Cultural backgrounds are foundations for the way we speak, interpret, and behave. This study examines cultural-related factors that influence the selection of extracurricular activities by African-American students and Asian students from China and Korea. These cultural factors are being examined along with their influence on the success rate (I.E., graduating with a competitive GPA) of these students. This is important because our society is becoming increasingly more culturally diverse and more competitive for students pursuing higher education. Understanding cultural differences will help determine why certain cultures do particular things. Looking at the cultural factors, as well as societal pressures geared toward high school students of color, it is interesting to present differences in activites that have been believed to be the students choices to participate in. The activities outside of school can negatively or positively affect a student's ability to succeed because the time outside of school will not be spent entirely on coursework. The methodology of this research is conducting literature review of current research in the areas of outside of school activities in relation to cultural influences and academic success. The anticipated results are that the socioeconomic status, education level, and geographic location of the high school student's parents influences the choices of extracurricular activities for the student. Activities that are intellectually stimulated or academia related are activities that positively affect a students' success while activities that do not use information learned in school negatively affect a students' success. The differences in the cultural factors raise questions as to why different activities are pursured by students of different cultural backgrounds. Knowing why there are differences will help schools determine where money needs to go or what measures need to be taken in order to encourage students to pursue activities that are not normally participated in.

Latinos are the largest and fastest-growing majority in Washington State, but over the past thirty years they have been systematically underrepresented in local office. This research focuses on city council and school board races across the ten counties which have the largest Latino populations, and the resulting report is the first to document the severe history of Latino underrepresentation in Washington. Through the same surname analysis used by the Department of Justice in its investigations of racially polarized voting, we analyzed the precinct-by-precint electoral results and found that Latino candidates are routinely defeated by non-Latino candidates. Previous studies have demonstrated that at-large elections - which are used in more than 90% of Washington's local races - tend to dilute minority votes and depress minority representation when minority candidates run against majority candidates. We found that Latinos win far less than half of their races against non-Latinos, suggesting that the extensive use of at-large elections has been combined with racially motivated voting patterns to systematically deny Latino candidates local office. Through interviews with Latino leaders and prominent members of various communities in Yakima County, we also found that Latino communites face more than just structural barriers to effective political participation and proportional representation. Our findings strongly suggest that the Revised Code of Washington ought to be amended to allow local jurisdictions to move away from at-large elections, that local jurisdictions should strive to provide more bilingual services, and that community organizations ought to prioritize the cultivation of local Latino leaders. This report was written as part of the State of the State for Washington Latinos project, which is an ongoing community-based research program at Whitman College. Our research was conducted in partnership with the National Voting Rights Advocacy Initiative.

The recent increase in international students at the University of Washington (UW) has been an extremely controversial issue. As undergraduate tutors in a writing center that serves these students, we are concerned with how this changing institutional climate affects both the students we work with and the university. This has prompted us to ask: What are these students’ needs, how can we best support them, and what institutional structures and policy must be changed or developed in response to the increasingly multilingual and multicultural demographic of the university? Through further development of a peer-led group tutoring program, Targeted Tutoring (TT), we have explored these questions and their implications for academic support models and policy relating to English Language Learners (ELLs) and international students. In particular, we have focused on researching ELL policy and support mechanisms at other universities and developing research designed to assess how student feedback about classroom and writing experiences and their perceptions of second-language writing at UW can be used to improve existing programs and policy. In practice, this has focused on efforts to design student-centered research methods and materials (reflective writing, surveys, interviews and observations), used in conjunction with TT, that can supply student feedback in order to assess our response, and the university’s response, to the increasingly diverse student body. While incomplete, this research has already shown promise. It has demonstrated the value of opening new avenues for students to communicate their needs, concerns, and views – providing the university with a clearer picture of these students’ needs and enabling a more effective response to, and support of, an increasingly diverse student body. In doing so, our research has the potential to be a valuable resource for students, administrators, and academic support programs and inform the university’s response to the changing student population at all levels.

How exactly is history of science related to philosophy of science? Answers range from denying there exists any substantial relation at all to asserting that the relation is one of necessity, in which philosophy of science without history of science is worse off and vice versa. In this research I give a brief survey of the relevant literature. I then suggest that thus far the various approaches taken toward resolving the general problem have not been satisfying and, hence, that a new approach is needed. I use a case-based analysis of a recent essay in philosophy of science by Kyle Stanford to demonstrate what I believe to be a novel, fruitful approach to the problem. Rather than speculating about the relation in the abstract, in this new approach I focus on how Stanford uses history of science to make his philosophical argument go through in practice. Here the problem becomes: How is history of science related to philosophy of science in Stanford’s essay? I argue that the payoff of this approach is that although the conclusion I draw is not as general in scope as those offered by previous philosophers, in its narrowness this new approach is more detailed and, hence, more illuminating of the relation between history of science and philosophy of science. Attending to how philosophers work out this problem in practice, I argue, is the approach that we should take in trying to understand the nature of this precarious relation. Finally, I compare my analysis of Stanford’s essay with some of the existing accounts delineated in the beginning of the paper, in order to determine whether any of the generalizations they offer hold in this particular case.

Social identity theory posits that the closer one identifies with a referent group the more their behavior will conform to the perceived norms of that group. Previous research suggests that in-group identification is positively associated with one’s attitude towards acceptable alcohol use. Furthermore, research has indicated that the association between perceived drinking norms (an individual's perception of the drinking behaviors of others) and one’s own drinking behavior is strengthened by strong identification with a referent group. To further examine these relationships, the primary goal of the present study is to expand the understanding of how injunctive normative perceptions (what we believe others approve or disapprove of), attitudes, and identity relate to personal drinking behavior and negative consequences. A random sample of 1,002 of college students from a major Pacific Northwest University ages 18-30 participated in a one time only survey that assessed drinking and risky sexual behaviors. Analyses for the present study will be conducted using measures of daily drinking frequency, alcohol related negative consequences, injunctive norms, and in-group identification. It is hypothesized that injunctive norms will be positively associated with the amount of alcohol consumed and negative consequences experienced. It is further expected that this relationship will be mediated by attitudes, especially among those who strongly identify with the normative referent. Results will help to inform preventative intervention for high-risk drinking among college students.

Rare earth element (REE) concentrations in Mount St. Helens (MSH) volcanic units remain constant (or slightly decrease) with increasing silica (from andesites to dacites). Owing to the commonly held view that REE are incompatible with typical mineral assemblages in mafic to intermediate magmas, crystal fractionation was not considered to be a viable mechanism for generating dacitic melts. Instead, partial melting of a low REE crustal source was considered more likely. REE are, however, highly compatible in apatite and there is evidence of its early crystallization in mafic to intermediate magmas. Hence, we have reevaluated models for crystal fractionation in order to determine a possible mineral assemblage (including apatite) required to reproduce REE trends. Using published partition coefficients, reasonable modal amounts of the major minerals (amphibole, clinopyroxene, Fe-oxides, and plagioclase) and 1-2% apatite, it appears possible to closely mimic the REE patterns in dacites, particularly if considering some assimilation of depleted lithologies in the deep crust.