Fearless Friday: Tiffany Lane

This week, SURGE is highlighting the fearless work of Tiffany Lane, the new director of the Women’s and LGBTQ Resource Center on campus. Although she is a new addition to the Gettysburg community, Tiffany has been working with issues of systemic injustice for much of her life. Her social justice journey began when she was an undergrad at Michigan State University (MSU), where she began to accept her identity as a queer woman. Tiffany was a student leader and activist at MSU and became so passionate about this work that she decided to make a career out of her activism. Tiffany went on to get her masters in social work from the University of Minnesota. Prior to arriving on our campus, Tiffany was the director of an LGBT center, the program coordinator of an LGBT school-based program, and a program coordinator at the University of Michigan-Flint. [excerpt

The rise and rise of environmental NGOs: unforeseen risks to democratic environmental governance in Australia

Current approaches to environmental policy and management in Australia designate non-government organisations (NGOs) an increasingly central role. This paper considers that the extent of NGO involvement, both formal and informal, in environmental governance is now so widespread, the magnitude of changes to democratic governance so far-reaching and the claims made of NGO participation so bold, that a critical gaze on NGOs is overdue. To foreground the analysis that follows, the paper interrogates the relationship between NGOs and civil society, and explores the structural transformation of western democracies which has provided the preconditions for the rise of NGOs in environmental governance. The paper then considers the diverse ways in which such NGOs are currently implicated in environmental governance in Australia and identifies a series of risks associated with these approaches when used uncritically. The paper concludes by calling for a more nuanced and critical appraisal of the role of NGOs in environmental governance which takes care to reserve political space for the articulation of diverse values and interests in environmental policy and management

Toward an Understanding of Vertical Momentum Transports in Cloud-System-Resolving Model Simulations of Multiscale Tropical Convection

This study examines the characteristics of convective momentum transport (CMT) and gravity wave momentum transport (GWMT) in two-dimensional cloud-system-resolving model simulations, including the relationships between the two transports. A linear group velocity criterion is shown to objectively separate CMT and GWMT. The GWMT contribution is mostly consistent with upward-propagating gravity waves and is present in the troposphere and the stratosphere. The CMT contribution forms a large part of the residual (nonupward-propagating contribution) and dominates the fluxes in the troposphere. Additional analysis of the vertical sensible heat flux supports the physical interpretation of the two contributions, further isolating the effects of unstable convection from vertically propagating gravity waves. The role of transient and nonconservative (friction and diabatic heating) processes in generating momentum flux and their dependence on changes in convective organization was assessed using a pseudomomentum budget analysis. Nonconservative effects were found to dominate the transports; the GWMT contribution involved a diabatic source region in the troposphere and a dissipative sink region in the stratosphere. The CMT contribution was consistent with transport between the boundary layer and free troposphere via tilted convection. Transient buoyancy–vorticity correlations highlighted wave sources in the region of convective outflow and the boundary layer. These sources were akin to the previously described “mechanical oscillator” mechanism. Fluxes associated with this upper-level source were most sensitive to convective organization, highlighting the mechanism by which changes in organization are communicated to GWMT. The results elucidate important interactions between CMT and GWMT, adding further weight to suggestions that the two transports should be linked in parameterizations

Dance 17 PSM Show Plot Act 1 Prompt Copy

The Calling Document matching the Show Call #2 for Dance 1

The Burke-Gaffney Observatory: A fully roboticized remote-access observatory with a low resolution spectrograph

