6.3: How does racism affect students?
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by Kelsey E. Thompson
Learning Objectives
- Know the difference between race and racism
- Understand that racism occurs everywhere
- Apply the knowledge learned to understand everyday happenings
- Recognize racism in everyday life
Definition: Race
1. A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics. 2. A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution: the German race. 3. A genealogical line; a lineage. 4. Humans considered as a group. 5. Biology a. An interbreeding, usually geographically isolated population of organisms differing from other populations of the same species in the frequency of hereditary traits. A race that has been given formal taxonomic recognition is known as a subspecies. b. A breed or strain, as of domestic animals. 6. A distinguishing or characteristic quality, such as the flavor of a wine.
Definition: Racism
1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others. 2. Discrimination or prejudice based on race.
A Dissection of Racism
Racism has been around for hundreds of years dating back to the Enlightenment. Most scientists in the nineteenth century compared females to the lower race, which was mainly made up of blacks(Goldberg, 1990). Females and blacks were also compared to apes. As such, the research the scientists conducted was that of weighing the brains between females and those of lower races, and made the connection that the two were similar. For example, the white males were superior to the white females and the blacks. Because of their similarity, "women and lower races were called innately impulsive, emotional, imitative rather than original, and incapable of the abstract reasoning found in white men"(Goldberg, 1990). A white male's brain processes and hormones were different from the females, so in return, the females were considered a different 'species'(Goldberg, 1990). As the years went by, racism became dependent on the outcome of people's behaviors. For example, under certain circumstances "...belief, intention, act, consequence, principle, rule, or institution can be racist"(Goldberg, 1990). In isolation, expressions such as slurs and epithets can and will be considered racist(Goldberg, 1990).
Sociology of Racism
According to David Mason, race is a legitimate concept for sociological analysis and remains a pivotal concept in sociology(Mason, 1994). Racism and race can be analytically eminent from one another by "the separation of human populations according to a notion of human stock difference, the characteristic mark of construct of race, need not to posit a hierarchy of groups"(Mason, 1994). However, racism should not be limited in situations with discourses and practices that are associated with biogenetic differences(Mason, 1994). In general, the categories of personal, social cultural competences should not coincide with the concept of race. Race, as Mason states, is a social relationship. For example, populations generally are separated by genetic makeup and not by race. Racism also has negative stereotypes and evaluations of groups. These stereotypes and evaluations represent a kind of symbolic resource such as power for example(Mason, 1994). As such, "power is both relational and situational"(Mason, 1994).
Racism in Education
"Positionality: the idea that peoples' backgrounds and identities, often seen as fixed in racial and gendered categories, are relational, contextual, and subject to change over time"(Maher, 2008). According to Frinde Maher, gender, race and class are shifting proportions not predetermined categories of identity(Maher, 2008).
Critical Race Theory(CRT) is oppositional and resists single-truth claims(Masko, 2008). CRT is based on six tenets: "1.racism is ordinary; 2.the current system of White-over-color ascendancy serves important purposes; 3.race and races are products of social thought and relations; 4.the dominant society racializes different minority groups at different times; 5.intersectionality and antiessentialism are present, whereas everyone has overlapping, conflicting identities and loyalties; and 6.there is a shared minority experience that people of color communicate about race and racism that White people are unlikely to know is present"(Masko, 2008).
Some schools find resistance within their faculty, staff, and students. In a study done in a Mid-western state, resistance was found in the administration in adherence to the current curriculum and within the school's student body(Masko, 2008). The most common resistance in the administration was the teacher's frustration(Masko, 2008). However, the students resisted "societal expectations of low achievement for students of color, and...multicultural curriculum"(Masko, 2008). For example, one of the administrators gave a motivational speech to the student body that "teeters between chastising poor behavior and inspiring higher achievement"(Masko, 2008) as a form of resisting societal expectations of the students.
In addition, schools can also get in trouble for putting too many kids of one race in a certain program. For example, "black students are more likely than white youth to be labeled as 'mentally or educationally retarded' and assigned to special education"(Hill, 2004). In addition, a high amount of foster care students receive special education(between 30% and 41%) (Hill, 2004). However, racism can also be applied to teachers. "Black teachers who subscribe to stereotypes about blacks may also exhibit aversively racist behavior that results in 'double standards' in the differential treatment of black and white students"(Hill, 2004).
Institutional Racism
Normally, black families have multiple risk factors such as unemployment and poverty, that cause the majority of children to become abused and neglected. Abuse and neglect is highly strenuous among the poor(Hill, 2004). As such, blacks tend to be overrepresented in child welfare because of the family's class status, not race. Because of this, "institutional racism influences the operation of child welfare"(Hill, 2004). Hill states in a statistic, that black children comprise about one of five children in the nation's population and account for more than two out of five of the 600,000 children who are placed in foster care(Hill, 2004).
Blacks are highly represented in child welfare because of their poverty status. Consequently, the definition of institutional racism is "the systematic oppression, subjugation and control of one racial group by another dominant or more powerful racial groups, made possible by the manner in which the society is structured"(Hill, 2004). For instance, some characteristics of institutional racism are that it can be covert or overt, unconscious or conscious and unintentional or intentional. However, racism does not necessarily occur in groups of people who meet and conspire. Even by internalizing the norms and values of an agency, institution or society can be called racism(Hill, 2004). Unfortunately, racism can occur without the person even knowing what he or she is doing.
In addition, institutional racism is also interconnected with sexism and classism(Hill, 2004). The most serious of this type of racism is commonly found among poor families headed by women who are of racial minority(Hill, 2004).
The personal opinion...
Unfortunately, racism occurs everywhere. With experience from a racially diverse high school and a diverse high school sociology class, racism was a strong subject as to who it applies to and what is acceptable to each race. As such, in a discussion on derogatory words, one student made a comment that she did not understand why people were getting so worked up over the subject. This caused myself to interject and speak my opinion. Some black teens in my class mentioned that it was okay for themselves to call each other a "nigga" as long as it was not "nigger". I however made the suggestion of what if a white person came up to you in the hallway and called you by the first term that ends with the 'a'? The student who responded said that they would be offended. Why would one be offended when a white person calls them that, but not a fellow black? Racism. Some people tend to judge before they get to know the other. Sometimes to judge is to be prejudice or racist. Naturally, to judge is something almost everyone tends to do at one point in their life. However, I tend to stray away from it. I'm not friends with just white people. Some of my closest friends were black and in that sociology class. I was the quiet girl who never spoke unless she was called upon. That one day in class, everything changed. Not one person in that class looked at me the same because I voiced my opinion about racism. You could be green, purple, orange, yellow or red and I would still want to be your friend. I do not judge often and when I do, I am usually wrong about that person.
Everyone deserves a chance to become a friend. You never know who you will be friends with until you try. Race should not be apart of that decision.
Exercise \(\PageIndex{1}\)
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What is the most common derogatory name used towards blacks even today?
A. Blacky
B. Jungle Bunny
C. Nigger
D. Wog -
In the past, scientists compared females and lower races to what animal?
A. Ape
B. Baboon
C. Cat
D. Dog -
Crystal is one of many black students at a local high school. She along with a few others were placed in a special education program in elemenraty school that has followed them to high school. Crystal and her classmates are associated with CRT how?
A. Disproportionally
B. Equally
C. Inversely
D. Proportionally -
If a minority student is being teased on or called names because of social class, the color of his or her skin and what classes he or she is taking, what is the student experincing?
A. Education
B. Happiness
C. Racism
D. Segregation
- Answer
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1. C
2. A
3. D
4. C
References
Goldberg, D (Ed.). (1990). Anatomy of racism . Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
Hill, R.B. (2004). Institutional racism in child welfare. Race and Society . 7, 17-33.
Maher, F. (2008). Twisted privileges: Terms of inclusion in feminist teaching. Radical Teacher . 83, 5-9.
Masko, A.L. (2008). Resistance at city middle school. Critical Race Theorizing in Educational Research . 10, 177-192.
Mason, D. (1994). Sociology: On the dangers and disconnecting race and racism. SAGE , 28, Retrieved February 5, 2009, from http://soc.sagepub.com .


15.16C: HIV and AIDS
- Describe the mode of transmission, mechanisms of infection, treatment options, and WHO and CDC classifications for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)
Human immunodeficiency virus infection / acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/ AIDS ) is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV ). During the initial infection a person may experience a brief period of influenza-like illness. This is typically followed by a prolonged period without symptoms. As the illness progresses it interferes more and more with the immune system, making people much more likely to get infections, including opportunistic infections, and tumors that do not usually affect people with working immune systems.
 Some bodily fluids, such as saliva and tears, do not transmit HIV. Prevention of HIV infection, primarily through safe sex and needle-exchange programs, is a key strategy to control the spread of the disease. There is no cure or vaccine; however, antiretroviral treatment can slow the course of the disease and may lead to a near-normal life expectancy. While antiretroviral treatment reduces the risk of death and complications from the disease, these medications are expensive and may be associated with side effects.
