Morehead State University Research Articles

Using the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy to Revise a for-Credit, Online Course

A recent revamping of a three-credit-hour course, which the library at Morehead State University has offered for more than two decades, prompted the authors to contemplate what it means to modernize information literacy instruction in a credit-bearing format. For the authors, this modernization meant both committing to asynchronous delivery and adopting the ACRL Framework as the course’s learning objectives. In this paper, we discuss some concerns with the previous course, the revision process, and the major components of the modified course. Some reflections after first teaching the course and subsequent revisions are likewise discussed.

H. Wade Cain Jr.

H. Wade Cain Jr., 82, died Jan. 20, 2023, in Morehead, Kentucky. “Wade was born in Somerset, Kentucky, and studied chemistry at the University of Kentucky. He spent 5 years in the Air Force as a captain before working as a research chemist at International Paper in Mobile, Alabama. He then found his calling as a professor of chemistry at Morehead State University in Morehead, Kentucky. He taught for 22 years before retiring as professor emeritus in 2004. His positive attitude, love of chemistry, and deep care for his students was evident to all who knew him.”—Mark Blankenbuehler, friend Most recent title: Professor emeritus, Morehead State University Education: BS, chemistry, University of Kentucky, 1962; PhD, chemistry, Auburn University, 1982 Survivors: Wife, Judy; brother, Bill; children, Claire and Trey; five grandchildren To recognize your late loved one or colleague, submit obituary information at cenm.ag/obits.

268 Growth Performance of Weaned Angus Bulls Housed in a Compost-bedded Pack Barn

Abstract Compost-bedded pack barns (CBP) are commonly utilized in dairy cattle operations across the United States. Their popularity is the result of improved animal welfare and reduced costs. The crossover of CBP into the beef cattle industry is new and the benefits and downfalls are not yet explored. Through a grant from NRCS, a CBP was built at the Morehead State University Derrickson Agricultural Complex in 2019–2020. In fall of 2020, the pack was established by mixing manure and sawdust shavings to start the aerobic composting process. The objective of our study was to determine the performance of growing bulls utilizing a CBP compared to a fully outdoor pasture housing system and measure the pack development. Growth data from 2 consecutive years of growing bulls were utilized, with calves born in 2019 being used as a control (CON) group and calves born in 2020 being used as the CBP group. Adjusted weaning and yearling weights reported to the American Angus Association were utilized to measure growth performance. Heifers born in both years were also evaluated as an outside standardization mechanism to eliminate genetic bias. Temperature measurements, surface and internal, were collected 3 times weekly to measure pack establishment. Weaning weights for CON and CBP bulls were similar (P = 0.45), though interestingly the corresponding heifer calves weaned with CBP bulls were heavier (P < 0.01) than those weaned with the CON bulls. Bulls housed in the CBP were significantly heavier (P < 0.01) as yearlings compared to the CON bulls (496 kg vs. 425 kg, respectively). Temperature differed (P < 0.02) between day, side of the barn, and measurement location. Our results suggest that utilizing a compost bedded pack barn during the winter growing phase may be beneficial to the producer by increasing growth potential of weaned calves.

Development of a Cell Culture System to Examine the Acclimation, Contraction, and Cytoskeletal Remodeling of A7r5 Smooth Muscle Cells to Microgravity