We describe the current state of the Burke-Gaffney Observatory (BGO) at Saint Mary's University - a unique fully roboticized remote-access observatory that allows students to carry out imaging, photometry, and spectroscopy projects remotely from anywhere in the world via a web browser or social media. Stellar spectroscopy is available with the ALPY 600 low resolution grism spectrograph equipped with a CCD detector. We describe our custom CCD spectroscopy reduction procedure written in the Python programming language and demonstrate the quality of fits of synthetic spectra computed with the ChromaStarServer (CSS) code to BGO spectra. The facility along with the accompanying Python BGO spectroscopy reduction package and the CSS spectrum synthesis code provide an accessible means for students anywhere to carry our projects at the undergraduate honours level. BGO web pages for potential observers are at the site: observatory.smu.ca/bgo-useme. All codes are available from the OpenStars www site: openstars.smu.ca/Comment: 23 pages double-spaced, 12 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2307.01279 . HR3580 now correctly identified and modelled as a giant, not a dwar

Talking with Children About Potentially Sensitive Topics: Birth, Sex, Death, and Santa

Our study looks at conversations between parents/caregivers and their children about potentially sensitive topics including birth, sex, death, and fantastical beings (i.e. Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny). Our paper covers information on what children know, Parent conversations, and cultural differences between all these topics. Our methods Are broken up into two parts: a parent survey and an informative website. The survey was distributed locally and included questions about parents’ beliefs towards how much their children knew about these topics and their attitudes about having the conversations. The website was created to be a tool for parents and combines the key findings of our literature review with our own survey-based research

Archival Continuum

Presentation to JMU Libraries and Furious Flower Poetry Center

The teachable moment: engaging students in social justice movements

Social justice has long been at the forefront of the core values of the social work profession. Social workers are charged to confront social injustices and advocate for social change. In 2014, there was a societal response across the United States to the deaths of two African-American men, Mike Brown and Eric Garner, and the decision to not indict the police officers who killed them. The collective reaction was reflective of a country unsettled by the criminal justice system’s ongoing acceptance of structural discrimination. This article will focus on one university’s social work faculty’s collective response to the brutal killings of African-American men by police officers. With a main campus located in the suburbs and a satellite campus situated in a major city, the faculty felt compelled to guide students from both campuses through an understanding of what was happening locally and nationally by facilitating forums and programs to engage in dialog, not only in the classroom, but throughout the campus community. The concept of the living classroom is introduced and applied as a way to combat discrimination and advocate for social justice and human rights

Persistence, Motivation, and Resilience: Older Youth Aging Out of Foster Care Attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)

Persistence, Motivation and Resilience: Older Youth Aging Out of Foster Care Attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities ABSTRACT Many young adults involved with the child welfare system have a unique set of circumstances and needs. As they come of age, separated from their families of origin, additional services and supports are warranted to achieve their goals in life. This qualitative study explores the experiences of youth who have been impacted by the foster care system and are enrolled at a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) in the Mid-Atlantic region. Using a phenomenological approach, participants were interviewed regarding their motivation to attend an HBCU. Journey to College and Current College Experiences were two major themes that emerged from the interviews, along with several sub themes. The need for additional research and implications for child welfare social work practice are discussed

Visible light carrier generation in co-doped epitaxial titanate films

Perovskite titanates such as SrTiO$_{3}$ (STO) exhibit a wide range of important functional properties, including high electron mobility, ferroelectricity, and excellent photocatalytic performance. The wide optical band gap of titanates limits their use in these applications, however, making them ill-suited for integration into solar energy harvesting technologies. Our recent work has shown that by doping STO with equal concentrations of La and Cr we can enhance visible light absorption in epitaxial thin films while avoiding any compensating defects. In this work, we explore the optical properties of photoexcited carriers in these films. Using spectroscopic ellipsometry, we show that the Cr$^{3+}$ dopants, which produce electronic states immediately above the top of the O 2p valence band in STO reduce the direct band gap of the material from 3.75 eV to between 2.4 and 2.7 eV depending on doping levels. Transient reflectance spectroscopy measurements are in agreement with the observations from ellipsometry and confirm that optically generated carriers are present for longer than 2 ns. Finally, through photoelectrochemical methylene blue degradation measurements, we show that these co-doped films exhibit enhanced visible light photocatalysis when compared to pure STO.Comment: 19 pages including supplement, 8 figures (3 main, 5 supplement