Furman University Research Articles

Stop, Collaborate, and List ‘Em: Creating Local Metadata to Promote User Discovery of Minoritized Identities in a STEM Collection

Historical and modern scientific thought is dominated by the English language, colonized science, patriarchal norms, and Westernized “ways of knowing.” By making materials that lie outside that narrative discoverable (e.g., non-Western science, Indigenous/Aboriginal knowledge, women in science, etc.) we can assert that science is a global endeavor by representing diverse scientists on physical library shelves or ebook “shelves.” The Cataloging and Metadata Librarian and Science and Outreach Librarian at Furman University, a small liberal arts college, collaborated on a project to address discriminatory practices in the catalog records of a subset of the libraries’ STEM collection. Spurred by another project to update deprecated Cutters in Library of Congress call numbers, we assessed collection content with an eye to improve future collection development and created a local method for collocating DEI materials within an Alma consortium catalog. The intended goals of the project were to update the collection, improve metadata to increase discoverability, and develop an auditing process to use for other collections.

Introduction from the Editorial Team

Introduction from the Editorial Team Selima Sultana, Paul Knapp, Ridwaana Allen, and Tyler Mitchell One of the many strengths of the Southeastern Division of the Association of American Geographers (SEDAAG) has been the broad and long-standing support of its members and their strong service commitment to ensure the vitality of the division. These contributions are best expressed during the annual meeting each November held in a variety of cities from small (e.g., Florence, Alabama) to large (e.g., Atlanta, Georgia) located within the SEDAAG region. Regardless of location, the meetings offer an opportunity for many of the attendees to travel, which is part of the enjoyment of the meeting, especially when exploration is integrated into the trip. As geographers, we know that visiting places with interesting geographical qualities can be highly educational and initiate new ideas. This travel can help satiate the wanderlust that is inherent to geographers, and when done as a group, initiate long-lasting friendships and promote great conversions. That said, the reason for the travel — to attend the meeting — is made possible by a suite of individuals who organize the event. For the 2022 meeting, we recognize the efforts of SEDAAG President Bill Graves, SEDAAG Vice President Jennifer Rahn, and local organizer Eric Spears who spent numerous hours working to create an event that was widely enjoyed. We also recognize the contributions of the State Representatives and committee members, and for the latter particularly, Phillip Schmutz, who served as Chair of the Honors Committee. The awards banquet keynote address by AAG President Marilyn Raphael made the conference even more special. Finally, the success of the meeting does not occur without participation on panels, in sessions, and in the honors competition. The exceptional contributions for 2022 are listed below: faculty • Lifetime Achievement Award: John Kupfer, University of South Carolina • Outstanding Service Award: Dawn Drake, Missouri Western State University • Undergraduate Mentoring Award: Saeideh Gharehchahi, Jacksonville State University • Research Honors Award: Joann Mossa, University of Florida; Joe Weber, University of Alabama. graduate students • Best Poster: Cooper Corey, University of Alabama • Best Master’s Paper: Mashoukur Rahaman, University of Florida [End Page 132] • John Fraser Hart Award for Best Ph.D. Student Paper: Sarah Jackson, University of South Carolina other • Best Southeastern Geographer Paper: Mary Biggs, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill • Southeastern Geographer Cover Photo: Joann Mossa, University of Florida In addition to the awards, the incoming Southeastern Geographer editors were announced at the SEDAAG meeting. Shrinidhi Ambinakudige and Brian Williams, professors at Mississippi State University, were appointed to begin their four-year term on July 1, 2023. We look forward to helping them with the transition as they assume the editorial duties during the summer. Issue 63.2 of Southeastern Geographer contains a cover essay by Joann Mossa, three articles and one geographical note that are summarized below, and one book review. As always, we encourage you to consider the journal as a publication outlet and note that beginning later this year Southeastern Geographer will have an impact factor. Finally, we thank the reviewers for their invaluable contributions that greatly improved the quality of the articles. Sugg and Weir investigate whether politics should remain a viable indicator of the public’s opinion on climate change by examining margin of victory data from the last four US presidential elections and climate change opinions. The regression models revealed that counties that voted for the Democratic candidate by wider margins were tied to higher percentages of adults who believe that climate change is mostly caused by human activity, while counties that voted for the Republican candidate by wider margins were tied to lower percentages accepting anthropogenic climate change. Moreover, climate change beliefs became increasingly polarized over time and model fit tended to improve over time, although there were some exceptions. Studies indicate that the vast majority of adults believe that climate change is occurring and most also believe that humans are the cause. Sugg and Weir suggest bypassing the contentious debate over anthropogenic climate change in favor of policy solutions with broad appeal. Friis and Habron investigate how various actors within Furman University’s socio-ecological system interact as part of the University’s placemaking efforts. Their study integrates...

