Today I met with Beth Ritter-Guth in Second Life to ask her about a science-writing project she will be starting with her students soon. The interview is after the break. Warning: Feral cats ahead.

Beth and I met at Genome Island

Troy: Maybe you could begin by saying where you are and what you do.

Beth: I teach Communication and English full-time at Lehigh Carbon Community College in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania (PA) and composition and literature part-time at DeSales University in Center Valley, PA.

Troy: May I give your Real name?

Beth: Sure – Beth Ritter-Guth.

Troy: I noticed that your Second Life (SL) profile says you’re also working on a PhD?

Beth: Yes, I have an MA in American Literature and my PhD will be in Technical Communication and Rhetoric at Texas Tech.

Troy: Wow so you’re quite busy – thanks for giving me some of your time.

Beth: LOL – I always have time for friends :). In Second Life, I operate a program called Literature Alive!, which is non-profit and geared to college students AND residents [of SL]. At present, it is the only program of its kind and the idea of it came from ISM [the International Spaceflight Museum in SL].

Troy: What does it entail?

Beth: There are 22 immersive literature spaces around the grid – the Edgar Allan Poe House – for example. They ask the visitor to do more than just read notecards. There are quests or challenges and students and residents are encouraged to participate fully in the environment.

Troy: I imagine we could do an interview about Literature Alive! – but today…

Beth: …we are here to talk about a grant that is not necessarily connected to SL. In fact, when it was written, I was not active in SL. It is an NSF grant titled, “A Model for Incorporating Application-based Service Learning in the Undergraduate Science Curriculum and Conducting Research on Community-based Problems.” The PI’s are Nancy Trun, PhD, Becky Morrow, DVM, and Lisa Ludvico, PhD. They are the PIs – and I am a contracted part – or at least my students are.

Troy: Wow the title doesn’t say much about specifics.

Beth: Essentially, the grant is funding a lab at Duquesne that will look at the DNA of feral cat populations. While I don’t know much of the science involved, my students, [who are] technical writers, will work with the students at the various colleges and help them to write effectively in the sciences.

Troy: Ah, okay. Can you remind our gentle readers what a feral cat is?

Beth: A feral cat is a wild domestic cat, so, these aren’t lions or tigers or “wildlife”. They are cats that were abandoned and populated in the wild. They are untouchable by humans, live in packs, usually in the woods.

A feral cat in Kona, Hawaii (Photo credit: Mila Zinkova in the Wikimedia Commons )

Troy: So they are house cats that didn’t come back (the very next day)?

Beth: Well, no. Feral cats live in the wild. Many dumped domesticated cats will try to find human contact.

Troy: Yes that is my experience.

Beth: LOL – Mine, too. These are different – these are the ones that are so far from human contact that they began delivering kittens in the wild and so those kittens are the first true ferals. There have always been feral cats.

Troy: I see. Are they common?

Beth: Very much so.

Troy: In areas far from people?

Beth: Not necessarily. A feral cat population can be in the nearby woods or in the country. Sometimes they populate near garbage dumps. The other thing to know about the truly feral, the truly wild cats, is that it is very hard to get their attention. They will not come out for humans. It isn’t like they are cutesy cats waiting to be loved up by the nice people. They hide, so, when a spay, neuter, release program goes in, the cats have to be trapped using safe cages and then the volunteers do an assembly line of spaying neutering, and shots. They clip their ears so they don’t capture them on the next trip. These ear clippings will be used in Nancy’s lab to see if trends can be identified, to see if histories can be patched up.

Troy: Histories?

Beth: Well, she can try to trace back lineage, see about inbreeding, disease.

Troy: By looking at blood types, or at DNA?

Beth: (Um…that is the part I will learn about.)

Troy: Okay, so I understand feral cats better now. When does the grant start?

Beth: It starts in Spring – the first joint class. The hope is to teach students that technical writers often do not know what they are writing about, so, we work hand in hand with scientists. Her students do the science and then my students help guide the reports, write grants – the stuff of technical writing.

Troy: I see.

Beth: So, it is important that I not know too much and learn with them.

Troy: Aha.

Beth: We need to ask clarifying questions and what is amazing about this grant is that the NSF is realizing the importance of science writing. The humanities will not fund these kinds of projects for technical writing and so, literally, there is no place for technical writing professors to get money to support innovation even though science writing is vastly different than writing for literature, the NEH won’t fund the projects, so, the NSF is really taking a leadership position.

Troy: NEH?

Beth: National Endowment for the Humanities. The NSF has listened to the companies complaining about the writing skills of science graduates and they are being proactive in creating stronger science writers. Here is an even more fascinating part: I live on the Eastern side of PA and Duquesne is on the other side of the state, so, we are using all Web 2.0 technologies to connect the students and maybe even SL.

Troy: What sorts of Web 2.0 technologies?

Beth: We are using the entire Google Suite – Google Docs, Google Video, Calendar, groups and Flickr, YouTube, SlideShare, KEEP Toolkit, Skype, AIM, podcasting, screencasting.

