DRAKE
MEMORIAL ROOM DEDICATION CEREMONY
2024 DANA (SCHOOL OF NATURAL
RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT)
OCTOBER 18, 2004
NRE545: Population-Environment
Dynamics.
Transition Theory, 1992-1998
Presentation of Sandra Lach Arlinghaus
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About the course: motivation
from book, and chapter, by a similar name, co-authored by Ness, Drake,
and Brechin. Drake expanded his chapter in this book, on "Transition
Theory," into a course of that name. I was honored to have been invited
to co-teach that course with him.
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Students came from a variety of
disciplines and from a variety of countries, as shown by the remarkable
variety of papers on the attached website.
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Drake tapped into the vast CSF experience
and linked it with amazing enthusiasm and effectiveness to the vast resource
base of the University of Michigan
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Some of the folks he invited to
serve as guest speakers in that course were: Gayl Ness, Kris Oswalt,
John Nystuen, and Frank Zinn.
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Some of the tools and topics, in
addition to those directly derivative of transition theory, made available
to students were GIS software (Atlas GIS, MapInfo, and ArcView GIS), Digital
Chart of the World, World Resources Institute Database, UNDP resource software
base, Stella and its predecessors (data-driven flow chart analysis and
predator-prey relations), Excel, Curve Fitting, Calculus, Differential
Equations, Exponential Growth and Decay, Graph Theory, Feigenbaum's graphical
analysis, fractals, and chaos AND the CSF software, "ChildInfo" in its
various forms.
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Course
website, attached to http://www.csfnet.org, contains all work done
by students over the seven years it was taught--the site is housed on the
SNRE server, a gift of SNRE to CSF in honor of Bill Drake. (The URL
above points to that site that also has links to, and pages from, the CSF
archive.)
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Spinoffs from the course:
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Limited publication of monographs
of student papers (funded by Drake) and given to students. Also produced
on CD--two copies for Rosina--from website above.
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CSF honorary intern program (to
date there have been a total of 16 in this program begun in the 1990s;
there were earlier CSF intern programs) who were invited following their
participation in NRE545:
Astrid Hillers, Richard
Aishton, Richard Wallace, Lynelle Preston, Tamana Nishiguchi, Seema Iyer,
Rosalyn Scaff.
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Regional Science meeting special
session in New Orleans, LA: participants--Drake, Nystuen, S. Arlinghaus,
W. Arlinghaus.
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Practical Handbook of Curve Fitting
(first in a three part series with CRC Press)--sample available today,
only. Practical Handbook of Digital Mapping--Terms and Concepts,
contains an essay related to CSF work. The latter is the second in
a three part series with CRC Press. Both published in 1995.