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The Lab as a Classroom: Advancing Faculty Research Through Undergraduate Experiential Education
- Bree Bang Jensen, Bernadette Bresee, Sarah K. Dreier, Ramin Farrokhi, Emily K. Gade, Willa Jeffers, Marcella H. Morris, Charitra S. Pabbaraju, Kayla Salehian, Ava Sharifi, Arica Schuett, Chonlawit Sirikupt, Emily Thomas, Danielle Villa
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- Journal:
- PS: Political Science & Politics / Volume 56 / Issue 4 / October 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 March 2023, pp. 455-462
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- October 2023
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Both undergraduate students and faculty members face a challenging job market that requires innovative approaches to skill development and research products. Moreover, entrenched approaches to research and education reinforce traditional hierarchies, exclusionary norms, and exploitative practices. This article describes a lab-based pedagogical framework designed to support faculty research goals and student learning and, simultaneously, to attenuate patterns of historical exclusion. This approach leverages evidence-based best practices from experiential education, team-based workflows, an understanding of servant leadership, and “whole-person”–style mentorship models. We find that these tools advance faculty research goals (in terms of both quality and productivity), support student learning in ways beyond traditional undergraduate coursework, and disrupt patterns of historical exclusion. We provide qualitative evidence to support our model and discuss the hurdles and challenges still to be overcome.
Man and Nature on Rodrigues: Tragedy of an Island Common
- Daniel W. Gade
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- Journal:
- Environmental Conservation / Volume 12 / Issue 3 / Autumn 1985
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 24 August 2009, pp. 207-216
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One of the most isolated islands on Earth, Rodrigues in the Indian Ocean stands as a modern-day ‘morality play’ of the consequences of environmental abuse. This tiny piece of land on the fringe of the tropics, emerged as an island through volcanic action some 1.5 million years ago, and acquired its biota mainly by long-distance dispersal from the west. Rodrigues was not inhabited by any people until 1691, and since then has always been administered from Mauritius which lies 650 km to the west.
Burning, browsing, and woodcutting, have almost completely removed the indigenous forest. Close to a third of the native plant species have disappeared, and another third are on the brink of extinction. Giant land-tortoises, sea-turtles, and the Dugong, have vanished. Only two of the ten native species of land-birds survive. The endemic Solitaire was killed off even before the human population started to grow. Forest removal opened new habitats for introduced plants and animals, some of which are now highly invasive pests.
Human impact on Rodrigues has gone beyond biotic effects. Cultivation of row-crops on the hilly terrain, and the keeping of domesticated animals in excessive numbers, led to the loss of most of the topsoil by the beginning of the twentieth century. Soil removal and compaction drastically modified the hydrology of the island, and silt deposition in the lagoon has contributed to fish decline. The inherent vulnerability of the native biota, the twin hazards of cyclones and droughts that befall the island, and demographic pressure, have all exacerbated the rate and degree of resource degradation.
II.G.14 - Horses
- from II.G - Important Foods from Animal Sources
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- By Daniel Gade
- Edited by Kenneth F. Kiple, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas
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- The Cambridge World History of Food
- Published online:
- 28 March 2008
- Print publication:
- 07 December 2000, pp 542-545
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Summary
The horse represents one of the most successful outcomes of animal domestication, but for a variety of reasons it has not been widely used as a source of human food. Very little of the exacting attention given this creature over the past 5,000 years has been directed toward developing its latent meat or milk potential. Artificial selection of this nonruminant herbivore has focused on speed, strength, and configuration.
Domestication
Long before their domestication, wild horses roamed the Eurasian grasslands. They were a favorite subject of the Paleolithic cave art of western Europe, which suggests their status as a major prey species. Certain Upper Pleistocene kill sites, such as that at Solutré, France, have more horse bones than those of any other animal. Human intervention into their breeding came later than with other herd animals. Two wild horses, the tarpan (Equus ferus gmelini) and (Nikolai) Przhevalski’s horse (Equus ferus przewalski), were the ancestors of the domesticated Equus caballus. Present knowledge places horse domestication in the grasslands of Ukraine around the fourth millennium before Christ. At Dereivka, a site of the early Kurgan culture, evidence of bit wear recovered archaeologically indicates that people rode horses (Anthony 1986). They also ate them, which is not surprising as the predecessors of these same people were avid consumers of the wild species.
Assuming present-day Ukraine to have been the center of horse domestication, the use of the animal spread westward during the next 500 years to eastern Europe, as well as eastward to the Transcaucasus and southward to Anatolia and the Mediterranean. Horse bones recovered at the site of Malyan (in Iran) that have been ingeniously analyzed reportedly show evidence of horse riding (Anthony and Brown 1989). By 2500 B.C. horses were well established in western Europe. Their main prehistoric role was as pullers of wheeled conveyances and as riding animals, and S. Bökönyi (1984) asserts that horses were used to pull carts before they were ridden. Horses were also eaten; in fact, the flesh of equids was an acceptable food in most societies that adopted them during the first 3,000 years of their domesticated state.
