For University of Wisconsin-Madison Alumni and Friends

Head Games Ann McKee ’75 tackles the devastating effects of brain injuries in athletes.

WINTER 2010

Discoveries Then and Next UW minds have changed the world. Now what?

Global Prescription These kindred spirits are working to alleviate cancer pain.

Won’t Forget, Can Forgive Sometimes prison walls encircle human compassion. Invest in Great PEOPLE Ensure that the leaders of tomorrow can afford a world-class UW-Madison education today.

Cameron Jones wants to change the educational system in America. He wants to get an advanced degree in educational administration, and help students from all backgrounds succeed in school. But first he plans to join the Peace Corps and give back to the world at large.

While majoring in Sociology with a certificate in Criminal Justice, Cameron works on campus 25 hours a week. But he still cannot afford to attend UW-Madison by simply working more hours. Your gift to the Great People Scholarship creates a pool of financial resources for promising students like Cameron while ensuring the future of a strong public university. Make your gift now and the UW Foundation will boost its impact with a match.

Go to uwgreatpeople.org to learn more and to give online today. Great People Move Wisconsin Forward

OnWisconsin_InsideFrontCover_08-05-10_v01.indd 1 10/25/2010 3:34:10 PM WINTER 2010 contents VOLUME 111, NUMBER 4

Features

22 Head-On Collision By John Allen With every brain she dissects, neuropathologist Ann McKee ’75 discovers more about chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the disease that results from repeated brain injuries. Her studies are changing how sports — especially football — are played.

28 Seven Wonders By Jenny Price ’96 We offer seven examples of life-changing UW discoveries, knowing full well that it’s only a start. Think back and add a favorite to our list, then learn what’s afoot at the new 22 Wisconsin Institutes of Discovery.

34 Opening the Door to Forgiveness By Stacy Forster An innovative program staffed by law professors and students pairs crime victims and offenders who are willing to meet — and willing to learn lessons from each other.

38 Pain Relievers By Jenny Price ’96 While American physicians have ready access to medi- cation to help their cancer patients, their counterparts in many countries do not. UW experts are leading a global 34 effort to recognize pain relief as a human right.

Departments 5 Inside Story 6 Letters 10 Scene 12 News & Notes 18 Q & A 19 Classroom 20 Sports 28 46 Traditions Cover 48 Gifts in Action Ann McKee is a world expert on the 49 Badger Connections brain injuries that plague football 66 Flashback and other contact sports. Photo by Tracy Powell

WINTER 2010 3 John Stauffer and Myron Backus

Countless lives were saved by penicillin during World War II, and thanks to University of Wisconsin research, a method was developed to mass produce the antibiotic. By the end of the war, the cost of the drug dropped from $20 to three cents.

University of Wisconsin–Madison scientists continue to lead the way in improving our health. Here, researchers are studying how we may prevent birth defects and manage cancer treatments.

FORWARD. THINKING. www.wisconsinidea.wisc.edu

Gabriela Cezar, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences 4 ON WISCONSIN

OnWiz_Health.indd 1 10/21/10 11:04 AM insidestory JEFF MILLER

John Stauffer and Myron Backus You never know where Countless lives were saved by penicillin during World On Wisconsin a story might take you. War II, and thanks to University of Wisconsin research, WINTER 2010 In the case of Stacy Forster, reporting this issue’s “Opening a method was developed to mass produce the antibiotic. Publisher the Door to Forgiveness” (see By the end of the war, the cost of the drug dropped Wisconsin Alumni Association page 34) took her to prison. 650 North Lake Street, Madison, WI 53706 from $20 to three cents. Voice: (608) 262-2551 • Toll-free: In late 2009, Forster met with (888) WIS-ALUM • Fax: (608) 265-8771 Pete DeWind ’82, JD’90, director E-mail: [email protected] Website: onwisconsin.uwalumni.com of the UW’s Restorative Justice What goes on inside a prison’s fences can be Co-Editors Project, which facilitates meet- surprisingly uplifting. Niki Denison, Wisconsin Alumni Association ings between crime victims and Cindy Foss, University Communications University of Wisconsin–Madison scientists continue to their perpetrators. She knew that observing a meeting firsthand was the best way lead the way in improving our health. Here, researchers Senior Editor to tell the story, and she checked with him monthly for prospects. John Allen, Wisconsin Alumni Association are studying how we may prevent birth defects and An opportunity surfaced in April at a minimum-security prison just outside Senior Writer manage cancer treatments. Jenny Price ’96, University Communications Madison. The victim and offender were both on board with Forster and University Art Director Communications photographer Jeff Miller attending their meeting, but a few days FORWARD. THINKING. www.wisconsinidea.wisc.edu Earl J. Madden MFA’82, before the scheduled visit, the prison said no. University Communications As Forster searched for plan B, she interviewed Jackie Millar, who had been Production Editor shot in the back of the head during an armed robbery. Millar mentioned an Eileen Fitzgerald ’79, University Communications upcoming meeting with the shooter, Craig Sussek, at a medium-security prison Editorial Associates 180 miles northwest of Madison. Both Millar and Sussek agreed to allow Forster Paula Apfelbach ’83 and Ben Wischnewski ’05, and Miller to attend, and officials at Stanley Correctional Institution gave their okay Wisconsin Alumni Association just one week before the meeting. Editorial Intern Sam Oleson x’11 But the hurdles didn’t end there. Forster and Miller had to provide their full names, dates of birth, and a detailed list of what they would be bringing with Design, Layout, and Production Barry Carlsen MFA’83; Toni Good ’76, MA’89; them. For Forster, it was simple: digital voice recorder (with AAA battery inside), Kent Hamele ’78, University Communications pen, and notebook. For Miller, it was a bit more complicated: two digital cameras, Campus Advisers lenses, memory cards, and other photographic equipment. Upon arrival, both Paula Bonner MS’78, President and CEO, and Mary DeNiro, Vice President of Marketing had to present driver’s licenses, walk through a metal detector, and surrender and Communications, Wisconsin Alumni personal items. A handkerchief Miller was carrying to contend with his allergies Association • Amy E. Toburen ’80, Director, University Communications • Lynne Johnson, was a no-go. Senior Director of External Relations, To get from the prison’s front door to the small break room where Millar and University of Wisconsin Foundation Sussek met, the pair walked through twelve doors and gates, including several Advertising Representative auto-locking doors surrounded by razor wire. Madison Magazine: (608) 270-3600 What they then witnessed inside was a remarkable portrayal of forgiveness Alumni Name, Address, Phone, and E-Mail Changes • Death Notices and healing. Madison area: (608) 262-9648 Both Forster and Miller say that being there was a privilege — not something Toll-free: (888) 947-2586 E-mail: [email protected] you expect to hear from people who went to prison. Jenny Price ’96 Quarterly production of On Wisconsin Magazine is supported by a UW Foundation grant. © 2010 Wisconsin Alumni Association Printed on recycled paper using soy inks. Please remember to recycle this magazine.

Gabriela Cezar, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences WINTER 2010 5

OnWiz_Health.indd 1 10/21/10 11:04 AM letters

even a dirty look. It wasn’t until the day before Good Catch classes when I reported to the professor of I am pleased to see the cane toss still exists air science, who was to be my nominal com- [Traditions, Fall 2010]. I do note, however, that mander while at the UW, that I was warned to in addition to the informality of dress, the field “never, never wear your uniform on campus!” is populated by young ladies. Big change. If I didn’t have the heart to tell him that his warn- my recollection is correct, my class (1963) had ing was a week too late. only two women. Incidentally, I caught my That said, when classes began and we cane and won my first case. It works. were asked to introduce ourselves, I made no Peter Pelkofer ’61, LLB’63 secret that I was an active-duty air force offi- Sacramento, California cer. In retrospect, it was probably the best thing I could have done, as it resulted in sev- All the World’s a Stage, Too eral very interesting class discussions about the role of the military in a democratic society. John Allen’s review of UW performance I also made a number of good friends venues missed one [Inside Story, Fall 2010]. in the department, most of whom were very During my senior year, I was a member of the stage crew for Orestes, which was performed Tug of War Stories much against the war for various reasons. None of them, however, held my military sta- in the Stock Pavilion. The “stage” was the dirt What a surprise to find your article “Tug of pavilion floor. War” in On Wisconsin [Fall 2010]. The photos tus against me, and we had some great times. Antiwar protests caused tear gas to flow on This show had everything I hoped for in brought back a painful memory. During “the my experience with college theater. First, one troubles” of 1970, while I was in Vietnam and Bascom Hill and into the graduate student lounge in North Hall — yet I was never put of the stage crew’s duties was to clean up any my wife and young children were in Madison, manure prior to rehearsals and performances. her car was nearly turned over, apparently upon, insulted, or made to feel unwanted in any way by any of the students I met. Horses were regularly on the floor prior to our because it had an identification sticker from rehearsals. Second, one entrance involved a an army post on the bumper. She was saved During my year on campus, the UW was definitely antiwar but, at least in my experi- character being driven onto the stage in a car. by a couple of good guys. Now, light years I was drafted into “acting” for that scene; I and many hard miles later, my sympathies are ence, not anti-military. Sheldon Goldberg MA’68 directed traffic with a bullhorn. Finally, no self- with the candlelight marchers at the Capitol, respecting college theater production is com- because I see General Petraeus’s Afghanistan Lieutenant Colonel, USAF, Retired Silver Spring, Maryland plete without nudity, which I understand was counter-insurgency strategy as just a re- a rather disturbing bathing scene. I never cooked Vietnam pacification program. actually saw that scene due to my location We now live happily in Texas near my two off-stage at the far end of the pavilion. little granddaughters while I pursue my sec- The contrast on campus between now and the Vietnam years was an excellent reprise, but A quick web search turns up many more ond career as a professional genealogist. examples of the Stock Pavilion’s use as a Richard Hooverson ’60 missing one key element. The animosity and hysteria of Vietnam stage, including speeches by U.S. presidents Lieutenant Colonel, Retired and concerts due to its “surprisingly good Belton, Texas protesters on campus made an illogical and emotional jump to include anyone who had acoustics.” The performance of the Verdi served honorably in the past in any branch of Requiem by a nearly 300-person ensemble in In 1967–68, at the height of the Vietnam War, 1999 had seating for 900 people. I was an air force captain studying on cam- our armed services. This was most evident in the [Bill Dyke LLB’60-Paul Soglin ’66, JD’72] Matt Kavalauskas ’98 pus for an MA in political science, and unless Littleton, Massachusetts things got worse in 1970, Jenny Price’s mayoral race in Madison in ’72. Dyke and six interesting “Tug of War” was a bit harder on of his key committeemen, myself included, I really enjoy On Wisconsin. In Inside Story, the university’s reputation than the UW were all Korean vets, and all graduates of the the list of stages missed one — the auditorium I experienced. UW. As a campaign tactic, we were all labeled in Bascom Hall. I remember lectures there and I was well aware that, next to Berkeley, “warmongers,” even by one of Madison’s understand that until the Memorial Union was UW-Madison was the most radical school in newspapers. completed, it had served as the theater for the the country. Still, being a bit naive (I saw my We were nonplussed as to how this had Wisconsin Players. I also helped stage more presence at the UW as a military assignment any relevance in a small town, mid-America than one high school drama competition there — after all, the air force had approved my mayoral race. for the Wisconsin Idea Theater. scholarship), I spent the first week register- Marshall Smith ’66 Tom Tews ’57, MS’66 ing, getting advised, and orienting myself on Madison Los Angeles, California campus in uniform, without a single incident or

6 ON WISCONSIN Your reference to the Fredric March Play least in my experience, his libation of choice There is no evidence to support the var- Circle [Inside Story] reminded me that March was a gin martini ordered with a wave of his ious treatments identified [in “Integrative visited the Wisconsin campus sometime during hand and the added fiat, “No fruit!” He also Medicine Man,” Fall 2010], like acupunc- the two years, 1938-40, that I spent in Madison often dispensed the medical advice that, “of ture and healing touch, as offering anything completing my PhD in rhetoric and public all things that won’t cure a cold, martinis are beyond placebo. I honestly cannot understand address. March attended a football game and best.” At around 10:30 p.m., Fred would put how a serious institution like the UW can offer during halftime was interviewed over the public on his cape and beret and bid me goodnight, treatments that lack any scientific basis. … address system. He concluded his remarks by and at 9:30 the next morning, he would join Moreover, by linking such a program to a saying, “God bless you.” The crowd responded Jim Kenzler, Jean Hodgin ’39, and me at the normally well-respected institution, you give with uproarious laughter. Freddie Bickel (for as Union Cafeteria for coffee and a sweet roll. credence to the claim that these treatments I recall, that was his real name) was completely He was a dear friend. are a valid alternative to so-called conventional baffled by this response. He didn’t know that Ralph Sandler MA’64, PhDx’67 medicine. They are not. People have died, and the then-governor of Wisconsin, [Julius P. Madison will continue to die, by opting for “alternative” Heil], had become notorious for concluding his approaches instead of real medicine. Let’s speeches with a “God bless you.” apply the university’s resources to treatments Some years later, I saw March play the that work, and cancel this program. part of God on Broadway in the play Gideon. — Tim The next day, I saw him walking his dogs on From the Web the streets of New York. I’m sorry now that I Thank you for the very fine article on Patrick I find it strange and quite sad that part of what didn’t go up to him and congratulate him for Sims and his play Ten Perfect [“How to Stage makes this “alternative” practice’s approach successful is that the doctors spend enough time with their patients to understand their concerns and start to consider the etiology as During my year on campus, the UW was definitely antiwar but, well as the symptoms. I hope that one day our at least in my experience, not anti-military. health care system will have evolved to a point where doctors being able to give their patients sufficient time and consideration to help them his masterly performance in a demanding role. a Lynching,” Fall 2010]. Anyone who was promote their own short-term and long-term I might also have reminded him of that inci- fortunate enough to meet Dr. James Cameron health is not the alternative, it is the norm. dent in Madison, but the opportunity passed could not help but be inspired by his life, and — Hollis Moore before I had gotten the courage to grasp it. anyone who works with Patrick Sims will be Perhaps the dogs scared me off. inspired by his talent. Please Update Your Address Edgar Willis PhD’40 — Sheri Williams Pannell MFA’09 UW-Madison wants to stay in touch with you. Perrysburg, Ohio To update your contact information, which Ten Perfect will inspire you, anger you, sadden is maintained by the UW Foundation, please you, but it will also provoke you to become an visit www.uwfoundation.wisc.edu/survey. To Remembering Fred Buerki agent of positive change. You owe it to your- log in, use the ID number above your name on Sheri Levine Zander ’74’s letter in the Fall self to see it if you haven’t. the magazine label. This information is shared issue of On Wisconsin mentions her then- — jaki-terry selectively with other campus units and the neighbor, Fred Buerki ’27, MA’35, a retired Wisconsin Alumni Association to ensure that theater professor. I also had the pleasure As a UW-Madison student and veteran of alumni information is consistent and accurate. of knowing Fred during my tenure at the both [Operation Iraqi Freedom] and [Operation Thank you! Union Theater from 1970 to 1980. He was a Enduring Freedom], I have to say that I have respected member of the theater commu- seen a lot of the antiwar side of UW-Madison On Wisconsin Magazine welcomes letters nity, and as Fan Taylor ’38 wrote in Wisconsin [“Tug of War,” Fall 2010]. I was recently related to magazine content, but reserves Union Theater: Fifty Golden Years, Fred was called a “baby killer,” and I have found my the right to edit them for length and clarity. an “enormous influence on generations of car vandalized after parking it while wear- You may e-mail comments to onwisconsin@ young men and women who learned back- ing my uniform. I have yet to see the changed uwalumni.com; mail them to On Wisconsin, stage crafts and the art of living from him.” UW-Madison. 650 North Lake Street, Madison, WI 53706; Fred was also something of a legend for — Heidi Andrew or fax them to (608) 265-8771. We regret that his extravagant costume and gracious, good we don’t have space to publish all the letters company. On many an evening, I enjoyed lis- For shame, Wisconsin. You have made me we receive, but we always appreciate hear- tening to his stories at Porta Bella where, at embarrassed to be a UW alumnus. ing from you.

WINTER 2010 7 CELEBR ATE DISCOVERY!

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What a Feeling! Fans took to the field in celebration after Wisconsin defeated No. 1 Ohio State, 31-18, at Camp Randall Stadium on October 16 — the Badgers’ first win against a top-ranked team since beating Michigan at Camp Randall in 1981. Earlier in the day, ESPN TV’s College GameDay broadcast live from the field’s 50-yard line. Just this once, given the spontaneous fan reaction, the traditional Fifth Quarter performance by the UW Marching Band was canceled. Photo by Jeff Miller

10 ON WISCONSIN FALL 2010 11 news ¬es

Hail to the Chief A current president visits campus for the first time since the Truman administration.

For the first time in more than In the intervening years, many JEFF MILLER sixty years, a current U.S. presi- presidential candidates have spo- dent visited campus when Barack ken on campus, including Obama Obama spoke before an esti- in February 2008 and John F. mated crowd of 17,500 that filled Kennedy in October 1960. And Library Mall and a further 9,500 former presidents have visited, on Bascom Hill and beyond in including Jimmy Carter in March September. Obama’s speech 1994 and Bill Clinton in February came as part of an effort to drum 2008. But none of them were still up support for Democrats during drawing a White House paycheck the November election. when they came to the UW. The UW has only had four The Obama visit caused previous visits from presidents a flurry in the area surround- who were then in office, including ing Library Mall, as security mea- Rutherford B. Hayes, who stopped sures required that some nearby in at Ladies Hall during a Madison buildings be shut down for sev- visit in 1878; Herbert Hoover, who eral hours before and during the made a campaign speech at the speech. The crowd spilled over onto Bascom Hill and other areas when Field House in November 1932; Sections of Lake, Langdon, Library Mall filled to capacity awaiting the arrival of President Barack Obama in September. Harry Truman, who made a cam- and Park Streets were closed paign stop at the Stock Pavilion in to traffic, and the line waiting to to continue with classes as Union — had access restricted October 1948; and, most recently, enter the area wound westward usual, though several build- to entrances facing away from Truman again in May 1950 for a through campus for more than ings — including Humanities, Library Mall. speech at the Field House. a mile. The university attempted Science Hall, and the Memorial John Allen quick takes Thanks a billion, UW-Madison In October, everyone was During his remarks on the Union in which astronauts could research! According to the imploring Quincy Kwaele x’11 Terrace, Landesman extolled the live while orbiting Earth, Mars, National Science Foundation, the and Logan Cascia x’12 to virtues of the Plazaburger (see or the Moon. Judging will take university’s research expendi- “Teach Me How to Bucky.” Traditions, page 46) and out- place in June. tures in fiscal year 2009 exceeded The two students created a lined “Our Town,” a new NEA pro- $1 billion for the first time ever. web video featuring Bucky, UW gram that will invest $5 million in The Dalai Lama’s personal That includes money from federal, Band Director Mike Leckrone, arts endeavors in thirty-five cities trust has given the UW’s Center state, and private sources. and Chancellor Biddy Martin around the country. for the Investigation of Healthy PhD’85 dancing to a song writ- Minds a grant of $50,000 to Poets & Writers has declared ten by Kwaele. It quickly went A team of Badger undergrads further its studies into what its love for UW–Madison, rank- viral, and by mid-October, more has entered a competition to makes people happy. ing the university’s master of fine than 200,000 people had viewed design and build an inflatable arts program third in the nation it on YouTube. To learn how to space habitat. The UW team is The UW Law School will soon (tied with the University of Texas- Bucky, visit youtube.com and one of three (along with groups have a new posting on its job Austin). The UW was rated third search for “how to Bucky.” from Oklahoma State and the board. Dean Ken Davis, Jr., has best in the country in fiction and University of Maryland) in the announced that he will step down second in poetry — in spite of The UW’s Year of the Arts contest, which is being run by as dean in September 2011 and the fact that nothing rhymes with kicked off in September with NASA’s National Space Grant return to teaching. Davis has Wisconsin. The University of a visit from Frederic “Rocco” Foundation. Each student team been on the Law School’s faculty Iowa came in first overall, with Landesman ’69, chair of the will spend the academic year since 1978 and has been dean Michigan second. National Endowment for the Arts. building a prototype of a structure since December 1997.

