UCA political science professor Gary Wekkin and recent UCA graduate Jared Stewart won the Southwestern Political Science Association’s 2007 Allan Saxe Best Paper on State and Local Politics Award for their paper, “Moral Values or Presidential Coattails?: Did Gay Marriage Ballot Measures Boost Social Conservative Support for Republican Candidates in 2004?” which was co-authored with Andrew Dowdle and Leslie Piatt of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. The award, which includes a $500 prize was presented at the SWPSA meeting in Albuquerque. The paper contests the prevailing view that “protect marriage” ballot initiatives helped George W. Bush win re-election in 2004. Using Oklahoma and Ohio county vote data as well as the Arkansas county data, neither GIS mapping nor regression analysis reveal any variance between “protect marriage” voting across counties won-or-lost by Bush or by Republican candidates for U.S. Senate. Democratic counties showed the same voting tendencies toward protect marriage that Republican counties did.
UCA assistant professor Terri Hebert of the College of Education received notification of having a chapter accepted into the Teacher Education Yearbook XVI, published in partnership with the Association of Teacher Educators. The book chapter is entitled, “Calling for a Renaissance of Care,” and was written in partnership with Advanced Studies in Teaching and Learning students Tami Burcham, a teacher in Greenbrier, and Tara Gordon, a teacher in Little Rock. The article sought to highlight the influence that caring educators can have on all students, especially those that seemingly have lost interest in learning or have little to no parental influence in their educational experience.
