Day 10, Mat115H

• Announcements:
  • I hope that you had a nice holiday.

• Today we begin finalizing our own "destination". That's our big push, but we have some more to learn from our intervention presentations before we can do that.

• We still have some presentations before us, and I would like to set a new deadline of Monday for the final reports. Two groups are done -- would any other group like to wrap things up today? If so, we'll start with that....
  • Psychology and the hope metric (see Prof. Rachel Clark) -- Kara (and Kensey and Haley)
  • Income inequality -- Marisa and Alli
  • Photography -- Betsy and Cassidy
  • Done: History -- Emily and Sandra
  • Done: Public art and Little Free Libraries -- Melody, Grace, and Robin

  For those groups which are not yet done, please choose Friday or Monday for your reports, and we'll set off some time for those.

• For your presentations I had asked you to focus on these issues:
  1. What did they do (or what are they doing): describe successes and failures
  2. What impact will/did their intervention have/had on 505?
  3. What can we learn from their project?
  4. What advice might they give us as we set off on our own project?
  We learned a few things from our presentations last time, and I want to begin with a discussion of those. I will quote or paraphrase liberally from the Public Art group's paper to jumpstart our conversation:
  • "...intervention is not appropriate at this time."
  • "Could education be the key to 505's success?" Finke's project was "unsuccessful in aiding education" .
  • beginning students were not up to the tasks presented.
  • "Some students lacked motivation and dedication, which is crucial...."
  • "If intervention were possible, then it would have to be with students who are aware of the issue at hand and are prepared for large-scale intervention."
  • Finke's problem: "imposing upon a community that does not need outside help." We need to learn from people who are within their own community.
  • "...there are plenty of ideas about how to help this hurting community, but not enough people going about it in the right way." [Question: in what ways are they "hurting"?]
  • "...we need to increase our own understanding of the issue before we try to take any intervention action."
  Feel free to add other comments for reflection.

• Now let's begin brainstorming about how to proceed.

  Let's suppose that we are not going to "intervene". Let's take as our starting place an attempt to answer my question above: in what ways are they "hurting"? [Further Question: who should answer this question?]

• Provided we can decide the ways in which they are "hurting", then can we measure the hurt, and can we compare across Census areas to determine if 505 -- or the Westside -- is worse off than other areas (locally, regionally, or nationally)?

• Your assignment for next time: provide a written (typed) response (at least two pages) of your own to these questions:
  • How are people in Newport's Westside hurting or healthy?
  • How can we measure the hurt or health?
  • How can we compare Newport's Westside to other areas?

Some Links:

• A GoogleMaps app provided by Doug Hume of Sociology.
• A cool tool to allow you to visualize the neighborhood on several census variables by census tract.
  Here's what may be a commercial version of the same thing? It's got a little more resolution. I'm checking with our library to see if we can have the professional access.
• Tract 505 ACS 2006-2010 census Profiles
• Map showing Census Tract 505
• Google Earth map of the tracts of Kentucky (505 is number 27302)
• What's the Matter With Eastern Kentucky?