Awards Entry Form - City Of Chesapeake: Fill & Download for Free

Land and land speculation were clearly a factor in the Revolution. The involvement and interconnection of soon-to-be Patriot families in these financial machinations is commonly unreported in standard histories of the Revolution lost as they are among less seamy facts and more glorious concepts involving liberty and political rights.The Proclamation of 1763 was a largely unsung cause of colonial unrest on the frontiers. However, Anglo-Americans were not only dealing with the acts of Parliament; they were also wrestling with the laws of frontier economics. The frontier was virtually everywhere in America, and a day’s ride into the interior from any settlement revealed an almost impenetrable forest broken only by the trails and fields of Native Americans and nature’s waterways. Land and its legal disposition were of no small regard to the first settlers in America, and they took the legalities of property transfer and tenure quite seriously.In 1773, after a decade of dispute with the frontier settlers, rumors spread through the colonies that it was again the Crown's intention to secure an Act of Parliament that would vacate all American titles to land by annulling the former colonial patents, thereby causing all titles to land to revert to the Crown from which they would have to be repetitioned. These rumors were given increased credence when, by order of the King, Gov. Josiah Martin closed the Royal land office in North Carolina that April. Although the Court of Claims continued to sit, applications for new entries, warrants, and patents were denied. Governor Martin issued a formal statement of denial to suppress this rumor, but in February 1775, two months before Lexington and Concord, the Royal land offices throughout the colonies closed forever.Amazon.com: The Boston Tea Party: The Foundations of Revolution eBook: Volo, James: Kindle StoreDiscussion:Privileged friends of the Crown and numerous charter companies were given grants of land in the colonies amounting to hundreds of thousands of acres. Land was a form of wealth, but if it could not be put into production, it was simply a liability for its proprietors. These men attempted to transform their land into cash by selling or renting it. Property agents and speculators attempted to make a profit through these land transactions the way realty agents do today, but they could make no commissions unless the price of the land was within reach of those who were willing to occupy, clear, and plow it.The first arrivals to New England in 1620 benefited from the abandoned fields of the Native Americans. Soon the colony was producing not only enough excess corn to trade with the tribes, but also enough to open trade with the Dutch in New Netherlands in return for manufactured goods. This marked the birth of commercial agriculture in New England as well as the initiation of an agricultural export trade from the region—New England’s first significant violation of British mercantilism.Notwithstanding the commercial successes or failures experienced by disparate ethnic and national groups, agriculture generally remained the foundation of wealth everywhere in British North America. It came to be practiced across a wide spectrum ranging from small subsistence farming in New England and unlawful swatting on the frontiers to the well-ordered farms of Pennsylvania and the great commercial plantations of the South with their wealth-producing surplus of agricultural exports. In New York huge land grants were made to influential individuals instead of to disparate groups. The resulting patroon system, left over from the Dutch, was followed up and down the Hudson Valley, and powerful families like the Livingston’s, the Phillips’s, and the Warren’s preempted individual ownership through an almost feudal system of tenancy and rents populated by German-speaking Europeans recruited for the purpose.Disentangling the agricultural systems from this network of diverse establishments can be difficult. As one moved south, land became less expensive. In North Carolina, before the intrusion of the land speculation companies, it was almost free except for government fees if purchased from the proprietors. This attracted many cash-strapped Scots-Irish and other relatively poor immigrant groups. Some men in the Chesapeake, with superior resources or better connections, acquired substantial holdings spread over a thousand acres, but New England maintained a more settled appearance much like that of an English country village. In any case, the agricultural skills of colonials in all regions of British North America were not highly differentiated. Farm workers were often segregated from their landowning contemporaries only by their legal status as indentured workers, hirelings, or slaves.Even though the land granted in Royal colonies was ostensibly free, the paperwork required by government was expensive. The whole granting process probably cost the average small farmer several months’ net earnings in terms of fees, but in Royal colonies it was not possible to obtain legal title to land simply by squatting on it. The cost of the land patent application alone was about ₤12 for any tract of less than one square mile (640 acres).In the mid-18th century many settlers, disgusted with the machinations of the various land companies, agents, and politicians, avoided the practice of surveying their land claims altogether and simply marked boundaries themselves by cutting notches in trees or making piles of stones at the corners of boundaries. This ad hoc system of land division was plagued by mistakes and conflicting claims that made proof of land ownership after the Revolution difficult and costly.So-called Old Virginians from the tidewater area and investors in England dominated the Ohio Company, the largest colonial land speculation company of the period. However, a newly rich group of more aggressive colonial Virginians became the rivals of the Ohio Company. These colonial speculators formed new partnerships like the Loyal Land Company and the Mississippi Company. The power of each group ultimately depended on its influence with the governor of Virginia. The acquisition of a patent