II.G.17 - Muscovy Ducks
- from II.G - Important Foods from Animal Sources
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- By Daniel Gade
- Edited by Kenneth F. Kiple, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas
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- The Cambridge World History of Food
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- 28 March 2008
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- 07 December 2000, pp 559-561
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Of the two species of domesticated anatines, the Muscovy duck (Cairina moschata) is larger, less vocal, and characterized by a fleshy protuberance on the head of the male. It is a duck of tropical American origin, whose wild ancestors nested in trees, whereas the common duck (Anas platyrhynchos) was domesticated in the Old World from the ground-dwelling mallard. The two species can mate and produce offspring, but such offspring cannot reproduce.
The Muscovy duck is misnamed, for it never had any special association with Moscow. Most likely the name is the result of a garbled corruption of canard musqué (“musk duck”); however, this French term is not an accurate descriptor either. Depending on area, various Spanish names are used for the duck in Latin America. Among these are pato criollo (“native duck”), pato real (“royal duck”), pato almisclado (“musk duck”), pato machacón (“insistent duck”), and pato perulero (“Peru duck”). In Brazilian Portuguese, it is most commonly called pato do mato (“forest duck”). Indigenous names for this bird indicate its New World origin, including ñuñuma in Quechua, sumne in Chibcha, and tlalalacatl in the Nahuatl language of Mexico.
Before the European conquest of the Americas, the bird’s apparent distribution extended from north central Mexico to the Rio de la Plata in Argentina (Donkin 1989). It was and still is kept in a wide range of environments, which include the islands of the Caribbean, deserts, humid tropics, temperate plains, and the high elevations of the Andes. Although several colonial chronicles refer to C. moschata, such sources do not indicate that these domesticated birds were particularly important to household economies. In Mexico, the turkey has had greater importance in the houseyard. In South America, the Muscovy had no poultry competitors until the Spaniards and Portuguese brought chickens, which – because of their greater egg-laying capacity – were widely adopted.
II.G.16 - Llamas and Alpacas
- from II.G - Important Foods from Animal Sources
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- By Daniel Gade
- Edited by Kenneth F. Kiple, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas
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- Book:
- The Cambridge World History of Food
- Published online:
- 28 March 2008
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- 07 December 2000, pp 555-559
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The llama (Lama glama) and alpaca (Lama pacos) are among the few domesticated ungulates whose most important function has not been that of providing food for the people who control them. The llama has been kept primarily as a beast of burden, whereas the more petite alpaca is most valued as a source of an extraordinarily fine fleece. These South American members of the camel family may share a common biological ancestry from the guanaco (Lama guanicoe), for although they have long been designated as separate species, the closeness of the relationship is reflected in fertile offspring when they crossbreed. An alternative point of view now gaining in popularity is that the alpaca descended from the vicuña (Lama vicugna), since both animals are about the same size (44 to 65 kilograms [kg]) and both have the capacity to regenerate their incisor teeth. The distribution of both the llama and the alpaca has been traditionally centered in the Andean Highlands of Peru and Bolivia, with peripheral populations of the former in Chile, Argentina, and Ecuador. In the past three decades growing interest has increased their population on other continents, especially in North America.
Camelid Meat as Human Food
Both animals have been an important source of food in the part of the central Andes where husbandry has been most intensive. In neither case, however, are they raised primarily for their flesh, which is consumed after their most valued functions diminish with age. However, llamas possibly had a more important meat function in the pre-Pizarro Andes before the introduction of European barnyard creatures. The movement of herds from the highlands to the coast could have been a way both to transport goods and to move protein-on-the hoof to the more densely populated coast, where at the time, meat was much rarer than in the highlands (Cobo 1956). David Browman (1989) suggested that when camelid utilization in the highlands expanded northward, starting around 1000 B.C., and long before the Inca civilization was established, meat production appeared to have been the most important use of these animals. But whether of primary or secondary importance, the protein and fat supplied by this meat have contributed to the health of the animals’ Andean keepers, whose diet consists mainly of starch.
II.G.21 - Sheep
- from II.G - Important Foods from Animal Sources
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- By Daniel Gade
- Edited by Kenneth F. Kiple, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas
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- The Cambridge World History of Food
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- 28 March 2008
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- 07 December 2000, pp 574-578
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Probably the earliest domesticated herd animal in the Old World, the sheep (Ovis aries) makes an unparalleled contribution of food and fiber. The great advantage of these small ruminants is their ability to digest the cellulose of wild grasses and coarse woody shrubs in their complex stomachs and convert it into usable products.
