DePauw University Academic News

Getting the Shot

Wed, 7 Dec 2011 00:00:00 EST

Benjamin "Ben" C. Solomon ’10 has been working among Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists in the Middle East, freelancing for The New York Times as a foreign correspondent and quickly making his mark in a fairly new field – video journalism. (Solomon above. Photo by Tyler Hicks.)

He credits his experience as a Media Fellow and staff member at the student newspaper The DePauw, both of which gave him the skills he used to land an internship at one of the most prestigious newspapers in the world.

A communication major and studio art minor, Solomon says it was his final project for the Media Fellows Program – a 15-minute documentary about the Posse Program at DePauw – that clinched the internship following graduation.

After his initial stint interning at The New York Times ended, he went to TIME magazine and interned in the video department, but The New York Times continued to hire him for freelance work.

He’s currently based in Cairo, Egypt, working on a large investigative multimedia project for The New York Times about the war in Libya, where he spent last month driving across the country – his third visit there. He also started a long-term documentary project about the youth and how they influenced and continue to change Middle Eastern politics and culture. Additionally, he’s engaged in daily assignments concerning the election and violence in Tahrir Square.

The assignment that helped launch his career, however, was the one he instigated by sheer determination and perseverance. He was working for The New York Times on TimesCast, which is a daily news video. “I had been begging my editors to let me out and send me somewhere,” Solomon says. “For eight months, I worked hard and did a good job, and after a while they agreed.” It was a trip planned for last August with The New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, who frequently works in the Middle East.

“We had planned a month in advance to go to Libya, where we were going to stay in the east – in the safer area. We were planning to make a basic video, and I was just happy to do it. The week before I was supposed to leave, the rebels reached the outskirts of Zawiya, a city right outside of Tripoli. This was the turning point. It was checkmate. As soon as that happened, I went to my editors and said I have an open ticket. I can go whenever I want. Can I just go? Can I go to Tripoli?

“They weren’t very comfortable sending me to the war zone alone, but thankfully they did. I left a week earlier than I had originally planned. We got there two days after the fall of the Gaddafi forces. It was a mess. The rebels are a very inexperienced army, and it was very clear that they did not have control over the city. Driving into Tripoli was an eight-hour trip from the Dehiba border. For eight hours, the drive was through the most beautiful country, but the last 45 minutes were undoubtedly the scariest time of my life.”

Solomon was traveling with reporter Anthony Shadid, the Beirut bureau chief for The New York Times. The last time Shadid was in Libya, he was kidnapped. He was one of four Times journalists covering the fighting in eastern Libya last March who were reported missing.

“He was as scared as I was,” Solomon says. “We weren’t sure if we were going to run into active fighting, or if we were going to run into some checkpoints manned by the Gaddafi forces. On top of it all, the driver got lost, and my translator was looking at a map. When we finally got to the hotel, it was such relief.

“For the first few days, we were very safe with our drivers and wore full body armor because there was risk of snipers. After four days, the fighting quelled, and the rebels pushed the forces out of town, so it was really safe to move around. The projects turned into reaction stories – what the damage has been, how many casualties, once modern city is now torn to pieces. It was pretty interesting.

“I ended up doing five or six videos, and they all varied in subject matter. It was really a terrific career jump because not only did I do some work independently, but also I worked with three writers and three photographers from The New York Times and among them, three were Pulitzer Prize winners – guys who had fantastic experience as foreign correspondents. I was just trekking along with them, but I worked hard and produced a lot of good videos that I’m really pleased with now.

“The video I did on my own is the one I enjoyed most. It’s about the inside of the palaces of Gaddafi’s sons. They had been abandoned and looted. I talked to some rebels and got to see their reactions to these palaces that they lived next to for 20 or 30 years. Now these men are just walking around because they were never allowed in before. They were rummaging through things – looking at the sandals Gaddafi’s sons wore, the Johnnie Walker Black they drank, and random things like that. They were flabbergasted by the amount of money the sons had and the luxuries they lived in.”

Solomon and Kristof produced three videos together. One focused on a naval commander who defected from the Gaddafi forces and joined the rebels. He was abducted by the Gaddafi forces and held for a week. Everyone was sure he was going to be tortured and executed. After he was freed, he was put in charge of one of the military operations in Tajura, just outside of Tripoli. Solomon says, “It was an uplifting story about this guy who faced death and was freed by the rebels.

“I continue to be interested in conflict and war. It’s something that is truly the most frustrating and most interesting thing I’ve ever faced. It’s war, but it’s human.”

Solomon hopes to keep covering war and acknowledges he’s fortunate to be where he is. “I’m in a very specialized position that’s underdeveloped. I produce videos for a newspaper. Five years ago, this position didn’t exist. My sense of the media is that it’s struggling, but I’m in a lucky position to be where I am.

“My time at DePauw allowed me to do some really interesting things. It’s been an easy transition for me. DePauw is an amazing place. If you’re motivated to do things, the opportunities are limitless.”

Aishwarya Subbaraman '12

Wed, 7 Dec 2011 00:00:00 EST

When former president Bill Clinton came to campus in November to give the 25th Anniversary Timothy and Sharon Ubben Lecture, he probably didn’t recall that a DePauw student had drafted briefs for him earlier in the year. Although entirely by chance, his visit was the second time their paths had crossed.

Considering senior Aishwarya Subbaraman’s direction, it might not be the last.

Living 7,500 miles from her family in Muscat, Oman, Subbaraman has certainly taken advantage of her time at DePauw. In addition to being a Management Fellow and member of the Information Technology Associates Program (ITAP), the economics major is finishing her Honor Scholar thesis about the economics of rare earth extraction policy.

With applications in defense and green energy, rare earth minerals are crucial to most high-tech industries . Luckily for China, it controls 97 percent of the world’s supply.

“China holds a monopoly of these rare earth elements, but they’ve decided to reduce their exports significantly,” Subbaraman says. “My project is an economic analysis of the problem. I’m looking at how much and how quickly China should extract its rare earth elements, and the political factors that might move them away from what would be their optimum output.”

In spring 2011, Subbaraman put her interest in economic policy to use while interning at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) in New York City. Founded in 2005, CGI oversees economic and human development projects called “commitments” around the globe. These commitments bring communities, corporations and nongovernmental organizations together to solve the world’s most pressing problems.

"A private firm from the communications industry, for example, might be interested in making a commitment, but not know what to do or where to start,” Subbaraman explains. “CGI can give them an idea of what their competitors have done, or of ongoing projects suitable for them to partner with."

Subbaraman started as a member of the CGI’s administrative team, drafting internal communications and arranging interviews for other internships and jobs. It was the makings of a good, if not especially glamorous, introduction to the day-to-day operations of a prominent organization. But as the weeks went on, Subbaraman became more and more involved with CGI’s global work.

Her time at CGI coincided with its annual commitments reporting cycle, during which members report back on the progress of their projects. As the reports piled up, her economics background became especially valuable. Subbaraman was soon analyzing commitment reports, making sure the numbers added up, taking notes of successes and failures, and drafting briefs for Clinton himself.

As with all good internships, Subbaraman left having learned as much about her own aspirations as she did about CGI’s inner workings. Rather than acting as a mediator, she says she wants to be at least one degree closer to the problems CGI helps to solve.

“CGI is a facilitator, not necessarily a creator, of solutions,” she says. “It says, ‘Okay, you’ve got an issue in mind. Now let's see how we can get an expert involved.’ I'd like to claim to be that expert. Whether in academia or in a think tank, I want to be doing really hard, empirical research. And hopefully I’ll be able to put it into practice.”

Whither We Will Walk

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

"What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whither we will walk? [...] No doubt, we find it difficult to choose our direction, because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea."

– Henry David Thoreau, Walking

Fall semester is the start of a new life for college freshmen. During the next four years, they will meet best friends and beloved mentors as they search for a creative spark that will light the path ahead. These people and ideas exists somewhere, but where? Assistant Professor of Art Barbara L. Timm is pointing her students in the right direction, even when there are many directions to take.

At first glance, Timm's first-year seminar, Redefining Landscape, is an outdoor studio art course. Her students keep journals of sketches and notes inspired by their trips through the DePauw Nature Park, and they work together on group projects, such as building cairns from rocks at the bottom of the old limestone quarry.

But nature inspires different people in different ways. The course borrows its guest lecturers from departments across the curriculum, and for each art student enrolled in the class, a budding scientist or writer follows in the footsteps of American philosopher Henry David Thoreau. In fact, Thoreau's essay Walking is one of the class's first assignments – as is its recommendation.

"We do a lot of walking," Timm says. "I use it as a metaphor to explore different paths of knowledge. The aim is to let investigation draw students into different areas of thought, to nurture inquisitiveness and to enjoy the journey. I want to teach them to be active learners, not passive learners."

Timm began painting landscapes from the Nature Park before it was such a thing. For decades, the abandoned quarry sat untouched except by those like her who jumped the surrounding fence.

"As an artist, it's essential to not be on one side of a window," Timm says. "You need to understand connections between everything you're seeing. Otherwise, you end up creating nothing more than an image."

Typically, Timm would be the only person in her class to remember the land before DePauw purchased it and opened it to the public in 2004, but in a stroke of fate, she isn't alone this year.

"It was kind of a wasteland," says freshman Shae A. Mahoney-Sutherland, whose grandfather was one of the last employees at the quarry when it closed in the 1970s. Without machinery grinding away at the rock, the surrounding nature has since crept back into the crater that was left behind.

"It's surreal – almost otherworldly – how all of what's there now could have grown out of a quarry," she says.

DePauw's first-year seminars give freshmen an idea of what to expect at a small liberal arts college. With titles such as Baseball as American History and Mars in Science and Literature, interests that were once distinctly "jock" or "nerd" are not so easily defined. Here, there are no such walls to separate ideas, and few other courses illustrate that as clearly as Timm's.

"I went to a small high school where there wasn't a huge variety of courses to take," says Mahoney-Sutherland, who plans to study environmental geoscience. "So much about this class is interdisciplinary that I thought it would give me what I hope to get out of a liberal arts education."

While the course gives students an opportunity to get comfortable with DePauw's academics, they also have a chance to get out and explore their new home away from home.

"I think the class helps to ease students into life at DePauw by connecting them with the surrounding environment," Timm says. "Some of them grew up in the city, and this is their first time in a place like the Nature Park."

An experiential map of the Nature Park by Maddie Hochwalt '15

Freshman Zhiyan Jiang measures her time in the United States from the day she traveled from Shenzhen, China (population, 10 million) to Greencastle (population, 10 thousand) to attend DePauw.

"I grew up in a big, modern city," Jiang says. "If you wanted to go into nature, there wasn't anywhere to go. This is a very different place for me."

Every walk through the park, she says, introduces her to a new animal or tree. Instead of seeing a picture or reading about it in a book, she alone gets the satisfaction of the discovery.