Few studies have examined the acclimation and contraction of smooth muscle cells in microgravity. In addition, the cytoskeleton in smooth muscle has not been thoroughly examined habituated to microgravity. Although previous studies have noted that the phenotype of smooth muscle may be gravity dependent, those that have been performed have utilized simulated microgravity. The cytoskeleton has been implicated by several investigators as allowing single cells in vitro to respond to changes in gravity and may serve as a gravity sensor (reviewed in Vorselen et al., 2016) at the individual cell level. This investigation will focus on the effect of microgravity on the alpha‐actin, beta‐actin, and myosin components of the cytoskeleton in resting and contracting A7r5 smooth muscle cells. We have provided evidence of differential remodeling of the alpha‐actin, beta‐actin, and myosin cytoskeletal domains in smooth muscle (Brown et al., 2006, Li et al., 2001, Fultz et al., 2000, Fultz and Wright, 2003, and Thatcher et al., 2011). At rest these are organized into filamentous stress cables that run the length of the cell. Upon stimulation, α‐actin and myosin interact to produce force that results in shorting of the cell. This shortening applies stress on the beta‐actin filaments which then undergo subsequent remodeling into configuration that holds the cell in the shortened state. Alpha‐actin and myosin then undergo disassembly/reassembly into a configuration that is optimized for further contraction and aggregate into podosomes that appear as column‐like structures in the contracted cell. While we have proposed that this remodeling is essential mechanism in the development and maintenance of force in smooth muscle (Li et al., 2001). Others have proposed that pododome formation may be relevant in the invasiveness of smooth muscle that is observed in cardiovascular disease as podosomes formation correlates with cell motility and localized degradation of the extracellular matrix (Burgstaller and Gimona, 2005; Lener et al., 2006; Murphy and Courtneidge, 2011). In collaboration with SpaceTango (Lexington, KY) and the Craft Academy for Excellence in Science and Mathematics at Morehead State University, a cell culture system has been developed that will allow for the culture, visualization, stimulation, and subsequent fixation of A7r5 cells aboard the International Space Station. Upon return to Earth, components of the cytoskeleton will be examined by fluorescent microscopy to investigate if microgravity alters the characteristic remodeling observed on Earth.Support or Funding InformationThis material is based upon work supported by NASA Kentucky under NASA award No: NNX15AR69H.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.

The Systematic Study of the Feasible Photovoltaics in Eastern Kentucky

Photovoltaics (PV-also called solar photovoltaic devices) are used to harness the power of the sun via the electronic process that occurs within semiconductor cells. The solar energy is absorbed by the cells, which causes the electrons to break away from their atoms, allowing them to flow within the material to produce electricity. This electricity will become the renewable energy for Kentucky, as the generation of coal will but come to a stop within the near future. Like Denmark who is running on 100% renewable generation we must stride to become fully operational on solar. In the present work, we systematically studied about renewable energy resources, in particular, solar energy for the application of photovoltaic panels in Eastern Kentucky. By analyzing data from our PV cells at Morehead State University designed to follow the direction of the sun for optimized output and by incorporating MPPT charge controllers, we have constructed a maximum power algorithm that performs best for the location. Utilizing these, measurements of daily electricity production in comparison to the average power needed for household use has validated our research. With the advancements in solar cell technology what was once impossible is now reality, as solar power can easily power this region based on our data. Knowing this, being a prime location we can now push to enable the advancement of renewable energy production and become less dependent on fossil fuels, thus creating an infrastructure that will run off solar power.

