Promoting Inclusion Through a Peer Mentoring Program.

Various studies have shown the need for and importance of inclusion in an undergraduate student's campus experience, academic success and career development. The Biomedical Engineering (BME) Department organizes monthly department events, such as open house, internship and career workshops, Lunch and Learn with employers, and holiday parties. These events are always well received and help to connect and engage with the BME students. We have also noticed that many first-year students do not attend these events, which could negatively impact the retention and student academic progress. The COVID-19 pandemic has added further challenges especially for the first-year students to make connections and socialize as easily as prior to the pandemic. We started a BME peer mentoring program with the main goal to help incoming first-year students make a smooth transition from high school to college. Every student is assigned a BME mentor. The mentors are Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) chapter officers and/or Biomedical Engineering Honor Society members. The mentors start email communication with the mentees in the summer. At the meet and greet in the first week of the fall semester, the BME Department office introduces expectations for the mentors and mentees, such as monthly one-on-one meetings, participation of at least one BMES and/or BME department events every month, and completion of end-of-semester surveys. It also provides essential support throughout the year to facilitate the program by providing mentor training, keeping an open-door policy to address any concerns from the mentors or mentees, channeling their need to other offices, and promoting the value of peer mentoring and learning. It is expected that the mentoring program will help build peer relationships between the mentors and mentees, encourage first-year students to progress towards their educational goals, and enrich their campus experience. The mentors will also benefit from the program with enhanced confidence, leadership and communication skills. We report in this article the process of implementing our peer mentoring program, major findings, student survey results, and lessons learned.

The Economic Recovery from Traffic Restriction Policies during the COVID-19 through the Perspective of Regional Differences and Sustainable Development: Based on Human Mobility Data in China

In the post-epidemic era, balancing epidemic prevention and control with sustainable economic development has become a serious challenge for all countries around the world. In China, a range of interventions include detection policies, clinical treatment policies, and most notably, traffic policies have been carried out for epidemic prevention and control. It has been widely confirmed that massive traffic restriction policies effectively brought the spread of the pandemic under control. However, restrictions on the use of transportation infrastructure undermine the smooth functioning of the economy. Particularly, China has a vast territory, with provinces differing in economic development, leading industries and transportation infrastructure;economic shock varies from region to region. In this case, targeted policies are the key to sustainable development. This paper sets forth advice for the Chinese government on its measures to boost the economy by analyzing regional differences in the impact of massive traffic restriction policies, based on large-scale human mobility data. After applying the Data Envelopment Analysis model, we classify Chinese provinces into different regions from the perspective of economic gradient, degree of internationalization and level of traffic convenience, respectively. Classification results are matched with the indicators of New Venues Created and the weekly Volumes of Visits to Venues from Baidu Maps. We find that the regional differences in the recovery of investment and consumption levels are striking. Based on the findings, we suggest that the government should adjust the intensity of traffic restrictions and economic stimulus policies dynamically according to regional differences to achieve sustainable economic development.

Factors That Influence Perceived Organizational Support for Emotional Labor of Chinese Medical Personnel in Hubei.

At the outbreak of coronavirus disease in Wuhan, China, 42,322 medical personnel from other provinces and municipalities in China volunteered to rush to Hubei to assist their colleagues. Their all-out efforts contributed to Hubei finally winning the fight to prevent and control the pandemic. The aim of this study is to explore the influence of perceived organizational support on the emotional labor of medical personnel in Hubei Province. A group of 170 medical personnel from (tertiary) hospitals who participated in the pandemic aid operation in Hubei completed self-administered questionnaires, including the perceived organizational support scale, emotional labor scale, and professional identity scale. This study used Pearson's correlation in SPSS to analyze the three variables of organizational support, emotional labor, and professional identity. Organizational support and emotional labor (r = 0.443, P < 0.01), organizational support and professional identity (r = 0.631, P < 0.01), and emotional labor and occupational identity (r = 0.511, P < 0.01) showed a significant positive correlation. The bootstrapping mediating effect test was used to determine the overall mediating effect of occupational identity. Occupational identity was a complete mediating effect between organizational support and emotional labor. The results show that a strong sense of organizational support can promote higher emotional labor among medical workers in Hubei Province. A strong sense of organizational support will also promote a stronger professional identity; further, a strong professional identity completely mediates the effect of perceived organizational support on emotional labor. These results infer that in emergency medical and health services, medical personnel can realize a high sense of organizational support, which could enhance their professional identity; this enables them to combine their professional goals with organizational goals more actively and to finally pay higher emotional labor to achieve organizational goals.