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From the chaos of 2020 arose many social conversations, among which were the legal rights of gay and transgender Americans. Landmark cases established precedents for potential legislation and reform regarding the transgender community. One particular issue is that of transgender athletes in college sports. While many are in staunch opposition to a future where people who are born male may play on women's sports teams in college, legal battles indicate the possibility that gender may cease to be a deciding factor in participation on national and collegiate sports teams. The appropriate management of transgender athletes related issues has consequently become an important issue in human resources for colleges and universities. While college athletes are not currently seen as employees, the people who work with them are. The purpose of this paper is to examine, from a human resource management and legal perspective, the issue of transgender athletes playing college sports in both the court of law and the court of public opinion.

Many colleges and universities are expected to produce more graduates while responding to an increasing level of racial and ethnic diversity among students. While the importance of diversity within executive management leadership teams may be accepted among nonprofit higher education institutions, the connection between diversity among the leadership in higher education and the retention of minority students has not been empirically established. This study, focusing on Texas public colleges and universities, finds that: 1) a diverse executive management team makes a positive difference in minority student retention at community colleges and 4-year universities institutions; and 2) the impact of a diverse executive management team on retention is not limited to race and ethnicity, but instead includes other demographic aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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US national park managers must address a complex portfolio of foreseen and unforeseen challenges that arise in part from a dual mandate to preserve nature and facilitate visitation. To deal with resource management challenges, managers can identify potential pathways toward a solution through the use of science to inform policy and guide actions. The way science has been applied has evolved over the course of the National Park Service's history, in large part due to the prevailing societal context and ways of thinking about the environment, and relatedly as a necessity to mitigate the impact from development and anthropogenic climate change. Landscape-scale environmental hazards are a fitting proxy to recount the changing use of science and policy because biophysical processes become most hazardous at the interface of infrastructure and the natural environment, where people are most exposed. This paper synthesizes modern administrative and environmental histories of hazards in Yosemite National Park from the late 19th century to the early 21st century through archival records and long-term data, including significant events and trends in wildland fire, tree mortality (falls), extreme floods, and rockfalls and slides. Findings confirm increased severity and extent of wildland fire, correlations between periods of drought and high rates of tree mortality, warmer precipitation events lead to earlier annual peak streamflow, and connections between periods of prolonged cold with rockfalls, and prolonged precipitation with slides. These hazards exist as an interconnected system in the context of high seasonal visitation, and while there are averages of seasonal conditions over time, there are no "normal" years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented, in which the editor refers to various topics in the book, which includes food and home security for college students in the U.S., food pantries, and role of community college leaders.

