Dennis Mahan’s Leadership and Tactics: How a West Point Professor Shaped the Course of the Civil War

This summer, while doing research at Stratford Hall, I happened across the name of one West Point professor who quite literally taught every cadet who fought in the Civil War. It is fairly common knowledge than many of the war’s great commanders were classmates together at West Point. For example, the class of 1842 contained George McClellan, James Longstreet, and John Pope. Such commanders influenced the course of the war by drawing upon their West Point education, and while they may have held different military outlooks, they all drew upon the teachings of one man: Dennis Mahan, professor of mathematics as well as military and civil engineering. Thus, Mahan, a relatively unknown figure, had a direct impact on how the war was waged during some of its most crucial days. [excerpt

Personality attributes that predict cadet performance at West Point

Using data from the United States Military Academy at West Point (N = 1102 and N = 1049) from two successive years, we examined psychological measures of cadets and the correlations of those measures with consequential outcomes such as cadet performance and leadership potential. We examined four broad intelligences, two of which were thing-focused (spatial and mathematical) and two people-focused (verbal and personal intelligences) and their predictions to thing- and people-centered courses (e.g., chemistry versus psychology). We found support for a thing-people differential in reasoning. The broad intelligences and the Big Five personality traits also predicted academic and other performance criteria at consequential levels

The Thayer Method: Student Active Learning with Positive Results

Graduation from West Point requires successful completion of four courses in the mathematical sciences. These core mathematics courses include topics in discrete dynamical systems, differential and integral calculus (single variable and multivariable), differential equations, linear algebra, probability, and statistics. The instructional system employed throughout the core is the Thayer Method, named for Colonel Sylvanus Thayer, the Father of the Military Academy. In the Thayer Method, traces of cooperative education and discovery learning are evident. It is quintessential active learning. The West Point catalyst is the fundamental principle that cadets are responsible for their own education

Farmer cooperatives in the food economy of Western Europe: an analysis from the Marketing point of view

This paper is concerned with an analysis of farmer cooperatives in Western Europe from the marketing point of view. The analysis is restricted to marketing and processing cooperatives. First some basic characteristics of farmer cooperatives are discussed from a systems point of view. Afterwards changes in the environment of farmer cooperatives are reviewed. Their impact on farmer cooperatives is analysed. Finally some hypotheses on future developments of West European cooperatives are presented. Our analysis suggests that West European cooperatives will become increasingly hybrid systems, being democratic in the general policy stage and hierarchical in the executive stag

Explicit expression for the generating function counting Gessel's walks

Gessel's walks are the planar walks that move within the positive quadrant $\mathbb{Z}_{+}^{2}$ by unit steps in any of the following directions: West, North-East, East and South-West. In this paper, we find an explicit expression for the trivariate generating function counting the Gessel's walks with $k\geq 0$ steps, which start at $(0,0)$ and end at a given point $(i,j) \in \mathbb{Z}^2_+$.Comment: 23 page

West Side Study

Buffalo, New York is no stranger to spatial segregation along racial and economic lines. Conventional wisdom throughout the region traces this historic divide along the length of Main Street, a north-south corridor. It is widely believed that Buffalo’s affluent neighborhoods sit to the west, with low-income neighborhoods in the east. While Main Street serves as an easy point of reference, Buffalo’s demographics are not binary. Even dividing the city into quarters is revealing, as shown in the figures on this page. The story of the West Side is particularly complex. This section of the city is much more diverse than North or South Buffalo, challenging the myth that the West Side is mostly White. Additionally, though the West Side boasts the highest rate of educational attainment, its poverty rate nearly mirrors the East Side, and its unemployment rate remains about the same as North and South Buffalo. This report explores and visualizes the demographic story of the West Side through data from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey. See the last page for data definitions and sources

US DOL Announces Grant Exceeding $553,000 to Assist Workers affected By Layoffs From Textile Manufacturing Industry in Maine

One hundred workers laid off from West Point in Biddeford, ME will receive assistance in retraining and re-employment services in effort to help them fill new high-growth, high-demand sectors

Quaternary warping at Gorge Saddle, western Southland

Gorge Saddle is one low point on a drainage divide between Fiordland and the Southland Plain. Eastward sloping Quaternary terraces east of the divide and westward sloping terraces to the west contain granitic pebbles which could have been derived only from the west. This suggests doming at the present divide concurrent with transport from the west