for the Ohio Company was the ostensible reason for Lawrence Washington’s trip to England in 1749 as evidenced by his letters to the colonial governor and others. Lawrence Washington—eldest sibling of George Washington—also selected and promoted the site of the new town of Alexandria, Virginia on the western banks of the Potomac near his own land holdings. The leading aristocrats of colonial Virginia had little influence on the lords controlling British policy in London. Benjamin Franklin and his colleague Samuel Wharton [agents for Pennsylvania], who were far more astute in such matters, knew where to apply pressure and whom to corrupt.The fortunes of the Ohio Company improved when Robert Dinwiddie, whose financial interest in the Ohio Company preceded his arrival in America, became governor of Virginia in 1751 and faded again when he resigned due to ill health in 1757 to be replaced by Francis Fauquier. The latter was essentially a powerless figurehead for a decade (1758-1768), friendly to the colonials but overshadowed and overwhelmed by British military commanders during the war with the French. The well-liked Norborne Berkeley, Baron Botecourt (1768-1770) and the much-hated John Murray, Lord Dunmore, the last British governor of Virginia, followed Fauquier in office after his death.Following the many years of war with the French that stifled development of their patents, the Ohio Company shareholders, who had spent over ₤310,000 to advance the company before the French and Indian War, believed that with the final British victory in North America their land business would be renewed and a profit would finally be realized. The sudden change in British policy, culminating in the restrictive Proclamation of 1763, came as a tremendous blow to these aspirations and unrealized profits. Moreover, while the stockholders of the Ohio Company wrestled with the Proclamation as a Crown colony, the agents of other companies in proprietary Pennsylvania were negotiating large land grants.A new company in competition with the Ohio Company was organized in Virginia in 1768 by a set of wholly colonial investors that included George Washington, John Augustine Washington (another brother), and several members of the extensive Lee and Fairfax families. The fact that no member of the company came from England is significant because it was the first such to do so, suggesting perhaps a new more independent attitude among Anglo-Americans. The purpose of the so-called Mississippi Company was to explore the possibility of a land grant farther west from western Pennsylvania into what is now Kentucky. Now only the Proclamation of 1763 stood in the way, but the Crown could grant permission. The original petition made by Arthur Lee was for several million acres with a western boundary at the Mississippi River. The British ministry rejected the petition of the Mississippi Company mainly because no English lords or merchants resident in England participated in it. The Mississippi Company thereby disappeared with several American families absorbing considerable loss, and later supporting the revolution.The lands previously sold by the Loyal Land Company west of the Appalachians also came into conflict with patents granted by Gov. Dinwiddie to Virginia militia officers to attract their service during the French war. George Washington (who had served as a surveyor for the colony, along with the father of Thomas Jefferson, and those close to the Lee family) represented the officers of the Virginia Regiment during the lengthy negotiations with the governor’s privy council that eventually affirmed all the lands sold by the Loyal Land Company. To quiet the claims of the veterans the men were assigned alternative acreage from a much larger and separate tract. Washington received 40,000 acres (20 percent of the total awarded to all the soldiers), but his loss in prospective shares in the various land company patents had been larger than his award under the veterans’ agreement.Indeed, after the revocation of their patents in 1763, the sheriff was ordered to remove settlers unless they had purchased their land from the company. In effect, the settlers were forced to buy land they had already improved from a company whose charter had lapsed. This elicited a complaint to the Crown from George Mercer (a recipient of a Soldiers’ grant) representing the rival Ohio Company in London. Listing the various land patents to the dominant political faction in the Virginia legislature, he wrote, “No less than 1,350,000 acres of land were granted by the governor and council to borrowed names and private land-mongers, which were incapable of making effectual settlements.” By 1773, almost 1000 surveys had been made in the area on which basis more than 200,000 acres of land, slightly more than one-quarter of the original grant to the Loyal Land Company, were sold.Note: In 1748 and much to the consternation the Anglo-Americans who had secured it, the British had returned Fortress Louisbourg (a.k.a. Louisburg) on Cape Breton Island, Canada to the French for the single city of Madras in India. When news broke of this distressing event, the population of Boston—primed to lash out by an ongoing financial crisis involving the so-called Land Bank—rebelled. The father of Samuel Adams had been instrumental in establishing the Land Bank as a meaning of underwriting colonial commerce based on their personal land holdings. In one move, the Crown had destroyed it and made a number of families paupers.