Early in the semester, the class took a night walk through the park to see how only a few hours can change a place. Along the way, Jiang borrowed a friend's cell phone to help map out the stars.

There are only so many stars in a typical textbook star map: those that make up the major constellations and a few scattered ones of note. Looking up from the woods on a clear fall night, Jiang could see all the constellations that might have been.

"I never knew how stars fill up the sky," she says.

Greeks Make A Delta Difference

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

Last year, juniors Sara R. Drury and Lukas W. Meyer were looking for something to do during DePauw's fall break.

“Everybody goes home for fall break, but we thought that was kind of boring,” Meyer says. “We wanted to do something different.”

Rather than head back to their Chicago-area homes, Drury and Meyer pooled money with nine of their friends to take a trip south. Sound familiar so far? That’s where the spring break similarities end. No, their “week off” was spent at work – building homes in the Mississippi Delta with Habitat for Humanity.

Facing another fall break, Drury and Meyer decided to go back this year, and this time with a larger group. Ten of their friends from Sigma Chi fraternity and Pi Beta Phi sorority, and one independent student, joined them in their return to the Delta.

The students raised $3,000 to pay for travel and food, and for lodging in a Habitat-owned dorm during the week. They were split between worksites in the neighboring towns of Jonestown and Coahoma until the final day of their trip, when they joined together to finish the Jonestown house, advancing the recipient family’s move-in date by nearly a month. At the end of the week, with half of their funds remaining, they donated the rest to the West Tallahatchie Habitat for Humanity.

Besides the new construction, they had a chance to visit a family whose home they had helped build in 2010, and to volunteer alongside friends they made during their first trip.

“Almost everybody wants to return after they’ve been there,” Drury says. “It’s like you’re visiting relatives.”

People there are beginning to recognize students in DePauw clothing. Whether helping out with a dead car battery or inviting them for food, Drury and Meyer say they felt welcome at every turn.

One night, the students headed to Ground Zero Blues Club in nearby Clarksdale, where they met the club’s part-owner, Bill Luckett, a local businessman and candidate in the 2011 Mississippi gubernatorial elections. Meyer, a musician himself, was invited to sing with the band (right), and afterward Luckett invited the students into the private apartment of actor Morgan Freeman, another part-owner of the club. Next time, he promised, Morgan would be there to meet them.

Drury and Meyer are already preparing for that return trip, and they don’t intend for their graduation in 2013 to be the end of things. They hope to train apprentices to plan future trips and maintain the DePauw-Delta connection. Though the region and its people now have personal meaning for the students who have traveled there, Meyer says that helping others can be just as helpful to oneself.

“When you go out on a service trip, it might not always be the happiest experience, but it’s certainly the most memorable,” he says. “In many ways, we’re also getting to know our own capabilities.”

Celebrating Diversity

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

DePauw celebrates International Education Week Nov. 14-19 with events that feature the benefits of international education and exchange worldwide. DePauw is home to 267 international and exchange students representing 41 countries.

For a detailed schedule of events, please visit the DePauw International Education Week website. All events are open to the public.

Loutfi Jirari, director of international student services, is working with the student coordinators of the event. “International Education Week (IEW) celebrates the benefits of understanding the world around us so we can better communicate and collaborate within the global community,” he says.

“This is an opportunity to celebrate diversity on our campus. Events like IEW give the DePauw and Greencastle communities a chance to learn more about different cultures, languages, traditions and customs.”

International Education Week is a joint initiative of the United States Departments of State and Education. It’s observed in more than 100 countries and celebrates the ways in which international education and exchange opportunities prepare citizens for community building – both in national and international settings.

Shreeya Neupane ’12, president of the International Student Association, is coordinating the International Bazaar, the very popular final event of International Education Week. It’s a unique opportunity to enjoy international foods and performances that showcase the different countries represented on campus.

The lively performances are by students, and there will be an additional performance by a professional flamenco and belly dancer.

The Bazaar is Saturday, Nov. 19, at 6 p.m. in the Memorial Student Union Building ballroom. Tickets are $3 and will be sold at the event, which is open to the public. All proceeds go to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

“So many people have committed to sharing their international experiences that I hope everyone will take advantage of this learning opportunity,” Neupane says. “We have a very large group of international students who are enthusiastic about making the International Bazaar even more successful than it was last year. I'm excited about it and hope a lot of people will attend.”

Seniors Xinxin Liu and Anthony E. Navarrete have been working together during the last several weeks to coordinate the week’s activities. “My hope is that this week will provide an opportunity for the DePauw community to come together and share in and acknowledge the importance of international experiential education,” Navarrete says.

The week kicks off with the annual photo exhibit on Monday, Nov. 14, at 4 p.m. in the Memorial Student Union Building lobby. The event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be provided.

The photo submissions are from students who have participated in off-campus study around the world. “We hope all students will get involved and vote for the best photos,” Liu says. “It’s also a place for students to share their experiences overseas and for those who have never been abroad to learn what to expect.”

A panel discussion that will address United States-Cuba relations is scheduled on Thursday, Nov. 17, at 4:30 p.m. in the Memorial Student Union Building, room 231. Dr. Deulofeu from Havana Technical University in Cuba will speak about the current realities of the Cuban people. He will also address the possibilities of strengthening United States-Cuba relations through community and academic ties. The event is sponsored by the Committee for Latino Concerns and The Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics.

There will be different foods in the Hub, depending on the country highlighted that day, and they will include Asian, Mexican, Indian, North American and Italian dishes.

Liu explains, “Most of the events are sponsored by different student organizations, so we see this as a time when all join together and help celebrate IEW. I hope the week is a bridge for students to know more about the world, be more aware of cultural diversity, and provide an opportunity to be involved in discussing issues surrounding community and humanity,” Liu says.

Beyond International Education Week, the following are ongoing programs that enable students to get involved in international life at DePauw.

Cultural Connections helps DePauw students build a deeper understanding of the value of worldwide education, development and communication. Through Cultural Connections, students participate in a variety of events, ranging from individual presentations to displaying exhibits for multicultural and international festivals at schools throughout Putnam County. Contact Xinxin Liu ’12 for more information.

Conversation Café takes place at the Dorothy Brown Cultural Center every Friday from 4:15-6:15 p.m. Student-run and highly engaging, Conversation Café aims to bring domestic and international students together to discuss relevant issues. Conversation Café is a great place to spark conversation that will lead to discussions in the greater DePauw and Greencastle communities. Contact Christy-Ann N. Nartey ’12 for more information.

Larry G. Sutton

Tue, 8 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

As a second grader performing for the first time on stage during a musical review, Larry G. Sutton, professor emeritus of communication arts and sciences, lost the pins holding up his crepe paper shorts. “I remember it,” Sutton explains. “It was during the war years, and the only costumes available were ones you made out of crepe paper, and my straight pins let go. There I was trying to perform and hold up these flimsy things.”

It was a show-stopping moment for the young performer, but the experience didn’t keep Sutton from returning to the stage – in countless roles as actor and director over the years.

Sutton joined the DePauw faculty in 1963 and taught communication and theatre courses for 40 years. He chaired the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences, served as director of theatre and technical director of the Performing Arts Center. He directed more than 100 productions, ranging from the Greeks to Shakespeare, Moliére to Williams, Miller and O’Neill. He designed sets for more than 100 productions and served as technical director for more than 200 plays.

In addition, since 1966, Sutton has been involved in the Putnam County Playhouse as board member, designer, director and actor.

Last summer, Andrew M. Hayes, associate professor of communication and theatre and chair of the department, asked Sutton if he was interested in returning to campus to direct a play. His answer was an enthusiastic yes.

After learning the goals of the 2011-12 theatre season, Sutton chose Hedda Gabler, written by Henrik Ibsen and adapted by John Osborne. The play opens Thursday, Nov. 17, at 7:30 p.m. in Moore Theatre in the Judson and Joyce Green Center for the Performing Arts.

“The basis for theatre realism in the Western world starts with Ibsen,” Sutton explain. “If you read the background on Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, they all say modeled after Henrik Ibsen. So, I thought this would be a good chance to do an Ibsen play,” Sutton says.

“The roles in Hedda Gabler are complex and challenging, but I have a cast of seven remarkable young people, who are very hard working.

Hedda’s character is extremely complicated, and Sutton describes why she is considered a psychological puzzle. Hedda torments Aunt Julia in the first act about the hat she is wearing. She leads George Tesman around by his nose, flirts with Judge Brack, but refuses to take the final step, and leads Eilert Lovborg to commit suicide.

“You ask, why does she do all of these things? Part of it is a matter of control,” Sutton explains. “At one point, Hedda says that just once she’d like to have the destiny of someone in her hand. At another point, she says these things just happen to me, and I do them. However, it’s never really explained why.

“Every Ibsen play is different, but Ghosts, A Doll’s House, Hedda Gabler and several others have women as the protagonist,” Sutton says. “It’s because women had fewer choices in the world, and they were more prone to be affected by society.

“What can Hedda do?” Sutton asks. “Her father was a general, but apparently she had been left nearly penniless. She could become a governess, get married or become a prostitute. Those were her choices. So, she married George Tesman, who may have not been the best choice.”

Sutton is looking forward to opening night of the play, and he is hopeful that it will be well received by the audience. He recalls a few favorite productions he directed, including Noises Off, The Crucible and A Man for All Season. “I have a lot of good memories of directing, but there are also some turkeys out there that I don’t want to talk about,” Sutton admits with a laugh.

“I’m probably in the business as much as I am because of my love for reading and talking about books,” Sutton says. “From the third grade through junior high school, we had to give oral book reports every six weeks.” Sutton knew that he enjoyed taking the stage, but he never actually finished even one report. “I would stand up, begin to talk and pretty soon everything would become fuzzy, and I would pass out.

“Of course, everyone thought I had a brain tumor or heart failure. I was checked for everything, and learned that I have one of the most common fears in the world – stage fright.

“I realized that there was nothing physically wrong with me. I was more worried about what people were thinking about me – rather than thinking about my message and my audience. So, I entered speech contests, and I made myself be in plays. You can’t cure stage fright, but you just learn to live with it.”

Sutton says he’s having a lot of fun directing Hedda Gabler. “I’d come back again in a heartbeat,” he says. “Two things that I’ve missed since retiring are working with students, both in the classroom and on stage, and daily interactions with colleagues, which I always found stimulating. The faculty members in the Communication and Theatre Department have a long history of talking to each other and exchanging points of view. So, I feel quite comfortable here.”

Hedda Gabler runs Nov. 17-19 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Nov. 20 at 3 p.m. Tickets are $3 for students and $6 for adults, and they are available at the Green Center Box Office. Everyone is welcome to attend an opening-night reception after Thursday’s performance, and there is a talk-back after the show on Friday night.

