Latest news with #HarveyMuddCollege
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
California wildfires force students to think about the connections between STEM and society
Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching. 'STEM & Social Impact: Climate Change' Harvey Mudd College's mission is to educate STEM students – short for science, technology, engineering and math – so they have a 'clear understanding of the impact of their work on society.' But the 'impact' part of our mission has been the most challenging to realize. When our college revised its 'Core Curriculum' in 2020, our faculty decided we should create a new required impact course for all students. The course is taught by a team of eight instructors who share their own disciplinary perspectives and help students critically analyze proposed interventions for increasing wildfire risks. Our instructors teach biology, chemistry, computer science and mathematics. The class also includes scholars focused on media studies, political science religious studies and science, technology and society. The course focuses on California wildfires so students can think critically about the ways STEM and social values shape each other. For example, in 1911, U.S. Forest Service deputy F. E. Olmsted applied the Social Darwinist idea of 'survival of the fittest' to forest management. Reflecting the prevailing views of his era, he believed that competition was the driving force behind biology, economics and human progress – where the strong thrive and the weak fail. Olmsted said it was good forestry and good economics to let the forests grow unchecked. This policy would yield straight and tall 'merchantable timber' suitable for sale and the needs of industry. He also rejected 'light burning,' which Native Americans had used for centuries to manage forest ecosystems and reduce the flammable undergrowth. We live with the consequences of such reasoning 100 years later. Fires speed through overgrown land at alarming rates and release enormous amounts of carbon and other particulate matter into the atmosphere. Climate change is arguably the most pressing concern of our time. And wildfires are particularly relevant to those of us in fire-prone areas like Southern California. Public distrust of science is increasing. Consequently, society needs skilled STEM practitioners who can understand and communicate how scientific interventions will have different consequences and appeal to different stakeholders. For example, Los Angeles first responders have been using drones for search and rescue and to gather real-time information about fire lines since at least 2015. But the public is not always comfortable with drones flying over populated areas. The Los Angeles Fire Department has fielded enough citizen concerns about 'snooping drones' and government concerns about data collection that it developed strict drone policies in consultation with regulators and the American Civil Liberties Union. The course's focus on writing, critical thinking and climate change science prepares students to participate in public discussions about such interventions. By making students consider the impact of their future work, we also hope they will be proactive about the careers they want to pursue, whether it involves climate change or not. Not everyone benefits in the same way from a single innovation. For example, low-income and rural Americans are less likely to benefit from the lower operating costs and lower pollution of electric vehicles. That's because inadequate investment in public charging infrastructure makes owning them less practical. The course's interdisciplinary approach helps to expose these kinds of structural inequities. We want students to get in the habit of asking questions about any technological solution. They include questions like: Who is likely to benefit, and how? Who has historically wielded power in this situation? Whose voices are being included? What assumptions have been made? Which values are being prioritized? We combine popular and scholarly sources. Students watch two documentaries about the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California, which killed 85 people. They analyze wildfire data using the Pandas library, an open-source data manipulation library for the Python computer programming language. They also read a Union of Concerned Scientists report examining fossil fuel companies' culpability for increased risk of wildfires. And they analyze the environmental historian William Cronon's classic indictment of the environmentalist movement for romanticizing an idea of a pristine 'wilderness' while absolving themselves of the responsibility to protect the rest of nature – humans, cities, farms, industries. We also examine poetry by Ada Limón, indigenous ecology and Engaged Buddhism. The final assignment for the course asks students to critically analyze a proposed intervention dealing with growing California wildfire risk using the disciplinary tools they have learned. For example, they could choose the increased deployment of 'beneficial fires' to reduce flammable biomass in forests. For this intervention, we expect that students would address topics like the historical erasure of Indigenous knowledge of prescribed burning, financial liabilities associated with controlled burning, and scientific research on the efficacy of beneficial fires. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Erika Dyson, Harvey Mudd College and Darryl Yong, Harvey Mudd College Read more: AI can boost economic growth, but it needs to be managed incredibly carefully National parks teach students about environmental issues in this course How researchers measure wildfire smoke exposure doesn't capture long-term health effects − and hides racial disparities Darryl Yong is a professor at Harvey Mudd College and co-directs Math for America Los Angeles. His work has been funded by the National Science Foundation. Erika Dyson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