12 ON WISCONSIN Driven by Data UW researchers help Wisconsin tribes fight obesity on their own terms.

When Alexandra Adams came RICK OLIVA to the UW ten years ago, her cre- dentials included a growing inter- est in Indian health. The assistant professor of family medicine had previously worked at tribal health centers in Wisconsin, Alaska, and South Dakota, and she hoped to address diabetes prevention among American Indian tribes. She soon learned that health fairs held on the Bad River res- ervation in northern Wisconsin included screenings for body mass index and blood sugar — a good start for exploring the epidemic levels of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes found among the state’s tribes. Adams, who also has a PhD in nutrition, discovered that the exams were designed to guide individual life- style changes, but no one was collecting and analyzing the data to get a solid overall picture of A playground with cultural features — and plenty of room to play and exercise — came to fruition as UW researchers worked closely with families at the Bad River reservation. the community. “The people who showed up at the health fair were par- River, Lac du Flambeau, and eases. I know nutrition is a strong child-focused initiatives.” ents with little kids, and they Menominee tribes to study risk component. How can I help?’ ” Under the project, each res- asked us to screen them, so we factors for heart disease and dia- Adams and her collabora- ervation has an advisory board ended up looking at one hun- betes among five hundred Indian tors have developed the Healthy that identifies barriers to healthy dred kids,” recalls Adams. “When children. Children, Strong Families project, lifestyle behaviors and ways to we brought those data back to “The high rate of overweight a randomized trial of a healthy- tackle changes. The Bad River the tribe in Bad River, they were and obesity in young children lifestyle intervention for families board decided to emphasize shocked: 26 percent of kids aged was creating early heart-disease with children ages two to five. A exercise by building a natural five to seven were obese, and risk factors, but people were not grant to the Great Lakes Inter- playground. Samuel Dennis, many had early heart-disease connecting dots, and did not Tribal Council from the Wisconsin Jr., a UW landscape architecture risk factors.” realize that the early life influ- Partnership Fund jump-started professor, worked with the tribe Data and a willingness to lis- ences were leading to high rates the effort; in 2006, it gained sup- to design a space that used ten became the springboard of a of disease later on,” Adams says. port from NIH. cultural influences, such as a long-term effort among Adams’s Her interactions with the Four years later, data show canoe used to harvest rice and research group and several tribes tribes represent “community- that the adults are controlling or a willow lodge. to abate obesity-related diseases. based participatory research,” reducing their weight; numbers “The incorporation of our In 2001, the National Institutes of which engages the community in for the children are just being tribal culture is what sets this Health (NIH) began to support the setting goals and fully participat- tabulated. “At this point, we can’t project apart from other play- Wisconsin Nutrition and Growth ing in the research. “I don’t come say [the project] has reduced ground projects,” says Mike Study (WINGS), a partnership in as an outsider telling communi- excess child weight gain,” Adams Wiggins, Jr., Bad River tribal among the UW Department of ties what to do,” she says. “I say, says, “but it has brought atten- chair. Family Medicine, the Great Lakes ‘I am a physician with an interest tion to the issue and has led to “When you work directly Inter-Tribal Council, and the Bad in preventing these chronic dis- a number of community-driven, with the community to design

WINTER 2010 13 news ¬es RICK OLIVA a community space or a park,” “The more you can engage Dennis says, “it’s not just a bet- people in discussions about ter design, but because peo- healthy behavior, the more it ple … had a meaningful hand sticks,” says Jerry Waukau, in the design and construction, the reservation’s tribal health they get a stronger emotional director. attachment.” Adams and her tribal part- The Menominee reservation’s ners expect further collaborations advisory board chose to focus on aimed at preventing childhood healthy food. “The reservations obesity and chronic disease as are what we call a ‘food desert,’ they build on what they have with low levels of fruit and vege- learned so far. table consumption because you “We recognize that reduc- can’t find any,” Adams says. ing heart disease and diabe- The board has created tes will take years,” Adams says, eight community and forty-seven “but we are planting seeds in individual vegetable gardens, partnership with the community. and is promoting other lifestyle Sometimes we are at the fore- changes, including occasion- front. Sometimes we are only ally dropping children off the bus giving information. Sometimes The UW “participatory research” is planting seeds — both literally a distance from their school, to we are walking alongside.” and figuratively — for change, involving the community in healthier encourage walking. David Tenenbaum MA’86 behaviors to reduce obesity, heart disease, and diabetes.

Combat Impact Non-metro areas take greater brunt of the war in Iraq. Rural America can add another of Pennsylvania. individuals. Among troops from because of the lower population item to the list of ways it differs “Rural communities are, in urban areas, the death rate was concentrations, the study says. from its big-city counterparts. fact, experiencing a dispropor- 3.27, while rural troops experi- The research also found that A study conducted by tionate brunt of the impacts of enced a rate of 4.09. While the states feeling the loss the most Katherine Curtis, a UW assis- war,” Curtis says. Although the difference is a single person per are in the Great Plains and the tant professor of community and study does not look into the rea- 1,000 in population, the loss has Upper Midwest. environmental sociology, has sons for the higher death rate, a greater impact in rural areas Stacy Forster

found that, while fighting in Iraq, it provides a baseline for future ISTOCK military troops from rural areas research on the effect of the have experienced higher death inequality, she says. rates than those from urban Disproportionate military areas. deaths may also perpetuate Regardless of cause or mil- the reasons rural youth join the itary branch, death rates are military, Curtis says, adding that higher among rural soldiers, sug- the effect on the available labor gesting that non-metropolitan force makes it harder for their areas more keenly feel the conse- communities to attract industries quences of war and that military and jobs. personnel from rural areas are The study uses U.S. at a disadvantage, according to Department of Defense data the study, published in July in the about troop deaths in Iraq from journal Demographic Research. the start of the war in March 2003 Curtis wrote the study through the end of 2007. The with Collin Payne ’08, who is combat-related death rate for all Soldiers fighting in Iraq who come from rural America are dying at now studying at the University troops was 3.43 per 1,000 rates higher than their urban counterparts, a recent study finds.

14 ON WISCONSIN From Hospital to Home Can You Buy Happiness? Research leads to a smoother transition for patients and caregivers. A national study links leisure spending to a sense of well-being. When patients come home from diately, and when to call the clinic How much cash do you need to be content? The answer may not the hospital after major surgery or within twenty-four hours. The be based on how you count it, but rather on how you spend it. a transplant, they are nowhere near unit also revamped patient edu- Thomas DeLeire, an associate professor of public affairs ready to take care of themselves. cation materials to clarify patient and population health sciences, decided to sidestep the somewhat Family members often step and caregiver needs, and present abstract controversy over how much income it takes to be happy. in as the “unrecognized long arm information in shorter sections. “We wanted to drill down a bit and learn what people do with their of the hospital,” because special- “To get a whole big packet money that leads to greater happiness,” he says. ized home nursing care can be of stuff without some guidance His opportunity came with the release of the latest Health and too expensive, says Cameron … is overwhelming, and people Retirement Study by the National Institute on Aging, which paints Macdonald, an assistant pro- tend not to read any of it,” says a portrait of the United States’s population over fifty. Recently, fessor of sociology and a scholar Bethaney Campbell, an oncol- the study added questions about psychological well-being, mak- with the UW’s Institute for Clinical ogy, hematology, and bone-mar- ing it the first national survey to track data on both happiness and and Translational Research. row transplant clinical nurse consumption. Macdonald has long been specialist. The study breaks household budgets into nine categories, interested in the “blurry line” Macdonald recruited stu- including vehicles, housing, personal care, and durable goods, but between hospital care and that dents enrolled in her medical the only category that bumped up happiness was leisure spend- given at home, which, she says, sociology class to research and ing — for example, on vacations, entertainment, or sports. Digging “we understand as being things write drafts of instructions for deeper, DeLeire and Ariel Kalil ’91 of the University of Chicago we do out of love, not out of pro- patients and their families. determined that leisure spending heightens happiness by fostering fessional ability.” She learned “It was the first time under- social connections. about that line firsthand after her graduate sociology students To get a sense of how big a lift leisure spending offers, they compared it to another well-documented mood booster — mari- late husband received a bone- were able to dig in and get into

tal bliss. DeLeire found that $20,000 of ISTOCK marrow transplant in 1999. the hospital,” says Shannon annual leisure spending generated With a grant from the National Patterson ’10, a psychology and very similar reports of happi- Institutes of Health, Macdonald sociology major whose mother ness to being married. interviewed thirty families from survived a bout with breast can- His analysis, pub- Wisconsin and the Upper cer after being diagnosed in sum- lished earlier this year Peninsula of Michigan before mer 2009. “A lot of times you in the International bone-marrow transplants, dur- think, ‘Oh, sociology, how is that Review of Economics, ing their hospital stays, and once really connected to medicine?’ ” is based on peo- patients returned home. She Macdonald also recom- ple whose aver- discovered something alarming: mended that the hospital develop age age is sixty-six. many patients were too sick to classes and support groups for The Consumer remember the instructions nurses caregivers, allowing them to learn Expenditure Survey provided before discharge. about day-to-day care that they of the Bureau of Labor “Even though the nurses do haven’t been able to observe Statistics is the only great training in the hospital, a lot while patients are hospitalized other large data set in the of patients didn’t remember their because they have work obliga- country — and it doesn’t col- hospitalizations because they tions and are saving time off for lect information on happiness. were so ill,” she says. helping at home. “Different kinds of spending Macdonald also identified “We need to be more accom- could bring happiness at different stages situations where the caregiver modating of the caregiver — and of life,” DeLeire concedes. “A thirty-year-old may not be able to look at this study and say, ‘More vacation spending could make and patient, once home, argued their schedules and their needs me happier.’ ” Nonetheless, he feels the retirement study is a good about when to call the doctor. — when they’re trying to work to place to start researching the connection between happiness and That prompted UW Hospital’s maintain insurance,” Campbell consumption, because people a little past retirement age are in an bone-marrow transplant unit to says. “So I think that’s one thing excellent position to take a long view of their lives and assess how develop a handout to post by the that will definitely change our things have turned out. phone that details when to call practice in the future.” 911, when to call the clinic imme- Jenny Price ’96 Denise Thornton ’82, MA’08

WINTER 2010 15 news ¬es

Waste Not, Want Not To feed the hungry, researcher looks to crops that aren’t being harvested.

There’s a hunger inside Jed ity. On the other sat a colleague canned-food drive.” among the farmers, the proces- Colquhoun PhD’00 that just from Second Harvest Food Bank The more difficult problem sors, and the food banks to fig- won’t go away. It’s not because of Southern Wisconsin who is became how to deal with per- ure out details, including who will he’s starving. It’s because, always in need of food supplies. fectly good crops that weren’t provide the trucking or the multi- according to Colquhoun, nearly “What that lunch [conversa- being harvested due to factors ton containers used to transport 20 percent of households with tion] really drove home is, how such as overloaded processing the vegetables. children in the United States are do we put these two types of facilities, limited numbers of har- “We need to develop a plan food insecure — they don’t know organizations together in a situa- vesting crews, and unpredictable that won’t be a burden on the where their next meal is coming tion that can provide nutrition to growing seasons. entire system,” Colquhoun says, from. He is on a mission to elimi- our children in particular?” says He turned to Wisconsin adding that such a plan is about nate that fear. Colquhoun, an associate profes- for solutions. “We have enor- a year away from implementa- During a very productive lunch sor in UW–Madison’s Department mous strength in Wisconsin with tion. In the meantime, his team in December 2009, Colquhoun of Horticulture. the diversity of our agriculture,” is busy collecting information on came up with an idea to do just He started by looking at Colquhoun says. “We have an the complexity of the situation that. products being processed in opportunity to demonstrate suc- and developing models to test. On one side sat a frus- oversupply. “The food proces- cess here on a local level that “Given the rather desper- trated vegetable grower who sors have been very generous could be used as a case study ate situation for those in need of wasn’t able to harvest a carrot in donating excess canned veg- nationally.” food,” he says, “failure is not an crop because processing plants etables into the food bank sys- That success requires open- option.” were already running at capac- tem,” he says. “It’s like a mega ing up the lines of communication Brian Klatt

Knotty Problem COURTESY OF FRANK SALOMON Residents of San Cristobal de Rapaz, Peru, perform a New Year’s ritual in front of an enormous collection of khipus — those are the strands of knotted wool hang- ing in the background. Khipus are an ancient method of recording information, one that goes back to the Inca empire that pre-dated the arrival of Europeans. Though no one today knows how to interpret the meaning encoded in khipus, the objects are still used in religious ceremonies in remote communities such as Rapaz. But the khipus of Rapaz were in danger of falling to pieces, victims of the elements, mold, and infesta- tion — until, that is, UW anthropology professor Frank Salomon stepped in. He led a team of anthropologists to Rapaz with the intent of preserving both the khipus and the building in which they’re stored. Since the arti- facts are still in use, Salomon knew he couldn’t remove them to the safety of a museum. For the Rapacitos, “the khipus are the documents of record of their past rela- tionship with the sacred mountains,” Salomon says. “So we took the museum to the patrimony.” He rebuilt the khipu house and repaired the khipus, all while keeping them in place.

16 ON WISCONSIN Sales Job Even three-year-olds can recognize commercial brands.

Think your average preschooler understanding of brands until nicate their understanding of with just above 20 percent recog- doesn’t know the difference they were between seven and brands. Young children recog- nition for brands not specifically between McDonald’s and Burger eleven years old, but earlier stud- nized brands aimed at kids targeted at their age group. King? Think again. ies had some flaws, including 50 percent of the time, compared Staff In a pair of studies, Anna asking those who had not yet McAlister, a lecturer in the learned to read to name their School of Human Ecology, found favorite brands. children as young as three recog- McAlister worked with nize and have judgments about T. Bettina Cornwell, professor different brands — and the peo- of marketing and sports man- ple who use them — especially agement at the University of ones aimed at their age group. Michigan, to test brands geared Researchers previously toward young children and used thought kids didn’t develop an pictures to help them commu-

BY THE NUMBERS: STUDENT WATCH Senior Auditors Where did all the boys go? It’s easily the best deal on campus, That’s a question universities across the country, but there’s an age requirement. Any 344 UW–Madison included, have been asking for more than Wisconsin resident sixty and older Number of students three decades. can enroll, for free, in courses where enrolled space is available and the instruc- According to Tom Mortenson of The Pell Institute for the tor approves. The number of senior Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, women began to auditors has increased three-fold 68 outnumber men on American college campuses starting in since the Wisconsin legislature rein- Average age of students 1978, and the disparity has been growing ever since. stated the program in 2000, ending Reasons for the trend include these factors among a ten-year layoff when some of the program’s former participants 6 male students: lower literacy scores in elementary and lobbied to bring it back. secondary schools, less participation in non-athletic Number of auditors Students in the program, who enrolled for 25+ extracurricular activities, and less college preparation range in age from sixty to ninety, semesters in high school. Not surprisingly, these details catch the take courses in departments includ- attention of college admissions officers when evaluat- ing art history, history, literature, music, and science. 150 ing prospective students. Also, joining the military or the “I love books. I love different work force after high school are options that appeal more Number of courses cultures. I love learning things,” with these students to males. Even doing prison time takes more males than says Lynn Siewert, seventy-two, females out of the running for college admission. who has audited courses for more Although the UW’s gender split — 51.8 percent female than a decade and is enrolled in two 75 — isn’t as uneven as the national average of 57 percent, architecture history courses this fall. Number of students “It makes my life so much richer.” enrolled in the most it’s still an interesting trend, given that forty years ago, men popular course — outnumbered women as college students by 16 percent. Source: Division of Continuing Studies Music in Performance Sam Oleson x’11

WINTER 2010 17 q&a BRYCE RICHTER Mary Beltrán When she watches television, it’s with an eye on diversity, as well as entertainment.

When the television show 30 Rock won the award for best comedy series at the Golden Globes in January 2009, cast member Tracy Morgan grabbed the trophy from the show’s creator and star. “Tina Fey and I had an agreement that if Barack Obama won, I would speak for the show from now on,” said Morgan, who is black. “Welcome to post-racial America!” Did the media enter a post-racial era with Obama’s campaign and election? What does that mean? Mary Beltrán MS’93, a UW associate professor of media and cultural studies, and Chicano and Latino stud- ies, is examining that idea as she explores not just what we watch, but whom. Before she earned a PhD in media studies at the University of Texas at Austin, Beltrán was a social worker in San Francisco. Many of her clients were minorities isolated at home with only young children and television, and she started to wonder what they were seeing and how it affected them.

