Virginia Community Research Articles

“They Never Told Me What to Expect, So I Didn't Know What to Do”: Defining and Clarifying the Role of a Community College Student

Background Low community college completion rates are an area of concern for policymakers and practitioners. Although many students require developmental education upon entry, research suggests that even students who are deemed “college-ready” by virtue of their placement test scores or completion of developmental coursework may not earn a credential, suggesting that college readiness encompasses more than academic skill. Purpose The purpose of this study is to provide an empirically grounded description of the role of the community college student. Drawing on sociological role theory, we articulate the largely unspoken expectations, behaviors, and attitudes to which students must adhere if they are to be successful. In doing so, we begin to clarify a piece of the college success puzzle that has heretofore been underexamined. We also extend current literature on college persistence by integrating theories of psychosocial identity, social roles, and college persistence. Research Design The study uses qualitative data from semistructured interviews conducted with community college students (n = 97) and faculty and staff (n = 72) from a study of student success courses in three community colleges in the Virginia Community College System (VCCS). We examined a subset of interview questions investigating the expectations that staff and faculty hold of community college students. We used analytic induction to categorize disparate expectations into discrete components of the community college student role. Findings Relying on sociological conceptions of the role, we find that the demands and expectations placed on community college students are different from other social positions with which individuals are familiar, particularly with regard to the level of fluidity and demands for self-awareness. We also identify four distinct components of the role of community college student: academic habits, cultural know-how, balancing multiple demands, and help seeking. Conclusions Our data clarify the nonacademic components of college success that contribute to academic readiness. We also find agreement between our data and other college persistence literature focused on other student populations. Our findings extend current understandings of the psychosocial transition to college by paying attention to the cultural elements of the community college student role. This paper concludes with suggestions for future research.

Freedom Has a Face: Race, Identity, and Community in Jefferson's Virginia

Freedom Has a Face: Race, Identity, and Community in Jefferson's Virginia

Introduction to the Theme: Religion, Media, & Culture

DialogVolume 53, Issue 1 p. 10-11 Editorial Introduction to the Theme: Religion, Media, & Culture Michael D. Gutzler, Michael D. Gutzler Northern Virginia Community CollegeSearch for more papers by this author Michael D. Gutzler, Michael D. Gutzler Northern Virginia Community CollegeSearch for more papers by this author First published: 04 March 2014 https://doi.org/10.1111/dial.12083Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume53, Issue1March 2014Pages 10-11 RelatedInformation

Letter From the Editor

At its founding in 1986, the Journal of Child Neurology had its Editorial Office in the University of Rochester Whipple Park apartment of the founding Editor, Roger A. Brumback. Later that year, the Editorial Office moved me to the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Ten years later, when the University of Oklahoma found it inconvenient to house an editorial office, the Journal of Child Neurology Editorial Office was set up in space at the law office of my wife Mary Brumback, who then served as the Editorial Assistant. In 2001, I relocated to the Creighton University School of Medicine and the Journal of Child Neurology Editorial Office was established at the Creighton University Medical Center. Now after more than a dozen years in that location, I am moving to the picturesque West Virginia community of Lewisburg (named ‘‘America’s Coolest Small Town’’), which is located in the heart of the Greenbrier Valley near the historic Greenbrier Resort, and Mary Brumback will resume her duties as the Editorial Assistant. I am taking a position at the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine (Figure 1), which will enthusiastically provide the necessary support for the Journal of Child Neurology Editorial Office. The West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine was founded in December 1972 as the Greenbrier College of Osteopathic Medicine by 4 visionary physicians— O. J. Bailes, Frank Wallington, Carlton Apgar, and Don Newell, Sr—who recognized the importance of training physicians to meet the rural health care needs of West Virginia (at that time, West Virginia ranked 49th out of 50 states in the number of physicians relative to state population). The next year (1973), a US$1.3 million grant through the Hill-Burton Act (the Hospital Survey and Construction Act enacted in 1946 to provide health care facilities with federal grants and loans for construction and modernization) helped to renovate the former dormitories of the Greenbrier Military School into classrooms and laboratories for the new medical school. The Greenbrier Military School had been an all-male, privately owned military boarding school for grades 7 through 12 that was initially chartered in Lewisburg in 1812. One of the notable graduates from 1937 was Robert Lewis Evans, who went on to found Bob Evans Farms, Inc and the Bob Evans Restaurants. As military activities experienced increasing public disapproval during the late 1960s and early 1970s, private military academies suffered financially and, in 1972 it was decided to close the Greenbrier Military School. This afforded founders of the Greenbrier College of Osteopathic Medicine the ideal opportunity to acquire a beautiful campus for their enterprising undertaking (Figure 2). In October 1974, the first class of 36 students entered the new medical school. Two years later, in January 1976, the medical school became a state-supported institution under the governance of the West Virginia Board of Regents and was renamed the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine. Over the years, the medical school has grown in stature and expanded its class size to the current 200 entering students each year. Classes for the first 2 years are conducted on the Lewisburg Campus, while the thirdand fourth -year students take clinical rotations throughout West Virginia at the Statewide Campus. In