Virology
HIV is the cause of the spectrum of disease known as HIV/AIDS. HIV is a retrovirus that primarily infects components of the human immune system such as CD4+ T cells, macrophages and dendritic cells. It directly and indirectly destroys CD4+ T cells.HIV is a member of the genus Lentivirus, part of the family of Retroviridae. Lentiviruses share many morphological and biological characteristics. Many species of mammals are infected by lentiviruses, which are characteristically responsible for long-duration illnesses with a long incubation period. Lentiviruses are transmitted as single-stranded, positive-sense, enveloped RNA viruses. Upon entry into the target cell, the viral RNA genome is converted (reverse transcribed) into double-stranded DNA by a virally encoded reverse transcriptase that is transported along with the viral genome in the virus particle. The resulting viral DNA is then imported into the cell nucleus and integrated into the cellular DNA by a virally encoded integrase and host co-factors. Once integrated, the virus may become latent, allowing the virus and its host cell to avoid detection by the immune system. Alternatively, the virus may betranscribed, producing new RNA genomes and viral proteins that are packaged and released from the cell as new virus particles that begin the replication cycle anew. Two types of HIV have been characterized: HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is the virus that was originally discovered (and initially referred to also as LAV or HTLV-III). It is more virulent, more infective, and is the cause of the majority of HIV infections globally. The lower infectivity of HIV-2 as compared with HIV-1 implies that fewer people exposed to HIV-2 will be infected per exposure. Because of its relatively poor capacity for transmission, HIV-2 is largely confined to West Africa.
Classifications of HIV infection
Two main clinical staging systems are used to classify HIV and HIV-related disease for surveillance purposes: the WHO disease staging system for HIV infection and disease, and the CDC classification system for HIV infection. The CDC’s classification system is more frequently adopted in developed countries. Since the WHO’s staging system does not require laboratory tests, it is suited to the resource-restricted conditions encountered in developing countries, where it can also be used to help guide clinical management. Despite their differences, the two systems allow comparison for statistical purposes.
The World Health Organization first proposed a definition for AIDS in 1986. Since then, the WHO classification has been updated and expanded several times, with the most recent version being published in 2007. The WHO system uses the following categories:
Primary HIV infection: May be either asymptomatic or associated with acute retroviral syndrome.
Stage I : HIV infection is asymptomatic with a CD4+ T cell count (also known as CD4 count) greater than 500/uL. May include generalized lymph node enlargement.
Stage II : Mild symptoms which may include minor mucocutaneous manifestations and recurrent upper respiratory tract infections. A CD4 count of less than 500/uL.
Stage III : Advanced symptoms which may include unexplained chronic diarrhea for longer than a month, severe bacterial infections including tuberculosis of the lung as well as a CD4 count of less than 350/uL.
Stage IV or AIDS : severe symptoms which includes toxoplasmosis of the brain, candidiasis of the esophagus, trachea, bronchi or lungs and Kaposi’s sarcoma. A CD4 count of less than 200/uL.
The United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention also created a classification system for HIV, and updated it in 2008. In this system HIV infections are classified based on CD4 count and clinical symptoms, and describes the infection in three stages:
Stage 1 : CD4 count ≥ 500 cells/uL and no AIDS defining conditions
Stage 2 : CD4 count 200 to 500 cells/uL and no AIDS defining conditions
Stage 3 : CD4 count ≤ 200 cells/uL or AIDS defining conditions
Unknown : if insufficient information is available to make any of the above classificationsFor surveillance purposes, the AIDS diagnosis still stands even if, after treatment, the CD4+ T cell count rises to above 200 per µL of blood or other AIDS-defining illnesses are cured.
Antiviral therapy
Abacavir, a nucleoside analog reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NARTI or NRTI) is used to treat HIV. Current HAART options are combinations (or “cocktails”) consisting of at least three medications belonging to at least two types, or “classes,” of antiretroviralagents. Initially treatment is typically a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI) plus two nucleoside analogue reverse transcriptase inhibitors(NRTIs). Typical NRTIs include: zidovudine (AZT) or tenofovir (TDF) and lamivudine (3TC) or emtricitabine (FTC). Combinations of agents which include a protease inhibitors (PI) are used if the above regime loses effectiveness.
Key Points
- During the initial HIV infection a person may experience a brief period of influenza-like illness. This is typically followed by a prolonged period without symptoms.

- Abacavir, a nucleoside analog reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NARTI or NRTI) is used to treat HIV. Current HAART options are combinations (or “cocktails”) consisting of at least three medications belonging to at least two types, or “classes,” of antiretroviralagents.
Key Terms
- immunodeficiency : A depletion in the body’s natural immune system, or in some component of it.
- AIDS : an infectious disease, caused by HIV, that causes the gradual degeneration of the body’s immune system


20.17: Chapter 17 (Grief and Loss)
Answer Key to Chapter 17 Learning Activities
Scenario A
1. What actions should the nurse take to support Mr. Lyn? The grieving process is variable for every individual. Mr. Lyn’s outward expression of grief should be supported by the nurse. The nurse can assist Mr. Lyn to cope by using supportive presence and encouraging reminiscence by sharing good memories of his life with Mrs. Lyn. It is helpful to offer the services of the agency chaplain, as well as to offer prayer and spiritual support based on Mr. Lyn’s beliefs and the nurse’s comfort level. The nurse can also encourage Mr. Lyn to contact other family members and friends for additional social support.
2. What medication is helpful to administer to treat dyspnea at end of life? Roxanol, a highly concentrated solution of morphine, can be administered sublingually as ordered for pain and air hunger.
3. Mr. Lyn tells the nurse, “My daughter lives six hours away and would like to be here when the time comes. How much longer does she have to live?” What is the nurse’s best response? Although we never know exactly when death will occur, there are recognizable signs that occur as death becomes imminent, such as noisy or irregular breathing, increased lethargy, and a type of bruising called “mottling.” Mrs. Lyn is demonstrating new changes in her breathing status, so death may occur in the next few days.
4. The daughter arrives and seems hesitant to talk to or touch the patient. What tasks can the nurse coach family members to do at the end of a patient’s life? Nurses can encourage family members to talk with and touch their loved one. They can encourage family members to reminisce about happy stories and say “I love you” or say “Goodbye.”
5. Mrs. Lyn dies the following evening. What postmortem care should the nurse provide? After verifying the lack of an apical heartbeat for a full minute, the nurse should follow agency policy regarding notifications and postmortem care. The nurse should document the date and time of assessment, the physician contacted, the individuals present at the time of death, the lack of response to stimuli and absence of an apical pulse, and the arrangements for transport to the morgue or funeral home. Typically, the patient is bathed, dressed, and positioned to show respect and provide dignity. Cultural practices should be honored. The nurse can offer to contact other family members to inform them of the death and support families in their ways of saying goodbye.
Scenario B
- According to Kubler-Ross’ theory of grief/loss, what stage of grief is Terry currently experiencing? Terry is demonstrating the stage of denial according to Kubler-Ross’ theory of grief/loss.
- How would you explain palliative care to him? Palliative care is a way to manage your symptoms and optimize your quality of life. A team will assist you in making difficult decisions and can provide support to you and your family members
- How would you explain advance directives to him? Advance directives are a legal way for you to establish your wishes for health care. A living will is a document that you can complete that describes your wishes if you are no longer able to speak for yourself. For example, you can decide if you would ever want a feeding tube placed if you are no longer able to eat. You can also identify a health care power of attorney who will serve as your decision maker when you can no longer speak for yourself. Would you like me to ask a social worker to visit so you can talk more about these options?
- Identify a SMART outcome. “Terry will discuss the meaning of the cancer diagnosis to his life before discharge.”
- List sample nursing interventions that may help Terry to cope with this new diagnosis. Use a calm, reassuring approach. Provide an atmosphere of acceptance. Seek to understand the patient’s perspective. Provide Terry realistic choices about aspects of his care when possible. Encourage verbalization of feelings, perceptions, and fears. Encourage support from family and friends.
Answers to interactive elements are given within the interactive element.


10.1: The Brightness of Stars
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Explain the difference between luminosity and apparent brightness
- Understand how astronomers specify brightness with magnitudes
Luminosity
Perhaps the most important characteristic of a star is its luminosity —the total amount of energy at all wavelengths that it emits per second. Earlier, we saw that the Sun puts out a tremendous amount of energy every second. (And there are stars far more luminous than the Sun out there.) To make the comparison among stars easy, astronomers express the luminosity of other stars in terms of the Sun’s luminosity. For example, the luminosity of Sirius is about 25 times that of the Sun. We use the symbol L Sun to denote the Sun’s luminosity; hence, that of Sirius can be written as 25 L Sun . In a later chapter, we will see that if we can measure how much energy a star emits and we also know its mass, then we can calculate how long it can continue to shine before it exhausts its nuclear energy and begins to die.
Apparent Brightness
Astronomers are careful to distinguish between the luminosity of the star (the total energy output) and the amount of energy that happens to reach our eyes or a telescope on Earth. Stars are democratic in how they produce radiation; they emit the same amount of energy in every direction in space. Consequently, only a minuscule fraction of the energy given off by a star actually reaches an observer on Earth. We call the amount of a star’s energy that reaches a given area (say, one square meter) each second here on Earth its apparent brightness . If you look at the night sky, you see a wide range of apparent brightnesses among the stars. Most stars, in fact, are so dim that you need a telescope to detect them.
If all stars were the same luminosity—if they were like standard bulbs with the same light output—we could use the difference in their apparent brightnesses to tell us something we very much want to know: how far away they are. Imagine you are in a big concert hall or ballroom that is dark except for a few dozen 25-watt bulbs placed in fixtures around the walls. Since they are all 25-watt bulbs, their luminosity (energy output) is the same. But from where you are standing in one corner, they do not have the same apparent brightness. Those close to you appear brighter (more of their light reaches your eye), whereas those far away appear dimmer (their light has spread out more before reaching you). In this way, you can tell which bulbs are closest to you. In the same way, if all the stars had the same luminosity, we could immediately infer that the brightest-appearing stars were close by and the dimmest-appearing ones were far away.
