Beth Parks, interviewed by Laura Tucker, Part 1

Beth Parks, interviewed by Laura Tucker on June 11, 1999. Parks speaks about her early life, education, and marriage; becoming an “obligated volunteer” in 1966 for 24-months; the mistake of believing the Army recruiter’s promises; being trained for medical field service at Fort Sam Houston; going to Vietnam early in the war; mistakenly believing her husband was stationed near the DMZ, then learning he was in Thailand; asking to serve a unit near the action; receiving her duty assignment at the Third Field Hospital in Saigon before being moved to the 7th Surgical Hospital (a MASH unit) in the Mekong Delta, and her permanent duty assignment with the 12th Evac.; feeling disoriented in Tan Son Nhut; using a Vietnamese rest room for the first time. She explains a typical day as an operating room nurse with the 7th Surg; operating on canvas litters supported by sawhorses; sometimes working up to 72-hours straight on their feet without food. Parks describes what it was like working in a mass casualty setting and recalls patients she operated on; how a “hooch” was constructed; bartering for bamboo and matting to create privacy curtains between bunks; the male to female ratio and how soldiers who wanted to impress the women allowed the nurses to drive tanks and fly airplanes. She explains the tactics used by the 7th’s chief nurse to secure supplies from other units; going on R&R; discovering the unit’s own supplies were being diverted to the Asian black market; couples using the bunkers at the 12th Evac. to have sex; nurses who were dating doctors finding privacy for sex in an operating room closet; how morale was high at the start of the war when the medical unit lacked military structure and operations were ‘fly by the seat of [your] pants’ and declined as the military-imposed structure and discipline in the form of behavioral and procedural changes. She speaks about working with Vietnamese nationals, not knowing who was with the Viet Cong and who was civilian, and concerns about nationals aligned with the VC creating or using the tunnels and trap doors that ran under the camp to lay booby traps using grenades; poisoning toothpaste, food, or drink; stealing medical supplies; and having a Vietnamese woman steal a ring from the pocket of the fatigues hanging in her hooch. Parks tells of being apolitical at the time of the war and still not understanding the point of the war; believing that Americans were in Vietnam to protect the wealth of capitalists; leadership ensuring the camp was unnaturally clean when dignitaries visited; witnessing Charlton Heston interact with the wounded; going to the open-air market; contracting dysentery; the prevalence of parasites in Vietnamese children who were treated; the handling of bodies and amputated limbs; coming under mortar attack; an adjunct who tripped on the duck board when running for the bunker during an attack receiving a scratch and putting himself in for a Purple Heart; talk of the Tet offensive and wanting out before it happened. She tells of her flight home and the poor treatment received in San Francisco; being turned away from the Top of the Mark and having to find a public bathroom to change out of their uniforms to avoid being shunned and denied service; spending three years in Germany; using her GI Bill to go to college at Wake Forest, then UMaine Orono. Text: 43 pp. transcript. Time: 01:28:40. Listen: Part 1: mfc_na4482_01APart 2: mfc_na4482_01Bhttps://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/ne_vietnam_vets/1053/thumbnail.jp

Beth Parks, interviewed by Laura Tucker, Part 2

Beth Parks, interviewed by Laura Tucker on June 11, 1999. Parks speaks about her early life, education, and marriage; becoming an “obligated volunteer” in 1966 for 24-months; the mistake of believing the Army recruiter’s promises; being trained for medical field service at Fort Sam Houston; going to Vietnam early in the war; mistakenly believing her husband was stationed near the DMZ, then learning he was in Thailand; asking to serve a unit near the action; receiving her duty assignment at the Third Field Hospital in Saigon before being moved to the 7th Surgical Hospital (a MASH unit) in the Mekong Delta, and her permanent duty assignment with the 12th Evac.; feeling disoriented in Tan Son Nhut; using a Vietnamese rest room for the first time. She explains a typical day as an operating room nurse with the 7th Surg; operating on canvas litters supported by sawhorses; sometimes working up to 72-hours straight on their feet without food. Parks describes what it was like working in a mass casualty setting and recalls patients she operated on; how a “hooch” was constructed; bartering for bamboo and matting to create privacy curtains between bunks; the male to female ratio and how soldiers who wanted to impress the women allowed the nurses to drive tanks and fly airplanes. She explains the tactics used by the 7th’s chief nurse to secure supplies from other units; going on R&R; discovering the unit’s own supplies were being diverted to the Asian black market; couples using the bunkers at the 12th Evac. to have sex; nurses who were dating doctors finding privacy for sex in an operating room closet; how morale was high at the start of the war when the medical unit lacked military structure and operations were ‘fly by the seat of [your] pants’ and declined as the military-imposed structure and discipline in the form of behavioral and procedural changes. She speaks about working with Vietnamese nationals, not knowing who was with the Viet Cong and who was civilian, and concerns about nationals aligned with the VC creating or using the tunnels and trap doors that ran under the camp to lay booby traps using grenades; poisoning toothpaste, food, or drink; stealing medical supplies; and having a Vietnamese woman steal a ring from the pocket of the fatigues hanging in her hooch. Parks tells of being apolitical at the time of the war and still not understanding the point of the war; believing that Americans were in Vietnam to protect the wealth of capitalists; leadership ensuring the camp was unnaturally clean when dignitaries visited; witnessing Charlton Heston interact with the wounded; going to the open-air market; contracting dysentery; the prevalence of parasites in Vietnamese children who were treated; the handling of bodies and amputated limbs; coming under mortar attack; an adjunct who tripped on the duck board when running for the bunker during an attack receiving a scratch and putting himself in for a Purple Heart; talk of the Tet offensive and wanting out before it happened. She tells of her flight home and the poor treatment received in San Francisco; being turned away from the Top of the Mark and having to find a public bathroom to change out of their uniforms to avoid being shunned and denied service; spending three years in Germany; using her GI Bill to go to college at Wake Forest, then UMaine Orono. Text: 43 pp. transcript. Time: 01:28:40. Listen: Listen: Part 1: mfc_na4482_01A Part 2: mfc_na4482_01Bhttps://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/ne_vietnam_vets/1054/thumbnail.jp