Purpose, place, and people: How the pandemic helped foster open and inclusive course design

In the spring of 2020, many institutions of higher education rapidly adopted new models of course delivery to support the ongoing need for instructional flexibility in response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. This article discusses how the transition to a flexible instructional model at Furman University created space for faculty to consider the value of intentional learning environment design to meet students where they are both literally and figuratively. Reporting on a course planning framework focused on the alignment of learning outcomes, learning space, and considerations of student engagement and accessibility, this article reviews data from a faculty survey on pedagogical adaptations to highlight how the pandemic provided an opportunity to expand notions of educational architecture in course design efforts by reimagining how, where, and through which mediums teaching and learning occur. The results presented underscore the need for sustained attention to open educational architecture as a part of course and curriculum development beyond the period of pandemic teaching and reveal important considerations for educational developers working to support inclusive pedagogy in the 21st century.

Institutional pessimism and optimism in racial repair

ABSTRACT The 2017-2018 Task Force on Slavery and Justice at Furman University documented historical harms and initiated reparative action. In this article, I advance a theory of institutional optimism and pessimism that flows through the work of racial repair. Narrating my experience as co-chair of this process, I call others to learn from the protean agency and hope of minorities, rather than embrace cliché forms of institutional pessimism–forms used by allied majorities to avoid prolonged stakeholder activism that leads to healing.

Stephen A. Swails: Black Freedom Fighter in the Civil War and Reconstruction by Gordon C. Rhea

Reviewed by: Stephen A. Swails: Black Freedom Fighter in the Civil War and Reconstruction by Gordon C. Rhea Holly A. Pinheiro Jr. Stephen A. Swails: Black Freedom Fighter in the Civil War and Reconstruction. By Gordon C. Rhea. Southern Biography. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2021. Pp. xvi, 189. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-8071-7626-9.) The American Civil War remains one of the most discussed and written-about historical periods, highlighting the relevance of the era even today. Additionally, the war has drawn generations of sustained interest from academics and the public in investigating the conflict’s multidimensional impacts. Thankfully, a bevy of scholars, including Gordan C. Rhea, remain committed to illuminating the lived experiences of Black soldiers during the Civil War era. Rhea, like other scholars, also recognizes that it is essential to explore Black soldiers’ lives in totality—before, during, and (potentially) after their time in the U.S. Army—while also including the perspectives of their [End Page 161] families and communities. Taking this approach provides nuanced avenues for historical analysis. As Rhea notes, even with the wealth of scholarship on the long Civil War era, there are still very few biographies in which a Black soldier is the central figure of the monograph. Rhea’s well-written and informative biography of Stephen A. Swails is an invaluable contribution to the historiography, as the author amplifies the historical voice of a Black servicemember and simultaneously disrupts the scholarly hyperfocus on white male figures (usually military officers and politicians). This approach allows readers to understand and discuss the lived experiences of Black soldiers like Swails, who composed 10 percent of the U.S. Army forces after 1862 and made profound and lasting impacts on American history. Sadly, despite these contributions, Black soldiers remain on the fringes in many historical examinations of this period. Throughout the book, Rhea details how Swails and other Black people experienced various forms of anti-Blackness that adapted over time and across regions. For Swails, those experiences included witnessing a large-scale race riot in antebellum Columbia, Pennsylvania, and dealing with racial discrimination (and fighting for his life) while holding political office in the Palmetto State after the Civil War. By tracing Swails’s life across an extended period, Rhea skillfully proves that Black soldiers fought for racial and social equality long before and long after they donned military uniforms. The book’s straightforward chronological structure spans eleven chapters that highlight how Swails’s and his family members’ lives intersected with numerous important historical events. For example, Rhea describes how Swails’s impressive rise from the rank of private to second lieutenant in the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry corresponded with an extended separation from his first wife, Sarah, and their two children. By including the familial experiences of Black soldiers, Rhea reifies the point that ignoring the home front silences the voices of important historical figures. The book touches on several historical topics, including an account of Swails’s fight against racial and political violence in South Carolina that many people should consider reading. In one of the most powerful portions of the book, Rhea details how Swails’s life remains important today to the numerous South Carolinians who continue to honor his legacy, including Congressman James E. Clyburn. For these and many other reasons, Gordon C. Rhea illustrates that scholarly attention needs to continue centering on the lives of Black historical figures to establish a more inclusive understanding of American history. Holly A. Pinheiro Jr. Furman University Copyright © 2023 The Southern Historical Association