To pin down this idea more precisely, recall from the Radiation and Spectra chapter that we know exactly how light fades with increasing distance. The energy we receive is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. If, for example, we have two stars of the same luminosity and one is twice as far away as the other, it will look four times dimmer than the closer one. If it is three times farther away, it will look nine (three squared) times dimmer, and so forth.
Alas, the stars do not all have the same luminosity. (Actually, we are pretty glad about that because having many different types of stars makes the universe a much more interesting place.) But this means that if a star looks dim in the sky, we cannot tell whether it appears dim because it has a low luminosity but is relatively nearby, or because it has a high luminosity but is very far away. To measure the luminosities of stars, we must first compensate for the dimming effects of distance on light, and to do that, we must know how far away they are. Distance is among the most difficult of all astronomical measurements. We will return to how it is determined after we have learned more about the stars. For now, we will describe how astronomers specify the apparent brightness of stars.
The Magnitude Scale
The process of measuring the apparent brightness of stars is called photometry (from the Greek photo meaning “light” and – metry meaning “to measure”). As we saw Observing the Sky: The Birth of Astronomy, astronomical photometry began with Hipparchus. Around 150 B.C.E., he erected an observatory on the island of Rhodes in the Mediterranean. There he prepared a catalog of nearly 1000 stars that included not only their positions but also estimates of their apparent brightnesses.
Hipparchus did not have a telescope or any instrument that could measure apparent brightness accurately, so he simply made estimates with his eyes. He sorted the stars into six brightness categories, each of which he called a magnitude . He referred to the brightest stars in his catalog as first-magnitudes stars, whereas those so faint he could barely see them were sixth-magnitude stars. During the nineteenth century, astronomers attempted to make the scale more precise by establishing exactly how much the apparent brightness of a sixth-magnitude star differs from that of a first-magnitude star. Measurements showed that we receive about 100 times more light from a first-magnitude star than from a sixth-magnitude star. Based on this measurement, astronomers then defined an accurate magnitude system in which a difference of five magnitudes corresponds exactly to a brightness ratio of 100:1. In addition, the magnitudes of stars are decimalized; for example, a star isn’t just a “second-magnitude star,” it has a magnitude of 2.0 (or 2.1, 2.3, and so forth). So what number is it that, when multiplied together five times, gives you this factor of 100? Play on your calculator and see if you can get it. The answer turns out to be about 2.5, which is the fifth root of 100. This means that a magnitude 1.0 star and a magnitude 2.0 star differ in brightness by a factor of about 2.5. Likewise, we receive about 2.5 times as much light from a magnitude 2.0 star as from a magnitude 3.0 star. What about the difference between a magnitude 1.0 star and a magnitude 3.0 star? Since the difference is 2.5 times for each “step” of magnitude, the total difference in brightness is 2.5 × 2.5 = 6.25 times.
Here are a few rules of thumb that might help those new to this system. If two stars differ by 0.75 magnitudes, they differ by a factor of about 2 in brightness. If they are 2.5 magnitudes apart, they differ in brightness by a factor of 10, and a 4-magnitude difference corresponds to a difference in brightness of a factor of 40.You might be saying to yourself at this point, “Why do astronomers continue to use this complicated system from more than 2000 years ago?” That’s an excellent question and, as we shall discuss, astronomers today can use other ways of expressing how bright a star looks. But because this system is still used in many books, star charts, and computer apps, we felt we had to introduce students to it (even though we were very tempted to leave it out.)
The brightest stars, those that were traditionally referred to as first-magnitude stars, actually turned out (when measured accurately) not to be identical in brightness. For example, the brightest star in the sky, Sirius, sends us about 10 times as much light as the average first-magnitude star. On the modern magnitude scale, Sirius, the star with the brightest apparent magnitude, has been assigned a magnitude of −1.5. Other objects in the sky can appear even brighter. Venus at its brightest is of magnitude −4.4, while the Sun has a magnitude of −26.8. Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\) shows the range of observed magnitudes from the brightest to the faintest, along with the actual magnitudes of several well-known objects. The important fact to remember when using magnitude is that the system goes backward: the larger the magnitude, the fainter the object you are observing.
Example \(\PageIndex{1}\): The Magnitude Equation
Even scientists can’t calculate fifth roots in their heads, so astronomers have summarized the above discussion in an equation to help calculate the difference in brightness for stars with different magnitudes. If m 1 and m 2 are the magnitudes of two stars, then we can calculate the ratio of their brightness \(\left( \frac{b_2}{b_1} \right)\) using this equation:
\[m_1−m_2=2.5 \log \left( \frac{b_2}{b_1} \right) \text{ or } \frac{b_2}{b_1}=2.5^{m_1−m_2} \nonumber\]
Here is another way to write this equation:
\[\frac{b_2}{b_1}= \left( 100^{0.2} \right)^{m_1−m_2} \nonumber\]
Let’s do a real example, just to show how this works. Imagine that an astronomer has discovered something special about a dim star (magnitude 8.5), and she wants to tell her students how much dimmer the star is than Sirius. Star 1 in the equation will be our dim star and star 2 will be Sirius (magnitude -1.5).
- Answer
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In that case:
\[\begin{aligned} \frac{b_2}{b_1} & = \left( 100^{0.2} \right)^{8.5−(−1.5)} =\left( 100^{0.2} \right)^{10} \\ ~ & =(100)^2=100×100=10,000 \end{aligned} \nonumber\]
Exercise \(\PageIndex{1}\)
It is a common misconception that Polaris (magnitude 2.0) is the brightest star in the sky, but, as we saw, that distinction actually belongs to Sirius (magnitude −1.5). How does Sirius’ apparent brightness compare to that of Polaris?
- Answer
-
\[ \frac{b_{\text{Sirius}}}{b_{\text{Polaris}}} = \left( 100^{0.2} \right)^{2.0−(−1.5)} = \left( 100^{0.2} \right)^{3.5} =100^{0.7}=25 \nonumber\]
(Hint: If you only have a basic calculator, you may wonder how to take 100 to the 0.7th power. But this is something you can ask Google to do. Google now accepts mathematical questions and will answer them. So try it for yourself. Ask Google, “What is 100 to the 0.7th power?”)
Our calculation shows that Sirius’ apparent brightness is 25 times greater than Polaris’ apparent brightness.
Other Units of Brightness
Although the magnitude scale is still used for visual astronomy, it is not used at all in newer branches of the field. In radio astronomy, for example, no equivalent of the magnitude system has been defined. Rather, radio astronomers measure the amount of energy being collected each second by each square meter of a radio telescope and express the brightness of each source in terms of, for example, watts per square meter.
Similarly, most researchers in the fields of infrared, X-ray, and gamma-ray astronomy use energy per area per second rather than magnitudes to express the results of their measurements. Nevertheless, astronomers in all fields are careful to distinguish between the luminosity of the source (even when that luminosity is all in X-rays) and the amount of energy that happens to reach us on Earth. After all, the luminosity is a really important characteristic that tells us a lot about the object in question, whereas the energy that reaches Earth is an accident of cosmic geography.
To make the comparison among stars easy, in this text, we avoid the use of magnitudes as much as possible and will express the luminosity of other stars in terms of the Sun’s luminosity. For example, the luminosity of Sirius is 25 times that of the Sun. We use the symbol L Sun to denote the Sun’s luminosity; hence, that of Sirius can be written as 25 L Sun .
Summary
The total energy emitted per second by a star is called its luminosity. How bright a star looks from the perspective of Earth is its apparent brightness. The apparent brightness of a star depends on both its luminosity and its distance from Earth. Thus, the determination of apparent brightness and measurement of the distance to a star provide enough information to calculate its luminosity. The apparent brightnesses of stars are often expressed in terms of magnitudes, which is an old system based on how human vision interprets relative light intensity.
Glossary
- apparent brightness
- a measure of the amount of light received by Earth from a star or other object—that is, how bright an object appears in the sky, as contrasted with its luminosity
- luminosity
- the rate at which a star or other object emits electromagnetic energy into space; the total power output of an object
- magnitude
- an older system of measuring the amount of light we receive from a star or other luminous object; the larger the magnitude, the less radiation we receive from the object
Contributors and Attributions
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Andrew Fraknoi (Foothill College), David Morrison (NASA Ames Research Center), Sidney C. Wolff (National Optical Astronomy Observatory) with many contributing authors. Textbook content produced by OpenStax College is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 license. Download for free at https://openstax.org/details/books/astronomy ).


1.31: Tips for the Listening Exam
To succeed on listening exams you need to do more than just listen to the overall sound of a piece. You need to dig down into the music with your ears and hear what is going on in the music. To do this you should be constantly asking yourself the question: what am I hearing? Can you discern the texture, the instrumentation, the tempo, the form, and the melodic style? Often there will be one single characteristic that will give away the genre, or at least enable you to eliminate all but a couple of possibilities. This of course assumes that you have done your homework and know what to be listening for. This document is designed to help you train your ear to listen for some of those telltale characteristics.
You will need to study the characteristics of each piece that will enable you to recognize that piece when you hear them. Often it’s best to learn how to identify the genre first. Every genre has certain general characteristics. If you can recognize them, that will often make identification of the specific title and composer much easier.