Using an original representative national survey, data were gathered on the ways colleges have responded to student hunger through the provision of campus‐based food banks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education enrolment has long been known to rise and fall counter to the current economic situation. This counter-cyclical enrolment response represents an economic principle where a price-elastic consumer is more likely make a consumption choice when another valuable use of resources is not available. Higher unemployment has historically led to increased enrolment as fewer prospective students have had attractive employment opportunities as an alternative use of the resource of time. This consumer decision was possible students generally had the ability to pay the cost. This trend has now ended as enrolment is no longer rising with increased unemployment. This indicates that ability of many students to pay has now been exceeded by the cost of tuition and other fees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Limits on overnight visitor use may be needed when demand is very high and other management tools alone are inadequate to protect resource and experiential conditions. In the wilderness, trailhead quotas may be an effective management tool that allows for more visitor autonomy. For trailhead quotas to be effective; however, managers must have a very good understanding of the relationship between the trailhead origin of trips and the resulting spatiotemporal distribution of users. Simulation modeling can accurately determine this relationship, thus allowing managers to set informed and appropriate trailhead quotas. This study showed how a simulation model can be used to 1) monitor the distribution of overnight wilderness visitors in a large wilderness area with a complex trails network and 2) achieve an informed redistribution of overnight visitor use that reduces the number of areas that are overcapacity while still accommodating the same overall amount and the same temporal distribution of visitor use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Erik Erikson's stages of psychosocial development represent a landmark in the understanding of human behavior. Although not without critics, (Chodorow, 1995) it espouses a framework for understanding individuated progress through various psychosocial crises and their subsequent resolutions. Consequently, the framework serves as a referential benchmark for educators. Since it pioneered an introspective view of development in both adults and children, its utility as an instructional educative model is enhanced. Additionally, this bilateral applicability has served the needs of many learning researchers who have expanded on his original work. This manuscript seeks to connect the relevance of Erikson's eight stages of psychosocial development to subsequent adult learning. Through this review, connections are proposed between previously incomplete ego integrations and current adult learning disruptions. Additionally, the exhibited behaviors of those who enjoy healthy psychosocial adaption, and those who lack it, are presented. Through reference to existing literature and a highlevel review of potential connections, improved causal understanding is sought. This knowledge can then be used to maximize the effectiveness of adult learning through a thorough review of Erikson's stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessments of vertebrate disturbance to plant and animal assemblages often contrast grazed versus ungrazed meadows or other larger areas of usage, and this approach can be powerful. Random sampling of such habitats carries the potential, however, for smaller, more intensely affected patches to be missed and for other responses that are only revealed at smaller scales to also escape detection. We instead sampled arthropod assemblages and vegetation structure at the patch scale (400-900 m patches) within subalpine wet meadows of Yosemite National Park (USA), with the goal of determining if there were fine-scale differences in magnitude and directionality of response at three levels of grazing intensity. Effects were both stronger and more nuanced than effects evidenced by previous random sampling of paired grazed and ungrazed meadows: (a) greater negative effects on vegetation structure and fauna in heavily used patches, but (b) some positive effects on fauna in lightly grazed patches, suggested by trends for mean richness and total and population abundances. Although assessment of disturbance at either patch or landscape scales should be appropriate, depending on the management question at hand, our patch-scale work demonstrated that there can be strong local effects on the ecology of these wetlands that may not be detected by comparing larger scale habitats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adult student retention is an issue of growing concern for many institutions. It differs from traditional retention much like traditional students differ from adult students. As the majority of student body growth comes from adult students, adult student retention management will become critical to the majority of colleges and universities. To support this end, this article explores the forces producing a need for better adult student retention, provides methods for the development of institution-specific retention enhancement plans and retention measurement metrics, and provides a set of retention enhancement tactics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Precipitation measurements in complex terrain are difficult to obtain, particularly during convective thunderstorm precipitation or mixed rain and snow. In such cases, stream stage recorders distributed across many small, headwater streams can bridge the gap between point measurements of precipitation and larger-scale total basin discharge. We use case studies from two steep basins with shallow soils in the Sierra Nevada, California to illustrate how distributed stream sensors can help identify the location, timing, and intensity of spatially variable precipitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a study on grade inflation in accelerated degree programs for working adults affected by intensive faculty development activities. Accelerated degree programs for adult students motivate the learning process by demanding high levels of group interaction and collaborative activity. The study results revealed that faculty development focused on group learning and grading techniques is related to a more stringent standard for grades.

Recreation experiences have social, ecological, and managerial dimensions. Park and protected area managers are forced to make trade-offs among these dimensions causing management to be more complex. This study evaluates how visitors to Yosemite National Park wilderness make tradeoffs among indicators of quality that represent social, ecological and managerial dimensions of the recreation experience. It is likely that most visitors want unimpeded access to parks but also want areas protected from excessive resource impacts, want to avoid undesirable levels of crowding and congestion, and "heavy handed" management restrictions. However, these desires often conflict, and tradeoffs must be made. Understanding visitors' preferences and acceptable tradeoffs will aid managers in deciding how best to mitigate recreational impacts while not hindering, to an unacceptable degree, the freedoms and other qualities often associated with experiences in parks and protected areas. The study was conducted in the summer of 2001 and employed a paired comparison questionnaire in which respondents reported their preferences between alternative wilderness settings. Results from this study were programmed into Excel to create a wilderness management alternative predictive model that enables managers to understand the relationships among various levels of standards of quality. Results suggest signs of human use at campsites was the most important indicator of those used in the study. Moreover, Yosemite wilderness visitors were willing to tolerate increases in certain forms of regulation in order to obtain a high quality recreation experience. Findings can be used to help formulate standards of quality, and evaluate and predict visitor support for potential management alternatives. The examples in this paper illustrate how the evaluation of relative tradeoffs among social, ecological, and managerial setting attributes provide contextual, multi-dimensional information for protected area management decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A subject index for Volume 58 of the "Journal of Continuing Higher Education" is presented.

Statistical models often use observational data to predict phenomena; however, interpreting model terms to understand their influence can be problematic. This issue poses a challenge in species conservation where setting priorities requires estimating influences of potential stressors using observational data. We present a novel approach for inferring influence of a rare stressor on a rare species by blending predictive models with nonparametric permutation tests. We illustrate the approach with two case studies involving rare amphibians in Yosemite National Park, USA. The endangered frog, Rana sierrae, is known to be negatively impacted by non-native fish, while the threatened toad, Anaxyrus canorus, is potentially affected by packstock. Both stressors and amphibians are rare, occurring in ~10% of potential habitat patches. We first predict amphibian occupancy with a statistical model that includes all predictors but the stressor to stratify potential habitat by predicted suitability. A stratified permutation test then evaluates the association between stressor and amphibian, all else equal. Our approach confirms the known negative relationship between fish and R. sierrae, but finds no evidence of a negative relationship between current packstock use and A. canorus breeding. Our statistical approach has potential broad application for deriving understanding (not just prediction) from observational data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]