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  • want-to-build-a-robot- The Cengage Blog

    want-to-build-a-robot- The Cengage Blog

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Welcome to “System Dynamics and Controls,” 1e by Dr. S. Graham Kelly — a new first edition and comprehensive guide to understanding and controlling interdisciplinary engineering systems. The goal of this text is to provide the reader with a general understanding of how to mathematically model a linear engineering system and how to control it effectively.

    The fundamentals

    Engineering is inherently interdisciplinary, and successful engineers often navigate and work in multi-disciplinary teams. Whether you’re a mechanical engineer learning about electrical systems or an electrical engineer diving into chemical processes, understanding diverse disciplines is key. All engineers should have some familiarity with the modeling of physical systems of any kind, as well as with the time-dependent responses of these systems. This knowledge isn’t just theoretical, it’s integral to designing control systems that guide these systems’ operations.

    Take robotics, for example. Designing a robot requires expertise in both mechanical and electrical systems. A control system for the robot, usually an electrical controller, is designed to make the robot respond appropriately to certain inputs.

    The prerequisites

    Before diving in, it’s important to come prepared. This text is meant for those with a background in:

    • Single-variable calculus, including ordinary differential equations
    • Engineering physics, with a focus on mechanics, electromagnetism, and thermal systems
    • Core concepts from statics and dynamics, especially rigid body dynamics in planar motion

    For more advanced sections, knowledge of multi-variable calculus will be helpful. Additionally, while not essential, prior or concurrent study in chemistry, circuit analysis, fluid mechanics, and thermodynamics will enrich your understanding of specific topics and examples.

    MATLAB and Simulink

    This text frequently uses MATLAB as a tool for the determination of the response of a dynamic system. MATLAB is used as a computational tool, a programming tool, and a graphical tool. From determining dynamic system responses to programming and graphical analysis, MATLAB is used extensively throughout the text. Some specific applications include:

    Simulink, a MATLAB-developed simulation and modeling tool, is also integrated throughout this text. Simulink allows development of models, using either the transfer function or the state-space formulation, without the programming required for MATLAB.

    This text’s comprehensive approach, combining theory with practical tools like MATLAB and Simulink, equips students to tackle the complexities of interdisciplinary engineering systems.

    Written by Dr. S. Graham Kelly, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, University of Akron and author of “System Dynamics and Controls,” 1e.

     

    Interested in this title? Dr. Kelly’s new first edition text is available for your engineering course now.

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  • A Shocking Case of Academic Misconduct at Universite Libre de Bruxelles (Emmanuel Legeard)

    A Shocking Case of Academic Misconduct at Universite Libre de Bruxelles (Emmanuel Legeard)

    A Flagrant and Repeated Breach of Academic Ethics (Université Libre de Bruxelles and European Journal of Applied Physiology)

    For
    several years now, Jacques Duchâteau and his team at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) have sought to misappropriate the 3/7 Method, a
    strength-training protocol I independently developed more than 20 years
    ago. Jean-Pierre Egger revealed the method — while respecting its
    intellectual property — during seminars and university lectures in 2012.
    Regardless of this elementary fact, ULB’s claims are contradicted by
    ample evidence proving my authorship, such as correspondence with Egger
    dating back to 2008, his documented public presentation at the
    University of Lausanne in 2012 within the ISSUL Master’s program, and
    Duchâteau’s recorded presentations at the French National Institute of
    Sport (INSEP).

    THE 3/7 METHOD, ALSO KNOWN AS THE LEGEARD PROTOCOL (Presented by Jean-Pierre Egger at the University of Lausanne in 2012)

    (You can download the full .pdf here: (PDF) Emmanuel Legeard Le 3–7 Master en sciences du sport, Université de Lausanne)

    Initially,
    Jacques Duchâteau organized conferences about me — curiously, without
    my involvement or consent — where the 3/7 Method was even referred to as
    “Legeard’s Method”. Gradually, Duchâteau resorted to insinuating that
    the method might not solely be my creation, a claim he knew was false.
    My method has never been modified by anyone. At the time, I dismissed
    these rumors as baseless. However, it became clear that this was a
    calculated strategy to dilute my rights and claim ownership of my work.

    2014: DUCHÂTEAU PRESENTS THE “LEGEARD’S METHOD” AT INSEP

    Subsequently, Duchâteau’s team — including Séverine Stragier, Stéphane Baudry, and Alain Carpentier — published a 12-page article in the European Journal of Applied Physiology about my method. Shockingly, my name, Emmanuel Legeard, WAS ENTIRELY OMITTED
    ! This publication, titled “Efficacy of a new strength training design:
    the 3/7 method”, audaciously describes the method as “new”, a blatant
    misrepresentation given its development over two decades ago and its
    public introduction in 2012 by Egger.

    European
    Journal of Applied Physiology’s predatory publishing — Predatory publishing, also write-only publishing or deceptive publishing, is an
    exploitative academic publishing business model, where the journal or
    publisher prioritizes self-interest at the expense of scholarship. It is
    characterized by misleading information, deviates from the standard
    peer-review process, and is highly opaque.

    The
    misrepresentation has not gone unnoticed. T.C. Luoma, a renowned
    American sports journalist and editor of T-Nation — a site with over
    three million monthly visitors — highlighted the issue, stating:

    “That’s
    why reading about the 3/7 method aroused my interest. It’s a set-rep
    scheme developed by French strength coach Emmanuel Legeard in the early
    2000s.”

    (Source: T-Nation Forums)

    2023: THE DUCHÂTEAU TEAM’S UNABASHED IDEA THEFT

    Last year, Grigoraș Diaconescu, an international rugby player, shared his outrage after discovering a post by Gaël Deboeck, identified as the head of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation at ULB. Deboeck congratulated Alexis Gillet,
    a doctoral student, for using the 3/7 Method to “prove” what I
    demonstrated 20 years ago. Unsurprisingly, the publication made no
    mention of the method’s original creator. It is now evident that ULB
    intends to mislead the public into believing that their laboratory
    developed the 3/7 Method. These unethical actions demand accountability.

