Professors Present Paper to Canadian Economics Association
Posted on Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Westminster College faculty Dr. Carolyn Cuff, professor of mathematics, and Dr. Timothy Cuff, associate professor of history, presented their co-authored paper "Stature Change and Variation in 19th-Century Pennsylvania: Preliminary Evidence from the Pennsylvania National Guard" at the 2009 meeting of the Canadian Economics Association May 28-31 in Toronto, Ontario.
The paper describes research which investigated change in the mean stature of Pennsylvania National Guardsmen who enlisted between the end of the Civil War and the end of World War I. The preliminary findings indicate that Pennsylvanians display declining mean stature (commonly used to indicate biological well-being when studying historical populations) across the latter decades of the 19th century.
Dr. Timothy Cuff explained, "This pattern is similar to that in other states in this time period. However, the guardsmen, on average, display mean adult heights more than an inch greater than Pennsylvanians who were incarcerated in the state's penitentiaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries."
The paper, an extension of Dr. Timothy Cuff's work on antebellum Pennsylvania published in The Hidden Cost of Economic Development: The Biological Standard of Living in Antebellum Pennsylvania, received support from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission through a Scholar-in-Residence Award; Westminster College faculty research and conference funding; and a 2004 Arthur H. Cole grant from the Economic History Association.
Eric Patton, a Westminster College senior history major, also attended the Toronto conference. Patton, a son of Thomas and Karen Patton of Edinburg and a graduate of Mohawk High School, is one of several history majors who served as a research assistant while earning internship credit working on aspects of the project.
Extensions of the work are scheduled for presentation at the Economic History Association meeting in Tucson in September and at the Social Science History Association meeting in Long Beach, Calif., in November.
Dr. Carolyn Cuff, a 1978 Westminster graduate and chair of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, has been on the Westminster faculty since 1989. She earned a master's and Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University.
Dr. Timothy Cuff, a 1978 Westminster graduate and First Year Program coordinator, joined the Westminster faculty in 2000. He earned a master's from Bowling Green State University and a master's and Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh.
Contact Dr. Timothy Cuff at (724) 946-6152 or e-mail cufft@westminster.edu for additional information.
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