First person – Kara Stark

ABSTRACT First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Journal of Cell Science, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Kara Stark is first author on ‘Precise levels of the Drosophila adaptor protein Dreadlocks maintain the size and stability of germline ring canals’, published in JCS. Kara conducted the research described in this article while an undergraduate research assistant in Dr Lindsay Lewellyn's lab at Butler University, Indianapolis, IN. She is now a PhD student in the lab of Dr Zhao Zhang at Duke University, Durham, NC, investigating how transposon mobilization interacts with the immune system during development.

Group activities and game-based learning to keep students connected to their academic communities

Challenges experienced by students with online teaching include maintaining connectivity to the academic community. To overcome students feeling ‘silo-ed’ and to maintain their motivation, the faculty at Butler University enhanced group activities with game-based learning. Group activities included problem-based learning exercises and students working together to expand concept maps. These provided the opportunity for students to interact with the content, to interact with their peers and to interact with faculty. Students found these group activities effective ways of applying their knowledge in a timely manner. Game-based learning platforms that were utilised included quizzes that took place in-class as well as during review sessions. These enabled students to keep abreast of the material they were learning in class and identify gaps in their comprehension. The quizzes generated dynamic class discussions which enabled students to learn from each other.

A Prelude to Civil War: The Religious Nonprofit Sector as a Civil Means of Debate over Slavery, Christian Higher Education, and Religious Philanthropy in the Stone-Campbell Movement

This paper examines the role of Christian higher education and religious philanthropy in the debate over slavery prior to the Civil War. Competing religious views regarding slavery led to the founding of Indiana’s abolitionist Butler University. The school’s decision to brazenly support the cause of abolition directly conflicted with the leadership of The Disciples of Christ and mired the Indianapolis school in one of the most impassioned debates about the role of religious practice in civic life in the nineteenth century. In this case, the religious nonprofit sector functioned as battlefield upon which competing forces engaged in a form of civil conflict. An examination of the role of Butler University’s philanthropic action provides fresh insight into the debate over slavery brewing on the eve of Civil War and the way individuals use philanthropic institutions, especially religious institutions, as a means to assert their values within society. Research for this study has employed primary archival research of documents held at Butler University, Christian Theological Seminary, and The Indiana Historical Society. The author has consulted period specific newspapers, journals, and handwritten documents. The author has also employed a host of secondary resources ranging from academic journals and religious histories to personal interviews and literature on the State of Indiana.

Book Reviews

Richard S.Eckaus, a Professor of Economics Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reviews “U.S. Energy Policy and the Pursuit of Failure”, by Peter Z. Grossman. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Analyzes the history of U.S. energy policy and the failure of energy policies. Discusses crisis; failure; fuels; the Energy Independence Authority; morality; the connotation of the word ""Apollo" in discussing U.S. energy policy; collapse; crisis 2.0; and modesty. Grossman is the Clarence Efroymson Professor of Economics at Butler University.”