    2023: THE DUCHÂTEAU TEAM’S UNABASHED IDEA THEFT


    CONSEQUENCES OF THIS ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT

    If
    the Université Libre de Bruxelles believes I will quietly accept the
    theft of my work, they are mistaken. This scandal, indicative of
    dishonesty incompatible with academic integrity, must result in
    sanctions. Public funding cannot continue to
    support crooked research where my work is falsely attributed to
    impostors like Jacques Duchâteau, Séverine Stragier
    , Stéphane Baudry, Alain Carpentier, Gael Deboeck or Alexis Gillet. I
    have been lenient for years, but my patience as the rightful creator
    has reached its limit. I have begun publicly correcting this falsehood
    online, as seen in similar cases — such as one involving the University
    of Zurich — which have led to severe consequences for academic dishonesty.

    Dr Emmanuel Legeard, Ph.D. — Creator, among quite a few others, of the 3/7 Method, also known as the “Legeard Method”.

    This article originally appeared on Medium.

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  • Study Reveals Key Factors Driving Student College Choice in 2025

    Study Reveals Key Factors Driving Student College Choice in 2025

    A comprehensive new study by education research firm EAB has identified the most influential factors shaping how students choose colleges, with academic program variety, campus safety, and student organizations emerging as the top three drivers of student attraction.

    The research, analyzing data from U.S. four-year colleges, found that schools offering a wider range of majors see significantly higher student interest, with each additional program contributing to increased application and enrollment rates. Campus safety measures and the number of available student organizations were also found to be major factors in students’ decision-making process.

    “What’s particularly interesting is how these factors play out differently across institution types,” said Dr. Ryan Gardner-Cook, the project director. “For example, smaller schools gain more from incremental improvements in campus amenities and academic offerings compared to larger institutions.”

    The study also revealed that affordability remains a critical factor, especially for first-generation and low-income students. Schools with lower net prices and stronger financial aid packages showed notably higher attraction rates among these demographics.

    Environmental factors like climate and location also play a significant role. Schools in temperate climates and growing urban areas generally showed stronger appeal to prospective students. State-level political environments were found to increasingly influence student choice as well.

    The research identified nine distinct “institutional personas” ranging from “Accessible Education Anchors” to “Rigorous Academic Giants,” each with unique characteristics and challenges in attracting students. This classification system aims to help institutions better understand their competitive position and develop more effective recruitment strategies.

    For institutions looking to improve their student attraction, the study recommends focusing on controllable factors like admissions processes, student life offerings, and academic programs while finding ways to mitigate challenges related to location or cost.

    The findings come at a crucial time as higher education institutions face evolving student preferences and increasing competition for enrollment.

     

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  • Mercury in retrograde: How UT Dallas tried to roll back student press rights

    Mercury in retrograde: How UT Dallas tried to roll back student press rights

    At the University of Texas at Dallas, a new independent newspaper is bearing witness to an authoritarian streak undermining student rights on campus. Last week, The Retrograde published its first print edition — cementing its status as the successor to The Mercury, the historic student newspaper that administrators silenced last spring for expressing dissenting opinions. 

    The new paper’s name — a reference to the astrological phenomenon of “Mercury in retrograde” — also references student journalists’ perception that the university is “going in reverse” on important issues like free speech.

    “We are seeing the school backslide and we want to make sure that each step backwards is criticized and documented,” said Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez, former editor-in-chief of The Mercury and current editor of The Retrograde.

    Concerns about academic freedom on college campuses spurred an interest in journalism for Gutierrez, a UT Dallas sophomore studying political science and philosophy. In an interview with FIRE, Gutierrez explained that he joined The Mercury in October 2023, “mainly because I was hearing a lot of commotion around the removal of DEI from the classroom.” 

    Although Senate Bill 17 — which Texas passed in 2023 to ban DEI offices, training, and statements at public universities — included exceptions for teaching and research, headlines revealed in November 2024 that administrators were, in fact, subjecting teaching and research to “intense scrutiny” under the law.

    As Gutierrez tells it, he saw warning signs at the University of North Texas, UT Dallas’ closest neighbor in the statewide system, where administrators unilaterally removed references to concepts like diversity and critical race theory from course titles and syllabi. “Despite these being higher-ed concepts, you couldn’t even talk about them,” Gutierrez said. FIRE wrote a letter to North Texas on Dec. 6, 2024, urging administrators “to refrain from unlawfully ordering changes to faculty’s pedagogical material as part of UNT’s overreaching compliance with state law.”

    We are seeing the school backslide and we want to make sure that each step backwards is criticized and documented.

    At UT Dallas, Gutierrez describes the emergence of a similar climate, where faculty “are scared that what they’re going to say isn’t allowed or that it will get them in trouble,” or might be “a mark against them” in tenure review.

    Gutierrez says The Mercury was a watchdog not just at UT Dallas, but within the statewide system. 

    Retrograde editor Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez

    “Anytime [Governor] Greg Abbott wants to crack down on higher ed,” Gutierrez told FIRE, “he usually starts with UT Austin, and then the other presidents in the UT system will either . . . do the same themselves or . . . get the consequences thrown their way.” And these changes affect UT Dallas. As Gutierrez explains it, “if there’s something’s going on in one Texas school, it’s very likely that our administration is going to like what they see and try to incorporate that into our campus policy.”

    It was exactly this watchdog role that got Gutierrez and The Mercury into trouble. Last spring, after a police crackdown on First Amendment-protected protests at UT Austin, Gutierrez recalls asking, “If encampments form at UT Dallas, what will we do? How do we protect our student journalists if there are police there? Can we make sure that we’re not getting arrested while doing this important coverage?” 