Q: How did you first become interested in the concept of a “post-racial America”? A: I’ve always been interested in how diversity is represented in con- temporary film and television. … So it was interesting that as I was see- ing a shift away from TV shows that focused specifically on white or non-white families to more diverse, ensemble casts (on shows such Q: What are some of the broader lessons we can draw from as Lost and Grey’s Anatomy) that this term post-racial was being used how race is represented in the media? quite a bit. It’s kind of a useful, catchall phrase that people put multiple A: What it means to be the ideal woman or ideal man is still usually the meanings on, but often is put out there to talk about an end of racism domain of the white characters, even when we’re seeing more nuanced in American society. representations. There have only been a few studies that have looked at American children of different backgrounds and how it impacts them Q: What questions are you exploring in your research? in terms of what they are seeing in the media. … I think things are bet- A: Is there such a thing as post-racial media representation? Are we ter than they used to be, but unfortunately for kids of color in the U.S., really seeing improvement in terms of how diverse Americans are rep- I think they still can come away from their experiences with the media resented in entertainment media, or are we just seeing a shuffling of feeling like there’s something not as good about them because they’re how things look? One of the questions that comes up with television not white. series that have a diverse cast is, who are the stars, actually? Who do we really get to know? Q: One of the shows you study is Glee, and you wrote that its portrayal of diversity is both “satisfying and frustrating.” Can Q: It sounds like the country’s changing population is being you explain what you meant by that? reflected in TV and movies. Are there certain people or shows A: It’s a very interesting show in presenting a very contradictory view or movies that show this is taking place? of diversity and of notions of equality among people of different back- A: Where we can see the biggest changes is actually in kids’ program- grounds. One reason is it wants to be modern and, in doing so, it ming, and it makes sense, considering the [U.S.] Census ... Latinos wants to represent a diverse group of teenagers and teachers. … The are one in five Americans under [age] eighteen, one in four under [age] show likes this idea of mashing up songs that are sometimes from dif- five. … A number of ’tween stars are of mixed descent. Someone like ferent eras, and I think it’s a mash-up of attitudes towards race and Selena Gomez, [who] is the star of Wizards of Waverly Place and she’s racial equality. But to some degree, it’s meant to be satirical, so maybe half Mexican-American, and Demi Lovato [star of the Disney Channel’s that’s enough to allow us to continue watching it without being totally Camp Rock and Sonny With a Chance] is also half Latina. … I think it’s offended all the time. pretty deliberate on the part of studios like Disney. Interview conducted, condensed, and edited by Jenny Price ’96

18 ON WISCONSIN classroom

Family Matters In this first-year course, students become philosophical about childhood, marriage, and family.

To drive a car, you need to pass a knowledgeable ISTOCK test and have a license. Although enough about there is no similar requirement to this course’s have a baby, should there be? subjects to It’s the sort of interesting reflect philo- question that students debate sophically from regularly in Philosophy 104: the get-go. Childhood, Marriage, and Family, “They one course within a First-Year have very simi- Interest Group that is exploring lar experiences children and families. The group of childhood to contemplates complex ques- one another,” tions surrounding family structure, he says. “One of society’s responsibilities toward the things I try children, and the role of govern- to get them to ment in marriage and in protect- do is read litera- ing and educating the young. ture — historical Licensing parents is a con- and sociologi- cept that typically generates cal literature — in some of the most animated dis- which it’s made cussions, says Harry Brighouse, clear to them a UW philosophy professor who there are very teaches the course. “Students different kinds who read it the first time think it’s of childhoods appalling, and by the time they than [those] they finish [the discussion], they’re experienced.” Harry Brighouse’s philosophy course asks students to wrestle with complex issues, in favor of it,” Brighouse says. At the very including the case for and against same-sex marriage. “It’s one of those things where start of the students’ minds get changed in course, Brighouse gets students both male and female students “I have no interest in having sort of surprising ways.” thinking about marriage and fam- think the mother will bear more of them walk away from my class The syllabus puts it best: ily through a survey that asks the parenting responsibilities. with the same views I have,” he “This course requires a lot of whether they expect to have chil- The questions reveal to says. “I want them to think care- thinking.” dren. To those who answer yes, female students the dissonance fully about the moral questions The twenty freshmen in he follows up: “Which parent do between their views of them- that face them as ordinary people Brighouse’s class wade through you expect to spend the most selves and their friends when it in their personal lives and in their ideas and issues they will con- time, energy, and effort raising comes to parenting. “In other lives as citizens.” front at some point in their lives: the children?” He then asks the words, you’re being totally unreal- The small class size creates what makes for a good child- students to consider the same istic about yourselves,” Brighouse an atmosphere in which students hood, the case for and against question for their five best friends. tells the mostly female class after are more likely to share their same-sex marriage, and who He has asked hundreds of sharing the results. “The boys thoughts and opinions, Brighouse is responsible for rearing chil- students these questions, and know exactly what the game is. says. “By the end of the semes- dren. Students take companion the results are always the same: The girls don’t.” ter, you’ve seen them change and courses in sociology and edu- Female students overwhelm- Brighouse has two overarch- develop,” he says. “That’s what cational psychology that cover ingly think they’ll raise their chil- ing goals for his students as they educating is; that’s what makes marriage, family, and childhood dren more or less equally with walk through these minefields of educating rewarding — not going development. They also read their spouses, while male stu- controversial topics: to be able to in and saying the same thing material that wouldn’t typically dents overwhelmingly think that reason, and to understand how over and over again, but actually be part of a philosophy class, the mothers will do most of the other people who go through the observing people learning because Brighouse believes childrearing. And when it comes same process may end up dis- and developing.” they can’t be expected to be to their friends having children, agreeing with them. Jenny Price ’96

WINTER 2010 19 sports

TEAM PLAYER Andrew Howe

At 165 pounds in NCAA Division I wrestling this season, there’s Andrew Howe x’13 … and then there’s all the rest. The entire weight class will be looking to give the Badger grappler something he didn’t experience last season — a loss. Unsatisfied with an NCAA Championships runner-up finish as a freshman in 2009, Howe revamped his wrestling style for 2010 to be more aggressive, pursuing attacks to score more points and to keep his opponents tired and on their heels. It worked. All eyes are now on the number-one-ranked junior wrestler after last season, in which he put together a perfect 37-0 campaign that culminated in a national championship, making him the fourth wrestler in UW history to go undefeated and the first to win a national crown since 2001. A colle- giate championship has been the Cedar Lake, Indiana, native’s goal ever since high school, and he achieved the feat through hard work and training. In addition to regularly scheduled team practices, Howe is up each morning before sunrise for a regimented workout that keeps him in top shape. But this season is no one-man show. Howe leads an impressive Badger squad that finished fourth in last year’s NCAA tournament, which ranks as the UW’s highest finish ever. “Individually, I want to win another national cham- pionship,” Howe says. “And it should be a great season for our team — maybe one of the best yet. If everything comes together and we put a good [NCAA] tournament together come March, there’s no reason we can’t win it.” Ben Wischnewski ’05

“If everything comes together and we put a good [NCAA] tournament together come March, there’s no reason we can’t win it.” JEFF MILLER

20 ON WISCONSIN JEFF MILLER Free Fallin’ UW student soars to new heights as a professional snowboarder. Before learning to fly, snow- “welcome with open arms some- boarder Colin Tucker x’12 had one who’s a little different, who’s to learn to fall. got a new story.” “You roll off the lip off the A Milwaukee native, Tucker jump, and if you don’t have didn’t strap on a snowboard until enough speed, you’ll knuckle, he was thirteen. He was instantly which basically means you’ll land hooked, and gravitated toward in the flat and explode instead freestyle snowboarding. In free- of making the downhill landing,” style, the rider uses manmade Tucker says in describing the terrain features such as rails, extreme sport he loves. “Every jumps, or boxes to perform aerial time you go into a new jump, it’s or sliding “jib” tricks. a roll of the dice. You hope to The sport can be dangerous, land on your feet, and if not, you however, and after Tucker landed tuck and hope for the best.” in the hospital with a ruptured When he’s not testing the spleen, his parents looked for a limits of his sport at professional way to get the youngest of their competitions, Tucker is a full- three sons the training he needed time UW-Madison student, alter- to safely pursue his passion. nating semesters studying with “My parents were concerned snowboarding while taking some that I would fall behind in my Colin Tucker finds balance by alternating semesters on the UW online courses. So far, he’s keep- education,” he says. “But being campus with snowboarding and taking some courses online. ing up with a regular credit load the cool parents they are, they and says, “It’s doable to juggle said if you’re serious about this high school and trained “Snowboarding is such a new the two.” and you want to be a pro snow- in the winter. A few years sport, it’s still possible to do tricks Snowboarding has also boarder, we’ll figure out how to later, the inexperienced teen that no one has ever done before opened doors to him on campus. make it happen.” turned pro, securing sponsor- — and to do them when it counts, “It’s an easy way to meet people. He left home at fifteen ships from Quiksilver, Bern during competition,” Tucker says. Even people not in the scene to live with a host family in Helmets, PowerBar, KlassNine “It’s all about progression and like talking about it,” he says. Steamboat Springs, Colorado, Snowboards, Bolle Optics, Zero adrenaline and keeping your cool.” He’s found that UW students where he attended a public Gloves, and Sun Bum. Karen Graf Roach ’82

BADGER SPORTS TICKER The athletic department has locker rooms near the Kohl Center. The women’s basketball team revived a plan to build a $27.8 mil- Construction is slated to begin in will get national exposure this lion practice facility for the men’s 2011, with the teams scheduled to year, as the Big Ten Network and women’s hockey programs. move into it in fall 2012. plans to air eight of its games. Initially shelved in March due to a For a full schedule, see www. lack of private funding, the proj- UW athletic director Barry uwbadgers.com. ect was revived in September after Alvarez will be inducted into the a group of men’s hockey alumni College Football Hall of Fame The Badger women’s hockey team united to increase donations. If in December. Alvarez was the is now on Facebook. To follow the the UW regents and state build- Badgers’ football coach from 1990 program — which won national ing commission approve the plan, to 2005 and led the team to 118 championships in 2006, 2007, and the athletic department will build wins, including three Rose Bowl 2009 — visit www.facebook.com/ a 2,400-seat rink with offices and victories. wisconsinwomenshockey.

WINTER 2010 21 head-on

collision ISTOCK

Ann McKee ’75 is discovering the dangers of contact sports, one brain at a time.

By John Allen I grew up in Appleton, and, you know, the Packers are pretty hard to ignore.” Ann McKee ’75 is at the center of Although she’s lived in Massachusetts a struggle between heart and head. for the last three decades, spending her Her heart belongs to football. “I love adult life in New England Patriots country football,” she says. “Everyone knows that. I hasn’t changed McKee’s allegiance. “I have come from a very heavily football family. My rankings of my teams,” she says. “I love the brothers played football, my father played Packers. I love Aaron Rodgers. I really don’t football. I went to practices in the summer. like Brett Favre.”

22 ON WISCONSIN But McKee’s head belongs to behavioral and personality changes, so success in the NFL. Drafted by the Pitts- science. As a neuropathologist, her a lot of people think they’re adjustment burgh Steelers in 1974, Webster became chosen science is head science, the study reactions or a mid-life crisis sort of deal. the anchor of that team’s offensive line, of brains. And what her head tells her is But actually, it’s neuro-degeneration. It’s helping them win four Super Bowls. that her favorite game is bad for its play- an organic brain disease. It’s structural Nicknamed Iron Mike for his endurance, ers — that football is literally beating some changes in their brains.” he played through injuries and started players’ brains into incoherence, and they McKee probably has more experience 150 consecutive games between 1976 won’t realize it until it’s too late to prevent examining CTE-ravaged brains than any- and 1986, becoming one of the team’s an early and excruciating death. one else in the world, and her studies are offensive captains. Over the course of “It’s very frightening,” McKee says. starting to change the rules and even the seventeen years in professional football, “Here’s this game that we all love so culture of football and sports in America. Webster built a resume that landed him much, and though we don’t see any in the NFL Hall of Fame in 1997. visible injuries, it can cause these devas- But his career also brought less- tating effects.” Iron Mike welcome developments. The require- McKee knows this — and knows it McKee’s ranking of football favorites ments of playing center — leaning over with increasing certainty — because she’s makes one glaring omission: the Wis- the football before passing it to the seen the evidence under a microscope. consin Badgers. But then her affinities quarterback, then surging headfirst into She’s on the faculty at Boston University were formed in her youth, and that oncoming defensive linemen, again and and runs the brain banks at the Veterans period — the 1960s and early 1970s — again, on almost every play — added up Administration hospital in Bedford, Mas- was dominated by the Green Bay to countless instances of cranial trauma, sachusetts. There she autopsies the gray Packers: Vince Lom- UW-MADISON ARCHIVES matter of the deceased to search for signs bardi and Bart Starr, the of neurological diseases and abnormali- Ice Bowl, and two Super ties. She’s examined the brains of dozens Bowl victories. The Bad- of former football players, boxers, and gers offered nothing to other athletes, and she and her Boston compete. colleagues have published a series of arti- “I went to school in cles that reveal and define the ravages that the seventies,” she says. years of continual pounding can cause: “It was total mayhem a condition called chronic traumatic then. It was anarchy. I encephalopathy, or CTE. have only vague recol- CTE is insidious in that it seems lections of football.” to be caused by relatively minor head During McKee’s injuries — concussions and even sub- four years in Madison, concussive hits to the head — that the Badgers compiled a appear to pass with little or no short- record of 19-24-1, with term effect, leaving victims unaware of just one winning season. the difficulties to come. But despite their medi- “These individuals play their sport ocrity, those Badger when they’re young, when they’re in their teams featured one of teens and twenties,” says McKee. “When the best players in the they retire, which is usually in their thir- school’s history: center ties, they’re asymptomatic. They don’t Mike Webster x’74. Mike Webster as a Badger: the Tomahawk, Wisconsin, native develop symptoms until mid-life, late Certainly no Badger was drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1974 and played sev- thirties and forties. And those are usually has gone on to greater enteen seasons in the NFL, leading to countless head injuries.

WINTER 2010 23 as his brain was bounced around inside in dementia, with victims suffering from And an open mind was important his skull hundreds of times every season. poor insight and judgment, erratic behav- when she opened up this patient’s brain, By the time he retired in 1990, he ior, and even psychosis. because she quickly determined that he was hooked on painkillers. By 2002, CTE is not a common diagnosis, didn’t have Alzheimer’s at all. One of he was dead. possibly because its symptoms are often the signs was there — the build-up of Webster’s passing was far from easy. masked by confusion with other neuro- a protein called tau, which is supposed He suffered not only from chronic pain, logical disorders. CTE involves memory to remain inside nerve cell axons, but but also from bouts of amnesia, depres- loss, like Alzheimer’s disease, and dimin- in Alzheimer’s escapes and becomes sion, and dementia. He spent periods liv- ishing muscle control, as in Parkinson’s deformed and tangled, accumulating until ing out of his truck or at train stations. and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), it kills off brain cells. But other signs were Still, Webster had one more con- or Lou Gehrig’s disease. But if the symp- missing — there was, for instance, no tribution to make to football, though it toms of CTE are difficult to recognize in beta amyloid, a peptide that appears in wouldn’t come until after his death. His the living, the evidence is unmistakable in heavy deposits in Alzheimer’s patients. family had his body cremated, but his the autopsy room. McKee found widespread damage brain was sent to the University of Pitts- across regions of the patient’s frontal burgh, where pathologist Bennet Omalu cortex, temporal cortex, hippocampus, performed an autopsy. Though Webster’s Tau and amygdala. “These are all important brain at first appeared normal, Omalu Ann McKee’s first experience with CTE regions of the brain,” she says. “The fron- discovered signs of the residue of a life- came in 2003, and it came as something tal cortex has to do with intellect, insight, time of physical trauma and diagnosed of a surprise. She was autopsying the judgment, and multitasking; the temporal Webster with CTE, making him the first brain of a former resident of the Bedford cortex with the same sort of things. The NFL player given that diagnosis. Since VA hospital, a man KRISTIN PRESSLY then, Webster has become something of who’d died at age a cause célèbre. His family sued the NFL 72, fifteen years after for disability payments, receiving a judg- having been diag- ment of over $1 million in 2006. nosed with Alzheim- Webster’s diagnosis and the lawsuit er’s disease. helped raise the profile of CTE, but the As with all her disease itself is hardly a new discovery. autopsies, she began The condition has been well docu- looking at the brain mented for nearly a century, though before reading under different names. It was first through the patient’s observed among professional fighters, chart. “I always do who were described popularly as being the brain examina- “punch drunk.” The medical designa- tion before know- tion, first applied in 1928, was dementia ing anything about pugilistica, or boxer’s dementia. the patient,” she The disease typically first manifests says. “That’s a huge as a loss of attention and concentration, advantage. I’m able memory deficits, confusion, dizziness, and to look at the brain headaches. As it progresses, victims may prior to being biased begin to show slurred speech, difficulty by any prior clinical swallowing, drooping eyelids, deafness, information, so I go slowed movement, vertigo, and a stag- in with a more open Ann McKee in the lab: by studying dozens of brains, she’s helping gering gait. Ultimately, CTE can end mind.” to discover the characteristics that define CTE.