Robbing The Headlines: Repurposing True Events in Fiction

Robbing The HeadlinesRepurposing True Events in Fiction Amanda Jo Runyon (bio) Early in the semester, my Appalachian literature students had the opportunity to have a Skype conversation with author Silas House. They had just finished reading his novel A Parchment of Leaves, and I hoped they would ask him meaningful and intelligent questions about the novel, questions that would lead to a deeper understanding of themes and characters [End Page 87] or good writing in general. Unsurprisingly, one of the first questions that came from the group was, where do you get your ideas? Many writers and instructors squirm at this question. It doesn’t necessarily indicate to the author that you have read and thought about their material, nor does it engage the particular craft decisions writers spend painstaking hours making. It could be considered a generic, blanket question. In the essay, “Where Do You Get Your Ideas?” Alice Mattison says readers ask this question of writers as if authors might respond, “I order them online” or “In the supermarket, near the pancake mix.”1 Admittedly, it is a common question, but it is also an important and valid question, particularly for the writer of fiction. Mattison agrees that the curiosity of readers is understandable. She says, “everything about writing is suspect; we may as well face that. Making up a story out of nothing is something like trafficking in the occult.”2 But no fiction story is ever made up “out of nothing.” Ideas for fiction come from life, from the experiences or observations of the author in the real world. The real question, then, is how do fiction writers decide how much of the real world to use in their invented stories? When I was a graduate student at Morehead State University, the instructor for my Advanced Fiction Workshop, Crystal Wilkinson, asked our class to think about what haunts us as writers. What images or themes do we find reoccurring on our pages? These things, she suggested, could be where we draw our ideas. Later, in a fiction workshop at the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival, I heard Gwyn Hyman Rubio lecture on how to forage for ideas. Rubio suggested good writers are often thieves. We could rob from the cradle; that is, we could write stories about our own pasts, particularly, our childhoods. Rubio’s second suggestion was that writers could rob the grave for ideas, or write the stories of their ancestors. Finally, she [End Page 88] said, we could rob other authors, relying on a variation of a theme we’ve encountered in other books. In my own fiction, I have robbed ideas from the cradle, the grave, and the themes of other authors, but during Rubio’s lecture I found myself thinking back to Crystal Wilkinson’s workshop question, and realized that none of these things haunt my writing. I am haunted by the stories of true events that occur in the community around me. I spend a lot of time in the archives of my university, scouring old newspapers and photographs that give me insight to events that have shaped and influenced my hometown. I am fascinated by events that have such dramatic effect on a community that they are remembered and passed down, in some variation, for years. I have a tendency to, as Rubio might phrase it, rob the headlines. To understand how I might use true stories in my own work, I need to shift the focus from where I get ideas to how I use ideas. I write about actual events, not to recreate them, but to repurpose them. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, to repurpose is to “change something so it can be used for a different purpose.” An image search of the verb will result in pictures of crib beds transformed into hallway benches, kitchen forks turned into windchimes, or other common, household items made into something new. Recently, a friend gave me a gift of a wreath made out of an old copy of The Dollmaker by Harriette Arnow. The idea is that once an object has lived out its use in one form, it can be remade, not into the same object, but...

Lack of evidence stalls former prof's lawsuit over tenure denial

Case name: Frieder v. Morehead State University, et al., No. 13‐6595 (6th Cir. 10/24/14).

“To Judge Harshly”: The Troubled Legacy of America’s Struggle with Poverty

About Thomas Kiffmeyer Thomas Kiffmeyer received his undergraduate degree from Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) in 1985 and his PhD from the University of Kentucky in 1998. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of History at Morehead State University. His publications include Reformers to Radicals: The Appalachian Volunteers and The War on Poverty (University Press of Kentucky) and We Are Ordered To Do Everything: The National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty and American Social Thought (Register of the Kentucky Historical Society). Thomas Kiffmeyer

13 Tumor necrosis factor-α gene expression before and after exercise in middle-aged and older horses

s / Journal of Equine Veterinary Science 35 (2015) 383e391 388 13 Tumor necrosis factor-a gene expression before and after exercise in middle-aged and older horses M.M. Darby*, S.R. Malone , D.W. Horohov , and D.E. Chappell 1 Morehead State University, Morehead, KY, USA; University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA Tumor necrosis factor-a (TNF-a) is a pro-inflammatory cytokine that is expressed at different levels depending on the age of the horse. Age influences the animal's ability to launch an appropriate immune response and as horses age they exhibit a lower inflammatory response. Twenty-six adult horses (n 1⁄4 8 mares; n 1⁄4 18 geldings) were used to test the hypothesis that older horses would have higher pre-exercise TNF-a values and lower postexercise values than middle-aged horses. Horses were used in a University riding program andwere ridden for approximately one hour undergoing exercise of varying intensity. Blood samples (~4 mL) were collected via venipuncture into PAXgene tubes before exercise (pre) and 3 h after exercise (post). Blood samples were analyzed using real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with equine-specific primers. Statistical significance was set at P < 0.05 and analysis was done using an ANOVA. Horses were split into age groups, middle-aged (<15 years; n 1⁄4 13; mean age 10 years; range 7e14 years) and older (1⁄4 15 years; n 1⁄4 13; mean age 17.6 years; range 15e21 years). The results are displayed as the mean ± SEM. Older horses had similar (P 1⁄4 0.24) pre-exercise TNF-a mRNA expression as middle-aged horses (middle-aged 0.075 ± 0.06; older 0.18 ± 0.07). Post-exercise there was no significant difference (P 1⁄4 0.119) between groups for TNF-a mRNA expression (middle aged 0.32 ± 0.08; older 0.14 ± 0.07). The magnitude of the response to exercise was similar in both groups of horses. Older horses had slightly, but not significantly, higher TNF-a mRNA expression pre-exercise and this could be expected due to chronic inflammation or underlying conditions. Future studies may focus on a more diverse age population with a wider gap betweenmiddle-aged and older horses andmore control over underlying medical conditions.