    The Mercury’s journalists were not arrested by the state troopers that UT Dallas deployed to break up pro-Palestinian protests, but the newspaper’s relationship with the administration deteriorated after its coverage criticized the university for quashing peaceful protests. In the end, administrators forced Gutierrez out, firing him as editor-in-chief and then firing more staff when they went on strike in protest. To make it worse, administrators completed these terminations without following official policy on the removal of editors — denying due process to Gutierrez and his colleagues.

    It would have been very easy for us to just roll over and let the campus administration do whatever they wanted with the student newspaper. But that would be a failure on our part to do proper journalism. It would be a huge dereliction of our duty as student journalists.

    Over a thousand people signed The Mercury’s solidarity petition after Gutierrez was fired. Not only that, as Gutierrez recounted to FIRE, “The student government passed multiple resolutions denouncing the actions from campus administration and then supporting our new endeavors with The Retrograde, officially recognizing it as the student newspaper. And the faculty’s academic senate has also been in support of us. They passed a resolution, which was just like — We’ll support the student government’s decision.”

    For the student journalists behind The Mercury, the administration’s attempt to silence them marked the beginning of a new chapter for independent student expression. 

    Gutierrez told FIRE that The Retrograde is working to get 501(c)(3) status and is currently registered as a nonprofit in the state of Texas. This move would give the newspaper full control over its operations — unlike The Mercury, which was beholden to administrators and faculty on the university-sponsored Student Media Oversight Board. 

    Front page of the first issue of The Retrograde independent student newspaper at UT Dallas Jan 21 2025

    The first issue of The Retrograde independent student newspaper at UT Dallas published on Jan. 21, 2025.

    But this new era of editorial freedom has not come without challenges. Gutierrez told FIRE that although “we do what we want as student journalists and we don’t have to fear campus reprisal when it comes to our actions, the administration has been very insistent that they don’t want this structure to exist at all.” While The Retrograde is free from direct retaliation, the university has engaged in what Gutierrez calls a “subtle form of censorship” by directing inquiries to PR officials, ensuring that the official university response is the only one that gets heard.

    Administrators at UT Dallas have a lengthy history of suppressing transparency and keeping student voices under their control. During Gutierrez’s freshman year, he recalls a cat torturer being exposed in a front page article in The Mercury as an employee of the university. Although the investigation was thorough and newsworthy, Gutierrez says, “The university didn’t like that we were talking about it . . . They were like, oh, we’re dealing with this internally, so you don’t need to make it public.” And in the spring of 2020, when the paper covered a series of suicides on campus, administrators allegedly removed copies of the paper from campus kiosks.

    For Gutierrez, reporting on matters of public concern is often a question of safety. 

    “Students want to know that the people at the testing center [like the cat torturer] might not all be the safest individuals in that very specific circumstance,” he says, “and yet campus administrators don’t talk about stuff like that.” 

    Despite these challenges, Gutierrez believes student journalists have a sacred obligation to uphold the freedoms promised by the Constitution. “It would have been very easy for us to just roll over and let the campus administration do whatever they wanted with the student newspaper. But that would be a failure on our part to do proper journalism. It would be a huge dereliction of our duty as student journalists,” he added, “to allow this huge infringement upon the First Amendment to occur on campus.” 

    FIRE to University of Texas at Dallas: Stop censoring the student press

    News

    Join FIRE in demanding UT Dallas compensate journalists, protect student media from interference.


    Read More

    Gutierrez credits FIRE, the Student Press Law Center, and the Society of Professional Journalists for stepping in with support, resources, and advice. He encourages other student journalists to reach out to these groups if censorship comes their way. 

    “I think it’s really important for student journalists facing censorship to reach out to others, work together and fight back against the current regime of censorship that a lot of universities are so fond of,” he concluded.

    The Retrograde’s plans to hold UT Dallas administrators accountable are as ambitious as ever. After the May 1, 2024 police raid on a peaceful protest at UT Dallas, Gutierrez and his fellow journalists filed a public records request. 

    “Right now, we’re working through over 1,500 pages of emails that we’ve gotten from our FOIA request,” said Gutierrez, “and a lot of the information in there is damning.” 

    You can take action to remind President Richard Benson that UT Dallas is a public institution that must abide by the First Amendment and uphold freedom of the press, even when the administration disagrees with student reporting. As Gutierrez says, “I hope it will shame our university administrators into acting normally for once.”

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  • Student Debt by Ethnicity | HESA

    Student Debt by Ethnicity | HESA

    Hi all. Just a quick one today, this time on some data I recently got from StatsCan.

    We know a fair a bit about student debt in Canada, especially with respect to distribution by gender, type of institution, province, etc. (Chapter 6 of The State of Postsecondary Education in Canada is just chock full of this kind of data if you’re minded to take a deeper dive). But to my knowledge no one has ever pulled and published the data on debt by ethnicity, even though this data has been collected for quite some time through the National Graduates Survey (NGS). So I ordered the data, and here’s what I discovered.

    Figure 1 shows incidence of borrowing for the graduating class of 2020, combined for all graduates of universities and graduates, for the eight largest ethnicities covered by the NGS (and before anyone asks, “indigeneity” is not considered an ethnicity so anyone indicating an indigenous ethnicity is unfortunately excluded from this data… there’s more below on the challenges of getting additional data). And the picture it shows is…a bit complex.

    Figure 1: Incidence of Borrowing, College and University Graduates Combined, Class of 2020

    If you just look at the data on government loan programs (the orange bars), we see that only Arab students have borrowing rates in excess of 1 in 2. But for certain ethnicities, the borrowing rate is much lower. For Latin American and Chinese students, the borrowing rate is below 1 in 3, and among South Asian students the borrowing rate is barely 1 in 5. Evidence of big differences in attitudes towards borrowing!

