Laura Lawson to Mr. James Meredith (10 October 1962)

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/mercorr_anti/1176/thumbnail.jp

Best Practices in Community Garden Management to Address Participation, Water Access, and Outreach

As community gardens expand across the U.S., Extension professionals can support them not only in horticultural education but also in planning and organization. Knowledge of community garden management is helpful in this regard. Existing research focuses on outcomes and criteria for successful gardens, but is less clear about how community gardens work. We use ethnographic methods to examine community garden management in New Jersey. Spatial and social contexts shape key issues such as water access, participation, and horticultural techniques. Extension professionals can more effectively support community gardens by tailoring their advice to these contexts

Developing a Vacant Property Inventory through Productive Partnerships: A University, NGO, and Municipal Planning Collaboration in Trenton, New Jersey

This paper analyzes the development of an inventory of vacant buildings and land in Trenton, New Jersey that resulted from a research partnership between the Rutgers University Center for Urban Environmental Sustainability; Isles, Inc. a Trenton-based non-governmental organization; and the City of Trenton. Participatory research design between university and NGO staff led to a smartphone GIS survey tool that functioned through web and desktop GIS. University students and community residents collected data through a smartphone GIS application and visually inspected almost every property within the city’s boundaries. Although many vacant land inventories have successfully used secondary data, this project required fieldwork to identify vacant properties because data were unavailable through secondary data. The survey was developed collaboratively with the NGO for their use and modification of it in future work, and to understand locally-specific visual markers of vacancy. The data informed the City of Trenton’s vacant property management policy, and served as a foundation for a variety of Isles’ community development programs. While smartphone applications may improve NGO access to GIS, the need for web and desktop GIS to complete data collection and analysis requires expertise and time that pose additional challenges

Examining the Impact of Disaster Experience with Winter Storm Uri and Climate Change Risk Perceptions on Support for Mitigation Policy

In February 2021, Winter Storm Uri swept across the central and eastern United States bringing extreme cold, widespread power outages, and rolling blackouts throughout Texas. This storm prompted climate change to emerge as a major topic of controversy and conversation with scientists and the public alike, and many began to think about the impacts of climate change. Risk communication experts have suggested prior disaster experience is a key mechanism of understanding how risk perceptions are shaped, and ultimately, on how individuals arrive at a judgment, evaluation, or attitude toward information and situations. Drawing from risk communication scholars, we examined the role of prior disaster experience, risk perceptions of climate change, and individual characteristics on its relationship with support for climate change mitigation policy. To do so, we sourced a Qualtrics public opinion panel of residents who lived in Texas during Winter Storm Uri (n = 486) to answer a series of questions related to prior disaster experience, their climate change risk perceptions, and their support of climate change mitigation policy. We conducted two hierarchical regression models to examine how prior disaster experience and climate change risk perceptions predicted support for policy. We found the inclusion of prior disaster experience provided a significant change in the respondents support for climate change mitigation policy. Although academic conversations in agricultural communications have started to explore the varying opinions of climate change, there is much more research needed in this area to fully explore the dynamic and complex phenomena of climate change

Collaborative Tools Used to Organize a Library Camp Unconference

From July to October, 2008, Laura Crossett, Joseph Kraus and Steve Lawson organized the Library Camp of the West (http://librarycampwest.pbwiki.com/). This was an unconference that took place on October 10, 2008 at the University of Denver. The authors used many technology tools to organize the event, such as email, wikis, blogs, two tools from Google, the Doodle scheduling Website, Flickr and more. This article will explain how they used those tools to prepare for the unconference

Do touch that dial: A guide to continuous response measurement in agricultural communications

As the gap in agricultural experiences between farmers and consumers grow, it is important for agricultural communicators to communicate strategically with their audiences and be proactive in addressing consumers’ concerns. Communication media can present a variety of messages or pieces of information that represent multiple perspectives within one unit. The dynamic nature of communication media, such as video and audio messages, lead to the fluctuation of feelings and responses to different elements within one singular message. While agricultural communications has traditionally relied upon quantitative and qualitative survey data, there are likely gaps in complete understandings of individual perceptions in response to varying elements of the communications message. Continuous response measurement (CRM) is a method that can be used to monitor and track individual responses to media messages in real-time to reveal critical moments within a communications message. CRM holds the potential to help those in agricultural communications understand what specific elements within messages resonate most with consumers. This professional paper explores how researchers can use CRM, showcases benefits and drawbacks of CRM, and provides recommendations for contributions to agricultural communications literature

Housing Leverage in Australia

A home is the single largest purchase that most households make, and it is one that usually requires some debt financing. Because housing debt is such a large component of households’ balance sheets, it is important to understand the financing decision. In this paper, we use household level data from the HILDA survey to relate households’ leverage to their observed characteristics using both graphical and econometric techniques. We also model the decisions to own a home and to have debt against it. We correct for any possible selection bias arising from these decisions before drawing conclusions about population behaviour. Much of the variation in leverage is attributable to the passage of time, as borrowers pay down their loans on schedule and the value of their homes rise. On top of these largely exogenous effects, we find evidence that some households make conscious decisions that strongly affect leverage. For example, Australian homeowners generally plan to pay off their mortgage before its contracted end date, and many are therefore ahead of schedule in paying off their housing debt. On the other hand, a minority of households have higher leverage than similar households because they have engaged in leveraged investment in both owner-occupied and rental housing.household survey; housing debt; leverage

Perspectives on Keeping Kids in Classrooms not Courtrooms

The school-to-prison pipeline begins with school disciplinary incidents that result in suspensions and/or referrals to law enforcement. With the support of the National Institutes of Justice, the presenters explored factors that inform decision-making about exclusionary discipline practices and law enforcement referrals in Virginia. Educators and school resource officers are invited to discuss strategies for promoting the well-being of youth at risk

An Exploratory Study of Risk Experience and Personal Values on Support for Climate Change Policies

In 2020 Oregon suffered one of the worst wildfire seasons on record that included a higher percentage of burned forest area, the destruction of residential areas, and significant risk to human health. The level of wildfire intensity was largely attributed as an effect of climate change, and future Oregon wildfire seasons are predicted to grow in intensity, acreage burned, and total duration. Public policy can be a tool to help to mitigate the effects of climate change, but successful policy implementation relies on public support. Therefore, this study sought to explore two factors that may influence support for climate change policy: risk experience and personal values. Oregon residents’ perceptions of and experiences during the 2020 Oregon wildfire season were assessed. Results indicated the value of universalism had a significant and substantial association with support for climate change policy, and power, achievement, stimulation, self-direction, and benevolence had significant low associations. Participants’ risk experience with wildfires accounted for little total variance in regard to support for climate change policy