In most of the periods of history there is a clear dividing line that will enable you to eliminate around half of the genres you’ve listened to: vocal vs. instrumental. For example, later in the semester when we study the Classical period, if you hear someone singing you know the piece cannot be a symphony or string quartet. In the Medieval and Renaissance periods, however, there just wasn’t much instrumental music that was written down. Because of that, we don’t have the benefit of grouping our pieces by whether they are instrumental or vocal—all but two of them involve singing. That said, those two strictly instrumental works will stand out so much that they are probably a good place to start.
Remember, the question that should always be in your mind during a listening exam is “what am I hearing?”
I Hear Instruments Only—No Singing
There are only two pieces you could be listening to. Both are examples of anonymously composed Renaissance dance music and so only the title will change. I’ve listed the title, composer, and genre information for both pieces. Below that we’ll delve into what you should listen for in order to tell them apart.
- Pavane by Anonymous; a renaissance dance
- Galliard by Anonymous; a renaissance dance
There are two clear characteristics to listen for when trying to tell which one of the dances you’re hearing: meter and instrumentation. Meter refers to the organization of the beats. As you tap your foot to the beat you’ll notice that some beats are stronger than others – important moments in the music will seem to line up with those stronger beats. Try to determine whether the beats are grouped “strong-weak-strong-weak” (duple meter) or “strong-weak-weak-strong-weak-weak” (triple). Pavane is duple and Galliard is triple. Triple meter dances tend to have a more lively and fun quality to them, while duple meter dances tend to be more stately and serious sounding. This is certainly the case with these two pieces so listen for the emotion of the piece as another clue to the meter. Next, each dance is performed by different instruments. Pavane begins with a hand drum introduction. Then a group of instruments play through the dance’s melody once. Most of these instruments are relatively loud winds: shawms (early oboes) and sackbuts (early trombones). This makes for a fairly strong sound. Next, the tune is played through again by a vielle (early violin) with lute (early guitar) accompaniment. Then the initial group plays through the piece one more time, the hand drum keeping a steady beat the entire time. By contrast, Galliard is performed entirely by softer flutes with a tambourine providing an underlying rhythmic accompaniment.
I Hear Singing and Instruments
Once again, there are only two possible pieces you could be listening to. Both are pieces of medieval secular music and both feature singing and polyphonic texture. However, they are easily distinguished by the instrumentation (the various voices and instruments that perform the piece). Because there is a little more to describe, I’ll list each piece separately.
- A Chantar M’er by Beatriz, Countess of Dia; a troubadour song. Troubadours and trobairitz were solo artists so this piece features a single, female vocalist and two instruments, namely a vielle and a lute. This is the only piece on the exam sung entirely by a solo female voice. In the beginning the vielle and the singer take turns presenting the melody and the lute plays with the singer only. On the final verse of the text the violin plays the tune simultaneously with the singer. Remember that the Countess was writing around 1175AD and polyphony was in its early stages at this time. It is not surprising that the texture of this piece, while polyphonic, is quite simple. The only thing Beatriz wrote down was the melody that was to be sung (and in this performance played by the vielle also). Any additional lines were improvised on the spot, which is one reason they were so simple. This provides a contrast with the later chanson. Chansons evolved as a combination of the tradition of the troubadours’ secular songs and the more complex polyphony that had developed in the composition of sacred masses and motets. It’s also worth mentioning that we really have no idea how these pieces would have been performed in their day. In this performance, the musicians are clearly using a regular beat, though it speeds up and slows down somewhat. However, this is not something indicated in the written music that has survived. It is entirely possible that these pieces would have been performed without a steady pulse, much like a Gregorian chant. I have heard performances of this piece that take that approach. So while you should focus on the specifics of this performance as you prepare for the listening exam, keep in mind that there are many possible was to perform the piece since there is no way to know what Beatriz intended.
- Ce Moys de May by Guillaume Dufay; a chanson. As was just mentioned, this piece was composed much later—roughly 250 years after A Chantar M’er . By this time polyphonic composition had become more sophisticated. This piece has three composed melodic lines, meaning nothing is improvised, and they are each quite active and involved. This more complex polyphony is one way to recognize this piece as compared to the troubadour song. The lively tempo and active lines will help you distinguish this piece from A Chantar M’er , which again is the only other piece with both instruments and voices. The tambourine is a pretty big clue as well. As with the troubadour song, however, there is a lot we don’t know about the composer’s intent. Did he mean for all three lines to be sung or just the highest part? In our performance all three lines are both sung and played by instruments, but if you search this piece on Spotify you’ll find other performances where a solo singer performs the top line and the lower lines are played by instruments.
I Hear Singing Only—No Instruments
We’ll need to find other ways to narrow down the possibilities: there are nine pieces that are performed by voices alone. I think the best characteristic to zero in on during the Medieval and Renaissance periods is texture. In some cases, such as monophony, texture will give you the genre, namely Gregorian Chant. In some others it will greatly narrow down the possible genre choices. Again, ask yourself “what am I hearing?”
Monophony
There are only two monophonic pieces on this exam. If you hear monophonic texture it can only be one of the two chants. Remember that monophonic texture means that everyone is singing the same melodic line and there’s nothing else going on in the music. Imagine if we all sang “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” in class. Even though there would be a lot of us singing, we’d all be on the same part or line of music. That’s what monophony is, and all chant features this simplest of textures. There are only two chants (and therefore only two examples of monophony) in your listening so if you can pick up on the texture you can narrow it down to two pieces: Gradual Viderunt Omnes and O Rubor Sanguinis . From there, listen to who is performing. They are listed below with some characteristics to listen for that will help you tell them apart.
- Gradual Viderunt Omnes by Anonymous; a gregorian chant. On our recording, this chant is sung by men. You’ll recall that in the monasteries, all-male establishments, these chants would have been sung on an almost hourly basis. O Rubor Sanguinis, on the other hand, is sung by women.
- O Rubor Sanguinis by Hildegard of Bingen; a gregorian chant. Because Hildegard of Bingen established an abbey, a place where the nuns lived and worked, this chant would have been sung by a female chorus just as it is in the performance on our Spotify playlist. That will also make it easy to distinguish from Viderunt Omnes .
Polyphony
If you hear a piece where some of the lines are held out and other lines are quite active, then the texture you are hearing is polyphony. There are seven pieces on the listening exam that are entirely vocal (no instruments) and polyphonic. Each of these has distinctive characteristics that will enable you to identify the piece on a listening exam if you know what to listen for. Let’s start with two examples of medieval polyphony.
-
Viderunt Omnes
by Perotinus; organum.
When polyphonic texture first began to be used in sacred music it was called organum and it was quite basic. It began with two parallel melodic lines that moved in lockstep with each other. Gradually composers began to experiment with ways to make this more interesting, and some of the most significant developments took place in Paris at the Cathedral of Notre Dame.
Viderunt Omnes
is Notre Dame school organum, and it has a very distinctive sound. The low part holds out the notes of a pre-existing Gregorian chant for a really, really long time. This creates a drone over which higher parts were composed. These upper parts were very active and used a repeated rhythmic pattern. Because the notes of the original chant are being stretched out, that means the text proceeds very slowly. The upper voice is therefore singing lots of pitches on each syllable of text. We call that a melisma. The long melismas in the upper voice of Notre Dame style organum constitute another really obvious characteristic. No other polyphonic genre from this period has such long melismas.
I should mention that at about the 7:08 mark, the lower voices become more active. This is a brief exception to what you generally hear in Notre Dame style organum so I won’t use that portion of the piece on the exam. If you get Perotinus’ Viderunt Omnes on your exam, the musical excerpt will feature the long, droning low notes for which Perotinus is generally known. Along those same lines, you’ll notice that at times this piece reverts back to the original chant. Organum was the practice of embellishing monophonic Gregorian chant with sections of more musically interesting polyphony. When we use the word organum we are referring to those polyphonic sections, so on an exam the organum excerpt won’t be taken from the chant sections of the overall piece. That would be a trick question and I don’t do trick questions on listening exams. You’ll hear the characteristics you need to make the identification. - Kyrie from Messe de Nostre Dame by Guillaume de Machaut; mass. Like Viderunt Omnes , this “Kyrie” from Machaut’s most famous mass features alternating sections of monophony and polyphony. Just as in the organum, any exam excerpt will come from the polyphonic sections as they are what constitute the most historically significant portions of this composition. Unlike the organum, however, the pre-existing chant melody on which this piece is based is not held out to nearly the same degree. For this reason the melismas in this piece are not nearly as long as the ones in the Notre Dame organum. You can hopefully hear how angular and dissonant medieval polyphony is compared to that of the Renaissance. So if you hear the clashing sounds and irregular rhythms of the middle ages without the long drones of organum, you’re hearing this Kyrie.
Next let’s examine two secular pieces from the Renaissance period. Both are madrigals that are clearly meant for entertainment at court and that makes them stand out. The madrigal genre developed in Italy and the first piece is an example of the Italian madrigal. The second is from England. The English fell in love with Italian madrigals and then over time adapted the genre into something uniquely English. Both pieces make use of word painting, but of course are sung in their respective languages.
- Ecco Mormorar L’onde by Claudio Monteverdi; a madrigal. The madrigal genre arose out of a desire to more fully express the imagery and emotion found in poetry. In this text the poet describes a peaceful seaside landscape at sunrise. Monteverdi composed music that enables us to hear the murmuring waves (that’s what “ecco mormorar l’onde” means), feel the gentle laughing breezes, and watch the glowing sunrise (represented in the poem by the Roman goddess Aurora). Monteverdi is so skilled at writing expressive music that you’ll almost certainly recognize the piece by the fact that it makes you feel the way you would if you were standing on the peaceful shore at dawn. However, it’s also worth noting that because of this desire for expression the tempo changes to fit the text. In the beginning, the tempo is moderately slow as we hear the murmuring waters. When the text talks about the laughing breezes the tempo becomes faster. As the sun rises the polyphony becomes imitative. Imitation was common in sacred music at the time so it provides an element of majesty for the arrival of the goddess of the dawn.