    Except…well when you add in borrowing from private sources (e.g. from banks and family) so as to take a look at overall rates of borrowing incidence, the differences in borrowing rates are a lot narrower. Briefly, Asian and Latin American students borrow a lot more money from private sources (mainly family) than do Arab students, whites, and Blacks. These probably come with slightly easier repayment terms, but it’s hard to know for sure. An area almost certainly worthy of further research.

    There is a similarly nuanced picture when we look at median levels of indebtedness among graduates who had debt. This is shown below in Figure 2.

    Figure 2: Median Borrowing, College and University Graduates Combined, Class of 2020

    Now, there isn’t a huge amount of difference in exiting debt levels by ethnicity: the gap is only about $6,000 between the lowest total debt levels (Filipinos) and the highest (Chinese). But part of the problem here is that we can’t distinguish the reason for the various debt levels. Based on what we know about ethnic patterns of postsecondary education, we can probably guess that Filipino students have low debt levels not because they are especially wealthy and can afford to go to post-secondary without financial assistance. But rather because they are more likely to go to college and this spend less time, on average, in school paying fees and accumulating debt. Similarly, Chinese students don’t have the highest debt because they have low incomes; they have higher debt because they are the ethnic group the most likely to attend university and spend more time paying (higher) fees.

    (Could we get the data separately for universities and colleges to clear up the confound? Yes, we could. But it cost me $3K just to get this data. Drilling down a level adds costs, as would getting data based on indigenous identity, and this is a free email, and so for the moment what we have above will have to do. If anyone wants to pitch in a couple of grand to do more drilling-down, let me know and I would be happy to coordinate some data liberation).

    It is also possible to use NGS data to look at post-graduate income by debt. I obtained the data by in fairly large ranges (e.g. $0-20K, $20-60K, etc.), but it’s possible on the basis of that to estimate roughly what median incomes are (put it this way: the exact numbers are not exactly right, but the ordinal rank of income of the various ethnicities are probably accurate). My estimations of median 2023 income of 2020 graduates—which includes those graduates who are not in the labour market full-time, if you’re wondering why the numbers look a little low—are shown below in Figure 3.

    Figure 3: Estimate Median 2023 Income, College and University Graduates Combined, Class of 2020

    Are there differences in income here? Yes, but they aren’t huge. Most ethnic groups have median post-graduate incomes between $44 and $46,000. The two lowest-earning groups (Latin Americans and Filipinos) re both disproportionately enrolled in community colleges, which is part of what is going on in this data (if you want disaggregated data, see above).

    Now, the data from the previous graphs can be combined to look at debt-to-income ratios, both for students with debt, and all students (that is, including those that do not borrow). This is shown below in Figure 4.

    Figure 4: Estimated Median 2023 Debt-to-Income Ratios, College and University Graduates Combined, Class of 2020

    If you’re just dividing indebtedness by income (the blue bars), you get a picture that looks a lot like Figure 2 in debt, because differences in income are pretty small. But if you are looking at debt-to-income ratios across all students (including those that do not borrow) you get a very different picture because as we saw in Figure 1, there are some pretty significant differences in overall borrowing rates. So, for instance, Chinese students go from having the worst debt-to-income ratio on one measure to being middle of the pack on another because they have relatively low incidence of borrowing; similarly, students of Latin American origin go from being middle-of-the-pack to nearly the lowest debt-to-income ratios because they are a lot less likely to borrow than others. Black students end up having among the highest debt-to-income ratios not because they earn significantly less than other graduates, but because both the incidence and amount of their borrowing is relatively high.

    But I think the story to go with here is that while there are differences between ethnic groups in terms of borrowing, debt, and repayment ratios, and that it’s worth trying to do something to narrow them, the difference in these rates is not enormous. Overall, it appears that as a country we are achieving reasonably good things here, with the caveat that if this data were disaggregated by university/ college, the story might not be quite as promising.

    And so ends the first-ever analysis of student debt and repayment by ethnic background. Hope you found it moderately enlightening.

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  • How to Find the Perfect College for You

    How to Find the Perfect College for You




    College Search: How to Find the Perfect College for You



















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  • Bite of the Big Four: India’s deadly snakebite crisis

    Bite of the Big Four: India’s deadly snakebite crisis

    Every year, an estimated 5.4 million people worldwide are bitten by snakes, resulting in as many as 138,000 deaths and three times as many cases of permanent disability.

    The World Health Organization classified snakebite as a neglected tropical disease in 2017 and set a target to halve related deaths by 2030.

    India, home to over 300 snake species, is at the heart of this global health issue, accounting for half of all snakebite-related deaths.

    While 95% of Indian snakes are non-venomous, it’s “The Big Four” species — the Indian cobra, common krait, Russell’s viper and saw-scaled viper — that cause the most harm said Dr. Sushil John, a public health doctor and amateur herpetologist from Vellore.

    “These snakes cohabit in the same spaces as humans, thriving in India’s agricultural fields, forests and urban outskirts,” said John. “So, they often come into close contact with people and might bite them.”

    A study conducted between 1998 and 2014, called the Million Death Study, found that almost 58,000 people in India died from snakebite each year. Second to India in recorded snakebite deaths is Nigeria, with a reported 1,460 deaths per year. 

    The missing data

    “Though India had a severe snakebite problem, accurate data on snakebite deaths in India was elusive for a long time,” said Dr. Ravikar Ralph, a physician at the Poison Control Centre at CMC Vellore.

    In 2011, the official reported number of snakebite deaths was only 11,000. The deaths reported in the Million Death Study highlighted the severe underreporting of snakebite mortality in the country.

    “This is because most studies available at the time were hospital-based, which led to the gross under-reporting of this issue,” said Ralph. “We knew from grassroots work that most patients were not reaching hospitals on time.”

