Theresa McDevitt, of the IUP Libraries, and Jeanine Mazak-Kahne, of the History Department, are leading a project to digitize Civil War documents from the collections of the library and the Indiana County Historical and Genealogical Society. McDevitt, as project director, received $24,270 from the Office of Commonwealth Libraries to fund the project.

The final product, expected this summer, will be a website similar to the Coal Culture project McDevitt completed six years ago. She hopes both sites, Coal Culture and the Civil War, are just the start of a broader digitization project, Historic Indiana. (See the digital collection for the Indiana County in the Civil War project, under construction until summer 2012.)

Also available on the Civil War website will be lesson plans written by History professor Soo Chun Lu that incorporate primary sources—that is, photos, diaries, and other raw materials—as well as interpretive essays and other secondary sources.

McDevitt envisions the site drawing everyone from students doing research projects to history buffs, particularly given the interest in the 150th anniversary of the war.

“When we talk about the Civil War, people think of Antietam or Gettysburg, but the Civil War could not have been waged, and won, without the support of the people at home,” she said. “Researchers from university professors to genealogists are looking at what was happening on the home front now more than ever.”

Documents illustrating local history foster a deeper analysis and understanding of the period, McDevitt said. She quotes colleague Robert Millward, of the Professional Studies in Education Department, in saying, “Primary sources make history come alive.”

Included in the historical society’s collection is the prison diary of Indiana County’s Harry White, who served simultaneously as a Pennsylvania senator and Union Army officer. White’s dual service caused problems back home when he was confined in a Virginia prison camp, leaving the state Senate with an equal number of Unionists and Democrats. The resulting deadlock lasted two months in 1864.

With Unionists unable to secure his release, White sneaked out a letter of resignation, said to be on a weather-stained scrap of paper, which allowed the election of a successor and gave Unionists a 17-16 edge in the Senate. White went on to become a Congressman in the 1870s and later an Indiana County judge.

His Libby Prison diary and a number of family letters and photographs will be among the more than 80 items in the digital archive.

McDevitt’s inspiration for the digitization projects came in part from her experiences working in the library’s Special Collections area. Requests for specific documents or images, such as a photograph of Philadelphia Street in 1942, required an extensive search that would have been far easier with online archives.

“The Internet is becoming the first resort for finding information,” McDevitt said. “If we want to promote an understanding of the period, we have to make information about it easily accessible to the public, and that means making it available online.”

Another benefit of digitization is the ability to preserve artifacts better by reducing their handling. “Thousands of people can read the letters, diaries, and telegraphs without the wear and tear on these delicate, embrittled items,” she said.

For their project, McDevitt and Mazak-Kahne enlisted the help of archivist Harrison Wick, who selected items from the collections of IUP Libraries, and three students, who will scan and enhance the images and documents, provide descriptions consistent with library standards, and place them into the digital repository software.

The students also underwent training in how to create a digital collection and how to preserve the artifacts during the digitization process. Those videotaped training sessions will be included on the Civil War website.

While working on the Civil War collection, the team is also building a framework for the broader Historic Indiana digitization project by documenting its procedures and creating a manual for future contributors to follow.

About Theresa McDevitt

McDevitt’s research interests include the American Civil War, women’s roles during the Civil War, and information literacy instruction. Her Ph.D. dissertation focused on the United States Christian Commission, a charitable organization that provided religious support and social services to soldiers during the Civil War.

She also edited Let the Games Begin!, published in 2011, a compilation of librarians’ strategies for engaging students through interactive information literacy instruction.

At IUP, she has taught a variety of courses, including Introduction to Library Resources, Internet and Multimedia, the Modern Era, Women and the Civil War, and Introduction to Women’s Studies.

She earned a Ph.D. in history from Kent State, a master’s degree in history from IUP, and a bachelor’s degree in anthropology, a master’s in library science, and a master’s in education of the deaf, all from the University of Pittsburgh.

About Jeanine Mazak-Kahne

Mazak-Kahne’s research interests include public history education, small town organized crime, deindustrialization, and gender representation in FBI file reports.

Her current research examines a late 1940s conflict between a local union of aluminum workers and the district administration of the United Steel Workers of America.

Mazak-Kahne teaches courses in public history, the history of organized crime, and America in War and Depression (1914–1945). She is also the History Department’s graduate program coordinator.

