Digital Commons Network^™

Sustainability Issues For Agriculture In Western Australia, Anne Bennett, Ross Kingwell, Ross George

All other publications

Agriculture has been and will continue to be a major component of economic activity in several regions in Western Australia, and agricultural communities will remain an important part of the social fabric and landscape of the State. Promoting the sustainability of agriculture is likely to produce three main outcomes: vibrant rural communities; profitable agricultural systems; and conservation of the natural environment.

This paper describes briefly the main challenges to the sustainability of agriculture and outlines some means of responding to the challenges: market-based approaches; agricultural and environmental research and development; accelerated adjustment; and global and national policy initiatives.

Review Of Waltzing With The Ghost Of Tom Joad: Poverty, Myth, And Low-Wage Labor In Oklahoma By Robert Lee Maril, Ginette Aley

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The Great Plains is home to a range of economic experiences, yet little research has focused on the roles that poor people and poverty have played in society. Constantly, though, the ghost of Tom Joad, John Steinbeck's protagonist in The Grapes of Wrath, has reminded us of the status of the contemporary poor while also embodying the potential for social change. Robert Lee Maril, has produced the first comprehensive analysis of poverty in Oklahoma, the eighth poorest state in the nation, in which he explores myths about the poor and the "real" causes of poverty, especially low-wage labor. Maril …

Community Dynamics Of An Ecotonal Forest-Prairie Interface In Northeastern Kansas, Elizabeth Hane, Steven Hamburg

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Climate change models predict that ecotones, which are boundaries between two biomes, are likely to be the first place we see the effects of climate change. However, very little baseline data exist for these areas and their current community structure. In order to better understand the community dynamics of an ecotonal forest, a 2.2 ha 60- year-old upland forest in northeastern Kansas was monitored for 10 years. This oak-hickory forest at the ecotone with the tallgrass prairie biome is growing more slowly than other forests of similar species composition farther east, possibly due to lower levels of available soil moisture …

Review Of Birds Of The Texas Panhandle: Their Status, Distribution, And History By Kenneth D. Seyffert, Mark Lockwood

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Birds of the Texas Panhandle is the first book to focus on the avifauna of this region of Texas. Seyffert has been studying the Panhandle's birds for almost forty years, and no one is more qualified to provide a comprehensive overview of its bird life. His work concentrates on the twenty-six counties that make up the Panhandle, including habitats from two physiographic regions, the High Plains and the Rolling Plains. Seyffert details the occurrence of 406 avian species that have been satisfactorily documented in the study area and thirty-six others that have been reported without supporting details. Each species account …

Review Of Kansas Breeding Bird Atlas By William H. Busby And John L. Zimmerman, Paul A. Johnsgard

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Kansas has now joined the expanding group of Midwestern states for which breeding bird atlases have recently been published, including South Dakota (1995), Iowa (1996), Missouri (1997), and Nebraska (200 I). Atlases are also in preparation or in press for Oklahoma and Texas, which will soon help fill out distributional knowledge of the Great Plains avifauna in a way unimaginable when I was assembling regional data for my Birds of the Great Plains: The Breeding Species and Their Distribution (1979).

Great Plains Research Volume 12, Number 2, Fall 2002 - Table Of Contents

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Cover and table of contents

Review Of Freshwater Ecoregions Of North America: A Conservation Assessment By Robin A. Abell, David M. Olson, Eric Dinerstein, Patrick T. Hurley, Et Al., Arnold Van Der Valk

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Defining ecogregions as "relatively large areas of land or water that contain a geographically distinct assemblage of natural communities," this book documents the efforts of the World Wildlife Fund-United States to identify areas with aquatic habitats in the United States, Canada, and Mexico that support "globally outstanding biological diversity." Public and private conservation groups can then focus their efforts on preserving the aquatic ecosystems of the most globally significant areas.

The book opens with its authors' discussion of their use of a biological distinctiveness index, focusing on fish, mussels, and crayfish species, to delineate the ecoregions of North America. Much …

Review Of Addictions And Native Americans By Laurence Armand French, Benson Tong

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Notwithstanding the title, this short book focuses largely on health issues arising from alcoholism in the indigenous population of North America. The evidence overwhelmingly points to this particular substance abuse as the number-one killer among Native Americans, accounting for the four leading causes of death: accidents, cirrhosis of the liver, suicide, and homicide. Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), which plagues infants with physical and psychological problems, is another effect of Indian alcoholism.