Troy: KEEP Toolkit? I’m not familiar with that one.

Beth: [The Keep Toolkit is] Carnegie Melon’s Portfolio system.

Troy: Ah.

Beth: It’s also free, but closed. [We’ll also use] wikis and blogs, and possibly SL. So, the money for my part is about 25000 and will be used to purchase equipment for students to use. This will be an open access project, so, we will publish everything in the open: lab reports, etc. and some of the money is for me to travel there to be present at one of the cat labs in the form of course release funds.

Troy: I imagine that ‘open access’ also means a less restrictive license than the default ‘all rights reserved’?

Beth: Exactly. The students in my class have to teach Creative Commons licensing options to the students in the science classes. We will be using Jean-Claude Bradley’s model of blog/wiki usage.

Troy: There is something called Science Commons now – an initiative of Creative Commons – are you familiar with it?

Beth: I am familiar with it, but I need to learn more about it to see how we can connect to it, or, rather, use it. My students will also be doing research on the ancillary topics, like how did all these cats get to be homeless? How many homeless cats are projected in the US? in PA? in the Pittsburgh area? in the Allentown area?

Troy: Yeah that’s something I was wondering.

Beth: So, my students, as researchers and writers will compile reports that will be CCL projects and will share that information with the scientists at Duquesne to see if any of that surrounding material is at all imperative in the scientific study.

Troy: I grew up on a farm in Canada but never ran into any feral cats – even though my brothers and I would go off into the woods. Maybe they need warmer weather year round.

Beth: You had a of of responsible neighbors. Not every area has them. Often, what happens is that people get a cat, neglect to spay and neuter (s/n), and then have no clue what to do with the kittens so they dump them. These kittens grow up fending for themselves, mate, have more kittens. One female cat can, in her lifetime, if she had all females, be responsible for a million cats.

Troy: I see. A lot like the story of the alligators in the sewers.

Beth: Right. And, so our combined research and writing not only is providing a service to the people trying to control the feral cat population – which carries disease, but also to people interested in getting a cat, so there are more populations served and hopefully, as a result, something can be done.

Troy: More populations served?

Beth: One audience is the science community. Another is the general public. Another are veterinarians.

Troy: Ah okay I wasn’t sure if you meant populations of people or of feral cats.

Beth: LOL. Well, we can’t train the cats. We just want to understand them as best as we can so that – eventually – vaccines can be made or the population will decrease but, the truth is – we don’t know much about them.

Troy: Won’t spaying and neutering tend to control the population?

Beth: Well, yes, except that for everyone that is spayed there will be one dropped off, so, the population grows and then dies off, and then grows. Ideally, s/n would fix it and it will over time but people need to stop dropping off their unwanted pets. However, the flip side is that the shelters are all full and you can be arrested for abusing a cat or killing it with malice.

Troy: I guess people need other alternatives for their unwanted cats.

Beth: So, many people don’t know WHAT to do with them. That is where my students come in – finding the alternatives. The problem is that these wild cats sometimes mate with domesticated outside cats that are not s/n, so, another piece is educating people on the importance of vaccines and s/n. Again, the flip side is that the operations are really expensive, even though they – technically – do not cost much, the fees are escalated so people tend not to get the shots and s/n. Then the domestic house kitty gets in the “family way” and there is another generation of new wild cats that will spread diseases like HIV or feline Leukemia.

Troy: I didn’t know cats could carry HIV.

Beth: Yes, it isn’t the same form as humans but they are carriers. Humans can’t be affected, but other animals can be.

Aside: Article about Feline Immunodeficiency Virus

Troy: Ah.

Beth: But, again, more research needs to be done. So, if Susie is out frolicking with Tom Cat and they make hay there could be more trouble than just kittens.

Troy: Yeah.

Beth: Nancy Trun is an amazing scientist and it is an absolute honor to work with her. She really cares that the students become strong writers

Troy: Do you have a website where people can go to learn more about this project?

Beth: Well, we have a wiki – but we have not done much there. Let me pass it to you. Some of this is outdated, and we are scheduled to meet this semester to hash this all out:

http://collegeenglish.wikispaces.com/FCP

Beth: That is the start of it. My hope is to bring it [the project] into SL as well to reach another population of pet owners since other countries have worse feral colonies than we do in the states.

Troy: What sorts of things might you do in SL?

Beth: Well, the students would do the content, but it would likely be a maze to educate people about pet ownership, loaded with facts and prevention methods as you travel through the maze. Secret floors, walls, that sorta thing.

Troy: I have an idea. They could find an abandoned kitten then have to decide what to do with it.

Beth: That would be awesome. Excellent idea :-). And get rewards for doing the right thing.

Troy: Was there anything else you wanted to add?

Beth: I can not say, enough, how much I appreciate the National Science Foundation’s leadership in helping develop science writing partnerships.

Troy: Thanks Beth!

Beth: Thank you :-)

---

Copyright© 2007 by T. Troy McConaghy.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License