Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Whither Education In Kentucky: The Challenges And Promises For The 21st Century, William E. Ellis

The Chautauqua Journal

From its founding in 1792, the Commonwealth of Kentucky, compared with the states north of the Ohio River, followed a typically southern style of education. Before the Civil War a slave oligarchy controlled the political destiny of the state. After the Civil War, ironically because two-thirds of Kentuckians who fought in that war were on the Union side, the state became even more southern in many ways. Racism and segregation prevailed until the mid-1950s when the state began making rapid and successful strides to integrate its public and private schools. Equity and equality have always been stumbling blocks for education …

The Wolf And The Philosopher, Mark Rowlands

The Chautauqua Journal

Some years ago, I wrote a book called The Philosopher and the Wolf. It should really have been called The Wolf and the Philosopher. The wolf is the star, the philosopher an insignificant extra bumbling around in the background. The book is about many things, but fundamentally, I suppose, it is about growing up. I’ve recently finished a sequel of sorts. It’s called Running with the Pack and it’s a book about growing old. There is, I suspect, a natural trilogy to be written here, but I hope I don’t have to write the final part for some …

Is There A Gps For Lost In Translation?, Carole Garrison

The Chautauqua Journal

Building human community is a greater task today as we reach a billion more people on our planet than just 12 years ago; then the earth was home to 6 billion people, according to the United Nations, and back in the 1960s, the earth’s population measured only half that number—3 billion. The concept, community, is over-broad and thus problematic. It covers both groups and individuals bound by similar and dissimilar interests. It can contain ideas across a broad array of cultural entities in life. A “Community” is a construct, an abstraction. Even as a member, we cannot see a whole …

Engaging Students In The Practice Of Statistics Through Undergraduate Research, Debra L. Hydorn

Mathematics

As statisticians, we engage in a variety of activities, some of which are regularly integrated into our undergraduate courses. However, the individual courses that comprise a mathematics or statistics degree program might not provide students with experiences in the broader range of activities that define the practice of statistics. To remedy this situation, faculty can consider developing and mentoring undergraduate research projects. This article briefly discusses the skills that comprise statistical practice along with some course and program options for helping students to develop these skills. Then, types of undergraduate research projects in statistics are described to help faculty generate …

Assistive Technology Guidelines For Higher Education Disability Support Staff, Brenda Delee

CCE Theses and Dissertations

With the changing laws and effective integration of assistive technology into the classroom environment, students can have the provision of multiple means to complete their work with greater independence. In post secondary education, any student who discloses a sensory, cognitive, or physical disability is eligible to request and receive assistive technology and other services. When used correctly, assistive technology can help students with reading, writing, math, and communication skills. With a possible influx of students, disability support staff must be prepared and willing to meet the needs and address issues relating to students with disabilities. If their needs are not …

Contributors

The Chautauqua Journal

Contributors to Volume II: Living with Others / Crossroads

Living With Others: The African American Experience, Arnold Rampersad

The Chautauqua Journal

The phrase, “Living with Others,” is especially intriguing in the context of race relations in the United States. At one level, it invites pleasantries about our natural wish for harmony and peace among diverse peoples, along with simple or even simplistic notions about what it takes to achieve this harmony and peace. At another level, however, it has the potential to be something much more complex.

To speak of living with others against the backdrop of the history of black Americans is to ask the following key question. How does a minority people manage to live with the majority, when …

The Chautauqua Journal, Complete Volume 2: Living With Others / Crossroads

The Chautauqua Journal

Complete text of The Chautauqua Journal, Volume 2: Living with Others / Crossroads

The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln And American Slavery, Eric Foner

The Chautauqua Journal

In April 1876, Frederick Douglass delivered a celebrated oration at the unveiling of the Freedmen’s Monument in Washington, D.C., a statue that depicted Abraham Lincoln conferring freedom on a kneeling slave. “No man,” the great black abolitionist remarked, “can say anything that is new of Abraham Lincoln." This has not in the ensuing 130 years deterred innumerable historians, biographers, journalists, lawyers, literary critics and psychologists from trying to say something new about Lincoln. Lincoln has always provided a lens through which Americans examine themselves.

Sesquicentennial Reflections On Civil War Women, Catherine Clinton

The Chautauqua Journal

The nation looked back on its Civil War, in the midst of a whirlwind of domestic debates, while impending foreign crises loomed—but with a new young President in the White House, with his charismatic wife and children, the country seemed on the brink of momentous change. On the cusp of a new era, it seemed an appropriate time, if not overdue, to reflect on the legacy of an epic historical era that tore the nation in two. Whether referring to the centenary in 1961 with John F. Kennedy in office, or the sesquicentennial in 2011 with Barack Obama, backward glances …

A Talk With Bracelen Flood, Author Of Grant's Final Victory, Charles Bracelen Flood

The Chautauqua Journal

A talk with Charles Bracelen Flood, author of Grant's Final Victory, about the last years of Union General and President Ulysses S. Grant's life and his determination to complete his memoirs while also fighting the effects of terminal illness.