Gendered Language and the Science of Colonial Silk

Gendered Language and the Science of Colonial Silk Allison Margaret Bigelow (bio) In May 1652, Virginia Ferrar conducted an experiment in her family garden at Little Gidding, Huntingdonshire, to determine the optimal growing conditions for silkworms. Her father carefully chronicled her methods and results in a letter that he sent to Samuel Hartlib, a Polish émigré and educational reformer who published the letter as the Rare and New Discovery of a Speedy Way, … Found Out by a Young Lady in England, … for the feeding of Silk-worms … on the Mulberry-Tree Leaves in Virginia. The religioscientific paradox of a cultivated commodity whose lowly origins could assume such heights of value—these were emblematic insects whose foul excretions were spun into sensuous silks—appealed to mid-seventeenth-century reformers who sought to refashion the nature of English empire at the height of Oliver Cromwell’s western design. For these writers, some of whom supported the Stuart monarchy, some of whom were aligned with the Protectorate, and most of whom were members of Hartlib’s loosely organized network of correspondents, silk represented the type of material good and spiritual symbol that both sides thought suitable in the reformation of English colonialism. As they envisioned a new English enterprise, colonial industry, and science of sericulture, “projectors” sought ways to integrate raw goods and uncultivated peoples into a universal mercantile and spiritual economy.1 This new program of silk work, Hartlib explained in the prefatory address to his “Ingenious Reader” in Legacy of Husbandry, would depend less on royal decrees that ordered large-scale landholders to purchase seeds from the Crown and plant mulberry trees on their estates (59–63) and more on empirically tested, commercially viable, gender-inclusive models like “the Experiment of a virtuous Lady of this Nation for the breeding of Silk-worms” (Hartlib, Rare and New Discovery A2). These interlocking programs of religious reformation, new knowledge, and gendered labor were borne out in the second edition of Virginia Ferrar’s silkworm trials, a [End Page 271] series of letters from John Ferrar and correspondents in Ireland, England, Virginia, and Germany that Hartlib published in 1655 under the new title of The Reformed Virginian Silkworm; or, A Rare and New Discovery of a Speedy Way, … Found Out by a Young Lady in England.…2 As Hartlib’s preface and editorial practices suggest, literacy, literary genres, and lettered transmissions of natural knowledge were central to the reformation of imperial silk and colonial Virginia. On the ground, silk works were utter failures. But as they were imagined, debated, and projected throughout the ends of English empire, silkworm letters by women and men reveal new insights into the fashioning of colonial designs, and the ways in which English projectors incorporated Near and Far Eastern methods and indigenous American sericultural practices into the new knowledge that they circulated through poetry and prose. While James I/VI’s instructions of 1607 had gone “wholly out of print,” multiple accounts of the “Lady’s” method, “which seemeth to be brought unto a more perfect and speedy accomplishment than heretofore hath been known either here or in France,” circulated among Anglophone readership communities in England, Ireland, Virginia, and Continental Europe (Hartlib, Rare and New Discovery A2).3 Unlike the “Muck-worms” who “conceal” their work “for private ends,” Virginia Ferrar shared her silkworm techniques for public improvement in England, and the global community of saints more broadly. While the former was ruptured by civil war (1642–46, 1648–60), the latter had been torn into factions of Christians. Virginia Ferrar’s natural knowledge was thus rooted in England and envisioned as part of a universal project to reform English empire and restore Adamic empire. Protestant projectors like Hartlib imagined that the better husbanding of commodities like silk would allow England and its foreign plantations to “overcome the burthen of povertie which for want of employment and decay of Trade, doth lie so heavie upon very many” (Rare and New Discovery A2). Introducing new trades was a responsibility of the blessed to the needy, allowing landless colonists and cash-poor indigenous people a chance to make use of “all the gifts of God” and to experience the spiritual and...

