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For one merit-based undergraduate scholarship program at Washington University in St. Louis (the University), discovery and dialogue have been essential to the program’s nearly 30-year existence. Named for Dr. John B. Ervin, the first African American Dean at Washington University in St. Louis, the John B. Ervin Scholars Program has attracted, recruited, retained, and graduated over 600 students deemed to exemplify extraordinary commitments to four pillars – scholarship, leadership, service, and diversity. Because the Program’s administrators have cultivated a community grounded in discovery and dialogue, the Ervin Scholars’ resolve to foster a more just and equitable society has deepened over time, perhaps preparing them for this time in which universities, this nation, and our world face crises over race. This resolve has manifested the last few years as Ervin Scholars have responded quickly to racial issues at Washington University in St. Louis and throughout the nation.

With its 30-year foundation, the John B. Ervin Scholars Program continues to develop, nurture, and support young people who advance discovery and dialogue. Drawing on a number of interviews, Program and University publications, and external publications, “A Legacy of Commitment,” the second installment of the Program’s history, demonstrates how the presence, contributions, and achievements of Ervin Scholars have changed Washington University in St. Louis. The Ervin Program has been an important part of the University’s efforts to be more diverse and inclusive, and it will continue to be integral to the University’s current and future plans.

This paper explores masculinity ideologies which influence family perspectives, and therefore, instigate mental distress among Black and White men between the ages of 18–30.

Using a grounded theory approach, 30 in-depth interviews were conducted to explore the social construction of masculinity and investigate the ways in which gender ideologies influence family gender roles.

Black men’s gender ideology was influenced by racial identity and stressed a communal and collaborative identity which can be seen by the reliance on religion and maintaining family financial stability. White employed a pragmatic, individual perspective that emphasized individual behavior in a changing society. They embraced evolving discourses necessary to cope with changing family structure and refocused attention from family of origin conflict.

Though this is a qualitative study, it does provide a starting point for further research on how the family roles of Black and White men affect their mental health.

Few studies have employed a racial comparison research design to investigate mental distress associated with gender ideologies. The paper suggests that moving forward will require, as Black men suggested, adopting a critical racial sociology of gender that emphasizes processes and social structure. Analyzing manhood acts through the lens of social marginality, identity work to claim membership in the male group, and the identification of characteristics to maintain male privileges vis-à-vis women may prove to be useful. Focusing on process allows an exploration of social forces that influence masculinity, gendered household ideologies, and mental health.

The Black Belt of the Deep South with rural areas in the states of Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi has historically faced challenges that come with rural isolation, limited industry and financial services, poor healthcare options, and lack of educational opportunities. In the early 1990s, some institutions of higher education, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities, sought to increase educational opportunities for African Americans living in these areas. This chapter provides a historic case study of a doctoral education program that was founded to increase the number of education leaders, especially African Americans with advanced degrees, who would work in Alabama. As a historic case study, it provides a general overview of the founding of the program including mission and vision, a retrospective of the types of opportunities provided to doctoral students, and reflections on ways in which the program has improved the students' professional practices from both faculty and students. One component of this retrospective is to trace those students living in and working in the Alabama Black Belt. A key understanding undergirding the importance of this work is that as school administrators educational knowledge levels increase, so does the personal knowledge base that they can contribute to the communities in which they live and work. In this way, the educational reach of the doctor of education program leads to improvements in the larger Alabama Black Belt through both community and P-12 school interactions.

Group communication as an area of intellectual interest had its beginnings in communication pedagogy with the goal of helping students to become more effective decision makers. A by-product is that group decision making became and remained a central research focus for many years. In the last 20 years, group communication research has facilitated the development of theory, research methods, and technology. Since 2000, group communication scholars have developed research lines on (1) virtual/digital team communication; (2) information sharing, hidden profile, and transactive memory systems; and (3) group participation. This chapter also explores the way in which group communication scholars have become connected with other disciplines that study groups and teams. The chapter concludes with current research methods trends, including interaction analysis, multilevel modeling, and qualitative methods.

There is always a significant amount of speculation as to how the American diet changes over time. Some of speculation is based on what’s good for people, and others base their speculation on various supply and demand issues and the impact of world social changes. However one approach to forecasting the demand for various food products in the American diet is to extrapolate how America’s eating habits would change based on two different scenarios. The first scenario is an cohort model. In this scenario individuals continue their eating habits as they get older. The second scenario is the aging model, with which it is assumed that as people age they adopt the eating habits of the group that they’re moving into.

In this chapter we will evaluate these two scenario-based extrapolation models for projecting food consumption. Data comes from the National Health and Nutrition Examination survey (NHANES), which is conducted regularly by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). It measures levels of consumption with a level accuracy usually not associated with traditional business data services. The specific food items consumed in a 24-hour period are collected for over 30,000 people along with an extensive list of biometric, anthropometric, social, and clinical variables.

The models we evaluate assume that new consumers will enter the market based on projected population growth rates and that consumers “exit” the market based on projected death rates. This chapter applies the models to a subset of the total food variables in the database. Food groups that are pertinent to current issues were selected, such as beef, carbonated soft drinks, and snack foods.

The models forecast food consumption of the by 5 year increments from age 1 to age 85+ an aging cohort model extrapolate how eating habits could be expected to changeover this time interval. The implications of this exercise are essential to the forecasting and management of food processors. The extrapolations may provide guidance for potential changes in capital investment or entry into other markets.