Lack of evidence stalls former prof's suit over tenure denial

Case name: Frieder v. Morehead State University, et al., No. 13‐6595 (6th Cir. 10/24/14).

Kentucky Academy of Science Annual Business Meeting Minutes Morehead State University November 15 2014. 5:30pm

Kentucky Academy of Science Annual Business Meeting Minutes Morehead State University November 15 2014. 5:30pm

Providing Support for Rural Teachers of Students with Low Incidence Disabilities who are Completing the Kentucky Teacher Internship Program

Working with students with moderate to severe disabilities (MSD) requires a broad set of competencies that, at minimum, include the ability to provide individualized adaptations to the general education curriculum, collaborate with general educators, implement systematic instructional strategies, provide assistive technology supports, address behavioral issues, oversee paraprofessional and peer support, meet healthcare demands, provide functional skill instruction, and use physical management techniques (Browder & Spooner, 2011; Collins, 2007a; Snell & Brown, 2011; Westling & Fox, 2009). A special education teacher who works with students with MSD may experience a sense of isolation within his or her school as the only teacher with expertise in these areas to meet the needs of these students. This is exacerbated when a teacher of students with MSD works in rural geographic areas where he or she may be the only teacher skilled in specialized techniques within the entire district (Collins, 2007b).The Commonwealth of Kentucky has a large rural population. According to statistics from 2011 cited by the Rural Assistance Center (RAC; http://www.raconline.org/states/ kentucky/), 41.4% of Kentuckians live in rural regions of the state; in particular, the rural eastern region of the state lies in the Appalachian Mountains, an area noted for its high rate of poverty. In a 2013-14 report (Appalachian Regional Commission; http://www.arc.gov/ research/MapsofAppalachia. asp?MAP_ID71), the majority of the most distressed Appalachian counties fall with the borders of Kentucky. The RAC (2011) reported that the rural per capita income in Kentucky was $28,767, lagging behind the average per state capita income of $33,988. Specifically, 23.4% of rural Kentuckians were living in poverty as compared to 16% of urban Kentuckians, while 24.7% of rural students completed high school as compared to 13.6% of urban students. These figures can be compared to an average national rural salary figure of $33,247, a national rate of rural poverty of 18.3 %, and a national rural high school completion figure of 16.9%.The effect of low high school graduation rates, unemployment, and poverty on education in rural Kentucky, and especially the Appalachian region, is clear (Collins, 2008), making it difficult to recruit or retain teachers to rural Kentucky, especially those with expertise in MSD (Collins, 2007b). As in other states (e.g., Robertson &. Singleton, 2010), those who accept jobs in the field of special education are often hired under an alternate route to certification (Option 6) in order to meet the demand for personnel, creating a situation where teachers enter the field without the expertise to work with students with low incidence disabilities (Collins, 2007b; Hager, 2011). The Education and Professional Standards Board (EPSB) is the governing organization for teacher certification in Kentucky. According to the EPSB (2013a), only three institutions of higher education in the state (i.e., Morehead State University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville) offer an approved alternate certificate program in MSD. This creates an additional challenge of providing coursework and clinical supervision to students in alternate certificate programs who may be located at a great distance from these IHEs. Thus, coursework is often offered through distance education technology (Collins, Baird, & Hager, 2009; Collins, Schuster, Ludlow, &. Duff, 2002; Glomb, Lignuagaris/ Kraft, & Menlove, 2009; Hudson, Knight, &. Collins, 2012; Ludlow &. Duff, 2009; McDonnell et al., 2011; Sebastian, Egan, &. Mayhew, 2009; Spooner & Lo, 2009; Thompson, Klass, & Fulk, 2012; Vasquez & Serianni, 2012) with clinical supervision through both face to face visits and remote technology (Hager, Baird, Keramidas, &. Spriggs, 2012; Jung, Galyon-Keramidas, Collins, &. Ludow, 2006; Scheeler, McKinnon, &. Stout, 2012). …