Welding Art and Science

Tue, 1 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

Take a moment and try to picture a protein. Having trouble? You’re not alone. Even powerful computers get caught up in their tangled shapes. But don’t worry; thanks to Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Daniel G. Gurnon, your protein picturing problems are soon a thing of the past.

Inspired by the work of sculptor Julian Voss-Andreae, a German-educated physicist whose art is taken from world of science, Gurnon saw an opportunity to bring DePauw’s artists and scientists together. It was a two-birds-with-one-stone idea: encourage scientists to demonstrate their research creatively, and the non-scientific community would meet them halfway.

“I wanted students to understand that there are artistic decisions to be made in science,” Gurnon says. “To effectively communicate science, you have to think about how to convey information in a way that others can understand and appreciate, and in a way that draws people in for more. You don’t need to know everything about biochemistry to be excited by, or even to understand what’s happening at a sub-micron level.”

Under Voss-Andreae’s guidance, Gurnon (right), Assistant Professor of Art Jacob K. Stanley and 10 DePauw students created a set of sculptures that depict the birth of a protein called villin. The sculptures were unveiled in the Julian Science & Mathematics Center atrium as part of ArtsFest 2011, Oct. 30-Nov. 6, whose theme is “Art & Truth?.”

Proteins are the machinery of life, crucial to almost every cellular process. As such, they are also incredibly small, so it's no wonder we have problems visualizing them. However, you might think of a protein as a string of beads. Each bead is actually one of 20 different building blocks called amino acids, and a single protein can be made from hundreds of them.

Once all the beads are strung together, they begin to interact with each other and their environment, causing the string to twist and flex. Some beads want to be closer together, some farther apart; some like water, and some don’t; and so on. Scientists refer to this initial restlessness as folding. Almost instantaneously, the string folds into a shape unique to its particular bead sequence. Some proteins look like compact little knots, while others spiral outward like ribbon on a birthday present.

But the differences are more than cosmetic. For a protein to serve out its intended purpose, it needs to have the correct structure. On occasion, a protein will fold into an unexpected shape – with equally unexpected results. So-called "misfolded" proteins are even linked to diseases such as Alzheimer's and cystic fibrosis.

Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign inspired Gurnon's decision to model villin. There, Professor of Physics Klaus Schulten and his student Peter Freddolino used powerful computers to “watch” villin as it took shape, trillionth of a second by trillionth of a second. Gurnon and Voss-Andreae (left) used Schulten’s data to design four snapshots of villin’s transformation from a simple kinked line into a crumpled spring.

You’ll find a few different protein models in Gurnon’s office – from ball-and-stick, to wire mesh – but Voss-Andreae’s style and technique sets the villin sculptures apart. Each segment of the protein was meticulously cut from 3-inch square steel tubes, then welded together and painted. The result: representations of villin’s structure 500 million times larger than the real thing. It’s a simple, tactile and attractive way of visualizing a protein in which even the colors, chosen to convey changes in energy, serve a purpose.

“These sculptures provide a chance to actually see how complex these tiny proteins can be,” says Benjamin C. Cox, a sophomore Science Research Fellows (SRF) member. “Supercomputers take months to visualize what happens in fractions of a second in our bodies. This art provides a unique insight into the intricacy of life.”

Working in the studio, the group’s conversations would often drift into the science behind their art. One day, Stanley was carefully examining the base of a sculpture. Unsatisfied, he looked at Gurnon and said, “I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel alpha helical.”

“He was right,” Gurnon says. “The villin helix sort of unravels at the end, so we talked about why that happens. Our project led to a lot of conversations about art and science, and how professionals work in both areas.”

“I think people will be intrigued and curious about these sculptures because this style of art is different from anything that we have seen here at DePauw,” sophomore Trina M. Manalo says. “It shows that science and art can and do go together quite harmoniously.”

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Competition++

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 00:00:00 EST

It’s practice time for DePauw’s programming team. Teammates squeeze together on a student lounge couch, their laptops side-by-side. Fingers walk across each line of computer code on the screens in search of potential bugs. Nearby, a coach talks strategy using a wall-mounted monitor. While you won't hear whistles or screeching sneakers, this is still an intense workout.

Their sport is a distilled version of what programmers, mathematicians and scientists do every day: identify a problem, solve it on paper and translate the solution into computer code. In competition programming, teams huddle around a computer and face a timed series of challenges. Each problem is explained with example inputs and outputs, but even the simplest ones take time to work through.

For example, anybody can be taught to play rock-paper-scissors, but how would you program a computer to follow along? In other words, how do you translate something intuitive into computer-friendly C++ or Java?

Other problems are more typical of what a professional programmer might find on the job, such as parsing DNA sequences or writing a software memory manager. During practice sessions, problems from past competitions are used to prepare the team for common hurdles. But the similarities can also be superficial or intentionally misleading. Half the work is often figuring out exactly what you’re being asked to do.

“Sometimes the problem is disguised within the instructions,” explains Brian T. Howard, assistant professor of computer science, who has coached DePauw’s programming teams for the last 10 years. “You have to figure out what it’s getting at before you can convert it into a program, so even that can be difficult.”

The competitions are set up by various computer science organizations such as the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), but, unlike NCAA athletic competitions, there are no divisions in these contests. Teams from every school, big and small, go against the same problems with only their practice and a few written resources to lean on.

“We can teach strategies for solving the problems, and coach them on what kind of notes and reference materials they will need,” says Joseph B. Kendall-Morwick, an instructor of computer science and programming coach. “But once a competition begins, the students are on their own.”

On Oct. 21, the team traveled to Cincinnati to compete in the regionals for the 36th annual ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest. Because the required team size is three, two separate DePauw teams competed: Da Huo ’13, Lei Liang ’13 and Tao Qian ’15 as the DePauw Zombies, and Rajat Kumar ’15, Ngoc Nguyen ’14 and Michael D. Osborn ’13 as the DePauw Daemons.

The Zombies finished 45th out of a field of 122 teams from the United States and Canada. Missing one of their regulars – the competition took place during DePauw’s fall break – the Daemons tied for 95th. Only a team from the University of Waterloo managed to solve all nine problems within the five-hour time limit.

It was the team’s second competition of the year, and, for some members, their first competition ever. During a competition hosted by the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges (CCSC) in September, the team found out that the best practice is the real thing.

“We weren’t familiar with all the rules,” says Huo, who competed for the DePauw Zombies. “We got stuck on a problem and kept trying because we thought it would be a pity to abandon all the code.”

Now, Huo says the team is better prepared for competition programming – not only for future events, but also, to borrow a common college sports phrase, for when they “go pro.”

Zakary Phillips '12

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:00:00 EST

Senior Zakary D. Phillips’ summer abroad in Argentina would have been a special experience on its own. He split his time in Buenos Aires between classes at two universities, and perfecting his violin talents at a conservatory with some of the country’s most talented musicians. But it was an unplanned trip in the middle of all this that made his time in Argentina an experience of a lifetime.

One day, while practicing violin at the conservatory, his maestro approached him with an unusual proposal.

“He asked me, if you were to leave for a few days, would you miss anything?” Phillips remembers.

“No,” was the answer.

A new theatre in Posadas, a city to the north, needed an orchestra for its grand opening. If Phillips was interested, the maestro might be able to arrange to have him play first violin – the classical equivalent of lead guitar.

Nothing was promised, however, so Phillips returned home to wait for word back from the maestro. Anxious and hopeful, he and his host mother, Maria Emma, talked about the opportunity. She even lit a prayer candle for him.

The next day, the maestro told Phillips that the gig was his. All he needed to do was pick up a bus ticket and everything else would be arranged for him in Posadas. The music for the performance was still a bit of a mystery, but Phillips – confident in his sight reading – was more eager than worried.

After a 12-hour bus ride, Phillips arrived in Posadas and met the other members of the orchestra arranged for the theatre’s opening. Some were from an orchestra in Buenos Aires, some were students from Paraguay, and one violinist from Japan. He also had a chance to look over what he’d be playing: Verdi’s La traviata and a selection of other well-known tangos.

“La traviata is an opera, but the music had been adapted for a ballet,” Phillips says. “So, I had to learn how to play for dancers rather than singers. And I’d never played a tango before. It was exciting to try out something new. The tango transforms the violin into a totally different sound.”

But it wasn’t what they were playing as much as who they would play for that excited him. Dancing in the ballet was Iñaki Urlezaga, an internationally famous ballerino. The musicians would also play a private performance of Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla’s Libertango for President Cristina Kirchner, who was visiting the area ahead of the national elections.

“I’d been watching television and the elections were the biggest thing,” Phillips says. “To hear that she’d be coming was one of those full-circle moments – a person can be in the back of your head, but not seem real, or part of your normal life. Everything just came together that week.”

On the day of her visit, the orchestra spent five hours preparing for Kirchner’s 10-minute private performance. Everybody wanted to make an impression. Not only was the President visiting, but nearly every government official in the region would be in tow.

They waited nervously as the performance time neared. At first, the orchestra could only see the silhouette of well-dressed woman when Kirchner entered the theatre. She looked down from the balcony and exclaimed, “How modern!” And then the music began.

“Sometimes you try to figure out what you’re supposed to be doing,” Phillips says. “Which of my interests do I follow? When I went to Posadas, I was only thinking about being immersed in the beautiful music. But that moment was a reminder about doing something you love. It’s like, look what happens when you follow your passion.”

Urlezaga and Kirchner enjoying Libertango

After the grand opening, Phillips returned to Buenos Aires and shared his story with Maria Emma. She reminded him of the candle she had lit and told him, “Every once in a while, people get ‘tapped.’ You’ve just been tapped.”

This fall, Phillips began his final year in DePauw’s 5-year Double Degree program, a partnership between the School of Music and College of Liberal Arts – and one of the few options that could accommodate all his interests. He’s majoring in philosophy, Spanish and violin performance, which is how he ended up studying at two different universities and a conservatory during his trip to Argentina.

Having flirted with fame and fortune, Phillips is looking forward to where life takes him next. “I feel like a spring,” he says. “All my interests have intersected and condensed. Now I’m ready to explode into something.”

Teaming Up for The Tempest

Fri, 7 Oct 2011 00:00:00 EST

William “Will” A. Freske ’13 is one of 15 students enrolled in The Tempest, a course team-taught by eight faculty members and offered in conjunction with a weeklong residency by the Actors From the London Stage.

“Having eight professors has been a unique experience because each teaches a specific lesson, including acting, history of theatre, development of Shakespeare's language and even a focus on music throughout the play,” Freske says. “It really shows Shakespeare’s depth when each professor teaches completely different lessons about his work.”

The Actors From the London Stage (AFTLS), one of the oldest established touring Shakespeare theatre companies in the world, arrive this week to share their acting expertise and knowledge of William Shakespeare. In addition to visiting Freske’s class and 17 other classes, they will perform The Tempest on Tuesday, Oct. 11, and Thursday, Oct. 13, at 7:30 p.m. in Moore Theatre in the Judson and Joyce Green Center for the Performing Arts. Performances are free and open to the public.