Bible Belt Gays: Insiders-Without, Bernadette Barton

The Chautauqua Journal

During a Spring 2012 visit to a university nestled in the Appalachian Mountains, my hosts introduced me to an openly gay Episcopalian priest active in a variety of local progressive causes, including gay rights issues. While enjoying a buffet luncheon of Indian food, I learned that Father “Joe” (all the names are changed) had lived many years in Central Kentucky and we knew several people in common. After a run-through of our personal connections, Father Joe shared other tidbits of his life story, including that he had not been raised Episcopalian. He explained, “I grew up in a fundamentalist family …

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Further Reflections On A Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, Eric Metaxas

The Chautauqua Journal

I first heard the name Dietrich Bonhoeffer during the summer that I turned 25. I had just returned to faith in a serious and moving way and one day the man who led me along that journey gave me a copy of Bonhoeffer’s classic book, The Cost of Discipleship. He asked if I’d ever heard of Bonhoeffer. I told him that I hadn’t, and he told me that Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and theologian who because of his faith had stood up for the Jews and had gotten involved in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. He said that …

Christian Faith And Struggles For Justice (A Reply To Metaxas), Carolyn R. Dupont

The Chautauqua Journal

As part of the EKU Chautauqua Lecture Series, author Eric Metaxas came to Central Kentucky to speak about his newly published book, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. The book garnered glowing reviews in some circles and continued to sell briskly after reaching the top slot on the New York Times bestseller list in September 2011. Engaging and openly evangelical, Metaxas tells a compelling story of the life and ultimate end of the German pastor who opposed the Nazi regime, joined a plot to kill Hitler and paid with his life. Audiences leave his presentations as if under a spell. …

First Day Of My Life, Derek Nikitas

The Chautauqua Journal

Mom stomped on the gas and the wheels spun but the car went nowhere. Rowan scooted up in the passenger seat to get a better view. The windshield was caked around with snow like the fuzzy edges of a dream, and the back window was even worse. Six hours back they left Queens, but now they were in the woods somewhere in New Hampshire. Rowan couldn’t even see a road.

“Well, we’re here,” Mom said, and tossed up her hands. Her voice steamed. They were both bundled in extra layers, but still Rowan’s toes were frozen in his boots. Around …

Abiding With Me, John Lackey

The Chautauqua Journal

Poem: "Abiding With Me"

Q & A With Donna Freitas, Author Of Sex And The Soul, Donna Freitas, Lisa Day

The Chautauqua Journal

As part of your methodology for your research and your writing of Sex and the Soul, how did you choose the participating universities? Did you consider any Bible Belt schools? Do you think Southern schools might align more closely with purity culture at religious schools? Have you visited any schools that presented different results from the predominant paradigm?

For this study, I chose the participating colleges and universities based on a number of factors: religious affiliation or non religious affiliation (Catholic, evangelical, private-secular and public), size, geographic location and whether the school was primarily a campus where students lived …

Elder Women Making Family Through Celebratory Foods: Kentucky, New Zealand, Thailand, Doris Pierce, Anne Shordike, Clare Hocking, Valerie Wright, Wannipa Bunrayong, Soisuda Vittayakorn, Phuanjai Rattakorn

The Chautauqua Journal

This study, which describes how older women of three counties experience the preparation of annual celebratory foods, is uniquely responsive to the theme of EKU’s 2011-2012 Chautauqua Lecture Series, “Living with Others: Challenges and Promises.” How women of different countries lead their families in preparing traditional foods together each year demonstrates how, although each culture is unique, the challenges and promises of living with others are fulfilled and managed in many similar and little-examined women’s ways in countries around the globe.

Understanding The Complexity Of School Bully Involvement, Dorothy L. Espelage

The Chautauqua Journal

Bullying perpetration and victimization are issues of increasing concern for researchers, educators, clinicians, parents and youth today. Bullying broadly refers to aggressive behaviors including physical aggression (hitting, shoving, tripping, etc.), verbal aggression (teasing, name-calling, threatening) as well as relational aggression (rumor spreading, exclusion, isolation from clique). Bullying is thought to differ from normal peer conflict in that it is often repeated and involves a difference in power between the bully and victim. Bullying behaviors also extend to the use of the internet and cell-phones to harass and intimidate recipients. Bullying through these mediums is commonly referred to as cyberbullying. Although …

The Ethics Of Facebook, Michael W. Austin

The Chautauqua Journal

In this paper, I offer a moral analysis of Facebook. What are the morally positive features of Facebook? What are its morally negative features? I will limit my attention to the personal and interpersonal aspects of the use of this technology, and set aside an ethical analysis of the business practices, both past and present, of Facebook. My analysis, then, is not comprehensive. I will argue for a particular thesis concerning Facebook, namely, that in many ways Facebook’s moral value for a person depends on the character of that person, though the structure of this technology is not morally neutral. …

