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Abstract: Innovation in local economic development strategy is necessary to support struggling regions and foster growth across municipalities with varying resources and needs. This paper presents a case of innovation in local economic development strategy to illustrate how institutional entrepreneurship can be used as a tool to help local governments innovatively approach economic development strategy. Through the creation of the Wireless Research Center of North Carolina, institutional entrepreneurs transformed the institutionalized role for local government in economic development, while simultaneously creating a new institutional form that would support local development goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global spread of English has increased opportunities for native English speakers in the US to interact with other speakers of world Englishes (WE). However, these native speakers are rarely encouraged to develop the knowledge and skills necessary for intercultural communication, often resulting in a one-way communicative burden imposed on the WE speakers. To explore ways to redress this problem, a pilot project was conducted in an English IV class at a public high school. The purposes were to raise students' awareness of the global spread of English and its implications and to have them explore ways to communicate effectively with WE speakers. This paper describes the instructional unit developed for the project and its effect on students' views on various issues related to communicating with WE speakers, and on their perceptions and comprehension of WE speech samples. The instructional effect was investigated by pre- and post-questionnaires and dictation tests, classroom observations, and post-study interviews. A total of 17 students participated. Results of t-tests for the questionnaires and dictation showed no significant effect except on beliefs about second language acquisition and perceived comprehension of the speech samples. Classroom observations and interviews revealed individual differences in the instructional effect. The paper offers implications and future directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on policy outcomes attained by the North Carolina General Assembly in its 1985 revision of the state's Administrative Procedure Acts (APA). Why did some state legislators' efforts to assume stricter oversight over administrative rulemaking fall far short of the kind of control and accountability they aimed for? The paper explores three types of obstacles to APA reform encountered in North Carolina. Each is relevant to other states. First, direct surveillance or "police-patrol" techniques of legislative oversight impose undesirable political costs on legislators. Second, there is an absence of the adoption of such techniques. Third, executive-legislative branch conflict and complex separation of powers issues arise when state legislatures attempt to curtail administrative rule-making in significantly new and restrictive ways.

This paper examines housing accessibility to public–community facilities (PCFs) using geographical information systems (GIS) for four county–wide metropolitan areas in North Carolina with population ranging from 90,000 to 700,000. An optimization–based assignment model is developed and implemented in ArcView GIS. Rather than using the conventional and less accurate traffic analysis zone (TAZ) or census geography, this research uses detailed county–wide building and parcel databases to estimate direct distances, hence accessibility, from homes (i.e., apartment, manufactured home, and single–family house) to PCF (i.e., office, shopping center, school). The results indicate that distinct housing accessibility patterns exist. In general, multi–family housing such as apartment and townhouse enjoys higher accessibility to positive (desirable) PCFs, followed by single–family detached housing. Manufactured housing has been placed further away from most positive PCFs, but closer to some negative (undesirable) ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional wisdom holds that American teenagers do not read or write – that they are a media-driven group who prefer movies, television and playing video games. Ethnographic data gathered in the High School Literacy Project, a study of four North Carolina high schools, showed a far different picture of teenage literacy. This paper reports on partial findings of the larger study and argues that students use their literacy practices to form their identities within, and sometimes in opposition to, the figured worlds of school, work and family. Many students look to school to provide formal literacy experiences, but find their reading and writing passions at odds with the demands of the school curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a case study of a Southern textile community to show how a distinct form of social capital is embedded in local net- works of power and domination. Textile firms and communities in the South have undergone restructuring: technology and Labor processes have modernized, finns have merged, consolidated, or closed, and the number of workers has declined. An analysis of Cannon Mills and its associated mill community of Kannapolis identifies the sources of the paternalist form of social capital that dominated work and community social relations. Corporate mergers, downsizing, technological change. shifts in the labor market, municipal incorporation, and labor organizing contributed to the transformation and decline of paternalistic social capital. The case study reminds social scientists that social capital is a context dependent form of power that can be created, accumulated, or destroyed. White many current analyses treat social capital as an unquestioned positive force. the case study reveals the dark side of social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights the Homeland conference on the Eucharist held at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, from April 17-19, 1998. Cluster of papers ranging over many aspects of the Eucharist and its ecclesial and biblical context; Exploration of the notion of transubstantiation; Dearth of detailed engagement with questions of Eucharistic rite and practice.

This paper describes the development and implementation of a computerized reliability prediction model at the IBM facility located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Through the analysis of historical life-test data, the model provides maximum likelihood estimates of the assumed Weibull life distributions of various types of components. The resulting component life distribution estimates are used to predict the reliability of new system configurations. This approach is based upon the well- known theory of competing risks. Our model, however, is unique in that it allows for the analysis of a pooled set of life data, i.e. life data from different types of systems, to obtain component estimates. This feature greatly generalizes the competing risks framework and hence offers advantages over the more traditional approach. We present the model and discuss various issues that were found to be critical to its successful implementation at IBM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing tendency to prohibit smoking in public places is examined in light of awareness of the health effects of smoking. Drawing from the Health Belief Model, this paper investigates the development of proscriptive norms for public smoking in two states. Survey data from Illinois and North Carolina show that while smoking prevalence is similar in the two states, Illinois residents are more likely to consider smoking harmful to the individual engaged in the act. Although no differences by state were observed in perceived effects of Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) on health, Illinois respondents were more likely to support legal controls of public smoking. Awareness of the primary effects of smoking on health emerged as more important than awareness of ETS effects on health in predicting support for legal control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A rubric is a set of criteria and a scoring scale that are used to assess and evaluate student's work. In assessment, rubrics are used to evaluate student assignments for courses, a collection of student works, student presentations or papers, or program effectiveness. To assess holistically the meaningfulness of academic programs' assessment-based reviews, the North Carolina State University designed a rubric, to incorporate various disciplines' needs in regard to required accreditation vocabulary. The primary emphasis, however, was to make the language meaningful to all faculty.