What makes a great teacher? I have been asking myself this a lot recently. Instead of simply sharing my views I will do something much better. Bob Swap has been honored by receiving the teacher of the year award at his major research university. I have talked with his students and I know how much he has changed lives. His approach to teaching incorporates a global perspective, and this too is something that needs more emphasis in our inter-connected world.***************************************************************QuestionsWhen did you find the passion you have for environmental sciences, global development and the many other areas of research you are involved in?I was always a curious kid – always asking questions and completely enthralled by the coffee table books that my parents had at home. I can remember as a first – third grader sitting on the family coach and looking at the pictures and reading about them – a number of the books were more about nature and history as well as some big old atlases. I suppose that that helped to whet my appetite. One book in particular also stuck with me – how to garden organically – Living in Ames Iowa at the time, having access to all of that land with all of that rich, black soil was incredible. I fondly recall hunting for salamanders and garter snakes in the fields… The environment was just so present and immediate whether the never-ending fields of corn as high as an elephant’s eye or the severe thunderstorms or blizzards – It just really had an impact. Follow up on that with our move to Virginia Beach when I was heading into the fourth grade and that love of exploring and capturing critters and fishing just fed that interest – I consumed all of the little golden guide books – the ones on freshwater sport fish, insects, snakes, trees, etc. All of that tied in nicely to my involvement in scouting (which I pursued to Eagle) and the camping etc. Proximity to water and pan-fishing was also chicken soul for my intellectual soul – however, I have to admit that spending time with my dad and brother fishing for largemouth bass out on Back Bay in southern Virginia Beach was one of my fondest memories – the early 3:45 am departures to be able to put the boat in the water just before first light was amazing…I also went to scout summer camp every summer from 12-17yrs old and it was during that time and working on nature related merit badges that I started to really make the connections between love for the environment and the science behind it – it became something that I took for granted – this incredibly rich set of experiences out in the environment and the science behind it – It came so easy and I just thought that it was something that everybody else saw/knew and appreciated…I can’t forget the conversation I had with my high school physics teacher in 12th grade – he asked me about what schools I had applied to and why – I told him my choices – W&M, VT and UVA – he approved of all three, yet knowing my love for the environment, he threw out something that has stuck with me to this day – “You know Bob, UVA has a Dept. of Environmental Science.” I told him thanks, but I was going to be a doctor – pre-med all the way – and he said, “well, just remember that they have that Dept. and it is pretty good.” Little did I know…With respect to my interests, upon accepting my admission to UVA, I applied for and was accepted into the “Curriculum One” scholars program, a program developed by Carl Trindle to produce well rounded and informed students who intended to be science majors – that program opened my eyes to the power of interdisciplinarity. When coupled with an ever-expanding appreciation for Jefferson and all of his interests (especially in natural history), it just kind of all came together…During my first two and a half years I was a pre-med major as well as a walk-on football player – like many entering students, I had a challenge adjusting from what worked for me in high school to what would work for me in the College… I quickly discovered that large gen ed and large pre-med courses did not work for me. And trying to maintain the pre-med load with the walk-on experience was also not working. In the second semester of my second year, on a lark, I took my first environmental science course at the U – and I did not look back. I walked off the team just before the start of my third year – went through summer ball and was just a week before the start of the year, but just walked away – I threw myself into environmental science head long and just grew exponentially as a student and as a scholar. I had reconnected with my passion and that made all of the difference.I was fortunate enough to have Jim Fourqurean as my graduate teaching assistant for that first environmental science course in ecology. Jim and his advisor, Jay Zieman, got me signed up for the major and also got me out in the field helping Jay’s grad students conduct research in the Chesapeake Bay.Once enrolled as a major, it was during that third year that I heard a seminar by the person who would become central to my formation as a scientist, Michael Garstang, who was speaking on the importance of the Amazon Basin as “the firebox of the atmosphere.” Garstang presented on the research that they had just conducted in the central Amazon Basin about 50km outside of the city of Manaus. I found myself being drawn into his seminar and at the end when he asked if there were any students who might be interested in participating in the next field campaign scheduled for the following year, I felt my arm rising. That is how I got started on the international aspect of my environmental and ultimately my development work.ManausWhile on the ground outside of Manaus in the late 80’s I couldn’t help but encounter images and circumstances that were forever formative – the memories of bearing witness for the first time in my life to families living on garbage dumps, or families working day and night making gravel by hand, or of staying with families that would go days waiting on municipal water supplies to function left deep, deep impressions upon me.I also participated in athletic activities growing up – in a variety of team sports – baseball, basketball, football, volleyball, etc. While not a star player, I used my power of observation, my access to the inner workings of athletic teams, and my experience with leadership to further learn about team dynamics – not in a judgmental fashion, but more in a causal fashion (e.g. “when you do this you get that”). This insight into human systems coupled with my insights into natural systems/environmental systems has probably given me a leg up on many other researchers and educators. Furthermore, my time holding down menial labor, temp jobs, pizza delivery, fry cook, newspaper deliverer and nightclub bouncer, also provided me with many opportunities to see things from a lived perspective not readily available to many academicians. I have come to learn the narratives