Limited academic career prospects are pushing PhD graduates in political science and other disciplines to nonacademic careers. Understanding the mismatch between student and supervisor perceptions of doctoral career training is a starting point for suggesting program reforms. This research note examines the perceptions of PhD students and supervisors on doctoral career training. We compare results from two surveys of English-speaking Canadian universities on doctoral political science programs; one surveys PhD students and the other surveys supervisors. These survey results suggest that 1) students are more aware of the limited academic job market and interested in nonacademic careers than supervisors realize; 2) supervisors are unaware of the sunk costs PhD students face; 3) supervisors and students have different preferences for change in doctoral programs; and 4) students overestimate supervisors’ confidence in preparing them for nonacademic careers. Changes in program design can better meet student needs in these PhD programs.

COVID-19 had the potential to dramatically increase public support for welfare. It was a time of apparent increased solidarity, of apparently deserving claimants, and of increasingly widespread exposure to the benefits system. However, there are also reasons to expect the opposite effect: an increase in financial strain fostering austerity and self-interest, and thermostatic responses to increasing welfare generosity. In this paper, we investigate the effects of the pandemic on attitudes towards working-age unemployment benefits in the UK using a unique combination of data sources: (i) temporally fine-grained data on attitudinal change over the course of the pandemic; and (ii) a novel nationally representative survey contrasting attitudes towards pandemic-era and pre-pandemic claimants (including analysis of free-text responses). Our results show that the pandemic prompted little change in UK welfare attitudes. However, we also find that COVID-era unemployment claimants were perceived as substantially more deserving than those claiming prior to the pandemic. This contrast suggests a strong degree of ‘COVID exceptionalism’ – with COVID claimants seen as categorically different from conventional claimants, muting the effect of the pandemic on welfare attitudes overall.

Do all PhD students aspire to an academic career? Do PhD programs appropriately prepare students for the realities of the job market? There is a well-established gap between political science PhD graduates and tenure-track academic postings. The mismatch between PhD graduates and academic positions may point to alternative models of doctoral education as a possible solution. However, the survey of Canadian and Australian PhD students described in this article suggests that issues and challenges are common regardless of the model of doctoral education. Canadian PhDs report more mentoring activity, but they also are more fixated on securing academic positions. However, we find important gender differences across countries: men are more interested in an academic career and only a (disproportionately male) minority is confident that they will succeed in securing a faculty career. This raises questions about diversity in the future of the profession. This research suggests that although students have different experiences under different doctoral models, issues of academic jobs and a mismatch are common in both systems.

Supervisors shape the PhD student experience and play a critical role in students’ development. To what extent and in what ways are faculty engaged in mentorship? Are faculty mentoring more or differently now than in the past? This study of political science faculty from political science departments offering PhD programs in the English language finds that graduate supervision is changing over time, with mentorship practices becoming both more common and more varied. Supervisors do not appear to be simply replicating their own limited experience of mentorship as a PhD student. Instead, supervisors are becoming more actively and directly involved in their students’ research careers in ways that increase their students’ career opportunities. There is opportunity for institutions, at both the university and department level, to further invest in building the capacity and ability of supervisors to be effective mentors.

ABSTRACT IMPACT: Use of this novel murine model of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and C. difficile infection (CDI) will aid in developing new clinical approaches to predict, diagnose, and treat CDI in the IBD population. OBJECTIVES/GOALS: IBD is associated with intestinal inflammation and alterations of the gut microbiota, both of which can diminish colonization resistance to C. difficile. Here, we sought to determine if IBD is sufficient to render mice susceptible to C. difficile colonization and infection in the absence of other perturbations, such as antibiotic treatment. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: C57BL/6 IL-10-/- mice were colonized with Helicobacter hepaticus to trigger colonic inflammation akin to human IBD. Control mice, not colonized with H. hepaticus, were pretreated with the antibiotic cefoperazone to render the gut microbiota susceptible to CDI. Mice were then gavaged with spores of the toxigenic C. difficile strain VPI 10463 and monitored for C. difficile colonization and disease. The fecal microbiota at the time of C. difficile exposure was profiled by 16S rRNA gene sequencing and analyzed using mothur. Statistical analyses were performed using R. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Mice with IBD harbored significantly distinct intestinal microbial communities compared to non-IBD controls at the time of C. difficile spore exposure (14 days post-IBD trigger). Mice with IBD were susceptible to persistent C. difficile colonization, while genetically identical non-IBD controls were resistant to C. difficile colonization. Concomitant IBD and CDI was associated with significantly worse clinical and intestinal disease than unaccompanied IBD. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF FINDINGS: Patients with IBD who develop concurrent CDI experience increased morbidity and mortality. These studies in a novel mouse model of IBD and CDI emphasize the dual importance of host responses and alterations of the gut microbiota in susceptibility to C. difficile colonization and infection in the setting of IBD.

