Royce C. Engstrom Interview, March 8, 2018

Royce Engstrom discusses his work as provost and president of the University of Montana (UM). He highlights UM 2020, which was the strategic plan for the University of Montana, his vision for the Global Leadership Initiative (GLI), and the expansion of research activity. Engstrom highlights academic programs created during his tenure at UM including climate change studies, data analytics, and systems ecology, and also the expansion of fundraising. Engstrom talks about Missoula College, including the importance of two-year education and the location of the new College building. Engstrom recalls the sexual assault problems at UM and his interest in addressing these with transparency and proactive solutions. He also reflects on the declining enrollment, budget cuts and layoffs during his tenure, and shares his reaction to being asked to resign. Finally, he shares his perspective on his leadership style and his legacy at UM.https://scholarworks.umt.edu/umhistory_interviews/1036/thumbnail.jp

Royce C. Engstrom Interview, August 29, 2017

In the first of a two-part interview, Royce Engstrom discusses his early years in Omaha, Nebraska; graduate school in Wisconsin; and 28 years working at the University of South Dakota, including as a department chair and administrator. He talks about his early interest in science and his college education and work in analytical chemistry, as well as his pursuit of a Ph.D. and his involvement with EPSCOR. Engstrom reminisces about meeting his now wife, Mary, who worked as a K-12 teacher in South Dakota. Finally, he recalls the first stage of his career at the University of Montana, which started with his appointment as provost, and begins to share his vision for the Global Leadership Initiative.https://scholarworks.umt.edu/umhistory_interviews/1035/thumbnail.jp

Liberty\u27s Last Post Office: A Story of a Gold MIning Camp in Washington State

There was once a large center of activity in the Swauk Basin of upper Kittitas County. The place is called Liberty. Liberty was once the most action packed place in Kittitas County. At least it was for a while after gold was discovered in Swauk Creek. Like many gold camps the place boomed and ebbed over the years. Unlike some other places it never quite went completely bust. It came close, and fortunately for some it didn’t. It still exists today as a living ghost town. The Liberty story has been told before in various ways. This telling of the story revolves around the end of Liberty’s role as an active mining community and its close call with complete destruction. It is about four Nicholson brothers and their store, the last post office in Liberty, and the people who later saved the mining camp as a historic site to show the next generation what came before. My thanks to Fred Krueger for preserving Liberty history in the form of oral interviews of old time miners and for his encouragement to write history in my own way. That is, to simply preserve history, not to rewrite it. Thanks also to Pattie Nicholson, Robert Nicholson’s wife, and Warren Leyde, Freida Nicholson’s nephew, for graciously sharing family documents and pictures that made this story possible.https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/local_authors/1002/thumbnail.jp

Patterns of Early Lake Ontogeny in Glacier Bay as Inferred from Diatom Assemblages

We studied a series of recently formed lakes along a deglaciation chronosequence in Glacier Bay National Park to examine changes in water chemistry, primary production, and biotic composition that accompany the early ontogeny of north-temperate lakes. Successional trends in these freshwater ecosystems have been explored with a two-tiered approach that includes (1) the comparison of limnological conditions among lakes of known age and in different stages of primary catchment succession, and (2) the inference of water-chemistry trends in individual sites based on fossil diatom stratigraphy. This paper emphasizes the reconstruction of limnological trends from fossil diatom assemblages. The modem distribution of diatoms in relation to water-chemistry gradients within 32 lakes of varied age is used to derive a transfer function for the reconstruction of chemical trends from fossil assemblages in sediment cores. The modem data suggest that pH and TN (total nitrogen) exert significant and independent controls on diatom distributions, and thus trends in these variables are reconstructed for Bartlett Lake, as an example of our approach. Core reconstruction corroborates patterns in pH suggested by the modem chronosequence and shows a gradual decline in lake water pH after about 100 years. The Bartlett Lake core also follows the chronosequence pattern in TN concentration, with an initial increase followed by a decline after ca. 100 years. Reconstructions from other sites, however, suggest that trends in total nitrogen concentration are variable, and thus that localized patterns of plant colonization and soil development may result in regional variability in lake water nitrogen concentration over time

Public Health and Social Desirability in Kazakhstan: Methodological Considerations