of people on the edge, highly intelligent people who encountered very unfavorable circumstances. I quickly came to realize the value of engaging knowledge beyond the borders. All of these experiences have gone into my intellectual toolkit and have provided me with some much-needed insight at different times throughout my career.Before I ask you to talk about your research I want to focus for a while on the importance of teaching and mentoring. Depending on your answer to the last question can you talk abut a teacher or mentor or two who were important to you? How did they ‘reach’ you and what sorts of things did they do to help you on your path?As I tell my students and as I have been fortunate enough to experience – we all stand on the shoulders of those who come before us. I have definitely benefitted from inspirational educators all throughout my educational career. In high school Mr. Koeppen (biology), Mr. Hoots (physics) and Mr. Lambriola (12th grade AP English), all impacted me and opened up my eyes to the power of the process of inquiry. At the University of Virginia, Jim Forquerean (Ecology TA), Jay Zieman (Undergraduate Advisor), Hank Shugart, Steve Macko and Mike Garstang (Page on m.sc./Ph.D. advisors) all broadened my concept of what it means to be an engaged scholar.As I have continued to evolve as an educator and a scholar, I have continued to learn from a gifted cohort of Graduate Teaching Assistants, Junior and Senior Faculty, most notably Lyndon Estes, Keir Soderberg, Suzanne Walther, Clare Terni, James Ngundi, Ethan Heil, Siddartha Pailla, Jonathan Walter, Caroline Berinyuy, Loren Intolubbe-Chmil, Claudia Ford, Kent Wayland, and Carol Anne Spreen. Furthermore, I have learned greatly from my international colleagues, again, most notably Harold Annegarn, Joseph Francis, O.G.S.O. Kgosidintsi, Shuaib Lwasa, and Shirley Pendlebury. I cannot say exactly what it is that specifically ‘reached me.’ It may be the way that they use the power of the narrative to educate. It might also be their intellectual curiosity and the way that they are open to other ways of being.Professionally/programmatically, I have benefitted greatly from my interactions with seasoned NASA program and project managers. Tim Suttles, Michael King, Chris Justice and Steve Platnick all provided guidance, mentoring and wisdom essential for my being able to serve as the U.S. Principal Investigator for the Southern African Regional Science Initiative – SAFARI 2000. S2K was a large five-year program involving well over 200 scientists from 16 different countries that focused on the emission, transport and impact of southern African aerosols. That group of gifted scientists and engineers also possess an uncanny ability to manage programs and people. I learned so much in the ways of ‘human engineering’ related to how to develop, implement, trouble shoot and wrap up a large international science initiative from them. They represented a blend of on the job experience, life lessons, on the ground experience, know-how when dealing with the complex work of negotiating with governments, inter-governmental agencies, and universities. I am incredibly fortunate to have worked with those folks early on in my professional career. What a gift to have them as team-mates and professional resources.What all of these fine educators did and did well is that they were able to find ways to engage, to find ways to provide an access point, an entry point to their wonderful world of knowledge. Perhaps I can best summarize it by saying their respective holistic approach to education and research, the way that they engage and their use of the three ‘R’s’ – Respect, Reciprocity and Relationship – are all things that I take away from my interactions with them.airborne sampling campaign across southern Africa to better understand the effect of aerosol and trace gas emissions.You received one of the highest honors a faculty member can receive: the Carnegie / CASE Virginia Professor of the Year. Can you talk about the ways you approach teaching? What makes a great teacher?I recall one of my undergraduate professors stating that an effective teacher is one who can take the same information and present it at least three completely different ways. To me, a great teacher is some one who can bring passion into a classroom, who is present – in the complete sense of the word, who can make knowledge and wanting to find knowledge accessible the to majority of their students and lastly, who can spark the fire of wonder and inquiry. I try to bring an activation energy into the classroom and to use that energy to realize the latent potential of each and every student in my classroom. As an educator, I feed off of the engagement. I am not naïve enough to believe that I can reach each and every student, but I sure as hell can and do try! Perhaps it is the competitive athlete in me – I could never seeing myself not trying – not giving some effort – whether on the field, in the classroom or in the field. That just isn’t me.Regarding the Carnegie/CASE recognition, I consider myself to be incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to engage undergraduate students throughout their intellectual journey. To be acknowledged here in Mr. Jefferson’s Academical Village as a teacher who has made a significant impact on the minds and lives of young people is incredibly humbling. It means so much to be recognized for something that one feels so passionately about, and for doing work that brings so much joy and satisfaction.To be recognized for outstanding undergraduate teaching at the level of the Commonwealth as the CASE Virginia Professor of the Year is a singular honor that I will treasure the rest of my life —I can only hope my future teaching will warrant this recognition that the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching have chosen to confer on me. Furthermore, this award signifies for me that the art of teaching still lies at the heart of the work that we do in the academy.This honor has special significance to me when I reflect upon the individuals who inspired me as a student; the communities who have embraced me as an educator, providing opportunities to teach in diverse settings; and the colleagues who