Royall Tyler

Royall Tyler (b. 1757–d. 1826) was born to a prominent merchant family in Boston and came of age in the decades leading up to the American Revolution. He entered Harvard College in 1771 and earned his bachelor of arts degree three months after the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. Tyler then enlisted in the Revolutionary Army, although he remained in Boston and Cambridge studying law. His active military service seems to have been limited to serving as a brigade major during the unsuccessful 1778 attempt to capture Newport, Rhode Island. As the war continued, Tyler earned his master of arts degree from Harvard in 1779 and engaged in a failed courtship of Abigail Adams, the daughter of future president John Adams. After the war, Tyler became involved in the suppression of Shays’ Rebellion in 1786. When Daniel Shays fled to Vermont, Tyler was assigned to negotiate with authorities in New York, which still laid claim to the territory, to ensure that the rebel did not find safe harbor. In New York City Tyler launched his literary career; in April 1787, The Contrast began its run in New York as the first professionally produced American comic drama and one of the first successful American plays. Months later Tyler produced a second play, May Day in Town, that is no longer extant. In 1790, Tyler returned to Boston and married Mary Palmer, who would later publish the first American manual for infant care. They relocated to Vermont, where the couple remained for the rest of their lives. In the years to follow, Tyler published numerous poems and essays, including a popular series of essays in collaboration with Joseph Dennie under the title of “Colon & Spondee.” In 1797, Tyler published the novel The Algerine Captive, which achieved moderate success and was one of the first American books to be republished in Great Britain. In the 1800s and 1810s Tyler served for six years as the chief justice of the Vermont Supreme Court and launched a failed bid for the U.S. Senate. He completed several new plays, including his biblical dramas and the epistolary satire The Yankey in London (1809). At the time of his death in 1826 he was rewriting the first half of The Algerine Captive as a New England picaresque titled The Bay Boy, which would remain unpublished until 1968.

Mark Eaton—A Non-traditional Path to Librarianship

In The Profession the Bulletin showcases some of the creative ways the study of religion can be put to use in and beyond academia. The Bulletin staff sat down with Mark Eaton, a librarian at The City University of New York (CUNY), which consists of 25 campuses and 31 libraries. Mark Eaton obtained his Bachelor of Arts in religious studies at McGill University before receiving a Master of Information Studies in library studies at the University of Toronto and later, a Master of Arts in religious studies at Queens University. Between his degrees, Eaton worked at the London Metropolitan University Library, at a bakery, and on a farm. Eaton describes how his journey in academia and various professions led him down an unexpected, but fulfilling, path.

Internationalisation at home through virtual exchange: an encounter between distance language learners and trainee language teachers

Undergraduate language students from the Open University (OU) and master’s degree students from Aix-Marseille Université (AMU) participated in an innovative Virtual Exchange (VE) as part of our institutions’ internationalisation at home strategy. Due to the pandemic, the one-week Residential School (RS) abroad, which is part of the Bachelor of Arts (BA) in modern languages at the OU, was replaced with an Alternative Learning Experience (ALE) – a one-week online intensive programme which included a VE. Its objectives were to support the development of OU students’ French oral skills, and the professionalisation of AMU students, by developing their pedagogical and digital skills. Qualitative and quantitative data collected showed a high level of participants’ interaction and collaboration, and positive feedback highlighting an increase in motivation and confidence to speak French (OU students) and a valued experience in developing professional ethos, and digital teaching skills (AMU students).