Each of the five actors, using a minimum amount of props and costumes, will take on two or three major roles and several minor ones in The Tempest, resulting in a fast-moving and very entertaining performance.

Freske, a communication and English writing double major, says the class is a perfect fit for him. The course designation – experiential experimental (EXP) – is a fairly new concept. Students receive a quarter credit and meet two hours a week for half a semester.

“I have studied Shakespeare in both my English and theatre classes, but I’ve never had the opportunity to focus on one play. The coolest thing has been analyzing the characters, mainly Caliban, who is Prospero's servant and perhaps the most complex character in the play,” he says.

The course combines reading and textual analysis with approaches to performing the play, culminating in a workshop with the visiting actors. For their final project, students perform a scene and write about it.

Ronald “Ron” L. Dye, associate professor of English and communication and theatre, is coordinating the actors’ visit, and is also one of the eight professors. “For the students, the course presents a focused study of one text. It’s a lot of work for a quarter credit, but most of the students are taking the course because they love Shakespeare, and because it’s a unique opportunity,” he says.

Deborah “Debby” R. Geis, associate professor of English and chair of the department, concurs. “The students who sign up are super motivated and also risk takers, because what we find is that many of them don’t have acting experience nor have they studied Renaissance drama before,” she says.

“The AFTLS coach the students, which is the most exciting part of the residency. They come to class and look at the scenes that the students are working on,” Geis explains. “It can be transformative. Students are very receptive to the professional British Shakespeare actors because they are disarming, very direct and really effective in getting students up on their feet speaking the language. An interesting aspect about learning to speak Shakespeare out loud is that it’s much more conversational sounding than it is when it’s read.”

Hillary S. Kelleher, part-time assistant professor of English and Posse mentor, teamed with Keith E. Nightenhelser, part-time instructor of classical studies and coordinator of convocations, to examine the play's historical and intellectual context. Kelleher focused on Renaissance magic, while Nightenhelser drew connections between Montaigne and political thought. “What we’re trying to do is to dovetail what we each specialize in with some aspect of this particular play. Part of what’s so amazing about Shakespeare is that you can find something that appeals to all of us.”

“We love to make that crossing between performance and text,” Geis says. “It really makes the play come alive. One of the things that people love about Shakespeare is, on the one hand, you can be true to the language of the play, and on the other, there is something wonderfully rewarding about making artistic choices to bring the play alive.”

The Tempest is a Performing Arts Series event that is co-sponsored by the Communication and Theatre Department and the Public Occasions Committee.

The four other faculty members teaching the course include Caroline L. Good, part-time instructor of communication and theatre and costume shop supervisor; Andrew M. Hayes, associate professor of communication and theatre and chair of the department; Amy M. Gaither-Hayes, part-time assistant professor of communication and theatre and coordinator of Will Power: Shakespeare in the Schools; and Andrea E. Sununu, professor of English.

For more information about arts at DePauw, visit the arts website.

In The Open

Thu, 6 Oct 2011 00:00:00 EST

How can you ignore tents in the middle of a college campus? For interns at the Compton Center for Peace and Justice, that’s sort of the point.

Like changing leaves and Monon Bell t-shirts, Peace Camp is an affirmation of fall at DePauw. Interns from the Compton Center organize the weeklong series of mostly open-air events to bring awareness to a patchwork of interrelated social issues.

“People rarely see connections between different social justice issues, so Peace Camp offers a setting to expand on these conversations and make connections.” says senior Nicholas “Nic” Flores, a Compton Center intern.

On a larger campus, passersby might simply be that. But at DePauw, the people in the tents are your friends. You see Nic and think, “I had a class with him,” so you stop to say hello. Before long, you’re talking and learning about something pretty important. Apart from it being a 24/7 campout, this isn’t much different from what goes on in classrooms every day.

“I think the idea of student activism being a phase is a contradiction, especially here at DePauw,” senior intern Kelly M. Kish says. “In our classes, we’re encouraged to question authors, theories and past events. All students here are already activists, but they don’t always know how to translate that to everyday life.”

The Compton Center was named for former DePauw philosophy professor Russell J. Compton, an ordained United Methodist minister and fierce advocate for social justice. He was also the inspiration for the recently announced Johnson-Wright Lecture in Conflict Studies to Honor Russell J. Compton, the first of which will be given on Nov. 8 by Karen Koning AbuZayd ’63, former commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

Sharing its 500 E. Seminary Street location with DePauw’s Center for Spiritual Life, the Compton Center is home to a dozen student interns who hope to follow in its namesake’s footsteps. Their role isn’t just to talk about social issues, but to be heard.

“We’re always talking about different types of activism, how to be inviting, how to introduce people to a subject in a way they’ve never thought about before,” says coordinator Valerie E. Rudolph, who helps with campus programming and acts as a staff mentor to the interns.

Rudolph’s job, as she explains it, is to “keep interns centered as they fight the man, so to speak.” After all, they’re dealing with serious topics, day after day, working to change the world. It’s possible to get caught up in the passion of an issue without realizing that it’s impacting your grades and personal relationships.

At the same time, these students are committed.

“I think my parents hoped my activism would end in high school, when I worked with issues of youth incarceration and racial inequality in New York City,” senior intern Michelina Ferrara says. “It didn’t. This is a choice I made for life – I can’t just turn it off.”

The goal, then, is to channel all that energy into productive, but uncompromising, work. Because most of the Compton Center’s work is student-run, multi-year interns get to know their University inside and out. They know what funding is available to bring speakers to campus, and what classes look like throughout the curriculum.

By the time they graduate, they’ve not only proven their expertise on an issue, but also that they know how to navigate a maze of professional relationships and budgets, stretching pragmatism to its limits.

Laura C. Stevens, a 2007 DePauw graduate, wrestled with Peace Camp tent poles and social issues as a four-year Compton Center intern.

“I was leading groups of people right away,” Stevens remembers. “My first big project came up during spring semester of my freshman year. I recruited and led a group of students to the March for Women's Lives in Washington, D.C. It was an awesome experience. Later, I helped organize more elaborate campaigns to certify green buildings on campus and get more local food in our dining system.”

Like many other Compton Center alumni, Stevens turned her experience into a career. She now serves as an organizing representative for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign in Portland, Ore.

“I wouldn't have continued on this trajectory of environmental organizing if I hadn't had these experiences with the Compton Center,” she says.

Hail Malthus!

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 00:00:00 EST

Humor and environmental sustainability come together in a darkly funny 2002 Tony award-winning musical, Urinetown, which opens Thursday, Oct. 6, at 7:30 p.m. in Moore Theatre in the Judson and Joyce Green Center for the Performing Arts.

Urinetown runs Oct. 6-8 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Oct. 9 at 3 p.m. Tickets are $3 for students and $6 for adults, and they are available at the Green Center Box Office. Everyone is welcome to attend an opening-night reception following Thursday’s performance, and talk-back Friday night featuring guest speaker Carol S. Steele, associate dean of academic affairs and sustainability coordinator.

The play is set in the mythical Urinetown, where the use of private toilets has been banned in an attempt to regulate water consumption. The citizenry must use public, pay-per-use amenities owned and operated by the Urine Good Company, a malevolent corporation run by the corrupt Caldwell B. Cladwell.

"Urinetown creator Greg Kotis was in Paris, and he didn’t have enough money to use a pay toilet,” explains director M. Susan Anthony, associate professor of communication and theatre. “That’s when the idea of the musical came to him," she says. Anthony notes that Kotis deliberately chose an off-putting title. Then, in Brechtian fashion, he included self-referential moments throughout the show in which characters comment on the bad title and distasteful subject matter. Thus, the audience is constantly reminded that they are watching a play and that serious issues lie beneath the catchy music.

“The writers didn’t think the audience would accept a frothy musical that makes fun of itself and has really serious dire issues,” Anthony says. “They thought the combination wouldn’t be appealing, but it clearly was. Urinetown began as a fringe piece, but it made its way to Broadway against all odds."

Anthony is thrilled with the group of students and staff working on the musical and acknowledges how dedicated they are. “The whole team has been phenomenal,” she says. “This is an amazing endeavor, and we’ll have been working on it for more than six weeks by the time we open.”

Steven R. Linville ’06 (below second from left), assistant to the dean of the DePauw School of Music and academic coordinator, is musical director. “Urinetown has been a great show for students because there is such a variety in the styles of music, including pieces in Rodgers and Hammerstein style, to Sondheim-like numbers, to jazz and gospel. There's a little bit of everything,” he says.

“The show spoofs other musicals, so there is quite a bit of artistic freedom to try new things, see what works and really just have a good time while learning,” Linville says.

Senior Jared P. Norman choreographed the musical and also plays Hot Blades Harry in the production.

Anthony, the Urinetown cast of 31 students, and Kerry E. Pannell, dean of faculty and associate professor of economics and management, are working together to present a unique student-faculty colloquium, Urinetown: The Future of Water, on Tuesday, Oct. 4 from 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. in the Memorial Student Union Building, ballroom. The event is free and open to the public. Lunch is provided.

It will be a lively event with musical performances from the cast, an introduction of the play by Anthony and a brief panel discussion, including Michele T. Villinski, associate professor and chair of the economics and management department and co-director of the Environmental Fellows Program.

Seniors Alex S. Lopatka and Katie E. Aldrich will talk about their summer internships and work as sustainability interns. Lopatka spent last summer at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Aldrich interned at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte researching water quality in urban streams.

“The colloquium is really exciting. We’re connecting science, social science and the arts to talk about water issues,” Pannell says. She encourages the audience to ask questions of the panelists. “If students are interested in these types of environmental issues, here’s a great opportunity to learn how to pursue them.”

To better understand the last line of the play, “Hail Malthus!” Anthony asked Pannell to write the following explanation in the program.

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) trained as an Anglican minister before becoming a professor of political economy and a widely revered doomsday soothsayer. His 1789 work, “An Essay on the Principle of Population,” predicted that humanity’s biological propensity to reproduce, not so different from that of rabbits, would overwhelm the world’s natural resources. Little did he know that a place to use the toilet would become the scarcest resource of all.

Urinetown is presented through special arrangement with Music Theatre International (MTI).

For more information about the 2011-12 theatre season, visit the DePauw Theatre website.

Michael A. Paniccia '14

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:00:00 EST

Sophomore Michael A. Paniccia straddled the line between vacation and school this summer. The Michigan City, Ind., native spent July on the southern coast of Peru, excavating centuries-old ruins buried beneath meters of dirt and sand.

At one time ruled by the Inca, Peru has a rich archaeological history, including the Nazca Lines – giant ground-etched drawings fully visible only from the air – and Macchu Pichu. But Paniccia passed over these main attractions to work in the Paracas National Reserve, a national park home to sea lions, flamingos, Humboldt penguins and its own archaeological treasures, from pre-Inca societies to Colonial-era ruins.

