CU Boulder prof gets MAJOR cred
Feb 9th
CU-Boulder Professor Elected to
National Academy of Engineering
National Academy of Engineering
Diane McKnight, professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering and a fellow of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado Boulder, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
McKnight is among 66 new members and 10 foreign associates of the academy announced today. She joins 16 other faculty from the campus who have been elected since the academy’s formation in 1962.
Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions accorded an engineer. Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice or education” and to the “pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.”
McKnight was recognized for making clear the interrelationship between natural organic matter and heavy metals in streams and lakes.
Her research expertise is in the interactions between freshwater biota, trace metals, and natural organic material in diverse freshwater environments, including lakes and streams in the Colorado Rocky Mountains and in the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica.
In the Rocky Mountains, she has focused on the impact of metal contamination in acid mine drainage streams and the influence of climate change and nitrogen deposition on alpine lakes and wetlands. McKnight has interacted with many state and local groups involved in mine drainage and watershed issues in the Rocky Mountains.
“Diane is a worldwide leader in the interactive effect of metals in our water system with natural organic matter,” said Professor Ross Corotis, who was dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science when McKnight joined the faculty and the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research in 1996. “In addition to her advanced research for protecting environments from the Antarctic to the Rocky Mountains, she is a leader in developing books for children to help them learn about the water cycle.”
McKnight has been working in Antarctica since 1987, and is a leading investigator studying extreme life at the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long Term Ecological Research site funded by the National Science Foundation. In the harsh polar environment, stream channels flow only a few weeks out of the year and the only life forms inhabiting the area are microorganisms, mosses, lichens and a few groups of invertebrates.
She wrote and published a children’s book, “The Lost Seal,” in 2006, that tells the true story of a wayward seal discovered near the research camp in 1990 and its eventual rescue. The story gives children an understanding of Antarctica’s extreme environment and the work of scientists there.
She earned three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1975, a master’s degree in civil engineering in 1978 and a doctorate in environmental engineering in 1979.
She was a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Research Program for 17 years before she came to CU-Boulder. She was named a fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2004 and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2009.
She is a former member of the National Research Council’s Water Science and Technology Board and Polar Research Board, and she received a Meritorious Service Award from the U.S. Geological Survey in 1995.
Other CU-Boulder faculty who have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, and their years of election, are: Bernard Amadei, 2008; George Born and Kaspar Willam, 2004; Ross Corotis and Fred Glover, 2002; Frank Barnes, 2001; Delores Etter, 2000; Martin Mikulas, 1999; Valerian Tatarskii, elected a foreign associate in 1994; Earl Gossard, 1990; Don Hearth and Richard Strauch, 1989; Jacques Pankove, 1986; Richard Seebass (deceased), 1985; Klaus Timmerhaus (deceased), 1975; and Max Peters (deceased), 1969.
CU study: Polarization fans the flames of political activism. Huh??
Feb 9th
Americans overestimate political polarization,
according to new CU-Boulder research
according to new CU-Boulder research
Many Americans overestimate the degree of polarization between Democrats and Republicans, and this misconception is associated with citizens’ voting behavior and their involvement in political activities, according to new findings from the University of Colorado Boulder.
“It is clear that Americans see themselves as very sharply polarized,” said Professor Leaf Van Boven, who led the research efforts. “And that the extent of perceived polarization dramatically overstates the actual degree of polarization.”
Van Boven of CU-Boulder’s psychology and neuroscience department and Professor John Chambers of the University of Florida presented findings of two studies on political polarization last month at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in San Diego.
In one study, which included a nationally representative sample of 1,000 voting age respondents during the 2008 presidential campaign, Van Boven and his colleagues found that individuals with more extreme partisan attitudes perceived greater polarization than those with less extreme partisan attitudes. For example, in the 2008 presidential election, people who strongly supported either Obama or McCain perceived Americans as more divided than did those whose support of either candidate was more moderate.
In another study, which included an analysis using a subset of 26,000 respondents from three decades of surveys of Americans, the researchers determined that the average gap between Republicans and Democrats on five-point scales regarding different issues such as the death penalty and abortion was approximately three-quarters of a point. However, people believed there was a scale difference of two points or more between the two parties.
“The more strongly people feel about an issue, the more divided they see other Americans,” Van Boven said.
The data also suggest that the people who perceive the most division among Americans are also the most likely to vote in elections.
“It seems that the people who see the most polarization are also more likely to engage in various kinds of political activities, including joining campaigns, persuading other people and contributing to PACs,” Van Boven said. He expects that both major political parties may try to benefit from the perceived polarization of voters during the current presidential election year.
“If I were a strategist and I saw that maybe I could get a 5 percent increase in turnout on my side by increasing people’s perceptions of polarization, I know exactly what I would do,” he said. “I would push toward increased perceptions of polarization.
“There certainly is a sound scientific basis for the strategy of making the other side seem very strong, very extreme and very active,” he said. “If I think the other side is really fired up and they are going to turn out the vote, that becomes a threat to me. So that might motivate me to vote.”
CU-Boulder Professor Charles Judd of the psychology and neuroscience department and Professor David Sherman of the University of California, Santa Barbara, were co-authors with Van Boven on the paper titled “False polarization of the American electorate.” Van Boven, CU-Boulder doctoral candidate Jacob Westfall and Professor John Chambers of the University of Florida co-authored the other paper titled “Political polarization projection.”
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