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Transformative Opportunities for Community Engagement within Teacher Education: Creating Opportunities to Prepare Preservice Teachers for Urban Environments in Post-Katrina New Orleans
No full textPreservice teachers need meaningful opportunities to engage in authentic community activities that expand their cultural horizons and frames of reference, strengthening their preparation for urban teaching. Abramson Science and Technology Magnet in New Orleans East opened the 2007-08 school year without a library or functioning classroom libraries. Providing access to books is a cornerstone of reading development; thus, Louisiana State University education candidates engaged in a project that established classroom libraries in every K-8 classroom
Engagement of Community Health Workers in the Research Enterprise: A Survey of Organizations and the Research Roles Given CHWs
No full textCommunity health workers (CHWs) have long been engaged by organizations to assist underserved populations with unmet health-related needs. CHWs’ roles in effectively addressing service and health barriers—for example, through navigation and health promotion—are well established. Few published studies address how the skills and roles of CHWs are applied to support research, though similar barriers exist. To address this gap, we surveyed CHW programs about the extent and type of CHW involvement supporting research
Bridging the Divide: From Service to Public Work
No full textAn important aspect of public higher education is the development of active citizens. Students should leave our institutions not only with an appreciation for the value of community service, but also having the vital knowledge, skills, and dispositions to be public problem solvers. This article is a reflection on one professor’s experience of teaching students for active citizenship by moving from a service mindset to an emphasis on public work. This account emphasizes public work as a critical pedagogy for a potential next phase of civic engagement in higher education, which focuses on the development of student civic agency in addition to community impact
The Evolution of an Urban Design Curriculum in Landscape Architecture and a Community-Based Design Center
No full textUrban community-based design centers have multiple potential functions. Ideally, they give voice to previously underrepresented groups in public discussions of urban design and environmental change. When combined with a university design curriculum, they can be training grounds for a new generation of urban designers sensitive to the needs, wants, and desires of local stakeholders. This study describes the co-evolution of an urban design curriculum at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a design center in the nearby city of Springfield, Massachusetts. Four key areas related to community service learning were evaluated through a mixed methods approach including historical analysis, qualitative and quantitative stakeholder surveys, and university course evaluations: (1) community participation in the design studio, (2) interdisciplinary teaching, 3) planning and physical outcomes, (4) academic research and creative work. Over a span of six years, all four areas showed qualitative or quantitative improvement. Collaboration between student designers and community stakeholders deepened and expanded, with stakeholders participating in the design process at earlier stages and having a greater role in shaping studio outcomes. Interdisciplinary learning and collaboration within the curriculum increased with distance from the university and its disciplinary institutions. Collaboration between the curriculum and the community, catalyzed by the Design Center, led to unanticipated but positive physical and planning outcomes, while stakeholders’ engagement in the participatory design process contributed to the development of community resilience and agency that persisted after the end of collaboration
Tree Rings and the Broader Ocean-Atmospheric Circulation in the Highland Himalayas
No full textClimate change has altered tree-growth patterns and resulted in higher sea-surface temperatures across the planet. The Himalayan biome is one of the most vulnerable areas in the world to climate change because it has caused changes in forests’ growth and glaciers’ retreat. Dendrochronology has been used to understand the impact of climate change on tree growth and for climate reconstruction. In this dissertation, I discuss the growth of trees in the highlands of the eastern, central, and western Himalayas for the last 500 years and relate these patterns to the present global warming scenario and broad-scale climate modes. I reconstructed surface temperatures for the Indian Ocean Basin to better understand the links to the present global warming scenario. Further, I apply the blue intensity technique to the tree-ring chronology of Pinus wallichiana from northern Pakistan. I have investigated the impact of El Niño-Southern Oscillation, Indian Ocean Dipole, global average annual temperature, and northern hemispheric average yearly temperature on the radial growth of trees from the Himalayas. For this, I downloaded tree-ring chronologies collected in Nepal (n=57), Pakistan (n=43), and Bhutan (n=21) from the International Tree-Ring Databank. I also used six chronologies developed by myself with collaborators from Pakistan (n=5) and Nepal (n=1). I created three individual composite chronologies for each country (Pakistan, Nepal, and Bhutan). A chronology from the western Himalayas (Pakistan) showed more variation than the chronologies from the eastern (Bhutan) and the central Himalayas (Nepal). All three chronologies have shown increased annual growth in recent decades. These three chronologies from the eastern, central, and western Himalayas