New York Times
29-01-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Iris Cummings Critchell, 104, Dies; Swimmer Turned Prominent Aviator
Iris Cummings Critchell, a swimmer who was the last survivor of the American team that competed in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin and an influential aviator who flew bombers as a pilot with the Women's Air Force in World War II, died on Friday in Claremont, Calif. She was 104. Her death was announced by Harvey Mudd College, in Claremont, where she was an instructor of aeronautics emerita. Ms. Critchell was 15 years old and known as Iris Cummings when she competed in Berlin, in Games in which Adolf Hitler hoped to showcase the supposed superiority of Nazi Germany's Aryan athletes. She had started swimming competitively a few years earlier, after her parents took her to the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, where her father served as a track-and-field official. She excelled in the trials for the 1936 Olympic team, but she and the other members struggled to raise funds for the trip to Hamburg, Germany, from New York on the steamship Manhattan. 'We had been wandering around trying to raise money, not training,' she told Swimming World magazine in 1984. 'In those 10 days before the boat sailed, I didn't even get in a pool, I never saw a coach, and I didn't have any chance to train. I think we may have gone back to Philadelphia for five days and then back to New York, because we couldn't afford hotels in New York.' Most members of the team eventually found sponsors, arriving in Berlin 'less than two weeks before the first competitions,' she said. The sights that greeted them elicited dread. 'Everywhere you went, there were the goose-stepping police and the guards,' she told the LA84 Foundation, a philanthropic organization that funds youth sports, in 1988. 'There was a sense of the impending future, a sense of the wish for dominance by the Germans and Hitler.' But the dominant figure at the Summer Games was Jesse Owens, a Black athlete who won four gold medals in track — a rebuke to the Nazis' claim that Aryans were the superior race. While Iris didn't win a medal at the 1936 Olympics, she went on to capture three national 200-meter breaststroke titles. But after the 1940 Olympics in wartime Tokyo were canceled, she put competitive swimming aside in favor of another passion that would hold her interest for the rest of her life: flying. Iris Cummings was born on Dec. 21, 1920, in Los Angeles. Her father was a physician and sports enthusiast who had been the athletic director at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Her mother, a graduate of Swarthmore, taught high school Latin and Greek. When Iris was 8, she saw the celebrity aviator Charles Lindbergh in a Los Angeles air show. That was the beginning of her fascination with flight. In the late 1930s, while she was still swimming competitively, she began taking flying lessons and earned a pilot's license. By the time the United States entered World War II in 1941, she was adept enough to join the elite unit known as the Women's Air Force Service Pilots, or the WASPs. Based in Long Beach, Calif., she flew fighter planes and bombers assembled in California to an airport in Newark, where they were loaded onto ships and sent to England. It was during this assignment that she met her future husband, Howard Critchell, a bomber pilot stationed in Louisiana, where she stopped for refueling. They were married on Christmas Eve in 1944. After the war, Ms. Critchell received a bachelor's degree with a concentration in science and mathematics from the University of Southern California, where she went on to teach aviation — an uncommon accomplishment for a woman at the time. Ms. Critchell's 'intellectual and academic inspiration,' she once told NBC Sports, was her mother, who was a 'college graduate and a high school language teacher when very few women ever went to college.' In 1962, she and Mr. Critchell, who was working as a commercial pilot for Western Airlines, began teaching in the Bates Foundation Aeronautics Program at Harvey Mudd College, where their students included the future astronauts George Nelson and Stanley G. Love. Ms. Critchell ran the program on her own after Mr. Critchell retired from teaching in 1979. When the program was shut down in 1990, she remained affiliated with the college, lecturing and working as a librarian there. Mr. Critchell died in 2015. Ms. Critchell is survived by their daughter, Sandie Clary; their son, Robin Critchell; three grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren. In addition to her work at Harvey Mudd College, Ms. Critchell created aviation outreach programs for public high schools, developed manuals for the Federal Aviation Administration and worked as a pilot examiner there for more than 20 years. She was a longtime member of the Ninety-Nines, a nonprofit organization supporting female pilots. She also competed in women's transcontinental air races, known informally as the Powder Puff Derby, a term coined by Will Rogers. In 1957, she finished first in a race to Philadelphia from San Mateo, Calif., sharing an $800 prize with her co-pilot, Alice Roberts. Ms. Critchell was inducted into the National Association of Flight Instructors Hall of Fame in 2000. Her other honors included the F.A.A.'s Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award, in 2006, and the Nile Gold Medal from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, in 2007. But for her, the flying was the real prize. 'It's a treat to be up there with the elements and appreciate it all,' she once remarked. Shortly before ending her career as a pilot in 2016, she said, 'I've been flying 76 years, and it's a privilege to just be around.'