The purpose of this paper is to build on personal engagement and role theory to develop a conceptual definition of engagement to different organizational roles (job, organization, supervisor, and coworkers) and create and validate the Role-Based Engagement Scale (RBES). Data were collected from four samples (n = 1,302) of employees, including three from multiple organizations and one from an aircraft manufacturer. Results across three studies consistently support the four dimension structure of the RBES, its internal consistency, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity based on a series of confirmatory factor analyses. The RBES is a psychometrically sound instrument that measures engagement to job, organization, supervisor, and coworkers. This instrument will provide more targeted information for human resource management (HRM) professionals tasked with developing training methods and processes to improve low-scoring dimensions of engagement, optimizing HRM interventions.

In face of the ongoing discrepancy between the number of political science PhD graduates and the availability of permanent academic positions, in this article we consider attitudes of faculty members towards options to address this issue. Based on a survey of faculty members in PhD-granting political science programs at English-speaking Canadian universities, we find considerable support for both reducing the number of PhD students admitted and reforming curriculum to ensure graduates cultivate skills transferable to non-academic environments. At the same time, faculty members are inclined to believe that PhD students themselves should shoulder the greatest responsibility for career preparation.

Background: Transdiagnostic psychotherapies are designed to apply the same underlying treatment principles across a set of psychiatric disorders, without significant tailoring to specific diagnoses. Several transdiagnostic psychotherapy protocols have been developed recently, each of which has its own strengths and weaknesses. One promising treatment is Transdiagnostic Behaviour Therapy (TBT), in that it is one of the few transdiagnostic treatments to date shown to be effective in patients with depressive and anxiety disorders. However, TBT has only been investigated via individual psychotherapy. Aims: The present study investigated the effectiveness of a group protocol for TBT, compared with disorder-specific group psychotherapies, in a naturalistic setting. Method: 109 participants with various diagnoses of affective disorders completed either group TBT (n = 37) or a disorder-specific group psychotherapy (n = 72). Measures included assessments of psychiatric symptomatology and transdiagnostic impairment at baseline and post-treatment. Results: Overall, participants in the TBT group demonstrated significant improvements across all measures. When compared with disorder-specific groups, no statistical differences were observed between groups across symptoms; however, participants in the TBT group demonstrated roughly twice the treatment effect sizes in transdiagnostic impairment compared with participants in the disorder-specific groups. In addition, when participants from the most well-represented diagnosis and disorder-specific treatment (social anxiety disorder) were investigated separately, participants in the TBT group demonstrated significantly larger improvements in comorbid depressive symptoms than participants in the disorder-specific treatment. Conclusions: Pending replication and additional comparison studies, group TBT may provide an effective group treatment option for patients with affective disorders.

Field experiments were conducted over 3 yr at three locations in Illinois to evaluate the efficacy of glyphosate in glyphosate-resistant soybean planted in rows spaced 19, 38, and 76 cm. Minimal soybean injury (less than 10%) was observed from any glyphosate treatment. Glyphosate treatments controlled 82 to 99% of giant foxtail. Common waterhemp control was increased as soybean row spacing was decreased. Applying sequential glyphosate applications or increasing the glyphosate rate from 420 g ae/ha to 840 g/ha frequently increased common waterhemp control in 76-cm rows. Velvetleaf control with glyphosate was variable, ranging from 48 to 99%. Decreasing soybean row spacing, utilizing sequential glyphosate applications, or increasing the glyphosate rate improved velvetleaf control in at least four of eight site-years. Glyphosate treatments generally resulted in weed control and soybean yield equal to or greater than the standard herbicide treatments. However, glyphosate treatments yielded less than the hand-weeded control in four of eight site-years, suggesting that weed control from glyphosate treatments was sometimes inadequate.