24 ON WISCONSIN amygdala is the emotional part of the brain All together, these banks contain the AP PHOTO/STEVEN SENNE and governs rage behaviors and aggressive- brains of more than a thousand individu- ness, and the hippocampus is a very impor- als. Removed from the donors’ bodies as tant structure for learning and memory. quickly as possible after death, the brains All of these regions were very abnormal.” are sliced into sections, with half of the She knew right away that she was tissue being frozen and the other half dealing with something unusual, and hardened with a fixative for immediate when she read the chart, she figured out study. McKee then examines the brain what that was. The patient had been a tissue to try to diagnose any neurologi- professional boxer — what she’d seen cal disease — an examination that covers were the structural effects of dementia some 465 data points. pugilistica, of CTE. “It’s a huge, long process,” says For the patient and his family, this McKee. “We look for all the proteins had been tragic, but for McKee it was associated with Alzheimer’s disease, or also fascinating. She’s spent almost her with the frontal and temporal dementias. entire career delving into the mysteries We look for the proteins associated with of what makes brains functional and dys- ALS. It’s very comprehensive.” functional, and CTE, she believes, offers And now her brain banks also check Chris Nowinski sustained several concus- unique possibilities to learn about how for CTE. McKee says she’s studied some sions while playing college football and wrestling professionally. brains work. thirty-six brains that show signs of the After earning her bachelor’s in zool- disease, not all of which came from ath- opening my eyes and the sky had turned ogy, McKee went on to medical school letes — some are from veterans who’d from blue to orange. Everything was at Case Western Reserve University in been jarred by explosions; some are from tinted.” Cleveland, Ohio, before taking on three patients who’d had psychological disor- Those head injuries didn’t end with different residencies, in internal medicine, ders that drove them to repeatedly bang Nowinski’s playing days, as after graduat- neurology, and finally neuropathology. their heads. But most had been athletes ing, he went pro — but not in football. “There are a lot of fascinating systems competing in contact sports. From 2001 to 2003, Chris Nowinski was in medicine … But there’s nothing that McKee has studied more athletes’ known as Chris Harvard, the professional compares at all to the nervous system, brains than any other neuropathologist, wrestler with an Ivy League pedigree. He because it’s so infinitely complex and a record she credits to her connection did postgraduate studies at the World anatomically diverse,” she says. “There’s with a professional wrestler. Wrestling Entertainment academy in so much we don’t know about what the Atlanta, and debuted in December 2001. mind is and what the brain is. It’s such a As Chris Harvard, he wore crimson huge mystery.” Chris Harvard trunks, a letterman’s jacket emblazoned McKee’s career took the research route, The same year that McKee performed with a big H, and an air of intellectual with faculty positions first at Harvard and her first CTE autopsy, Chris Nowinski smugness. His signature moves included then at Boston University, and for the last also discovered the disease — and to him, the “Honor Roll” and the “Harvard twenty years, she’s focused her energy on it meant something far more personal. Buster.” And before bashing his oppo- neurodegenerative diseases. Currently Nowinski, a Harvard graduate, played nents with a folding chair or some such based at the Bedford VA brain bank, she football for the Crimson as a defensive implement, he might quote Shakespeare. also heads the brain banks for Boston Uni- lineman, and he took more than his share He made a popular villain. versity’s Alzheimer’s Disease Center, the of hits to the head. But for all Nowinski’s success in the Framingham Heart Study, the Centenarian “I can remember one specific play ring, he was not immune to head trauma. Study, and now the Center for the Study of where I was hit so hard I didn’t remember “I’ve suffered at least four concus- Traumatic Encephalopathy. falling down,” he says. “I just remember sions while wrestling,” he says, “perhaps

WINTER 2010 25 more. There were times when I’d black working together, they’ve found increas- and no one, Nowinski points out, takes out in the ring for about ten seconds and ing evidence related to the disease. Cantu, a disease seriously if it can only be couldn’t remember what we’d planned according to McKee, “is the world’s lead- recognized in the dead. for the rest of the match. In the sum- ing expert on concussion,” while Stern “Part of the problem is that until mer of ’03, I had my last concussion, and studies the behaviors that lead to CTE, you have diagnostic criteria, you don’t my most severe. But because I didn’t and McKee autopsies the deceased to really have a disease,” he says. “Nothing know any better, I kept working out find physical evidence. Nowinski uses his will be approved by the [Food and Drug every day for five weeks. I had all sorts influence with other athletes and their Administration] or [Centers for Disease of memory and sleep issues just trying to families to spread the word on CTE and Control]. It can be a tough road to travel, push through it. And then one day I woke encourage brain donation, especially but we’ll get there eventually.” up on the floor of a hotel room having among former football players. And so McKee’s work is only the first jumped through the nightstand in my Throughout 2008, Nowinski con- stage in combating CTE. As she collects sleep. That scared me straight.” vinced the families of several NFL players the physical evidence of the disease’s Nowinski knew that his brain was fail- who died that year to donate those play- effect on the brain, Stern and Cantu are ing him, but he wasn’t sure just why. He ers’ brains to McKee’s lab: former line- trying to find ways to recognize those went to see a series of specialists, includ- backer John Grimsley, who died at age same signs in live athletes. ing, ultimately, Bob Cantu, Bedford’s 45 after five years of cognitive decline; “We didn’t know what we were look- brain bank neurologist. Cantu suggested offensive lineman Tom McHale, who ing for before,” McKee says, “and the Nowinski was suffering the aftereffects of also died at 45; Wally Hilgenberg, who autopsies sort of laid it out: this is what his head injuries and warned him about died at 66 in 2008 after having been diag- this disease is. Now we just have to be the dangers of CTE. nosed with ALS; offensive lineman Louis able to look for those changes while the “I think Chris was so alarmed that so Creekmur, who died at age 82 after more person is still alive.” few people, even knowledgeable people, than twenty years of dementia. All of Stern is currently leading a longitudi- knew about [CTE] that he made it his them were found to have the widespread nal study of some three hundred athletes life’s mission to understand concussion,” tau deposits characteristic of CTE. from around the country. All of them says McKee. “He wants people to under- “Every athlete whose brain Dr. have agreed to donate their brains to stand the consequences of repetitive McKee has studied who’s played more McKee’s bank for study after they die, but traumatic injury in sports.” than ten years of contact sports has been that isn’t the primary focus of the work. Nowinski dedicated himself to sup- diagnosed with CTE,” Nowinski says, “They’re young guys, so I certainly won’t porting research in CTE. He spoke with which is not good news. At thirty-two, he be seeing most of these brains,” says Cantu and with Bob Stern, a neuropsy- can already see dark times coming. “I’d McKee. Instead, the athletes are respond- chologist, and in 2007, they encouraged be naive to think that there’s not a good ing to regular surveys to monitor their him to meet with the person they con- chance CTE is in my future,” he adds. injury history and to track their mental vinced him was the best neuropathologist “Statistically, it’s virtually guaranteed. functioning. in the country: Ann McKee. The question is, how bad is it going to be, Further, a subset of twenty athletes “One of the primary goals was to and is understanding it going to make it — ten with a history of traumatic brain partner with a top-tier academic medical easier on the people around me?” injury and ten without — are undergoing school to continue pathology studies,” more intensive study, including regular Nowinski says. “But the research wasn’t neuro-imaging tests, such as magnetic being done to a standard that I believed Defining a Disease resonance imaging scans, and giving cere- was necessary to create change and find Currently, however, the group’s focus brospinal fluid for chemical analysis. the cures that are needed.” isn’t on treatment so much as on figuring The data that Stern generates, along- Nowinski, McKee, Stern, and Cantu out just how to recognize CTE in living side McKee’s discoveries, may help create formed a partnership to study CTE, individuals. The only means to reliably diagnostic criteria and uncover what sorts and in the two years that they’ve been diagnose the disease is through autopsy, of triggers cause CTE — whether the

26 ON WISCONSIN important factors are moderate trauma, such as concussions, or relatively light BRENT NICASTRO trauma, such as the sub-concussive hits Head Start that don’t cause any recognizable symp- Even before the football Badgers toms at the time they occur and which took the field for their first prac- are far more common. Professional foot- tice this year, the team’s newest ball players on offensive and defensive members encountered increased lines, for instance, tend to suffer between attention to head injuries. In part nine hundred and fifteen hundred sub- due to the work of Ann McKee concussive hits to the head each year. and her colleagues, college football, as well as professional, McKee believes that medical science is taking traumatic brain injury may be able to define diagnostic criteria more seriously. for CTE in the living in the next two “The research they’re doing years. “I’m sure that we’re going to have in Boston has really had a big a good handle on this,” she says. “Things effect,” says Gary Johnson ’85, the Badgers’ head football athletic trainer. Part are changing so quickly.” of that effect is that the Big Ten football teams have prepared an educational program to teach incoming players how to recognize the signs of mild and traumatic brain injuries, as well as the consequences of not reporting them. Football Those players also received more extensive neuro-cognitive testing, designed Not all of the athletes McKee and her to gauge brain health and help the team’s medical staff judge whether a player group are looking at played football. In who receives a head injury is suffering any neurological impairment. fact, her first major paper on the topic “It’s basically a comprehensive test, including visual memory, verbal mem- ory, and reaction time,” Johnson says. “We want to establish how [a player’s] — “Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy brain functions in its normal state so that we’ll be able to test him again if he in Athletes: Progressive Tauopathy after suffers a concussion and make sure he’s back to baseline before we let him Repetitive Head Injury,” published in the participate again.” Journal of Experimental Neurology in 2009 When a UW player suffers a concussion, athletic trainers remove him from — cites fifty-one cases, only five of whom the game or practice and send him to a physician for evaluation. They then were football players. The vast majority have a set of protocols in place to try to ensure that he’s fully recovered before — thirty-nine — were boxers. Why the he returns. focus on football now? The first stage, according to Johnson, is “brain rest.” The player is asked The answer lies in numbers. Foot- to cut back on all forms of activity — television, video games, or music, and, in ball provides a lot of athletes to draw serious cases, even classes — until all symptoms (such as amnesia, confusion, from. “It’s [the contact sport that] the disorientation, headache, dizziness, nausea, blurred vision, and light sensitivity) most people are playing,” says Nowinski. have disappeared. Then athletic trainers slowly increase the player’s activity. “It starts with exercise on a stationary bike,” says Johnson. “We want “You’ve got the greatest urgency there, in to increase the blood flow to the brain.” Once a player can do that without that that’s where the most brain trauma showing any symptoms of concussion, he proceeds to running, and then non- is happening, and you can have the most contact practice. At each stage, athletic trainers give the player tests to gauge impact in terms of reducing it.” cognitive function, and a physician ultimately decides when and whether the That large sample of football players player may return. may shed light on ways in which other But, Johnson says, the chief difficulty isn’t so much in treatment as in groups of people are in danger of devel- changing the push-through-the-injury culture of football. “The hardest thing is oping CTE. McKee notes, for instance, getting kids to report,” he says. “The [symptoms of traumatic brain injury] can that members of the military may be at be pretty subjective. We’re really trying to help kids be more informed.” risk, due to proximity to explosions. J.A.

Continued on page 63

WINTER 2010 27 An admittedly arbitrary list of discoveries from the UW that changed the world for good.

By Jenny Price ’96 To get a sense of what we have to look forward to, Illustrations by Barry Roal Carlsen MFA’83 we looked back. Be forewarned: this list is not exhaus- tive. In fact, it’s entirely arbitrary, and we expect that UW-Madison is fertile ground many of you would like to add to the seven discoveries for imagination and innovation. Our best and brightest we picked. make discoveries that change lives — and sometimes No one can dispute this, however: these are seven save them. And we’re not just talking about Babcock homegrown finds that make a tangible difference out- Hall’s orange custard chocolate chip ice cream. side of the classroom, the library, and the laboratory. This tradition is poised to continue with the open- At the very least, pull them out of your back ing of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery on campus pocket the next time you want to brag about the in December (see sidebar, page 33). We at On Wisconsin UW. It never hurts to be ready in case you’re stuck admit that we don’t always understand the full signifi- at a party with someone who extols the virtues of a cance of exciting research findings that seem to emerge competing alma mater. from campus nearly every day and make us wish that Talk among yourselves. Then send us an e-mail we’d paid closer attention in science class. But we do at [email protected] if you’d like to add know that the UW is a source of life-changing work. to our list.

28 ON WISCONSIN Mini Machines

Henry Guckel’s invention wasn’t big, but its potential turned out to be huge. In 1991, the UW engineering profes- sor made the world’s first working metal micromotor. He used x-ray lithography and electroplating techniques to make the tiny machines, which are smaller than the width of a human hair. When Guckel died in 2000, he held more than eighty patents related to what are now called microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS. Who uses these microscopic marvels? We all do. The burgeoning field produced high-speed parts for computers, cars, and airplanes, and even improved medical technology to other devices, ranging from inkjet-printer procedures such as balloon angioplasty to treat heart disease. cartridges to miniature robots and optical scanners. New applications emerged as researchers applied the existing The latest iPhone has MEMS, including a light sensor and dual microphones for noise cancellation. The devices are also inside instruments for the video game Rock Band, which allows players to try their hand at tunes by groups from the Beatles to Green Day, and part of special suits used to capture movement for animated films (think Avatar).

Making it Compute

Imagine life without the Internet. Yes, there was one. Without the creativity and foresight of UW computer science researchers, you might not be able to instantaneously look up stats for your fantasy football team, book airline tickets, or find out what guinea pigs eat. Not everyone thought it was a great idea at first. It took Lawrence Landweber, emeritus professor of computer science, and his team several attempts to get funding to build the Com- puter Science Network (CSNET) in the early 1980s, linking computer science researchers in university and private settings to one another. Little did the naysayers know that the team’s efforts would help set the stage for the Internet, which today reaches more than one billion people worldwide.

WINTER 2010 29 Mold to Medicine

It was the height of World War II. The military needed antibiotics, and lots of them. While government officials rationed the drugs to give priority to soldiers, UW-Madison joined a massive effort by the U.S. govern- ment, scientists, and pharmaceutical manufacturers to ramp up production. UW researchers J.F. Stauffer PhD’33 and Myron Backus ’28, MA’29, PhD’31 used ultraviolet light to induce thousands of different mutations of a single strain of penicillin mold from a cantaloupe found in a Peoria market. Their work increased the strain’s productivity and paved the way for mass production of antibiotics. All industrial strains used today are descendents of what came from that one moldy melon. By 1945, every U.S. drugstore had the antibiotic in stock. Anyone who has ever had a sinus infection can appreciate that.

D Spells Research Dollars With one discovery — that ultraviolet radiation increases the content of vitamin D in food — Harry Steenbock helped set the UW on a course that made other breakthroughs possible. In 1927, the fledgling Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) executed its very first license agreement. The deal allowed the Quaker Oats Company to use Steenbock’s patented irradiation process to fortify the vitamin D content of breakfast cereals. Steenbock’s discovery generated $14 million in licensing income in the 1920s and ’30s, helping to fuel additional UW research efforts and establish WARF as a model for protecting intellectual property that has since been copied by more than three hundred other universities. The innovation doesn’t end there. One of Steenbock’s students, Hector DeLuca MS’53, PhD’55, who today is a UW professor of biochemistry, went on to work with vitamin D and developed treatments for diseases including osteoporosis, vitamin D-dependency rickets, and bone disease due to kidney failure. The story will likely continue, as new research suggests vitamin D’s power to fight myriad diseases.

30 ON WISCONSIN A Map that Changed the World

How do you solve a problem like Greenland? Robinson, who died in 2004, designed his elliptical- UW geography professor Arthur Robinson MA’38 shaped projection to minimize those distortions. When found a way to fit a spherical globe onto a two-dimen- it came to maps, Robinson cared about appearances, and sional map in 1963. How? By changing the shape of he believed that people wanted to work with maps that the world. were beautiful. He described a competing map projec- The maps sailors used for hundreds of years to navi- tion as “somewhat reminiscent of wet, ragged long winter gate the seas distort the size of countries and continents underwear hung out to dry on the Arctic Circle.” in the Northern Hemisphere. As a result, Greenland Others agreed. The National Geographic Society appears to be the same size as Africa, even though Africa’s adopted Robinson’s projection, which hangs at the front land mass is fourteen times larger. of classrooms around the world.

WINTER 2010 31 1965. In 1966, his camera was on board a NASA Eye in satellite launched into orbit — three years before Apollo 11 landed on the moon. The the Sky device provided a way to take pictures of The space race had the world looking Earth from space for the first time by to the moon in the 1960s, while one scanning our planet as it spun, snapping UW scientist’s invention gave us a sequential pictures at twenty-minute new way to see Earth. intervals. Suomi’s camera paved the Without Verner Suomi’s spin- way for what scientists can do today scan camera, we might not be able to — measure and track cloud and air tune in to The Weather Channel each motion, cloud heights, rainfall, severe morning to find out if we should grab weather, pollution, and natural disasters. an umbrella before leaving home. No doubt it has also helped people Suomi founded the UW’s renowned to fill awkward silences in conversation Space Science and Engineering Center in ever since.

History on Tape

It was one of the darkest moments in presidential history, but we didn’t know the whole story until we heard it directly from Richard Nixon. That’s exactly what he didn’t want. Nixon fought until his death in 1994 to keep private hundreds of hours of secretly recorded conversations. UW historian Stanley Kutler sued and won, forcing the release of the tapes through a deal with Nixon’s estate and the National Archives. In 1996, the archives finally made public all recordings connected to Watergate, which verified Nixon’s knowledge and participation in the cover-up. “Today, we speak of presidential abuses of power as being ‘worse than Watergate’ in their contempt for lawful processes and the rule of law,” Kutler wrote last year on the thirty-fifth anniversary of Nixon’s resignation. “The ‘lessons’ and meaning of Richard Nixon remain exquisitely relevant.” Kutler won his battle twenty-one years after Congress first ordered Nixon’s tapes released. He continues to advocate for open govern- ment and access to presidential records as a UW emeritus professor of history. His hard-fought discovery reminds us of one truth that should be self-evident: hide from our history and we’re doomed to repeat it. n

Jenny Price ’96 is senior writer for On Wisconsin.

32 ON WISCONSIN On the Horizon Two campus research institutes are poised for new discoveries.

As we pause to recognize notable UW contributions from past In turn, WID’s five research groups will focus on decades, a powerful incubator for new discoveries is about to cutting-edge work in these areas: open on campus. Tissue engineering, led by mechanical and industrial engi- One of the first inklings of its potential, in fact, was a compe- • neering professor Lih-Sheng “Tom” Turng, will aim to tition held to choose five areas of research for the public side of develop scaffolding to support and guide a patient’s own the soon-to-open Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. cells — including stem cells — as they replace or repair “All twelve finalists for the research themes received just damaged tissue. perfectly stellar reviews. There was little to differentiate them on pure scientific-quality grounds,” says John Wiley MS’65, PhD’68, • Epigenetics, led by biomolecular chemistry professor John former UW chancellor and interim director of the public half of the Denu ’88, will focus on the factors that govern the way we institutes, which are set to open in December in a striking new read and express our genetic code. Understanding how building on University Avenue. chemical and environmental differences (the “epigenome”) in The institutes are divided by a meaningful difference visible cells can silence or boost the effects of particular genes may only to their accountants. The Wisconsin Institute for Discovery prove effective in treating genetic disorders. (WID) will run on public research dollars, but will share space and — planners hope — inspiration with the Morgridge Institute • The Living Environments Laboratory, led by engineering and for Research, which is privately backed by alumni John ’55 nursing professor Patricia Flatley Brennan MS’84, PhD’86, and Tashia ’55 Morgridge and the Wisconsin Alumni Research will develop and test new tools to move health care out of Foundation. the clinical environment, helping patients and providers mon- “The most important final selection criterion [for WID research itor and treat conditions at home, at work, and just about areas] was the possibility of collaboration,” Wiley says. “We took anywhere. the potential for synergies between the WID researchers and the • Optimization, led by Michael Ferris, computer science and Morgridge researchers into account, with the idea that the power industrial and systems engineering professor, will apply com- of those collaborations will show up in the results.” puter models in an effort to make complex questions more The paired institutes are shot through with complementary manageable. For example, optimization helps steer cancer-kill- goals — improving human health, harnessing advances in tech- ing radiation beams past healthy tissue by weighing inexact nology, and understanding genetic processes — that dovetail measurements of anatomy, scattering tendencies of radiation neatly across the invisible public-private divide. beams, and even the rise and fall of an anxious patient’s chest.