Math and the Mouse: Explorations of Mathematics and Science in Walt Disney World

Math and the Mouse is an intensive, collaborative, project-driven, study away course that runs during the three-week May Experience term at Furman University and has many of the attributes of a course-based undergraduate research experience in mathematics. We take twelve students to Orlando, Florida to study the behind-the-scenes mathematics employed to make Walt Disney World operate efficiently. Students learn techniques of mathematical modeling (mostly resource allocation, logistics, and scheduling models), statistical analysis (mostly probability, clustering, data collection, and hypothesis testing), and ow management (queuing theory and some beginning ow dynamics) in an applied setting. Through planned course modules, collaborative activities, conversations with guest speakers, and three group projects, one of which is of the students' choosing, this academic experience provides an engaged learning experience that shows how material from eleven academic courses comes together in connection with real-world applications.

French on Shifting Ground: Cultural and Coastal Erosion in South Louisiana by Nathalie Dajko

Reviewed by: French on Shifting Ground: Cultural and Coastal Erosion in South Louisiana by Nathalie Dajko Carole Salmon Dajko, Nathalie. French on Shifting Ground: Cultural and Coastal Erosion in South Louisiana. UP of Mississippi, 2020. ISBN 978-1-4968-3093-7. Pp. xviii +184. Sociolinguists specializing in Louisiana French have long established its steady decline since the beginning of the twentieth century, despite cultural revival movements and linguistic preservation efforts that started after World War II. Simultaneously, during all those decades, geographers have been monitoring the erosion of coastal marshes in the Gulf of Mexico, which constitute the southern border of the Pelican State and the base of what is called the Acadiana triangle. As Dajko explains, causes leading to such land erosion are numerous and complex, but she aims at exploring “the theoretical construct of place and the role that language [...] plays in its construction” (12). This region is composed of twenty-two parishes and her study focuses on two in particular: Lafourche and Terre- bonne, where French-speaking Cajuns historically settled and where their culture and identity are still vibrant, even if their language is shifting to English. Moreover, other varieties of French and Creole can be found, and Dajko offers a detailed inventory of those varieties in southern Louisiana. About a hundred years ago, the future of French started to be threatened when in 1921, a change to the State’s constitution made English the mandatory language of schooling. Even though some researchers, such as Michael Picone (1997), have previously linked language and land, Dajko’s extensive study specifically explores the loss of the language (here, French) with the loss of the place (here, coastal marshes). Since pieces of land the size of a football field are disappearing in the Gulf at a rapid pace, the correlation between land erosion and language loss in French-speaking communities in coastal southern Louisiana is evident—and frightening. Dajko’s fieldwork is composed of around 250 interviews with local French speakers, collected between 2006 and 2008 in Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes. The volume provides extensive descriptions of the demographic history as well as economic factors in the area being studied, which helps the reader understand how important these communities’ connection to their land has been—but also how, ironically, some of their activities have contributed to land erosion, especially the cutting of canals for the oil industry. By reading this volume, one can fully understand the connections between land, language, and what Dajko calls— referring to her participants’ answers—“bayou identity.” The author shares her results from surveys in perceptual linguistics, such as verbal guise tests, cultural domain tests, and maps drawings, which allowed her to measure language ideology features and identity perception among her Lafourche and Terrebonne participants. She also offers a linguistic landscape study of bayou Point(e) au(x) chêne(s)—or for some, Point(e) au(x) chien(s), those two toponymic variants underlying various identities among this place. Dajko’s study clearly establishes that when it [End Page 230] comes to their own identity perception, French-speaking participants consider that belonging to a place (bayou identity) is more important than ethnic belonging. French in Terrebonne-Lafourche is enregistered (linguistic features have become associated with social features, 127) because of language death, therefore confirming the place-based identity of those French-speaking communities. [End Page 231] Carole Salmon Furman University (SC) Copyright © 2022 American Association of Teachers of French

Count me in: Leopard population density in an area of mixed land‐use, Eastern Cape, South Africa

Count me in: Leopard population density in an area of mixed land‐use, Eastern Cape, South Africa

Piloting a Student Digital Accessibility Program

In spring 2022, Furman University Libraries piloted an innovative program that provided student workers with foundational knowledge of digital accessibility concepts and facilitated their development of skills in creating, remediating, and checking the accessibility of Word and PDF documents. This article describes the pilot program in-depth, including set-up, costs, implementation, and results.