She received a Ph.D. in history from Michigan State University, a master’s degree in history with a concentration in archives, museum, and historical editing studies from Duquesne University, and a bachelor’s degree in history from Gannon University.

The new simulation laboratory, located in Putt Hall, also provides hands-on training for students in the use of electronic medical records. Palmer is the project director, and Julia Greenawalt, assistant chair for the department, is codirector.

The department introduced its first simulation laboratory in 2007. This lab, located in Johnson Hall, was renovated and expanded in 2009 and now includes nine adult manikins, two adolescent manikins, a pediatric (baby) manikin, and other training equipment. The simulation lab has two hospital-style rooms with control-observation rooms and the capability to broadcast to nearby classrooms.

The high-fidelity manikins in the new simulation laboratory suffer from a variety of health issues, but they are also housed in a home-like setting to simulate a home-care situation.

“Because of a shortage of nurses, there is an increasing number of home health care patients, especially in the rural areas, who are monitored by telehealth systems,” Palmer said. The simulation equipment will enhance undergraduate nursing education with opportunities to practice nursing care using electronic documentation and telehealth services prior to their on-site experiential work.”

The Putt Hall manikins are designed to mimic a rural patient with a common chronic illness, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hypertension, or obesity, the most prevalent health concerns of rural residents in the United States.

This laboratory will be especially helpful to students because a telehealth nurse, in addition to receiving data from patients, must learn to work with patients in the home, according to the project directors.

“The nurses of tomorrow will be data driven and patient centered,” Greenawalt said.

The high fidelity manikins not only present with symptoms from a variety of illnesses, but they can talk to the nurse to say how they are feeling. They change temperature, their pupils constrict, they have seizures, and they expel liquids in all the ways a human does, including sweating and crying.

“Students learn how to care for their patients through our simulation laboratories, and we can recreate the entire hospital experience. Students portray the doctor, the anxious family member, and other hospital staff, in order for our nursing students to understand what they will be facing as nurses,” Palmer said.

In addition to the students caring for the patients, the students who are watching the simulation in the debriefing room also learn from the experience. During the debrief, students and the instructor offer comments, criticisms, and praise for the way the case was handled.

Because manikins are being used, if students are having difficulty with a particular procedure, they can come back for a do-over to become proficient. This zero-fault environment is unique to simulation and fosters deeper learning, Greenawalt said.

Every junior or senior Nursing major has at least two or three simulated learning opportunities with the high-fidelity manikins each semester. Sophomore nursing majors are initiated with the medium-fidelity manikins.

“By their senior year, our nursing students have become very skilled with hands-on care,” Palmer said.

Using the recent grant funds, the department has also purchased equipment to help students learn to use electronic medical records. “This is a great advantage to our students, as some clinical sites require up to three days of training before students can even begin their clinical experience,” Palmer said.

“We have been very, very fortunate to have successfully secured this grant for our home-health care simulation laboratory and electronic medical records training equipment. Private funds are crucial to our ability to continue to offer cutting-edge training opportunities for our students,” Palmer said.

About Elizabeth Palmer

Elizabeth Palmer is a graduate of the IUP nursing program and received her Ph.D. from Duquesne University in 1999. She joined the IUP faculty in 1999 and was elected chairperson in May 2008.

She is active with the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, serving on the Baccalaureate Conference Committee and with the Pennsylvania Higher Education Nursing Schools Association. Palmer is a certified nurse educator through the National League for Nursing.
Currently, she teaches mostly at the master’s and doctoral level but has taught across the undergraduate and graduate curriculums. At the undergraduate level, she focuses on clinical areas related to adult health nursing, and, at the graduate level, she teaches course work in research, curriculum, measurement and evaluation, and health policy.

At IUP, she has been active on committees at the department and college level and, on a larger scale, the college curriculum committee and APSCUF, currently chairing the IUP APSCUF Scholarship Committee.

In addition to the recent grant for the simulation laboratory, she has been successful in securing external grants from the Health Resources and Services Administration for Advanced Education Nursing Traineeships, the Environmental Protection Agency, United Way, and the Center for Rural Pennsylvania.

About Julia Greenawalt

Julia Greenawalt, assistant chairperson of the Department of Nursing and Allied Health Professions and coordinator of the simulation laboratory, was instrumental in founding the Johnson Hall simulation laboratory. She received her B.S. in Nursing from Bradley University in Peoria, Ill., and her Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 2008. She joined the IUP faculty in 2006.