Morgridge has drawn notable UW-Madison • Systems biology, led by chemical and biological engineer- researchers, including: ing professor John Yin, will apply engineering concepts to • Stem-cell pioneer James Thomson describe complex relationships among cells, viruses, and bacteria, and to help predict the way those relationships • Virologist Paul Ahlquist PhD’81 scale up to the level of neighboring tissues, organs, and full organisms — even to teeming, interdependent populations of • Medical devices developer Thomas “Rock” Mackie animals known as humans. • Engineering and computing experts Sangtae Kim and Miron Livny, who will train their computing experience on pharma- Chris Barncard ceutical development and high-powered number-crunching for collaborative research

WINTER 2010 33 Opening the door to Forgiveness

A UW law program brings the victims of violent crimes face-to-face with the people who hurt them, proving that human compassion resides in the most unlikely places.

By Stacy Forster Photos by Jeff Miller

Jackie Millar and Craig Sussek sit opposite each other across the corner of a heavy wood table, catching up like old friends do. They talk about her new sandals, the charity walk he’ll be doing, a pair of prestigious national awards she recently received. Jackie Millar brings an open mind and the capacity to forgive as she arrives But they’re unlikely friends meeting in an unexpected place: a small, bare at the Stanley Correctional Institution break room inside the Stanley Correctional Institution, where Millar visits Sussek for her thirteenth annual meeting with one of the offenders who injured her each year. Fifteen years ago, in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, a sixteen-year-old Sussek while committing a violent crime. shot Millar in the back of the head as he and a friend tried to steal her car.

34 ON WISCONSIN “I can forgive you, but forget it, I won’t. I am legally blind, I am paralyzed on my right side, but I am healed from my heart.”

Though she was given just a No matter what happens during a day at Restorative Justice, I was meeting 2 percent chance of living, Millar meeting — whether or not the offender clients and talking with them about survived, launching her on a journey takes responsibility, whether or not a vic- serious, life-changing issues. That was of forgiveness and reconciliation. In the tim offers forgiveness — nearly all confer- something I could never replace.” years since she was nearly killed, Mil- ences end with both sides feeling positive Jacob Stroup JDx’12, who organized lar has transformed a relationship with about participating, says Pete DeWind this year’s meeting between Millar and her two assailants to a level of love and ’82, JD’90, a clinical associate professor Sussek, says he was drawn to the project acceptance that is rare in the human at the law school. For the past decade, because he wanted to explore legal work experience. DeWind has directed the project, which outside the traditional adversarial process “I can forgive you, but forget it, I began in the mid-1980s with meetings of the criminal justice system. won’t,” Millar tells Sussek during their between property offenders and their vic- “I hope to help other people achieve meeting within the prison walls. “I am tims at Oakhill Correctional Institution whatever it is they want out of the pro- legally blind, I am paralyzed on my right near Madison. He follows in the footsteps cess, which can be different for different side, but I am healed from my heart.” of former directors Dave Cook ’76, JD’81 people,” he says. For the last thirteen years, Millar has and Bruce Kittle. been meeting with Sussek through a pro- “The best testament to [a meeting] is gram offered by the UW Law School’s that people come out of it saying, ‘I’m so Recognizing Frank J. Remington Center, which glad I did that, I feel so much better, I’m is directed by Meredith Ross MA’79, so relieved, I feel this huge weight lifted Victims’ Rights PhD’85, JD’90 and faculty director off my shoulders,’ ” DeWind says. Restorative justice grew out of a move- Walter Dickey BA’68, JD’71. Called the The project also provides important ment in recent decades to recognize the Restorative Justice Project, training for the soon-to-be-lawyers who rights of victims. While our nation’s it allows crime victims such as Millar work to pull the meetings together. Six justice system pits prosecutors against to meet with the very people who’ve law students are chosen for the project defendants, victims — many of whom committed crimes against them. each year. They start in May, just after have undergone great trauma and are The outcome of each conference completing their first year of law school. most affected by crimes — are often is different. For some, as with Millar They work full time during the summer, sidelined. and Sussek, an offer of forgiveness is then switch to part time for the following “The criminal justice system in the extended and a relationship begins. academic year. (Wisconsin’s other law United States provides no real oppor- Other victims need a way to vent their school, at Marquette University, also has tunity for this kind of exchange,” says anger at someone who took something a restorative justice program; it is run by Carla McKenzie JD’07. “Victims never very personal from them — a loved one, former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice get to ask the questions they have, never a sense of safety. Many come seeking Janine Geske.) get to express the real emotions they understanding or healing. The experience is unlike anything else have about the crime, and, consequently, The concept has benefits for offend- during their three years in law school, say offenders never get the opportunity ers, too. Restorative justice can contribute the students who’ve worked on the proj- to understand the effects of their actions to reduced recidivism and help rehabili- ect. They learn to see cases from a crime on someone else.” tate offenders by allowing them to look victim’s point of view, and they develop For a crime victim, a meeting with their victims in the eye and understand compassion that they can’t learn from the an offender means confronting a piv- the consequences of their actions. black-and-white pages of the heavy law otal, life-changing moment. But it also “When I got locked up, I was still stu- books they consume. gives a victim the chance to wrest back pid and crazy, but [then] I met with you,” “I don’t know that anything could some control and change the life of the Sussek tells Millar. “For years, I wouldn’t be better than that for my future person who committed a crime, says Jo let myself forgive myself for anything. It’s career in meeting with clients,” says Winston, director of the Office of Vic- helped me become a better person.” Christopher Behrens JD’10. “The first tim Services for the Wisconsin Depart-

WINTER 2010 35 Yet, despite the benefits for both par- ties, the concept is little known and used, and it doesn’t appeal to all victims. Many simply want to move on and aren’t inter- ested in revisiting a traumatic incident. And some offenders aren’t ready to take responsibility for their actions. The UW’s Restorative Justice Project has facilitated more than one hundred meetings during DeWind’s ten years — a small number compared with crimes committed in that same period. “Communities don’t think in terms of restoration as much as they think in terms of reparation and punishment,” says Robert Enright, a professor of educational psychology at UW-Madison who has studied forgiveness, including its place in restorative justice, for twenty-five Jackie Millar talks with Craig Sussek, now in prison for a crime against her, during a meet- years. “But the ideas are so powerful, ing coordinated by the Restorative Justice Project. Quietly observing in the background are law student Jacob Stroup, left, and project director Pete DeWind. they will continue to give a voice that will build.” ment of Corrections, which works with a metaphor for the entire restorative For Millar, restorative justice offered the UW program to coordinate prison justice process. a way to carry on. Her alternative, she meetings with offenders. “Many victims of crime — daily, says, was being “in a small padded room Although the concept can work for and sometimes for years on end — live for the rest of my life.” Millar also meets nearly all types of cases, some types of in the space of the crime, relive the once a year with Josh Briggs, her other offenses — such as domestic violence or crime, recall it, are surrounded by it … attacker; their relationship began several sexual assault — have additional risks. In and the crime envelops them,” she says. years later because Briggs was housed in DeWind’s program, the most common “Through restorative justice, in a man- an out-of-state prison for many years. requests are from family members of ner of speaking, they repaint the space Sussek believes more offenders could homicide victims. they’ve been inhabiting.” benefit from restorative justice, noting “Some people really do want the Restorative justice is designed as a that his relationship with Millar helped offender to know how this changed their service for victims, but offenders’ satisfac- him mature and turn his life around. life,” Winston says. “They believe that tion with the experience is important, too, “People come to prison to do peni- unless they sit down and talk about this, DeWind says. Of the offenders who par- tence and get back out into the world to the offender won’t have any real good ticipate in the program, almost all are in be a helpful cog in society. Restorative understanding of the impact of their prison. Some are on community supervi- justice helps people do that,” Sussek says. choices.” sion, while others are referred by judges, McKenzie recalls going to a victim’s prosecutors, or defense attorneys to help home and being struck by how the vic- their cases move through the criminal Making Preparations tim lived each day with reminders of the justice system. In addition to achieving a In cases where a victim and offender are crime against him — paint spots on the level of healing themselves, most offend- meeting for the first time, DeWind and wall that covered blood stains, the lamp ers are grateful for the opportunity to pay one or more of his students spend time whose twin had been broken in a struggle. back their victims in one of the few ways with both parties, getting to know them She sees that visit to the victim’s home as available to them. and their goals for the meeting. Most

36 ON WISCONSIN “People come to prison to do penitence and get back out into the world ... Restorative justice helps people do that.”

victims ultimately meet face-to-face with the person who committed the crime, and some exchange letters before they come together, DeWind says. Weeks — and sometimes months or years — can pass before a victim and offender are ready to meet. Victims and offenders sometimes keep journals of their thoughts to plant the seeds for a future visit. Some victims need a lot of time to build up the necessary emotional energy to meet the person who so intimately violated them. The student facilitators take care of arranging many of the details for the meeting, from contacting prison officials to answering questions from victims Jackie Millar hugs Craig Sussek at the start of their meeting at the prison. “It’s part of the and offenders — no matter how minor continued healing process that I’m allowed to learn from her,” Sussek says. In turn, Millar — about what might happen when they says, “You’ve grown by leaps and bounds.” meet in person. Behrens remembers a become a national leader in the restorative “There she is!” Sussek exclaims as he victim asking him what kind of shoes the justice movement, often traveling to pris- enters, and they hug for several seconds, offender would be wearing. ons across the country to talk with offend- exchanging greetings. “I don’t know why I noticed it, but I ers from the perspective of the victims. As Millar and Sussek quickly settle did, and had an answer for her,” he says. into an easy conversation, neither Before any meetings, DeWind and DeWind nor Stroup need to say a word. the student assigned to the case build The Annual Visit trust and rapport by visiting with every On a bright and steamy day last July, A Capacity to Forgive offender and victim in person. Millar travels three hours from her home “That’s a big reason why these meet- in Madison to Stanley prison, set on a Forgiveness isn’t the goal or purpose for ings — without exception — go well, flat, bucolic tract in northwestern Wis- restorative justice — an aspect that is and people are satisfied they’ve done consin, for her yearly visit with Sussek. often misunderstood, McKenzie believes. them,” he says. “In a meeting, people Once at the prison, she puts her cane “Forgiveness, emotional release, ‘com- often initially look at us because we’re the through an x-ray machine before being ing to terms with,’ or ‘finding peace’ ones they’ve known before and they’re searched herself; the shards of bullet that are all possible outcomes of restorative nervous, but after our one- to two-minute remain in her head prevent her from justice, but I don’t think they are the only introduction to these meetings, we stop passing through a metal detector. She outcomes, and they are certainly not the talking. We’re present, but we don’t then walks through a series of twelve purpose,” she says. intervene unless we absolutely feel we doors — which clank heavily as they close Yet some crime victims find a capac- have to or participants ask us to.” — to reach the austere break room where ity to forgive that many find difficult to Millar spent weeks in a coma after she’ll spend the next two hours visiting understand or achieve. she was shot, but when she regained con- with Sussek. “Without it, people can experience sciousness, she felt a strong pull to meet When Sussek comes through the understanding and mutual respect and with Sussek and Briggs. Barely two years door, he strides quickly across the room healing, but the depth of that will be passed before Millar met with Sussek for to Millar, and her face brightens with joy missing without forgiveness,” Enright the first time. In the time since, Millar has when she sees him. Continued on page 62

WINTER 2010 37 EARL KELENY

38 ON WISCONSIN Pain Relievers A UW group wages a global battle to help desperate cancer patients.

By Jenny Price ’96 Five years ago, Eva Duarte started the only palliative care hospital unit for adult cancer patients in her native Guatemala. But in the beginning, she had little to offer them. The country’s strict and complicated drug laws made it practically impossible to fill the prescriptions that Duarte wrote — despite the condition of her patients, more than half of whom were admitted with a diagno- sis of advanced cancer and in need of skilled pain management. “I began from zero,” Duarte says. The situation is not unusual. When the battle against cancer is all but lost, the journey to the end of life brings pain. In many countries, doctors don’t have access to inexpensive drugs such as morphine that can safely ease that suffering. Or they don’t pre- scribe morphine, fearing scrutiny and punishment from regulatory authorities that view it as no different from heroin, since both are in the same class of pharmacological drugs called opioids. Their patients come to believe that nothing more can be done, and, in time, only death brings an end to their agony. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 5.5 million people with terminal cancer and another million in the late stages of HIV/AIDS are not getting the pain relief that they desperately need.

WINTER 2010 39 Duarte has an ally at UW-Madison their pain, and guide them through end- get here,” Ryan says. “It is totally a sys- in the Pain & Policy Studies Group, of-life decisions. temic problem. It’s policy. It’s medical which for fifteen years has worked to ele- education. It’s drug availability. It’s cost vate pain relief as a human right and has of medicines.” been designated a WHO Collaborating Kindred Spirits To spend any time with the fellows Center for Policy and Communications The UW organization helps a small is to see courage and the drive to make a in Cancer Care. The team of doctors and group of international fellows — mostly difference. They are dynamic and intel- policy experts, located in the Carbone doctors and pharmacists — become ligent people from every corner of the Cancer Center, works side-by-side with champions for change within their own world who have found kindred spirits doctors, pharmacists, and health officials governments and health care systems. with one another and their UW men- who are fighting to change laws and tors. What they share is a huge anchor, BRYCE RICHTER practices in their home countries. because their mission can be lonely David Joranson ’68, MS’70, the work. Along the way, any number of group’s founder and retired director, factors — including national elections calls its work “the Wisconsin Idea gone that bring about massive turnover in the global.” In his travels, he has visited very government agents with whom they cancer hospitals where pain is ignored, work — can stall progress. When the doctors walk past suffering patients, and fellows meet face-to-face, usually once a those in the worst agony are placed in year, the gatherings generate light-bulb what’s called a “screaming room.” In moments as they learn about strategies Georgia, once part of the Soviet Union, others have used that might work in patients discharged from the hospital their own countries. are required to obtain their medications “It was a relief to know that we were from a local police station. all fighting for the same thing,” says This worldwide lack of pain relief for Marta León, a doctor from Bogotá, terminal cancer patients is so severe that Colombia, who became a fellow in 2006. Human Rights Watch issued a report on Competition is fierce for those the problem last year. Some of the coun- wanting to join the program. For the tries highlighted in the report specifically “I began from zero,” says Eva Duarte, a most recent class of fellows, forty-five for improving morphine access — India, physician in Guatemala, about her early applicants were vying for slots even- efforts to help cancer patients. Vietnam, and Romania — were helped tually filled by eight people from six by the UW experts to bridge the gap “They know the medical side of it, countries. The UW program evaluates between health care providers and the but they don’t know how to make the an applicant’s experience, involvement authorities in charge of drug control. link and bridge the gap with govern- in national palliative care organizations, “We work with countries and gov- ments and regulatory officials in their contacts with government officials, and ernments to say, ‘Hey, it’s a triangle. You country,” says Karen Ryan ’89, MA’97, English skills. The fellowship is open actually need educated clinicians who can who leads the fellowship program. to health care administrators, policy give the drugs, you actually need access Fellows attend an intense five-day experts, social workers, attorneys, and to the drugs, and you need laws that per- training session in Madison, learning regulators who want to improve access mit the use of them,’ ” says James Cleary, about controlled medications, identify- to pain-relief drugs and palliative care. director of the WHO collaborating cen- ing the barriers in their countries’ health For those not admitted to the pro- ter and UW’s palliative care program. care and drug-distribution systems, and gram, staff members have developed Palliative care doctors work with patients developing action plans to break them an online course that provides a frame- during transitions in treatment, treat down. “They’re wide-eyed when they work of international and national drug

40 ON WISCONSIN regulation. More than two hundred participants from sixty-six countries have registered for the course. Global Morphine Consumption (milligrams per person in each country)

Smart Battles The numbers tell the story of the disparity The support from the UW and the other among nations in the availability of pain relief. fellows gives Duarte, who is one of just *Austria 166.91 four palliative care doctors in Guate- mala, the tools to educate others about Canada 73.99 pain and palliative care. Attitudes in her United States 66.57 country dictate that people with cancer New Zealand 55.22 should endure chemotherapy until the Denmark 48.70 day before they die, she says. For three years, before becoming Australia 48.19 a fellow in 2008, Duarte fought on her France 38.16 own to improve access to morphine and Switzerland 35.05 other medical narcotics. “It was like Iceland 32.58 chasing [something] … I didn’t have a plan,” she says. The UW program, United Kingdom 31.61 she says, taught her how to fight “smart *Austria uses morphine in treatment of drug dependence. battles.” “It was very nice to be a superhero sometimes, but not being the only super- Consumption by countries with fellows hero,” Duarte says. “It took me out of in the UW’s Pain & Policy Studies Group. that place of frustration and isolation, because I was so alone in fighting things Jamaica 1.3652 and even wondering, ‘Am I right or Georgia 1.3380 wrong?’ ” Colombia 1.2390 Her first step was identifying the Uganda 0.7416 barriers blocking access to affordable drugs. Low-cost oral morphine was Armenia 0.6945 not available in Guatemala. The only Serbia 0.6659 opioid medicines available were very Guatemala 0.3561 expensive, costing more than a day’s sal- Nepal 0.2277 ary. Pharmacies could only fill prescrip- tions approved by a government agency Vietnam 0.2193 that has just one office for the entire Kenya 0.0446 country. Depending on where patients Nigeria 0.0071 live, Duarte says, “this could take some Sierra Leone did not report any morphine consumption for 2008. minutes, this could take some hours, this could take some days” — and that’s if Source: International Narcotics Control Board, 2008 the pharmacies agreed to handle the prescription at all.

