Academic literature on the topic 'Public schools – Indiana – Endowments'

Research in medical schools developed after World War I with specific projects funded by foundations, firms, and industries. After World War II, medical schools greatly expanded their research activities with funding from the federal government. Medical school researchers became the most important performers of research funded by the National Institutes of Health, which delegated most of its responsibility for setting research policy to academic medical researchers. Both basic science and clinical research in medical schools has been directed toward an understanding of biological processes rather than the prevention and treatment of disease. Medical school research has become a specialized activity separate from other medical school activities. Research in medical schools began in earnest after 1900 with the employment of full-time faculty members. The quantity of research was limited and the quality did not meet European standards. Erwin Chargaff reminisced that when he came to the United States in 1928, “I found a scientifically underdeveloped country dominated by an unhurried, good-natured, second-rateness. European scientists who visited the country at that time were attracted by the feeling of freedom generated by the wide open spaces and even more by the then very pleasant aroma of the dollar.” Research was at first funded from medical school endowments and grants from a few major foundations, such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Foundation. By the mid-1930s, about 20 private foundations had a major interest in health and spent a total of about $7 million annually for medical research and medical education. About this time also, the American Foundation for Mental Hygiene, the American Cancer Society, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, and other health-related associations began to fund research related to their interests. Private firms also sponsored research with direct commercial applications. In return, they used the names of the medical schools in advertisements as providing “scientific” data to support their claims. By 1940, research had become a measurable factor in medical school budgets. In that year Deitrick and Berson found that 59 of the 77 medical schools spent $3.2 million on research: 22 public medical schools spent 8.9 percent of their combined budgets of $9.5 million on research, and 37 private medical schools spent 13.0 percent of their budgets of $17.8 million on research.

“I’ll Never go to School with a Nigger!” Dickie, an eighth grader in my social studies class, shouted vehemently as we began to discuss the Brown v. Board of Education case prohibiting segregation in public schools that the Supreme Court had decided a year before, in 1954. Dickie was right; he never did, dropping out of school two years later, before his Virginia public high school began desegregation. I was flabbergasted and appalled by Dickie’s assertion, only gradually coming to realize that my new profession, teaching, was heading on a rocky road to improvement. In September 1955, as a new, navy bride, I began teaching in still segregated Deep Creek High School serving the predominantly low-income white community of the Dismal Swamp in southeastern Virginia. Prepared as I had been by the mushy adjustment curriculum of my Indiana public schools (lots of attention to my deficient social skills, not much to strengthening my intellect), I had zipped through college. I added the teacher training sequence after I became engaged in order to have a saleable skill when I married on graduation day. My five education courses, most of which I thought academically and professionally worthless, required that I memorize the Seven Cardinal Principles, still the reigning dogma, and I did, believing they represented the fuzzy thinking I associated with public education. I lived in a totally white world, never having had a black friend, fellow student, or teacher. Under Virginia law at that time Deep Creek High School was also a totally white high school world, though surrounded by a black community. The drop-out rate was high: 140 students in eighth grade but only 40 high school seniors. When Dickie made his assertion about segregation, I was astounded both by the language and by the sentiment. We did not use such a term in my household, and, innocent that I was, I thought the Supreme Court had decided the year before in Brown v. Board of Education that public schools could not be legally segregated by race.

This paper contains an analysis of withdrawal data for North West Indiana to compute consumptive-use coefficients and to describe monthly variability of withdrawals and consumptive use. Concurrent data were available for most water-use categories from 1990 through 2008. Average monthly water withdrawals are discussed for a variety of water-use categories, and average water use per month is depicted graphically. Water quality analysis is presented and historic water quality data of Northwest Indiana, (Lake, Porter and LaPort Counties) were downloaded from USEPA website and they were examined for the trends in different water quality constituents. Individual station based analysis and regional analysis were conducted using MK Test. Water quality data indicated an improvement trend. Water withdrawals data were analyzed using regression and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) models. The ANN model performed a better forecasting while compared to a linear regression model. For most water-use categories, the summer months were those of highest withdrawal and highest consumptive use. For public supply, average monthly withdrawals ranged from 2,193 million gallons per day (Mgal/d) (February) to 3,092 Mgal/d (July). North West Indiana energy production had large increases in average monthly withdrawals in the summer months (17,551 Mgal/d in February to 26,236 Mgal/d in July, possibly because of increased electricity production in the summer, a need for additional cooling-water withdrawals when intake-water temperature is high, or use of different types of cooling methods during different times of the year. Average industrial withdrawals ranged from 31,553 Mgal/d (February) to 36,934 Mgal/d (August). The North West Indiana irrigation data showed that most withdrawals were in May through October for golf courses, nurseries, and crop irrigation. Miscellaneous water withdrawals ranged from 12.2 Mgal/d (January) to 416.3 Mgal/d (October), commercial facilities that have high water demand in Indiana are medical facilities, schools, amusement facilities, wildlife facilities, large stores, colleges, correctional institutions, and national security facilities. Consumptive use and consumptive-use coefficients were computed by two principal methods in this study: the return-flow and withdrawal method and the winter-base-rate method (WBR). The WBR method was not suitable for the industrial and miscellaneous water-use categories. The RW method was not used for public-supply facilities. The public-supply annual average consumptive-use coefficient derived by use of the WBR methods is 8 percent from 1990 to 2008 for North West Indiana; the summer average consumptive-use coefficient was considerably higher with the amount of 20 percent. The energy production annual consumptive-use coefficient was 13 percent by the WBR method, which increased to 28 percent for summer. In terms of maximum accuracy and minimal uncertainty, use of available withdrawal, return-flow, and consumptive-use data reported by facilities and data estimated from similar facilities are preferable over estimates based on data for a particular water-use category or groups of water-use categories. If monthly withdrawal, return flow, and consumptive use data are few and limited, monthly patterns described in this report may be used as a basis of estimation, but the level of uncertainty may be a greater than for the other estimation methods.