During his 37-day excursion, the group he worked with stayed at a remote ranger station in the park, located on a cliff overlooking a lagoon on the Pacific coast. The group rose with the sun every morning and traveled 45 minutes via off-road trails to the excavation site, an area next to a small bay that has been occupied by numerous peoples. Though they worked in a desert not far from the Equator, the southern hemisphere’s flipped calendar spared Paniccia and the others from stifling heat.

“It was absolutely beautiful,” Paniccia says. “It never rained; but most days were overcast, and in the morning we would sometimes get a salt mist from low-lying clouds that soaked everything. It’s a whole new world there.”

Paniccia worked with Jalh Dulanto, a professor of archaeology at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. The two met last year, when Dulanto was visiting professor of anthropology at DePauw and Paniccia was a student in his Human Origins course. They were joined by two of Dulanto’s Peruvian students and an archaeological anthropologist from Penn State University.

“It was a great experience,” Paniccia says. “I feel like I couldn’t have gotten a better chance to try out all the different kinds of field equipment, types of excavations and individual instruction than I did there. I’m glad I went with a professor, rather than a commercial field school.”

The crew mixed modern GPS equipment, ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys and photogrammetry – 3D modeling through photographs – with traditional field techniques to document the area as they uncovered the history below.

“I actually received the privilege to use a lot of the equipment, or at least help out and watch closely as one of the professors worked,” Paniccia says. “I don’t think many people can say that they’ve used a GPR before – especially as a college freshman.”

On his journey back home from Paracas, Paniccia spent a day in Lima before taking a red-eye flight back to Chicago. Besides the usual sites and museums, such as the San Franciscan convent in the heart of the city and the natural history museum, Paniccia visited the National Museum of the Archaeology, Anthropology and History of Peru in the Pueblo Libre district. Only then did the impact of his fieldwork hit him.

“The museum there had a huge collection from the area where we had been digging,” Paniccia says. “One of the exhibits was actually a replica of a burial chamber nearly identical to the one I had helped excavate only a few days before. It was really breathtaking for me. I actually sat down for a few minutes just laughing to myself, amazed at seeing all of the hard work I had done over the past month come together in front of my eyes. The exhibit made me want to get in my taxi and go straight back to work.”

He will – and soon. Paniccia will return to Peru during DePauw’s Winter Term to work with Dulanto again, this time in a different area of the same park.

“Even after just a day or two of class, I already felt ready to go back to work in the field,” Paniccia says. “I think I’m more excited this time than I was last time I went.”

Black & White & Gray

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 00:00:00 EST

How do video games promote ethical positions? Can they enhance our ethical sensibility by simulating real world dilemmas? Game industry insiders and academics from around the country will address these questions during Ethical Inquiry through Video Game Play and Design: A Symposium, hosted at the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics on Oct. 10-12.

Director of Instructional and Learning Services Donnie A. Sendelbach and Associate Professor of English Harry J. Brown organized the symposium to explore how video games offer an oft-overlooked opportunity for ethical reflection.

“Rather than an event that rehashes what is considered problematic with games – sex, violence – we decided to explore the possibilities games offer with regard to ethical inquiry,” Sendelbach says.

The symposium will address issues about how to use games to simulate ethical dilemmas in fields such as law, medicine, and business. Brown, author of Videogames and Education, hopes the symposium gives participants a chance to question the relationship between game world and real world.

“By simulating ethical choices, games can confront the players with choices in ways that traditional pedagogical tools can’t,” he says.

Peter Molyneux, founder of Lionhead Studios and creative director at Microsoft Game Studios, Europe, will give a keynote address to the symposium on Tuesday, Oct. 11. Few designers are more qualified to speak about choice and consequence in video games than Molyneux, who has integrated moral dilemmas into his games for more than two decades.

“Molyneux's games represent some of the most vivid and skillfully crafted examples of games as vehicles for ethical choice and self-examination,” Brown says. “He created the ‘god game’ genre with Populous and Black & White, games that allow the player omnipotent power over a game world, making the player accountable for the decisions he or she makes in shaping that world. In his more recent Fable series, Molyneux emphasizes the ways personal interactions and political decisions reverberate throughout the web of society, often in ways we can't foresee or control. His game designs are moving past the moral binary of good and evil, toward more complex simulations of ethical reasoning in which the ‘right’ path is often unclear.”

Veteran video game executive and DePauw alumna Kathy Vrabeck ’85 will also speak at the event. Vrabeck was president at both Electronic Arts and Activision, two of the video game industry’s biggest heavyweights, and headed the digital division at Legendary Pictures, a partner in the production of films including The Dark Knight and Inception.

In addition to the symposium’s high-profile industry guests, members of the DePauw community will be joined by their peers to discuss the intersection of games and ethics.

“We wanted to bring together a variety of perspectives for the symposium,” Brown says.

Sendelbach adds, “Our goal is that this event will inspire collaborations between the DePauw community and other Indiana schools, as well as professionals in the field of game creation.”

For more information, including a complete program and registration details, please visit the symposium’s website. You can also follow program updates on the event’s Facebook page. Individual sessions are free and open to DePauw’s students, faculty and staff. Peter Molyneux’s Oct. 11 keynote will also be open to the public.

Professor Doug Harms

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 00:00:00 EST

Three sections of Computer Science 1 (CS1) are offered each semester, but one section this semester includes a lively addition to the curriculum – an intelligent mechanical agent or robot. Professor of Computer Science Douglas “Doug” Harms is teaching the pilot course.

In CS1 classes, students learn programming, and traditionally everything is done entirely on the computer. “You tell a computer what to do, and it does it – no more, no less. Giving precise directions is key,” Harms explains. “At this level computer science encompasses how to communicate, express and solve problems.”

Five years ago, Bryn Mawr College, Georgia Institute of Technology and Microsoft Research formed a consortium to establish the Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE). “Their plan was to introduce a robot into the CS1 curriculum so that students would learn how to program it,” Harms says. “Not only would students learn computer science concepts, but they would also write programs to direct a robot to carry them out.”

Harms’ interest in the project began when he attended a workshop presented by Bryn Mawr computer science professors Doug Blank and Deepak Kumar at the annual Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) conference. Kumar is the author of Learning Computing with Robots. “The workshop was really fun, and the program has been very successful,” Harms says. “I was so impressed with what Doug and Deepak have done that I wanted to use the robots in my CS1 class, too.”

The programming language that IPRE uses is Python. DePauw and many other universities use Java. Once Harms discovered that the program had never been written in Java, he made it his sabbatical project – developing more than 8,000 lines of Java code and rewriting about two-thirds of Kumar’s book. “I based the book on what Deepak wrote, but moved topics around so that it make sense in Java. All of the general information, including the information on robots didn’t change.”

Harms presented the program at several computer science conferences, and he received positive feedback. “People said they have been following this project for years and have been waiting for it to be written in Java,” Harms says. “A few colleges and universities will be using my software this year.”

Each robot costs about $230, and DePauw bought 30. Each student has a robot and is charged a $50 course fee, which allows them to use the robot for the semester. Harms set the price based on the expected life of the robot so that it would eventually become self-sustaining.

The book and software are free. “I use a lot of public domain software, and I wanted to contribute somehow to the open source community,” Harms says. “I also know that a lot of colleges can’t afford expensive software. The language Java is free, and at DePauw we use Blue J, which is an integrated Java environment, and it’s free, too.”

The robot has two parts – the Scribbler, manufactured by Parallax, and the fluke board, designed and manufactured at Georgia Tech. The Scribbler has a light, speaker, light detectors and distance sensors. The fluke board is equipped with a camera and Bluetooth technology so that communication between the computer and robot is done wirelessly.

“In class we start by giving simple instructions to the robots, and then move on to sequencing, making decisions, repetition and other CS concepts,” Harms says. “For example, if there is something in front of the robot, then the student has to instruct it what to do. In a traditional computer science class, the decisions being made are about things happening on the screen, but in the lab with the robots, they are in the context of how you can direct the robot.”

Students have the software installed on their computers so they can work on projects outside of the lab – in their dorms, lobbies and hallways. “I thought, 'What a cool way to get non-computer science students interested in computer science,' which has happened at other institutions using robots, and that intrigued me.”

Ni Hao DePauw

Thu, 1 Sep 2011 00:00:00 EST

Every morning, Danielle R. Strohmeyer ’10 heads to a job where she can’t speak the native language. It isn’t a lack of knowledge or practice – she studied Chinese for four years as an undergrad, including a semester abroad in Beijing. She’s paid to speak English.

Strohmeyer is one of nine DePauw alumni teaching at Tam Kang, a private school just outside of the Taiwanese capital, Taipei. More than 23 million people occupy Taiwan, an island one-third the size of Indiana, but you’d be hard-pressed to find many other blonde, blue-eyed people there. That’s not such a bad thing in her line of work – as far as English teachers from America go, she certainly looks authentic. To her students, she brings something new and exciting to the classroom. From Strohmeyer’s point of view, so do they.

“The students can be so entertaining,” Strohmeyer says. “One little boy told me he wants to go to America because he wants to have a cheeseburger. Another one wants to go because he heard we have ‘advanced science and mathematical programs.’ He’s 10.”

Those comments sum up life at Tam Kang. Kids are still kids, but at a private school in the capital of a powerful Asian economy, cheeseburgers aren’t the only difference between here and there.

Strohmeyer’s elementary classroom at Tam Kang has two full-time teachers – one English speaker and one Taiwanese. They support each other during the day, splitting their time between teaching and grading, and sometimes stirring a student from an unscheduled nap. At the high school level, English teachers act more like tutors, helping students brush up their language skills before leaving for college.

“It’s a good job,” Strohmeyer says. “We’re paid well and our housing is provided along with insurance. And it’s a job where you feel like you’re doing meaningful work. I’m in love with the kids.”

Some of Tam Kang's recent DePauw hires cool off in Taiwan's Sun Moon Lake.

Rather than slogging through a crowded jobs market, many recent college graduates like Strohmeyer are choosing short-term commitments to programs such as Teach For America or the Peace Corps. This year Teach For America accepted a record number of new teachers – among them, 16 members of DePauw’s Class of 2011, ranking seventh among small colleges. It was also the largest group of DePauw graduates to head to Tam Kang since 2007, when Professor of Asian Studies Sherry Mou first found a contact at the school.

Mou, a native Taiwanese, thought the school’s diverse – and bilingual – curriculum matched up well with what DePauw students had to offer.

“Tam Kang is one of the oldest and most renowned private schools in Taiwan,” Mou says. “It has an unusual curriculum that emphasizes music and the arts. I thought it would be a good fit for DePauw graduates, especially with our programs in those areas. Its English department always hired native English speakers to teach there, but I learned that the school relied on headhunters to find the foreign teachers they needed. The process was costly, and the teachers were not always right for the school and its students. I thought DePauw graduates – young, fresh and eager – would be much better.”