The Pransky interview: Jack Morrison, CEO and Co-Founder, Scythe Robotics

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a “Q&A interview” conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot Journal as a method to impart the combined technological, business and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry engineer-turned entrepreneur regarding his pioneering efforts in starting robotic companies and commercializing technological inventions. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach The interviewee is Jack Morrison, CEO and Co-Founder, Scythe Robotics. Morrison shares how he and his co-founders started this innovative company, the milestones and challenges he’s faced and his long-term goals. Findings Morrison received Bachelor of Arts degrees in Computer Science and German from Bowdoin College. He attended The George Washington University as a PhD student in Computer Science but left to co-found Replica Labs, a producer of software that turns any mobile phone into a high-quality 3D scanner. Morrison served as Replica’s CTO until it was acquired by Occipital in 2016, where he stayed on as a computer vision engineer until co-founding Scythe Robotics in April 2018. Originality/value While mowing his lawn in Colorado, Jack Morrison had a sudden insight: what if he could apply the latest robotics technology he was so familiar with to the challenge of commercialized landscaping? In 2018, Morrison teamed up with Replica Labs co-founder Isaac Roberts and Occipital’s Davis Foster, to create Scythe Robotics, a company that builds autonomous robotics solutions for the $105bn commercial landscaping industry. In June 2021, Scythe Robotics emerged from stealth with over $18m in funding with its first commercial product: a transformational, all-electric, fully autonomous mower designed to keep crew productivity high while also increasing the quality of cut and worker safety. The machine features eight high dynamic range cameras and a suite of other sensors that enable it to operate safely in dynamic environments by identifying and responding to the presence of humans, animals and other potential obstacles. Simultaneously, the machine captures valuable property and mower performance data, which helps landscape contractors improve workflow, identify upsell opportunities, schedule more efficiently and manage labor costs. The all-electric powertrain is quiet, emissions-free and radically more reliable than gas-powered manual mowers. Scythe Robotics’ business model is based on Robot as a Service. Instead of buying machines outright, customers are billed by acres mowed. This massively reduces contractors’ expenses and eliminates substantial costs. Scythe Robotics is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado and has offices in Vero Beach, FL and Austin, TX. Scythe is the recipient of the 2020 ALCC (Associated Landscape Contractors CO) Innovation Winner and the 2021 Colorado OEDIT Advanced Industries Grantee.

My Own Liberator: A South African Story

Dikgang Moseneke was born in Pretoria, South Africa in December 1947. He was imprisoned on Robben Island, where most political prisoners were kept, off the coast of Cape Town for 10 years as a young man for his political activity. While in prison, he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Political Science and later completed a Bachelor of Laws degree. After his release from prison, he was admitted as an attorney in 1978 and in 1983 was called to the Pretoria Bar as a Senior Counsel. During the 1980s he worked underground for the Pan-African Congress and became its deputy president when it was unbanned in 1990. Moseneke also served on the technical committee that drafted the interim South African constitution of 1993. After a corporate career between 1995 and 2001, President Thabo Mbeki appointed him to the High Court in Pretoria and in 2002 as a judge in the Constitutional Court. In June 2005, he became the Court’s Deputy Chief Justice, a position from which he retired in May 2016. In this essay, he chronicles his years of protest, political activity, and imprisonment as a young man. The essay is an excerpt from his memoir, My Own Liberator, which is published by Picador Africa (2018), and is available online and at all good bookstores.

Exploring Reliability and Factorial Validity of Responsible Talk and its Impact on Cooperative Classrooms

The aim of this study was to validate an instrument which enables the evaluation of talk which maximizes student performance during different segments of interaction-interactivity throughout a complete learning sequence. Based on works developed by the Learning and Research Development Center of the University of Pittsburgh, a scale was developed that gathered the most relevant behaviors of each proposed dimension by researchers from this university center. The scale was used to develop a core subject for a final year Bachelor of Arts degree in Primary Education at a university in Spain and was applied to the 65 students (M = 19, F = 46) taking the subject. The data analysis used an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) that yielded a reliability of α = 0.922. EFA revealed a final interpretable three-factor structure, and the factorial solution comprised 87.86% of total variance. Results show that the talk that students use has three purposes: to constitute an effective group for learning, to build knowledge and to verify its acquisition. The results are discussed in terms of input from the Center for Research in Education and Educational Technologies at the Open University and the Learning Research and Development Center of the University of Pittsburgh.