    “Either people didn’t realize that being bitten by a snake required medical management, or they went to traditional healers, causing fatal delays in hospital-based care,” said Ralph. “The Million Death Study used community-based data collection to circumvent that barrier and document accurate numbers.”

    Harvesting the cure

    Snakebites are unique compared to other health issues. Snake venom, a potent mix of proteins, can destroy tissue, paralyze muscles and impair blood clotting, often leading to severe disability which is most likely loss of limbs which were bitten or death if untreated.

    “Unlike diseases caused by other agents such as viruses or bacteria where one can eliminate the causing agent, a similar approach cannot be taken for snakebites,” Ralph said.

    Antivenom is the only specific treatment that can prevent or reverse many of the effects of snakebite, when given early and in the right dosage.

    To produce antivenom, snake venom must be first collected, or “milked,” from live snakes kept in a specialized facility. Only one facility in India, located in Tamilnadu, harvests venom for anti-venom production in India.

    The venom is then diluted and injected in small doses into animals like horses, prompting their immune systems to produce antibodies. These antibodies are then harvested, purified and processed into antivenom.

    But India’s only anti-snake venom treatment targets only The Big Four snakes.

    “There are over 50 venomous snake species in India,” said Gnaneshwar Ch, project lead of the Snake Conservation and Snakebite Mitigation project at the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust.

    “The anti-snake venom’s limited scope means bites from less common species remain inadequately treated,” he said

    Despite its importance, antivenom is also not widely available, and its cost can be prohibitive for many rural families. The gaps in stocking and distribution further worsen the issue.

    While many countries produce antivenom, they tend to cater to the locally available species of snakes making it impractical to import it from other countries to India in order to solve the availability crisis.

    A national action plan

    The WHO has called for concerted global action to reduce deaths and disability in priority nations. In 2019, the WHO launched an international strategy for preventing and controlling snakebite, which was then regionally adapted for Southeast Asia and published in 2022.

    The Indian Union Health Ministry then launched the National Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Snakebite Envenoming (NAPSE) in March 2024. The NAPSE aligns strategically with the WHO’s global roadmap and its regional adaptation for Southeast Asia.

    Many stakeholders need to join forces in order to balance snakebite mitigation with snake conservation, experts say.

    “Snakes tend to be very important to every ecosystem they are found in,” said Dr. Sushil John. “If snake numbers fall, we would see an increase in rodents which the snakes keep in check by eating. They would then destroy crops and spread diseases to animals and people.”

    While this strategy appears to be heading in the right direction, some experts caution that there might be barriers to implementation.

    “While public hospitals may adopt the reporting system, many Indians seek private health care,” said Professor Sakthivel Vaiyapuri, a venom pharmacologist at the University of Reading in England. “Mechanisms to ensure private hospitals comply with reporting requirements are essential.”

    Vaiyapuri helped work on the National Action Plan. He said health workers who are to report snakebite must understand the significance of their role which will motivate them to record the data accurately. He also said someone must verify the entered data independently to ensure accuracy. He suggests developing a mobile app to streamline data collection.

    While Vaiyapuri worries about the logistics of implementing such a plan for massive surveillance, there are also other worries about unintended consequences for snakebite victims, according to Dr. Anand Zachariah, a toxicologist at CMC Vellore.

    “When India made maternal deaths notifiable, many private clinics in India stopped treating high-risk pregnancies because they worried about the reporting process getting them in trouble if something went south,” said Zachariah. “I fear snakebite becoming a notifiable disease might trigger such defensive practices among physicians.”

    But he admits that at this point, the fear is only theoretical; what will eventually happen remains to be seen.

    “Despite the challenges, I think [the National Action Plan] is a pivotal initiative in tackling snakebite envenomation in India,” Vaiyapuri said.

    “By fostering accurate data collection, promoting intersectoral collaboration and engaging communities, the plan holds significant potential to drive meaningful change — ensuring effective prevention, timely treatment and a significant reduction in snakebite-related deaths and disabilities,” Vaiyapuri said.

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  • Essays in the Transformation of Higher Education (Dan Morris and Harry Targ)

    Essays in the Transformation of Higher Education (Dan Morris and Harry Targ)

    From Upton Sinclair’s ‘Goose Step’ to the Neoliberal University (lulu.com)

    Table of Contents
    Introduction
    Chapter One: Macro and Micro Analyses of Higher Education
    Chapter Two: Discourses On Ideology
    Chapter Three: Branding
    Chapter Four: What Do Universities Do?
    Chapter Five: Universities and War:
    Conclusion
    Appendix

    Introduction

    In the following pages, you are going to find a lot of specific information about what is happening at one major public research university, but we believe what is happening at Purdue is analogous to a canary in a coal mine. We believe that Purdue under Mitch Daniels, a former George Walker Bush administrator and Governor of Indiana, is becoming a high profile and influential spokesperson for the transformation of public higher education in the 21st century in directions that we find dangerous and that go against how we value higher education. We realize that, while we address extensively institutional changes and policies at Purdue, Indiana’s Land Grant University, our interest is in using this case study to illustrate larger patterns and issues that should be of concern to readers who care about the future of higher education in a broader sense.

    Harry Targ’s pieces do tend towards a wider-angle perspective than do those by Dan Morris, although both of us rely on our “boots on the ground” level understanding of Purdue to counteract and contest official media versions of what is happening at Purdue. We write at a moment when there is something of a “media desert” in terms of local news coverage of higher education in small markets such as Lafayette, Indiana. We have both tried to work to rectify the “media desert” landscape in our community by contributing to the Lafayette Independent, an electronic newsletter. We appreciate efforts by local journalists such as Dave Bangert and the student staff of the Purdue Exponent to offer coverage of the university in ways that are more substantial, and, often, more critical, than what one finds in the area’s only mainstream newspaper, the Journal and Courier, and main local TV news source, and the Purdue NPR radio station, whose ownership in the last year has been mysteriously transferred to an Indianapolis corporation. Paradoxically the richest data for many of the essays below come from the official daily public relations newsletter from Purdue called Purdue Today. This public relations source celebrates Purdue’s latest connections with multinational corporations, the military, and state politics, and provides links to editorials published by Purdue’s President and other officials in the national press. Ironically, oftentimes what Purdue celebrates becomes the data for our more analytical and discursive writings.