WINTER 2010 41 After Duarte’s first session in lack of access to pain medicines. They “That’s a sure way to take three steps Wisconsin, she made progress, winning developed guidelines for evaluating a backward,” Ryan tells the fellows during government approval for her hospital country’s drug-control policies, starting an August training and strategy session in to use an internal, pre-authorized pre- with the principle that a nation’s drug Madison. “We don’t want the pendulum scription form for medications, rather laws should strike a balance between to swing so far. … We don’t want them than the original exhaustive authentica- ensuring that drugs are available for to fall into the wrong hands.” tion process. However, she says, getting pain relief and preventing their abuse morphine is still difficult, although it’s and trafficking. now on the list of medications covered It sounds easier than it is. Supply and by the country’s national health plan. “When I’m doing these workshops Demand And she’s still working with the min- with people in different countries, I istry of health and drug regulators to In India, the laws covering the use and implement an electronic approval BRYCE RICHTER distribution of drugs are complex. They system for prescriptions. fill a 1,389-page book, as thick as the “We have a wall that is blocking the six-inch binder that Joranson bought at a happy ending,” she says. Delhi bookstore. The mammoth volume is an intimidating reminder of what’s keeping pain relief from patients. inding alance After India broke free of British F B rule in 1947, twenty-eight states came Nearly fifty years ago, countries enacted together and adopted a constitution an international treaty to stem the pro- that allowed each of them to individu- duction and supply of narcotic drugs. ally control drug regulation. To move a The treaty, now signed by 184 nations, narcotic drug from one state to another also states that such drugs are essential requires an import permit, an export for the relief of pain and suffering, and permit, and a transport permit. Think that governments are obligated to make red tape. them available for medical treatment and “If you’re in one state and you research. want to get morphine out of a govern- Yet the day-to-day reality for cancer ment factory, you have to get two states patients in more than one hundred coun- involved in transferring every consign- tries is pain. Fear and stigma surrounding “It was a relief to know that we were all fighting for the same thing,” says Marta ment,” Joranson says. narcotic drugs have gotten in the way León, a physician in Colombia. Even Indian doctor R.B. Ghooi of pain relief. That’s due to the long- struggled in vain to find pain-relieving standing myth that taking morphine for ask, ‘How do you say balance in your drugs for his mother, who died of cancer medical purposes automatically leads to language?’ — and you get some pretty in 1997. From government officials and addiction, and to the lack of education for interesting responses,” says Joranson, the bureaucrats, Ghooi wrote, he “received many doctors about how to properly use UW group’s founder. “There’s a lot of tons of sympathy — but not a milligram the drugs. In fact, only in recent years has discussion, first of all, to define [balance] of morphine.” the United Nations Office on Drugs and correctly, and then they try to find the So why not just increase the supply Crime issued statements to countries that right word.” of morphine to meet the demand? It encourage access to pain-relieving narcot- The UW team is mindful that turns out that supply isn’t the problem; ics for patients who need them. diversion of morphine or other narcot- there’s already more than enough to go In the 1990s, the UW group began ics intended for medical use can derail around. Forty percent of the world’s collaborating with WHO to address the efforts to improve access. legal poppy crop is grown in Tasmania,

42 ON WISCONSIN with other major growing areas in first recommended in 1998. Rajagopal narcotics control board to refine how Turkey and India. says the work of Joranson and others at governments are instructed to calculate The International Narcotics Control the UW “has had such a huge impact on estimated needs for morphine and other Board tightly regulates all of these areas. the pain burden in the world.” pain-relieving medications. Growing more poppies won’t erase How much morphine a country can “Sometimes it’s a weak demand that the challenges in countries where people purchase for medical use is based on an leads to inadequate supply. Sometimes die in pain. While India supplies much estimate that governments submit to the it’s a failure of the government to accu- of the opium to make morphine for International Narcotics Control Board. rately assess its needs, but it’s the kind use in the rest of the world, it produces Some countries submit no estimates of a problem that can only be solved by very little for its own use because of at all or request enough to help only a people working together in the country,” low demand. Twice during the 1990s, handful of patients; others miss the mark Joranson says. the Indian government used funds to by submitting an estimate based on the purchase a large lot of oral morphine to previous year’s consumption, which distribute to regional cancer centers. wasn’t enough. No Pain After “They ran into the same problems Statistics for morphine consumption that we were trying to straighten out, in milligrams per person by country tell Five O’Clock? and most of the morphine was never the story. The UW’s Cleary says there is Morphine was available in Bogotá, where distributed and ultimately was wasted,” essentially a “thousands-fold difference” the government produces it, when Marta Joranson says. “They were trying to between developed and undeveloped León first joined the fellows program. But she found a very different story The only opioid medicines available were very expensive, costing outside Colombia’s capital city when she surveyed regulators and health care more than a day’s salary. Pharmacies could only fill prescrip- providers about drug availability in their tions approved by a government agency that has just one office regions of the country. “Every time we heard the same for the entire country. Depending on where patients live, Duarte [thing]: sometimes they will have one says, “this could take some minutes, this could take some hours, opioid for a while, and then they won’t have any for a couple of months,” says this could take some days” — and that’s if the pharmacies León, a doctor who heads the pain and palliative care department at Universidad agreed to handle the prescription at all. de La Sabana. Pharmacies throughout Colombia come up with a simple supply-side solu- countries. While the United States con- that stocked opioids had very limited tion to what is really an infrastructure sumes nearly 67 milligrams of morphine hours. “They would have a very strange and a demand-side problem.” per person each year, Ethiopia sits at the schedule — 8 to 5, Monday through Fri- Joranson has spent a lot of time on other end of the spectrum, with .0045 day. So [apparently] it was impossible for planes and trains in India with M.R. milligrams per person. you to have pain during the weekend or Rajagopal, who is considered the father “So there’s no pain relief in terms of at night,” she says. of palliative care in that country, trav- morphine,” Cleary says. Two years ago, a local newspaper eling to different states to work with Improving estimates, physician ran a classified ad on behalf of a thirty- cancer doctors and government officials education, and public awareness are all six-year-old woman with advanced to improve access. Fourteen of twenty- keys to developing better pain relief cancer who lived nearly three hundred eight states have adopted a simplified in affected countries. Ryan and her miles from Bogotá. It was a cry for help: rule governing narcotics, which Joranson UW colleagues are working with the “Cancer is killing us. Pain is killing me

WINTER 2010 43 try. The obstacles still preventing patient dedicated to promoting pain relief. “It’s Definition: o·pi·oid access to pain relief in Colombia reflect not. It’s an expensive, controversial way the depth of the systemic barriers found to give morphine, because it’s converted Opioids are narcotics derived from throughout the world. to morphine in the body.” the opium poppy and prescribed Dahl and Joranson launched the to treat pain. They include Wisconsin Cancer Pain Initiative, aimed morphine, oxycodone, methadone, at educating physicians and reforming codeine, fentanyl, and others. Addiction Myth regulations to improve care. Their efforts Opioids block the perception Pain — and how to manage it — has been garnered attention from the Oxford of pain by attaching to proteins wildly misunderstood. Experts in the field Textbook of Palliative Care, which calls found in the brain, spinal cord, say that some of the push for physician- the Wisconsin initiative “pioneering.” and gastrointestinal tract called assisted suicide, in fact, stems from poor Dahl and Joranson concluded that opioid receptors. The illegal drug pain control. the problem wasn’t a shortage of drugs. heroin, which has a similar effect, In 1984, some members of the U.S. Instead, Dahl says, “[the drugs] weren’t is synthesized from morphine and Congress proposed making heroin legal being used appropriately and people had is converted back into morphine for people dying from cancer. Joranson the wrong attitude. They were terrified once it enters the brain. was then serving as administrator of Wis- of addiction.” consin’s Controlled Substances Board, People who use morphine to relieve where he had developed an approach to pain can become physically dependent because for several days I have not been identify doctors who were abusing their on the drug and even go through with- able to find injectable morphine in any prescriptive privileges. The proposal to drawal, but that doesn’t mean they are place. Please, Mr. Secretary of Health, make heroin legal prompted Joranson addicted. That bears repeating: addic- do not make us suffer anymore.” to join forces with June Dahl, another tion and physical dependence are not the In 2007, León brought together in board member and a UW pharmacology same thing. Addiction results in the com- one room everyone who played a part professor. They investigated what was pulsive use of drugs despite harm, and in the chain of distribution: represen- driving the unexpected proposal. evidence shows it is not more common tatives of the Ministry of Health, the national and state authorities, pain and palliative care physicians, and interna- Two years ago, a local newspaper ran a classified ad on tional leaders in the efforts, including behalf of a thirty-six-year-old woman with advanced cancer Joranson and Ryan. Today, because of the work of León and drug regulators, who lived nearly three hundred miles from Bogotá. It was a each state has at least one pharmacy cry for help: “Cancer is killing us. Pain is killing me because that dispenses opioids open around the clock, seven days a week. for several days I have not been able to find injectable morphine In spite of this progress, there are other problems. It has become clear to in any place. Please, Mr. Secretary of Health, León that she also needs to work with the do not make us suffer anymore.” departments of health in each of Colom- bia’s thirty-two states (which she refers to as “thirty-two problems”) and with the “[They] had some crazy idea that in patients with chronic pain from cancer country’s version of HMOs to ensure an heroin was a magic bullet,” says Dahl, than in the general population. ongoing, reliable supply of medications former director of the Alliance of State Yet, for decades, medical texts and from Bogotá to other regions of the coun- Pain Initiatives, a U.S. network of groups laws stated that addiction was to be

44 ON WISCONSIN The Fight on the Home Front global program. “It’s not the availability; it’s the numerous barriers to access that we deal with.” Ten years ago, the UW’s Pain & Policy One of these barriers is restrictive policy language. Studies Group issued a report card on For example, sixteen states define addiction based state policies governing pain on outdated language from the federal government’s management in the United use of World Health Organization terminology. Those States. No state received an A. definitions brand someone who is physically dependent Since then, with help from on the medications — including those prescribed legiti- the UW group, most state med- mately for cancer pain — as an addict. ical boards, along with many Although medications to relieve pain are available, nursing and pharmacy boards, Gilson says patient access remains an issue. “I would have adopted policies encour- love to be able to say that if a state has an A, [it means aging treatment of pain. In the that] patients are being treated adequately, but I can’t,” most recent report, forty-four he says. “Effective pain relief requires a comprehensive states received grades above approach.” a C. Five states, including Wis- That includes more education about the use of consin, each received an A. morphine and other pain-relieving medications for “The only difference doctors, pharmacists, and nurses in training or those between the U.S. and other already taking care of patients. countries is we have the “We often encounter practitioners with mispercep- medications here,” says Aaron tions about opioids and pain management,” Gilson says. Gilson MS’94, PhD’98, senior “It’s those misperceptions that often create additional researcher for the group’s barriers and need to be remedied.” J.P.

measured by withdrawal symptoms, The group receives no money from to its patients; government officials and which led to doctors confusing the UW-Madison or WHO. It relies on fellows sitting down at the same table in appropriate treatment of pain with grants from private organizations, includ- Wisconsin to draft new laws for Romania addiction. WHO issued a definition ing the Lance Armstrong Foundation, the and Vietnam to replace decades of anti- of addiction in the 1950s, stating that Susan G. Komen Foundation, the Ameri- narcotics regulations. physical dependence or withdrawal was can Cancer Society, and the Open Society But the journey is far from over. inevitable for people who used mor- Institute founded by George Soros. As just one reminder, Joranson dis- phine and that it should be avoided. “It’s not just work for them,” says plays a photo that he took at a hospice “You can’t be surprised that people Willem Scholten, who leads the access to in sub-Saharan Africa in 2002. It shows are afraid of using these drugs and mak- controlled medicines program for WHO a pristine, white, metal cabinet. The ing them more available,” Joranson says. in Geneva. “David [Joranson] has retired door is hanging open with the keys now, but he’s still working on the issue. dangling from the lock, and the word So that makes it quite clear.” poison — used to refer to pain-relieving More Than Work They have seen reasons to hope: drugs in some countries — is painted Members of the UW’s Pain & Policy physicians who walk through jungles on the front in English and Dutch. The Studies Group have the passport stamps to reach patients who need morphine; shelves are empty. n to prove how widely they’ve traveled in countries such as Sierra Leone, where Jenny Price ’96 is senior writer for On their quest to ease pain. the first hospice can now offer morphine Wisconsin.

WINTER 2010 45 traditions

“Just the thought literally makes my mouth water. That special sauce makes the Plazaburger a vivid and wonderful memory.”

The Plazaburger JEFF MILLER Without the sauce, it might be just another burger. And without the burger, the Plaza Tavern might be just another bar. Anyone who has eaten this quarter-pounder ventures a guess at what’s in the cool, white sauce. Sour cream and mayonnaise are two known ingredients, but the rest remains a closely guarded secret. (Seriously. The owner keeps the recipe in a safe deposit box.) The Plaza started serving its famous burger in 1964. Mary Huss invented the sauce after she and her husband, Harold, bought the bar the year before. But what gives it that signature zip? Garlic salt? Chives? Maybe parsley? All good guesses, but quite possibly all wrong. “Whatever it is, this unique topping is good. Very, very good,” wrote George Motz in his 2008 book, Hamburger America. And as Motz correctly notes, one would be remiss not to order a side of fried cheese curds to accompany the burger. The bar’s design aesthetic is not of this decade, or the last one. It’s adorned with mural-sized paintings of scenes straight out of an old Hamm’s beer commercial, and customers set- tle into vinyl booths to eat at Formica tables. For amusement, there are arcade games, including Ms. Pac-Man and a dome hockey table (Badgers vs. Gophers). Motz called it “an enor- mous romper room for adults.” The Plaza claims that its famous patrons have included Bill Murray, Johnny Cash, Tom Wopat x’74, Brett Favre, Neil Young, Joan ’84 and John Cusack, and Greta Van Susteren ’76. And Badger alumni rhapsodize about the burger. “Holy macaroni, I miss this place,” an alumna from San Diego wrote on the social networking site Yelp.com. “Just the thought literally makes my mouth water,” wrote Anne Kissel Elliot ’75 on Facebook. “That special sauce makes the Plazaburger a vivid and wonderful memory.” Maybe it’s more than the burger that makes the Plaza a special place for so many alumni. It could be the memories of friends they were with, what happened on those nights, and the people they met. Then again, maybe it’s just the sauce. It is that good. Jenny Price ’96

What’s your favorite UW tradition? Tell On Wisconsin about it at [email protected], and we’ll find out if it’s just a fond memory — or if it’s still part of campus life today.

46 ON WISCONSIN WINTER 2010 47 gifts in action

The Art of Medicine Bishop award will encourage medical students to choose rural practice. COURTESY OF ERIN KIMBALL Erin Kimball ’03, MD’07 grew Wisconsin, with up in City Point, a township of 250 Gibbs Zauft ’46, in central Wisconsin, where her MD’50. Bishop family has lived for four genera- was well suited tions. The nearest gas station was to rural doctor- fifteen miles away; the closest ing, his son Neil school was twenty miles from her says, noting, “I home. As a fourth-year medical think he liked the student, she chose a rural track, small-town atmo- and spent five months at the sphere because Krohn Clinic in Black River Falls, he was from a Wisconsin — population 3,800. small town. I The track was a pilot effort know he enjoyed for the Wisconsin Academy for the personal rela- Rural Medicine (WARM) at the tionships that University of Wisconsin School developed with of Medicine and Public Health, a his patients who program designed to encourage were community young physicians such as Kimball people.” to look seriously at rural practice. In Louisiana, “It was the best choice I Bishop regu- Erin Kimball, who today is a practicing family doctor in a small Wisconsin town, made,” Kimball says. “Working larly made house says choosing the rural track in medical school taught her “what it really means with the doctors and nurses at calls. “I think he to be a physician.” the Krohn Clinic and Black River was one of the Memorial Hospital, I learned the most conscientious people I’ve when assigned to write about and medical issues during the art of medicine and what it really ever known in my life,” Neil says. the person they most admired. first two years of training, and means to be a physician.” Today Anytime anyone called, the ques- “I wrote about my dad,” he says. allows students to complete most Kimball practices in Black Creek, tion was not if the doctor would “I saw that, as a result of his life, of their third- and fourth-year Wisconsin, where she is the only go, but how soon. Many of Neil’s he had a significant impact on the clinical training in rural commu- family doctor in the town of 1,200. driving lessons occurred taking lives of others, and I wanted my nities. The program will graduate The six sons of the late Paul his dad on house calls. life to count as much. twenty-five rural physicians each Bishop ’43, MD’49 and his “I never saw him ever “We need more family phy- year by 2015. spouse, Alice, learned about that begrudge going to see some- sicians,” Mark adds. “Every sin- “By having students live art firsthand from their father. one,” Neil says. A rural Louisiana gle patient needs to have a family in rural communities, they see They endowed the Dr. Paul R. woman called about her mother doctor, someone who’s looking at the quality of life that can be so and Alice P. Bishop Memorial every Sunday, he remembers. the entire context of their life.” desirable,” Crouse says. Award to be presented annually “Mama’s not feeling well,” she’d WARM was established to Kimball says the rural rota- to a third-year medical student say. “You’d better come out.” ensure that rural communities tion gave her a strong foundation enrolled in WARM. The sons — So Neil would drive his dad to continue to have access to local for everything she’s learned since Neil, Edmund ’73, Paul, Mark the family home, where he was physicians. Studies show rural then. MD’73, Alan ’78, and William always treated to a heaping plate patients are often sicker, poorer, “Whenever I have the chance, — asked that preference be given of food while the doctor visited older, and more likely to be unin- I encourage young medical stu- to recipients who demonstrate a his patient. sured, and the nation is facing a dents to spend as much time in strong work ethic and compas- Paul’s son Mark also is growing shortage of rural prac- smaller hospitals and clinics as sion, and a willingness to go the a family doctor, practicing in titioners, says Byron Crouse, they can,” she says. extra mile for their patients. Mineral Point, Wisconsin. When associate dean for rural and To learn more about WARM Paul Bishop practiced first Mark was in third grade, his community health and WARM or to make a gift online, visit in Haynesville, Louisiana, before classmates chose historical fig- director. The WARM curriculum med.wisc.edu/warm. going into practice in Sauk Prairie, ures such as George Washington emphasizes rural public health Ann Grauvogl

48 ON WISCONSIN Badger connections JEFF MILLER

50 Alumni Association Tray Day News Eileen Bennett x’12 and her brother, Peter Bennett ’07, joined the sledding frenzy on Observatory Hill when classes were canceled last December due to a 52 Class Notes snowstorm. True to tradition, cafeteria trays were the conveyance of choice. 59 Calendar

60 Bookshelf

61 Sifting & Winnowing

WINTER 2010 49 alumni association news JOHN LUCAS

International Initiatives Boosting the UW’s role on the world stage.