- “As Vesta Was” from Latmos Hill Descending by Thomas Weelkes; an English madrigal. The genre of this piece really stands out. First of all, it’s the only piece in English. I wouldn’t rely too much on that as it’s easy to get the language confused in a polyphonic texture (everyone sings different words at the same time), but it is a characteristic that sets it apart from all the others. Second, it is the fastest, happiest sounding piece on the test. That’s really what English madrigals were all about—fun and frolic. In case you’re worried that you might get this mixed up with the Medieval chanson Ce Moys de May which is also somewhat lively, just remember that our English madrigal is sung a cappella, meaning there is no instrumental accompaniment, while in Ce Moys instruments play along with the voices.
Now the last three polyphonic pieces are probably the most difficult to distinguish as they are all examples of the Renaissance a cappella style of sacred music. The good news is that if you hear rich, flowing, serene Renaissance polyphony it can really only be one of these three so you’ve narrowed your choices considerably. We’ll start with Josquin’s motet.
- Ave Maria by Josquin des Prez; motet. Josquin had a taste for very clear sections, each section sounding somewhat different than the one before. Some sections feature imitation, meaning a polyphonic texture in which a melodic idea is repeated in every voice part successively. Other sections feature what I like to call dialogue – an imitative texture in which two parts are woven together in a long phrase which is then imitated by two different parts. Finally there are sections of the Josquin motet which are homophonic—a texture in which all the parts move together. This makes the text very clear as everyone is singing the same syllable of text at the same time. Josquin liked the contrast and variety that these different sections provided. Palestrina, on the other hand, strove for greater consistency—his music just seems to flow continuously from beginning to end. If you hear serene Renaissance polyphony with contrasting sections you it can’t be one of the Palestrina pieces. It must be Josquin’s motet, Ave Maria .
- “Gloria” from Missa Papae Marcelli by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina; mass. This movement from the Missa Papae Marcelli (or Pope Marcellus Mass) not only avoids contrasting sections, it almost entirely avoids imitation. While there are six voice parts, each part moves in sync with the others. This means that everyone is, for the most part, singing the same words at the same time. This is called homophonic texture. While the Josquin piece has some short sections of homophony, the fact that the Gloria is consistently homophonic provides a clear difference between the two that you can hear.
- “Agnus Dei” from Missa Papae Marcelli by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina; mass. The Agnus Dei is as consistent in its texture as the Gloria, but the texture is imitative polyphony. However, the imitation in this piece is less obvious than in the Josquin piece because Palestrina made sure that the listener would be able to follow the text. He does this in two ways: the use of long melismas and keeping each phrase of text separate (e.g. the 2nd phrase “qui tollis peccata mundi” doesn’t begin until each voice has completed the 1st phrase “Agnus Dei”). This is helpful for us as those long melismas provide a clear contrast with the Gloria which is much more syllabic. It also means that the Agnus Dei has an even more smooth and flowing quality than the Gloria. So basically if you have narrowed your choice down to these three pieces, and you hear clearly contrasting sections within the piece, it must be Josquin’s motet. If you hear a fairly consistent texture throughout the piece then you’re hearing Palestrina’s famous mass, and you need to then figure out which of the two movements it is. At that point listen for texture (homophony = Gloria, imitative polyphony = Agnus Dei) and overall text setting (syllabic = Gloria, melismatic = Agnus Dei).
I hope this has been helpful in training your ears for what to listen to. Please don’t think that you can read these tips once and then recognize these characteristics during the listening exam without any additional preparation. It takes a lot of practice to hear some of these things, especially some of the details that are not immediately apparent on the surface of the music. You’ll want to familiarize yourself thoroughly with the contents of this sheet so that you’re not wasting time looking things up during the exam. One thing I do suggest you look at during the exam is this final table below. During the exam, double check this list after you’ve selected your answer (title, composer, and genre) for each question. That won’t cost you much time but it will help prevent mistakes where you accidentally clicked on the wrong composer or genre for a piece you recognized. Good luck on the test!
Titles, Composers, & Genres for the Medieval & Renaissance Music Exam
| Title | Composer | Genre |
| Pavane | Anonymous | Renaissance Dance |
| Galliard | Anonymous | Renaissance Dance |
| A Chantar M’er | Beatriz, Countess of Dia | Troubadour Song |
| Ce Moys de May | Guillaume Dufay | Chanson |
| Gradual Viderunt Omnes | Anonymous | Gregorian Chant |
| O Rubor Sanguinis | Hildegard of Bingen | Gregorian Chant |
| Viderunt Omnes | Perontinus | Organum |
| Kyrie from Messe de Nostre Dame | Perotinus | Mass |
| Ecco Mormorar L’onde | Claudio Monteverdi | Madrigal |
| As Vesta was from Latmos Hill Descending | Thomas Weelkes | English Madrigal |
| Ave Maria Josquin | Des Prez | Motet |
| Gloria from Missa Papae Marcelli | Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina | Mass |
| Agnus Dei from Missa Papae Marcelli | Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina | Mass |
Contributors and Attributions
- Authored by : Elliott Jones. Provided by : Santa Ana College. Located at : http://www.sac.edu . License : CC BY: Attribution


7.2: What Does Probability Mean?
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Let’s start with the first of these questions. What is “probability”? It might seem surprising to you, but while statisticians and mathematicians (mostly) agree on what the rules of probability are, there’s much less of a consensus on what the word really means . It seems weird because we’re all very comfortable using words like “chance”, “likely”, “possible” and “probable”, and it doesn’t seem like it should be a very difficult question to answer. If you had to explain “probability” to a five year old, you could do a pretty good job.
So I’ll have a go at it. Let’s suppose I want to bet on a soccer game between two teams of robots, Arduino Arsenal and C Milan . After thinking about it, I decide that there is an 80% probability that Arduino Arsenal winning. What do I mean by that? Here are three possibilities…
- They’re robot teams, so I can make them play over and over again, and if I did that, Arduino Arsenal would win 8 out of every 10 games on average.
- For any given game, I would only agree that betting on this game is only “fair” if a $1 bet on C Milan gives a $5 payoff (i.e. I get my $1 back plus a $4 reward for being correct), as would a $4 bet on Arduino Arsenal (i.e., my $4 bet plus a $1 reward).
- My subjective “belief” or “confidence” in an Arduino Arsenal victory is four times as strong as my belief in a C Milan victory.
Each of these seems sensible. However they’re not identical, and not every statistician would endorse all of them. The reason is that there are different statistical ideologies (yes, really!) and depending on which one you subscribe to, you might say that some of those statements are meaningless or irrelevant. In this section, I give a brief introduction the two main approaches that exist in the literature. These are by no means the only approaches, but they’re the two big ones.
frequentist view
The first of the two major approaches to probability, and the more dominant one in statistics, is referred to as the frequentist view , and it defines probability as a long-run frequency . Suppose we were to try flipping a fair coin, over and over again. By definition, this is a coin that has P(H)=0.5. What might we observe? One possibility is that the first 20 flips might look like this:
T,H,H,H,H,T,T,H,H,H,H,T,H,H,T,T,T,T,T,H
In this case 11 of these 20 coin flips (55%) came up heads. Now suppose that I’d been keeping a running tally of the number of heads (which I’ll call N H ) that I’ve seen, across the first N flips, and calculate the proportion of heads N H /N every time. Here’s what I’d get (I did literally flip coins to produce this!):
| number.of.flips | number.of.heads | proportion |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0 | 0.00 |
| 2 | 1 | 0.50 |
| 3 | 2 | 0.67 |
| 4 | 3 | 0.75 |
| 5 | 4 | 0.80 |
| 6 | 4 | 0.67 |
| 7 | 4 | 0.57 |
| 8 | 5 | 0.63 |
| 9 | 6 | 0.67 |
| 10 | 7 | 0.70 |
| 11 | 8 | 0.73 |
| 12 | 8 | 0.67 |
| 13 | 9 | 0.69 |
| 14 | 10 | 0.71 |
| 15 | 10 | 0.67 |
| 16 | 10 | 0.63 |
| 17 | 10 | 0.59 |
| 18 | 10 | 0.56 |
| 19 | 10 | 0.53 |
| 20 | 11 | 0.55 |
Notice that at the start of the sequence, the proportion of heads fluctuates wildly, starting at .00 and rising as high as .80. Later on, one gets the impression that it dampens out a bit, with more and more of the values actually being pretty close to the “right” answer of .50. This is the frequentist definition of probability in a nutshell: flip a fair coin over and over again, and as N grows large (approaches infinity, denoted N→∞), the proportion of heads will converge to 50%. There are some subtle technicalities that the mathematicians care about, but qualitatively speaking, that’s how the frequentists define probability. Unfortunately, I don’t have an infinite number of coins, or the infinite patience required to flip a coin an infinite number of times. However, I do have a computer, and computers excel at mindless repetitive tasks.  Actually, I did it four times, just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. The results are shown in Figure 9.1. As you can see, the proportion of observed heads eventually stops fluctuating, and settles down; when it does, the number at which it finally settles is the true probability of heads.