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Iris Cummings Critchell, last living Olympian from 1936 Berlin Games and aviation pioneer, dies at 104
Iris Cummings Critchell, an aviation pioneer who was believed to be the last living Olympian from the 1936 Berlin Games, died last Friday at age 104. Her death was confirmed by the IOC and by Harvey Mudd College, where she launched an aeronautics program. "Iris was a beloved instructor and mentor to countless Harvey Mudd College students and alumni, a pioneering female pilot in the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS), an Olympic athlete, and a dear friend to many in our community," Harvey Mudd College President Harriet B. Nembhard wrote in a letter. "While we are deeply saddened by her passing, we stand in awe of the tremendous accomplishments and life of such an amazing human being. Our thoughts are with her family as well as with all those she touched during her time with us." After making the 1936 Olympic team at swimming trials, Critchell, then 15, and other athletes were told there weren't enough funds to send everybody on the 10-day trip to Germany. 'The S.S. Manhattan sails in five days. Get out and raise as much money as you can from your hometown," Critchell was told. "My mother and I telegraphed our local newspaper, and a small amount was sent in from Redondo Beach.' While at sea, the U.S. swimmers had one 20-foot-by-20-foot pool in which to train. At the Opening Ceremony, Critchell took pictures of the Hindenburg flying above. She said she later watched Jesse Owens race from an athlete section at the Olympic Stadium. 'Most of us were quite aware of the evolving difficulties or however you want to classify the rise of Nazism in Germany,' Critchell said in a 2015 interview for the NBC Sports film "More than Gold" on Owens at the Berlin Games. 'We'd heard the same rumors (about a U.S. boycott). We were all wondering if the Olympic committee was going to take action before the boat sailed. That had come up in most everyone's minds.' She finished fourth in her 100m breaststroke heat in Berlin, the last Games until 1948 due to World War II. She then attended the University of Southern California and enrolled in a pilot training program in 1939. She earned her license the next year and worked as a flight instructor during the war. She became a pilot for the AAF Ferry Command in the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, later included in the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs). As one of the first women to pilot U.S. military aircraft, she flew over 25 types of aircraft across the U.S. during World War II, according to the National Women Airforce Service Pilots World War II Museum. 'There were only 21 of us [women] who ever flew the P-38,' she said, 'and there were only four of us who ever flew the P-61 Black Widow.' Critchell estimated she flew more than 50 types of aircraft in all before she stopped piloting after more than 75 years in 2016. After the war, she married Howard Critchell and had two children. She developed curricula for the Federal Aviation Administration, plus founded the Harvey Mudd College aeronautics program in 1961 along with her husband. "Iris's contributions to aviation extended beyond her achievements," the Ninety-Nines, an international organization of licensed women pilots of which Critchell was a member, posted on Tuesday. "She became an inspiring mentor to other aspiring female pilots, advocating for greater inclusion and opportunities for women in the field. Her lectures, writings, and advocacy efforts helped to pave the way for future generations of women aviators, ensuring that the sky was no longer the limit for their dreams. Her legacy is one of breaking barriers and challenging norms, proving that one can truly soar to new heights with passion and perseverance." She was inducted into the National Flight Instructors Hall of Fame, among many honors. "It's a treat to be up there with the elements and appreciate it all,' she said in 2015. 'It's you and the air movement and the wind and what you can do with your airplane.' Iris Cummings, last living 1936 U.S. Olympian, has flown ever since Berlin Iris Cummings, a swimmer turned Hall of Fame pilot, is the last living U.S. Olympian from the 1936 Berlin Games. Nick Zaccardi, Nick Zaccardi,