Greenawalt is the recipient of the 2011 Excellence Award for Integration of Simulation in the Academic Setting from the International Nursing Association for Clinical Simulation and Learning. She currently teaches Maternal Health Nursing (NURS 333), focusing on the professional role of the obstetrical nurse in the clinical setting. She is active in the IUP community, serving on University Senate and the Undergraduate Wide University Curriculum Committee and as the APSCUF representative for her department.

She is also very active in the professional organizations that foster learning with simulation, such as the Society for Simulation in Healthcare and International Nursing Association for Clinical Simulation and Learning.

Among them was IUP Art faculty member Steve Loar, whose concept “significant moments in the woodturning field” ended up driving much of the book’s format and content. Woodturning Today: A Dramatic Evolution was released in June 2011.

Right Person for the Job

Loar was a natural to be involved with the book. During his more than thirty years of woodturning and contemporary furniture making, he was also a follower of the field. He connected with his counterparts and collected images of their work to use as a resource for his teaching.

In addition to his essays, Loar contributed to the book about eighty photos from that collection. Having experienced those “significant moments” firsthand, he had a wealth of anecdotal information to draw from but needed to verify some facts.

“It allowed me to reconnect with a number of colleagues who had done very important work, some of it quite early, and who may not even be active in the field now,” Loar said. “Some important people have passed away, and mine were the only slides of their work we know of.”

Further qualifying him for this editorial role was that Loar had already researched many issues in contemporary woodturning—for numerous conference presentations and published commentaries throughout his career.

Contemporary Woodturning’s Rise and Stall

“A blur” is how Loar described the evolution of woodturning over the last half-century in his essay “So Far, So Fast” in the AAW anniversary book. Through the early 1970s, turning was based in utility and often industry, with patterns dictating style. It was taught, often vocationally, in secondary schools and by master to apprentice and father to son.

Traditions that emerged in the 1980s had little concern with utility or function and focused instead on tools and technique. How thin a turner can make the wood has dictated the bulk of the field’s work over the past twenty-five years, according to Loar. Although many of contemporary woodturning’s early innovators were self-taught, thousands since have found guidance through workshops, which are common in the field.

After a break-neck rise, woodturning seems to have slowed in ingenuity and innovation and now rests on a plateau, Loar said, a state that has led some to proclaim the death of the field.

While not so dire in his assessment, Loar sees a number of challenges to the future of turning: the elimination of industrial arts programs at secondary schools, the aging field of practitioners, and the continuing fascination with tools and techniques rather than concepts, ideas, and statements—often the case with hobbyists who lack formal education in art and design.

Given those challenges, Loar questions whether the strength of the field—as evidenced by an AAW membership of more than fourteen thousand—can be maintained. He hopes that new educational opportunities will emerge as a catalyst for moving woodturning off its plateau.

Now in his thirty-second year of teaching, Loar has had many students follow in his footsteps and embrace his teaching philosophies and concerns. That process continues in his role as director of the Center for Turning and Furniture Design at IUP. Within this woodworking program is a business component called CenterWorks, which allows students to work on projects for commission. This work has included the processing of fallen or removed campus trees and giving them new life as usable lumber. (Learn more about this aspect of the program in the online feature “Green Design: Harvest to Use.”)

Significant Moments in Woodturning

Setting the stage in the AAW anniversary book for Loar’s photo gallery of selected artwork representing critical moments in woodturning was his other major essay, “Themes: Decoding Contemporary Woodturning.”

“I sought to identify works that changed our perceptions of what was possible,” he said. “From them often emerged whole genres of creations by others.”

Determining what was most significant among his peers’ work was a “harrowing task,” Loar said. “As an art critic, I had the choice of inclusion—or not. This book is the culmination of me as an intellectual force in the field, as well as an artist.”

Loar is no stranger to innovation in woodturning. He was one of the first to use sandblasting, experiment with color, and suspend the vessel, or put it on legs. His Bowl for the Coastal Tribes, which he made in 1985, was the earliest piece in an American Woodturner photo gallery of suspended vessels featured in the December 2010 issue.

In 1996, the AAW recognized Loar as one of fifteen people who had made the greatest impact on the contemporary woodturning field through their work and sharing of expertise.

