University of Arkansas at Little Rock

UALR Professor Robert F. Corwyn of UALR’s Department of Psychology is a co-author of a new study published online in the journal “Obesity” providing further evidence that strict maternal control over eating habits - such as determining how much a child should eat and coaxing them to eat certain foods - during early childhood may not lead to significant future weight gain in boys or girls.

Instead, this behavior may be a response to concerns over a child’s increasing weight.

“Our findings suggest that controlling maternal feeding practices probably do not cause increased weight gain, as some previous studies have proposed. In fact, some degree of control may actually be beneficial in helping certain children maintain their weight,” says lead author Kyung E. Rhee, M.D., M.Sc., a researcher with the Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center at The Miriam Hospital.

Rhee is also a pediatrician with Hasbro Children’s Hospital and an assistant professor of pediatrics (clinical) at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.

Study authors said research on the relationship between controlling feeding practices and child weight has been inconsistent and has not conclusively determined whether these practices cause, or are a consequence of, weight gain.

In the study, researchers examined the data of 789 children who participated in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development’s Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. The group included almost equal numbers of girls and boys, which the authors say is significant, since many prior studies have only focused on girls.

A UALR professor whose research provided historic perspective on the treatment of wards of the Irish state in the 1920s to the 1960s said the media missed the point of the study, nine years in the making, that was released last week.

“The real message of the Ryan Report (Ireland’s Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse) is that Irish society as a whole failed poor and marginalized children,” said Dr. Moira Maguire, associate professor of history.  She was in Ireland for the release of the five-volume investigation of rapes, humiliation, and beatings of children in Catholic Church-run reform schools.

The report said rape and sexual molestation were “endemic” in Irish Catholic church-run industrial schools and orphanages. The investigation found that Catholic priests and nuns for decades terrorized thousands of boys and girls in the Irish Republic, while government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rape and humiliation.

The 2,600 page report, Ireland’s Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse, chaired by high court Judge Sean Ryan, relied heavily on historical research done by Maguire and her Irish colleague Professor Seamus O’Cinneide of the National University of Ireland at Maynooth on governmental social policy, and the Irish social historical background since the 1920s. Little or no research on this extensive field during the time period had been done before.

Maguire’s research opened for the first time adoption records of Irish children given up for adoption - sometimes without the knowledge of the mother, who may have been under age and unmarried.

“In focusing exclusively on the most salacious elements of the Ryan report, like sexual abuse, media coverage was missing the main points of the report,” she said. “The (Irish) Departments of Health and Education, who had legal custody of the children involved, failed in their duty to provide for and protect them. District court justices willingly committed children whose parents were guilty of nothing more than poverty.

“And inspectors from the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children appear to have made it their mission to take children away from parents who could not provide for their children according to middle class standards of respectability.”

The Ryan Report uncovered previously secret Vatican records that demonstrated church knowledge of pedophiles in their ranks back to the 1930s. Maguire predicted another upcoming report on sexual abuse of children in the Diocese of Dublin will cause the Irish church more woe.

Maguire said court records, as well as the records of the Department of Education, show that physical and sexual violence against children was widespread in the Ireland of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.

She said the research unveiled a widespread class warfare in which children were caught in the crossfire.

“The industrial schools were a microcosm of the disregard shown to, and the violence inflicted on, poor Irish children right into the 1960s. That really summarizes my big issue with media coverage of the Ryan Report,” the professor said. “The story has had not been told was the class war the middle class waged against the poor. Poverty was criminalized. The middle class viewed poverty as a crime and this was the result.”

Maguire, a native of Boston, graduated high school at Little Rock’s Mount St. Mary Academy. She earned a B.A. in political science and history from George Washington University in Washington and an M.A. in history from Northeastern University in Boston.

After receiving her Ph.D. from American University in Washington, D.C., she spent six years engaged in teaching and research at the National University of Ireland at Maynooth. She will be the interim chair of the UALR Department of History in the fall.