The Impact of Developmental Mathematics Courses and Age, Gender, and Race and Ethnicity on Persistence and Academic Performance in Virginia Community Colleges

This research study examined the 2006 cohort of First-Time-in-College students from all 23 community colleges in Virginia. The goal was to examine fall-to-fall persistence and success in the first college-level mathematics course. Predictor variables used were developmental status, age, gender, and race and ethnicity of the student. Interaction variables were created to determine if age, race and ethnicity, or gender moderates the effects of developmental status for both persistence and success. And a model was created using all main and interaction predictor variables to determine to what extent each variable accounts for persistence and success. It was found that neither gender nor race and ethnicity moderates developmental status for either persistence or success, but age moderates both success and persistence. Developmental courses are more effective for traditionally aged students and developmental courses are positively related to the persistence of nontraditionally aged students and negatively related to the persistence of traditionally aged students. The predictor variables developmental status, age, race and ethnicity, and gender are all significantly related to both the success and persistence of students. The effect of developmental status on both success and persistence is weak. Nondevelopmental status, female, nontraditionally aged, and non-Black race and ethnicity are all positively related to the success of students. Nondevelopmental status, female, traditionally aged, non-White and non-Black race and ethnicities are all positively related to the fall-to-fall persistence of students.

Kirt von Daacke. Freedom Has a Face: Race, Identity, and Community in Jefferson's Virginia.

Kirt von Daacke. Freedom Has a Face: Race, Identity, and Community in Jefferson's Virginia.

Does glycopyrrolate at anesthesia induction increase temporary postoperative urinary retention after a midurethral sling?

Study ObjectiveTo determine whether patients receiving perioperative glycopyrrolate during midurethral sling surgery had more acute but temporary postoperative urinary retention. DesignRetrospective cohort from 2006 to 2011. SettingNorthern Virginia community urology practice. MeasurementsTo minimize variability in surgical technique and postoperative care, all cases were from a single fellowship-trained urologist who performed most of the female incontinence procedures. Inclusion criteria were charts of women, 18 years of age or older, who had a primary preoperative diagnosis of stress urinary incontinence (SUI) and who underwent a midurethral sling procedure. Of 151 patients charts, 135 met study eligibility: 57 (42.2%) patients received glycopyrrolate; 78 (57.8%) did not. The postoperative course of those who did and did not receive glycopyrrolate was compared and formed the basis of group allocation. Data collected included age, body mass index, incontinence type, smoking status, diabetes mellitus, surgery performed, anesthesia type, estimated blood loss, intraoperative fluids, surgery end time to void, and postoperative urinary retention. Main ResultsNo differences existed between the groups in baseline or surgical data. Seven patients (5.2%) had acute temporary postoperative retention, two of whom received glycopyrrolate and 5 did not (3.51% vs 6.41%; relative risk [RR] 0.55, 95% CI 0.11 -2.72, P = 0.70). Excluding those with continued persistent voiding dysfunction beyond 48 hours from surgery, only 3 patients (2.22%) had acute temporary postoperative urinary retention: one received glycopyrrolate and two did not (1.75% vs 2.56%; RR 0.68, 95% CI 0.064 - 7.36; P = 0.99). ConclusionAcute temporary postoperative urinary retention is rare after midurethral slings. Glycopyrrolate during anesthesia induction does not appear significantly to increase this rate.