helped mentor me as a teacher. The award also provides those who have paid the quiet price, my family, with some validation that the work I do matters and that others know this. Without this collective support, this kind of recognition would not have been possible. My hope is to continue working with students in such a way that catalyzes their intellect and curiosity and sparks their life-long passion for learning---while at the same time, students and colleagues do the same for me. It is in this way that I intend to carry on, honoring those in the profession by sustaining my own investment as an educator.Can you take the other side and say what makes a great student?I think that what makes the difference between a good and a great student is that ability to let go of feeling as if one has to have the right answers and moving towards having the right/good questions. It has been my experience that those students who let go of the “product” based approach, that is focusing primarily on grades, and give in to the process of inquiry, of being present, of actively seeking, tend to develop the types of skills that make them great students, not just at the university, but great students in life, as well.One of the courses you have offered is a six credit hour, interdisciplinary summer study abroad course entitled “The People, Culture and Environment of Southern Africa.” The course has an ‘in the field’ approach to demonstrating not only how people and their culture impact the environment in the developing world, but also how the environment influences people and their culture in the emerging world. Can you talk abut some of the highlights of the course in terms of both what you like about teaching it and what you think students get out of it? What sort of skills do they learn that might transcend what happens on a traditional campus?I like teaching the course because, just like a river has a set river course, no two days of water flowing down that river course are exactly the same, so two no two editions of the course are exactly the same. What I like is that that course has been a real opportunity for me and my colleagues to impress upon students just how the environment helps to give rise to the peoples and their cultures of an area. So often, we tend to focus on how humans and their cultures impact the environment. Sometimes it is very humbling when one comes to see that the opposite is not only possible but happens more often that one thinks.The skills that they leave the course with are related to negotiating cross-cultural differences. Traveling with students from other cultures in an intensive and confined setting across a range of environments (from urban to peri-urban to rural requires patience, understanding and a sense of humility. All traits that I have heard stood former students well in the working world. The other thing that students in this program will not get in a traditional or even virtual setting is access to ‘informal’ knowledge authorizes – that is information from sources from outside of the academy. My students have been impressed with their interactions with community members of the years and their lived experiences and personal and historical narratives. Such information also creates dissonance at times with what they have read about in books or on the web. It provides for many teachable moments. Such an atmosphere is very difficult if not impossible to create on a university campus. Having access to such figures and learning how to listen respectfully and to then reflect upon what they have been exposed to are all things that I have known students have taken with them after graduation.Bob Swap with students in Limpopo ProvenceI would like to ask a somewhat related question. You use the term service learning several times in your course descriptions. How do think the students who work with you internalize this passion and interest in service? Can a passion for service and commitment for public good be taught?It has been my understanding that we at my university tend to select those elite students who are inclined towards pursuing positions of leadership upon their completion of their education. Those who at teach at Virginia are quite fortunate to have students who want to put their knowledge into action. Many want to put this knowledge into action to have an impact on/for the good of larger society. Some in the professorial ranks view this as being ignorant and naïve – I tend to view this as an asset that can be utilized, with proper mentorship and respectful engagement, to achieve the students’ desires as well as to contribute to their overall educational experience while at university. I have found service learning to be an effective mode of achieving these larger outcomes. Service learning, at least from my perspective, allows for students to learn how to work collaboratively in real world settings. It forces students to recognize that they do not have to have all of the answers and that this is okay. It drives home the point that there are many others that are experts. As I like to tell might students, every person you meet is an expert in something you are not as they know things that you do not.Using service learning and trying to teach service learning is not easy and requires educators being comfortable with pushing away from the product driven mindsets and to focus on the process. It also requires much front end loading on the part of an educator to help students ‘unlearn’ and become comfortable with the discomfort of uncertainty and to ponder questions of connectedness outside of the traditional university ‘bubble’ of existence. I think that service learning also provides the student with an institution with an opportunity to instill a sense of humility rather than to further inculcate hubris within a student. Overall, when done properly, it has been my experience that the payoffs of service learning - for the student, the communities involved, the faculty and the larger University – outweigh the potential negatives thereby making it worthwhile.Regarding whether a passion can be taught, I believe that passion from an educator can be the spark that causes something bigger and farther reaching to ignite. I don’t think one