The frequentist definition of probability has some desirable characteristics. Firstly, it is objective: the probability of an event is necessarily grounded in the world. The only way that probability statements can make sense is if they refer to (a sequence of) events that occur in the physical universe. 142 Secondly, it is unambiguous: any two people watching the same sequence of events unfold, trying to calculate the probability of an event, must inevitably come up with the same answer. However, it also has undesirable characteristics. Firstly, infinite sequences don’t exist in the physical world. Suppose you picked up a coin from your pocket and started to flip it. Every time it lands, it impacts on the ground. Each impact wears the coin down a bit; eventually, the coin will be destroyed. So, one might ask whether it really makes sense to pretend that an “infinite” sequence of coin flips is even a meaningful concept, or an objective one. We can’t say that an “infinite sequence” of events is a real thing in the physical universe, because the physical universe doesn’t allow infinite anything. More seriously, the frequentist definition has a narrow scope. There are lots of things out there that human beings are happy to assign probability to in everyday language, but cannot (even in theory) be mapped onto a hypothetical sequence of events. For instance, if a meteorologist comes on TV and says, “the probability of rain in Adelaide on 2 November 2048 is 60%” we humans are happy to accept this. But it’s not clear how to define this in frequentist terms. There’s only one city of Adelaide, and only 2 November 2048. There’s no infinite sequence of events here, just a once-off thing. Frequentist probability genuinely forbids us from making probability statements about a single event. From the frequentist perspective, it will either rain tomorrow or it will not; there is no “probability” that attaches to a single non-repeatable event. Now, it should be said that there are some very clever tricks that frequentists can use to get around this. One possibility is that what the meteorologist means is something like this: “There is a category of days for which I predict a 60% chance of rain; if we look only across those days for which I make this prediction, then on 60% of those days it will actually rain”. It’s very weird and counterintuitive to think of it this way, but you do see frequentists do this sometimes. And it will come up later in this book (see Section 10.5).
Bayesian view
The Bayesian view of probability is often called the subjectivist view, and it is a minority view among statisticians, but one that has been steadily gaining traction for the last several decades. There are many flavours of Bayesianism, making hard to say exactly what “the” Bayesian view is. The most common way of thinking about subjective probability is to define the probability of an event as the degree of belief that an intelligent and rational agent assigns to that truth of that event. From that perspective, probabilities don’t exist in the world, but rather in the thoughts and assumptions of people and other intelligent beings. However, in order for this approach to work, we need some way of operationalising “degree of belief”. One way that you can do this is to formalise it in terms of “rational gambling”, though there are many other ways. Suppose that I believe that there’s a 60% probability of rain tomorrow. If someone offers me a bet: if it rains tomorrow, then I win $5, but if it doesn’t rain then I lose $5. Clearly, from my perspective, this is a pretty good bet. On the other hand, if I think that the probability of rain is only 40%, then it’s a bad bet to take. Thus, we can operationalise the notion of a “subjective probability” in terms of what bets I’m willing to accept.
What are the advantages and disadvantages to the Bayesian approach? The main advantage is that it allows you to assign probabilities to any event you want to. You don’t need to be limited to those events that are repeatable. The main disadvantage (to many people) is that we can’t be purely objective – specifying a probability requires us to specify an entity that has the relevant degree of belief.  To many people this is uncomfortable: it seems to make probability arbitrary. While the Bayesian approach does require that the agent in question be rational (i.e., obey the rules of probability), it does allow everyone to have their own beliefs; I can believe the coin is fair and you don’t have to, even though we’re both rational. The frequentist view doesn’t allow any two observers to attribute different probabilities to the same event: when that happens, then at least one of them must be wrong. The Bayesian view does not prevent this from occurring. Two observers with different background knowledge can legitimately hold different beliefs about the same event. In short, where the frequentist view is sometimes considered to be too narrow (forbids lots of things that that we want to assign probabilities to), the Bayesian view is sometimes thought to be too broad (allows too many differences between observers).
What’s the difference? And who is right?
Now that you’ve seen each of these two views independently, it’s useful to make sure you can compare the two. Go back to the hypothetical robot soccer game at the start of the section. What do you think a frequentist and a Bayesian would say about these three statements? Which statement would a frequentist say is the correct definition of probability? Which one would a Bayesian do? Would some of these statements be meaningless to a frequentist or a Bayesian? If you’ve understood the two perspectives, you should have some sense of how to answer those questions.
Okay, assuming you understand the different, you might be wondering which of them is right ? Honestly, I don’t know that there is a right answer. As far as I can tell there’s nothing mathematically incorrect about the way frequentists think about sequences of events, and there’s nothing mathematically incorrect about the way that Bayesians define the beliefs of a rational agent. In fact, when you dig down into the details, Bayesians and frequentists actually agree about a lot of things. Many frequentist methods lead to decisions that Bayesians agree a rational agent would make. Many Bayesian methods have very good frequentist properties.
For the most part, I’m a pragmatist so I’ll use any statistical method that I trust. As it turns out, that makes me prefer Bayesian methods, for reasons I’ll explain towards the end of the book, but I’m not fundamentally opposed to frequentist methods. Not everyone is quite so relaxed. For instance, consider Sir Ronald Fisher, one of the towering figures of 20th century statistics and a vehement opponent to all things Bayesian, whose paper on the mathematical foundations of statistics referred to Bayesian probability as “an impenetrable jungle [that] arrests progress towards precision of statistical concepts” Fisher (1922b). Or the psychologist Paul Meehl, who suggests that relying on frequentist methods could turn you into “a potent but sterile intellectual rake who leaves in his merry path a long train of ravished maidens but no viable scientific offspring” Meehl (1967). The history of statistics, as you might gather, is not devoid of entertainment.
In any case, while I personally prefer the Bayesian view, the majority of statistical analyses are based on the frequentist approach. My reasoning is pragmatic: the goal of this book is to cover roughly the same territory as a typical undergraduate stats class in psychology, and if you want to understand the statistical tools used by most psychologists, you’ll need a good grasp of frequentist methods. I promise you that this isn’t wasted effort. Even if you end up wanting to switch to the Bayesian perspective, you really should read through at least one book on the “orthodox” frequentist view. And since R is the most widely used statistical language for Bayesians, you might as well read a book that uses R. Besides, I won’t completely ignore the Bayesian perspective. Every now and then I’ll add some commentary from a Bayesian point of view, and I’ll revisit the topic in more depth in Chapter 17.


15.15: Screening Applicants
- Describe techniques to help screen a potential employee.
The objective of using various screening techniques and levels of screening is to filter out candidates that either don’t meet the stated minimum requirements or aren’t a good fit for cultural or other reasons (i.e., job realities or salary expectations). Screening is simply a process of elimination. The goal is to ensure that those candidates who are invited to participate in a face-to-face interview are, in fact, highly qualified.
There are five primary techniques for helping to screen potential candidates that also represent phases in the screening process:
- Evaluation by Association: Use the posting location—i.e., an industry or professional association-specific job site—as an initial screen.
- Application: Conduct an initial assessment based on review of a candidate’s cover letter, resume and application. This may also include review of a candidate’s business (i.e., LinkedIn) and/or social networking (i.e., Facebook or Twitter) profiles. To avoid investing time assessing a candidate that isn’t viable, incorporate pre-screening questions that require the candidate to attest that he or she meets the stated minimum criteria. In this phase, the objective is to eliminate candidates that don’t meet the basic requirements for the position based on fundamental factors including minimum experience and education, salary expectations and/or willingness to relocate or meet work schedule requirements, if applicable.
- Assessment: Conduct a preliminary assessment of skills. This can be done in conjunction with or subsequent to the application review process. Depending on position requirements, a more in-depth assessment of a candidate’s level of skill and aptitude may be appropriate.
- Screening Interview: An initial telephone interview is a second level of active screening that’s used to assess the candidate’s objective and motivation, relevant education and experience and to get a sense for the candidate as a person. In the course of approximately twenty to thirty minutes, an interviewer can confirm application and resume details and assess a range of soft skills—for example, active listening and communication—as well as engagement and overall level of poise and professionalism. The objective is to eliminate candidates that don’t warrant the time and cost of an in-person interview or in-depth skills assessment.
- External Verification: Verify stated educational qualifications and check references.
Using these techniques in combination with an online application system allows companies to reduce the time and costs of a paper-based recruiting and screening process and may reduce liability associated with compliance reporting and record retention.
Check out SHRM’s Guide to Application Tracking Systems.


What types of college degrees or certifications can I pursue?
What is the difference between majors and minors?
How do preprofessional programs differ from other majors?
Do some majors have special requirements beyond regular coursework?
To set goals for your academic and career path, you must first have an understanding of the options available for you to pursue and the requirements you will need to meet. The next section provides an overview of academic programs and college degrees that are common among many colleges and universities in the United States. Please note that each institution will have its own specific options and requirements, so the intention of this section is both to help you understand your opportunities and to familiarize you with language that colleges typically use to describe these opportunities. After reviewing this section, you should be better able to formulate specific questions to ask at your school or be better prepared to navigate and search your own college’s website.
Types of Degrees
Whereas in most states high school attendance through the 12th grade is mandatory, or
compulsory
, a college degree may be pursued voluntarily. There are fields that do not require a degree. Bookkeeping, computer repair, massage therapy, and childcare are all fields where certification programs—tracks to study a specific subject or career without need of a complete degree—may be enough.