Cather’s Editorial Shaping of Sapphira and the Slave Girl

Sapphira and the Slave Girl, published in 1940, is Willa Cather's only book set in the southern United States. Her last major work of fiction, it provides a fascinating and enigmatic ending to her career as a novelist. While Cather's beautifully-worded descriptive passages evoke many of the customs and routines that characterized the antebellum South, the plot of Sapphira narrates the harassment and attempted rape of a young enslaved woman. The novel is based on from Cather's own family and the Virginia community where she spent the first nine years of her life. Because family history is of paramount importance to this novel, it seems fitting that a significant interpretive resource recently emerged from one of Cather's own descendents. In 2011, Charles Cather, the last of Cather's nieces and nephews, died, leaving a wealth of Cather materials to the Archives and Special Collections of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). One of these items is a partial typescript of Sapphira and the Slave Girl. This typescript joins a significant cache of pre-publication material, including other extant typescript and holograph fragments as well as another nearly-complete typescript housed at Drew University. (1) This essay examines points where the UNL typescript differs from the novel and uses those differences to expand our understanding of Cather's text. It is less an attempt to understand Cather's revision process in general and more an examination of what this particular resource can tell us about possible ways Sapphira could have developed. I generally focus on elements that appear to be unique to the UNL typescript. My analysis of differences between the typescript and the novel is thematic rather than chronological. I begin with some broad observations about Cather's treatment of race in the novel and move into a consideration of individual characters and scenes. I end with an examination of the poor white characters in Sapphira. The novel's black characters and how to portray them were very much on Cather's mind when she composed Sapphira. (2) What if any connections Cather made between these characters and actual black people living in America at the time she was writing is impossible to know, but the novel itself oscillates between depicting black characters as objects that exist only in relation to white characters and allowing them to be autonomous subjects who act with conscious intent. (3) Orality is central to Sapphira, since the narrative has its origins in old family and neighborhood stories (Woodress 481). Cather heard these from three main sources: her own family members, Matilda Jefferson, and Mary Ann Anderson. Matilda Jefferson (the prototype for Till) was African American, while Mary Ann Anderson (the inspiration for Mandy Ringer) was a poor white woman from the Virginia hills. It is entirely possible that Cather might have heard the same person or incident described from as many as three distinct vantage points. In addition to the narratives of her family members, the more marginalized perspectives of Mary Ann Ringer and particularly Matilda Jefferson also influenced the novel. Structurally, the novel reflects the that the young Willa Cather heard. The dominant perspective of Cather's family narrative is questioned and extended through the viewpoints of African Americans and less-enfranchised whites. One of the most significant differences between the UNL typescript and the novel involves the scene that begins with Sapphira's visit to the elderly Jezebel, which segues into a description of Jezebel's experience during the Middle Passage. The UNL typescript contains two versions of Sapphira's visit to Jezebel, each of which is very similar to the scene in the first edition of the novel. The typescript also contains an alternate scene where Henry, and not Sapphira, goes to see Jezebel in her cabin (B2F18). According to the typescript, Henry's visit to Jezebel is motivated by the loneliness he feels while his wife is in Winchester for Holy Week. …

Examination of psychosocial predictors of Virginia pharmacists' intention to utilize a prescription drug monitoring program using the theory of planned behavior

Little is known about the main drivers of pharmacists' intention to utilize prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) when making care decisions and the actual contribution of these factors in explaining intention and behavior. This study examined what theory of planned behavior (TPB) model constructs (i.e., attitude, subjective norm [SN], perceived behavioral control [PBC]), past utilization behavior (PUB) and perceived moral obligation (PMO) were significant predictors of Virginia community pharmacists' intention to utilize a PDMP. A cover letter with a link to a 28-item online survey was e-mailed to 600 members of the Virginia Pharmacists Association. Multiple regression analyses were used to determine the association between pharmacists' intention to utilize the PDMP database and attitude, SN, PBC, PUB and PMO. Ninety-seven usable responses were received, for a response rate of 16.2%. A majority of the respondents were Caucasian (96.4%), female (50.5%), working in independent community pharmacies (60.4%) with an average age of 49.5 ± 13.4 years. Overall, pharmacists intended to utilize a PDMP (mean = 5.3 ± 4.6; possible range: -9 to 9), had a positive attitude toward utilizing PDMP (mean = 6.3 ± 5.3; possible range: -12 to 12), perceived that others wanted them to utilize a PDMP (SN score = 3.7 ± 2.4; range: -6 to 6), and believed that they had control over utilization behavior (PBC score = 4.5 ± 4.0; range: -9 to 9). Attitude (β = 0.723, P < 0.001), SN (β = 0.230, P = 0.014) and PBC (β = -0.215, P = 0.026) significantly predicted pharmacists' intent, accounting for 56.7% of the variance in intention to utilize the PDMP database (P < 0.001). The addition of PMO (P < 0.001) significantly contributed to explaining the variance in intention but PUB did not. Members of the Virginia Pharmacists Association who responded to the survey showed a strong positive intent to utilize PDMP database. Pharmacists' attitudes, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control and perceived moral obligation were significant predictors of intention but past utilization behavior was not. The TPB is a useful theoretical framework when predicting PDMP utilization behavior of community pharmacists, accounting for 56.7% of the variance in intention.