How To Build A Domesticated Fox: The Start Of A Long Journey, Lee A. Dugatkin

The Chautauqua Journal

In 1959, outside of Novosibirsk, Siberia, Dmitri Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut began what remains one of the longest-running experiments in biology. For the last 59 years they have been domesticating silver foxes and studying evolution in real time. Belyaev died in 1985, but Trut has continued to lead this experiment up to this very day. Each generation they and their team have been selecting the calmest, most prosocial-toward-humans foxes and preferentially breeding those individuals. Today they have foxes that are calmer than lap dogs, and who also look eerily dog-like—floppy ears, wagging tail and all. Belyaev and Trut’s results have …

Symmetry Of Energy Divergence Anomalies Associated With The El Niño-Southern Oscillation, Evan Kutta, Jason A. Hubbart, Timothy P. Eichler, Anthony R. Lupo

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a dominant source of global climate variability. The effects of this phenomenon alter the flow of heat from tropical to polar latitudes, resulting in weather and climate anomalies that are difficult to forecast. The current work quantified two components of the vertically integrated equation for the total energy content of an atmospheric column, to show the anomalous horizontal redistribution of surface heat flux anomalies. Symmetric and asymmetric components of the vertically integrated latent and sensible heat flux divergence were quantified using ERA-Interim atmospheric reanalysis output on 30 model layers between 1979 and 2016. Results …

The Planet, 2018, Winter, Keiko Betcher, Huxley College Of The Environment, Western Washington University

The Planet

No abstract provided.

Gender Fairness Within The Force Concept Inventory, Adrienne L. Traxler, Rachel Henderson, John Stewart, Gay Stewart, Alexis Papak, Rebecca Lindell

Physics Faculty Publications

Research on the test structure of the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) has largely ignored gender, and research on FCI gender effects (often reported as “gender gaps”) has seldom interrogated the structure of the test. These rarely crossed streams of research leave open the possibility that the FCI may not be structurally valid across genders, particularly since many reported results come from calculus-based courses where 75% or more of the students are men. We examine the FCI considering both psychometrics and gender disaggregation (while acknowledging this as a binary simplification), and find several problematic questions whose removal decreases the apparent gender …

Teaching Chemistry In A Spiral Progression Approach: Lessons From Science Teachers In The Philippines, Joymie R. Orbe, Allen A. Espinosa, Janir T. Datukan

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

As the Philippines moves towards implementing the K-12 curriculum, there has been a mismatch in teacher preparation in science. The present teacher education curriculum prepares science teachers to specialise in a specific field (e.g. integrated science, biology, chemistry, and physics). However, in the K-12 curriculum, they are required to teach all the sciences in a spiral progression approach. Hence, this study analysed the experiences of science teachers in teaching chemistry in the K-12 curriculum in order to identify their challenges and how they are overcoming them. Findings suggest that the teacher’s content, pedagogy, and assessment in chemistry are problematic; specifically, …

Question 1: Throwing Out Energy; Question 2: Blood Pressure, Larry Weinstein

Physics Faculty Publications

The article presents two questions on the amount of energy wasted by Americans whenever they throw out unused ice in their drinks, and why is blood pressure measured on the upper arm.

Experiences And Practices Of Environmental Adult Education Participants, Cindy Fitzwilliams-Heck

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Awareness of the sustainability of our natural resources is a continuing concern. Initiatives promoting environmental adult education (EAE) through professional development (PD) workshops ensure educators' have the knowledge and skills to inform their audience about environmental literacy and stewardship. However, these workshops have rarely been monitored. Specifically, it appears no researchers have focused on the reflective experiences of an EAE PD workshop on educator participants at least 5 years after participation. This basic qualitative study used telephone interviews of 8 past participants to explore whether and how they perceive their behavior changing in relation to natural resources conservation years after …

Educational Manager Perceptions Towards Integrated Management Information System Implementation In Yemen, Mahfood Hussain Alkaabi

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The government of Yemen has been developing government offered services designed to improve the quality of education management. Yemen's managers of education and managers of higher education in the Ministry of Education (MOE) and the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) have sought to improve quality of education, reduce costs, and provide timely information for decision-making processes by implementing an integrated management information system (IMIS). The problem was the lack of understanding the barriers that hinder successful IMIS implementation by the MOE and MOHE, and the role that lack of collaboration has played in prior unsuccessful attempts. The purpose of this …

Teacher Perceptions Of Professional Learning Communities' Impact On Math Critical Thinking Pedagogy, Elizabeth Ann Daly

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

U.S. educational leaders struggle with declining mathematics achievement among students as compared to other countries. The problem for this study was low standardized mathematics scores in one district in a major city in the Southwestern United States. The purpose of this sequential explanatory mixed method project study was to analyze the effectiveness of professional learning communities (PLCs) on the mathematics critical thinking pedagogy among teachers in 2 elementary schools. The conceptual framework focused on work by Olivier, Hipp, Huffman, and Hord on the efficacy of PLCs for improving teacher pedagogy. Research questions addressed in this study were designed to explore …

Smu Master Of It In Business Launches New Artificial Intelligence Track, Singapore Management University

SMU Press Releases

The Singapore Management University’s School of Information Systems (SIS) has launched a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) track under its Master of IT in Business (MITB) programme. Geared towards nurturing graduates who are ready for the revolutionary change from AI in data science, the AI track equips a new generation of IT business leaders in careers that bridge AI with business.