Loar was also one of the innovators of collaboration—the use of castoffs, or unfinished pieces by other turners, to create new works—now a mainstay of the field. Among his best known collaborative pieces is Helplessly Hoping II, which he created in 1996 using an upside-down bowl and other castoffs from other turners.

Loar’s ability to evolve has fueled his longevity in woodturning. His Young Ludwig: Dreaming of the Fifth was featured in the recently published Wood Art Today 2, a juried overview of the wood field as a whole. He also had a piece in the original Wood Art Today, published ten years earlier, making him one of the few artists to make appearances in both.

And, Loar is still working to “keep the revolution going.” His current projects include a piece inspired by the 2010 oil-rig catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, and, in an even greater diversion, experiments with turning wood versions of lingams—lozenge-shaped stones revered as sacred icons in India. Translating these simple forms into turned wood without projecting his ego has proven difficult for the turner known for his theatrical, often rock-and-roll-inspired works.

“My work has been loud and colorful—it’s been like a flashing neon sign,” he said. “The lingams go to another extreme—a quiet, perfect as possible form.”

Loar is curious to see if he can engage people on this other level.

“Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind,” Loar once wrote, quoting zoologist Marston Bates in reference to the passion and “spirit of inquiry” that engendered woodturning’s meteoric rise. For Loar, the research continues.

The following photo gallery features a number of works by Loar and by IUP alumni. Some of these photos were included in the American Association of Woodturners’ twenty-fifth anniversary book.

About Steve Loar

Loar is an associate professor of art and director of the Center for Turning and Furniture Design at IUP.

He received a Bachelor of Science in studio art from Murray State University in 1972 and a Master of Arts in design studio from Northern Illinois University in 1975.

At IUP, Loar teaches Foundations/Three-Dimensional Design, has developed an independent study that allows select students to explore the demands of college teaching, and has led several study-abroad experiences that have included studio art. Among those are his One Island initiatives, which have investigated castoff plastic on Andros Island, Bahamas, and in Perth, Scotland. The Andros project involved cleaning up a beach and using the recovered materials to create art. (Learn more about the Andros trip in the online feature “Green Design: Recycling the Beach.”)

The 7,150-square-foot center is designed to create an outdoor learning environment. Not only does this center offer IUP education majors unique perspectives on teaching science, it is also a resource for the region’s teachers and elementary and middle-school students.

The site is all about Pennsylvania. The plantings are unique to the state, and its water feature is designed to attract insects and animals—dragonflies, frogs, and birds—that you’d find in the commonwealth. Every part of the space tells a story or offers information. Even the sidewalks have tracks of animals native to the state: deer, groundhog, turkey, great blue heron, bullfrog, black bear, and human.

“It’s not unique for a university to have an environmental center or to be associated with an outdoor science center, but it’s special in part because it’s such a little space offering so much information, it’s focused on Pennsylvania, and it has something for all levels of children,” Meghan Twiest, a faculty member in the Professional Studies in Education Department, said. “Young children will understand that the marks in the sidewalk are animal tracks. Older students will not only identify what animals made the tracks, but can do an analysis of what the tracks mean—was the animal running or walking, for example.”

Having the center on campus also maximizes accessibility for students and faculty members from a variety of disciplines, she said.

“The wall strategically blocks out the noise and busyness of the surrounding buildings and traffic, and it is technology friendly, with wireless connectivity, an interactive white board, laptop, and Doc Cam [document camera, for displaying an object to a large audience]. While its main function is to provide a resource for environmental education, it can also be a gathering or meeting place for students or community groups.”

Resources within the center blend with various programs at the university, Twiest noted.

“For example, one wall has information about different leaves of trees found in the state. If students are interested in trees and wood, one of things we will do is to direct them to the university’s Center for Turning and Furniture Design, to show how different woods can be used for furniture and other items.”

Twiest also has designed a set of lessons for teachers that will complement a visit to the center. “The curriculum continues to be a work in progress because the four information boards being designed for the center will be rotated, so there is always something new to discover.”

“It’s so exciting to me to have the opportunity to work with the Science Discovery and Outdoor Learning Center. Teaching science—and helping children to discover a love of nature—is definitely my passion. Funds for field trips in public schools are being cut, and children aren’t spending as much time outside as my generation did. I want to make sure that children—and our students—learn about nature, so when it comes time for them, as adults, to make decisions about the environment, they understand how important these decisions can be.”