However, many individuals will find that an associate’s or bachelor’s degree is a requirement to enter their desired career field. According to United States Census data published in 2017, more than one-third of the adult population in the country has completed at least a bachelor’s degree, so this may be the degree that is most familiar to you.
Not every job requires a bachelor’s degree, and some require even higher degrees or additional specialized certifications. As you develop your academic plan, it is important to research your field of interest to see what requirements might be necessary or most desirable.
Table 4.3 Example Jobs by Minimum Degree Qualification2
Require Associate’s Degrees
Require Bachelor’s Degrees
Require Additional Certifications
Require Graduate Degrees
Radiology Technician
Nurse
Public School Teacher
Lawyer
Dental Hygienist
Computer/Information Systems Manager
Accountant
College or University Professor
Web Developer
Airline Pilot
Financial Advisor
Pharmacist
Graphic Designer
Electrical Engineer
Marriage and Family Therapist
Automotive Technician
Construction Manager
Occupational Therapist
To distinguish between the types of degrees, it is useful to understand that courses are often assigned a number of credits, sometimes called
semester hours
as well. Credits relate to the calculated hours during a course that a student spends interacting with the instructor and/or the course material through class time, laboratory time, online discussions, homework, etc. Courses at all degree levels are typically assigned a value of one to six credits, although students often need to complete a developmental education course or two, often in English or math. These requirements, which cost as much as typical college courses but do not grant college credit, are meant to provide some basic information students may have missed in high school but that will be necessary to keep up in college-level coursework.
The minimum or maximum number of credits required to graduate with different degrees varies by state or institution, but approximate minimum numbers of credits are explained below. Keep in mind that although a minimum number of credits must be completed to get a certain degree, total credits completed is not the only consideration for graduation—you must take your credits or courses in particular subjects indicated by your college.
To determine your best degree option, it might make sense to do some research to determine what kind of career you’re most interested in pursuing. Visit your campus career center to meet with a counselor to guide you through this process. These services are free to students—similar services can be pricey once you’ve graduated, so take advantage. There are other tools online you can investigate.
GET CONNECTED
These free, online self-assessments help you narrow down your choices.
MyPlan
identifies your motivations by having you rank different aspects of work, then creating a ranked list of different possible jobs.
MAPP Test
helps you determine what you love to do and what you don’t love to do and then creates a list of jobs that might be a good fit for you.
The Career Cluster Interest Survey
is a quick tool to let you create career clusters based on personal qualities and school subjects and activities you especially enjoy.
Associate’s Degrees
To enter an associate’s degree program, students must have a high school diploma or its equivalent. Associate’s degree programs may be intended to help students enter a technical career field, such as automotive technology, graphic design, or entry-level nursing in some states. Such technical programs may be considered an Associate of Applied Arts (AAA) or Associate of Applied Science (AAS) degrees, though there are other titles as well.
Other associate’s degree programs are intended to prepare a student with the necessary coursework to transfer into a bachelor’s degree program upon graduation. These transfer-focused programs usually require similar general education and foundational courses that a student would need in the first half of a bachelor’s degree program. Transfer-focused associate’s degrees may be called Associate of Arts (AA) or Associate of Science (AS), or other titles, depending on the focus of study.
An associate’s degree is typically awarded when a student has completed a minimum of 60 credits, approximately 20 courses, meeting the requirements of a specific degree. Some technical associate’s degrees, such as nursing, may require additional credits in order to meet requirements for special certifications. You may find that your college or university does not offer associate’s degrees. Most associate’s degrees are offered by community or junior colleges, or by career and technical colleges.
ACTIVITY
What to Ask
If you’re planning your associate’s degree, here are some specific questions you may want to research.
If you intend to enter a technical career that requires special certification:
Does your college prepare you to take a certification exam, or will you be meeting those requirements through your courses?
Does your college have any special internship or employment placement arrangements with employers to help you gain experience or get started in the field?
If you intend to transfer upon graduation:
Is your college regionally accredited?
Does your college have any special transfer agreements for guaranteed transfer of credits or perhaps for discounted tuition?
Does your state have special transfer agreements or requirements that make it easier to transfer to colleges or universities within the same state?
Bachelor’s Degrees
When someone generally mentions “a college degree,” they are often referring to the bachelor’s degree, or baccalaureate degree. Because it takes four years of full-time attendance to complete a bachelor’s degree, this degree is also referred to as a “four-year degree.” Similar to an associate’s degree, to enter a bachelor’s degree program a student must have completed a high school diploma or its equivalent. Both associate’s degrees and bachelor’s degrees are considered
undergraduate degrees
, thus students working toward these degrees are often called
undergraduates
. A student with an associate’s degree may transfer that degree to meet some (usually half) of the requirements of a bachelor’s degree; however, completion of an associate’s degree is not necessary for entry into a bachelor’s degree program.
A bachelor’s degree is usually completed with a minimum of 120 credits, or approximately 40 courses. Some specialized degree programs may require more credits. (If an associate’s degree has been transferred, the number of credits from that degree usually counts toward the 120 credits. For example, if an associate’s degree was 60 credits, then a student must take 60 additional credits to achieve their bachelor’s degree.)
Bachelor of Arts (BA), Bachelor of Science (BS), Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN), and Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) are the most popular degree titles at this level and differ primarily in their focus on exploring a broader range of subject areas, as with a BA, versus focusing in more depth on a particular subject, as with a BS, BSN, or BFA. Regardless of whether a student is pursuing a BA, BS, BSN, or BFA, each of these programs requires a balance of credits or courses in different subject areas. In the United States, a bachelor’s degree comprises courses from three categories:
general education
courses,
major
courses, and
electives
. A fourth category of courses would be those required for a minor, which we will discuss in more detail in the section on majors and minors.
General Education
General education, also called
core curriculum
, is a group of courses that are often set as requirements by your state or by your individual college. These courses provide you with a foundation of knowledge across a breadth of fields and are also intended to help you further develop college-level critical-thinking and problem-solving abilities. You may be able to select courses from a general education menu of courses available at your institution. More than half of your bachelor’s degree program is likely made up of general education courses.
Table 4.4 General Education Categories. While your college may use different labels, general education courses often include a selection of courses from these categories.
English composition
Humanities courses that study our beliefs and the expression of our beliefs such as literature, philosophy, politics, art, or religious studies
Social science courses that study our behavior such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, or economics
Laboratory science courses such as biology, chemistry, physics, and environmental science
Mathematics
Technology or computer skills
Foreign language, diversity, or global studies courses that provide introduction to different cultures or global social issues and promote cultural awareness
College success or first-year experience courses that provide introduction to your specific institution, discuss college-level expectations and skills, and/or provide assistance with academic and career planning
Major Courses
Major courses are courses in your field of interest and provide you with the foundational knowledge required for further study in that field or with the skills necessary to enter your career. Some schools may refer to these as
career studies
courses. Major courses often have a series of
prerequisites
, or courses that must be taken in sequence prior to other courses, starting with an introductory course and progressing into more depth. Major courses usually make up about a fourth or more of a bachelor’s degree (30 credits, or approximately 10 courses). A BS or BFA degree may require more major courses than a BA degree. Colleges and universities usually require students to select a major by the time they’ve completed 30 total credits.
Electives
Electives are free-choice courses. Though you may have a choice to select from a menu of options to meet general education and major requirements, electives are even less restricted. Some students may be able to take more electives than others due to their choice of major or if they are able to take courses that meet more than one requirement (for example, a sociology course may be both a major requirement and a general education social science course). Some colleges intentionally allow room for electives in a program to ensure that students, particularly those students who are undecided about their major, are able to explore different programs without exceeding the total number of credits required to graduate with a bachelor’s degree. In other cases, students may have taken all of their major courses and fulfilled their general education requirements but still need additional credits to fulfill the minimum to graduate. The additional courses taken to meet the total credit requirement (if necessary) are considered electives.
Graduate Degrees
According to United States Census data published in 2018, 13.1 percent of the U.S. adult population have completed advanced degrees.
3
Whereas associate’s and bachelor’s degrees are considered undergraduate degrees and require high school graduation for entry, advanced degrees called graduate degrees require prior completion of a bachelor’s degree. Some professions require graduate degrees as a minimum job qualification, such as pharmacists, lawyers, physical therapists, psychologists, and college professors. In other cases, students may be motivated to pursue a graduate degree to obtain a higher-level job or higher salary, or to be more competitive in their field. Some students are also interested in learning about some subject in greater depth than they did at the undergraduate level. Because graduate degrees do not include general education or free elective courses, they are very focused on career-specific knowledge and skills. Graduate degrees include master’s, doctoral, and professional degrees.
Master’s degrees
often require 30–60 credits and take one to two years of full-time attendance to complete. Some master’s degrees, like those for counselors, require supervised job experience as a component of the degree and therefore require more credits.
Doctorate and professional degrees
are the highest level of advanced degrees. Approximately 3.5% of the U.S. adult population has completed a doctorate or professional degree. Very few careers require this level of education for entry, so fewer individuals pursue these degrees. Doctorates are offered in many subjects and primarily prepare students to become researchers in their field of study. This in-depth level of education often requires an additional 90–120 credits beyond the bachelor’s degree, and may or may not require a master’s degree prior to entry. (A master’s degree as an entry requirement may reduce the number of credits required to complete the doctoral degree.)