Kentucky Academy of Science, Annual Business Meeting Minutes, Morehead State University, November 9, 2013

Kentucky Academy of Science, Annual Business Meeting Minutes, Morehead State University, November 9, 2013

The Effectiveness of Inter-institutional Collaboration: Designing and Conducting Effective Simulation of an ASEAN Plus Three Meeting

Consensus exists among scholars on student simulations that these exercises ultimately improve student interaction and increase overall effectiveness of learning. Most of the studies, however, are based on simulations conducted by a single mostly large academic institution and there is limited scholarship on how partnerships among several institutions of higher education can improve the quality of these interactive learning exercises. This paper uses evidence from inter-institutional collaboration between two colleges in Kentucky—Morehead State University and Georgetown College—in the spring of 2011 to assess the challenges and opportunities of such cooperation. Specifically we focus on the preparation, the conduct and conclusion of a simulation of Model ASEAN Plus Three Summit. Our observations and the data collected from the anonymous student satisfaction survey confirmed that the benefits of such cooperation significantly outweigh the costs associated with it. Furthermore, we also offer general conclusions and practical recommendations for inter-institutional collaboration between different institutions of higher education in organizing such interactive exercises.

Keeper at "The Light to the Mountains": James Still at Morehead State University

Keeper at "The Light to the Mountains": James Still at Morehead State University

Terrain

Terrain Crystal Wilkinson (bio) the map of me can’t be all hills and mountains even though i’ve been geographically rural and country all my life. the twang in my voice has moved downhill to the flat land a time or two. my taste buds have exiled themselves from fried green tomatoes and rhubarb for goats’ milk and pine nuts. still i am haunted by home. i return to old ground time and again, a homing black bird destined to always return. i am plain brown bag, oak and twig, mud pies and gut wrenching gospel in the throats of old tobacco brown men. when my spine crooks even further toward my mother’s i will continue to crave the bulbous twang of wild shallots, the gamey familiarity of oxtails and kraut boiling in a cast iron pot. i toe-dive in all the rivers seeking the whole of me, scout virtual african terrain trying to sift through ancestral memories, but still i’m called back home through hymns sung by stout black women in large hats and flowered dresses. i can’t say the landscape of me is all honeysuckle and clover cause there have always been mines in these lily-covered valleys. you have to risk the briar bush to reach the sweet dark fruit, and ain’t no country woman all church and piney woods. there is pluck and cayenne pepper. there is juke joint gyrations in the youngun-bearing girth of this belly and these supple hips. all roads lead me back across the waters of blood and breast milk, from ocean, to river, to the lake, to the creek, to branch and stream, back to the sweet rain, to the cold water in the glass i drink when i thirst to know where i belong. [End Page 15] Crystal Wilkinson Crystal Wilkinson grew up on Indian Creek in Casey County, Kentucky. She is the author of Blackberries, Blackberries and Water Street and currently teaches at Morehead State University where she serves as Writer in Residence. Copyright © 2008 Berea College

Reader, I Memorialized Him: A. S. Byatt's Representation of Alfred Lord Tennyson in “The Conjugial Angel”

In “True Stories and the Facts in Fiction,” A. S. Byatt contends that her fictive rereading of In Memoriam in the novella “The Conjugial Angel” is actually a celebration of Tennyson's poetic achiev...

