Results by title

The Lower Danube—the stretch of Europe’s second longest river between the Romanian-Serbian border and the confluence to the Black Sea—was effectively transformed during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In describing this lengthy undertaking, Luminita Gatejel proposes that remaking two key stretches—the Iron Gates and the delta—not only physically altered the river but also redefined it in a legal and political sense. 

Since the late eighteenth century, military conflicts and peace treaties changed the nature of sovereignty over the area, as the expansionist tendencies of the Habsburg and British Empires encountered rival Ottoman and Russian imperial plans. The inconvenience that the river’s physical shape obstructed free navigation and the growth of commercial traffic, was an increasing concern to all parties. This book shows that alongside imperial aspirations, transnational actors like engineers, commissioners and entrepreneurs were the driving force behind the river regulation. In this highly original, deeply researched, and carefully crafted study, Gatejel explores the formation of international cooperation, the emergence of technical expertise and the emergence of engineering as a profession. This constellation turned the Lower Danube into a laboratory for experimenting with new forms of international cooperation, economic integration, and nature transformation.

• gain an overview of the contemporary STEM teaching and research enterprise by learning about the roles and needs of STEM community members such as program administrators, tenure track principal investigators (PIs), non-tenure track teaching faculty, research staff, graduate students, and undergraduate students;
• become familiarized with the “research group,” the organizational structure through which these different personas come together to advance the university research enterprise;
• get pointers on building teaching and learning programs that enhance student success and designing research support services that integrate into STEM researchers' actual workflows;
• receive proven outreach strategies for engaging STEM communities;
• learn approaches for incorporating AI (artificial intelligence) and LLMs (large language models) into information literacy programs for scientists and engineers; and
• discover how library leaders can support both nascent and established STEM librarians to advance STEM education and research at their local institutions.

Winner of the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education Edited Volume Book of the Year Award

Winner of the 2026 Distinguished Contributions to Gender Equity in Educational Research Award from the American Educational Research Association

The growing population of engineering students who identify as Latin* are underrepresented in the field of engineering. Latin* refers to an individual of Latin American origin or descent, without restricting to a specific gender. The asterisk (*) includes related identity terms such as Latina/é/o/u/x.There is, however, a rising need to train U.S. students in engineering skills to meet the demands of our increasingly technological workforce. Structurally excluding Latin* students hinders their economic and educational opportunities in engineering. Latin* Students in Engineering examines the state of Latin* engineering education at present as well as considerations for policy and practice regarding engineering education aimed at enhancing opportunity and better serving Latin* students. The essays in this volume first consider, theoretically and empirically, the experiences of Latin* students in engineering education and then expand beyond the student level to focus on institutional and social structures that challenge Latin* students' success and retention. Finally, it illuminates emergent work and considers future research, policy, and practice.
 

For anyone interested in visual communication, a training guide for evaluating and developing visual representations for the big ideas in science and technology, essential skills for journal submissions, grant applications, and public understanding.
 
As a scientist, engineer, or other researcher, you may have written an abstract. In a paragraph, you explain the purpose of your research, your approach, the questions you have asked and answered, and your work’s impact. The abstract is a summary and an invitation—to read the paper, attend your talk, and join you in your thinking. You may even have been asked to create a visual abstract—a single image—to achieve the same goals. As a designer or public information officer, you may have had a similar brief—to explain a compelling subject with a visual for a journal cover or press release. And yet, this important skill—devising visual metaphors—isn’t typically taught. With her decades of experience creating compelling images and instructing MIT researchers, award-winning photographer and science communicator Felice C. Frankel helps readers evaluate and create their own visual abstractions.
 
Like in her other books in the Visual Elements series, on photography and design, Frankel asks readers to evaluate different choices—for example, in conveying the uncertainty of a hurricane’s path or the organization of the Standard Model for elementary particles. But in Abstraction, she offers more. With examples from science, engineering, and beyond, the book helps readers consider and evaluate the visuals around them and determine how they work and when they fail: Is this representation the best for communication? Will these abstractions encourage others to engage with my work? Will they mislead? Will they help my ideas evolve? Frankel invites researchers to think about the many meanings behind their images—and, in turn, to think more deeply about their research.

In 2001, the National Science Foundation's ADVANCE Institutional Transformation program began awarding five-year grants to colleges and universities to address a common problem: how to improve the work environment for women faculty in science and engineering. Drawing on the expertise of scientists, engineers, social scientists, specialists in organizational behavior, and university administrators, this collection is the first to describe the variety of innovative efforts academic institutions around the country have undertaken.

Focusing on a wide range of topics, from how to foster women's academic success in small teaching institutions, to how to use interactive theater to promote faculty reflection about departmental culture, to how a particular department created and maintained a healthy climate for women's scientific success, the contributors discuss both the theoretical and empirical aspects of the initiatives, with emphasis on the practical issues involved in creating these approaches. The resulting evidence shows that these initiatives have the desired effects. The cases represented in this collection depict the many issues women faculty in science and engineering face, and the solutions that are presented can be widely accepted at academic institutions around the United States. The essays in Transforming Science and Engineering illustrate that creating work environments that sustain and advance women scientists and engineers benefits women, men, and underrepresented minorities.

Abigail J. Stewart is Sandra Schwartz Tangri Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan.

Janet E. Malley is a psychologist and Associate Director of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan.

Danielle LaVaque-Manty, former Research Associate at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan, teaches composition at U-M's Sweetland Writing Center.

Cover photo: Joanne Leonard

On the eugenic origins of US reproductive laws—and the surprising policy changes needed to remedy it.

The US government spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year to promote and facilitate contraception. Whereas other wealthy countries support broader fertility interventions under the banner of “family planning,” the United States remains committed only to helping Americans—and especially poorer Americans—plan not to have a family.

In an unflinching treatise on one of the century’s defining social issues, Leonard M. Lopoo shows how the US’s asymmetric reproductive approach is a vestige of the country’s earlier sins: America’s first reproductive policies were authored by some of the twentieth century’s most prominent eugenicists, a group whose primary goal was birth prevention among lower economic classes and racial minorities. These origins have consequently created a contradictory position for the country today, in which contraception for the lowest-income Americans is subsidized, while many upper-class Americans employ technologies to have children with preferable traits.

Lopoo recasts this personal and politicized topic in elegant, stark terms. If the United States is to legislate reproduction, the only defensible approach is equity: helping people who want children to have children. Wanting Children posits a new and elevating criterion for how we think about fertility in the twenty-first century.