Professional degrees are a specific type of doctorate-level degree that focus on skills to be applied in a
practical
, or hands-on, career rather than as a researcher. The most common professional degrees are Doctor of Medicine (MD) for aspiring medical doctors, Juris Doctor (JD) for aspiring lawyers, Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) for aspiring pharmacists, and Doctor of Education (EdD) for aspiring school and college or university administrators. If the career you are pursuing requires a graduate degree, you should keep this end goal in mind as you plan for the timeline and finances required to meet your goals. You may also want to inquire about special agreements that your college or university may have to expedite admission into or completion of graduate degrees. For example, some universities offer
4+1 master’s programs
, wherein students take both bachelor’s and master’s level courses during their last year as an undergraduate to accelerate the completion of both degrees.
Other Post-Baccalaureate Credentials
Post-baccalaureate refers to structured learning experiences pursued after a bachelor’s degree is achieved. While some such activities are structured into graduate degrees as described in the sections above, other fields value continuing education credits, competency badges, and additional certifications. These post-baccalaureate credentials may need to be completed prior to entering a career field, may be obtained as an option to gain competitive advantage for hiring, or may be achieved during the course of an individual’s career to stay current, maintain qualification, or be promoted. To determine if your field requires post-baccalaureate credentials, you may want to speak with an established professional in that career, review the qualifications section of related job descriptions, or visit with a career counselor on your campus. In a world that changes as rapidly as ours, engaging in lifelong learning is advisable regardless of the specific requirements of any particular career choice.
ACTIVITY
Draft an Education Timeline
Use the Bureau of Labor Statistics online
Occupational Outlook Handbook
to search for occupations that interest you, and note the level of education that these jobs require. Refer to your college’s academic catalog (frequently located on the college’s website) or curriculum maps to see the suggested sequence of courses for majors that relate to your career or careers of interest.
Select three interesting jobs and sketch a timeline for each, starting with your first semester of undergraduate study (whether you’re getting an associate’s or a bachelor’s) and ending with the point when you will meet the minimum requirements to be qualified for that job. Keep in mind that the timeline of students attending full-time may differ from those who are attending part-time.
Majors and Minors
One of the most common questions an undergraduate college student will be asked is “What’s your major?” As we already noted, your major is only one part of your undergraduate (associate’s or bachelor’s) degree, but it is the part that most demonstrates your interests and possible future goals. At some point during your studies you will be asked to decide on, or
declare
, a major. You may also be able to select a
minor
or additional concentration. Whereas a major comprises approximately 10–12 courses of a bachelor’s degree program and is required, a minor is usually 5–8 courses, is often optional, and may count toward or contribute to exceeding the total number of credits required for graduation. Rather than take elective courses, some students will select courses that meet the requirements for a minor. When selecting a major and possibly a minor, you’ll want to consider how the knowledge and skills you gain through those fields of study prepare you for a particular career. Majors and minors can be complementary. For example, a major in business might be well-matched with a minor in a foreign language, thus allowing the student to pursue a career in business with a company that hires bilingual employees. It is important to research careers of interest to you when selecting your major and/or minor to determine what will best help you to meet your goals.
Preprofessional Programs
Some undergraduate degrees are specifically designed to prepare students to later pursue professional degrees (such as the MD or PharmD) at the graduate level. Such programs are called
preprofessional programs
, preprofessional majors,
or
preprofessional tracks.
The most common preprofessional programs are premed, prelaw, and prepharmacy, but you may see other offerings. Although some preprofessional programs are structured as majors that you can declare, many preprofessional programs are a sequence of recommended courses and activities that a student can follow alongside a related major. While following a preprofessional program may not guarantee your admittance to a professional program, it does increase the likelihood of acceptance to and preparation for a graduate professional program.
Consider Loretta’s story as an example of how a student might be on a preprofessional track. Loretta has decided that she would like to become a medical doctor. She has declared biology as her major and is taking the courses required to graduate with a bachelor of science degree in biology. Her university does not have a premed major, but it does have a premed track. She informs her academic advisor of her career goals, and her advisor provides her information about the premed track. The premed track includes a list of courses that students should take to prepare for the medical school entrance exams, called MCATs. Some of these courses are biology courses that overlap with Loretta’s biology major, while others are higher-level chemistry courses that are not required for her major. She can take these chemistry courses, and any other premed-track courses, as her elective courses. The premed track at Loretta’s university includes opportunities to attend MCAT study workshops and premed student club meetings. It also provides recommendations for summer volunteering and internships that will strengthen Loretta’s resume and application to medical school following the completion of her bachelor’s degree.
Special Requirements of Majors
While preprofessional programs prepare students for entrance into graduate professional degree programs, some undergraduate majors involve special requirements beyond the usual courses and classroom experience to prepare students for entrance to their career. Such requirements provide students practical experience or prerequisites for licensure necessary for a particular job. When requirements are major-specific, it is often because the requirement is state-mandated for that job. Majors that often include state-mandated special requirements are education, social work, and nursing. Some colleges and universities may require all students to participate in additional experiences beyond their regular coursework. You will want to ask your college about details specific to your major or institution. In this section we will generally discuss four such special requirements and experiences: fieldwork and internships, clinicals, student teaching, and service learning.
Fieldwork and Internships
Fieldwork and internships may also be referred to as
practicums
and field experience. These requirements provide hands-on work experience in a career, or
field
. When fieldwork or internships are required for your major, such as with a social work major, it is often listed as a course requirement among your major requirements. In other words, you usually receive credits for your fieldwork as you would for a lab or lecture course. Your fieldwork instructor will likely ask you to reflect on and report on your experiences. They will likely confer with a supervisor at your
fieldwork site
, the place where you are working, to help assess your hands-on learning. Fieldwork and internships provide students with opportunities to practice the skills they’ve learned in the classroom while also introducing them to the values and culture of the organizations and communities in which they hope to be employed. It is important to note that fieldwork and internship experiences are often available to students even if they are not required for their major. You may want to inquire with your academic advisors, faculty, or career services office to determine what opportunities might be available for you to gain this type of experience in your field of interest.
Clinicals
Clinicals are a type of fieldwork specifically required of nursing students. Clinicals may take place in hospitals, nursing homes, or mental health facilities. They provide nursing students who are nearing the end of their degree programs with the opportunity to practice nursing skills that cannot be learned in a regular classroom. During clinicals, students will interact with real patients to conduct physical examinations, draw blood, administer medicine, and provide other care as necessary. Because of the risk to patients, students participating in clinicals are more closely supervised by experienced professionals than those in other types of fieldwork experiences. Thus, clinicals function very much like a real-world classroom and progress to more independent work through the semester. Before undertaking clinicals, nursing students will need to complete certain coursework and pass a physical examination and background check. Because clinicals are often much longer than a class meeting, students will need to work with staff from the program to plan their schedule. It may not be feasible to work at another job while completing clinicals, so if you must work while you’re in college, it’s important to discuss this with nursing staff or academic advisors and to plan ahead.
Student Teaching
Student teaching is a specific type of fieldwork undertaken by students who plan to teach at the preschool, elementary, or middle and high school levels. Education students are often required to complete a student teaching experience in order to obtain a teaching license in their state. Students must often complete core education coursework prior to student teaching and must complete a background check prior to placement in a school setting. During their student teaching experience, students are usually paired one-on-one with an experienced teacher and have the opportunity to observe that teacher, get to know the students, understand the classroom culture, and participate in lessons as a teaching assistant as needed or appropriate. Much like nursing clinicals, this highly supervised fieldwork experience usually progresses to more independent work when the student teacher is asked to deliver and reflect on a lesson plan of their own design. Keep in mind as you plan for student teaching that unlike other fieldwork experiences, student teaching is limited to fall or spring semesters and cannot be completed in the summer because most schools are closed during the summer terms. Also, it may not be feasible to work at another job while completing your student teaching experience, so if you must work while you’re in college, it’s important to discuss this with your program staff or academic advisors and to plan ahead.
Service Learning
While service learning may not be required of a specific major, you may see this special requirement for a course or as a general graduation requirement for your college or university. It’s also an excellent opportunity to try out something that interests you, something that could lead to or be part of your eventual career.
Service learning is very much like volunteering or community service. The purpose of service learning is to interact with and meet the needs of your local community. Service learning does differ from volunteering in that it is more structured to meet specific learning goals. For example, if you were engaging in service learning for an environmental science course, your activities would likely be focused on local environmental issues. Or, if you were engaging in service learning for a sociology course, you would likely be working with local community groups or organizations not only to assist these organizations, but also to observe how groups interact. Like fieldwork, service learning provides you an opportunity to observe and apply concepts learned in the classroom in a real-world setting. Students are often asked to reflect on their service learning activities in the context of what they’ve been learning in class, so if you’re engaged in service learning, be thinking about how the activities you do relate to what you’ve learned and know.
WHAT STUDENTS SAY
Does your major have any special requirements that must be completed outside of the classroom?
Fieldwork, internships, and/or student teaching
Clinicals
Other (write in)
None
While in college, which of the following do you think you are most likely to do?
Internship
Part-time job
Full-time job
Study Abroad
What has influenced your academic and career plan the most? (rank order)
The advice of friends and/or family
The practical, hands-on experiences I’ve had outside of the classroom
The knowledge and skills I’ve learned in class
The advice I’ve gotten from mentors, advisors, or college faculty
You can also take the anonymous
What Students Say
surveys to add your voice to this textbook. Your responses will be included in updates.
Students offered their views on these questions, and the results are displayed in the graphs below.
Does your major have any special requirements that must be completed outside of the classroom?
While in college, which of the following do you think you are most likely to do?
What has influenced your academic and career plan the most?
Footnotes
2
Minimum degree qualifications may vary by state.