Utah State University Faculty Monographs
Utah State University features some of the publications created by faculty members here in the Utah State University Faculty Monographs collection. These essays and books focus on specific topics, some of which include local wildflowers, nuns who lived in the American West, Fremont rock art, Argentine and Brazilian film, the role of school psychologists, and more. These detailed items of research are important because they allow readers to focus their learning by exploring subjects more deeply.
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The Rhetoric of Redemption: Chesterton, Ethical Criticism, and the Common Man (Studies in Literary Criticism and Theory, Vol. 23)
Alan R. Blackstock
The Rhetoric of Redemption: Chesterton, Ethical Criticism, and the Common Man examines the literary criticism written by G. K. Chesterton between 1902 and 1913 from a rhetorical standpoint to ascertain whether Chesterton did in fact create the 'criticism for the common man' he aimed for. To answer this question, this book explores the relationships among writers, readers, books, and critics both during the time Chesterton first began writing and in the context of rhetorical and critical tradition from Plato to the present day. Ultimately, this book argues that Chesterton's unorthodox approach to literature, while still dismissed by the academic establishment, raises fundamental questions about the nature and function of literature and criticism that need to be raised anew in every generation and especially in the wake of each new critical episteme.
The Rhetoric of Redemption is extremely useful for both scholars and students of literary criticism and Chesterton enthusiasts who are interested in his approach to literature. This book would also be a valuable resource for courses in nineteenth-century British literature, literary criticism, and rhetorical analysis.
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The Role of Criticism in Understanding Problem Solving: Honoring the Work of John C. Belland (Explorations in the Learning Sciences, Instructional Systems and Performance Technologies, Vol. 5)
Samuel Fee and Brian Belland
In 1991, Denis Hlynka and John Belland released Paradigms Regained, a well received reader for graduate students in the field of educational technology. The Role of Criticism in Understanding Problem Solving updates some of those ideas initially proposed in Paradigms Regained, and extends the conversation into the contemporary discourse regarding problem based learning (PBL). Paradigms proposed the idea of criticism as a third method for the conduction of educational research, the first two being qualitative and qualitative. The concept of criticism as a tool for research is not well established in educational technology, although it is well established in other educational research traditions such as Curriculum Studies. Unfortunately, it is not always clear how criticism can be applied. This book views criticism as a way to step back and look at an educational intervention within educational technology through a particular critical lens. Criticism is viewed as a valuable approach to guiding meta analyses and theoretical studies, serving to prevent the proverbial "spinning of the wheels" that often happens in educational research. By indicating new potential research questions and directions, criticism approaches can invigorate educational research. This book revisits the ideals of criticism in order to establish their usefulness for studying educational technology interventions to support problem based learning. First, a few foundational chapters set the stage for the conversations on criticism. Then, the role criticism can play in enhancing analysis and interpretation of the PBL literature is explored. Finally, case studies addressing the central concepts of the text are presented and dissected. This book represents a complete overhaul and rethinking of the use of criticism as a method for understanding and furthering the research area of PBL within the field of Educational technology.
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The Smart Marketer’s Toolbox: The latest marketing inovations and how to use them to grow your business
Eric Schulz
The Smart Marketer's Toolbox uses the marketing innovations created by the social media and technology revolutions in combination with proven, time-tested marketing strategies to create a blueprint that can help anyone create world-class marketing plans. Small and mid-sized business owners trying to steal away customers to grow their business; entrepreneurs developing new products and services; even seasoned marketers and CEO's seeking ways to invigorate established enterprises will all find valuable insight and strategies that can be implemented today! Technology is the force around which marketing orbits. New technology, media and hardware are being created at breakneck speed to help marketers reach consumers. Just when you think you're up-to-date on the latest Smartphone innovation, mobile app, social network, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest or other invention, something new comes along that changes everything. Many young marketers growing up in this age of rapid technological advancement are so focused on taking advantage of the next new thing, they've failed to learn or integrate basic marketing strategies that have been time-proven to work. Many seasoned marketers, having embraced and found success using the core strategies of the past, disparately cling to old tactics, discounting the opportunities created by new technology, media and hardware. The Smart Marketer's Toolbox is written by Eric Schulz, a 25-year marketing veteran of Procter & Gamble, The Coca-Cola Company, The Walt Disney Company, consultant to several Fortune 500 corporations and now a marketing professor at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. In preparing this book, Schulz has analyzed hundreds of brands in dozens of product and services categories to synthesize this learning into easy to follow principles and strategies. His conversation-like writing boils down the information into easy-to-execute, down-to-earth insights which can be understood and utilized by anyone. Schulz previously authored "The Marketing Game, How The World's Best Companies Play to Win", a marketing textbook that has been used in many of the top business schools around the world.