That first year, two graduates left for Tam Kang based on the Mou’s promise of a job at a Taiwanese school. Even when Strohmeyer joined in 2010, the process hadn’t changed. Tam Kang administrators took for granted that Mou had a good eye for potential, and they turned out to be right.

“The school loves DePauw people because they’re very hard working,” Strohmeyer says. “You also have to be someone who can communicate with kids. If the kids don’t want to talk to you, they won’t put in the effort. The recent DePauw graduates who have come to Tam Kang have been the kind of people whom the students gravitate toward."

Last year, after student interest swelled, DePauw put in place a formal process for interviewing with Tam Kang. The new approach gives students a chance to ask questions and become familiar with a potential situation before committing to teach for a year halfway around the world.

Though China claims the island as a territory, the Taiwanese have governed themselves independently since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1950. Taiwan is most of what remains of the losing side of the conflict, formally the Republic of China, having ceded the mainland.

Strohmeyer, who has lived on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, says that while China was a great place to visit, Taiwan has been a great place to live as a foreigner. “It’s appropriate that Taiwan is between China and the United States because, culturally, that’s what you find – it’s a middle ground.”

Later this month, DePauw’s Office of Civic, Global and Professional Opportunities will host a videoconference with Strohmeyer and other alumni at the school. More information will be provided on the Professional Opportunities website.

Gone to Gulu

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 00:00:00 EST

May 2011 graduates J. Adam Hawkins and William “Max” M. Hudson spent part of their summer in Africa – going on safari, traveling by small motorcycles called boda-bodas, and helping coach a local basketball team. However, it was their service – work in a hospital and orphanage in Uganda – that solidified their goal of raising awareness of underserved communities.

Sharon M. Crary, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry, organized the trip. Hawkins and Hudson asked to join her after traveling together last January to Ecuador during a Winter Term trip with a medical brigade from the Timmy Foundation.

Crary’s connection to Uganda began during her postdoctoral work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She completed fieldwork in Gulu, Uganda, at Lacor Hospital during an Ebola outbreak. Moved by what she saw and the people she met, she knew it would not be the last time she traveled to Northern Uganda.

This summer marked Crary’s fourth trip to Gulu. During the last decade, she has organized nearly a dozen fundraisers for St. Jude Children’s Home, and last spring she formed a nonprofit organization, Social Promise, Inc., to continue support for both the hospital and orphanage.

Lacor Hospital, located in Northern Uganda, is a private, nonprofit hospital, whose mission is to guarantee affordable medical services, especially to the most needy. It was founded in 1959 by the Comboni Missionaries for the Gulu Catholic Diocese, and treats 300,000 patients annually – half of them are children under the age of six.

Hawkins, who began medical school at Oklahoma State University this fall, went to Gulu to gain more international medical experience and to help underserved communities. “The experience for me was an affirmation that studying medicine is what I want to do,” he says.

Hawkins shadowed a doctor who specializes in infectious diseases. “I saw some of the sickest patients I’ve ever seen,” he says. “A nine-year-old girl was in the hospital with tuberculosis for a second time, in addition to having HIV, meningitis and malaria. It was pretty tough to see.

“The main thing that I gained from the trip is more perspective and a better appreciation and understanding of the status and conditions that some poorer communities face around the world everyday,” Hawkins says. “The conditions in the hospital are extremely rugged – serving the poorest of the poor in Uganda – but the health statistics have risen tenfold since the hospital opened, and that continues to improve.”

“I know that I’m going to get bogged down in studying in medical school, and I might lose some perspective on why I’m here. Remembering my experiences in Africa and Ecuador reinforces my desire to work with patients like the ones I saw at Lacor, instead of working in a hospital where I could make the most money by seeing the most patients,” he says.

Hawkins is interested in studying infectious diseases but admits he may change his mind. In the meantime, he joined the board of Social Promise, Inc., and is committed to helping raise awareness of, and money for, the people he met in Gulu.

“Going to Lacor was a good career opportunity for Adam,” Crary says. “He has always talked about working as a doctor in a developing country. He plans to go back, and in fact, Lacor is a good place to do a rotation. You see many different kinds of infectious diseases in one hospital.”

Hudson (above left) spent most of his time working with children with disabilities at the orphanage. “The hardest part was maintaining a positive attitude with the kids and not becoming overwhelmed by the conditions they live in,” he says. “Despite those conditions, the kids were always happy and playful.”

Hudson took photos of some of the children at the orphanage, learned their histories and is matching them for a pen pal program with children with special needs at an area high school in Cincinnati. He’s looking forward to seeing the connection take place. Hudson says he plans to return to Gulu. Though he begins a full-time job this fall, he also joined the board of Social Promise, Inc., and will continue to help raise awareness of the organization’s needs.

Click here to learn more about Lacor Hospital.

Sidewalk Superplant

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 00:00:00 EST

Purslane is absolutely packed with antioxidants – helpful agents that prevent molecular trouble-makers called free radicals from damaging living cells. Walk through a supermarket and plenty of labels will advertise that the antioxidants within fight aging or prevent cancer.

But you probably won’t find purslane.

Abroad, you'll find purslane mixed with salads or in stews, and even used medicinally; here, it's just a weed.

“The United States is one of the few places that doesn’t make use of purslane,” says Bryan A. Hanson, professor of chemistry and biochemistry. "It’s a weed to us. Weeds are something you dig out of your garden.”

All those antioxidants aren’t just sitting around, waiting to be eaten by humans, however. They make purslane an especially hearty plant, able to survive in places where others would wilt away. So, while Hanson’s three student research assistants spent their summer cutting up and testing a more than a thousand purslane plants, they weren’t doing it to find a good recipe.

“We looked at how purslane is affected by stressful environments by testing it in salty and drought conditions,” says Paulina “Polly” J. Haight ’13 a biochemistry major from Wooster, Ohio, who worked on the project. “We’re hoping that it will relate to how plants in general might react to climate change.”

Haight and two other Science Research Fellows – Matthew A. Kukurugya ’13, a biochemistry and history double major from Crown Point, Ind., and Vincent S. Guzzetta ’14, a biochemistry major from Rockton, Ill. – spent the summer cultivating and testing three different types of purslane: one domesticated variety, and two collected by Hanson from sidewalk cracks in South Carolina and Wisconsin.

“It’s a very, very resilient plant,” Guzzetta says. “We find it in cracks in the sidewalk; we find it in deserts. It grows everywhere. Because we’re looking at climate change, we’re looking at hotter environments and what’s surviving in them.”

In total, they used a staggering 1,080 plants – each one grown in the DePauw Nature Park’s Manning Environmental Field Station – to find out how purslane reacted when pushed to its limits in salty or dry soil. For example, salt stress was shown to increase the plant’s production of betalain, an antioxidant and pigment that gives plants red stems, leaves or flowers. To the best of Hanson’s knowledge, theirs is the first study to make this connection.

Hanson began the study three years ago with Associate Professor of Biology Dana A. Dudle, who adds an ecological perspective to his interest in the internal chemistry of purslane. The interdisciplinary approach to the study, the students say, helped them connect chemical changes inside the plant to changes in its appearance and health.

“Sometimes in a chemistry class, you wonder, how does this apply to something real?” Haight says. “This project does a good job of helping us see that.”

“This research is really rewarding because, at the end of the day, you produce results you can see,” Kukurugya adds. “You’re not only learning new techniques, but also learning the chemical portrait of this plant.”

Next summer, new students will join Hanson and Dudle to pick up where Guzzetta, Haight and Kukurugya left off. Even though their work with purslane has come to an end, one of them still sees the plant in his future.

“I’m bringing seeds home,” Guzzetta says. “I told my parents we’re going to start eating purslane.”

Margaret G. Musgrave '11

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 00:00:00 EST

Photo by Alika D. Seu '11

Margaret G. Musgrave '11 remembers standing outside an Evansville, Ind., polling place with her mother and father, the candidate and the campaign manager. She remembers shaking hands and asking people, "Please vote for my mommy." And she remembers the rain, too. It always rains on Election Day.

This was the Musgrave family routine every four years, beginning when she was six. Politics is invisible to most children, but not to her. Politics was all around her.

"It's difficult to ignore politics when your dining table is always covered with maps, and you're looking at how tax rates are fluctuating in each area," she says before interrupting herself. "I know too much about property taxes."

As Musgrave grew older, she began to campaign for candidates who didn't share her roof. Soon enough, she outgrew phone calls and canvassing and moved on to fundraising and organizing rallies. Musgrave even worked as a scheduler for Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock's 2006 campaign. She was a high school junior.

In some ways, college life didn't change much. By the time she got to DePauw, Musgrave had the experience and knowledge of a true political wonk. She joined the College Republicans and interned for Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, where she created an online mapping system of each visit he made to every country diner or fire hall across the state.

But college opened new doors, too. Musgrave wrote a food column for the student newspaper. She was a deejay on WGRE, the campus radio station. She majored in classical studies and was named to Eta Sigma Phi, the national honorary classical fraternity. Musgrave argues that classical studies is political science, however. She says it's just not current.

"Plato, Aristotle – these are the founding beliefs of American government," she says. "I remember being in my freshman seminar and thinking, 'This is perfect.'"

As a classical studies major, Musgrave reveled in learning about the foundations of Western civilization with professors who brought the ancient world to life.

"During my sophomore year, [Associate Professor of Classical Studies] Pedar Foss wanted to teach us the brilliance behind Roman battle strategies, and what better way than to actually give us swords?" she says. "Our 'legion' marched onto the battlefield that was Bowman Park, where our 'legionnaire' gave us armor, shields, and swords. We spent the next hour learning how to properly hold a gladius and how to march in formation. Since that afternoon, I've never forgotten just how amazing the Roman army was."

Roman-like orderliness and efficiency is now Musgrave's foremost concern. This spring, she began work as an operations coordinator at Scale Computing in Indianapolis through the Governor Bob Orr Entrepreneurial Fellowship. Musgrave is one of five members of the Class of 2011 – with Abigail K. Wilson, Alec C. Synnestvedt, Sally M. Reasoner and Breana A. Buchler – chosen for the fellowship, which places recent graduates in Indiana host companies.

Like other Orr hosts, Scale Computing is relatively young, having been founded in 2007, but growing quickly and keen to innovate.

"The atmosphere here is a hotbed for creative productivity," Musgrave says. "Nothing beats the feeling of waking up every morning and loving going in to work."

Of course, politics still plays an important role in her life. She was elected treasurer of the Indiana Federation of College Republicans in May, and she was recently named one of Indiana's Top 25 Under 25 in politics by HoosierAccess.com. But Musgrave is happy to work behind the scenes the same way she always has.