UW-Madison has more than tional education and help 15,400 alumni who live and work students understand the context internationally, and they are cen- of working globally with people tral to the university’s reputation from diverse backgrounds,” says as a world-class institution. Their Paula Bonner MS’78, WAA’s talent and influence also help to president and CEO. position the state of Wisconsin as WAA’s new director of inter- a powerful partner in the knowl- national alumni relations, Kim edge economy. Santiago de Madera ’88, notes WAA President and CEO Paula Bonner visits with Shawn Li ’04 in Shanghai. These graduates serve at that many alumni abroad are the highest levels of international making meaningful connections business, academia, and pub- with the UW by using their alumni in Asia. Santiago expects to see foreign policy and economics, and lic sectors, and just as they ben- status to foster relationships at least four new chapters over international philanthropy. (See efit from their UW degrees, their between the campus and institu- the next year as WAA strength- uwalumni.com/international.) work can benefit the universi- tions in their home countries. ens alumni networks in areas with “This celebration of the great ty’s research, teaching, and pub- And as these international growing economies, including people, places, intelligence, lic service. The Wisconsin Alumni graduates find ways to connect Brazil, Russia, India, and China. ingenuity, and spirit that make Association (WAA) is working with their alma mater, Santiago UW-Madison is also host- UW-Madison a special place will to maximize partnerships with says, they’re also connecting with ing its second-ever International give those who attend the convo- alumni abroad to increase the fellow Badgers through alumni Convocation on campus July cation a stronger connection with UW’s international standing. chapters, academic endeavors, 26–28, 2011. The conference will the university,” Santiago says. “By strengthening our and community service. welcome all alumni with global “We know they’ll feel energized, international alumni relations Official international WAA interests to engage in dialogue and we hope they’ll share that program, we’ll better engage chapters number about a dozen, with distinguished alumni and UW great sense of pride with others graduates in the university’s including one in France, one in faculty, students, and one another they meet at home.” strategic initiatives for interna- the United Kingdom, and several about issues such as global health, Kate Dixon ’01, MA’07

Chancellor Solicits Alumni Input New Badger Partnership aims for revised model of state support. Is it time for a fresh and more flex- university committing to help sity while acknowledging that we ideas, and they provide valuable ible relationship between the uni- more state residents earn bach- can’t keep going back to taxpay- feedback to campus leaders.” versity and the state? That’s the elor’s degrees, offer more finan- ers for more money,” he says. The conversations were question that Chancellor Biddy cial aid, and make it easier for “The conversation with business the start of an ongoing dia- Martin PhD’85 asked alumni students to get the classes they and community leaders was an logue regarding the New Badger at events in Kimberly and Green need, among other things. The exciting start toward forging a Partnership that will eventually Bay, Wisconsin, this fall. chancellor has turned to alumni different model of state support engage a wide group of alumni, The conversations, hosted for suggestions and ideas for the for UW-Madison.” students, parents, and state res- by WAA’s Alumni for Wisconsin the plan, which is consistent with WAA President and CEO idents. For more information, see advocacy network, focused on statewide efforts to create more Paula Bonner MS’78 says that uwalumni.com/alumniforwiscon- the chancellor’s proposal for the flexibility for all the UW System having Alumni for Wisconsin host sin or newbadgerpartnership. New Badger Partnership — an campuses. the meetings was a natural fit, wisc.edu/. effort to craft with the state of Paul McCann ’81, CEO of because the group’s mission is to Mike Fahey ’89 Wisconsin a new business model Aurizon Ultrasonics in Kimberly, create a public discussion about for the university. The discus- explained why attendees walked the importance of higher educa- sion is likely to involve asking the away from the conversation with tion in the state. “Our alumni play state to give the university more enthusiasm. “Alumni are eager an important role as supporters flexibility to become more effi- to work with the chancellor to of the university,” she says, “but cient and cost effective, with the find ways to support the univer- they are also a great resource for

50 ON WISCONSIN DANITA DELIMONT/ALAMY Study Abroad, Alumni Style WAA’s Ecuador tour offers first immersion experience.

Have you ever wanted to learn ing an authentic Ecuadorean life- Sandy Spanish, but never had the time? style. They’ll also attend the Kampen also Now is your chance — WAA is Simon Bolivar Spanish School cites camarade- offering a four-week introduction and learn about the country’s his- rie as the rea- to living abroad in Cuenca (kwain- tory, music, art, and politics. son she travels ka), Ecuador, that will include Similar immersion experi- with WAA — daily one-on-one tutoring in the ences in France, Spain, and Italy to the tune of language. are under consideration. thirty-three ath- “It’s almost like study-abroad Along with Cuenca, WAA letic trips over for adults,” says Sheri Hicks, offers more than forty trips each the past few WAA’s travel director. “It’s a year to destinations around the decades. “I value great chance for Badgers to world. According to a recent arti- the wonderful immerse themselves in the cul- cle in the Los Angeles Times, it’s friendships I’ve ture, cuisine, and language of the not just exotic locales that attract made meeting people on my trav- Star Wars movie; travel by private country.” The inaugural Cuenca alumni travelers — it’s also the els,” she says. “Many of the same jet to destinations such as St. trip is scheduled for January 29 bonding that occurs due to sim- people travel with WAA, so you Kitts and Tahiti; and tours to see to February 28. ilar educational and social back- get to know everyone pretty well, the Masters golf tournament, A UNESCO World Heritage grounds. Future Cuenca traveler and many of us get together dur- the Kentucky Derby, and the site, Cuenca is a beautiful colo- John Strebel ’72 agrees. “I ing the off-season, too.” Daytona 500. nial town set in the heart of the haven’t traveled internation- Other upcoming alumni trips For more information, visit Andes Mountains. Travelers will ally before, and the alumni group include Tunisia, where travelers uwalumni.com/travel. experience this top retirement appealed to me for socializing,” will see the underground troglo- Brian Klatt, haven as if they were locals liv- he says. dyte village used in the original Wendy Hathaway ’04

Sifting and Winnowing in New York City Meeting of the Minds sparks lively debate on pressing contemporary issues.

The U.S. economy continues to the issues at the core of what it soon. To learn more about the http://www.chancellor.wisc.edu/ struggle, the country is at war, and means to live in a democracy in series and see photos and video meeting-of-the-minds/. on some days, certain headlines in 2010. The panel addressed issues from the New York event, visit Staff

the Onion start to ring true. relating to the intersection of BUD GLICK Engaging in discourse around politics, the environment, the topics such as these is an every- economy, and the media. day occurrence between UW pro- “The sifting-and-winnowing fessors and students, but what component of the evening about professors and alumni? In got going in earnest when the September, Chancellor Biddy audience offered questions Martin PhD’85 decided to and comments,” says Robert take the UW to alumni by lead- Beecher ’69. “How many ing a dynamic conversation at attendees were transported back New York City’s Morgan Library to the days — now long ago for & Museum as the first event of some of us — when this type of the ongoing Chancellor’s Series: challenging discourse was rou- Meeting of the Minds. tine? It was the perfect synthesis Martin moderated a panel of academia and world issues.” with four UW-Madison faculty Future cities and dates From left are Doris Weisberg ’58; Chancellor Biddy Martin; pan- at the top of their fields to cut for subsequent Meeting of the elists Joel Rogers, Tracey Holloway, Barry Burden, and Stephen through the chatter and tackle Minds panels will be announced Ward; and WAA President and CEO Paula Bonner.

WINTER 2010 51 classnotes

early years impact on North American at the Institute of Medicine in production and have gar- Washington, D.C. Send us your news! Most happy (albeit belated) nered international acclaim in If you saw the Bailiwick birthday wishes go to two the French fry industry. With the Chicago production of Elton John Please share with us the (brief, Badgers. Dubuque, Iowa, resident Agriculture Canada Research and Tim Rice’s Aida this sum- please) details of your latest Bob Hutchison ’33 celebrated Station in Fredericton, New mer, you saw original, Egypt- achievements, transitions, and his big 1-0-0 in June, no doubt Brunswick, from 1957 until 1986, inspired dresses created by major life events by e-mail to reminiscing on his military ser- he also established its Benton Chicago fashion designer Maria [email protected]; by vice and ownership of Dubuque Ridge Potato Breeding Facility. Danae Mandis ’66 and others in mail to Class Notes, Wisconsin Hardwoods for three decades. Who doesn’t love butter?! the number “My Strongest Suit.” Alumni Association, 650 North And centenarian Vernon Horne That’s why we were so excited Mandis has been a senior VP and Lake Street, Madison, WI 53706- ’38, MS’62 of Beaver Dam, that Don Hamilton ’58 and his production director for Playboy; 1476; or by fax to (608) 265-8771. Wisconsin, noted in August that spouse, Nancy, were crowned has worked in numerous capac- We have the “good problem” of “it’s taken a long time to get king and queen of Reedsburg, ities for the city’s Mannequin receiving many more submissions here.” He was an agriculture Wisconsin’s 2010 Butter Fest in Nightclub; and is designing than we can include, but we love educator and school administra- June. The Hamiltons have been clothing and home-goods collec- to hear from you nonetheless. tor around the state. devoted festival volunteers since tions under the Danae Design and Please e-mail death notices “It’s taken a long time to get here.” and all address, name, tele- 40s–50s phone, and e-mail updates to — Vernon Horne ’38, MS’62 The Dance Heritage Coalition has [email protected]; hailed (Ann) Anna Schuman 1980, and Don has had a career MDM Studio labels, respectively. mail them to Alumni Changes, Halprin ’42 as one of “America’s in physical therapy. They met The UW Foundation (UWF) Wisconsin Alumni Association, irreplaceable dance treasures.” when they both worked at the board has a new chair in Fran 650 North Lake Street, Madison, The Kentfield, California, inno- Capitol Theater in Madison. Shuter Taylor ’68 of Madison, a WI 53706-1476; fax them to vator has continued the legacy retired Bank of America executive (608) 262-3332; or call them in of the UW’s legendary founder VP. She’s given enormous sup- to (608) 262-9648 or toll free to 60s of dance in higher education, port to the UW, including estab- (888) 947-2586. the late Margaret H’Doubler U.S. Representative David Obey lishing with her spouse, Bradley Claxton 1910, MA’24, and ’60, MA’68 (D-Wisconsin) — Taylor ’68, the Fran and Brad Most obituary listings of WAA went on to create many contro- the third-most senior mem- Taylor Great People Scholarship. members and friends appear versial, yet healing works. For ber of the House, chair of the Richard Antoine ’69 of in the Badger Insider, WAA’s Halprin’s ninetieth birthday in Appropriations Committee, and Cincinnati, a retired Procter & member publication. July, the Museum of Fine Arts in the lawmaker whom the New Gamble global human-resources Houston showed Breath Made York Times called “an occasion- officer, is the board’s new vice x-planation: An x preceding a Visible, the sole documentary on ally cantankerous figure and die- chair. Fran Taylor and Antoine will degree year indicates that the Halprin’s life. Her late spouse was hard liberal” — is retiring after work with the UWF’s new presi- individual did not complete, or acclaimed architect Lawrence four decades. Wisconsin State dent and CEO, former Wisconsin has not yet completed, the degree Halprin MS’41. Assemblyman Spencer Black School of Business dean and at UW-Madison. Felicitations to Herbert MS’80, MA’81 (D-Madison) is vice chancellor for advancement Sandmire ’50, MD’53, who’s retiring as well; the environmen- Michael Knetter. He’s succeed- received the 2010 Distinguished tal advocate whom the Wisconsin ing Sandy (Andrew) Wilcox, ® The Wisconsin Alumni Association Service Award from the American State Journal dubbed a “pro- who’s served as the UWF’s pres- (WAA) encourages diversity, inclusivity, nondiscrimination, and Congress of Obstetricians and gressive Madison institution” has ident for twenty-two years and is participation by all alumni, students, Gynecologists. In private practice served since 1984. retiring at the end of the year. and friends of the UW in its activities. in Green Bay, Wisconsin, since In honor of her forty-plus-year Badgers are heading up 1959, he’s delivered about eleven career as a practice-changing two national medical associa- thousand babies. (We say, wow!) innovator in pediatric oncol- tions: Dean Schraufnagel ’69, The Order of Canada has ogy research, Sharon Boehm MD’74 has been elected pres- invested agrologist Donald Murphy ’65 has been awarded ident of the American Thoracic Young MS’54, PhD’57 to honor the 2010 Pediatric Oncology Society, while George Sledge, his contributions in introducing Award from the American Society Jr. ’73 is the new president of and developing several potato of Clinical Oncology. She’s the American Society of Clinical varieties that have had a major currently a scholar-in-residence Oncology. Schraufnagel is a

52 ON WISCONSIN professor of medicine and pathol- Rod Clark ’71: Literature in Bloom ogy, as well as program direc- tor, in the Section of Pulmonary, Love of literature and disdain for most literary journals ANDY MANIS Critical Care, Sleep, and Allergy propelled Roderick (John) Clark ’71, a graduate in at the University of Illinois at English and philosophy, to nurture an unconventional Chicago. Sledge is a professor magazine called Rosebud. The experiment has lasted of oncology, medicine, pathol- seventeen years and is still going strong. ogy, and laboratory medicine at After graduating from the Writers’ Workshop Indiana University’s School of at San Francisco State University in 1975, Clark Medicine, as well as a physician worked in the Madison area as a magazine writer and researcher at the university’s and editor. He also wrote and directed experimental Simon Cancer Center. theater. One of his actors was ad man, writer, and poet President Obama has John Lehman. selected Frances Ulmer ’69, One day Lehman complained that his writing JD’72 to serve on a seven- students had no place to publish. He broached the person commission charged with idea of a literary magazine. “And you have a half-million finding ways to avoid a repeat of dollars?” Clark recalls asking. No, said Lehman, but the Deepwater Horizon disaster surely they could do it. Says Clark, “It was as if some- that killed eleven men this sum- one had asked you to invent an antigravity machine.” mer and initiated the nation’s Nonetheless, they began brainstorming. “We worst oil spill. Formerly Alaska’s started out talking about what we hated about most lit- lieutenant governor, a state rep- erary journals,” Clark recalls. “There was the stuffiness. resentative, and the mayor of its There was the preoccupation with taking themselves capital, Juneau, Ulmer plans to too seriously. We wanted something that would be retire from her current post as intelligent but not stiff. … We wanted to create a new chancellor of the University of As the editor of the literary magazine kind of magazine that would appeal to readers as well Alaska-Anchorage next year. Rosebud, Rod Clark has published nearly as writers.” 50 issues, despite the lack of a parent Launched in 1993, the magazine (www.rsbd.net) foundation or university to provide funding. was named with the mysterious word in Orson Welles’s 70s film Citizen Kane. “The name suggests both innocence and worldliness,” says Clark, who took over nine Badgers represent three decades years ago as Lehman moved on to other projects. as bar-association leaders around Rosebud always leads with Clark’s column and ends with a cartoon. In between are poems, stories, the nation: Linda Auerbach and essays arranged, as Clark says, by “tonal groups” that share a theme or more nebulous quality. Most Allderdice ’70, a partner in the Rosebud writers are relatively unknown, but the magazine has published pieces by Stephen King, Ray Los Angeles law office of Holland Bradbury, Alice Walker, Norman Mailer, and other literary lights. The publication is “beautifully edited & Knight, has been elected pres- and designed,” says Ron Wallace, a poet and a UW-Madison professor of English. “I think it’s a terrific ident of the Los Angeles County magazine, one of the best around.” Bar Foundation; Valerie Bailey- Among Rosebud’s hallmarks is a blurb accompanying each story or poem describing the origin of Rihn ’84, JD’91, a partner in the piece or the author’s intention for it — “like a window into the interior landscape of the writer,” says Quarles & Brady’s Madison law Wisconsin poet Shoshauna Shy, whose work has appeared in the magazine. “I am always interested in the office, is the president-elect of ‘backstory’ behind inspiration.” the Dane County Bar Association; Rosebud has been a shoestring operation since its inception. The nonprofit manages to break even and Rachel Schneider JD’95, through lots of poorly paid labor by Clark and art director Parnell Nelson, and by accepting donations. Clark a partner with the Milwaukee must wait for the income from previous issues before he can print the next one, but despite the challenges, office of Quarles & Brady, is the he manages to send four thousand copies of the triannual publication to eight hundred subscribers and nine new president of the Milwaukee hundred stores in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. Bar Association. Clark has retired from other “magazinery” but continues to produce Rosebud from his one-hundred- Jerry Gottsacker ’71 twenty-year-old farmhouse near Rockdale, east of Madison. In the spring, he’ll publish his fiftieth issue. was a font of news this summer, “I get to sit out here and be a rural hermit, and at the same time have a connection with a much larger sharing that Jeff Hermanson world,” he says. “That’s a lot of fun.” ’71, MA’73 is the assis- — Greg Breining tant executive director of the Writers Guild of America/ West in Los Angeles. The pair

WINTER 2010 53 worked together in the 1970s at the Co-op Garage on West Zach Bassett ’09: Setting Sail through Craigslist Washington Avenue, and Gottsacker says that many of OF ZACH BASSETT COURTESY Just days before launching his those who were involved with professional career in Hastings, it — as well with the Common Minnesota, Zach Bassett ’09 Market Food Cooperative — was sailing a forty-six-foot yacht have recently reconnected. He in the Mediterranean. The former also notes that TV producer UW sailing team member landed Glenn Silber ’72 made a docu- the summer dream job on Craigslist, mentary about Common Market. and although the offer sounded Finally, Gottsacker adds that too good to be true, Bassett the president of the University knew better. of New Hampshire, in his home- That’s because he’d been town of Durham, is Mark hired to sail for the Kennedy fam- Huddleston MA’73, PhD’78. ily in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts We’re especially proud of — also through a Craigslist ad — two big-hearted, home-state the summer after his freshman year. Badgers who’ve been hon- He’d enjoyed that trip’s sense ored for their humanitarian work: of adventure so much that the Zach Bassett has landed not one, but two dream jobs on Joe Ketarkus ’71, an EMT following summer, he spent his Craigslist. He’s sailed with the Kennedy family in Hyannis Port trainer and the EMS coordina- life’s savings on an inexpensive (above), and he’s crewed a yacht in the Mediterranean. tor at Madison’s Meriter Hospital, boat and sailed solo from Miami to Boston. has earned the American Red After graduation, the economics grad moved home and worked a couple of odd jobs before another Cross’s Hero of a Lifetime award Craigslist help-wanted ad caught his eye. It was seeking candidates with sailing experience — in addition for dedicating his thirty-nine-year to being mechanically inclined, self-starting, athletic, well organized, and tidy — to sail a yacht for six weeks career to “serving and saving around the coast of Turkey and the Greek Islands in the eastern Aegean Sea. Bassett nailed his interview lives in Dane County.” In addi- on Skype, and in May 2010, he boarded a plane in Minneapolis and flew fifty-five hundred miles to meet his tion, Thomas Rand MS’72 has new employer, a retired American business executive. garnered a Lifetime Achievement “I went a week early to hang out in Istanbul and explore a bit,” says Bassett. “I got caught in a riot at a Award from the Wisconsin soccer game and was tear-gassed and shot with a fire hose.” Association of Homes and Once he boarded the yacht, the Gaviidae, life was smoother sailing. As first mate, Bassett was in charge Services for the Aging. As the of navigation, sailing, docking, cleaning, maintenance, some cooking, and the overall safety of the crew and executive director of Bethany St. guests. “Depending on whose waters you’re in, you have to worry about rules and regulations and stay on Joseph Corporation in La Crosse, top of the paperwork,” Bassett says of international sailing. “And with boats, things break all the time, so he’s been a longtime advocate for you have to hire mechanics and technicians and negotiate prices.” the elderly and disabled. The best part about the trip, he says, “was seeing all sorts of interesting places, from huge, industrial UW-Madison can boast Turkish towns with millions of people, to tiny Greek islands with a permanent population of twenty farmers three new U.S. attorneys or nomi- — places you can’t go without a boat of your own. It was really neat.” nees: David Capp ’72 of Beverly Besides summer jobs, Bassett has found other deals on Craigslist. He once ran an ad to borrow a goat Shores in the northern district for a day to play a prank, after joking for years that he would buy a friend a goat as a lawnmower after the of Indiana, Betsy Steinfeld friend bought his first home. Jividen ’76 of Wheeling in the Bassett is now busy with his new job with the Loyalton Group as an analyst of energy portfolios for northern district of West Virginia, big hotel chains. Though he’s not sure how much time the future holds for sailing, if he finds himself in the and John Vaudreuil ’76, JD’79 market for a sailboat someday, he’ll know where to shop. of Madison in the western district Karen Graf Roach ’82 of Wisconsin. The first definitive proof that all major animal groups with internal and external skeletons New York State’s paleontolo- and fossils to his UW studies. Organization (WMO). WMO has appeared in the Cambrian period gist and curator of paleontology Tom Peterson ’72 a Commission for Climatology has come from Ed Landing ’72, at the New York State Museum explained his new honor this way: (one of eight commissions). the lead author of an article in in Albany, and he attributes his “In a nutshell, the United Nations Membership in [that commis- the June issue of Geology. He’s interest in Early Paleozoic rocks has a World Meteorological sion] is made up of 142 coun-