teaches passion. I think that one can model with passion and presence in the classroom, just as one can model lack of passion and disengagement in the classroom. This is one of the challenges in higher education today – how can one effectively teach the importance of learning and embracing the ‘process’ when many in the profession model through their own non-verbal communication that they have ‘arrived’ – that they are ‘made’ members of the Academy? We can lecture until we are blue in the face, however, how can we expect our students to be passionate about things larger than themselves if we educators in the classroom do not model passion for never losing the wonder in what we do? I think that a gifted educator and communicator uses passion to make others aware and once they are aware, how could they ever go back to being unaware and therefore unengaged?In your interview with Eris Qian you say we cannot keep doing what we are doing globally without paying a price. Can you talk a bit about this and do you think the current generation of students has the background, understanding and commitment to make significant change?This is where I think the notion or rather the appreciation of connectedness comes into play – what I was thinking of in particular is your cell phone. How many times do we take for granted that the phone is going to work when we need it to work? And, if it doesn’t work, what do we do? Throw it away (or send it to a black box ‘recycling’ center) and get another one. Yet, how many of us realize what goes into that cell phone? What materials supplied by whom? Coltan, short for Columbite-tantalite, is used in the electronic components of all phones. Some Coltan from conflict regions in Africa and is supplied by child labor. Similarly, I show a video in my classes entitled “Digital Dumping Group – The story of E-waste.” Those students who have been exposed to this type of information where not aware of the costs – human and environmental – that our current consumptive patterns have associated with them. It has been my experience that once students see how much of their waste goes where, they often begin to think about their personal consumption. So, in many ways, it goes back to the point that I have made earlier, I have found that once a person becomes aware of how they have been aware, it is difficult to go back to being completely unaware. That is one of my hopes – that by being able to demonstrate to students about how they are connected to each other and other communities around the world.Child mining for ColtanIn a wonderful article authored by you and your students you make it clear that your efforts succeed in avoiding some of the concerns about community programs:“As students, we often hear criticisms of international service-learning, criticisms that include projects not being maintained once the outside implementing teams have left the site and that many of these types of encounters are based on extractive engagements where student teams focus on projects almost exclusively (Brown-Glazner et al., 2009) and where the community has little equity.” (Sandy & Holland, 2006; Nelson & Klak, 2012How do you manage to do this?First of all, I think of the term ‘development’ along the lines of working with others to realize their latent potential (just like a coach, a teacher, a professor, etc.). Community development would then be working with a community to realize their own potential to address their concerns. It is not doing for others it is about working with others to realize latent potential. Working with others necessitates getting into the trenches, getting muddy, engaging with the complexities of life, complexities that are well beyond anything one can read about in a book or listen to in a staid lecture. This kind of work requires searching for commonalities and engaging any and all strengths that a community possesses. To learn about the strengths that different groups possesses requires one to be proximate, to be engaged, to be present (in its totality) with others. This can be difficult for many students, especially those that have been groomed to be the best of the best. Being present with others means taking a step off of the bullet train to success and just flat out chilling with others. It has been my experience that deviating from ‘the plan’ or the ‘pathway to success’ causes some students to experience great levels of anxiety. As an educator, deviating from the plan requires me to be present and available to help mentor students through these uncertainties, to help students realize that many of them have the answers to their own problems and just need someone to help them work through this rather than to pontificate to them.The way that I have tried to manage this is to respond to the expressed needs of a community – a community that has invited us to come visit them. [By the way, this is where I tend to diverge from some of my academic colleagues.] By listening to their expressed needs and working collaboratively on a joint venture, where all parties have some equity in the process, it has been our experience that the communities arrive with the types of engagements and approaches that they are seeking. My students also are instructed to think about capitalizing upon what these communities have in abundance – what assets that they already possess. The students really aim to use an asset-based approach to community-based development that requires entering a community with more questions than answers. This approach also requires coming to think about capital in all of its forms – social, human, environmental, cultural, etc. It requires flexibility and collaborative problem solving skills. It also requires a great deal of humility. What my students are cognizant of and really try to minimize is the creation of new dependencies upon outsiders for the solutions that they community seeks.You describe your work with students this way:“Since 2003, I have been actively involved in advising and supervising undergraduate and graduate students interested in conducting research, participating in international service learning projects, and experiencing educational activities in southern Africa and elsewhere. I believe that now, more so than