"By helping to keep the inner cogs working on campaigns, I meet and help so many people," she says. "That in itself is rewarding for me."

Parachuting Frogs

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 00:00:00 EST

What began as a joke resulted in a legitimate science experiment that involved more than 100 “parachuting” frogs. This summer three students are working with Biology Professor James “Jim” H. Benedix. Ashley M. Conard ’14, Stephen G. Hesterberg ’13 and Luke B. Miller ’14 admit they were pleased and surprised when their brainstorming session that included some kidding around led them to a very interesting and rewarding research experience.

They designed an experiment to study the falling behavior of frogs – a behavior that is referred to as parachuting. “As the students tried to come up with project ideas, Luke shared what he learned in a physics class from an earlier cat study, which you couldn’t possibly do now,” Benedix says. “The project involved dropping cats from different heights to see them get into their falling behavior and try to land effectively.

“Luke asked jokingly, ‘Could we drop frogs off the roof?’ My answer was, ‘No,’ but I said that there are times when weather conditions are right, and frogs are heading to the pond in such a hurry, that they literally are jumping out of trees.

“All this time, the idea had been a big joke telling stories about frogs,” Benedix explains. “Finally, I realized that this is a legitimate behavior, and it’s something that we should understand because clearly, not all frogs should be able to do it. There should be adaptations for allowing the frog to jump out of trees and not die when they land on the ground.

“We did some more background research and discovered that the behavior is called parachuting, when some animals drop directly down and try to slow their decent. In cases where they move laterally, it is referred to as gliding,” Benedix explains. “We decided to compare frogs that live in trees and ones that don’t. The hypothesis being that the species that lives in trees is going to be better at falling and will do something that allows them to drop at a slower speed.

“We built a 12-foot high wall, painted it like a ruler and set up two video cameras,” Benedix says. “From the front, we could videotape the frogs falling in front of the ruler, and a smaller camera took MP3s from the top to show that the frogs were actually doing the correct behavior. We put a pool at the bottom so that they had a soft place to land – if they were really bad at falling.

“The students figured out a way that they could throw the frogs into the air and actually videotape them. The next step was to figure out a way to calculate the differences in acceleration,” Benedix says. “It took a while to create a formula to measure from the videotaping because it was limited. You could only get one frame every 30th of a second. So, you couldn’t precisely time them using the video, but you could measure how far they moved over a known amount of time.”

Benedix explains that if you think of gravity as being like a gas pedal, the frogs that are good parachuters have their foot off the gas more than the ones who are bad parachuters and have their foot to the floor.

The students decided to add toads to the experiment because the toads have always been on the ground. “We figured the frogs were going to fall really fast, and we wanted to have a comparison. We had frogs that were fully awake and warm, and also chilled some of them so that their reactions would be slowed and they wouldn’t be very good at performing the behavior. We wanted to show not only that there is a difference between species, but also find within a species, do they fall less well when they’re groggy?

“The students started the experiment and found that the frogs that were chilled were still throwing their arms out,” Benedix says. “So we needed an extra comparison. We asked for permission from the Animal Care Committee to take a small sample of two of the three species and anesthetize them. They fell like rocks.

“We just finished analyzing the data, and in the end, it didn’t matter whether they were cold and sort of throwing out their arms in a slower, awkward way or if they were anesthetized, they all dropped at about the same speed. Basically, if you were a fully awake tree frog, you were pretty good at slowing yourself down.

“The cricket frogs, which are in the tree frog family but live on the ground, were also good at it but not quite as good as the tree-dwelling frogs. There actually was a difference between them. After that, it didn’t matter if you were a toad, cold, anesthetized; you just dropped like a rock. It was clear that the tree frogs do use the behavior, and if they are arboreal frogs, they have perfected it. The cricket frogs can do it but just don’t do it as well.

(Pictured above from left to right are Stephen G. Hesterberg ’13,
Professor Jim Benedix, Ashley M. Conard ’14 and Luke B. Miller ’14)

“The importance of the study is that we were able to document the first step in the evolution of what could eventually become gliding behavior,” Benedix says. “It appears that in the species we studied, the behavior did evolve. The tree-dwelling frogs have a very precise behavior that slows them down. If they were in a situation where it was crucial because they were jumping out of trees much more than I think they probably are now, then you’d expect those morphological traits to evolve, too. However, it’s just the behavior that they have at this point.”

Benedix says, “This was the best kind of project because it was totally unanticipated and turned into something really interesting, but started off as something just silly.”

Hesterberg agrees. “I never thought we’d actually be doing this project and turning it into real science. It’s given me the chance to experience ecology research and understand what the research process is really like.”

“It’s a great feeling to know that one of our first research projects – which was completely a joke in the beginning – turned into something that is of value to the science community,” Conard says. “The experiment didn’t look as complicated as it was, but when you start with nothing, and have to completely imagine how you want it to look, it was challenging. We got the results we expected, which is a very rewarding feeling after so many hours of work.”

Conard, Hesterberg and Miller are Science Research Fellows (SRF), which is an honors program for outstanding students interested in studying science and having significant hands-on research experiences as undergraduates. The program prepares students to be top candidates for post-graduate study and for a wide variety of careers in science. To learn more about the program, click here to visit the SRF website.

Photo Gallery: The Celebrated Parachuting Frogs Of Putnam County

Professor Anne Harris

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:00:00 EST

Anne F. Harris, associate professor of art history and director of the Women's Studies Program, received a student-faculty summer stipend to write curriculum for a new interdisciplinary course she will offer next year – The Ecology of Medieval Art.

Her motivation behind designing the course is to show students that Western culture, indeed human culture, is not self-contained. “A previous course, Monsters and Marvels: Imagining the Other in Medieval Art, was a first attempt to make Medieval art history less white and less European,” Harris says. “As I looked at the courses I was teaching, I realized that they were consistently about a very self-enclosed Medieval Europe.

“Modern Western culture is influential but also deeply influenced by other cultures,” she explains. “Looking at the Crusades, opened up the Middle Ages because it made me realize that not only did Christians go to Jerusalem, but there were Christians ruling in the Middle East from 1099 - 1291. There was a 200-year colonial period right in the middle of Medieval history.

“I began to see the enclave of Western Europe as incredibly permeated and permeable, and I started to view Medieval culture very differently,” Harris says. “Many students come to Medieval classes wanting to talk about knights in shining armor in a very closed Medieval culture. So, a new course on the Ecology of Medieval Art will allow me to explore topics differently and also talk about contemporary and this time, environmental issues.

“In researching post-colonial theory, I came across the term ‘the Other.’ It’s a productive and far-reaching term because it allows you to frame conversations about the West and the East, the self and the other, and, in the context of ecocriticism and the analysis of environmentalism, the human and the non-human,” Harris explains. “Discussing how ‘the Other’ is constructed, has uncovered many great investigations for me. I don’t think Medieval has all the answers, but I like the questions it asks.”

Students in the class will have to answer tough questions about themselves in relation to the environment. “I’m looking at how Medieval culture constructed nature and constructed the idea of environment,” Harris says. “There are lines between nature and culture and human and non-human. That’s what the course will force students to look at – those lines between human and non-human and self and other.”

Harris says, “In some instances, we will look at how Medieval culture reasserts that line between human and non-human. We'll be looking at the way that Genesis draws up boundaries between humanity and the "perfect" natural world of Eden. I like to think of the expulsion from Eden as the ultimate climate change. It’s a model of climate change. There’s a real line drawn between a benevolent nature and a malevolent nature.”

However, Harris points out that there are also instances in Medieval culture that blur the line. “Part of the course is to think about how to blur the line in some way so that students can see their identities as more integrated with what has been made ‘the Other.’ We’ll examine how nature has been made ‘Other.’

“Do I want us to hug trees? Recycle more?” Harris asks. “That’s not the goal of this course. I want students to be more troubled by nature, and I’d like for them to experience the wonder of the blurring of those lines, which can be a little unsettling.

“We aren’t going to try to solve the recycling and pollution problems; we’re going to look at what, within the historical conditions of the Middle Ages, created the conditions for these problems. Which is – how did we get to this point where we are one thing and nature is another?," Harris asks. "We give nature agency in our language. We say things like, 'Nature is taking back the quarry,' but we don't give it agency in our politics. We can be more conscious of its agency on our behaviors."

Harris has incorporated a technological component to the new curriculum with assistance from Vishal Khandelwal ’13. Khandelwal plans to attend graduate school to continue his studies in art history with a focus on architecture. He is also a student in the Information Technology Associates Program (ITAP). By using Google Earth and researching in the DePauw Archives, he has mapped old photographs onto new landscapes.

“Part of the course will address landscape and memory, and the idea of the agency of landscape being found in the memory that it can contain,” Harris explains. “We’ve picked sites in Putnam County that used to be other things: a horse farm, cattle farm, saw mill, etc. It will be a little bit of a then-and-now comparison. We will also look at the DePauw Nature Park and explore what gets erased, and what gets constructed and why.”

The course, The Ecology of Medieval Art, will focus on seven topics: including landscape, garden, minerals, animals, humans and magic/cosmology.

Harris says, “The big thing that motivates me is to look at those lines that we think are so certain and show that they are not. It’s not an argument that trees have souls. It’s an acknowledgment that it matters when trees are cut down or planted. Inanimate objects have a 'vibrant matter,' in the words of Jane Bennett, a professor of political science and author of Vibrant Matter: a Political Ecology of Things. That’s the big philosophical takeaway from the course.”

Environmental Fellows Program

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 00:00:00 EST

Students will have an exciting opportunity to focus on environmental issues through a newly established four-year program at DePauw that is designed to foster an interdisciplinary understanding of environmental issues. The new Environmental Fellows Program is the fifth Honors and Fellows Program at DePauw.

The Environmental Fellows Program has three main components – coursework with an environmental focus, an internship and senior seminar. Students will choose three classes from the sciences and three from art, humanities or social sciences in addition to the senior seminar.

The internship will enable students to have an extended, intensive research experience. It could be a traditional internship or occur during an off-campus study program – if there is a substantial field or internship component. The goal is to have an experience outside the classroom and out in the world – taking advantage of the opportunity to apply knowledge learned and gaining a better understanding of how it’s integrated.

The other Honors and Fellows Programs include: Honor Scholar Program, Management Fellows, Media Fellows and Science Research Fellows.

James “Jim” H. Benedix, professor of biology, and Michele T. Villinski, associate professor of economics and management, are the Environmental Fellows program co-directors (at right).

“We want to provide an opportunity for students to study environmental issues in an academic, intellectual way,” Villinski says. “This is not an advocacy program. Students don’t need to have a particular attitude about the environment. We want to combine the academic rigor and critical thinking that DePauw promotes and allow, encourage and enable students to apply that to environmental issues.”

Benedix says, “The idea is to give them expertise in the field they want to work in and also connect that field to environmental issues.”

