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In this paper, we offer an option for streamlining the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969 process for roadway projects. Section 1309 of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century addresses concerns relating to delays in implementing roadway projects and directs federal agencies to streamline the environmental review process. Our objective for each of these projects was to produce a NEPA environmental document and an engineering design in a timely and cost effective manner.The Georgia Department of Transportation and the City of Roswell, Fulton County, have contracted five of Kisinger Campo & Associates’ projects to include both the environmental document and the preliminary engineering/final design under one contract per project. These projects in Georgia include: two state routes (S.R. 53, Hall County and S.R. 140/Holcomb Bridge Road, Fulton County), two city streets (Whittlesey Road, Muscogee County and Old Alabama Road, Fulton County), and one Interstate highway interchange upgrade (I-75/Pate Road, Monroe County). Each of these projects is funded with state and federal monies.The streamlined process of performing environmental studies and preliminary engineering at the same time at one transportation engineering firm has been beneficial for the clients in terms of time and cost savings through constant communication and coordination. For each of these projects, the right-of-way plans phase was not started until the Federal Highway Administration approved each NEPA document. With engineers, NEPA specialists, and environmental studies analysts under one roof, ongoing communication for these projects resulted in the early detection, avoidance, and minimization of impacts to historic properties, wetlands, longitudinal encroachments of streams, cemeteries, public parks, floodplains, and Section 4(f) properties. In these projects, after environmental specialists located a potential natural or cultural resource in the field, the engineers were immediately notified of them for further coordination and communication. This immediate field understanding of a project’s resources saved the engineers time because the plans were changed to accommodate the resources early in the project development. The time savings translated into cost savings, resulting in minimal delays, current plans reflecting the resources, a positive morale for the project team, and appreciation for the NEPA process. In addition, resource agencies and the transportation agencies were notified early about resources along project corridors and attended meetings to discuss alternatives, which facilitated their involvement. The streamlining process begins with trust and commitment from the transportation agency. Concurrent environmental and preliminary engineering project development also requires good communication among the environmental analysts, NEPA specialists, and design team. The streamlining of the NEPA process results in a successful transportation project that can efficiently utilize resources to meet the public’s needs in a timely manner.

School principals should lead for social change, particularly in support of vulnerable or marginalized students. An important social justice issue in which principals must provide strong leadership, but may not be adequately prepared in university training, is creating positive and inclusive school environments for lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual, and questioning (LGBTQ) students. Research reveals that LGBTQ students experience high rates of discrimination, bullying, and physical assault due to their sexual orientation or gender expression. This Application Brief describes how faculty members at a Midwest university developed curriculum and pedagogy for their principal preparation program with the goal of promoting the knowledge and skills that future school leaders need to provide effective leadership for protection, acceptance, and affirmation of LGBTQ students.

Death Cafés are informal events that bring people together for conversations about death and related issues. These events connect strangers from across a range of backgrounds, including healthcare workers, hospice volunteers, and funeral directors, among others. Based on an analysis of focus groups and interviews with Death Café attendees, this paper explores how participants construct and express conceptions of the process of dying and what happens after we die. Ideas about the afterlife have historically been shaped by a religious outlooks and identities. However, nonreligious lifestances have shifted how people understand death and dying. We suggest that notions of continuity of life are not the purview of religious people. Rather, participants in Death Cafés draw simultaneously on many ideas, and reveal ways of conceptualizing life after death—in various forms—without the guidance of religion. Based on conversations with attendees about their outlooks on death (and what may happen after death), our data reveals four main typologies of afterlife imaginaries, which we label cessation, unknown, energy, and transition. Among the diverse perspectives shared, we argue for the emergence of an immanent afterlife outlook. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing inspiration from Joseph T. O’Connell’s work on socio‑cultural integration, this paper connects the notion of ‘deep equality’ with two broad lessons that can be taken from O’Connell’s approach that pertain to the study of religious diversity in contemporary life. The first is the recognition of the amorphous nature of religious identity, and the second is the necessity to search for models of socio‑cultural integration in the face of difference. These lessons are valuable in providing an alternative discourse of diversity that moves away from problematisation to collaboration.

The European Court of Human Rights decision in SAS from France illustrates how a policy and national mantra that ostensibly aims to enhance inclusiveness, ‘living together’, is legally deployed in a manner that may have the opposite effect. In essence, despite acknowledging the sincerity of SAS’s religious practice of wearing the niqab, and her agency in making the decision to do so, the Court focuses on radicalism and women’s oppression amongst Muslims. Taking the notion of living together as the beginning point, the paper explores the normative assumptions underlying this notion as illustrated in the judgment of the Court. An alternative approach, drawing on the work of Derrida for the notion of ‘living well together’ will be proposed and its implications for social inclusion explicated. The paper’s aim is to move beyond the specific example of SAS and France to argue that the SAS pattern of identifying particular values as ‘national values’, the deployment of those values through law, policy and public discourse, and their exclusionary effects is playing out in a number of Western democracies, including Canada, the country with which the author is most familiar. Because of this widespread dissemination of values and their framing as representative of who ‘we’ are, there is a pressing need to consider the potentially alienating effects of a specific manifestation of ‘living together’ and an alternative model of ‘living well together’.

This study investigates the performance of Indiana's new principals per the Educational Leadership Constituent Council (ELCC) and the Indiana Content Standards for building-level leader preparation. Using quantitative survey methodology, information was collected from Indiana superintendents regarding the effectiveness of principals who had recently completed university administrative preparation programs. Analysis of responses revealed that superintendents viewed their new principals as "proficient" in almost every area, with the highest mean observed in the category of "Integrity". In contrast, the mean response for "financial management" was found to be in the "basic" range, creating implications for an area of potential development in school leadership education in the state.