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Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century
Douglas Jackson-Smith
In the last 20 years, there has been a remarkable emergence of innovations and technological advances that are generating promising changes and opportunities for sustainable agriculture, yet at the same time the agricultural sector worldwide faces numerous daunting challenges. Not only is the agricultural sector expected to produce adequate food, fiber, and feed, and contribute to biofuels to meet the needs of a rising global population, it is expected to do so under increasingly scarce natural resources and climate change. Growing awareness of the unintended impacts associated with some agricultural production practices has led to heightened societal expectations for improved environmental, community, labor, and animal welfare standards in agriculture.
Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century assesses the scientific evidence for the strengths and weaknesses of different production, marketing, and policy approaches for improving and reducing the costs and unintended consequences of agricultural production. It discusses the principles underlying farming systems and practices that could improve the sustainability. It also explores how those lessons learned could be applied to agriculture in different regional and international settings, with an emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa. By focusing on a systems approach to improving the sustainability of U.S. agriculture, this book can have a profound impact on the development and implementation of sustainable farming systems. Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century serves as a valuable resource for policy makers, farmers, experts in food production and agribusiness, and federal regulatory agencies.
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Traces of Fremont: Society and Rock Art in Ancient Utah
Steven Simms
Fremont is a culture (ca. 300-1300 A.D.) first defined by archaeologist Noel Morss in 1928 based on characteristics unique to the area. Intially thought to be a simple socio-political system, recent reassessments of the Fremont assume a more complex society. This volume places Fremont rock art studies in this contemporary context. Author Steven Simms offers an innovative model of Fremont society, politics, and world-view using the principles of analogy and current archaeological evidence.
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Undergraduate Research in English Studies
Laurie Grobman and Joyce Kinkead
Why shouldn't undergraduates in English studies have the same opportunities as those in the sciences to benefit from undertaking real research that can inform and have an impact on practitioners in the discipline? They should and can, according to editors Laurie Grobman and Joyce Kinkead, who have produced this collection to showcase the first steps being made to integrate undergraduate research into English studies and, even more important, to point the way toward greater involvement.
"Undergraduate Research in English Studies" is a groundbreaking collection that aims to mobilize the profession of English studies to further participate in undergraduate research, an educational movement and comprehensive curricular innovation that is ""the pedagogy for the twenty-first century,"" according to the Joint Statement of Principles composed by the Council on Undergraduate Research and the National Conferences on Undergraduate Research. Students engaged in genuine research gain an insider's understanding of field-specific debates, develop relevant skills and insights for future careers and graduate study, and contribute their voices to creating knowledge through the research process.
Some contributors discuss the importance of mentoring, how to conduct research responsibly, and avenues for disseminating research and scholarship locally, regionally, nationally, or internationally. Others provide case studies of undergraduate research in literature and composition and rhetoric. The volume combines theory and practice, and lays the groundwork for further practice and inquiry, sending forth a call to broaden undergraduate research possibilities in all areas of English.
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Undergraduate Research Offices & Programs: Models and Practices
Joyce Kinkead and Linda Blockus
This volume offers examples of undergraduate research offices and programs from nine types of institutions, ranging from two-year colleges to research universities. Its pragmatic advice extends to research experiences off-campus, assessment, and public relations.
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Voices on Stage and in Print
Susan Andersen and Bonnie Moore
This anthology of student work is a collection of winning essays from Voices: on stage & in print, a writing contest hosted by the Writing Program at Utah State University. Voices celebrates the writing of students enrolled in English 2010, Intermediate Writing. Each essay in this volume was selected as best in class by the members of that class themselves.
Voices recognizes excellence in writing from students of all backgrounds and fields of study, and through these essays cover many different styles of writing and a wide range of topics and interests, each captures one of the many ‘voices’ of the rising generation.
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Whispers of Rebellion: Narrating Gabriel’s Conspiracy (Carter G. Woodson Institute Series)
Michael L. Nicholls
An ambitious if ultimately unrealized plan to revolt that ended in the conviction and hanging of over two dozen men, Gabriel’s Conspiracy of 1800 sought nothing less than to capture the capital city of Richmond and end slavery in Virginia. Whispers of Rebellion draws on recent scholarship and extensive archival material to provide the clearest view yet of this fascinating chapter in the history of slavery—and to question much about the case that has been accepted as fact. In his examination of the slave Gabriel and his group of insurgents, Michael Nicholls focuses on the neighborhood of the Brook, north of Richmond, as the plot’s locus, revealing the area’s economic and familial ties, the geographic proximity of the key conspirators, and how their contacts allowed their plan to spread across three counties and into the cities of Richmond and Petersburg. Nicholls explores under-documented aspects of the conspiracy, such as the participants’ recruitment and motives, showing them to be less ideologically driven than previously supposed. The author also looks at the state’s swift and brutal response, and argues persuasively that, rather than the coalition between blacks and whites that has been described in other accounts, the participants were all slaves or free blacks, suffering under an oppressive white population and willing to die for their freedom.