While most of the structure of the program is in place, the program’s steering committee will meet this fall to approve course offerings. This year, the program is accepting lateral-entry applicants – sophomores in the fall and first-year students in spring 2012.

“As part of the Mellon grant proposal, we promised to have conversations and work hard to find a way to institutionalize our curricular offerings as an interdisciplinary program about the environment,” Villinski says. “Getting the grant and funding speakers and co-curricular events really helped us get momentum and gain interest for this program.”

In 2010, DePauw received a $595,000 three-year grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create new and innovative opportunities related to interdisciplinary environmental education for students and faculty members.

In addition to helping fund the Environmental Fellows Program, the Mellon grant supports: two faculty members (one recently hired, one new) who will enhance environmental course offerings; research opportunities for students; the development of new courses and the addition of environmental modules to existing courses; a variety of co-curricular activities, including symposia and workshops; and continued support for the DePauw Environmental Policy Project (DEPP).

“We spent a lot of time talking about models for a curricular program,” Villinski says. “We wanted to be sure that the students have both the depth of understanding of a particular area and also the breadth of understanding across the disciplines.

“Once we came to the idea of a fellows program, we got very excited because if a student majors in economics, for example, and is an Environmental Fellow, he or she could still go to graduate school in economics or law school but have this added dimension of an environmental cluster of courses and experiences that will possibly open other doors,” Villinski says.

The grant is helping fund a new tenure-track position in political science. Both Benedix and Villinski agree that this position adds a crucial component to the Environmental Fellows course offerings: environmental policy. “We think this will increase interest and rigor in the program,” Villinski says.

“This is just the beginning,” she says. “We’re excited, energized and motivated about Environmental Fellows, but we also think there is room for environmental minors and possibly majors.”

“Many DePauw students have an emotional connection to the environment and want to change the world, but we want them to be prepared so that they can make a real impact in this area,” Benedix says. “We hope the Environmental Fellows Program will enable them to do that.”

For more information about the Environmental Fellows Program, visit the website by clicking here.

Dynamic Duo

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:00:00 EST

The word that best describes the Davies-Jackson Scholarship? Selective. Usually only one student receives the award, a full ride to St. John’s College at the University of Cambridge, but there is no yearly quota to fill. Sometimes two recipients are merited, and sometimes the selection committee finds none. So, when you’re a college freshman and somebody suggests you apply for this award – a process that will take years of dedicated study and months spent writing and rewriting a personal statement – you may just decide that there are other, more productive ways to spend your time.

Stephen K. Worden ‘11 stood at the foot of that mountain not long after arriving at DePauw, when Andrea Sununu, the professor of English who led his first-year Honor Scholar seminar, told him about the scholarship. He fit all the requirements, she said. Assuming he graduated, he would be among the first in his family to do so, and his academic potential stood out even then.

“Stephen emerged with the highest grade in the class, and he was very serious from the start,” Sununu remembers. “He clearly had the kind of sophistication that was rather unusual for someone in the first semester of college.”

Sununu, who became Worden’s adviser, never let him forget the Davies-Jackson Scholarship. Three years later, her persistence paid off. Worden received word in January that he would be this year’s recipient of the graduate scholarship. (Read more...)

“It’s hard for me to even process it,” says Worden, an English literature and political science double major. “It’s going to be absolutely unreal to study where William Wordsworth and Bertrand Russell have worked.”

Sununu was less surprised by the news. “Stephen gives himself challenges, and then he rises to meet them,” she says.

Worden will continue his studies at Cambridge, where he will pursue an M.Phil. in politics. He came to DePauw without any interest in the subject, but it quickly became his passion after taking courses with Assistant Professor of Political Science Smita A. Rahman.

Rather than the quantitative political science that leans heavily on demographics and polling, Worden's interest grew out of political theory. He studied nations that have rebuilt themselves after tragedy: post-Apartheid South Africa or the collapse of East Germany and its oppressive surveillance state.

Worden's graduate dissertation proposal continues his interest in political bodies in transition, but refocuses on the idea of progress in liberal democracies.

"Since the times of Kant and Hegel, Western political consciousness has been wedded to the belief that history is structured by a clear and rational idea of progress; that it moves along a linear path as it works towards its ultimate end," Worden wrote. "According to this narrative, mankind is becoming smarter, freer, and more egalitarian. ... However, what if this progressive understanding of history, which legitimizes the present by divorcing it from the past and locating the future as the sight of greater happiness, is an insufficient framework for political understanding? What if, instead, this narrative paralyzes man’s capacity to affirm the present? What are the political consequences of this belief?"

The night before his application for the Davies-Jackson was due, differences between areas of political scholarship at St. John's College nearly derailed Worden’s hopes. Realizing he would need to rewrite his personal statement, Worden looked to his adviser for help.

“The university system over there is a little different, and what I thought would be my original area of focus turned out not to be what I wanted to do at all,” Worden says. “I went to Professor Sununu at 10 p.m., and she stayed up with me until 3 in the morning to help me finish my application. She was always just as eager and committed to this as I was.”

Sununu’s work with Worden comes as no surprise to those who know her. During the day, students flow in and out of her Asbury Hall office, with or without an appointment. In the summer, she even visits her former pupils who have long since graduated. The dedication she shows to her students, Worden says, helped him capture a dream – and begin a new one.

“I’d like to be a professor because of the relationships I’ve had at DePauw,” he says. “My professors have opened doors for me. I hope I have the opportunity to do that for others, too.”

More about DePauw's recent fellowship and award recipients can be found at www.DePauw.edu/Fellowships.

A Winter Term in Summer

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 00:00:00 EST

Twice since 2009, Assistant Professor of Modern Languages Roberta “Francesca” Seaman and her husband, Michael G. Seaman, a part-time instructor of classical studies, have taken students on Winter Term trips to Italy. It’s common to find DePauw students scattered across the globe during Winter Term, but one major difference separates this course from the others: It takes place during summer break.

The Seamans' “Winter Term in May” originated as a way to accommodate members of the University’s athletic teams, many of whom must remain on campus to practice with their teams during January, the traditional Winter Term month. Student-athletes such as Katherine S. Morrison ’12, a member of the women’s swim team, are given preferential enrollment and make up half the class as a result.

“I wanted to travel, and with swimming, a May term was ideal,” Morrison says. ”It was a great way to transition from finals to working in the summer. I loved the food and the art. Italy is literally an open history book.”

This year’s study-tour, The Culture, Art History and Language of an Italian Border Area, began soon after DePauw’s spring semester ended and continued into June. During that time, students visited seven UNESCO World Heritage sites, with frequent adventures off the beaten path. Trips to larger cities, such as Venice and Padua, were balanced with historic towns in Slovenia and Croatia – places that are historically and artistically significant, but less traveled.

Between viewings of art and architecture of the region, students also learned travel essentials in Italian and sampled the local fare. The class enjoyed meals in the rolling Collio Wine Country, at a 12th century "agriturismo” where all the food must be grown on location, and ate an authentic medieval dinner in the San Floriano Castle.

“Michael and I make a pretty good team,” Seaman says. “He teaches the students history and art history, while I teach the basics of Italian language and culture.”

The group based its day trips out of the northern island city of Grado, where Francesca was born and lived until coming to the United States for her own college education. Her familiarity with the city provided students with a level of cultural immersion that can be shared only by a native.

“The students are welcomed here more as friends than as tourists,” Seaman says. “They meet Italians, including some university students, and so they get a real sense of Italian culture and life. They see Italy more as an insider and feel they belong to the community in a way that would not happen visiting other cities. When students return to Grado from a tour or from a trip during their day off, they often say that they felt as if they were coming home.”

As it turns out, half of this year’s travelers delayed their return. Instead, they continued to other parts of the continent, or put their new language skills to the test in Italy after the course had ended.

“Since there is no rush to return to campus, the students have the option to travel independently in Italy and Europe afterward,” Seaman explains. “The airline ticket is a large part of the trip's cost, but staying on for a week or two does not add significantly to the cost for students.”

Seaman says she hopes to add an overnight stay in the Austrian Alps to the 2012 trip, which students filled nearly as soon as it became available. Winter Term, it seems, is never out of season.

Jordan Stefanov '11

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 00:00:00 EST

DePauw brings students from many countries to our campus, and many DePauw students in turn go abroad for work or study. Jordan S. Stefanov ’11 stands proudly in both categories. In a few short years, Stefanov traveled halfway around the world from his home in Bulgaria to come to DePauw, then halfway back to begin a career in London.

Originally from Kazanlak, Bulgaria, Stefanov first heard about DePauw from a friend. He came to Greencastle not knowing what to expect from the school and the people, but any homesickness quickly faded.

“DePauw definitely kept me busy with academics and extracurricular activities, so I never really had the time to think about home,” he remembers. “Plus, people in the Midwest were so welcoming and warm that I actually felt at home. I spent many of the breaks with the family of one of my best friends, and they treated me as their son.”

Stefanov begins the next leg of his global tour in this summer in London, where he joins PricewaterhouseCoopers’ management consulting graduate program. There, he’ll be able to put his major in economics to use, but Stefanov believes the full spectrum of his DePauw liberal arts education will play an equally important role.

“My courses in economics and mathematics definitely helped me shape my analytical thinking, but other courses, such as Interpersonal Communication and Ethical Theory, helped me develop strong communication and thinking-outside-the-box skills,” Stefanov says. “I loved each and every one of my professors. They were always there for me, and they always challenged and encouraged me to work harder and to achieve more and more.”

Besides his coursework, Stefanov credits membership in a number of campus programs and students organizations for preparing him for his next step.

“My involvement in the Information Technology Associates Program (ITAP), Management Fellows Program, International Student Association and International Student Advisory Board pushed me out of my comfort zone, and I learned how to interact with people of various backgrounds,” he says. “Those were also a great way to develop leadership and problem-solving skills.”

Stefanov created plenty of opportunities to put those skills to the test as a student. Through ITAP, he worked with John “Jack” E. Morrill, professor emeritus of economics and mathematics and director of the Rector Scholarship Program, to develop an online information hub for DePauw’s historic Rector Scholarship. A Rector Scholar himself, Stefanov says he saw the project as a way to return the favor to the program.

“I wouldn't have been able to attend DePauw had it not been for this scholarship,” he says. “In a way, I felt that by getting involved, I would be able to give back to DePauw.”

“I also learned more about the history behind the Rector Scholarship program,” Stefanov adds. “More importantly, however, I had the chance to interact with one of DePauw's most famous professors. Jack truly is a legend around this campus, and he is a great guy to talk to. He is passionate and cares about maintaining the program's prestige.”

This year, Stefanov’s appreciation for his time at DePauw proved to be contagious. As a final gift before graduation, he and Minnu Paul ’11, from Chennai, India, rallied more than 90 percent of the graduating international students to contribute to DePauw’s 2011 Annual Fund.