The pavilion for the center is named in honor of Anna Young Feisley, a 1911 graduate of Indiana State Normal School, now IUP. The funds came to IUP from her son, William B. Feisley, who died in 1999. His will stated that the gift was in memory of his mother, to be used in support of elementary education students at IUP.

Information about how to assist with other philanthropic needs of the learning center is available on the Support IUP website.

About Meghan Twiest

Meghan Twiest, a professor in the Professional Studies in Education Department, has been at IUP since 1987. She received both her undergraduate and master’s degrees from Clarion University (elementary education and science education, respectively) and received her doctoral degree in science education from the University of Georgia in 1988. In addition to her IUP teaching experience, she was a sixth-grade science teacher in Macon, Ga.

Twiest currently teaches science methods to undergraduate elementary and early childhood majors. She also teaches at the graduate level, including in the doctoral program in Curriculum and Instruction. She has been a twenty-year active member of the National Science Teachers Association, North American Association for Environmental Education, National Association for Research in Science Teaching, and the Pennsylvania Science Teachers Association; is a frequent presenter at national and state conferences; and serves on committees and boards associated with these organizations. Twiest has coauthored one book and has published her work in journals such as Science and Children, Young Children, and the PSTA Exchange.

Classes she teaches at IUP include Teaching of Elementary Science, Creativity and the Elementary School Child, Science and Health in a Literacy Based Early Childhood Curriculum, and doctoral course Curriculum 951, Issues and Processes in Curricular Change.

Wachter believes that human error in the workplace, while not completely preventable, can be managed by better tools to motivate and engage workers in the safety process.

“While human error has been associated with the majority of incidents in the workplace, it can be managed through a variety of mechanisms. But motivation and worker engagement may be the keys to human-error reduction,” he said.

Wachter will test this theory in a research project that recently received $90,000 in funding from the Alcoa Foundation.

The key difference in this study, as opposed to other research on safety in the workplace, is that Wachter will investigate how well—or how poorly—workers are engaged, or buying into, a shared accountability for identifying at-risk situations and responding to them.

For example, a worker may forget her safety glasses and get glass or metal shards in her eye. Wachter suggests that this type of accident could be prevented through methods of worker engagement. That is, before each work shift, employees may get together and remind each other of the specific personal protective equipment needed for that day’s task.

In this study, Wachter will investigate the role and degree of worker-engagement practices in preventing human error and improving safety performance by conducting supervisor and employee surveys and interviewing companies for best practices related to worker engagement in their safety systems and programs.

It is believed that actively engaged employees demonstrate a greater sense of personal ownership and compliance with safe work methods, adjust more quickly to needed changes in safety practices, and act proactively to ensure that work is being done in the safest way possible, Wachter said.

He hopes that the outcomes of this research, once instituted in the workplace, could reduce lost workdays due to accidents by 20 percent.

Wachter will collaborate on the project with IUP Safety Sciences professor Patrick Yorio.

IUP has a history of collaboration and support with the Alcoa Foundation and Alcoa Inc. In November 2007, IUP received a $100,000 grant to partner with the Alcoa Foundation to present a two-day conference in Pittsburgh on workplace fatalities.

About Jan Wachter

Wachter has more than twenty-five years of experience in the government, private, and academic sectors, primarily in the field of environmental health and safety.

He has held a variety of supervisory research and administrative positions within the U.S. Department of Energy’s national laboratory complexes and is a senior environmental health and safety associate for private sector companies. He has both a master’s degree and doctorate in environmental health, a Master of Business Administration, and a bachelor’s degree in biology and chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh.

Classes Wachter teaches at IUP include Environmental Safety and Health Regulations, Hazard Prevention Management II, Safe Living: A Challenge in Modern Society, and Radiological Health.

About Patrick Yorio

Yorio earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from IUP. He is a senior professional in human resources, a certified safety professional and a certified workers’ compensation advisor.

Courses he teaches include Introduction to Occupational Safety and Health and Hazard Prevention Management.

It comes naturally to them: They eat in one spot, travel here and there, and pass the seeds along their path.