0240 Investigating the Potential for Actigraphy as a Complementary Clinical Tool for Evaluation of Sleep in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis

Abstract Introduction Poor sleep is a common complaint among patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), but few actively recognize the problem or discuss it with their rheumatologist during the clinical visit. Challenges to identification of sleep issues include a lack of standardized sleep measures used within clinical care and lack of confidence on the part of patients’ articulating how sleep is affected by RA. Clinical management is further complicated by insufficient evidence between sleep quality and disease symptomology. The objective of this study was to identify correlations between sleep measures assessed through self-report and actigraphy with disease activity for patients with RA. Methods In a prospective, cross-sectional study, a sample of 15 participants diagnosed with RA were recruited through convenience sampling. Consenting participants self-reported sleep quality and disease activity using Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and Routine Assessment of Patient Index Data 3 (RAPID-3). Participants’ sleep quality was also measured using actigraphy which monitors wrist movement by wearing a watch. Daily actigraphy measures of sleep efficiency, latency, and fragmentation were averaged over 6 nights. Actigraphy measures were correlated to the PSQI and RAPID-3 through Spearman correlations. Results The sample was mostly Caucasian women with an average age of 55 years, generally reflective of the population with RA. The results demonstrated weak, nonsignificant correlations between self-reported measures of sleep and average sleep efficiency (0.12, p=0.66), latency (0.10, p=0.72), and fragmentation (-0.13, p=10). Additionally, weak, nonsignificant correlations existed between disease activity and average sleep efficiency (0.09, p=0.75), latency (0.35, p=0.19), and fragmentation (-0.12, p=65). Conclusion This study’s implications suggest actigraphy may provide complementary information to self-reported measures of sleep. Such information may support patients’ articulation of sleep issues to the rheumatologist. Further research is necessary to understand how actigraphy measures can be effectively summarized for use by the patient and rheumatologist to discuss sleep issues during the clinical encounter as well as their ability to support clinical diagnosis of sleep disorders. Support (If Any) Support: Prisma Health Upstate Seed Grant 2019-2020. University of South Carolina Magellan Scholar & Apprentice Programs funding Shelby Rader. Furman University Center for Engaged Learning for summer internship funding for Ava Cox.

Note from the Editor

Note from the Editor Gregory S. Crider The Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies convened virtually 15–18 April 2021 for our Sixty-Eighth Annual Meeting. The conference featured forty-seven panels on a wide variety of topics. Program chairs Eunice Rojas (Furman University) and Colin Snider (University of Texas, Tyler) handled the essential tasks of putting panels together in the areas of Literature & Cultural Studies and History & Social Sciences, respectively. Monica Rankin (University of Texas at Dallas), Jürgen Buchenau (University of North Carolina Charlotte), Steven Hyland (Wingate University) and Gregory Crider (Winthrop University) organized arrangements for the online convention. As the COVID-10 pandemic prevented us from holding our usual inperson conference, the local arrangements team took advantage of online opportunity to meet and hold our academic sessions. While we missed our traditional banquet and networking events, we benefited from many outstanding panels and diverse global participation. Susanny Acosta, Rossmery Palacio, Julia Poppell, and Paul Telljohann (all of UNC Charlotte) served as SECOLAS Zoom moderators who expertly facilitated individual sessions and calmed presenters’ nerves along the way. Critical assistance in making the conference a success came from the Maestro Meetings team of Mili Cabrera, John Meyers, and Lazaros Amanatidis as well as from our collaborators at UNC Press, John McLeod and Dylan Stroupe. Now beginning our fourth year of collaboration with the University of North Carolina Press, our readership and exposure have grown significantly with inclusion in Project MUSE, an online database of peer- reviewed academic journals and books. We also continue to highlight our ongoing collaboration with the SECOLAS podcast, Historias, which frequently includes interviews with TLA authors and other Latin Americanists from diverse disciplines. As always, the journal editors welcome new ideas and suggestions. This volume features some of the best papers from the conference in article format. Fourteen of the 192 presenters at the conference submitted revised manuscripts of their papers for publication. Following editorial and peer review and another round of revisions, the eight articles published in this issue represent a range of disciplines in both the humanities and social sciences. In presenting these articles, we appreciate the help by our graduate assistant, Susanny Acosta. UNC Charlotte, Winthrop University, and Wingate University, the three SECOLAS host institutions, offer significant financial and institutional [End Page 7] support for the publication and success of this journal. In particular, we offer our gratitude to Dr. Nancy Gutierrez, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at UNC Charlotte; to Dr. Takita Sumter, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Ellison Capers Palmer, Jr. Professorship of History at Winthrop; and to Dr. Jeff Frederick, Provost at Wingate University, for their continuing encouragement of both The Latin Americanist and SECOLAS. [End Page 8] Copyright © 2022 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies

Fostering Campus-Wide Dialogue and Student-Centered Learning through Film Festivals and Media Projects: Engaging Chinese Environmental Issues beyond the Asian Studies Classroom

Based on a Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment Pilot-Year Project at Furman University This article discusses how film festivals and other media projects can be used to engage students in hands-on learning while also immersing campus communities in topics of broad concern. A Chinese Environmental Film Festival held at Furman University in 2015 is used as a case study to examine how students can develop festival programming, learning about films as well as developing skills related to multimedia communication, teamwork, and event planning. Beyond the students directly involved with planning the festival, faculty, staff and students from other classes also benefit from the activities related to the festival, which can be used to extend learning in their own courses. The interdisciplinary potential of film festivals and their adaptability to a wide variety of topics make them particularly well suited to liberal arts college settings, though they can be used effectively on larger campuses as well.

Practical Applications of Analyzing the Evidence:Are Multiclass Mutual Funds the Right Choice?

<h3>Practical Applications Summary</h3> In <b>Analyzing the Evidence: <i>Are Multiclass Mutual Funds the Right Choice?</i></b> in the Spring 2020 edition of <i>The Journal of Index Investing</i>, <b>Jonathan Handy</b> of <b>Western Kentucky University</b>, <b>Jonathan Ricketts</b> of <b>Furman University</b>, and <b>Thomas Smythe</b> of <b>Florida Gulf Coast University</b> review the empirical and academic literature on multiclass mutual funds and draw conclusions about the suitability of such funds for investors. The authors trace the history of these investment products and examine the considerable body of evidence that multiclass funds have governance issues and incur substantial, if not excessive, expenses. Although the multiclass framework may broaden investor options, it also inherently leads to agency problems. Fund advisors often face conflicts of interest between themselves and their clients. They may be motivated to recommend a class of mutual fund shares that is inappropriate for a client but may be the most profitable for the advisor to sell. Moreover, investors are confused by the categorization schemes of multiclass funds and their associated fees. Advisors and fund managers themselves are often not fully conversant with the characteristics of the multiclass funds they are touting. The systemic weaknesses of the multiclass-fund framework should prompt reconsideration or even eschewal of these products by investors and advisors alike. <b>TOPICS:</b>Financial crises and financial market history, mutual fund performance

Edições digitais nas Clássicas: elementos de gênero na produção e leitura da língua grega e do latim

As edições digitais na área de clássicas têm surgido como aliadas no rompimento de barreiras e no enfrentamento de desafios no ensino das línguas e culturas clássicas. O objetivo deste artigo é destacar algumas características específicas de edições digitais das Letras Clássicas, como possíveis elementos de gênero na sua produção e sua leitura digitais, supondo serem uma forma de contribuir para a mobilização da aprendizagem das línguas clássicas e a formação docente na área. Descrevemos, de um lado, os componentes essenciais no processo de uma edição digital nova do texto grego do Édipo Rei, de Sófocles, preparado na Universidade Furman, para um curso de graduação. De outro, apontamos de que modo as anotações de edições digitais, em alinhamentos, treebanking e geoanotações, na qualidade de experiências de aprendizagem, são potenciais instrumentos de desenvolvimento.

Transportation Plan for Furman University

Transportation is a huge part of any university campus, yet systems can be disconnected, funding limited, and students unaware of alternative transit options. A sustainability team of the four stud...