Bioeconomy Institute Trading Cards: Promotional Objects with Internal Purposes

This analysis of a deck of trading cards demonstrates how internal, institutional purposes are embedded in informational and promotional objects that serve multiple audiences and rhetorical situations. The institutional purposes potentially constrain and influence the agency of rhetors and their institutional and external audience

Rhetorical dilemmas in funded science annual reporting

Scientists experience angst when faced with the task of writing the annual reports often required by their employers or funders. Although similar annual reports are widely studied in business contexts, communication and science studies disciplines have not considered annual reporting in science contexts. This is an oversight because annual reporting is one of the main ways that scientists communicate the progress of their research to stakeholders, including publics and policy-makers. Therefore, annual reporting is one way that science is guided and constrained by societal and cultural expectations. Further, existing scholarship has not considered the scientists’ frustration in reporting, which is a missed opportunity for communication scholars to engage with real, reoccurring communication concerns. Therefore, this dissertation fills these gaps by developing a deeper understanding of the experiences, issues, and challenges of science annual reporting. Specifically, this dissertation explores the ways in which scientists’ interpretations of their obligations suggest many possible rhetorical routes to fulfill report requirements, some of which are in tension with each other. It also shows strategies report writers use to make and justify their choices. The National Science Foundation’s Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research for Iowa (Iowa NSF EPSCoR), a large interdisciplinary and interinstitutional grant project provides a useful case to study how annual reporting works since changing report requirements over its 5-year term led Iowa scientists and staff to regularly re-evaluate how they wrote reports. Interviews with faculty and staff, annual report documents, and other supporting documents were analyzed using grounded practical theory and rhetorical analysis. The analysis identifies the reasoned, reflective, but sometimes tension-reinforcing decisions report writers make about how to manage communication dilemmas. Although communication research generally considers transfer of known genre characteristics a way to constructively manage uncertainty in how to write, this case shows the transfer sometimes reinforces problems. Annual report writers at Iowa NSF EPSCoR experience problems largely due to the rhetorical scarcity NSF prescriptions create. Changing national requirements restrict some rhetorical choices such as word count, timing of submission, and style, while also identifying varied audiences to target and providing frameworks for organizing rich detail. These prescriptions not only conflict with each other; they also often run afoul of what report writers believe an annual report ought to be like. This leaves report writers with a dilemma in how to best write a report. In particular, requirements that ensure grant research is described in detail compete with requirements to ensure concision, such as page restrictions. As well, report writers’ perception of the annual report as a stakeholder-oriented communication with unknown public stakeholders plays a role in creating rhetorical scarcity because the rhetorical tools to target different audiences also sometimes conflict with each other, and writers are uncertain which set to use. In addition, rhetorical scarcity is felt when report requirements do not seem to allow for writers to fulfill their administrative role to support local faculty and staff fairly, for example by describing all the research in equal detail. When report writers choose any of a myriad of rhetorical techniques, such as highlighting only one research project, including figures or tables, or including prose descriptions, they show the salience of two ideal visions for the annual reports: the annual report as a comprehensive inventory of activities and the annual report as a narrative of struggle and achievement. These ideal visions are important because they are whole models of good conduct and values. Report writers use these ideals to justify their rhetorical choices during reporting. Inventory includes characteristics such as reporting data in tables and appendices, targeting evaluative audiences, and valuing numeric, comprehensive, and granular data. Report writers often describe inventorial reporting in the positive frame of “keeping track” of activities or more ambivalently as merely “collecting.” Narrative includes characteristics such as a single prose voice and temporal organization, targeting skeptical public audiences, and valuing coherence and balance. The inventory and narrative ideals imperfectly combine. This imperfect combination brings rhetorical scarcity to the forefront and reinforces frustration. Based on these results, there is a potential opportunity for communication scholars to positively engage with frustrated science annual report writers by guiding reflection about the ideals being invoked, their interaction, and their fit with stakeholder expectations. This engagement promises to help report writers better manage the frustrations of annual reporting