Microhistory and Movement: African American Mobility in the Nineteenth Century

Microhistory and MovementAfrican American Mobility in the Nineteenth Century Nicole Etcheson (bio) Janette Thomas Greenwood, First Fruits of Freedom: The Migration of Former Slaves and Their Search for Equality in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1862–1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). Earl F. Mulderink III, New Bedford’s Civil War (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012). Sydney Nathans, To Free a Family: The Journey of Mary Walker (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2012). Leslie A. Schwalm, Emancipation’s Diaspora: Race and Reconstruction in the Upper Midwest (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). Rebecca J. Scott and Jean M. Hébrard, Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2012). Eva Sheppard Wolf, Almost Free: A Story about Family and Race in Antebellum Virginia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012). Edlie L. Wong, Neither Fugitive nor Free: Atlantic Slavery, Freedom Suits, and the Legal Culture of Travel (New York: New York University Press, 2009). African American history may be one of the last fields to receive a micro-historical treatment. Nineteenth-century African American history has been favored with sweeping accounts of the black experience, ranging from John Blassingame’s classic The Slave Community to Ira Berlin’s more recent Many Thousands Gone. Studies on more focused topics such as slavery in the Chesapeake or free blacks in the North have certainly contributed to knowledge of the black experience, but scarce records, especially the lack of firsthand accounts for many aspects of black life, make microhistory’s tight focus on the “proudly small” difficult to achieve.1 [End Page 392] Microhistories are intensely concentrated examinations of topics that often appear narrow and insignificant until the microhistorian reveals how the subject illuminates greater issues. The microhistory falls between the grand synthesis or theoretical analysis that slights individual human actors and the antiquarian social history that ignores the larger meaning of the countless details it relates. Microhistories can test the conclusions of the grand synthetic histories as well as reveal the patterns of life in a particular place and time.2 Microhistory’s close relatives include biography and the community study. While biography relates the individual life, savoring its uniqueness, microhistory challenges conventional historical narratives by revealing how a life, often a very ordinary one, defied societal patterns or lived up to them in unexpected ways. Microhistory observes historical change up close and notes how historical forces operated on individuals.3 Similarly, examining a place can reveal the contours of the larger society by elaborating the different types of communities—rural or urban, agricultural or commercial, northern or southern—that people construct. There have been classic studies of colonial towns and nineteenth-century rural communities.4 Many microhistories of places have been what J. Matthew Gallman has called “city biographies,” but people inhabit places, and studies of those places connect their inhabitants to larger trends. John Mack Faragher used Robert Pulliam, “the pioneer of Sugar Creek,” as the iconic figure illustrating the nature of frontier Illinois.5 Studies of northern African American communities, such as James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton’s study of Boston, have generally focused on cities. Melvin Patrick Ely used county court papers to reconstruct the life of free blacks in the rural Virginia community of Israel Hill.6 The works under review include both genres of microhistory: studies of individual African Americans and accounts of the post-Civil War black diaspora that created new communities of freedmen in the North. If there is a theme that unites them, it is that of movement. White mobility is taken for granted, perhaps because whites chose to migrate, while slavery made black mobility far more constrained, but Africans and their descendants migrated in ship holds crammed with bodies or coffles of slaves, chained at the neck, walking toward the newly opened cotton lands of the interior South. The authors discussed here use microhistorical techniques to examine struggles over black mobility. Edlie L. Wong presents a nuanced history of sojourning cases in which a slave’s travels opened up the possibility of freedom. A scholar of African American literature, Wong draws from critical legal studies and race theory. She is...

A Historical Account of Community Mobilization in Public Education in Early Twentieth-Century African America: introducing Miss Virginia Estelle Randolph, master-teacher and community mobilizer

Miss Virginia Randolph was a historic pioneer in teaching and community mobilizing for African American children and community in early twentieth-century Henrico County, Virginia. She created a viable educational and vocational training institution called the Old Mountain Road School, and used her skills to galvanize support from white and African American communities, a major feat that many African-American female teachers and organizers performed everyday in segregation. Her model of coupling public education with community mobilization is still relevant today, given national concerns about the futility of public education's success and failure rates with African American children.