ever, these types of educational experiences have emerged to be an essential component of a comprehensive University education.”Why are these experiences essential? Do you feel that colleges are putting the resources into making this happen in such a way that more student can participate?It is easy to point to many, not so pleasant situations around the world today and to say that “that is not my problem…” and “my getting involved would do more harm than good so I am not going to get involved…” I raise this because a lack of exposure to these types of experiential learning activities that service learning/community engagement provides (both at home and abroad) helps to illuminate just how connected we are – as humans, as communities, as nations, etc. My experience having done these types of activities for more than a decade is that these students have needed to travel 8,000 miles to be able to see 8,000 feet in a different light. Such experiences provide students with perspective changing and at times, life altering.I think that the way that a student who participated in one of these immersive, intensive educational activities put it sums it up nicely: “I went to Africa to change the world. In the end, Africa changed me.”I also want to take this opportunity to stress that these types of service learning and community engagement activities conducted in domestic settings can be equally as “foreign” to students who have had little if any exposure to other, less resourced communities. The impacts can be and are often as profound and life changing as those experienced by those who have conducted international SLCE activities.Regarding the question about resources, let me try and put it this way – the resources needed are not just financial – they are human and they are programmatic. It is easy for an institution to throw out a sound bite regarding a financial commitment regarding these types of programs, but what does that really mean? Does the university have any skin in the game? Are they committed to those professionals that are themselves committed to this type of education – professionals that are often viewed as children of lesser academic beings from a traditional disciplinary perspective – and what form does that commitment take? Has the institution formalized such programs or are they always to remain in some institutional state of perpetual bastard-dom? There are people who want to support these types of efforts, but they want to do it in a joint fashion – they want to know that there is commitment to a joint venture, not just a one-way proposition. In my estimation, universities still have a long ways to go to provide the types of resources necessary to facilitate an expansion and longevity of this kind of educational experience.Do you think there are too may programs sponsored by schools and groups that are little more than poverty tourism?I think that at times, we in higher education are as guilty as our students of focusing on products, metrics and throughputs, rather than on engaging with other human beings. I come from a blue collar, background with strong Midwestern ties. One of the things that I always caught flak for was coming across as being ‘so damn high and mighty thinking that you are smarter than everybody else.” I raise this point because sometimes in higher education, especially with these kinds of programs, there is a tendency to think about the ‘others,’ those that we seek to engage with as being some less important, less central to us and this is dangerous – for several reasons, most notably because it tends to reinforce differences and a sense of social/cultural hierarchy/superiority. It reminds me of a phrase that my dad would seem to always have at the ready in these kinds of situations “there’s another case of hurray for me and the hell with everybody else.” Poverty tourism in my mind comes pretty close to that sentiment – people wanting to experience ‘big pain and big suffering’ out of some form of personal guilt, and once the tourists have been able to emote, they clamber back on to their jet airplane headed back home for the ‘burbs… Poverty tourism, in my mind does not require actually connecting on terms that are dignified for both parties.WRT poverty tourism – we as a people wouldn’t be going to visit these places to see these people in these situations. Or rather, these people who are often the objects of poverty tourism have something we do not have – we are the ones seeking something from them – so in that vein, who are the impoverished in that type of relationship?Developing metrics to discern impacts of these types of international educational experiences beyond simple numbers and assessing language proficiencies requires a commitment to observing students over a longer arc. Given the budgetary constraints and the need to provide decision makers with ‘facts’ and ‘outcomes’ numbers, at times have become a proxy, an in many cases a proxy that has little to do with the efficacy of a particular program. It is as if higher education has come to mirror what has happened with food production in the U.S. over the past 4-5 decades – bigger is better, cheaper, mass produced food is the answer. Hopefully higher ed can learn from larger US society with its recent move towards locally produced and sourced foods, often involving smaller quantities and higher qualities (high quality production of better tasting and nutritious food). If cattle can move from overcrowded, poor quality massive feedlots literally to greener pastures, why cannot students do the same, metaphorically speaking?We in higher education have to really address the question of whether it is about checking the box or about learning the process. As long as we go for international programs that produce big numbers while tending to objectify others or portray others as lacking / dependent and/or as having no agency or being empowered, especially wrt international programs, my belief is that we are diminishing the opportunity for meaningful engagement between people from different spheres of the global society.You describe your research this way:My current research continues to be focused on understanding how global change, in its broadest form, helps shape regional