Screening and socioeconomic associations of dyslipidemia in young adults

BackgroundThe Southern region of the United States is home to substantial populations with obesity, dyslipidemia, and hypertriglyceridemia, while also housing a large percentage of America’s minority, rural, and low socioeconomic status (SES) peoples. Adult-onset cardiovascular disease (CVD) research may be informed by investigating associations(s) between late adolescent demographic variables and lipid values. Our objective was to investigate lipid parameter associations with college-age socioeconomic status, which may improve age-specific screening algorithms for management or prevention of adult-onset CVD.MethodsUsing an Analysis of Variance test and a general linear model, associations between gender, race/ethnicity, SES, and athletic participation on lipid parameters (VLDL-C, LDL-C, TG, TC, and HDL-C) were analyzed in 4423 private liberal arts college students enrolled in freshman-level wellness courses at Furman University in Greenville, SC. Comparative data were collected from an age-matched sample (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey: NHANES 2003–2016). Our main outcomes were statistically significant relationships between any lipid values (TC, HDL-C, LDL-C, TG) and any demographic variables (gender, SES, ethnicity, athlete status).ResultsMales demonstrated lower TC and LDL-C, and higher HDL-C values. HDL-C was highest in athletes. African-American students demonstrated healthier VLDL-C, TG, and HDL-C values. With similar distributions, the age-matched NHANES comparison group showed unhealthier values in nearly all categories.ConclusionsCollege students may have better lipid health than the general population. African-Americans may have seemingly healthier lipid values than age-matched individuals independent of athletic or college enrollment which has already been demonstrated in other studies. Future research should include SES relationships in lipid screening paradigms along with other appropriate risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Based on our comparative data, pediatric health providers and researchers may consider education as a potential protective factor against poor lipid health when considering lipid screening protocols for students.

Disentangling the American Christian Right: An Interview with Dr. Christopher Douglas | Decifrando a direita cristã norte-americana: uma entrevista com o Prof. Dr. Christopher Douglas

Christopher Douglas is one of the most prominent scholars who has studied the rise of the conservative Christian Right in the American political arena and the links of this complex movement to American culture. Prof. Douglas taught at the University of Toronto and, for five years, at Furman University, South Carolina before transferring to University of Victoria in 2004. He teaches American literature, particularly contemporary American fiction, religion and literature, multicultural American literature, postmodernism, and the Bible as Literature. In the interview below, Prof. Douglas talks about his research and the idea behind his book “If God Meant to Interfere”, published in 2016; the explanatory concepts of Christian Multiculturalism and Christian Postmodernism; the spread of fake news, conspiracy theories, and alternative facts among Christian fundamentalists; the American political context. Prof. Douglas also offers interesting comments on the current Brazilian situation. His critical insights provide interesting and new perspectives that give fresh vitality to the debates about Christian fundamentalism. Prof. Douglas is committed to “public-scholar engagement” that is, research-based critical writings for non-academic audiences.Links to his public academic activity are inserted throughout the interview.

Opportunities and Benefits of a University-Based Weatherization Assistance Program: The Case of Furman University's Community Conservation Corps

Weatherization assistance programs have been in existence in the United States for decades, but they are commonly managed and implemented by local government organizations. Furman University, a sma...

A pilot study of bacterial communities in soils under different land managements on a college campus in South Carolina

This study investigated the bacterial communities in soils of three different managements - lawn managed chemically, vegetable garden following organic practices, and unmanaged forest - on the Furman University campus in South Carolina. We hypothesized that the bacterial community in the organically managed soil would be most diverse and that the three bacterial community compositions would differ at least at the family taxonomic level. We took two approaches: culture-dependent and culture-independent. The culture-dependent approach revealed that the bacterial community in the organically managed soil was the most morphologically diverse and the one in the non-managed soil was the least. The Sorenson's coefficient for community similarity showed low similarity between these three bacterial communities. The culture-independent approach revealed that, based on Simpson's diversity indices comparing the bacterial communities at the family level, the bacterial community in the organically managed soil was the most diverse and the one in the chemically managed soil was the least. Additionally, Sorenson's coefficient for community similarity revealed low community similarity between these three bacterial communities. Results from both approaches suggested that the bacterial communities in soil of different managements differ in both composition and diversity and that the bacterial communities are most diverse in organically managed soil.

Scaffolding Applied Learning and Sustainable Development Goals in the Furman University Sustainability Science Program

Abstract The Furman University (Greenville, SC) Sustainability Science Bachelor of Science degree curriculum requires two introductory courses (Environmental Science, Sustainability Science), three...