"Be my inscape, be my lyre": The Hymnody of Albert Stewart

FEATURED AUTHOR—ALBERT STEWART "Be my inscape, be my lyre": The Hymnody of Albert Stewart________ Marianne Worthington To read the poems of Albert Stewart is to consider his organic religiosity, a blended spiritual view or his own making. Stewart mixes Greek mythology, Biblical free verse, medieval mysticism, British Romanticism, American Transcendentalism, and the folkways of his Knott County, Kentucky neighbors like a great stew, flavored with a pantheistic theology and a fervor for the aesthetic and spiritual dimensions of nature. Stewart's poetry is not always easy or forthcoming; his early work often contains indirection and veiled allusion, inverted syntax, and obtrusive, sentimental descriptors that make for a stilted and distant voice. Generally, however, it's worth the dig because Stewart is a poet with a keen eye and an inquisitive nature; a poet who celebrates and laments the human condition; a poet dedicated to the medieval notion of finding the sacred while in the midst of the profane. In many ways, Stewart's poems can be likened to hymns in that they are lyric offerings that express a theological point of view, a heightened imagination, and passion and reverence for the sublime. We may not be able literally to sing his poems, but Stewart was aware of the need for congregational song: "I am looking / For the one to whom it must be told," he writes in "The Holy Season." We might think of Stewart's poetry as lyric containers for his invocations, confessions, praises, petitions, litanies, and creeds. Albert Stewart was 86 years old when he died in April, 2001. He left us only three volumes of poetry, but many Kentucky writers name him as their literary mentor in one way or another. No doubt, his classical training at the Settlement School and his education at Berea College and the University of Kentucky offered him opportunities beyond Yellow Mountain, his home place in Knott County. He served three years in the navy during World War II and taught at high schools in northern Kentucky and southern Ohio and at Morehead State University, University of Kentucky and Alice Lloyd College. Yet he always returned to Yellow Mountain, and most of his poems are rooted there. 25 In 1962, Morehead State College Press published Stewart's first collection, The Untoward Hills. Twenty-five years later, it republished a facsimile edition. In 1993, Berea College Press published Stewart's second collection, The Holy Season: Walking in the Wild. In 1996, Limited Editions Press published A Man of Circumstance & Selected Yellow Mountain Poems 1946-1996. The Untoward Hills is marked in obvious and subtle ways as a spiritual journey. The first section, "The Hills of a Child" features poems where the solitary and lonely childhood on a mountain farm is centered around loss. The poet begins to look to nature as a substitute for parental guidance (Stewart was sent to live at the Hindman Settlement School at age five after the death of his mother) and as a way of knowing the world. The title poem of this section is a representative example of Stewart's epistemology of nature and of his poetic style. It is reprinted on page 8 of this magazine. Here we see not only the poetic tension of the bright "little lives" of insects and children being contrasted with the coming dark, but also some of the hallmarks of Stewart's early style and influences: the use of end rhyme but with irregular meter, allegiance to the Romantic notion of human activity conditioned by nature, and a fondness for Biblical cadence, as in the second stanza above. The knowledge of "bright things gone away" is emphasized in the next section of this collection. "The Outlying Hills" contains elegies and tributes that are pensive and sensitive responses to death and the passing of time. In "Mountain Funeral," for instance, a family prepares a coffin that Stewart describes in a hymn-like meter: Of curly pine from off the height This coffin shall be made To house the frugal shade Of one who fled into the hills of light. They praise with zeal the morbid shade In weeping and in psalm And have the bitter coffin made To guide the...