Origin and Domestication
Sheep were domesticated on the flanks of the Taurus–Zagros Mountains, which run from southern Turkey to southern Iran. Within that arc is found the urial (Ovis orientalis), a wild sheep now generally regarded as the ancestor of the domesticated sheep. Early archaeological evidence of sheep under human control comes from Shanidar Cave and nearby Zaqi Chemi in Kurdistan. Sheep bones recovered in abundance at these two sites have been dated to between 8,000 and 9,000 years ago and contrast with other Neolithic sites close to the Mediterranean, where similar evidence of domesticated sheep is rare. However, accurate species identification has posed problems, for the bones of goats and sheep are often difficult to distinguish from one another. Therefore, some archaeological reports have grouped them together as “sheep/goat” or “caprine.”
The domestication process that transformed O. orientalis into O. aries involved several key changes. The body size of the sheep was reduced from that of the urial. Diminution could have been accomplished over many generations by culling out larger, aggressive males as sires. Selection also occurred for hornlessness, but this process is not complete. Although many breeds of domesticated female (and some male) sheep typically have no horns, in other males the horns have only been reduced in size. Domesticated sheep also have a long tail as compared with the wild ancestor. The most significant physical transformation of the animal was the replacement of the hairy outercoat with wool fibers, which turned the sheep into much more than a food source. As early as 6,000 years ago,woolly sheep had differentiated from hairy sheep, and in ancient Mesopotamia, the raising of wool-bearing animals was a major activity in lowland areas. Selection for white-wooled animals explains the gradual dominance of that color.
II.G.5 - Cattle
- from II.G - Important Foods from Animal Sources
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- By Daniel Gade
- Edited by Kenneth F. Kiple, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas
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- The Cambridge World History of Food
- Published online:
- 28 March 2008
- Print publication:
- 07 December 2000, pp 489-496
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Although cattle have been domesticated for less than 10,000 years, they are the world’s most important animals, as judged by their multiple contributions of draft power, meat, milk, hides, and dung. In Asia and Africa, the tie between man and beast is much more than economic (as it is in the West), and domestication itself seems to have occurred for noneconomic reasons. Cattle, like other ruminants, convert cellulose-rich materials – that are otherwise useless to humans as food – into carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. (In industrialized countries, however, cattle are fed grains from cultivated land and consequently can be viewed as competing for foods that could go directly to humans.)
The term “cattle” can have a broad or narrow meaning. One usage subsumes all five domesticated species in the genus Bos as cattle. The other restricts the term to only the two main bovines in this genus: European cattle (Bos taurus) and zebu cattle (Bos indicus). Both animals were derived from the same wild ancestor, the aurochs (Bos primigenius), and they can interbreed to produce fertile offspring. Three much more localized Asian species sometimes fall under the rubric of domesticated cattle: mithan (Bos frontalis, yak (Bos grunniens), and banteng (Bos javanicus). The mithan is found in a forested region that encompasses northeast India, northwest Burma, and Bhutan. Its ancestor is the wild gaur (Bos gaurus). The yak of Nepal and Tibet was derived from the wild yak (Bos mutus), whereas the banteng (“Bali cattle”), found on several islands of the Indonesian archipelago, was domesticated from the wild banteng of the same species. Unless otherwise qualified, the term “cattle” in this chapter refers to the two main species derived from the aurochs.
II.G.12 - Goats
- from II.G - Important Foods from Animal Sources
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- By Daniel Gade
- Edited by Kenneth F. Kiple, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas
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- The Cambridge World History of Food
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- 28 March 2008
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- 07 December 2000, pp 531-536
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The domesticated goat (Capra hircus) is an animal that, although of extraordinary usefulness to humans, experiences sharply different levels of acceptance around the world. Its ruminant ability to digest cellulose is the key to its success as a form of livestock, but its browsing efficiency can often be harmful to marginal environments.
Origin and Domestication
Goats were domesticated in the Near East from Capra aegagrus, known variously as the Persian wild goat, bezoar goat, or padang. The males of this ungulate species of the rugged terrain of western Asia have long, scimitar-shaped horns; the females' horns are similarly shaped but shorter. The bezoar goat has been a prey of hunters, in part, at least, because its stomach concretions (also called “bezoars” by physicians) have a widespread but medically unfounded reputation as an antidote for poison. The foothills of the Zagros Mountains is the most plausible area for the origin of goat domestication. Early Neolithic sites contain evidence of goat keeping from as long as 9,000 years ago. Such dating would seem to make the goat a candidate for the world’s oldest domesticated herd animal. Brian Hesse (1982) analyzed the abundant goat bones at the site of Ganj Dareh on the cold Iranian plateau and determined that the smaller size of the bones corresponded to domestic goats. Other sites, dated several hundred years later, have yielded further evidence of early goat keeping in the eastern half of the Fertile Crescent. At Jarmo, goats were the most numerous domesticate. At Tepe Ali Kosh, domestic goats preceded domestic sheep. From the east, the domesticated caprine spread westward into the Mediterranean. For example, at Natufian sites in the Levant, the domesticated goat appeared only later as a significant animal in the life of the people. There, and in Egypt, goats have been present for about 7,000 years. In the Nile Valley, goats were integrated into a sedentary agricultural system, but they also could be sustained in the non-irrigated desert beyond.