showed a strong positive correlation with the northern hemispheric temperature anomaly and the global average temperature anomaly. A significant positive relationship is observed between El Niño and the composite chronology from the western and central Himalayas for the winter and spring months. The Indian Ocean dipole mode index showed a positive relationship between all of the composite tree-ring chronologies, but a statistically significant relationship is observed with the composite chronologies from the eastern and central Himalayas. Individual chronology from the Himalayas has shown a site-specific relationship to the mode of climate variabilities. The influence of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation is better observed on the individual chronologies for the Himalayas, and the Southern Annular Mode has the least influence on the site-specific tree-ring chronology for the Himalayas. The surface temperature of the oceans significantly impacts global climate patterns. Present global warming has substantially increased sea-surface temperatures. The surface temperature of the Indian Ocean has a considerable influence on global climate, especially in the bordering nations. There is a need for sub-decadal to annual pre-instrumental sea-surface temperature records. I have reconstructed the Indian Ocean Basin sea-surface temperatures anomaly for the last 548 years from 1468 to 2015 CE using tree-ring chronologies from the Himalayas. The data consists of 957 series of 10 different species. The reconstruction depicts a decreasing sea-surface temperature trend from 1468 to 1920 CE and an increasing trend after 1920 CE. Sea-surface temperature has unprecedentedly increased after 1970 CE. The temperature of the Indian Ocean is positively correlated to the temperature of the tropical Atlantic Ocean. A wavelet analysis indicated that the impact of multidecade oscillation has weakened in the Indian Ocean in the present century. Most of the dendrochronology studies in the Himalayas are based on the measurement of ring width, which is a conventional method. Blue intensity-related studies are limited in the region. In this dissertation, I explored blue-intensity research using tree-ring samples of Pinus wallichiana from northern Pakistan. The blue intensity research is a less tedious, less expensive alternative proxy to maximum latewood density and provides a strong climate signal. I developed a latewood blue intensity chronology from 1520 to 2015 CE and showed that the minimum temperature from July to October primarily controls the growth of latewood cells in Pinus wallichiana in the study area. Latewood blue intensity is also strongly associated with sea-surface temperatures of the tropical Atlantic and northern Indian Ocean
Issues with Implementing Service Learning into an Agricultural Sciences Equine Program
No full textIn the spring of 2007 service learning classes were implemented in an equine science program after being funded for animal evacuation and recovery grants. This program was met with great student enthusiasm and participation; however, the authors raise questions about some of the obstacles they have found while implementing this program. The three major areas of concern include the optimum class size for service learning, transportation, and the depth of responses to student reflective pieces
Community-Based Learning and Social Capital: Exploring Student Attitudes and Perceptions of Connectedness to Campus and Diverse Communities
No full textCommunity service activities, civic engagement, and volunteer services have been identified as key elements in improving how individuals relate and communicate with each other in society. Social capital also has been described as a highly useful form of social networking that empowers community members to collectively use each other as potential resources. The current study explored how participants from non-traditional backgrounds (i.e., ethnicity, culture, and age) completed a variety of interethnic community service activities. We hypothesized that increased exposure with members of diverse ethnic groups through community service activities would show reductions in ethnocentric attitudes and also show increases in the perception of the importance of social capital and future participation in community service work activities
Errata
No full textIn the Volume 3, Number 1 issue an error was made in the “Issues with Implementing Service Learning into an Agricultural Sciences Equine Program” article. The affiliation of authors Aleta C. Overby, Erin Tucker, and Aaron Lusby should have read Louisiana Tech University
Dispositions of Higher Education Faculty Toward K-12 Community Outreach
No full textThis study assessed the preparedness and willingness of faculty at a land-grant university to conduct outreach to youth about science. Using a mixed-methods design, faculty were aware of some components of effective youth outreach, but fail to acknowledge the importance of other critical pieces such as linking outreach to educational standards. This study has implications for higher education administrators, particularly those who perceive our universities as a resource for addressing the low science achievement in the United States
A Civic Engagement Agenda for Caribbean Higher Education
No full textCivic engagement programs have become prevalent in higher education in many regions of the world. Interest in engagement has increased at a time when Caribbean countries are strengthening the regional integration movement in response to the demands of globalization. Based on a cross-national assessment, this article describes the manifestations of civic engagement in Caribbean universities and proposes an agenda for institutionalizing the practice. The civic engagement agenda is applicable to higher education institutions elsewhere