February 2015

One of the major challenges of globalization for a developing country is to preserve its unique culture and practices while stepping inside the global arena of inclusiveness. At Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) in the Sultanate of Oman, the College of Education has been accepted as a precandidate for National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) accreditation. The faculty is facing a series of transformations as they ready for their looming site-visit in a year’s time. This project focuses on the early days of the process of adapting a U.S. assessment management system to enhance sustainable growth and development in Oman’s leading educational institution. As any process that delves deeply into the practices of an organization, the NCATE accreditation process has quickly unveiled commonly held assumptions and practices with little recognition to country, culture, or creed. NCATE, a highly respected American performance based professional accreditation body for teacher preparation is, in short, making life challenging lately at the SQU College of Education. Our project examines these challenges from three unique viewpoints within the Instructional and Learning Technologies Department in the College– an Omani faculty member, an American Head of Department (HOD) who has lived and worked in the Sultanate for four years, and an international consultant, a former dean from a medium-sized regional Kentucky university who visited SQU's College of Education this past year. Documenting the process through journals, three differing worldviews and perceptions emerge that share common concerns and distinct disquiets. Extending these insights to SQU’s larger mission, to become a “world-class university” and to “add something new to world knowledge,” carries with it important questions about what is at stake when a foreign educational institution attempts to align itself with an assessment system as foreign as the horse is to the camel. Preliminary conclusions are based on the currently collected evidence and emerging themes from the documentations.

Ag(I), Cr(III), Fe(III) and Sb(III) complexes of bis(indoline-2-one)triethyelenetetraminewhich is madefrom isatinandtriethylenetetraminewere prepared and characterized by physical properties, spectral and magnetic methods. Based on the analytical results, electronic and infrared spectral data and magnetic susceptibility measurements, suitable structures have been proposed. The antimicrobial results indicate that the cadmium complex exhibit more activity than the palladium (II), mercury and zirconium (II) complexes.All complexes were found to have strong to moderate antibacterial activity against the tested bacteria with no cytotoxic/antifungal effect.

There are many diverging opinions on the issue of immigration and in 2012 one specific cultural group received large attention within national media. One movie offers a portrayal of what life would be like in California if those of Hispanic ethnicity suddenly disappeared. Director Sergio Arau’s “A Day without a Mexican” (2004) is a satirical comedy that seeks to demonstrate how important Hispanics are to California. This movie intends to be comedic while conveying a persuasive message about the important role of Hispanics in America. Although race in the media has been traditionally focused on escalating negative portrayals of various ethnic groups, there is an apparent trend in employing humor in media to combat stereotypes and as a form of protest. This paper explores the types of rhetorical devices and strategies the film “A Day without a Mexican” (2004) uses to combat race issues, confront stereotypes, and then outlines the four main strategies discovered within the film.

Polyurethane is widely used in many products, such as the manufacture of plastic foams, sponges, paints, coatings and fibers. Conventional polyurethane is mostly produced from polyols and diisocyanate. The ecological problems related to the environmental pollution by synthetic polymers like polyurethane are one of the major concerns of the present days, especially because they are difficult to degrade easily and the entire process is time consuming. Currently research is being undertaken on different aspects of polyurethane biodegradation, such as polyurethane degrading microorganisms, the mechanisms of degradation and on isolation and investigation of polyurethane degrading enzymes. This study focuses on the biodegradation of polyurethane by microorganisms isolated from cedar wood. Microbial degradation of polyurethane is thought to be mainly due to the hydrolysis of carbonyl bonds. Analyses were carried out by Infrared spectroscopy and Scanning electron microscopy.

This study aims to compare high-school students in Turkey and the U.S., in terms of career-decision making difficulties. The research group consists of a total of 576 students, including 296 high-school students in the U.S, and 280 high-school students in Turkey. The data of the research were collected by the “Career Decision-Making Difficulties Questionnaire” (CDDQ). The career decision-making difficulties are composed of three sub-scales, including lack of readiness, lack of information and inconsistent information. Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was used to evaluate whether the sub-scale scores for career decision-making difficulties experienced by high-school students in the U.S. and Turkey differ depending on an individual’s gender and class. It was found that there are significant differences in gender and class variables in the career decision-making difficulties experienced by high-school students in Turkey and the U.S. The findings of the research were compared using the data collected.