Midwestern Land Grant Research Articles

Lessons in Diversity: Origins of Interior Decoration Education in the United States, 1870–1930

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, many factors, such as greater emphasis on the importance of the home and its decoration, contributed to the separation of interior decoration from other similar vocations. By the early twentieth century, interior decoration as a profession and occupation had begun to gain acceptance in the market place and academic world. Print media attention focused on the interior decorator who was no longer merely a wall painter or furniture salesman but was a furnisher and marketer of art and good taste. Advances in formal education and a culture of professionalism contributed to the realization by practitioners and others that interior decoration required specialized knowledge so many began to push for training in newspapers, books, and magazines. This study discusses the origins of interior decoration education in the 1870s, when the first courses related to the home were offered at mid–western land–grant universities, to 1930, the year before the organization of the American Institute of Interior Decorators (AID) was founded. It covers the variety of training methods for decorators and the sometimes conflicting views of early advocates for the profession and for education. It points out tensions within interior decoration and conflicts with other similar fields. Finally, it looks at several university programs in different academic homes and the various course titles used in the curriculums. If training for interior decorators between 1870 and 1930 could be described in a single word, it probably would be diversity. This was reflected in the many means and places to acquire training, the institutions that offered it, and the opinions about it. The earliest training methods were those that were most readily accessible for most people, such as self–education or apprenticeships. They were soon joined by interior decoration courses and programs at various art, design, and industrial art schools; colleges and universities; teachers’ colleges; and other institutions across the United States. Throughout this early period, institutional training evolved from a single course to complete programs. The first bachelor's degrees were awarded. This early period also established ties between interior decoration and the disciplines of fine arts, architecture, and home economics. Diversity was important to interior decoration at its inception because it permitted individuality, provided availability for more people, and accommodated the evolving definition and practice in the field. At the same time, it reflected and contributed to such challenges as a lack of identity and cohesion. In education, this diversity was evident in the variety of institutions offering study in interior decoration, its various academic homes, the assortment of course and program titles, and differences in program requirements. A lack of standards and consensus in education helped to create gaps and disparities in preparation, knowledge, and skill among practitioners. Interior decoration did not resolve these problems. As a result, they became the foundation on which interior design was built.

Sociocultural tensions and wicked problems in sustainable agriculture education

Future practitioners of sustainable agriculture and agroecology must have the capacity to address the wicked problems in the food system to make progress toward sustainability. Undergraduate sustainable agriculture students from a variety of backgrounds may struggle with the question, is the challenging and complex work of addressing wicked problems of agroecology for me? Our case study investigated sociocultural tensions associated with identity encountered when wicked problems teaching units were integrated into the Advanced Practices of Sustainable Agriculture course at a large, Midwestern Land Grant University. The research and course employed a four-part framework that focused on (1) attending to individual needs and identities, (2) facilitating practice-based and community-based learning, (3) engaging in problems situated in regional contexts, and (4) supporting awareness of local and global political and ecological issues. Researchers used a community of practice theoretical lens, and focused on the sociocultural tensions that may have impacted individual and community identity formation. Two wicked problems teaching units are described by drawing upon documentation and audio recordings from planning meetings, course sessions, student and instructor interviews, and course artifacts. Vignettes were constructed to situate four interrelated types of sociocultural tensions encountered by instructors and students. These tensions reflected forces at the individual, community, local, and global levels which interact to influence learners’ capacity to become full participants in sustainable agriculture. The study fills a gap related to affective dimensions of learning like identity in agroecology education. Dilemmas and implications related to identity, pedagogy, and epistemology are discussed.

The Minnesota School and Immigration History at Midwestern Land Grant Universities, 1890–2005

This article offers an alternative genealogy for American immigration history. It traces the origins of the methods and analytical interests of the new social historians of immigration in the 1960s and 1970s to the early work of immigration historians at midwestern land grant universities. At the University of Minnesota, historian Theodore Blegen introduced a long-term legacy of ‘history from the bottom up,’ privileging the building of archives and the building of collaborations among first and second generation academics, ethnic communities and scholarly research.

