Yearly Archive: 2014

A Greener Walmart?

Last month, Walmart announced “its commitment to create a more sustainable food system.” As The New York Times noted in its report on the announcement, Walmart is “the United States’ largest grocer, and food is its biggest business. So it has enormous clout with food producers and food processing companies…” As a major player, if Walmart succeeds in its “four pillar” initiatives, its efforts can have a significant impact on how food is produced and sold in the US. The four pillars (affordable, accessible, healthier, safe & transparent) touch upon the main aspects of our food system, namely consumer rights, food safety, and public health issues. This kind of initiative highlights how big corporations can create standards that exceed the…

Assessing Learning Outcomes of IRiA Sim

I recently guest-blogged on the Active Learning in Political Science website, giving an overview of the International Relations in Action simulation that I incorporated into my GOV 1320: Topics in International Politics course that I teach at WPI. There’s a new follow-up piece addressing the issue of assessing the learning outcomes of using sims, and specifically pondering how I should assess learning outcomes for this particular sim. Please check it out!

Overview of the IRiA Simulation

At WPI, I’m slated to teach an intro to International Relations course (GOV 1320: Topics in International Politics) every year. Although I’ve taught the class about half a dozen times before at Brooklyn College, it was in a traditional semester format. To rebuild it to fit WPI’s 7-week terms, I decided to implement a longer-term simulation in class to get students into applying theories and concepts almost immediately. I’ll be writing about the experience over on the Active Learning in Political Science site in the next month or so. And the first post is up!

Debating Paid Surrogacy

The New York Times has recently published a series of articles on assisted reproductive technology and on surrogacy in particular. “Room for Debate” has hosted a discussion on surrogacy, with five experts weighing in on the legal and ethical ramifactions of the practice. An article from September 17th further highlights the piecemeal regulatory approach we have in the US for dealing with surrogacy and surrogate contracts. The author, Tamar Lewin, notes that “Seventeen states have laws permitting surrogacy, but they vary greatly in both breadth and restrictions. In 21 states, there is neither a law nor a published case regarding surrogacy…” The wide disparity among state regulations leaves potential parents vulnerable to contract violations. Moreover, the vast differences among states…

Battening Down the Hatches

I’m excited to announce that my team’s proposal, “Battening Down the Hatches: Major Storms & Community Resilience,” was accepted by InTeGrate through SERC (the Science Education Research Center at Carleton College). InTeGrate is “a community program, a collaboration between faculty in the sciences and other disciplines, educational specialists, and evaluation experts at a diverse group of institutions,” which focuses on interdisciplinary methods for teaching about the Earth and sustainability. The “Battening Down the Hatches” team is made up of a geoscientist in New Hampshire, an emergency management specialist in New York, and myself – a political scientist in Massachusetts. We will spend the next two years creating, piloting, and revising a teaching module that focuses on the risks and hazards…

(Infertility + Lack of Regulation) x Capitalism = Surrogacy Tourism

I tweeted recently about an article by Tamar Lewin in The New York Times, “A Surrogacy Agency That Delivered Heartache,” which looked at the disreputable business practices of a “medical tourism company.” The title of this post, (Infertility + Lack of Regulation) x Capitalism = Surrogacy Tourism, was meant to be a little snarky, but it also has deeper meaning. A lack of comprehensive and clear federal regulation of reproductive medicine here in the United States, as well as spotty coverage by insurance companies, impels American patients to look abroad for other options. While the practice is more common for people seeking cosmetic surgery, clinics are beginning to tap into the demand for assisted reproductive technology (ART). There are different…

Food Fight in Maine

A June 18th article in The New York Times, “Maine Court Fight Pits Farmers Against State and One Another,” reveals some of the challenges of regulating local food production and sales. In brief, Jess Bidgood looks at Dan Brown’s efforts to sell unpasteurized milk at his farm stand in Maine. After a few years of selling the milk, along with some other items, state regulators told Brown he must stop because he didn’t have a distributor’s license and he wasn’t using proper labeling. Bidgood writes that “The case has pitted the state against some small-scale farmers and stirred a feud between new homesteaders and longtime family farmers.” The case also provides a good example of the push-and-pull between the different…