On the status of low back vowels in Kentucky English: More evidence of merger

In an effort to provide greater understanding of the mechanisms of the diffusion of the low back vowel merger in American English, this study presents a detailed acoustic analysis of low back vowel systems in the speech of 114 native nonurban Kentucky speakers of English. The study reveals unexpected instances of merger in areas of the state that cannot be explained by current theories of merger. In this respect, it argues that these instances of low back vowel merger, while they may be an expansion of an existing merger, result from a distinct mechanism of merger, that is, merger by glide loss. It is predicted that as elements of traditional Southern phonology recede, similar merger will be widespread across the South.This research has been supported by grants from the Kentucky NSF EPSCoR Research Enhancement Grant Program and the Institute for Regional Analysis and Public Policy at Morehead State University. An earlier version of this work was presented at the South Atlantic American Dialect Society session at SECOL 72.

Kentucky's Moonlight Schools: An Enduring Legacy of Adult Learning Principles and Practice

Honoring the past through knowledge of a powerful movement from the beginning of the last century has been found to contain useful, relevant, meaningful information for present-day practitioners in adult education. compelling story of an adult education project, begun nearly 100 years ago by Cora Wilson Stewart and known as The Moonlight Schools, provides amazing links with modern-day adult learning principles. What does an adult learning initiative that began nearly 100 years ago have to do with 21st century practices in adult learning? Recently, the two of us traveled the mountain roads of eastern Kentucky once a week to an extended Morehead State University campus where we each taught a graduate class. During our travels, we discovered several interesting connections. One of us, Jim Canipe, teaches graduate courses in Adult Education and Research Methods, while the other, Mattie Decker, teaches Foundations of Reading and Reading in the Content Area. Each semester, Decker teaches her students about and takes them to visit Little Brushy, the Moonlight School near the Morehead State University campus where Cora Wilson Stewart began teaching adults to read and write in September 1911. Decker's students are always surprised to find that many of the innovative strategies they are learning were once taught in the one-room schoolhouse. In addition, we saw the links between Stewart's methodology and present-day adult learning theory. We realized how certain principles of adult learning were encapsulated within Stewart's practices--long before much formal adult learning theory existed. Similarly, students in our reading classes continued to discover direct application of best practice reading strategies that were actually relevant back in Stewart's days. Therefore, we became inspired to share this remarkable story of the Moonlight Schools and suggest that some principles of adult learning reveal how lessons learned from Cora Wilson Stewart's historical campaign against illiteracy coincide with modern-day adult education practices. story itself is compelling: Stewart was the first female superintendent of schools in a rural community that had few roads and plenty of feuds. setting is Rowan County, eastern Kentucky, after the turn of the century, where the one-room schools scattered throughout the county were the sites used for the new effort in adult learning. Over time, Stewart became aware of a need for educating adults in the community, since many often visited her office asking her to read a letter they received and to write a response for them. Classes were held on the nights of the full moon, so that the students could find their way through the dark, tree-shaded, treacherous, and circuitous mountain roads. teachers were all volunteers, and the students ranged in age from 18 to 86 years old. Many brought their babies with them (Nelms, 1997). There are amazing photographs documenting these adult learners. One of those photos shows adult students engaged at the blackboard inside the simple classroom environment. What began here spread to other states and eventually grew to include Moonlight Schools for African Americans and Native Americans. Stewart received national and international recognition because of her work with adult education (Baldwin, 2006). setting of the story is a simple one. People lived and traveled in mostly undeveloped forests and hillsides. Travel on the few roads was made difficult by the isolation of the communities, as well as the frequent floods, mudslides, snow, and ice. Fifty small one-room schoolhouses were scattered throughout Rowan County by 1911 and were filled with children during the day. Cora Wilson Stewart devised a system in which the teachers in the day schools were asked to volunteer to teach in the evening Moonlight Schools. They spread the news of the idea mostly by word of mouth and did not know if anyone would attend that first night. …