The digital natives as learners: Technology use patterns and approaches to learning

This study investigated the claims made in the popular press about the “digital native” generation as learners. Because students' lives today are saturated with digital media at a time when their brains are still developing, many popular press authors claim that this generation of students thinks and learns differently than any generation that has come before, but the evidence to support these claims is scarce. This study used a survey to gather data on the technology use of university freshmen, the degree to which they identified with the claims being made about their approaches to learning, and the productiveness (in terms of focused attention, deep processing, and persistence) of their approaches to learning. Valid surveys were received from 388 freshmen at a large Midwestern land grant university. A factor analysis was used to identify meaningful patterns of technology use, and descriptive statistics, analysis of correlations, and extreme group t -tests were used to explore the relationships between technology use patterns and learning characteristics. The findings indicate some positive correlations between use of digital technology and the characteristics ascribed in the popular press to the digital native learners, and negative correlations between some categories of technology use and the productiveness of student learning behaviors. Overall, however, the small to moderate relationships suggest a less deterministic relationship between technology and learning than what the popular press writers claim. ► Nine technology use factors were present in a sample of university freshmen. ► Some technology use patterns correlate with often-claimed “digital native” characteristics. ► Technology use is an influence on students but is not deterministic.

Fostering Academic Cooperation and Collaboration Through the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: A Faculty Research Abroad Program in Poland

This study is a narrative analysis of participants’ perceptions of the development of crosscultural awareness through The Faculty Research Abroad Program in Poland, a joint initiative between a regional campus of a Midwestern land grant university and a private university in Poland. The purpose was to foster academic cooperation and collaboration through a co-sponsored symposium on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Results from a survey of the 15 participating faculty members from the United States provided the basis for the development of the University Global Collaboration Model. The model depicts how awareness of culture, connection to others, and collaboration can result in tangible outcomes. The American faculty participating in the week-long sojourn in Poland experienced a different culture, but the short amount of time on-site attenuated the development of cultural awareness. Participants viewed the experience as having the potential for international collaboration.

Higher Education: Transform Society or Keep Status Quo?

Higher Education: Transform Society or Keep Status Quo?

Developing and Extending Sustainable Agriculture, a New Social Contract

Developing and Extending Sustainable Agriculture, a New Social Contract is a collection of essays by several authors, most of whom are involved with cooperative extension programs and midwestern land grant universities. Charles A. Francis of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, is the primary author

Moving Into Students' Spaces: The Impact of Location of Academic Advising on Student Engagement among Undecided Students

University stakeholders recognize the importance of exposing all students to academic advising as a means to enhance their engagement with the institution. Living-learning communities are of particular promise. In this study, conducted at a midwestern land grant university in the 2004–05 academic year, advisees in living-learning communities reported significantly higher engagement in their educational experiences than advisees with access only to a central advising office, and the differences in levels of engagement with advisors were significant as other predictors of engagement were taken into account. Relative Emphasis: practice, research, theory

Gender, Coeducation, and the Transformation of Catholic Identity in American Catholic Higher Education

Much of the recent scholarship on American Catholic higher education in the twentieth century has focused on the demise of a unified Catholic intellectual tradition and the growing secularism and dependency upon laity in Catholic institutions. While recognizing that numerous Catholic colleges and universities have reached new heights of academic respectability and financial success, many lament the loss of Catholic higher education's distinctiveness as it increasingly resembles its more secular counterparts. A rapid decline in the number of clerics and religious women, the growing laicization of university governance, the rising numbers of non-Catholics on the faculty and in the student body, and the lack of a coherent, widely-shared ideological consensus of what constitutes Catholicism are frequently cited reasons for the loss of a distinctive Catholic culture.1 We propose another reason that, while sometimes mentioned in recent works, has been under-explored: the profound changes in gender norms in Catholic higher education created by the widespread adoption of coeducation. By examining the histories of Boston College, Georgetown University, and the University of Notre Dame, we will explore how the recent wave of coeducation contributed to a critical cultural break with past Catholic practices. For while the minds of students are shaped by the content in the classroom, they are also influenced by the cultural values and social rituals reflected in campus life. The wave of coeducation that swept through Catholic higher education a generation ago hastened the acculturation of American Catholics to contemporary society. Sex Segregation and the Structure of Catholic Higher Education When Catholics first established their colleges and universities in the United States, sexual segregation was the national norm. Coeducation first emerged in 1833 when Oberlin College opened with forty-four women students enrolled in its Female Department. Several small religious colleges followed Oberlin's example, including Iowa College (Grinnell), Knox, Wheaton, Lawrence, Northfield (Carleton), Berea, and Washburn. The largest boost to coeducation came at mid-century, when several Midwestern land grant institutions began to admit women, including Iowa in 1855, Wisconsin in 1867, Indiana, Kansas, and Minnesota in 1869, and Michigan and Missouri in 1870.2 By 1870 there were nearly a hundred coeducational colleges; by 1890 there were 282; and by 1902 there were 330.3 Most of these institutions were in the West and Midwest; the more traditional South and East had proportionately more single-sex institutions. At the turn of the century, seventy-one percent of American colleges and universities were coeducational, and forty percent of American college students were women.4 Thus, while the large majority of college students nationwide attended a coeducational institution, students at Catholic colleges pursued their education in a single-sex environment. This single-sex characteristic of Catholic higher education became further entrenched when Catholic colleges for women opened at the turn of the twentieth century. Largely in response to the concern that growing numbers of Catholic women were attending non-Catholic institutions, many bishops urged, and occasionally ordered women religious to establish colleges. In 1899 six women became the first to graduate from a Catholic college when they received their degrees from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland. Debate among Catholics over the propriety of higher education for women continued when Trinity College opened a year later in the nation's capital. Proponents of the institution, such as the Bishop of Peoria, John Lancaster Spalding, and the president of Boston College, Thomas I. Gasson, S.J., strongly supported the ability of women to develop professional aspirations.5 Women religious continued to establish colleges at an astounding rate. At the end of World War I, there were ten colleges iihat enrolled 1,500 students; by 1968 there were 142 colleges educating 101,000 students. …