Challenges of Writing Dissertation among University Students: Based on South Eastern University of Sri Lanka

The undergraduates of Bachelor of Arts Honours degree have to write a dissertation in their fields. When they write it, they have been facing challenges. Therefore, this research sought to investigate the challenges of writing a dissertation as a requirement of the specialisation Bachelor Degree in the Arabic Language among those who are speaking Tamil as a mother tongue and who learning Arabic as a foreign language. This research is a qualitative study through the descriptive methodology. The researchers selected 30 dissertations randomly from the Faculty of Islamic Studies and Arabic Language, the South Eastern University of Sri Lanka and analysed them. The review of the documents focuses on students’ abilities to write dissertations. Also, 25 students who submitted their dissertations were selected randomly to fill the questionnaire to reveal the challenges they faced. Writing a dissertation in a foreign or second language is difficult than writing in a native language. As pointed out in the previous sections, there are challenges in writing dissertations such as the influence of the Tamil language, Lack of knowledge in research writing, Selecting a new topic, Lack of reading, Experience of using the software. At the same time, findings of the review of the dissertations reveal that language fluency and data analysis are the common errors observed in the dissertations.

Undergraduate Researcher Stories: Insights for Mentoring in an Open and Distance Learning Context

Research is a requisite for most of the undergraduate honors degrees offered by universities worldwide and these undergraduates are expected to submit a dissertation based on their research. Given the new demands of this independent component of learning, it is important to understand the challenges faced by students and the strategies that they employ in successfully navigating the various components of this process. This knowledge is useful to mentors and course developers as it provides insights about the firsthand experience of the students. The present study used a qualitative research design to investigate the research experience of a purposive sample of undergraduates who completed their Bachelor of Arts Honors in English and English Language Teaching in an open and distance university in Sri Lanka in the academic year 2017/2018. The responses from 12 undergraduates in the form of written stories were coded and analyzed thematically. The study revealed areas which need attention by mentors, faculty, and universities, especially those in open and distance contexts, when providing support to novice researchers.

Co-constructing Social Justice: Language Educators Challenging Colonial Practices in Mexico

This article involves the work of four language educators/researchers collaborating on an ongoing longitudinal multilingual participatory action research (PAR) project in a Bachelor of Arts (BA) language teaching program in Oaxaca, Mexico. Overall, this PAR project aims at the co-construction of social justice in ELT in Mexico. In particular, it explores an approach that would encourage learners to make full(er) use of their language resources to challenge the colonial othering discourses of inferiority, disability, and backwardness inherent in ELT in Mexico. The analyses reported in this article zooms in on the English learning experiences of three Indigenous background, low-socioeconomic status, female undergraduate students, and their alleged struggle with speaking English in teaching–learning and assessment activities. The purpose of this article is to illustrate how a local English teacher co-constructed social justice with these three students. To fulfill this purpose, we succinctly present the focal students life stories and address three emergent themes: (i) unveiling alienating practices in the classroom; (ii) carving out spaces for multilingualism in the English classroom; and (iii) authoring assessment as a way to enact social justice.

What Can You Do With a Bachelor's in Public Health? A Case Study of Graduate Outcomes From the University of Hawai‘i

Since the development of a Bachelor of Arts in public health, a common question among prospective students, faculty, and community members has been asked: “What will students do after graduation?” While national data on graduates are abundant, community inquiries sought more detailed profiles of local graduates. To address this need, data on 224 graduates of the Bachelors of Arts in Public Health (BAPH) degree at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa were collected through alumni outreach efforts and professional online profile searches. Data were compiled into a summary presentation and program “resume”. Findings indicated roughly 30% of BAPH graduates pursued graduate-level education and 43% were employed within a year of graduation. Employment in local NGOs and healthcare organizations was common, while bureaucratic challenges limited hiring at public agencies. A review of job titles suggested graduates were employed in program coordination or support staffing. Local program profiles, such as this one, complement national employment data. Moreover, these efforts may foster interest among prospective students and support from faculty, administrators, and employers.