Preparing writing centers and tutors for literacy mediation for working class campus-staff

Writing centers work with writers; traditionally services have been focused on undergraduates taking composition classes. More recently, centers have started to attract a wider client base including: students taking labs that require writing; graduate students; and ESL students learning the conventions of U.S. communication. There are very few centers, however, which identify themselves as open to working with all members of the campus-community. Michigan Technological University has one such center. In the Michigan Tech writing center, doors are open to “all students, faculty and staff.” While graduate students, post docs, and professors preparing articles for publication have used the center, for the first time in the collective memory of the center UAW staff members requested center appointments in the summer of 2008. These working class employees were in the process of filling out a work related document, the UAW Position Audit, an approximately seven-page form. This form was their one avenue for requesting a review of the job they were doing; the review was the first step in requesting a raise in job level and pay. This study grew out of the realization that implicit literacy expectations between working class United Auto Workers (UAW) staff and professional class staff were complicating the filling out and filing of the position audit form. Professional class supervisors had designed the form as a measure of fairness, in that each UAW employee on campus was responding to the same set of questions about their work. However, the implicit literacy expectations of supervisors were different from those of many of the employees who were to fill out the form. As a result, questions that were meant to be straightforward to answer were in the eyes of the employees filling out the form, complex. Before coming to the writing center UAW staff had spent months writing out responses to the form; they expressed concerns that their responses still would not meet audience expectations. These writers recognized that they did not yet know exactly what the audience was expecting. The results of this study include a framework for planning writing center sessions that facilitate the acquisition of literacy practices which are new to the user. One important realization from this dissertation is that the social nature of literacy must be kept in the forefront when both planning sessions and when educating tutors to lead these sessions. Literacy scholars such as James Paul Gee, Brian Street, and Shirley Brice Heath are used to show that a person can only know those literacy practices that they have previously acquired. In order to acquire new literacy practices, a person must have social opportunities for hands-on practice and mentoring from someone with experience. The writing center can adapt theory and practices from this dissertation that will facilitate sessions for a range of writers wishing to learn “new” literacy practices. This study also calls for specific changes to writing center tutor education.

PRODUCTION OF BIOFUEL INTERMEDIATES FROM WOODY FEEDSTOCKS VIA FAST PYROLYSIS AND TORREFACTION

The main objective of this research was to investigate pyrolysis and torrefaction of forest biomass species using a micropyrolysis instrument. It was found that 30-45% of the original sample mass remained as bio-char in the pyrolysis temperature range of 500 - 700˚C for aspen, balsam, and switchgrass. The non-char mass was converted to gaseous and vapor products, of which 10-55% was water and syngas, 2-12% to acetic acid, 2-12% to hydroxypropanone, 1-3% to furaldehyde, and 5-15% to various phenolic compounds. In addition, several general trends in the evolution of gaseous species were indentified when woody feedstocks were pyrolyzed. With increasing temperature it was observed that: (1) the volume of gas produced increased, (2) the volume of CO2 decreased and the volumes of CO and CH4 increased, and (3) the rates of gas evolution increased. In the range of torrefaction temperature (200 - 300˚C), two mechanistic models were developed to predict the rates of CO2 and acetic acid product formation. The models fit the general trend of the experimental data well, but suggestions for future improvement were also noted. Finally, it was observed that using torrefaction as a pre-curser to pyrolysis improves the quality of bio-oil over traditional pyrolysis by reducing the acidity through removal of acetic acid, reducing the O/C ratio by removal of some oxygenated species, and removing a portion of the water.

An investigation of phenolic glycoside and condensed tannin homeostasis in Populus by salicyl alcohol feeding to cell cultures and by transgenic manipulation of the sucrose transporter, PTSUT4, in planta

Secondary metabolites play an important role in plant protection against biotic and abiotic stress. In Populus, phenolic glycosides (PGs) and condensed tannins (CTs) are two such groups of compounds derived from the common phenylpropanoid pathway. The basal levels and the inducibility of PGs and CTs depend on genetic as well as environmental factors, such as soil nitrogen (N) level. Carbohydrate allocation, transport and sink strength also affect PG and CT levels. A negative correlation between the levels of PGs and CTs was observed in several studies. However, the molecular mechanism underlying such relation is not known. We used a cell culture system to understand negative correlation of PGs and CTs. Under normal culture conditions, neither salicin nor higher-order PGs accumulated in cell cultures. Several factors, such as hormones, light, organelles and precursors were discussed in the context of aspen suspension cells’ inability to synthesize PGs. Salicin and its isomer, isosalicin, were detected in cell cultures fed with salicyl alcohol, salicylaldehyde and helicin. At higher levels (5 mM) of salicyl alcohol feeding, accumulation of salicins led to reduced CT production in the cells. Based on metabolic and gene expression data, the CT reduction in salicin-accumulating cells is partly a result of regulatory changes at the transcriptional level affecting carbon partitioning between growth processes, and phenylpropanoid CT biosynthesis. Based on molecular studies, the glycosyltransferases, GT1-2 and GT1-246, may function in glycosylation of simple phenolics, such as salicyl alcohol in cell cultures. The uptake of such glycosides into vacuole may be mediated to some extent by tonoplast localized multidrug-resistance associated protein transporters, PtMRP1 and PtMRP6. In Populus, sucrose is the common transported carbohydrate and its transport is possibly regulated by sucrose transporters (SUTs). SUTs are also capable of transporting simple PGs, such as salicin. Therefore, we characterized the SUT gene family in Populus and investigated, by transgenic analysis, the possible role of the most abundantly expressed member, PtSUT4, in PG-CT homeostasis using plants grown under varying nitrogen regimes. PtSUT4 transgenic plants were phenotypically similar to the wildtype plants except that the leaf area-to-stem volume ratio was higher for transgenic plants. In SUT4 transgenics, levels of non-structural carbohydrates, such as sucrose and starch, were altered in mature leaves. The levels of PGs and CTs were lower in green tissues of transgenic plants under N-replete, but were higher under N-depleted conditions, compared to the levels in wildtype plants. Based on our results, SUT4 partly regulates N-level dependent PG-CT homeostasis by differential carbohydrate allocation.