The Department of Sociology at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley is looking for a dynamic candidate to fill a tenure track position. The appointment at the level of Assistant Professor will begin Fall 2020. Areas of specialization are open, but preference will be given to individuals with backgrounds in demography and survey design. The position will involve teaching undergraduate- and graduate-level courses for the Department of Sociology’s BA and MS programs. The successful candidate will also be expected to maintain an active research agenda while holding a strong commitment to student mentorship and success. Incomplete applications will not be considered. Selected candidates will be required to provide official transcripts from all degree-granting universities. Applications must be submitted through the UTRGV employment portal.

The African and African Diaspora Studies (AADS) Department is searching to hire a tenured social science faculty position in African Diaspora Studies in the United States at the Associate or Full rank. This position will have an affiliation with the Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis (IUPRA), a partner unit in The University of Texas at Austin’s Black Studies suite. We seek candidates with a strong research agenda whose work focuses on key issues for reducing racial inequality in the United States. The start date for this position is September 1, 2020. 

A candidate’s research should utilize a combination of strong conceptual foundations and rigorous empirical methods, including but not limited to quantitative and structural or critical race theories. A demonstrated ability to write and secure grants is required; the ability to write policy briefs is a plus. Candidates should also be able to demonstrate interest in and effectiveness at teaching one of the department’s introductory graduate courses, “Black Studies Theory” and “Black Studies Methods.” We welcome candidates with doctorates in any relevant field – including, among others, black studies, critical race studies, ethnic studies, economics, education, political science, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, sociology, and geography – with research interests in public health, medical disparities, mass incarceration, the racial wealth gap, demography, urban development, urban studies, environmental justice, and/or geospatial analysis, among others. Demonstrated excellence in scholarship, teaching and a commitment to diversity and inclusion are essential.

Applicants should submit the following materials: 

• Cover Letter
• Curriculum Vitae
• Two Writing Samples
• Contact Information for Three References

Inquiries and other communications may be directed to Jackson Brown at  jacksonbrown@austin.utexas.edu . 

Applications received by December 1, 2019, will receive full consideration . The search will remain open until the position is filled or closed.

Please join us next Wednesday when The Medical Anthropology and Global Health Seminar Series presents:

 Dr. Cody McDonald, Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Washington

“Access to Prosthetics and Orthotics in Low and Middle-Income Countries”

Date:  Wednesday November 6

Time:  3:30-4:50

Location:  Johnson 102

Abstract

People around the world experience disability due to unaccommodated physical impairments. Prosthetic and orthotic devices serve to accommodate many physical disabilities, thereby restoring mobility, function and participation in society. Successful prosthetic and orthotic service provision relies upon a well-trained and accessible workforce of prosthetists/orthotists. Successful education of prosthetic and orthotic professionals requires a thorough understanding of the current personnel need and state of prosthetist/orthotist education. To date, the global need for and education of prosthetists/orthotists is largely undocumented. This body of work addresses three aims (1) estimate region specific prosthetist personnel need to serve the population of people with amputation based on estimates of global amputation prevalence due to trauma and diabetes, (2) examine the prosthetic and orthotic education, curriculum and teaching methods described in prosthetic and orthotic literature and (3) explore how prosthetic and orthotic faculty in Ghana and the U.S. access information.

Global Burden of Disease (GBD) amputation estimates were used in a secondary data analysis to provide descriptive interpretation for prosthetic and orthotic service provision and calculate estimates of prosthetist need globally. A systematic review of current prosthetic and orthotic education research was used to aggregate the body of literature and identify areas for development. Lastly, a social network analysis was conducted to explore information access and exchange among faculty at two prosthetic and orthotic professional preparation programs. Together this body of work explores the global prosthetic and orthotic workforce at three different levels.

Biography

Dr. McDonald is a certified and licensed prosthetist/orthotist with an MPH in Global Health and PhD in Rehabilitation Science. She graduated from the University of Washington prosthetics and orthotics program in 2006, completed both residencies at the University of California San Francisco and continued to work at UCSF in clinical practice until 2011. She then worked as an orthotist mentor at the Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise (COPE) in Vientiane, Laos. She has continued her international work with ongoing collaborations in Peru and Ghana. Dr. McDonald’s research explores amputation prevalence, prosthetist/orthotist education, prosthesis and orthosis user outcomes and building global workforce capacity. She currently serves on the executive board of the U.S. Chapter of the International Society of Prosthetics and Orthotics and conducts research and teaches at the University of Washington. Dr. McDonald will move into an Acting Assistant Professor role in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine in January 2020.

For information about upcoming MAGH Seminar talks, see https://anthropology.washington.edu/news/2019/09/25/current-issues-medical-anthropology-and-global-health-seminar-series

For information on courses in the Medical Anthropology and Global Health Option see https://anthropology.washington.edu/major-option-medical-anthropology-global-health-ba

Factors models for binary data are extremely common in many social science disciplines. For example, in political science binary factor models are often used to explain voting patterns in deliberative bodies such as the US Congress, leading to an “ideological” ranking of legislators. Binary factor models can be motivated through so-call “spatial” voting models, which posit that legislators have a most preferred policy – their ideal point –, which can be represented as a point in some Euclidean “policy space”. Legislators then vote for/against motions in accordance with the distance between their (latent) preferences and the position of the bill in the same policy space.