V.D.2 - South America
- from V.D - The History and Culture of Food and Drink in the Americas
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- By Daniel Gade
- Edited by Kenneth F. Kiple, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas
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- Book:
- The Cambridge World History of Food
- Published online:
- 28 March 2008
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- 07 December 2000, pp 1254-1260
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Summary
The continent of South America has been a place of origin of many important food plants. Moreover, plant and animal introductions to the Americas made both before and after Columbus have provided an extraordinary diversity of food sources. Culinary traditions based on diverse foodstuffs show the imprint of indigenous, European, and African cultures. This is because food production and consumption in these lands stem from an environmental duality of both temperate and tropical possibilities. Moreover, throughout the twentieth century in South America, the binary distinction between food produced for commercial purposes and for subsistence needs has continued in a way that is unknown in North America. Contrasting nutritional standards and perturbations in supply add to the complexity of the total food situation in South America.
Domesticated Food Sources
The pre-Columbian peoples of South America domesticated more than 50 edible plants, several of which were such efficient sources of food that they subsequently have served as nutritional anchors for much of the rest of the world. The potato, manioc, and sweet potato, each belonging to different plant families, are among the top 10 food sources in the world today. The potato (Solanum tuberosum and related species) clearly originated in South America, where prior to European contact it was cultivated in the Andes through a range of 50 degrees of latitude. Archaeological remains of these tubers are scanty, but there is little doubt that Andean peoples have been eating potatoes for at least 5,000 years. The center of greatest morphological and genetic variability of potatoes is in southern Peru and northern Bolivia where they fall into five chromosome (ploidy) levels. That the potato is an efficient source of carbohydrates is well known, but it also provides not insignificant amounts of protein (in some varieties more than 5 percent), vitamins, and minerals. In the Andes, the tuber is traditionally boiled, but now it is also fried. Chuño, a dehydrated form of the fresh tuber, may have been the world’s first freeze-dried food. Working at high elevation, Indians still go through the laborious process of exposing fresh potatoes to both above and below-freezing temperatures before stepping on them with bare feet in order to make this easily stored form of food.
II.G.13 - Hogs (Pigs)
- from II.G - Important Foods from Animal Sources
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- By Daniel Gade
- Edited by Kenneth F. Kiple, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas
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- Book:
- The Cambridge World History of Food
- Published online:
- 28 March 2008
- Print publication:
- 07 December 2000, pp 536-542
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“Pig” is a term used synonymously with “hog” and “swine” for the one domesticated suid species, Sus scrofa domesticus. In livestock circles, a pig becomes a hog when it passes the weight threshold of 50 kilograms. The word “swine” transcends age and sex but to many has a pejorative ring.A “gilt” is any immature version of a sow, whereas a “barrow” is a young, castrated male that can never grow up to become a boar. After a piglet has been weaned, it becomes a “shoat.” Most of these terms are not used by a general public whose only encounter with this animal is in the supermarket. The meat of this often maligned beast yields some of the world’s best-tasting flesh and provides good-quality protein in large amounts.
Domestication
All domesticated pigs originated from the wild boar (Sus scrofa) (Epstein 1984). Within that one wild species, more than 20 subspecies are known in different parts of its natural range, which has extended from the British Isles and Morocco in the West to Japan and New Guinea in the East. But where in this vast stretch of territory the first domestication occurred is still uncertain, although the earliest archaeological records (c. 7000–5000 B.C.) have been concentrated in the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean.
Indeed, the recovery of bones of domesticated pigs has been done at Jericho (Palestine), Jarmo (Iraq), Catal Huyuk (Turkey), and Argissa-Margula (Greece), as well as other sites. But bones older than any of those from these sites were uncovered in 1994 at Hallan Cemi in southeastern Turkey. There, in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains, the pig was apparently kept as early as 8000 B.C., making it the oldest known domesticated creature besides the dog. Moreover, pig keeping at this site was found to predate the cultivation of wheat or barley. Both findings contradict the long-held twin assertions that sheep and goats were the world’s earliest domesticated herd animals and that crop growing preceded the raising of herd animals.