She has helped numerous adopted children and birth parents learn their true heritage and heal wounds through her embrace of a country’s painful legacy. Maguire’s work in what has been termed a sensationalist topic - the treatment of unmarried mothers and their babies in Ireland - brought the topic into the realm of academic discourse.

In focusing on the plight of Irish children given up for adoption in the 20th century, she contributed much needed light and careful scrutiny in an aspect of Irish history that until recently and only with the notable addition of her own work has been unexamined. Her research opened up primary sources such as adoption court records, some of which had not previously been used by any researchers. She is given a voice to marginalized children who have suffered at the hands of church and state institutions in Ireland in the 20th century.

Her upcoming book, Precarious Childhood in Post-Independence Ireland, gives voice to ordinary people who have long been ignored in the historical record and offers a glimpse into the past that she said is long overdue.

The UALR Concert Choir will perform seven different concerts in Quebec City, Montreal, Toronto, and Niagara Falls in Canada beginning this weekend. The choir is made up of 25 UALR students.

Music professor and native Canadian, Bevan Keating, will conduct the performances, some of which will be joint concerts with choirs Keating began more than 15 years ago.

“The choir has been practicing in Gallery I in the UALR Fine Arts Building because the acoustics are similar to the basilicas and other facilities in which we plan to perform, “ said Keating. “They have learned a different style of singing to accommodate this acoustic situation.”

Choir member Sharon Downs said that it took a year’s worth of fundraising to make this trip possible. “We’ve raised money through various sales and have given promotional concerts with paid admission,” she said. The University is also sponsoring the trip.

To read the blog and see photos of the UALR Concert Choir’s trip to Canada, go to http://ualrconcertchoir.ning.com/.

The UALR Concert and Chamber Choirs are the two premiere ensembles at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. The auditioned singers within these choirs represent the music department as well as many academic disciplines from within the university.

Under the direction of Keating, both groups perform large works such as Carmina Burana by Carl Orff, Regina Coeli KV108 by W.A. Mozart, Dixit Dominus by G.F. Handeland, and Mass of the Children by John Rutter. In addition, the Concert and Chamber Choirs perform many major choral works with the UALR Community Chorus.

Ryan Bona, a UALR theater major graduating this month, was accepted into the California Institute of the Arts Master of Fine Arts program in lighting design - one of two students accepted this year in the exclusive program.

Bona, a graduate of North Little Rock High School, placed second last year in the South Eastern Theatre Conference Undergraduate Design competition and won the undergraduate research award in the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. He has designed lighting and sets for department productions, was the company manager for the Marlowe project that traveled to Canterbury, England, last summer, edited the weekly e-newsletter, and served as president of the student theater organization.

The strength of Bona’s portfolio and written submissions won him an interview at the New York studio of Donald Holder, the director of CalArts lighting program. Holder has won Tony Awards for Broadway hits “Lion King” and “Movin’ Out.”

CalArts, the nation’s first art institute to offer BFAs and MFAs in both the visual and performing arts, is dedicated to training the next generation of professional artists and fostering innovation within the broadest context possible. Emphasis is placed on new and experimental work and students are admitted solely on the basis of artistic ability.

Ninety students from across the United States applied for 20 scholarships awarded by the American Humanics Academic Award. Two of those scholarships went to UALR students - junior Lakresha Diaz and senior Roni Flakes, both of Little Rock.

“That’s a whopping percentage we should be proud of. Lakresha also received a NextGen scholarship for her upcoming internship with American Humanics,” said Anthropology Professor Juliana Flinn, who also serves as UALR’s American Humanics program director.

Diaz also recently received a local award from Big Brothers Big Sisters. She and her husband were selected as Couple of the Year for their mentoring of a little brother.

This year, two of the three winners of UALR’s Faculty Excellence Awards are professors in the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences: Dr. R. Paul Yoder, of the Department of English, and Dr. Juliana Flinn, of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.

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