In this talk we introduce a novel class of binary factor models derived from spatial voting models in which the policy space corresponds to a non-Euclidean manifold. In particular, we consider embedding legislator’s preferences in the surface of a n-dimensional sphere. The resulting model contains the standard binary Euclidean factor model as a limiting case, and provides a mechanism to operationalize (and extend) the so-called “horseshoe theory” in political science, which postulates that the far-left and far-right are more similar to each other in essentials than either are to the political center. The performance of the model is illustrated using voting data from recent US Congresses. In particular, we show that voting patterns for the 113th US House of Representatives are better explained by a circular factor model than by either a one- or a two-dimensional Euclidean model, and that the circular model yields a ranking of legislators more in accord with expert’s expectations. This is joint work with my Ph.D. student, Xingchen Yu.

Taught by a Stanford-educated, ex-Googler and an IIT, IIM – educated ex-Flipkart lead analyst. This teaching team has decades of practical experience in quant trading, analytics and e-commerce. 

This course is a gentle yet thorough introduction to Data Science, Statistics and R using real life examples. 

Let’s parse that.

• Gentle, yet thorough: This course does not require a prior quantitative or mathematics background. It starts by introducing basic concepts such as the mean, median etc and eventually covers all aspects of an analytics (or) data science career from analysing and preparing raw data to visualising your findings. 
• Data Science, Statistics and R: This course is an introduction to Data Science and Statistics using the R programming language. It covers both the theoretical aspects of Statistical concepts and the practical implementation using R. 
• Real life examples: Every concept is explained with the help of examples, case studies and source code in R wherever necessary. The examples cover a wide array of topics and range from A/B testing in an Internet company context to the Capital Asset Pricing Model in a quant finance context. 

What’s Covered:

• Data Analysis with R: Datatypes and Data structures in R, Vectors, Arrays, Matrices, Lists, Data Frames, Reading data from files, Aggregating, Sorting & Merging Data Frames
• Linear Regression: Regression, Simple Linear Regression in Excel, Simple Linear Regression in R, Multiple Linear Regression in R, Categorical variables in regression, Robust regression, Parsing regression diagnostic plots
• Data Visualization in R: Line plot, Scatter plot, Bar plot, Histogram, Scatterplot matrix, Heat map, Packages for Data Visualisation : Rcolorbrewer, ggplot2
• Descriptive Statistics: Mean, Median, Mode, IQR, Standard Deviation, Frequency Distributions, Histograms, Boxplots
• Inferential Statistics: Random Variables, Probability Distributions, Uniform Distribution, Normal Distribution, Sampling, Sampling Distribution, Hypothesis testing, Test statistic, Test of significance

This is a comprehensive course to learn Python Programming for Data Science, Data Analysis and Data Visualization In this course we will learn:

1) Complete understanding of Python from Scratch

2) Python for Data Science and Business Analysis

List of some Topics that we will cover,

1) NumPy : NumPy array, Indexing and Selection, NumPy Operations

2) Pandas : DataFrames, Series, Matrix, Working on missing data, Reading and Writing files

3) Matplotlib : Data Visualization, Plotting different graphs

4) Data Types

5) If-else statement, For loop and While loop

6) Functions and Methods

7) Object Oriented Programming

Learn Python for Data Science to advance your Career in a fun and practical way !!!

This RFA invites applications from multidisciplinary teams to perform secondary data analysis, using existing datasets from two or more multi-site clinical research projects, including clinical trials, natural history studies, and/or comparative effectiveness research. Secondary analyses should address scientific and / or clinical hypotheses that can advance the understanding or care of neurological disorders and conditions within the NINDS mission. In this phased funding mechanism, applications are required to systematically and comprehensively perform cross-project data harmonization and curation, assessed using go/no-go data-quality metrics, prior to funding of the second phase of analyses. Consistent with the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) data principles, this funding opportunity expects open-source cataloging of the processes and tools used for harmonization, curation, and analysis, as well as controlled access to the curated datasets.

Every year the Center for Teaching and Learning invites UW faculty, staff, and graduate students to present their work on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) at the UW’s Annual Teaching & Learning Symposium in April.

The Symposium is designed for interactive presentations and discussion on innovative evidence-based teaching strategies, whether it is work you have done in the past or are in the process of implementing. Presentations are in poster format and can not be larger than 4’ x 6′.

• October 21, 2019 – December 9, 2019:  Call for proposals.
• February 10, 2020:  Outcomes of the proposal review process are emailed to all applicants.
• February 19, 2020: Deadline for applicants to confirm their participation.
• March 9, 2020:  Full program (titles, abstracts, and presenters) is posted on the Symposium home page.
• April 6, 2020:  Teaching & Learning Symposium.
• Posters must be set up between 1:35 and 1:45 p.m.
• Symposium schedule: TBD

 

Are your students looking for other funding options to do research overseas?

We highly encourage students to explore the following nationally competitive options, open to U.S. citizens. The Office of Fellowships & Awards can provide assistance with preparing applications:

Boren Fellowships: fund up to 12 months overseas—students must incorporate language study into their plans but can combine with independent research, other academic study, or internships (or propose exclusively to study language). This opportunity is currently quite undersubscribed at the graduate level—nationally, approximately 1 out of 3 applicants were awarded last year! Application deadline is in January; please see our website for scheduled information sessions and application support.

Fulbright U.S. Student Program: funds 8-10 months of overseas independent research or academic study (or a combination of both). Fulbright information sessions on campus will be announced in late March and held throughout spring quarter. Application deadline is in September; please see our website for more information and read about our recent graduate student/alumni awardees.

Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Award: funds 6-12 months of dissertation research overseas (must have candidacy by the start of the grant). At least part of the research must be done in a language other than English; applicants are expected to have a thorough background of relevant area studies coursework and applicable language skills. Application deadline varies and may be announced any time between January – April; information sessions forthcoming. Permanent residents may also apply for this funding. Students must work through the Office of Fellowships & Awards to submit an application—see our website.