Materials Education and Research in Art and Design: A New Role for Libraries - Session 3. RISD Faculty

Faculty from Rhode Island School of Design representing Interior Architecture, Industrial Design, and Textiles detail their thoughtful interactions with materials.

Materials Education and Research in Art and Design: A New Role for Libraries - Session 4. Designers

Designers respond to issues and synthesize ideas from throughout the day as voices from the field who directly encounter the need for recently graduated students to possess the ability to investigate and interrogate materials.

Materials Education and Research in Art and Design: A New Role for Libraries - Session 2. Educators

Educators representing interactions with materials speak to critical approaches, life-cycle concerns, critical thinking of composition/process/properties.

Extreme observations and diversification in Latin American emerging equity markets

In this paper, we focus on the tails of the unconditional distribution of Latin American emerging markets stock returns. We explore their implications for portfolio diversification according to the safety tirst principIe, tirst proposed by Roy (1952). We tind that the Latin American emerging markets have signiticantly fatter tails than industrial markets. especially, the lower tail of the distrihution. We consider the implication of the safety tirst principIe for a U .S. investor who creates a diversitied portfolio using Latin American stock markets. We tind that a U.S. investor gains by adding Latin American equity markets to her purely domestic portfolio. For different parameter specitications. we finu a more realistic asset allocation than the one suggested by the Iiterature haseu on the traditional mean-variance framework.

Fostering innovation and entrepreneurship in Brazil through private equity and venture capital public policies

It is well documented the positive impact of the Private Equity and Venture Capital (PE/VC) industry on the creation and development of highly successful innovative companies in a few countries, mainly in the United States. PE/VC firms provide not only capital to startups and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that usually have financing gap, especially in emerging markets, but also strategic resources that enable these enterprises to commercialize innovation. As consequence, government incentive and nurture of local PE/VC industries would be expected in emerging economies due to innovation‟s importance to economic growth. This paper aims to identify if the Brazilian government has supported local PE/VC industry throughout the years in order to foster favorable conditions to creating and developing successful innovative businesses. It also analyzes Brazil‟s main public policies towards PE/VC and if they encompass all the three stages of its cycle – fundraising, investing and exiting. I conducted an empirical research which collected primary data from a sample of 127 PE/VC firms (90% of the population) operating in Brazil as of June, 2008. All firms answered a webbased questionnaire that collected quantitative data regarding their investment vehicles, portfolio companies, investments and exits. I compared the data obtained from the survey with the main local governmental PE/VC support programs. First, I confirmed the hypothesis that the Brazilian government has been using the PE/VC industry as a public policy towards entrepreneurship and innovation. Second, I identified that although PE/VC public policies in Brazil are mostly concentrated in fundraising phase, they have been able to positively impact the whole cycle. Third, it became clear that the Brazilian government became more concerned about Seed and Venture Capital (VC) Early stages due to their importance to the entire PE/VC value chain. As consequence, I conclude that those public policies have been very important to build a dynamic and strong local PE/VC industry, whose committed capital grew 50% per year between 2005 and 2008 to achieve US$27 billion, which invested US$ 11 billion, which employs 1,400 professionals (75% with postgraduate degrees) and maintains 482 portfolio companies, mostly SMEs. In addition, PE/VCbacked companies represented one third of the Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) that occurred in Brazil between 2004 and 2008 (approximately US$15 billion).

Toward convergence? The brazilian stock market concentration and the role of private equity in its diversification

Using quantitative data obtained from public available database, this paper discusses the difference between of the Brazilian GDP and the Brazilian Stock Exchange industry breakdown. I examined if, and to what extent, the industry breakdowns are similar. First, I found out that the Stock Exchange industry breakdown is overwhelming different from the GDP, which may present a potential problem to asset allocation and portfolio diversification in Brazil. Second, I identified an important evidence of a convergence between the GDP and the Stock Exchange in the last 9 years. Third, it became clear that the Privatizations in the late 90’s and IPO market from 2004 to 2008 change the dynamics of the Brazilian Stock Exchange. And fourth, I identified that Private Equity and Venture Capital industry may play an important role on the portfolio diversification in Brazil.

Defining student participation and empowerment in higher education

Customer participation has been studied for decades; however, it gained a postmodern perspective around the year 2000. Customers have become co-creators of personalized experiences, moving from the audience to the stage. In the educational context, students must take responsibility for their learning process and participate in the production of the service. This changing is providing opportunities and challenges for higher education institutions (HEIs) to redefine their relationship with stakeholders, especially with students. This study is based on the service dominant logic (SDL) perspective because students are assumed to take the role of co-creators of knowledge in the educational setting. The research uses adapted frameworks and concepts applied in organizational, knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) and also medical studies to advance the understanding of value co-creation in the HEI context. The current study addresses a lack of research in the higher education context focusing on defining students’ participation and students’ empowerment in higher education context. An empirical investigation was developed with traditional schools in Brazil. This investigation allowed the description of the constructs in the specific context. The description of student participation in HEIs context reflects the relevance of three dimensions – information sharing, personal interaction and responsible behavior. In the Brazilian context, responsible behavior is the weakest dimension in the construct, because the responsibilities are unbalanced between students and professors. The main reasons identified for this unbalanced relation were cultural issues and local regulation. Student empowerment was described as composed by four dimensions – meaningfulness, competence, impact and choice; however, one of them – choice – was identified as the weakest dimension, facing cultural and bureaucratic barriers for implementation in the Brazilian educational context. Moreover, interviewees spontaneously cited the idea of trust in the faculty as an important antecedent of student participation that must be considered when analyzing student participation and empowerment mechanisms. An additional contribution was the proposal of a theory-based framework for understanding the service dominant logic perspective in the HEI context, in which student participation and student empowerment were explored as mechanisms leading to positive student behavior toward institution.

Power law distribution in education: Effect of economical, teaching, and study conditions in university entrance examination

We studied the statistical distribution of student's performance, which is measured through their marks, in university entrance examination (Vestibular) of UNESP (Universidade Estadual Paulista) with respect to (i) period of study - day versus night period (ii) teaching conditions - private versus public school (iii) economical conditions - high versus low family income. We observed long ubiquitous power law tails in physical and biological sciences in all cases. The mean value increases with better study conditions followed by better teaching and economical conditions. In humanities, the distribution is close to normal distribution with very small tail. This indicates that these power law tails in science subjects axe due to the nature of the subjects themselves. Further and better study, teaching and economical conditions axe more important for physical and biological sciences in comparison to humanities at this level of study. We explain these statistical distributions through Gradually Truncated Power law distributions. We discuss the possible reason for this peculiar behavior.

VOICES FROM THE SOUTH: DIALOGICAL RELATIONSHIPS AND COLLABORATION IN MATHEMATICS EDUCATION

This chapter presents a collaborative experience between two neighbouring countries from South America: Argentina and Brazil. Our purpose is to share a model of international collaboration that we consider to be an alternative to the classical movement of early mathematical and scientific knowledge between East and West and between North and South. We start our chapter with a general discussion about the phenomenon of globalization considering some local examples. We characterize our collaboration exploring the tensions and difficulties we faced along our own professional development at the local as well as the international level. We describe the development of our prior collaborative work that established the foundation for our international collaboration portraying the local mathematics education communities. We refer to some balances that were created among our relationships, the expansion of our collaborative network, and how this particular collaboration allows us to contribute to the regional field and inform the international one. We discuss the way that the search for balance and symmetry, or at least a complementary asymmetry in our collaborative relationships, has led us to generate a genuine and equitable collaboration.