NBC Sports
29-01-2025
- Sport
- NBC Sports
Iris Cummings Critchell, last living Olympian from 1936 Berlin Games and aviation pioneer, dies at 104
Iris Cummings Critchell, an aviation pioneer who was believed to be the last living Olympian from the 1936 Berlin Games, died last Friday at age 104. Her death was confirmed by the IOC and by Harvey Mudd College, where she launched an aeronautics program. 'Iris was a beloved instructor and mentor to countless Harvey Mudd College students and alumni, a pioneering female pilot in the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS), an Olympic athlete, and a dear friend to many in our community,' Harvey Mudd College President Harriet B. Nembhard wrote in a letter. 'While we are deeply saddened by her passing, we stand in awe of the tremendous accomplishments and life of such an amazing human being. Our thoughts are with her family as well as with all those she touched during her time with us.' After making the 1936 Olympic team at trials, Critchell, then 15, and other swimmers were told there weren't enough funds to send everybody on the 10-day trip to Germany. 'The S.S. Manhattan sails in five days. Get out and raise as much money as you can from your hometown,' Critchell was told. 'My mother and I telegraphed our local newspaper, and a small amount was sent in from Redondo Beach.' While at sea, the U.S. swimmers had one 20-foot-by-20-foot pool in which to train. At the Opening Ceremony, Critchell took pictures of the Hindenburg flying above. She said she later watched all of Jesse Owens' races from an athlete section at the Olympic Stadium. 'Most of us were quite aware of the evolving difficulties or however you want to classify the rise of Nazism in Germany,' Critchell said in a 2015 interview for the NBC Sports film 'More than Gold' on Owens at the Berlin Games. 'We'd heard the same rumors (about a U.S. boycott). We were all wondering if the Olympic committee was going to take action before the boat sailed. That had come up in most everyone's minds.' She finished fourth in her 100m breaststroke heat in Berlin, the last Games until 1948 due to World War II. She then attended the University of Southern California and enrolled in a pilot training program in 1939. She earned her license the next year and worked as a flight instructor during the war. She became a pilot for the AAF Ferry Command in the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, later included in the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs). As one of the first women to pilot U.S. military aircraft, she flew over 25 types of aircraft across the U.S. during World War II, according to the National Women Airforce Service Pilots World War II Museum. 'There were only 21 of us [women] who ever flew the P-38,' she said, 'and there were only four of us who ever flew the P-61 Black Widow.' Critchell estimated she flew more than 50 types of aircraft in all before she stopped piloting after more than 75 years in 2016. After the war, she married Howard Critchell and had two children. She developed curricula for the Federal Aviation Administration, plus founded the Harvey Mudd College aeronautics program in 1961 along with her husband. 'Iris's contributions to aviation extended beyond her achievements,' the Ninety-Nines, an international organization of licensed women pilots of which Critchell was a member, posted on Tuesday. 'She became an inspiring mentor to other aspiring female pilots, advocating for greater inclusion and opportunities for women in the field. Her lectures, writings, and advocacy efforts helped to pave the way for future generations of women aviators, ensuring that the sky was no longer the limit for their dreams. Her legacy is one of breaking barriers and challenging norms, proving that one can truly soar to new heights with passion and perseverance.' She was inducted into the National Flight Instructors Hall of Fame, among many honors. 'It's a treat to be up there with the elements and appreciate it all,' she said in 2015. 'It's you and the air movement and the wind and what you can do with your airplane.' Nick Zaccardi,