Freedom has a face: race, identity, and community in Jefferson's Virginia

Freedom has a face: race, identity, and community in Jefferson's Virginia

Student Success Courses in the Community College

Using data from the Virginia Community College System and building upon prior Florida-based research, this study examines whether student success course enrollment, as well as student and institutional characteristics, has positive associations with shorter-term student outcomes, including earning any college credits within the first year and persistence into the second year. The present study finds that students who enrolled in a student success course in the first semester were more likely to earn any college-level credits within the first year and were more likely to persist to the second year. The study also finds that students who were referred to developmental education were more likely to earn any college-level credits within the first year if they enrolled in a student success course in their first term.

Why Treaties Can Abrogate State Sovereign Immunity: Applying Central Virginia Community College v. Katz to the Treaty Power

Why Treaties Can Abrogate State Sovereign Immunity: Applying Central Virginia Community College v. Katz to the Treaty Power

The Legacy of Extraction

The Legacy of Extraction

Second annual AGU Take Your Child to Work Day

The second annual Take Your Child to Work Day was held 26 April at AGU headquarters. Nearly 25 children, grandchildren, and nieces and nephews of AGU staff members participated in the daylong activities. Jill Treby, assistant director of member services, began the day by welcoming the children and telling them about what many AGU Earth and space scientists do. AGU blogger Callan Bentley and his Northern Virginia Community College colleagues provided mineral samples and an ultraviolet light; these allowed AGU staff to demonstrate fluorescence in minerals from Franklin, N. J., and other localities.

Looking Back Across the Years: Alumni Reflections on a Community Design Service Learning Experience

This paper examines the perceptions of alumni on a service learning experience they engaged in as graduate students. As students, they were enrolled in West Virginia University’s Master of Public Administration program and participated in the West Virginia Community Design Team. Since 1997, the Community Design Team (CDT) program has engaged the state’s rural communities through volunteer teams of faculty, professionals, and students who assist in community efforts to assess and envision their futures. Through a curricular-based approach of integration and reflection, students are able to incorporate their CDT experiences into their overall graduate education. After briefly describing how integration and reflection are pursued through portfolio and capstone requirements, the paper then focuses on alumni recollections of how they encountered small rural communities, their lasting lessons gained from the experience, their evaluations of the place of service learning in graduate education, and their advice to others seeking to engage communities through university outreach and service projects. Data was gathered for this paper through in-depth interviews with alumni who participated in the CDT program as students. The results also suggests that alumni perspective is important not only in assessing service learning experiences but in reinforcing lessons learned by revisiting the experience years later. The research also seeks to add to our understanding of service learning in graduate education. KEYWORDS service learning; graduate education; community engagement