Birds, elephants, and monkeys are among the most recognized long-distance seed carriers. But when it comes to spreading seeds of fruit-bearing trees and woody vines in the Amazon region, fish may be the unsung heroes—until recently.

IUP Biology professor Tim Nuttle was part of a research team that spent six years studying seed dispersal by fish species Colossoma macropomum in the Amazon’s wetland forests. The team’s findings were published in U.K. biological research journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B in March 2011.

Putting Colossoma to the Test

Colossoma, commonly known as tambaqui or pacu, are known to enter the Amazon’s floodplains during the annual flood season, eating large quantities of fallen fruit and defecating viable seeds.

The researchers set out to determine how far the fish carry the seeds and whether they tend to disperse them in areas where they’re likely to grow, such as floodplains, or in settings where they’re not, such as rivers, lakes, and other permanent bodies of water.

Data collection for the study was twofold. Radio transmitters were placed on twenty-four wild tambaqui in northeastern Peru over three flood seasons, from 2004 to 2006. This allowed researchers to track the tambaqui’s movement and habitat use.

How long a seed spends in the digestive tract was measured by feeding fruit pulp with a known quantity of seeds to captive tambaqui and recording on an hourly basis the number of seeds defecated.

On Par with Elephant, Hornbill

Nuttle, who joined the study in 2007, developed the simulation model used to integrate data on travel distances, habitat affinities, and gut-retention time and determine how effective tambaqui are at dispersing seeds.

Aided by their long gut-retention time (averaging seventy-four hours from the time of eating the seeds to passing them), the tambaqui carried seeds a mean distance of 337 to 552 meters and a maximum distance of 5,495 meters, according to the model. In addition, 5 percent of seeds were predicted to have been dispersed a distance of at least 1,707 to 2,114 meters.

Those statistics put the tambaqui on par with the longest-distance seed dispersers known, the African hornbill and the Asian elephant, and ahead of the white-tailed deer. Long-distance seed dispersal is defined as 100 meters or more.

Furthering the tambaqui’s effectiveness at dispersing seeds is their apparent preference for floodplain forests and savannahs over permanent bodies of water. More than 90 percent of seeds were released in areas that promote growth of the plants, the model showed.

According to the researchers, the study’s estimated seed-dispersal distances were conservative, based on a few factors: The dense floodplains decreased the range of the radio transmitters, underestimating the amount of time the fish spent there; some fish in the study were lost; and none of the tagged fish were close to the maximum size reported (tambaqui can reach 30 kilograms in weight and more than a meter in length), probably because of overfishing in the area. The study found that larger fish had significantly greater mean distances for seed dispersal.

Crucial Role in Plant Evolution

Findings from the study support previous research suggesting that tambaqui have dispersed seeds for millions of years and have probably contributed greatly to the evolution of Amazonian wetland plants.

“These trees are clearly adapted for seed dispersal by fish,” Nuttle said, noting the trees fruit specifically during flood season, from January to June.

While the study measured the tambaqui’s seed-dispersal abilities, it also explored a larger issue: the fish’s role in promoting plant diversity and, thus, healthier wetland forests.

Long-distance seed dispersal results in greater genetic variation among plants, both in the species present in a given area and in the genetic makeup of plants of the same species, Nuttle said.

Those variations make plant populations more resilient to environmental changes, such as climate changes. “Diversity helps them to persist,” he said.

Healthy forests, Nuttle explained, are crucial to the ecosystem, aiding with the cycling of water, removing pollutants such as carbon monoxide from the atmosphere, and supporting plant and animal life.

While plants in wetland forests are an important source of new medicines and chemicals, they also have an intrinsic value: “They’re part of our biological heritage,” Nuttle said. “They enrich our experience as human beings.”

Future Study to Focus on Plant Diversity

Nuttle hopes to take part in a follow-up study that will delve deeper into the effects of tambaqui seed dispersal on plant diversity in the Amazon region. In that study, the diversity of tree populations in areas where there are many tambaqui would be compared to diversity in areas where there are few. Researchers would expect to find greater genetic variation among plants in areas where tambaqui and long-distance seed dispersal are present.

According to Nuttle, this research would also help to raise awareness of and build a case against the overfishing of tambaqui, a dietary staple in the Amazon region. The fishing industry tends to target the largest tambaqui—the longest-distance seed dispersers.