Background: As the Republic of Kazakhstan undertakes new public health efforts to promote healthy lifestyles among its citizens, the local perceptions of health and health behaviors need to be examined and understood from the sociocultural and historical perspectives. The primary aim of this study is to examine the association between perception of control on one’s health and engagement in good and bad health behaviors.Methods: Students enrolled in a health communication course surveyed 310 citizens of Kazakhstan on their perceptions of control over their own health and multiple health behaviors (i.e. smoking status, physical activity, etc.). Twenty-seven students were divided into groups and approached every third passerby as a potential participant during common shopping hours in nine popular marketplaces in Astana, Kazakhstan. Perception of control on one’s health was measured using a validated measure of health control: the multidimensional health locus of control scale (MHLC), developed by Wallston and colleagues. The MHLC measures three separate loci of control: internal, chance, and powerful others.Results: Participants perceived themselves as having highest control over their health (MHLC subscale internal: 29.70±0.64), powerful others had second highest control (MHLC subscale power others: 23.72±0.77), and chance had the lowest but still some control on their health (MHLC subscale chance: 20.82±0.85). Most participants rated their current health as very good (18.1%), good (45.0%), or moderate (32.3%). Approximately 23.4% of participants were smokers, and 22.2% consumed alcohol. Physical activity averaged 3.63 days in the past week, and fruit and vegetable consumption averaged 2 servings of each per day.  Tobacco and the powerful others subscale were significantly negatively correlated (r=-0.17, p<0.05). Conclusions: Participant reports regarding personal health behaviors and lifestyle did not reflect the national reports regarding lifestyle behaviors. The relationship between powerful others subscale and tobacco smoking indicate that using healthcare providers may open up avenues to lowering tobacco use through patient education; however, social desirability is a notable concern for public health interventions. More importantly, the surveys uncovered future questions for conducting public health research with the general public, including issues of trust in the healthcare system and social desirability bias. Additional factors such as distrust in healthcare and government also may play a role in the public’s participation in social scientific research. The students who conducted the surveys reported a general skepticism from the public ranging from unfamiliarity with survey research to explicit distrust in the intentions and purpose of the research itself

Patterns of Early Lake Ontogeny in Glacier Bay as Inferred from Diatom Assemblages

We studied a series of recently formed lakes along a deglaciation chronosequence in Glacier Bay National Park to examine changes in water chemistry, primary production, and biotic composition that accompany the early ontogeny of north-temperate lakes. Successional trends in these freshwater ecosystems have been explored with a two-tiered approach that includes (1) the comparison of limnological conditions among lakes of known age and in different stages of primary catchment succession, and (2) the inference of water-chemistry trends in individual sites based on fossil diatom stratigraphy. This paper emphasizes the reconstruction of limnological trends from fossil diatom assemblages. The modem distribution of diatoms in relation to water-chemistry gradients within 32 lakes of varied age is used to derive a transfer function for the reconstruction of chemical trends from fossil assemblages in sediment cores. The modem data suggest that pH and TN (total nitrogen) exert significant and independent controls on diatom distributions, and thus trends in these variables are reconstructed for Bartlett Lake, as an example of our approach. Core reconstruction corroborates patterns in pH suggested by the modem chronosequence and shows a gradual decline in lake water pH after about 100 years. The Bartlett Lake core also follows the chronosequence pattern in TN concentration, with an initial increase followed by a decline after ca. 100 years. Reconstructions from other sites, however, suggest that trends in total nitrogen concentration are variable, and thus that localized patterns of plant colonization and soil development may result in regional variability in lake water nitrogen concentration over time

Whispers From the Grave: Stories of the Evans Family and Other Early Settlers on Swauk Prairie

In 1882 Jesse James Evans and his family were one of the last pioneers to follow the Oregon trail by Wagon, pulled by mules, intending to settle in the Puget Sound area. Instead they ended up joining a half-dozen or so early settlers on Swauk Prairie in Kittitas County. They sent word back to Missouri to neighbors and relatives and eventually most of the early settlers on Swauk Prairie were connected in some way to the Evans. This book was written because an Evans family historian, Mary Lou Dills, and a local Swauk historian, Wesley Engstrom, just happened to meet one day and decided that, by combining resources, a bit of local history could be preserved. The result of that joint effort was a book that describes what conditions were like when settlers first arrived on Swauk Prairie. Who the people were, what the towns looked like, who claimed the land, where the schools and churches were built, where the dead were buried and, lastly, what the family stories were of those in the southwest corner of the Swauk Cemetery where Mary Malinda Evans and her unborn child were buried in June of 1884. The Swauk Cemetery is a community heirloom. It started without any formal organization or plan, just a place where neighbors buried their dead. Now, to comply with state law, there is a non-profit corporation to administer its affairs. It is still a non-endowed cemetery without a fund for its perpetual care where the descendants of those buried there are expect-ed to take care of the graves. Swauk Cemetery is a place of serenity and beauty befitting of the hardy pioneers resting there.https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/local_authors/1003/thumbnail.jp