented his dissertation research as a poster session at the International Conference on Communication in Healthcare, along with his committee chair, Dr. William Disch, in Miami Beach, Fla., on Oct. 5, 2009.
 
Dr. Mukesh Srivastava, a faculty member in the College of Management and Technology, co-published “Chinese Cultural Implications for ERP Implementation” (Journal of Technology Management and Innovation, Vol. 4, Issue 1, 2009).
 
Daniel A. Weigand, Ph.D., associate director of the Center for Research Support at Walden University, has been selected as the next editor of the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, a refereed publication of the Association for Sport Psychology.
 
Dr. Jörg Westermann, a faculty member in the College of Health Sciences, has been re-elected to the American Public Health Association Governing Council.
 
Kenneth R. Williams, a Ph.D. in Applied Management and Decision Sciences student, was awarded fourth place in the 2009 General William E. DePuy Writing Competition, sponsored by the United States Army Combined Arms Center, Fort Leavenworth, Kan., for his article “The Noncommissioned Officer as Moral Exemplar.” His article will appear in the September/October issue of Military Review. Williams has served as an active duty Army chaplain for 15 years and is currently assigned as the brigade chaplain, 14th Military Police Brigade, Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. He was recently selected for promotion to lieutenant colonel.

Jeff Zuckerman, director of the Writing Center at Walden University, contributed to the recently released sixth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, and his work is acknowledged in its preface.