Oral History Interview: Anna McCright

This interview is one of series conducted concerning Oral Histories of African-American women who taught in West Virginia public schools. Anna McCright began teaching in 1942 at a one-room school and later become principal of a school in Monongah, West Virginia. She gives us detailed information about her family and her childhood throughout the interview, including information on her sister Catherine\u27s children, discrimination she faced as a child at integrated schools, an anecdote about another student who gave her trouble at a segregated school, and a brief section on Christmas during her childhood. She also tells us detailed information about her education, which included Dunbar School, West Virginia State, and Columbia University. She describes activities at school, a minister who helped her get into college (Reverend C. M. F. Wylie), teachers she knew, and the Delta (Delta Sigma Theta?) sorority. Her career is a very important subject, and she describes: detailed information about the schools she taught at; her first job at a one-room school; teaching in Dunbar, Barracksville, and Fairmont; a brief section about working on the Hunt Honor Scholarship Board from the Fairmont State College; students she knew; race- relation incidents at school; the desegregation of schools and what things were like before and after; how she became school principal; parental complaints and teachers\u27 fears of lawsuits from parents; how technology has affected learning; child- discipline at home and at school; differences she sees between black children and white children; and also special education. She also started the McCright Library and Learning Center and provides us with detailed information about it and how she handles children at her library. Race relations are also discussed, such as her living in a white neighborhood, prejudices (including prejudices among African-Americans); African-Americans trying to get jobs, and the double burden black women face from racism and sexism--she also discusses women\u27s rights. There are numerous other discussion points as well, such as: church and religion; her achievements in life; organizations she belonged to; an award she won from the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People); her self-perceptions; things in her life she\u27s proud of; her thoughts on her life in general; her house; her social life; letters, and many other topics. The interview ends with more awards she has won and a brief note about her master\u27s degree from West Virginia University. She also reads us a poem she wrote.https://mds.marshall.edu/oral_history/1582/thumbnail.jp

Anti-reflexivity and climate change skepticism in the US general public

The leading theoretical explanation for the mobilization of organized climate change denial is the Anti-Reflexivity Thesis, which characterizes the climate change denial countermovement as a collective force defending the industrial capitalist system. In this study, I demonstrate that the Anti-Reflexivity Thesis also provides theoretical purchase for explaining patterns of climate change skepticism among regular citizens. Analyzing nationally representative survey data from multiple waves of the University of Texas Energy Poll, I examine key predictors of climate change skepticism within the US general public. Identification with or trust in groups representing the industrial capitalist system increases the likelihood of climate change skepticism. Also, identification with or trust in groups representing forces of reflexivity (e.g., the environmental movement and scientific community) decreases the likelihood of such skepticism. Further, this study finds that climate change skeptics report policy preferences, voting intentions, and behavioral intentions generally supportive of the existing fossil fuels–based industrial capitalist system

Test Method for Determining Outside Film Coefficients of Finned Tubes in Forced Convection with Air

Mechanical Engineerin

Analysis of high‐frequency and long‐term data in undergraduate ecology classes improves quantitative literacy

Ecologists are increasingly analyzing long-term and high-frequency sensor datasets as part of their research. As ecology becomes a more data-rich scientific discipline, the next generation of ecologists needs to develop the quantitative literacy required to effectively analyze, visualize, and interpret large datasets. We developed and assessed three modules to teach undergraduate freshwater ecology students both scientific concepts and quantitative skills needed to work with large datasets. These modules covered key ecological topics of phenology, physical mixing, and the balance between primary production and respiration, using lakes as model systems with high-frequency or long-term data. Our assessment demonstrated that participating in these modules significantly increased student comfort using spreadsheet software and their self-reported competence in performing a variety of quantitative tasks. Interestingly, students with the lowest pre-module comfort and skills achieved the biggest gains. Furthermore, students reported that participating in the modules helped them better understand the concepts presented and that they appreciated practicing quantitative skills. Our approach demonstrates that working with large datasets in ecology classrooms helps undergraduate students develop the skills and knowledge needed to help solve complex ecological problems and be more prepared for a data-intensive future

Energy and Economy: Recognizing High-Energy Modernity as a Historical Period

This introduction to Economic Anthropology’s special issue on “Energy and Economy” argues that we might find inspiration for a much more engaged and public anthropology in an unlikely place—19th century evolutionist thought. In addition to studying the particularities of energy transitions, which anthropology does so well, a more engaged anthropology might also broaden its temporal horizons to consider the nature of the future “stage” into which humanity is hurtling in an era of resource depletion and climate change. Net energy (EROEI), or the energy “surplus” on which we build and maintain our complex societal arrangements, is a key tool for anthropologists as we bring our trademark cross-cultural, ethnographically grounded knowledge and perspectives to bear in examining the complex interplay of material infrastructures, energy flows, social organization, and culture. We are now mindful of the always already cultural nature of such circuitry and interactions—in ways obviously unavailable to our nineteenth-century forebears. And yet even as our energy futures are neither predetermined nor inevitable, neither are they as unfettered by material constraints as many have come to think. A robust anthropology of energy informed by awareness of the energetic basis of the historically specific moment in which we find ourselves seems poised to help us get beyond the developmentalist ideas of Morgan and Tylor and to overcome a seeming inability to think comprehensively about the human predicament in simultaneously general and particular terms. We have a chance in the space now opening to get beyond the antinomies—materialist—mentalist, infrastructure—superstructure, agency—structure, objective—subjective, and so on—that dominated much of twentieth-century anthropology

Inoculating the Public against Misinformation about Climate Change.

Effectively addressing climate change requires significant changes in individual and collective human behavior and decision-making. Yet, in light of the increasing politicization of (climate) science, and the attempts of vested-interest groups to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change through organized "disinformation campaigns," identifying ways to effectively engage with the public about the issue across the political spectrum has proven difficult. A growing body of research suggests that one promising way to counteract the politicization of science is to convey the high level of normative agreement ("consensus") among experts about the reality of human-caused climate change. Yet, much prior research examining public opinion dynamics in the context of climate change has done so under conditions with limited external validity. Moreover, no research to date has examined how to protect the public from the spread of influential misinformation about climate change. The current research bridges this divide by exploring how people evaluate and process consensus cues in a polarized information environment. Furthermore, evidence is provided that it is possible to pre-emptively protect ("inoculate") public attitudes about climate change against real-world misinformation