Browsing by Author "Pencek, Bruce"

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9
  • Thumbnail Image
    Coevolution of library services, scholarly communication infrastructures, and emergent academic fields: the ongoing case of veterans studies
    Pencek, Bruce; Higgins, Jason A.; McGandy, Michael (University of Michigan Press, 2023-11-28)
    A decade ago, an archivist and a librarian asked the Charleston Conference: Is your library ready for an emergent academic field? (Brodsky and Pencek 2013) Here we present a history of that emerging academic field, veterans studies, emphasizing its coevolution with library services that support scholarly communication. These culminated in a flourishing open-access journal, a biennial conference, and a scholarly association to coordinate them. Ultimately, a local initiative became an international network that attracted federal grants and publisher interest. But even with scholars’ networks growing and librarians promoting access and preservation, a key question before the field is whether today's publishing ecosystem can be sufficiently robust and diversified to carry forward the multidisciplinary, transnational intellectual project laid out in the Veterans Studies Association’s scope statement (VSA 2022). Although a peculiar convergence of opportunities made possible one library’s contribution to the institutionalization of veterans studies, university libraries' intellectual and technological resources – even in their early stages – to support their own communities may be better equipped than they assume to help scholars grow new fields of research and instruction.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Creating Better Citizens? Investigating U.S. Marine Corps Basic Training
    Hodges, Eric (Virginia Tech, 2014-05-08)
    Yonkman and Bridgeland (2009) and Nesbit (2011) have each offered studies in recent years in which military veterans reported possessing skills and values that facilitate civic engagement. I investigated these claims by exploring basic training in one branch of the United States (U.S.) military, the Marine Corps. I conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 10 enlisted Marine Corps veterans and 7 drill instructors to ascertain their perceptions regarding the didactic aspirations and pedagogies of their service's basic training related to skills and values development. I utilized a civic capacities model developed by Verba, Schlozman, and Brady (1995) and Kirlin (2003) to examine whether Marines' entry training could be classified as civic in character. According to this study/s participants, Marine Corps Basic Training did teach skills and values that qualify as civic dispositions. I also explored several pedagogical strategies utilized by the Marines, such as learning communities, role modeling, narrative pedagogy and the use of a capstone exercise, which could be applied by civic educators. Topics for future research of the sort undertaken here include both national and international comparative studies of entry-level military training, the effects of combat on veterans' civic dispositions and whether and how community involvement can aid in veterans' transitions to civilian life.
  • Thumbnail Image
    An Epidemiology of Information: Data Mining the 1918 Influenza Epidemic Project Report
    Hausman, Bernice L.; Pencek, Bruce; Ramakrishnan, Naren; Eysenbach, Gunther; Ewing, E. Thomas; Kerr, Kathleen; Gad, Samah (2014-04-07)
    This project research report describes the results of four case studies undertaken as part of Virginia Tech’s “An Epidemiology of Information: Data Mining the 1918 Flu Pandemic,” which was funded through the Digging into Data Challenge of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
  • Thumbnail Image
    A Need for Government Intervention? Prescription Drug Prices and Retail Mark-ups
    Pearson, Susan (Virginia Tech, 2011-02-04)
    The high cost of prescription drugs has been an issue that numerous federal agencies have examined for years. In 2003, Congress passed the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act, better known as Medicare Part D, in an effort to ease the burden of skyrocketing prescription prices for citizens 65 and older. While much of the discussion has focused on the impact on Medicare and Medicaid, the search for the source of high prescription drug prices has possible benefits for all patients. Unfortunately, the vast majority of research into this topic focuses only on the manufacturers of prescription drugs. This thesis examined the relationship between wholesale and retail prices of prescription drugs to discover whether this is another possible source of high prescription drug costs that policy makers need to consider. The findings suggest that more research is warranted. Many of the pharmacies surveyed reported unexpected negative mark-ups. Moreover, the Average Wholesale Rice evidently is not an accurate basis for comparison with actual retail prices. The findings suggest that more research is warranted, including studies by federal legislative and executive branch actors with investigatory authority.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Race and/or Reconciliation : Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Veterans in Society
    (Virginia Tech, 2016)
    The Veterans in Society (ViS) research group is proud to present the proceedings of the Third Conference on Veterans in Society: Race and/or Reconciliation, with papers that represent a wide range of research and community engagement, and a focus that speaks to the growth of our work over the past several years.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Raising the bar: An approach to reviewing and revising standards for professional achievement for library faculty
    Lener, Edward F.; Pencek, Bruce; Ariew, Susan (ACRL Publications, 2004-07)
    The committee revising the retention, promotion, and continued appointment policy in the Virginia Tech libraries took a broad view of its task in articulating its goal, gathering information from internal and external sources, allocating drafting responsibilities, and winning support. The committee's work revealed an unexpected need and led to an explicit affirmation of professional obligations of librarians to one another. Thus, adoption of the new policy and the principles it embodied became a lever for changes in the organizational culture.
  • Thumbnail Image
    U.S. Military Student Veterans Identity Formation: Policy Feedback and Symbolic Interactionism
    Krewson, Rosa Castillo (Virginia Tech, 2019-07-14)
    This dissertation takes a three-article approach in which the literature from public administration, political psychology and sociology is synthesized around student veterans as a new phenomenon in higher education and public policy. By examining student veterans through the Social Construction of Target Populations (SCTP) framework, these articles contribute to the theoretical understanding of how social identity at the group and individual levels impact a target population's understanding of and reaction to a policy that does not always align with the policy-makers' intent. Because the current SCTP literature has focused on how policy-makers construct target populations and the practices they use to mitigate any negative effects of policy feedback, these articles offer a new perspective by applying symbolic interactionism as a method for capturing the two-way interaction between the target population and the policy's intent. The articles focus on the policy feedback mechanism in the SCTP framework to explain why and how policies shape the identities of target populations, and how they in turn, engage in the policy process by first presenting student veterans as a new social concept, then presenting a case study of how an organization that represents student veterans achieved policy change, and finally, interviewing veterans, revealing that their individual interpretation of the policy is not always representative of the student veteran identity as constructed by policy-makers and advocates.
  • Thumbnail Image
  • Thumbnail Image
    Veterans in Society: Changing the Discourse - Conference Overview
    Pencek, Bruce (Virginia Tech, 2013)
    The attached document describes the activities, presentations, and speeches that took place during the "Veterans in Society: Changing the Discourse" conference, which was held from April 14-15, 2013 at the Inn at Virginia Tech and Skelton Center. This document provides (1) an overview of the conference, (2) the conference's schedule, (3) a description of the conference's themes and presentations, (4) a biography of the conference's keynote speaker, Dr. Mike Haynie, (5) a biography of the conference's luncheon speaker, Virginia State Senator John Edwards, and (6) registration and travel information for conference attendees.