    Like alternative media sources, we see this book as another intervention in offering an alternative view of what is happening at our campus, but we also write with the hope that readers can apply the readings we bring to Purdue to begin conversations about the promise and problems of contemporary higher education on campuses. The authors wish to praise and encourage further research and activism around the transformations of higher education in general. We identify with what some scholars have referred to as Critical University Studies (CUS). The essays below, we believe, are part of this emerging tradition of critical and self-reflective scholarship.

    The authors also wish to identify at least three major elements of the transformation of higher education. First, Purdue, like many other universities, is once again pursuing research contracts with huge corporations, and perhaps most importantly, the Department of Defense. As essays below suggest, Purdue research is increasingly justified as serving the interests of United States “national security.” Often this is conceptualized as helping the United States respond to “the Chinese threat,” rarely identifying what exactly is the threat, or considering the possibility that contributing to a new arms race with a perceived adversary may increase, rather than reduce, the possibility for conflict between nations.

    Second, the work below and other writings in CUS, highlight the purposive transformation of the content of higher education. Universities are moving resources away from the liberal arts, creating new programs in “artificial intelligence” and “data science,” and in response to political pressures are diminishing programs that emphasize interdisciplinarity, intersectionality, and the structural problems of race, class, gender, and sexual preference in history and contemporary society. Essays below on “civics literacy” suggest that leading administrators at Purdue, while refusing to defend its universally praised Writing Lab after it was ridiculed on Fox News for its recommendation that student writers select gender-neutral terms such as postal worker when writing about occupations, seek to avoid the controversaries around Critical Race Theory by requiring all students to study in some fashion “civics literacy.” President Daniels has made it clear that the study of civics literacy will illustrate the “vitality” of US political institutions (as opposed to over-emphasizing the slaughter of the original inhabitants of the North American continent or the history of slavery and white supremacy).

    Third, the essays below do not dwell enough on the transformation of the university as a workplace. While there have been attacks for years on the tenure system, a system of job security which was initially designed to protect faculty from external political pressures, recent additions to the transformations of the university as a work site should be noted.

    Adjunctification is a term that refers to the qualitative increase in the hiring of various forms of part time instructors: full-time instructors for a set time period, instructors to teach less than a full complement of courses, and instructors with various arrangements that limit their work life, their ability to do research and prepare for their class time, and their time to serve the many needs of students. The fundamental trend in higher education is to “cheapen” and make insecure instructors, ultimately to destroy the job security that comes with academic tenure. In many cases this impacts negatively on the quality of the educational experience. (In colleges and universities in general about 70 percent of classes now are taught by instructors who are not tenure-line faculty).

    And finally, every effort is made by universities to limit and derail the workplace concerns of non-teaching staff, particularly opposing their right to form unions.

    One positive development from all of this-destroying the tenure system and job security, adjunctification, increased exploitation of graduate students, and finally restricting the rights and the wages and benefits of staff has been the rise of labor militancy. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and various unions such as the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the United Electrical Workers (UE) with a history of militancy have been organizing graduate students and staff.

    Finally, the authors acknowledge that in the months after we completed our manuscript, Purdue administrators and trustees have announced a series of initiatives without an appropriate level of input from university stakeholders and the wider Lafayette area community:

    1. Purdue is building a housing complex near the Discovery Park part of campus to attract higher income earning technologists to relocate in West Lafayette. To encourage new high-income residents, the West Lafayette city government has authorized $5,000 cash incentives for any purchasers of these new housing units adjacent to Purdue. Such offers are not available to lower income earners or students.

    2. To deal with record enrollments, Purdue has purchased a privately constructed apartment complex across from campus at a price well more than the cost of its construction.

    3. Purdue officials have expanded partnerships with Saab, Rolls Royce, the Raytheon Corporation, one of the world’s five largest military contractors, and undertaken a controversial business mission with the Indiana governor to Taiwan to pursue research and production of semi-conductors, in part to respond to what Purdue officials have described as a ”Chinese threat” to national security in the United States.

    4.The College of Liberal Arts has announced it will be partnering with the College of Science to develop a new interdisciplinary degree program in artificial intelligence. CLA calls its “new field” of interest, “sociogenomics.”

    5. Purdue received an award recognizing its “excellence in counterintelligence,” one of only four such award recipients in 2022. Purdue joins those few universities which protect “sensitive national information from foreign adversaries.” The award announced in Purdue Today, August 24, 2022, noted that the university continues to work with the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) and the FBI.

    In short, the transformation of Indiana’s Land Grant university continues at a rapid pace. And while the essays below concentrate on the developments and forces leading to these changes, the broader point of this collection of essays is to suggest that higher education in the twenty-first century is changing in a rapid and largely deleterious way. The appended essay by Carl Davidson reflects a similar critique of the university during the height of the Cold War. What we are witnessing today is a revitalization of that trend.

    For those who value the university as a site for informing students about the world and debating the value of changes occurring in it, the developments highlighted in these essays are a warning. And for faculty and students alike the antidote to the militarization of the university, the transformation of the curricula, and the disempowering of those who work in universities is organizing against those elements of change that are antithetical to the educational process.