“Overexploitation probably disrupts an ancient coevolutionary relationship between Colossoma and Amazonian plants,” the researchers wrote in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The project was funded by the Wildlife Conservation Society, the National Geographic Society, and the Center for the Environment at Cornell University.

About Tim Nuttle

Nuttle specializes in forest ecology, restoration ecology, and ecological modeling.

His research interests focus on how forests develop into and function as diverse communities, including how plants and animals interact to shape the community structure.

In another recent research project, Nuttle explored how the overabundance of white-tailed deer in forests of Pennsylvania reduces tree-species diversity, foliage density, and the presence of insects and birds.

Classes Nuttle teaches at IUP include Botany, Plant Ecology, and Environmental Science. He is the coordinator for the Biology program’s Ecology, Conservation, and Environmental Biology Track.

Nuttle received his bachelor’s degree in wildlife ecology and management from Michigan State University, his master’s degree in wildlife ecology from Mississippi State University, and his Ph.D. in ecology from Utah State University.

This graph, created by Tim Nuttle, IUP Biology professor, shows cumulative seed dispersal curves generated by Colossoma macropomum and eleven other seed dispersers. The curve of the Colossoma macropomum, represented by the solid black line, is comparable to those of the African hornbill (green dotted line) and the Asian elephant (blue dotted line).

The photo at the top shows Colossoma macropomum swimming in the Pittsburgh Zoo aquarium. It was taken by Jill T. Anderson, the team’s lead researcher.

With a research interest in wildlife ecology, Duchamp studies the woodrat for its value as an indicator of forest health. He recently received $38,770 from AK Environmental, LLC, to assist with his monitoring of the species.

Truth be told, the woodrats—sporting soft, gray coats and fluffy tails—are far from their better known, sewer-dwelling relatives. The nocturnal rodents are seldom seen, living around jutting rock ledges and dunes of disintegrated sandstone near wooded areas.

But the population is on the decline in several states. Widened roads, mining, and the development of homes and farms have hindered the rats’ ability to spread, resulting in unhealthy inbreeding.

According to Duchamp, dwindling food supplies and harmful raccoon roundworm have added to the problem.

Duchamp and his fellow researchers, including IUP biology professor Jeffery Larkin, are working to keep the woodrat off the endangered species list. An important link in the ecosystem, woodrats are a food source for owls, and their travels between cave and forest promote the survival of other animals found only in caves.

About Joe Duchamp

Within his field, Duchamp focuses on wildlife population and community ecology, mammalogy, and biostatistics.

Addressing questions related to the conservation and management of vertebrate wildlife populations, Duchamp aims to provide information that improves people’s ability to live alongside a diverse array of wildlife.

His research efforts are quantitative, bringing together diverse datasets and using innovative statistical tools. His interests span fragmentation and landscape ecology, population and community dynamics, urban-wildlife ecology, conservation biology, spatial ecology, applied statistics, assessing wildlife management tools, and simulation modeling.

Classes Duchamp teaches at IUP include Anatomy and Advanced Anatomy for undergraduates, Mammalogy for undergraduate and graduate students, and Population and Community Ecology at the graduate level.

Duchamp received a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Michigan, a master’s in ecology from Indiana State University, and a Ph.D. in wildlife science from Purdue University.

Photo above: Graduate and undergraduate students Tabbi Reefer, Michele Troutman, Kim Brown, Megan Ola, and Jake Kovalchuk in the curation lab with boxes of artifacts prepared for curation.

When archaeological sites were uncovered during highway projects, the Pennsylvania State Museum stepped in to curate them.

However, before 1985, not all collections were properly labeled and organized before the close of archaeological investigations.

That changed with the partnership between the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), IUP Archaeological Services, and the Pennsylvania State Museum.

Artifacts recovered from archaeological sites include animal bones, like this pig jaw from an historic site.

Chiarulli is the project’s manager, leading her students in cataloging artifacts recovered from archaeological investigations conducted in the 1970s and ’80s for permanent storage in the museum.

The three years of the current agreement have provided more than $420,000 for over sixty undergraduate and graduate students in the Anthropology Department. Through the past seven years, PennDOT has funded $1,482,053 to Archaeological Services and IUP for curation and other projects. These include the Byways to the Past Conference and publication of CD versions of technical reports and popular booklets. In the process, more than 300,000 artifacts have been transferred to the state museum.