Review Of F. P. Grove In Europe And Canada: Translated Lives By Klaus Martens, Irene Gammel

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Canada's leading prairie author Frederick Philip Grove (1879-1948) had a predilection for strong and silent heroes: the unforgettable Niels Lindstedt in Settlers of the Marsh (1925), Abe Spalding in Fruits of the Earth (1933), John Elliot in Our Daily Bread (1928). Grove's fictional landscape was a multicultural potpourri of immigrants from Sweden, Iceland, Germany, and Russia with new-world men and women transforming the prairie wilderness into fertile and flourishing settlements. Yet Grove, aka German author and translator Felix Paul Greve, was also a literary con man who led his audience down the garden path in a fictionalized autobiography, In Search …

Review Of Letters From The Dust Bowl By Caroline Henderson, Brian Q. Cannon

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In 1907, Caroline Boa, a thirty-year-old school teacher and graduate of Mount Holyoke College, filed on a quarter section in the Oklahoma Panhandle. The following year she married Will Henderson, a one-time cowboy, well-digger, and would-be rancher. For the next fifty-seven years the couple farmed their homestead, although Caroline also taught school for three years in another community and later spent two years working on a master's degree.

Henderson is best known for her "Letters from the Dust Bowl," published by Atlantic Monthly in 1936, one of dozens of articles she wrote for popular magazines between 1913 and 1937. In …

Review Of Teaching Spirits: Understanding Native American Religious Traditions By Joseph Epes Brown With Emily Cousins, Kathleen Danker

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This volume passes on to readers some of the teachings of the late scholar and educator Joseph Epes Brown. In consultation with Brown's wife Elenita Brown and daughter Marina Brown Weatherly, writer and editor Emily Cousins has produced a clear and succinct synthesis of what Brown taught his classes at the University of Montana about Native American concepts of the sacred. She accomplishes this through the complex task of blending some of his class lecture notes, published articles, and conference talks with recollections from his students and quotations from published Native American sources.

Following Brown's example in his lectures, Cousins …

Review Of Plain Speaking: Essays On Aboriginal Peoples And The Prairie Edited By Patrick Douaud And Bruce Dawson, L. Brooks Hill

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Primarily derived from a March 2001 conference held in Regina, Saskatchewan, these essays present diverse perspectives on various connections between First Nations and Metis peoples and the Canadian Plains. Designed to create a more holistic perspective, the conference and this companion book used a wide variety of presentational formats to capture the diversity of past and present connections between Aboriginal Peoples and the prairies. The twelve articles range from traditional academic reports to autobiographical commentaries, photo essays, and transcribed interviews from an Elders' roundtable.

Essential to this collection is the confrontation of modernism with traditionalism. In his article Neal McLeod …

Glenville State College Presidential Scholars Program, Alison Witte, Philip Taylor

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Glenville State College established a new honors program in the fall of 2000. The Presidential Scholars Program (PSP) was developed to reflect the Renaissance of Shared Values, a conceptual framework of values identified to guide Glenville State College in its mission to serve the State of West Virginia. Each of these values, Civility, Freedom, Tolerance, Responsibility, Excellence, Fairness, and Integrity, is taken as a focus for one semester in a variety of class activities: readings, discussions, field trips, and finally, a relevant service project. The continual goal is that the PSP student be able to articulate a personal definition …

Penn State Schreyer Honors College, Cheryl Achterberg

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Penn State’s Schreyer Honors College utilizes technology to enhance its key learning, assessment, communications, outreach, and operations efforts.