    And More:

    “The Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue has created a category of its own. As part of the nation’s leading national security university, it is rapidly becoming the world’s premier institution focused on Tech Statecraft, a new model of diplomacy bridging the gap between technology experts, government officials and policymakers, and business leaders to ensure tomorrow’s tech secures our freedoms,” said (Daniel) Kurtenbach. ‘I’m excited to contribute to the Krach Institute’s already-impressive momentum by enhancing and building its innovative partnerships and relationships to achieve our shared vision of a future that prizes individual freedom through trusted technology.’ ”

    https://www.citybiz.co/article/378157/krach-institute-for-tech-diplomacy-at-purdue-names-daniel-kurtenbach-as-chief-growth-officer/

    Homepage – Tech Statecraft (techdiplomacy.org)

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  • Your district’s 2025 resolution: Extreme weather resiliency

    Your district’s 2025 resolution: Extreme weather resiliency

    As extreme weather becomes more intense and more frequent, school districts are increasingly adding resilient solutions to their facilities. Achieving resiliency can look very different depending on regional needs, and choosing the right projects for your building portfolio can be challenging. One key element to resiliency includes strengthening your facilities wherever possible. But with budgets tighter than ever, knowing where to begin is not always straightforward. 

    A robust approach is to apply the principles of the hierarchy of needs to resiliency. Explore more about this concept in the Extreme Weather Prep Fact Sheet. Ranking projects this way establishes levels of risk and benefit for each school district and makes it easier to adjust to unique climates and circumstances. 

    The extreme weather hierarchy of needs

    Level 1: Updating outdated equipment

    Outdated equipment is often the weakest link, breaking first when systems are stressed. If your district is seriously behind in infrastructure updates, you are not alone. The Government Accountability Office reports that more than half of the public school districts in the U.S. need to update or replace building systems.  

    Systems like HVAC, electricity, plumbing and water are foundational to everything schools do. Old systems can be glitchy and fail to reboot after unplanned outages due to extreme weather. While other updates may seem more attractive, repairing and updating these systems should be the top priority. Without them, other updates may even be a waste of money if you can’t keep schools open due to unsafe conditions. 

    Level 2: Securing your building envelope

    Water is the enemy of every building and older buildings, including many school facilities, are particularly vulnerable to its destructive nature. A small amount of water can quickly become a big problem and persist for a long time. In addition to the initial damage, humidity and mold can cause significant long-term health issues. 

    We also know students and staff perform better, attend more consistently and enjoy a higher quality of life when they’re not continuously exposed to hazardous air quality conditions. Science Direct published a case study in which 82% of study participants reported that their health improved after moving from a moisture-damaged school facility to a new, cleaner environment. Measurable pulmonary function returned to normal after just a few months.

    Remediating water and mold damage is an important starting point when completing that maintenance to-do list. Going a step further and ensuring it doesn’t happen again is the power move to keep buildings in shape for years to come. Ensure that your roofs, windows and doors are doing their job to keep your facilities safe and weather-tight. Maintain them well and, when needed, replace them. Investment in these critical items is a much better use of funds than continuously repairing them in hopes they’ll hold when the next extreme weather event comes along… and then repairing them when they fail yet again.  

    Level 3: Using renewable energy for stability

    The best way to avoid power outages is to implement onsite power generation – often in the form of a renewable energy microgrid system. For districts that have already updated their outdated equipment and secured all their building envelopes, renewable energy is the ultimate upgrade to equip your district to withstand extreme climate events or seasons.

    Protecting your buildings from energy outages that hit your surrounding community makes your district a literal powerhouse. With a microgrid, your own on-site power generation can keep the lights on and climate controls working. Your building can serve as a safe space for providing shelter, distributing resources and educating children. 

    Even if you’re not able to reach the gold standard of a fully functioning microgrid, adding renewable energy to your infrastructure portfolio is a win-win for all stakeholders. Take a look at Onsted Community Schools, MI, which used renewable solar energy to unlock funding for other projects that positively impact learning outcomes. The on-site availability of this modern technology provides excellent, hands-on learning opportunities for students. 

    Plus, renewable energy, like solar power, can reduce a significant line item in your budget – utility costs. According to Stanford University, educational institutions account for approximately 11% of energy consumption by buildings in the United States. They state, “Taking advantage of all viable space for solar panels could allow schools to meet up to 75 percent of their electricity needs and reduce the education sector’s carbon footprint by as much as 28 percent.”

    Starting where you are

    As we tell students, ‘the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,’ and so does the journey toward making K12 schools energy-efficient and resilient. It’s unrealistic to think that every district will be covered with solar arrays powering microgrids tomorrow. But each step in this extreme weather hierarchy of needs has value. It’s okay to start small! Every system update, new roof and window replacement is a step in the right direction. 

    At Energy Systems Group, modernizing school facilities is our highest priority. We partner with K12 districts to conduct severe weather audits, develop prioritized recommendations and provide project management and execution. 

    Discover practical solutions to boost your district’s resilience and efficiency with our Extreme Weather Prep Fact Sheet

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  • Did the Ivy League really break America? (opinion)

    Did the Ivy League really break America? (opinion)

    Are many of the ills that plague American society caused by Ivy League admission policies?

    That is the premise of David Brooks’s cover story for the December issue of The Atlantic, “How the Ivy League Broke America.” Brooks blames the Ivies and “meritocracy” for a host of societal problems, including:

    • Overbearing parenting
    • Less time for recess (as well as art and shop) in schools
    • An economy that doesn’t provide opportunities for those without a college degree
    • The death of civic organizations like Elks Lodge and Kiwanis Club
    • The high percentage of Ivy League graduates who choose careers in finance and consulting
    • The rise of populism based on “crude exaggerations, gross generalizations, and bald-faced lies.”

    Brooks somehow left the decline of small-town mom-and-pop businesses and the popularity of reality television off his laundry list.

