The proposal “Moving From Culture Shock to Cosmopolitanism: The Position of Students Immersed in Educational, Cross-Cultural Experiences“ created by Kristen Hunsberger, with the guidance of Professor Elizabeth Guthrie and Glen Levine, was a grant recipient for SURP. This proposal is a well structured interactive experiment. It bases its conclusion on reported behavior and emotions through surveys of a more specific sample group of students who go abroad. This sample is to be compared to the researchers own experiences and those of others in this project, then drawn to conclusion by such comparisons. The research purpose is in studying the experiences of students studying abroad, acquiring a cross-cultural experiences, and reporting on how they expand their educational experience on an academic and personal levels. The type of data are reports of behavior through a series of collected survey data. The surveys used categorical and ordinal to create data based off the pre researched theories. The administering surveys, questionnaires, and interviews are to be past out on stages of pre-departure, arrival, mid-stay, prereturn, and post-experience. This data will then chart the personal progress of the focus group in their unique relations pre researched stages. Specific factors such as the Pedersonian Stages, and the Schumann’s Factors, are the basis of the interview questions given to the focus group. These factors will be monitored in the research to follow student progress and enable results to show patterns throughout the time abroad. In addition to taking part in the surveys and questionnaires the focus group, Kristen Hunsberger will be maintaining a personal journal. The specific collection sample and site will be monitoring the progress of 10-20 students who are studying abroad in France, along with a personalized data collection of Kirsten herself. As her data analysis method she plans to “organize all data in comprehensive manner to show variance of experiences in relation to Pederson’s “Stages”, interview participants about experience and conduct comparison of initial expectations with actual outcome of time abroad”.

http://www.urop.uci.edu/SURP/sample_proposals/SURP%20Humanities%201.pdf

Maria Ruane author of “ Economic Development Prospects for a Small Island Economy: The Case of Guam.” This journal article talks about the developing economy of my little island, Guam. It is an article on the environmental factors of Guam’s economy, and the analysis in the relationship that they have to it. The factors are: Guam as a small island economy, the economy being relatively open and lacking economic diversification, Guam having lots of natural resources, and a multicultural society. The case discusses employment stats, gross domestic products, Guam’s lack of economies of scale and its limited productive resources. It discusses imports for Guam, that around 36% of its GIP, making Guam vulnerable to external shocks that effect tourist markets. It discusses that military and tourism as the most significant income for Guam. Then the case goes over geographic isolations challenges, absence of mass production, and the governmental involvement: which has shifted Guam towards privately owned businesses. Which in my experience has proven to connect to family/ governmental corruption on Guam. Towards the end the article discuses that the current dependency on military and tourism as their main income should be redirected towards increasing standard of living, smart management of the environment to ensure sustainability, resurgence of pride in their indigenous culture, high productivity and value-added, intensive use of human capital and technology, use of “green” technology and practices, non-carbon printing and finally, intensive use of indigenous resources including human talents and local materials. “This paper presented an in-depth evaluation of the environmental factors that affect Guam’s economy and its future development prospects.” There were many economic data sets, demographic data sets, some self-identifying data sets (connected to the ethnicity of the Guam population) in relation to this article. There were a few cultural knowledge aspects and a few hidden social patterns revealed. The data-gathering method that Maria used centered on surveys and questioners, public and private records, and content analysis. The method of data analysis is to see the cause and effect of each environmental factor on the economy of Guam. I enjoyed reading this piece; it gave me a more broadened overview of Guam’s economic system than I am used to. I can see how things operate as a resident, but seeing more factors involved into the economics of Guam lets me look at the factors that I didn’t see originally correlating with it. Guam has a fun economy, designed to attract tourist. However, that economy may be fun on the outside, but has been politically corrupt for a long time. Guam’s economy like many island economies have major struggles in self-efficiency, and although to a tourist might look strong, has too much reliance on too few of factors.

Ruane, Maria Claret M. “ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PROSPECTS FOR A SMALL ISLAND ECONOMY: THE CASE OF GUAM.” Journal of Economics and Economic Education Research 13, no. 1 (2012): 15-23, http://0-search.proquest.com.books.redlands.edu/docview/1037693072?accountid=14729 (accessed February 20, 2017).

“Paving the Road to “to Big to Fail”: Business Interest and the politics of Financial Deregulation in the United States” by Sandra Suárez and Robin Kolodny, discusses the connection between public policy makers, polices, and business alliances. The article analyzes the time period of the financial crisis in 2007-09 to critique the political process leading to the FMA, the Financial Modernization Act. The result of the review of FMA’s process concluded in finding several factors such as: “political institutions, international competition, the ideological converges of the Republican and democratic parties and the political interest of financial industry actors”; that contributed to the establishment of the FMA. The FMA is an act that repealed depression-era regulations, allowing commercial banks to enter the securities and insurance business and vice versa established in 1999. This goes into proving “to big to fail” by condoning the emergence of largely unregulated diversified financial institutions. “To Big to Fail” is basically the story of the financial crises of 2007- ’09, when “wall street and Washington fought to save the financial system.. and themselves.” Overall the topic would be how the certain relationships among policy makers and business alliances set up certain financial situations, narrowing down into specifically how did the FMA process correlate with the crisis of 2007-09? This is a correlation study, where the data types consist of organizational data, historical and reports of acts data. Patterns and historical review will locate some of the data used, but also public and private records will help. To analyze the data intake they used categorical data analysis in comparing company and governmental positions. You can Find this article at the Armocost Library in the Journal “Politics and Society” Volume 39 Number 1 March 2011 a Sage Publications Production.

Suárez, Sandra and Kolodny, Robin. “Paving the Road to “to Big to Fail”: Business Interests and the politics of Financial Deregulation in the United States.” Politics & Society 39, no.1 (2011): 74-102.