No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The many competitive challenges facing U.S. industry today are increasingly impacting the teaching, research, and service mission of institutions of higher education and affording unprecedent opportunities for entrepreneurial involvements beyond the campus. Fueled by higher education's dwindling fiscal resources, outreach to industry is viewed as essential to maintaining state-of-the-art curricula, equipment, and research. Bridging the gap between campus and corporate cultures, however, remains an enigma. This dissertation seeks to contribute to an understanding of the art and science of campus outreach by providing an in-depth look at partnership building--i.e., at the methods and process used in building a partnership between the University of Massachusetts and General Motors Framingham for the comprehensive provision of human resource development (HRD) programs and services aimed at improving the automobile assembly plant's competitive position. Chapter I describes the context of the dissertation, its purposes, significance, and limitations. Chapter II introduces the case study, describing the purposes and rationale underlying the organizational inquiry aimed at assessing the plant's HRD needs, the conceptual framework of the study, its research design and methods, and the vast body of multidisciplinary literature that informed the study and partnership implementation. Data collection included interviews with 95 salaried and 125 hourly personnel, an HRD questionnaire survey administered to the 4,300-member workforce, extensive review of plant records, and participant observation at the plant over the course of the 1-year study. Chapter III presents the study's non-proprietary product and process findings. Chapter IV explores what was learned from the case study concerning university-industry partnership building, draws certain parallels between the case study findings and conditions prevalent in the nation's higher education system and public K-12 schools, and urges closer collaboration between education and industry as they each struggle with restructuring.

The purpose of this study was to decrease the risk of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) during keyboard entry tasks through a combination of training, self-monitoring, feedback, goal-setting and reinforcement. A multiple baseline across subjects was used to assess subjects' posture and hand-wrist positions as they entered text on a keyboard. Following baseline data subjects received training and self-monitored either posture or hand-wrist positions. Later feedback, goal-setting, and reinforcement were given on both behaviors in a staggered fashion. The results indicate dramatic increases in both the percentage of posture items performed correctly and the percentage of time hand-wrist positions were at neutral for all subjects. Implications of the results are discussed.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Many studies of academic women have concentrated on women who have been deflected from their academic careers either by personal considerations or institutional procedures, such as becoming a mother or being denied promotion and tenure. Little research has been done with present-day professional women who have chosen a nontraditional sector of higher education. A fundamental problem, supported by the literature, are the perceptions and attitudes toward women's roles in the workplace. The literature describes today's society as one that has a set of assumptions that still supports traditional roles for men and women. The traditional value system in the United States views women who achieve in nontraditional ways as extraordinary performers; as exceptions to the rule. The current system supports structures and systems that prevent society from discovering and implementing changes that could solidify new roles for women and men. The purpose of this study was to assess the differences in attitudes of administrators and faculty toward faculty women teaching in the field of Industrial Technology (IT). More specifically, this study investigated attitudes toward the employment and advancement of Industrial Technology faculty women in higher education. The substantive findings after administering an opinionnaire were: (a) women in administrative and faculty positions in Industrial Technology programs recognized that employment opportunities were not the same for men and women in the institutions, and the opportunities favored men; (b) male administrators and male faculty felt that IT faculty women contributed as equals in the department and were not viewed as being subordinate, on the other hand, the female administrators and female faculty recognized the importance that the personality of the women affects the work environment; and (c) female administrators and female faculty and male administrators and male faculty varied when looking at the teaching effectiveness and related classroom climate. The women were more in consensus with the literature that described how women and men are perceived in the classroom by students and the differences between the genders when interacting with students. Lastly, recommendations were made to modify the study and suggestions were made for further research.