Scientists as writers

AbstractThis study attempted to establish an image of a science writer based on a synthesis of writing theory, models, and research literature on academic writing in science and other disciplines and to contrast this image with an actual prototypical image of scientists as writers of science. The synthesis was used to develop a questionnaire to assess scientists' writing habits, beliefs, strategies, and perceptions about print‐based language. The questionnaire was administered to 17 scientists from science and applied science departments of a large Midwestern land grant university. Each respondent was interviewed following the completion of the questionnaire with a custom‐designed semistructured protocol to elaborate, probe, and extend their written responses. These data were analyzed in a stepwise fashion using the questionnaire responses to establish tentative assertions about the three major foci (type of writing done, criteria of good science writing, writing strategies used) and the interview responses to verify these assertions. Two illustrative cases (a very experienced, male physical scientist and a less experienced, female applied biological scientist) were used to highlight diversity in the sample. Generally, these 17 scientists are driven by the academy's priority of publishing their research results in refereed, peer‐reviewed journals. They write their research reports in isolation or as a member of a large research team, target their writing to a few journals that they also read regularly, use writing in their teaching and scholarship to inform and persuade science students and other scientists, but do little border crossing into other discourse communities. The prototypical science writer found in this study did not match the image based on a synthesis of the writing literature in that these scientists perceived writing as knowledge telling not knowledge building, their metacognition of written discourse was tacit, and they used a narrow array of genre, strategies, target audiences, and expectations for their writing. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 86:672–692, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/sce.10042

An Exploration Of The Leadership Practice Enabling Others To Act: A Case Study

The purpose of this study was to explore the leadership practice of "enabling others to act" as defined by Kouzes and Posner. Data collected using the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) have consistently shown a significant difference between leader scores on the LPI "self" and subordinate scores on the LPI "observer." Using a multiple case study with embedded unit analysis, this research investigated why such differences exist. Three departments or centers located within Colleges of Agriculture at three midwestern land grant universities served as sites for the study. The study focused on identifying and confirming behaviors used by executive oficers that enable subordinates to perform their duties.The appropriate LPI instrument was the embedded unit of analysis with three leaders and 21 subordinates. Findings were supportive of both the transformational theory of leadership and Kouzes and Posner's emphasis on the leadership practice "enabling others to act." The departments and centers were selected because of their reputation for outstanding leadership, and the LPI confirmed no significant discrepancies between leaders and the faculty. The exemplary leader can employ behaviors that impac tfaculiy members' perceptions of their ability to act in fulfilling their responsibilities.

Proceedings of the stated meeting held Thursday, October 20, 1920

This study investigated the claims made in the popular press about the “digital native” generation as learners. Because students' lives today are saturated with digital media at a time when their brains are still developing, many popular press authors claim that this generation of students thinks and learns differently than any generation that has come before, but the evidence to support these claims is scarce. This study used a survey to gather data on the technology use of university freshmen, the degree to which they identified with the claims being made about their approaches to learning, and the productiveness (in terms of focused attention, deep processing, and persistence) of their approaches to learning.Valid surveys were received from 388 freshmen at a large Midwestern land grant university. A factor analysis was used to identify meaningful patterns of technology use, and descriptive statistics, analysis of correlations, and extreme group t-tests were used to explore the relationships between technology use patterns and learning characteristics. The findings indicate some positive correlations between use of digital technology and the characteristics ascribed in the popular press to the digital native learners, and negative correlations between some categories of technology use and the productiveness of student learning behaviors. Overall, however, the small to moderate relationships suggest a less deterministic relationship between technology and learning than what the popular press writers claim.