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Wildflowers of the Mountain West
Richard M. Anderson, JayDee Gunnell, and Jerry L. Goodspeed
Many recreational hikers have stopped along the trail to admire a wildflower only to wonder what, exactly, they are seeing. Wildflowers of the Mountain West is a useful field guide that makes flower identification easy for the general outdoor enthusiast. Covering New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Nevada and Oregon, this book is perfect for the enthusiasts who has little botanical knowledge but would like to know more about the wildflowers they are seeing. Organized by flower color for easy reference, plant records include the common and scientific names, a description of typical characteristics, habitat information and distribution maps, look-alike species, color photographs, and informative commentary. In addition, the book provides a useful introduction to the Mountain West region, along with line drawings to illustrate basic flower parts, shapes, and arrangements; a glossary of common botanical terms; a quick search key; and an index. An ideal companion for hiking, backpacking, or biking, it includes stunning full color photographs that help make visual confirmation of flower type simple and straightforward.
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Wild Rangelands: Conserving Wildlife While Maintaining Livestock in Semi-Arid Ecosystems
Johan du Toit, Richard Kock, and James Deutsch
Nearly 40 percent of the earth’s surface is classified as rangeland, those rolling landscapes of grass, trees and shrubs that stretch far beyond the horizon. Yet dramatic social, economic, climatic and ecological changes are causing such ecosystems to shrink on all continents. In response, Johan du Toit and his two co-editors assembled a diverse group of internationally recognized researchers to pool their experiences from all continents and write Wild Rangelands, covering the ecological, sociological, political, veterinary, and economic aspects of the situation as it exists today. Published by Wiley-Blackwell, this is the first book with a specific focus on the challenges of conserving wildlife while maintaining livestock communities in “wild rangelands”; those being extensive semi-arid ecosystems that have not yet been completely transformed by human activities. The book, which was commissioned by the Zoological Society of London and the Wildlife Conservation Society (New York), offers ideas and perspectives for decision makers involved in planning, approving and funding projects that influence rangeland ecosystems on all continents, as well as researchers, conservation practitioners, educators and students.
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Winter Carnival in a Western Town: Identity, Change and the Good of the Community
Lisa Gabbert
Held annually, the McCall, Idaho, Winter Carnival has become a modern tradition. A festival and celebration, it is also a source of community income and opportunity for shared community effort; a chance to display the town attractively to outsiders and to define and assert McCall's identity; and consequently, a source of disagreement among citizens over what their community is, how it should be presented, and what the carnival means.
Though rooted in the broad traditions of community festival, annual civic events, often sponsored by chambers of commerce, such as that in McCall, are as much expressions of popular culture and local commerce as of older traditions. Yet they become dynamic, newer community traditions, with artistic, informal, and social meanings and practices that make them forms of folklore as well as commoditized culture. Winter Carnival is the first volume in a new Utah State University Press series titled Ritual, Festival, and Celebration and edited by folklorist Jack Santino.
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Woody Plants of Utah
Renee Van Buren, Janet G. Cooper, Leila M. Shultz, and Kimball T. Harper
A comprehensive guide that includes a vast range of species and plant communities and employs thorough, original keys. Based primarily on vegetative characteristics, the keys don't require that flowers or other reproductive features be present, like many plant guides. And this guide's attention to woody plants as a whole allows one to identify a much greater variety of plants. That especially suits an arid region such as Utah with less diverse native trees.
Woody plants are those that have stems that persist above ground even through seasons that don't favor growth, due to low precipitation or temperatures. Woody Plants of Utah employs dichotomous identification keys that are comparable to a game of twenty questions. It works through a process of elimination by choosing sequential alternatives. Detailed, illustrated plant descriptions complement the keys and provide additional botanical and environmental information in relation to a useful introductory categorization of Utah plant communities. Supplementary tools include photos, distribution maps, and an illustrated glossary.
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Working With Aging Families: Therapeutic Solutions for Caregivers, Spouses, & Adult Children
Kathleen W. Piercy
With today’s shifting demographics can arise tricky family issues—here are tips for therapists on how to steer clients through them. As the average lifespan increases, so does the number of living generations, a recipe for some potentially complex family issues. This book offers therapeutic strategies to navigate the unique dynamics and experiences of today’s aging families, from the “sandwich generation” and caregiver burdens to divorce, bereavement, and much more.