In terms of learning, honors students learn more than just course schedules, policies, and due dates for their annual academic plans from the SHC website. Our most important learning assist comes from our thesis website with annotated examples, faculty and student tips, and a calendar planning tool. Honors faculty are also encouraged to use ANGEL, a course management tool that allows for on-line syllabi, course chat rooms, posted readings, grading records, and various email options. Some honors courses also participate in shared …

Western Washington University, George Mariz

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Some classes in the Honors Program at Western Washington are beginning to use instructional technology, chiefly as a result of initiatives from individual instructors. Some employ internet resources in their non-Honors university course offerings, and when they teach cognate classes for the Honors Program, they bring these innovations with them. These classes have been universally in the general education program. The geology department, which teaches a general education course for the program most years, has been the most aggressive in this regard and uses everything from readily available internet sites that have good collections of material on mineralogy and continental …

Clemson University, Pam Mack

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

While the honors program at Clemson University has not developed its own technology plan, the university’s efforts have opened interesting opportunities. Most of our interdisciplinary honors seminars are taught in a smart classroom, with a computer that projects onto a screen, so Internet resources can easily be accessed. I’ve taught honors seminars there, such as one on “2001: The History of the Future,” and use the computer projection to show web pages to the class. I am particularly fond of the Oxford English Dictionary on line, to which Clemson subscribes; looking up the definition of a word that has become …

Technology, Distance Education, And Honors, Jon A. Schlenker

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Few people would deny the advancements that have occurred in educational technology in recent decades. Scarcely a generation has passed since educators have gone from 16-mm projectors, slide projectors, overhead projectors, and opaque projectors to video players, DVD players, computers, and power-point presentations in the classroom. Indeed, for many teachers these “modern” technologies have become “traditional” and indispensable classroom features.

Technology And The Nchc, Bob Spurrier

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

As an acknowledged “techno-peasant” (as my wife calls both of us), it is more than a little surprising to be thought of as a “techno-guru” (Ada Long’s terminology) within NCHC. Still, I have been around long enough to participate in a number of the technological advances that have been made by our organization.

Red Rocks Community College, Amy Braziller, Chris Howell

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In the spring of 2001, an Introduction to Literature course was integrated with a Western Civilization II course, creating an honors learning community taught by two full-time Red Rocks Community College instructors. Of the eighteen students enrolled, approximately half were in the honors program. The hybrid course met twice a week for 2 1⁄2 classroom hours total (the typical hours for a traditional class); other course work was completed online.
The hybrid learning community presented a wonderful opportunity to utilize technology to enhance this unusual learning environment. The strength of the community turned out to be online discussions using WebCT, …

University Of Connecticut, Trevor Tebbs

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

“In search of Arthur” is the title of an interdisciplinary field trip dedicated to the exploration of traditional – and not so traditional – sites of the legendary King Arthur in England and Wales. It took place during spring break of 2002 but was tied to a semester-long special Honors course entitled “Interpreting Arthur.” The courses were altogether rich and fascinating, affording opportunities to visit several centuries of texts from Wales, Ireland, ancient Britain, France, and modern England, while also wending our way from hill fort to cathedral to Stonehenge to castles perched upon cliff tops to Roman temples to …

The Pickup Truck Being A Scholarly Paper On The Efficiencies Effected By Modern Technology, Don Tucker

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Sometime last spring, Dr. Bill bought a two-year-old pickup truck from one of his patients who is a used car dealer. Dr. Bill2 and I are hunting and fishing buddies, and the pickup seemed a good idea for towing a boat and such things. The pickup has an extended cab where my chocolate lab girl-dog can ride on our outings. I asked if the truck could be repaired with bailing wire and spit. He said one might also need a roll of duct tape since friction tape was hard to find these days. I said that I thought he’d made …

Wright State University, Susan Carafiello

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Technology is indispensable to the University Honors Program (UHP) of Wright State University. Fundamentally, the UHP uses Microsoft Access to maintain a comprehensive student database that allows us to keep track of our students’ academic progress and their fulfillment of UHP requirements. We also regularly use an Honors student e-mail list (updated quarterly) to notify students of upcoming Honors events, courses, and scholarship opportunities. And we of course use our web page (http://www.wright.edu/academics/honors) to explain the program, make announcements, and provide links to scholarship information. Additionally, all of our forms and our student handbook are available online at our web …

Florida International University, Meri-Jane Rochelson

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Having participated in a university-wide initiative to learn and use WebCT, I began using it in my Honors classes last spring. This is my second year with the platform, and I’m finding it an excellent adjunct to classroom work. I use WebCT primarily to communicate with students and to post assignments and relevant websites. Students have sent me drafts of papers via the system, and I have sent back my comments in the same way. Of course, all of these exchanges may be done through regular e-mail and communications programs and more ordinary course websites; although I’ve been pleased with …