In the mid-1980s, the impact of three decades of uranium processing near rural Fernald, Ohio, 18 miles northwest of Cincinnati, became the centre of national public controversy. When a series of incidents at the uranium foundry brought to light the years of contamination to the environment and surrounding farmland communities, local citizens’ groups united and demanded a role in determining the plans for cleaning up the site. One citizens’ group, Fernald Residents for Environmental Safety and Health (FRESH), formed in 1984 following reports that nearly 300 pounds of enriched uranium oxide had been released from a dust-collector system, and three off-property wells south of the site were contaminated with uranium. For 22 years, FRESH monitored activities at Fernald and participated in the decision-making process with management and regulators. The job of FRESH ended on 19 January this year when the U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson — flanked by local, state, and national elected officials, and citizen-led environmental watchdog groups including FRESH — officially declared the Fernald Site clean of all nuclear contamination and open to public access. It marked the end of a remarkable turnaround in public confidence and trust that had attracted critical reports from around the world: the Cincinnati Enquirer; U.S. national news programs 60 Minutes, 20/20, Nightline, and 48 Hours; worldwide media outlets from the British Broadcasting Company and Canadian Broadcasting Company; Japanese newspapers; and German reporters. When personnel from Fluor arrived in 1992, the management team thought it understood the issues and concerns of each stakeholder group, and was determined to implement the decommissioning scope of work aggressively, confident that stakeholders would agree with its plans. This approach resulted in strained relationships with opinion leaders during the early months of Fluor’s contract. To forge better relationships, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) who owns the site, and Fluor embarked on three new strategies based on engaging citizens and interested stakeholder groups in the decision-making process. The first strategy was opening communication channels with site leadership, technical staff, and regulators. This strategy combined a strong public-information program with two-way communications between management and the community, soliciting and encouraging stakeholder participation early in the decision-making process. Fluor’s public-participation strategy exceeded the “check-the-box” approach common within the nuclear-weapons complex, and set a national standard that stands alone today. The second stakeholder-engagement strategy sprang from mending fences with the regulators and the community. The approach for dispositioning low-level waste was a 25-year plan to ship it off the site. Working with stakeholders, DOE and Fluor were able to convince the community to accept a plan to safely store waste permanently on site, which would save 15 years of cleanup and millions of dollars in cost. The third strategy addressed the potentially long delays in finalizing remedial action plans due to formal public comment periods and State and Federal regulatory approvals. Working closely with the U.S. and Ohio Environmental Protection Agencies (EPA) and other stakeholders, DOE and Fluor were able to secure approvals of five Records of Decision on time – a first for the DOE complex. Developing open and honest relationships with union leaders, the workforce, regulators and community groups played a major role in DOE and Fluor cleaning up and closing the site. Using lessons learned at Fernald, DOE was able to resolve challenges at other sites, including worker transition, labour disputes, and damaged relationships with regulators and the community. It took significant time early in the project to convince the workforce that their future lay in cleanup, not in holding out hope for production to resume. It took more time to repair relationships with Ohio regulators and the local community. Developing these relationships over the years required constant, open communications between site decision makers and stakeholders to identify issues and to overcome potential barriers. Fluor’s open public-participation strategy resulted in stakeholder consensus of five remedial-action plans that directed Fernald cleanup. This strategy included establishing a public-participation program that emphasized a shared-decision making process and abandoned the government’s traditional, non-participatory “Decide, Announce, Defend” approach. Fernald’s program became a model within the DOE complex for effective public participation. Fluor led the formation of the first DOE site-specific advisory board dedicated to remediation and closure. The board was successful at building consensus on critical issues affecting long-term site remediation, such as cleanup levels, waste disposal and final land use. Fluor created innovative public outreach tools, such as “Cleanopoly,” based on the Monopoly game, to help illustrate complex concepts, including risk levels, remediation techniques, and associated costs. These innovative tools helped DOE and Fluor gain stakeholder consensus on all cleanup plans. To commemorate the outstanding commitment of Fernald stakeholders to this massive environmental-restoration project, Fluor donated $20,000 to build the Weapons to Wetlands Grove overlooking the former 136-acre production area. The grove contains 24 trees, each dedicated to “[a] leader(s) behind the Fernald cleanup.” Over the years, Fluor, through the Fluor Foundation, also invested in educational and humanitarian projects, contributing nearly $2 million to communities in southwestern Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. Further, to help offset the economic impact of the site’s closing to the community, DOE and Fluor promoted economic development in the region by donating excess equipment and property to local schools and townships. This paper discusses the details of the public-involvement program — from inception through maturity — and presents some lessons learned that can be applied to other similar projects.