Going to the Community

Let me offer three points. First, I want to take a few minutes to set the context for a democratic education. I want to cite six or seven key choices that I think anybody who\u27s interested in community service as a vehicle of citizen education needs to face and which we face at Rutgers as do other universities around the the country. Thirdly, I want to address Harry Boyte\u27s thoughtful criticisms of communitarianism

Measurement of Neutron Reflectivity from a Silicon Crystal: Preparation for an nMDM Measurement

Physicists from Argonne National Laboratories, Valparaiso University, the University of Hawaii, and the National Institute for Standards and Technology have designed an experiment to use the known neutron magnetic dipole moment (nMDM) to measure Schwinger scattering in silicon (Si), a process whereby the orientation of the magnetic dipole polarization is altered by interactions with the atomic electric fields in a Si crystal. This measurement is intended to be a precursor to a search for a neutron electric dipole moment (nEDM) employing a similar spin rotation via a different interaction. Both measurements depend on neutron Bragg reflections down a slotted Si crystal. For a successful measurement, the neutron beam has to reflect approximately 150 times, without a large loss of beam intensity. This requires a high reflectivity, on the order of 99% reflective. In order to make an accurate measurement of the Schwinger scattering, both the incident neutron beam and the crystal\u27s reflectivity need to be well understood. In summer 2010, we characterized the newly commissioned \u27nMDM Experiment\u27 neutron beamline at the NIST Center for Neutron Research, and measured the reflectivity of the slotted Si single crystal intended for the experiment. These measurements laid the groundwork for the coming nMDM Schwinger scattering measurement

Neutron Electric Dipole Moment: Research and Development

The neutron\u27s electric dipole moment (nEDM) serves as an important test of the Standard Model of particle physics and it\u27s various alternatives. Various models of fundamental physics allow for different magnitudes for the nEDM, and recent experiments have begun to exclude some models. Valparaiso University is part of a collaboration of institutions working on an improved experiment to measure the nEDM, to be conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the next few years. The experiment will be performed at 0.4 Kelvin, and will involve the use of magnetic fields and very large electric fields. Research at Los Alamos National Laboratory this summer has focused on identifying materials with the proper electronic properties under these conditions for further study and development efforts. Some measurements and conclusions are presented

Public Talk and Civic Action: Education for Participation in a Strong Democracy

Civic education programs have always played a distinctive role in the American education curriculum. For the most part, however, civic education has been associated with civic knowledge and the cultivation of a cognitive faculty thought to be identical with political judgement (private judgment on public issues). Perhaps this has been appropriate to a society which understood democracy primarily as a system of accountability in which elected representatives do most of the actual governing and citizens limit themselves to the passive roles of voter and watchdog

Introducing the VPHA Policy Forum

Data before and during the pandemic indicates Virginia\u27s public health system needs reform. This article suggests that reform requires policy change, and it introduces the VPHA forum as a place to examine current policies and explore new ideas. Finally, it encourages policymakers, advocates, and the public to focus on fundamental questions about how public health is financed and delivered in Virginia. Answering these questions is necessary to creating better public health policies - and better health - for all Virginians

A. Season of Service: Introducing Service Learning into the Liberal Arts Curriculum

We live in times when rights and obligations have become uncoupled. Individuals regard themselves almost exclusively as private persons with responsibilities only to family and job and yet possessing endless rights against a distant and alien state in relationship to which they think or themselves, at best, as watchdogs and clients and, at worst, as adversaries and victims. The idea of service to country or to the institutions by which rights and liberty are legitimized and sustained has fairly vanished

This Is the Way: Faculty on the Camino de Santiago

Excerpt from book chapter: For nearly a millennium, pilgrims have made their way to Santiago de Compostela to visit the tomb of Saint James. These pilgrims initially journeyed from the Iberian Peninsula and then greater Europe, establishing over a dozen routes to reach the northwestern city in modern-day Galicia, a province of Spain. These routes followed established pathways connecting urban hubs, ports, and trade channels. While the number of pilgrims rose steadily in the Middle Ages through the Renaissance, the popularity of pilgrimage mirrored that of the Catholic Church and began to wane with the onset of the Enlightenment. It is not until the late twentieth century that we begin to see the Camino\u27s revitalization and then a boom in participation in the first decades of this century...https://scholarworks.wm.edu/educationbookchapters/1055/thumbnail.jp