Beth Parks and Colonel Mary Cady, interviewed by Devida Kellogg

Beth Parks and Lieutenant Colonel Mary Cady, interviewed by Devida Kellogg, August 25, 2002. Parks and Cady, on the Veterans Panel, speak of their experiences in the military during the Vietnam War era; reasons for enlisting in the military; society’s reactions to the Vietnam War; propaganda, including “The Green Beret” by Robert Moore and “The Ballad of the Green Beret” by Staff Sergeant Barry Saddler; Beth’s experiences in a MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital); Beth’s participation in constructing an evacuation hospital; MK’s education and participation in the Army at the University of Kansas; the College Army Nurse and WAC Student Officer Programs; MK’s training at Fort McClellan, Alabama, and Fort Ben Harrison, Indiana; MK’s employment at Fort Riley, Kansas, and Fort Devens, Massachusetts; MK’s enlistment in the Army Reserves; MK’s retirement in April of 1990; their experiences as women in the military; sexism in the military; the G.I. Bill; Mr. Branneth, a Canadian Vietnam Veteran; opinions on women in combat; and education at the University of Maine. Text: no transcript. Recording: mfc_na3085_c2129_01 (C 2129). Time: 00:47:08. Photographs: p14552-p14557. Restrictions: None.https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mf144/1000/thumbnail.jp

Beth Parks, interviewed by Sarah Kneeland, Part 1

Beth Parks, interviewed by Sarah Kneeland, February 16 and 23, 2005, Corea, Maine. Parks talks her experiences in the Vietnam War and how she dealt with it afterwards: reasons for becoming a nurse; training at D.C. General Hospital; volunteering as an officer in the Army Nurse Corps (ANC); Viet Cong tunnels underlying the base camp at Cu Chi; attacks against their camp; operating rooms in the MASH and evacuation hospitals; it was the peak of her career; army vs. civilian nursing; attending the reunion; Annie Cunningham, Glenna Goodacre and Diane Carlson Evans; her film “A Chunk of My Soul”; coping with memories; leaving nursing; the Iraq War and public opinion; James Davis Nelson’s oil painting of the 12th EVAC Hospital operating room. Also included: summary and index of interviews 1 and 2; articles: “A Chunk of My Soul” and “A Vietnam Nurse’s Thanksgiving,” 12th Evac, Cu Chi, RVN; 5 photos. Text: 29 pp. transcript, index, summary, and index, two articles. Time: 00:55:07. Photographs: p14552-p14557. Restrictions: None. Listen: Part 1: mfc_na3328_cd0950_01Part 2: mfc_na3328_cd0950_02https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mf144/1079/thumbnail.jp

Beth Parks, interviewed by Sarah Kneeland, Part 2

Beth Parks, interviewed by Sarah Kneeland, February 16 and 23, 2005, Corea, Maine. Parks talks her experiences in the Vietnam War and how she dealt with it afterwards: reasons for becoming a nurse; training at D.C. General Hospital; volunteering as an officer in the Army Nurse Corps (ANC); Viet Cong tunnels underlying the base camp at Cu Chi; attacks against their camp; operating rooms in the MASH and evacuation hospitals; it was the peak of her career; army vs. civilian nursing; attending the reunion; Annie Cunningham, Glenna Goodacre and Diane Carlson Evans; her film “A Chunk of My Soul”; coping with memories; leaving nursing; the Iraq War and public opinion; James Davis Nelson’s oil painting of the 12th EVAC Hospital operating room. Also included: summary and index of interviews 1 and 2; articles: “A Chunk of My Soul” and “A Vietnam Nurse’s Thanksgiving,” 12th Evac, Cu Chi, RVN; 5 photos. Text: 29 pp. transcript, index, summary, and index, two articles. Time: 00:55:07. Photographs: p14552-p14557. Restrictions: None. Listen: Part 1: mfc_na3328_cd0950_01 Part 2: mfc_na3328_cd0950_02https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mf144/1080/thumbnail.jp

Development of a SCDMV strategic communications plan

The purpose of this project is to evaluate the S.C. Department of Motor Vehicles' current communications performance, identify barriers and inconsistencies, and develop a strategic communications plan and recommendations to deliver information about the agency's strategic objectives and goals to employees and gain their support