environmental systems, especially in the developing world. I want to identify and understand relationships between environmental and human factors that underlie the biogeophysical / biogeochemical processes occurring in developing world ecosystems. Specifically, I study the aerosol & trace gas emissions, transports, and impacts at regional scales. I am also interested in the nexus of environmental sciences and human health issues in the developing world. I am moving in this research direction through collaborations with colleagues in the UVA Schools of Medicine, Nursing and Engineering.What advice do you have for students, even those in secondary school, who might be thinking about pursuing some of the issues you are involved with and some of the research you do? What should they be looking for in particular school or department?Don’t be afraid to try different things during their first year – take some widely varying types of courses with very different content and formats. This is one way to help a student identify their passions. I also strongly encourage students to sit in on different lectures, talks and events – they are free and low risk on the part of the students – be open to trying out these different modalities and to listening to different points of view. See what resonates with them.WRT looking for a school or department – again, it is as much about feel – does the subject strongly resonate with the student? Do they have a good feeling about it? Do they feel passionate about it? If so, they are halfway there. Also, if upon visiting a school or talking with faculty, or more importantly with current students in a program, the students should be listening to their own body, to the feelings that they get – do they have that sinking feeling? Do they sense a lack of passion? Do they feel that folks are going through the motions – these are all great warning signs that a particular program or school may not be for them – and it is important to keep in mind, it is not that the programs or schools are bad per se but rather that they might just not be the right fit for that particular student.Are there courses or skills they should develop that will prepare them to take part in programs like yours?I would encourage students to never lose the wonder. I would also hope that they seek to understand before making themselves understood. And I would strongly encourage them to work on their people skills, especially their active listening skills. I also think that it would be a good thing if a prospective student can demonstrate that they have purposefully undertaken some activity that is completely orthogonal to their interest and articulate what they learned about themselves and those they worked with. And along those lines, I look for students that like to journal. If they can do these things, then they have the right stuff.Anything else you want to add?I think that it is worth sharing that I have broken a chair on every continent that I have visited. There was a streak for a while of having broken on in every country that I had visited – not sure if that streak still lives. Why I mention this is that it is hard to get high and mighty and thinking that one is better than another when one is busy breaking chairs and literally and figuratively being brought back to earth!Bob with students and community members***************************************************************I hope that anyone who wants to teach will read these words. I hope that anyone who wants to learn in the world we live in today will read these words too. Instead of paraphrasing Bob’s words my teacherly advice would be to go back and read his words again. There is so much wisdom for anyone interested in education—in any subject and at any school or university.In a new book that has been very highly reviewed, the author shares words about a great teacher she met:But the more I learned about Magdalene and her teaching, the more I saw that what looked like mind reading was in fact the result of extraordinary skill, not inborn talent. Her success did not depend on her personality, which— inward, pensive, and measured— was in many ways the opposite of Hollywood’s mythic teachers. Instead, Magdalene’s success relied on a body of knowledge and skill that she had spent years acquiring. Teaching, as she practiced it, was a complex craft. Magdalene showed me that the illusion of the natural-born teacher is at best a polite version of the old adage attributed to George Bernard Shaw: “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.” By imagining teaching as a “voodoo” mixture of personal charisma and passion, we are saying, essentially, He who has intelligence, does. He who has charm, teaches. I have come to think that this is a dangerous notion. By misunderstanding how teaching works, we misunderstand what it will take to make it better— ensuring that, far too often, teaching doesn’t work at all. Green, Elizabeth Building a Better Teacher: How Teaching Works (and How to Teach It to Everyone) W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.I think if the Bob’s name were put in place of Magdalene’s name these words would help to summarize how Bob became one of the best. Just reading through the list of names of people he has learned from and collaborated with underscores that he learned how to learn and learned how to teach. What he does is not magic; it’s the result of experience and an incredible work ethic too. It’s those things that often bring success rather than luck or magic or even the newest technology or gimmick, or educational theory.He has spent an incredible amount of time on the ground in Africa forging trust and relations and showing students how to learn in and from a community and how to learn from each other too. His efforts to share his passion have changed lives in the communities he has worked in and at his university. He is also not afraid to say what he thinks, something that is not always rewarded in the world.I can say that he has changed the way I understand global studies, environmental science and a whole lot else. I am very grateful that he has taken the time to share his words here. I hope that many will have the opportunity to learn from him in the coming years.