Student Michele Troutman sorts and rebags artifacts.

There are more benefits than just preserving the past. Students develop skills in artifact identification and labeling, preservation of records, and other aspects of curation, experience that will be relevant to their future careers.

About Beverly Chiarulli

Chiarulli joined the IUP Anthropology Department and IUP Archaeological Services in 1997 after spending the previous eight years with the Bureau of Historic Preservation (the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office) of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

She is principal investigator on a National Science Foundation grant to develop a Mobile Spatial Research Laboratory for the Anthropology, History, Geography, and Geoscience departments, and is PI for a PennDOT project investigating Late Prehistoric village settlement patterns.

Her research also includes the Chau Hiix and Maax Na sites in Belize, and directing the GPS/GIS survey portion of the Gila Archaeological Project at Hermosa, N.M.

Chiarulli received a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of Illinios–Champaign, and her master’s and Ph.D. degrees from Southern Methodist University.

Nearly two hundred years later, shipwrecks from the war remain in the bed of the Great Lakes, and two IUP professors are setting out to find them.

Katie Farnsworth, Geoscience Department, and Ben Ford, Anthropology Department, are preparing for a June 2011 survey of the Black River Bay, in the northeast corner of Lake Ontario, to find and identify two shipwrecks. They received $14,888 from the National Geographic Society in support of their research project.

Farnsworth and Ford will search for a frigate called the Mohawk, a product of the naval arms race between the Americans and the British, and an unnamed gunboat designed for amphibious attacks and harassing British shipping. They chose these vessels, Ford said, because he has data suggesting the gunboat’s location and reason to believe the Mohawk is within a few miles of it.

From the survey, they hope to gain insight into the modernization of U.S. Navy ship construction, but also into the history of sedimentation in the bay.

The shipwrecks will be buried, at least in part, by sediment that entered the lake from the surrounding watershed, Farnsworth said. Sediment flux into the bay would have been substantial in the early 1800s because of agricultural growth and deforestation in upstate New York, and Farnsworth and Ford hope to quantify the sedimentation pattern.

Field tools and techniques they will use include side-scanning sonar, sub-bottom chirp profiling, magnetometry, archaeological diver inspections, and sediment coring.

Undergraduate and graduate students from both the Geoscience and Anthropology departments will be involved in all aspects of the project—from the field surveys to data analysis and synthesis.

Other partners in the project are the College of Charleston (South Carolina), which will also have students participating, and the Great Lakes Historical Society, of Vermilion, Ohio.

During their fieldwork in the summer, Farnsworth and Ford plan to provide public talks near the survey site. If they are able to find and identify the ships, Ford hopes to return the following year to excavate portions of the wrecks. Any artifacts raised would be conserved and included in a museum exhibit in the Great Lakes region.

About Katie Farnsworth

Farnsworth is a geologist with a particular interest in the connection between land and ocean. Coastal sedimentary processes, the flux and fate of fluvial sediment in the shallow ocean, and global flux of sediments are among her main research interests.

Classes Farnsworth teaches at IUP include Oceans and Atmospheres, Surficial Processes, Sedimentary Petrology, and Research Methods in the Geosciences.

She received both her Ph.D. and Master of Science degrees in marine geology from Virginia Institute of Marine Science/College of William and Mary. Farnsworth received a B.S. in geography and computer science from DePauw University.

About Ben Ford

Ford is a historic and underwater archaeologist who has done extensive research on Lake Ontario.

North American historical archaeology, nautical archaeology, geographic information systems, and remote sensing applications in archaeology are among his research interests. Ford also has extensive experience in applied archaeology, having worked in both the public and private sectors.

He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from Texas A&M University through the Nautical Archaeology Program. His dissertation, “The Lake Ontario Maritime Cultural Landscape,” integrated marine and terrestrial archaeological survey techniques to analyze human interaction with the shore environment between 5000 B.P. and AD 1900.

Ford holds an M.A. from the College of William and Mary, where “Shipbuilding in Maryland, 1631–1850” was the focus of his master’s thesis.

At IUP, Ford teaches graduate courses Historical Archaeology, Seminar in Cultural Resource Management I, and Issues in Historic Preservation; undergraduate courses World Archaeology and Contemporary Anthropology; and a cross-listed class, Historic Artifact Analysis.