Journal Of The National Collegiate Honors Council -- Volume 3, No. 2 -- Complete Issue

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

CONTENTS

Call for Papers
Submission Guidelines
Dedication (Ada Long)
Editor’s Introduction (Dail Mullins)

TECHNOLOGY IN HONORS
Technology and the NCHC, Bob Spurrier
Technology, Distance Education, and Honors, Jon A. Schlenker
The Pickup Truck, Being a Scholarly Paper on the Efficiencies Effected by Modern Technology, Don Tucker
Collaborative Teaching of English and Information Literacy in the Community College Honors Program, Nancy Tenhet, Juanita Flanders, Jeanne Wells Cook, and Margaret Jane Stauble
Introducing the Video Web-board as a Technologic Enhancement to Your Honors Course, A. Midori Albert and Katherine M. Bruce

SHORT PIECES
The Computer Based Honors Program at the University of …

Long Island University, C. W. Post Campus, Joan Digby

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

At this point I think it is quite fair to say that technology is simply the machinery of our daily lives, in honors programs as in every other sphere of activity. For that reason the impact of technology on honors in particular is extremely difficult to assess. Of course, we keep our records on computers, contact students through e-mail and listservs, and utilize media of all kinds.

Longwood University, Claire Black Mccoy

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Honors students studying art history often find it challenging to think and work creatively– discovering formal relationships between works of art or recognizing the transmission of a style or tradition through visual analysis rather than research. Often they are most comfortable with very concrete and somewhat limited paper topics such as an analysis of a particular painting, iconic image, or the work of an artist during a discrete period.

The Computer Based Honors Program At The University Of Alabama, Cathy Randall

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The first university-wide undergraduate research program in America was founded at the University of Alabama in 1968 with a grant from the National Science Foundation. The Computer Based Honors Program chooses 20 outstanding incoming freshmen each year and gives them an opportunity to learn how computing technology is used in their major fields of study. The Computer Based Honors program serves as a minor for students who major in any discipline. They receive an accelerated introduction to computer technology in their freshmen year. In their sophomore, junior, and senior years, they choose computer-oriented research projects being conducted by members of …

North Carolina State University, John Wall

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

For the past two years, the University Honors Program at NC State has co-sponsored with the College of Engineering a wireless laptop program. Incoming students in the Honors Program are offered the opportunity to purchase specially-configured and specially-priced laptop computers with wireless cards. Students then enroll in Honors seminars and other classes that meet in rooms with wireless access to the Internet. In the first year of this program, about 40 students participated. This year the number of participants has almost doubled.
The program is viewed as a pilot, with potential for expansion across the campus. NC State does not …

Introducing The Video Web-Board As A Technologic Enhancement To Your Honors Course, A. Midori Albert, Katherine Bruce

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Most instructors of honors courses strive to engage students in interactive, interdisciplinary and experiential learning. Small class sizes are almost universal, and discussion format is common. While no one learning style is common to all honors students, academically talented students tend to be intuitive learners; that is, they are abstract and insightful thinkers (Clark, 2000). They look for patterns and new relationships. Technology, such as multimedia and Internet resources, has been recommended as a pedagogical tool to enhance honors and non-honors teaching (Cooley & Johnston, 2001; Hagner & Barone, 2002; Lea, Clatyon, Draude, & Barlow, 2001; King, 1997), and here …

Collaborative Teaching Of English And Information Literacy In The Community College Honors Program, Nancy Tenhet, Juanita Flanders, Jeanne Wells Cook, Margaret Jane Stauble

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

“The honors program, in distinguishing itself from the rest of the institution, serves as a kind of laboratory within which faculty can try things they have always wanted to try but for which they could find no suitable outlet. When such efforts are demonstrated to be successful, they may well become institutionalized, thereby raising the general level of education within the college or university for all students. In this connection, the honors curriculum should serve as a prototype for educational practices that can work campus-wide in the future.” (NCHC. “Basic Characteristics of a Fully-Developed Honors Program.” National Honors Report 22(7), …