    You may be wondering how the Ivies contributed to or caused all these problems. The essence of Brooks’s argument is that “every coherent society has a social ideal—an image of what the superior person looks like.” His hypothesis is that America’s social ideals reflect and are determined by the qualities that Ivy League universities value in admission.

    One hundred years ago, the Ivy League social ideal was what Brooks terms the “Well-Bred Man”—white, male, aristocratic and preppy, athletic, good-looking, and personable. What was not part of the ideal was intellectual brilliance or academic prowess, and in fact those who cared about studying were social outcasts. Applying to the Ivies resembled applying for membership to elite social clubs.

    That changed starting in the 1930s when a group of educational leaders, the most prominent being Harvard president James Conant, worried that the United States was not producing leaders capable of dealing with the problems it would face in the future. Their solution was to move to an admission process that rewarded intelligence rather than family lineage. They believed that intelligence was the highest human trait, one that is innate and distributed randomly throughout the population. Conant and his peers believed the change would lead to a nation with greater opportunities for social mobility.

    Brooks seems far from sure that the change was positive for America. He acknowledges that “the amount of bigotry—against women, Black people, the LGBTQ community—has declined” (that might be debatable given the current political climate), but observes that the previous ideal produced the New Deal, victory in World War II, NATO and the postwar world led by America, while the products of the ideal pushed by Conant have produced “quagmires in Vietnam and Afghanistan, needless carnage in Iraq, the 2008 financial crisis, the toxic rise of social media, and our current age of political dysfunction.” Those examples seem cherry-picked.

    In the essay, Brooks cites a number of troubling societal problems and trends, all supported with extensive research, but the weakness of his argument is that he tries to find a single cause to explain all of them. That common denominator is what he calls “meritocracy.”

    Meritocracy, a society with opportunities based on merit, is an appealing concept in theory, but defining merit is where things get sticky. Merit may be similar to Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart’s description of pornography, in that you know it when you see it. Does merit consist of talent alone? Talent combined with work ethic? Talent, work ethic and character?

    Merit is in the eye of the beholder. If I was admitted to an Ivy League university, it was obviously because I had merit. If someone else, especially someone from an underrepresented population, got the acceptance instead of me, factors other than merit must have been at play. If two candidates have identical transcripts but different SAT scores, which one possesses more merit? Complicating the discussion is the fact that many things cited as measures of merit are in fact measures of privilege.

    For Brooks, Ivy League meritocracy involves an overreliance on intelligence and academic achievement, to the detriment of noncognitive skills that are more central to success and happiness in life. He argues that “success in school is not the same thing as success in life,” with success in school primarily being individual while success in life is team-based. He quotes Adam Grant’s argument that academic excellence is not a strong predictor of career excellence.

    Ultimately, he argues that “meritocracy” has spurred the creation of “an American caste system,” one in which “a chasm divides the educated from the less well-educated,” triggering “a populist backlash that is tearing society apart.” Yet Brooks’s beef is not so much with meritocracy as it is with a mindset that he attributes to Conant and his brethren. He equates meritocracy with a belief in rationalism and social engineering that assumes that anything of value can be measured and counted. What he is criticizing is something different from meritocracy, or at least reflects a narrow definition of meritocracy.

    Even if we don’t agree with Brooks’s definitions, or the implication that Ivy League admission policies are responsible for the ills of society, his article raises a number of important questions about the college admission process at elite colleges and universities.

    First, is the worship of standardized testing misplaced? The SAT became prominent in college admission at around the same time that Conant and others were changing the Ivy League admission paradigm. They believed that intelligence could be measured and latched onto the SAT as a “pure,” objective measure of aptitude. Today, of course, we recognize that test scores are correlated with family income and that scores can be manipulated through test preparation. And the “A” in SAT no longer stands for aptitude.

    Do we measure what we value or do we value what we can measure? Brooks criticizes the Ivies for focusing on academic achievement in school at the expense of “noncognitive skills” that might be more important to success in life after college, things like curiosity, relationship-building skills and work ethic. He’s right, but there are two reasons for the current emphasis. One is that going to college is going to school, so an admission process focused on scholastic academic achievement is defensible. The other is that we haven’t developed a good mechanism for measuring noncognitive skills.

    That raises a larger question. What do we want the admission process to accomplish? The SAT is intended to predict freshman year college GPA (in conjunction with high school grades). Is that a satisfactory goal? Shouldn’t we have a larger lens, aiming to identify those who will be most successful at the end of college, or after college? Should we admit those with the greatest potential, those who will grow the most from the college experience, or those who will make the greatest contribution to society after college?

    Brooks questions elite colleges’ preferences for “spiky” students over those who are well-rounded. Is a student body full of spiky students really better? An even more important question arises from a distinction Brooks made some years ago between “résumé virtues” and “eulogy virtues.”

    Does the elite college admission process as currently constituted reward and encourage students who are good at building résumés? A former student attending an elite university commented that almost every classmate had done independent academic research and started a nonprofit. Do students aspiring to the Ivies choose activities because they really care about them or because they think they will impress admission officers, and can admission officers tell the difference? What is the consequence of having a student body full of those who are good at playing the résumé-building game?

    There is one other issue raised by Brooks that I find particularly important. He argues that those who are successful in the elite admission process end up possessing greater “hubris,” in that they believe their success is the product of their talent and hard work rather than privilege and luck. Rather than appreciating their good fortune, they may believe they are entitled to it. That misconception may also fuel the populist backlash to elites that has increased the division within our country.

    I don’t buy Brooks’s definition of meritocracy or his contention that the Ivy League “broke” America, but his article nevertheless merits reading and discussion.

    Jim Jump recently retired after 33 years as the academic dean and director of college counseling at St. Christopher’s School in Richmond, Va. He previously served as an admissions officer, philosophy instructor and women’s basketball coach at the college level and is a past president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. He is the 2024 recipient of NACAC’s John B. Muir Excellence in Media Award.

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