The Ninety-Second Annual Meeting of the American Catholic Historical Association

The Ninety-Second Annual Meeting of the American Catholic Historical Association American Catholic Historical Association Report of the Committee on Program The ninety-second annual meeting of the American Catholic Historical Association was held in conjunction with the annual meetings of the American Historical Association and affiliated societies at the Marriott Miracle Mile Downtown Chicago, Illinois, from Thursday to Sunday, January 5-8, 2012. A special thanks goes to Ellen Skerrett (Jane Addams Papers Project) and Malachy R.McCarthy (Claretian Missionaries Archives USA) for their efforts in developing the Chicago program. Without their leadership, the conference would not have been a success. On Thursday afternoon, the annual meeting kicked off with one session composed of five panels. The first panel, "Communities and Networks in Early Modern European Catholicism," featured papers by Dale Van Kley (Ohio State University) on "Communities in Dialogue: Utrecht Jansenists and Catholics, 1769-74," which described the contrasting views of authority in those ecclesiastical parties; Pierpaolo Polzonetti (University of Notre Dame) on "Community of Listeners: Music as Universal Liturgical Language," which highlighted the development of new forms of instrumental music as a means of transcending linguistic and cultural differences; and Ulrich Lehner (Marquette University) on "Communities and Crime: Monastic Prisons in the Habsburg Territories, 1770-80," which focused on the disciplinary system in selected male and female religious houses. Ralph Keen (University of Illinois at Chicago) chaired the session and provided the response. In the panel "Reconciling Medieval Communities: Priests, People, and Prostitutes" the following papers were read: Winston E. Black II (University of Tennessee), "Shepherds Astray: Clerical Officers in the Later Medieval Court of Conscience"; Marc B. Cels (Athabasca University, Alberta, Canada), "'First be Reconciled': Penitential Reconciliation of Enemies by Parochial Priests"; and Lori A. Woods (St. Francis University, PA), "Disciplinary Dilemmas: Reconciling Prostitutes and Wayward Wives in Late Medieval Valencia." Indre Cuplinskas (St. Joseph's College at the University of Alberta, Canada) chaired the session. David M. Perry (Dominican University) provided insightful comments pointing to how the papers approached the issue of the effects of sin on community and difficulties of investigating both the theory and practice of reconciliation. This was followed by a lively discussion with the audience. [End Page 301] The third session of Thursday afternoon, "Latinos and U.S. Catholicism: A Reappraisal," was chaired by Malachy R. McCarthy (Claretian Missionaries Archives USA) and focused on the challenges of ministering to Latino Catholics today and in the past. The paper "Latinos and the Transformation of American Catholicism" by Timothy Matovina (University of Notre Dame) reflected current issues. "Making Mexican Parishes: Ethnic Succession in Chicago Churches, 1947-77" by Deborah E. Kanter (Albion College) examined the transformation of Pilsen's ethnic churches from an Eastern European to a Spanish-speaking congregation. John J. Macias Jr. (Claremont Graduate University), in the paper "The Resurrection of San Gabriel: The Image of Mexican Catholics in the Context of the Spanish Fantasy Heritage," presented a different challenge. The local Mexican Catholic community had to contend with California's Protestant romanticized understanding of the state's mission heritage with the reality of ministering to an increasing Spanish-speaking audience. A lively discussion followed. The panel "Marian Devotion in North America"was composed of Kathleen Sprows Cummings (University of Notre Dame), "An American Lourdes? The Shrine of Our Lady of the Martyrs and the Search for an American Saint, 1884-1930"; Thomas A. Tweed (University of Texas at Austin), "Contesting Protestants and Claiming America: Marian Devotion at Washington's National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, 1919-59"; and Joseph Laycock (Piedmont Virginia Community College), "The Pope Is an Imposter! Subversive Marian Devotion in the Wake of Vatican II"; they then presented their current research on Marian devotionalism in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Kristy Nabhan-Warren (Augustana College) chaired the session. There was an open and lively discussion of the papers as members of the audience were quite engaged. And last, "Perspectives in American Catholic History" highlighted the current doctoral work of three students, and these accompanied an additional presentation on the seal of confession by Patrick Carey (Marquette University). Kevin Q. Doyle, a student at Brandeis in early American history, delivered the paper "Anti-Popery on Battlefields and...

Characterization of particulate matter (PM10) related to surface coal mining operations in Appalachia

This study investigates the environmental exposure of residents of a community in southwest Virginia to respirable concentrations of dust (PM-10 i.e. PM10) generated by trucks hauling coal from surface coal mining operations. The study site is representative of communities in southwest Virginia and other parts of Appalachia that are located in narrow hollows where homes are placed directly along roads that experience heavy coal truck traffic.Preliminary air sampling (Particulate Matter i.e. PM10) was conducted for a period of approximately two weeks during early August 2008 in the unincorporated community of Roda, Virginia, at two locations (about a mile apart along Roda Road (Route 685) in Wise County, Virginia). For the purposes of this study (a combination of logistics, resource, and characterization of PM) we sited the PM samplers near the road to ascertain the micro exposure from the road. The results revealed high levels of PM10 (the mean adjusted 24-h concentration at the Campbell Site=250.2μgm−3 (±135.0μgm−3); and at the Willis Site=144.8±60.0μgm−3). The U.S. 24-h national ambient air quality standard for PM10 is 150μgm−3. Elemental analysis for samples (blank-corrected) collected on Quartz filter paper (on one randomly selected day) at both the sites revealed the presence of antimony, arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, lead, manganese, mercury, nickel, selenium. Electron micrographs reveal the morphology and habit (shapes and aggregates) of the particulate matter collected.