54 ON WISCONSIN tries. Representatives from more Wildlife Conservation Network. she’s also served as the first rity and defence at the Ministry than 80 member countries met Two California State African-American president of the [for Foreign Affairs]. And even in Turkey in February and unan- University administrators have National Reading Conference. that is about to change, since in imously elected me president. been lauded of late: Howard Chase grizzly bear from June I will move to Afghanistan It’s a four-year term.” Peterson Wang MS’74, associate VP campsite. Check. Find lost hik- to become the political director is the chief scientist at NOAA’s for student affairs at Cal State- ers. Check. Tranquilize cou- in the NATO office there. It will be National Climactic Data Center in Fullerton, has been named a Pillar gar. Check. All could be part of a interesting to do something new Asheville, North Carolina. of the Profession by NASPA- day’s work for Scott Emmerich at this stage in my life.” Congratulations to Carol Student Affairs Administrators ’79, MBA’82, a ranger at University of Missouri Thomey Stiff ’72, who’s been in Higher Education; and F. Montana’s Glacier National Park economics professor Michael elected to the board of the (Fieldon) King Alexander since 1989. He took time off in Podgursky PhD’80 is one of American Council for Medicinally PhD’96, president of Cal State- June, though, to receive the 2010 three scholars recently appointed Active Plants, and will serve as its Long Beach, is this year’s recipi- Harry Yount National Park Ranger to the George W. Bush Institute, treasurer and webmaster. Stiff, of ent of the California State Student Award for promoting awareness a research facility that focuses on Milton, Wisconsin, is the founder Association’s Robert C. Maxson and appreciation of the profes- the economy, education, global and president of Kitchen Culture President of the Year Award. sion. Emmerich oversees a health, and human freedom. Education Technologies and the Podgursky will work on strategies Home Tissue Culture Group. “It will be interesting to do something for improving the leadership of John Buckley JD’73 and school administrators. Ward McCarragher ’85, JD’92 new at this stage in my life.” The 2010 Oncology Nursing are kings of the Hill, you might — Thordur Oskarsson MA’80 Society’s Excellence in Blood and say: the newspaper Roll Call has Marrow Transplantation Award named them to its list of top staff- Leading the American quarter-million acres of land, 170 has gone to D. (Debra) Kathryn ers on Capitol Hill. Buckley is the Association for Justice as its miles of hiking trails, and 18 miles Tierney ’80. She’s an oncol- chief tax counsel for the House new CEO is Linda Lipsen ’75 of international border. ogy clinical nurse specialist at Ways and Means Committee and, of Kensington, Maryland. She’s With threats from nature ever Stanford [California] University Roll Call reports, “has had a hand served as a “tireless advocate looming, Charley Shimanski Medical Center. in nearly all the major tax bills.” for civil justice issues” as the ’79 will never have a dull day as This year the Royal Society McCarragher is chief counsel for association’s executive VP for the American Red Cross’s new of Chemistry has bestowed its the House Transportation and public affairs since 1993. senior vice president of disas- Theophilus Redwood Award upon Infrastructure Committee. The National Wildlife ter services — the top national Paul Bohn PhD’81 for his con- In May, President Obama Federation has honored writer, disaster-response official for the tributions in the areas of micro- announced his intent to appoint photographer, and long- Washington, D.C.-based organi- fluidics and nanoscale chemical Robin Butterfield MS’73 as a time Wyoming Wildlife edi- zation. The quarter-century vet- sensing. He’s a University of member of the National Advisory tor Chris Madson MS’76 of eran of Colorado’s Alpine Rescue Notre Dame researcher; profes- Council on Indian Education. The Cheyenne with its 2010 National Team was previously CEO of the sor of chemical and biomolecu- Alexandria, Virginia, resident is Conservation Achievement Red Cross’s much-lauded Mile lar engineering, chemistry, and a senior liaison with the Minority Award. One of Madson’s nomi- High chapter in Denver. biochemistry; and director of the Community Outreach Department nators said of him, “His intuitive school’s Advanced Diagnostics of the National Education sense of the Western landscape 80s and Therapeutics initiative. Association and a member of the and Western people, coupled Certainly no one would say Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska. with his passion for wild things Thordur Oskarsson MA’80, the words “lazy boy” to Greg Richard Scheller ’74 is part and wild places, has made him formerly Iceland’s ambassador Brinks MS’81, except in refer- of a trio of laureates who shared the premier advocate for wildlife to Japan, sent this message our ence to his new job: he’s been a million-dollar 2010 Kavli Prize in Wyoming and throughout the way in May from Reykjavik: “Life named vice president and trea- in neuroscience in September interior West.” has not been easy in Iceland as surer of the Monroe, Michigan- for its work to reveal the precise Patricia Edwards PhD’79 you probably know, but still home based furniture manufacturer molecular basis of signal transfers has taken the helm of the is always the best place to be. La-Z-Boy. Brinks has previously among nerve cells in the brain. International Reading Association I have been very busy dealing held several positions in the U.S. Scheller, the executive VP of as its new president. Currently with Middle East [issues, as the and abroad with General Motors. research and early development a senior outreach fellow and a representative to the Palestinian The newly created post of for the biotech firm Genentech in distinguished professor of lan- Authority], and even more so chief content officer at Vermont South San Francisco, California, guage and literacy at Michigan with security and defence issues, Public Television is the profes- is donating his prize money to the State University in East Lansing, as I am now director of secu- sional home of Kathryn Scott

WINTER 2010 55 classnotes

’81. The South Burlington res- Carolina, and was UW-Madison’s together, then stand corrected. the 3D network happen,” trum- ident has also been a producer university counsel for eighteen They’re actually concocted peted a summer news release. for PBS’s Newton’s Apple and years before joining Duke in 2007. in sophisticated labs, one of Sony Corporation, Discovery American Public Media’s Sound Two ’80s grads have retired which is the Dr Pepper Snapple Communications, and IMAX Money and Weekend America. from their military service: U.S. (DPS) Group Research and Corporation have announced that The next time you’re in Navy Captain Mark Englebert Development Center in Plano, the former Discovery Channel Turkey, think of Zafer Kurtul ’83 of Silver Spring, Maryland, Texas, where David Thomas executive VP and COO has MBA’82, the new CEO of was honored for his quarter- ’84, MS’88, PhD’92 divulges become president and CEO Sabanci Holding in Istanbul. His century of duty during a summer that a Slurpee’s “drinkable, frozen of their joint venture to develop last position was deputy chair of ceremony following his final tour consistency” presents unusual the first round-the-clock, dedi- the executive board of the private as the military assistant to the challenges to flavor developers. cated-3D television network — Turkish lender Akbank, a subsid- Assistant Secretary of Defense He’s DPS’ senior VP of research “a turning point in entertainment iary of Sabanci Holding. for Reserve Affairs. He was also and development and holds history.” Stay tuned … We can claim two new proud to see his son, Andrew fifteen food-science patents. The Environmental Badger deans among the aca- Englebert JD’10, graduate in James Carney JD’85 and Protection Agency has bestowed demic ranks: Kathryn Boor May. Navy Commander Paul his family took to the open road its 2010 Presidential Green MS’83 is the new dean of the Chemistry Challenge Award College of Agriculture and Life “The only thing I can do now in my life is to on (Chun-Chih) James Liao Sciences at Cornell University in PhD’87, a professor of chemical Ithaca, New York. She was pre- work to make the world a better place.” and biomolecular engineering viously a professor and chair of — Bryan Atinsky ’92 at UCLA. His research involves Cornell’s Department of Food synthesizing fuels from carbon Science, as well as director of Vandenberg ’87, MS’96 of this summer to complete a bicy- dioxide — technology that could its Milk Quality Improvement Black Creek, Wisconsin, has cle trek of 4,262 miles in seventy significantly reduce carbon- Program. Meanwhile, the retired after twenty-one-plus days, traveling the TransAmerica dioxide emissions. Liao is affili- University of Cincinnati’s College years as a Civil Engineer Corps Trail from Astoria, Oregon, to ated with Easel Biotechnologies, of Business has welcomed David officer, most recently serving Yorktown, Virginia. Carney is an which is commercializing the Szymanski MBA’83, PhD’87 as the contingency engineer attorney with Carney, Davies and technology. as its new dean. He’s the for- and deputy operations officer at Thorp in Janesville, Wisconsin. Who’s the new chief of mer director of the Center for Pearl Harbor’s Naval Facilities The University of Wisconsin staff at NASA’s Washington, Retailing Studies at Texas A&M Engineering Command Pacific. Colleges and UW-Extension D.C. headquarters? David University and sits on the board When the U.S. attorney for board of visitors has welcomed Radzanowski ’88 has stepped of OfficeMax. the district of Minnesota handed Mark O’Connell MA’85 of Sun up from his post as the agency’s Anesthesiologist K. (Karen) out the 2009 Law Enforcement Prairie as its new president and deputy associate administrator for Bobbi (Powless) Carbone Recognition Award, veteran FBI has given him its 2010 Wisconsin program integration in the Space MD’83 has shattered two glass special agent Eileen Rice ’83 Idea Award. He’s also the exec- Operations Mission Directorate. ceilings of sorts: she’s the first of Minnetonka was a recipient for utive director of the Wisconsin Congratulations to Radzanowski female and the first physician her role in toppling Tom Petters, Counties Association and pres- on his promotion (and much to become the executive VP a Twin Cities businessman who ident of the National Council of shorter title). and chief operating officer of orchestrated a $3.7 billion Ponzi County Association Executives. Chuck (Charles) Taylor Beaumont Hospitals, a full-range scheme that’s become the largest A mutual love of movies; PhD’88 “is not a millionaire regional health care system in the financial crime in the state’s his- addresses in Twisp, Washington; or a household name,” writes Detroit area. Carbone was previ- tory. Rice says, “This is the most and the advice, “If there’s not a Elizabeth Brings Johanna ’76 ously the chief clinical operations exciting, the most rewarding time film festival within 150 miles of of Blanchardville, Wisconsin, “but officer with Houston’s Memorial I’ve ever had in my career.” where you live, start one” con- he is a role model whose con- Hermann Health System. New to the Medicare vinced film-industry professionals tributions have helped improve For his longtime devotion Payment Advisory Commission, Robin Kamerling ’86 and Carol race relations, trained new lead- to the National Association of which counsels Congress on Geertsema that their community ers, and raised cultural aware- College and University Attorneys, issues affecting Medicare, is needed just such an event — and ness that is priceless.” Taylor has Henry Cuthbert JD’83 has gar- Scott Armstrong MA’84. He’s thus was born the Twisp Rural stepped down as dean of the nered the group’s Distinguished president and CEO of the Seattle- Roots Film Festival in May. School of Business at Madison’s Service Award. He’s the associ- based Group Health Cooperative. “No date set, but Tom Edgewood College to teach in the ate university counsel for Duke If you think that a Slurpee’s Cosgrove [’87, MBA’89] is doctoral program of its School University in Durham, North ingredients are just thrown announced as the man to make of Education.

56 ON WISCONSIN The Milwaukee Journal Ever since Bryan Atinsky she’s become the first female department’s deputy secretary, Sentinel calls local activist ’92 lost his wife, two children, publisher of Sports Illustrated Schooff has also served his home Christine Neumann-Ortiz and mother-in-law in a head-on — with numerous stops along community of Beloit for three ’89 a “national voice for immigra- collision in Israel this spring, he’s the way, including a stint as VP terms in the state assembly. He’s tion issues.” As the founder become a knowledgeable, pas- and publisher of SELF Magazine replacing Michael Morgan ’78, and executive director of the sionate, and determined advocate for Condé Nast Publications. JD’84, who’s become the UW immigrant-advocacy and worker- for improved road safety in the She was named that company’s System’s senior VP for adminis- rights organization Voces de la country. “The only thing I can do Publisher of the Year in 2009 and tration and fiscal affairs. Frontera, she’s orchestrated large now in my life is to work to make earned one of WAA’s Forward It’s hard to know what to say marches and grown her volunteer the world a better place,” he says. under 40 Awards in 2009 as well. about the trial(s) of former Illinois ranks substantially. Neumann- Atinsky is also on the staff of the Best wishes to Patricia governor Rod Blagojevich that Ortiz says she learned her skills Alternative Information Center, Neudecker MS’93, PhD’06 hasn’t already been said, but working on anti-racism and wom- a joint Israeli-Palestinian activ- as she becomes the 2010– one piece of the saga that you en’s rights campaigns at the UW. ist organization with offices in 11 president-elect of the may not know is that his theatri- Jerusalem and Beit Sahour. American Association of School cally inclined defense attorney is 90s When the National Science Administrators. The superin- Sam Adam, Jr. ’95, JD’98 of Foundation gave out the latest tendent of the Oconomowoc Chicago. Adam’s “breakthrough So, what have Michael Begler round of its prestigious Faculty [Wisconsin] Area School District case” was the 2008 acquittal of ’90 and Jack Amiel ’00 been Early Career Development vows, “I will advocate for coura- R&B performer R. Kelly. up to since their Mad City days Awards, known as CAREER, two geous leadership in the midst of Big congrats to the new working on Humorology? Among Badgers were in the receiving line: the rapidly changing landscape of legal head of Citi India, Sandip other things, they’ve written the David Corr ’92, MS’94, MS’99, public education.” Beri JD’95. He was formerly script for Whales, a fact-based PhD’01, an assistant professor Willie Ney MA’93, MA’94 GE Capital’s general counsel of Universal Pictures film about the in the Department of Biomedical garnered the National Governors South Asia and head of corpo- 1988 rescue attempt of three Engineering at Rensselaer Association’s Distinguished rate secretarial and government California gray whales that were Polytechnic Institute in Troy, Service to the Arts award in relations. trapped under the ice in the New York; and Anna Whitfield July for his work as the execu- Joseph Connelly ’95, Arctic Circle. Begler lives in Los PhD’04, an assistant profes- tive director of the UW’s Office MFA’98 and his spouse, Rachel Angeles; Amiel and his spouse, sor of plant pathology at Kansas of Multicultural Arts Initiatives Gordon, have used art to trans- Darcy Steinhart Amiel ’89, live State University in Manhattan. (OMAI) and as the founder of form the heartbreak they’ve felt in Park City, Utah. Corr will use the five-year award OMAI’s groundbreaking First over infertility. For three years, The new president of the to further his research in biologi- Wave Spoken Word and Urban they gathered clothes that had American Nuclear Society is cal soft tissues, while Whitfield will Arts Community. This fall, First been left around their neighbor- Eric Loewen MS’91, PhD’99. study vector/virus interactions in Wave welcomed its fourth fifteen- hood in Jerusalem, Israel, and As the chief consulting engi- insects. member cohort of student artists. created 1,111 fabric dolls. They neer for advanced plants tech- Two researchers from The next time you consider gave some to people they knew, nology at GE Hitachi Nuclear the UW’s Center for Limnology eating at a Red Robin Gourmet but then unobstrusively distrib- Energy in Wilmington, North took home accolades from Burgers restaurant, also con- uted the remaining 1,000 around Carolina, he’s been spearheading the recent meeting of the sider the role that Gerry O’Brion the city over twenty-six hours in the company’s development of International Association for Great ’93 may have had in persuad- August, to be taken home and a “Generation IV” liquid-sodium- Lakes Research. Postdoc fellow ing you — he’s the new vice pres- cherished by passersby. The cooled reactor design. Loewen Scott Higgins MA’92, PhD’00 ident of strategic marketing for couple calls its mass artwork Yad was also profiled in Esquire’s received the Young Scientist the casual-dining chain, based Shniyah (www.yadshniyah.com): December 2009 issue as one of Award for his study of the fil- in Greenwood Village, Colorado. Hebrew for “second hand.” the nation’s brightest minds. amentous algae Cladophora, O’Brion was previously the VP Jennifer Hayashi MD’95 of Kudos to Michael Lucareli and PhD student Gretchen of marketing for Quiznos and Columbia, Maryland, has received ’91 on his promotion at Modine Anderson Hansen ’03 earned speaks professionally on the the Eric Baron House Call Doctor Manufacturing Company in the Young Student Award for subject of big-brand strategies. of the Year Award from the Racine, Wisconsin — he’s now her work managing parasitic Quick! Name Wisconsin’s American Academy of Home Care the vice president of finance, sea lampreys. new secretary of administration. Physicians. She’s an assistant chief financial officer, and trea- Kimberly Anderson Actually, you’re too late, because professor at the Johns Hopkins surer. The company specializes Kelleher ’93 has gone from Governor Jim Doyle ’67 already University School of Medicine and in thermal management systems Wisconsin’s Door County to the did: he’s Dan Schooff ’94. the director of its medical center’s and components. UW to New York City, where Formerly the administration Elder House Call Program.

WINTER 2010 57 “I am the new editor of the Ron Kuka, my amazing Composers Lab in Utah. Carroll University in University New York City Housing Authority creative-writing instructor at Imagine how you’d feel if your Heights, Ohio. Journal, the monthly newspaper the UW, for encouraging me writing was chosen from nearly “Bringing more women to that goes to all residents of to be a writer.” Davis is now in eleven hundred submissions in elected office is a way to start to public housing in New York City the Philippines on a nine-month fiction, playwriting, poetry, and diffuse power … in the Middle — a population of more than four Fulbright fellowship to fight sex screenwriting … and then ask East,” says Katie Croake hundred thousand,” writes Eric trafficking with a local organi- Jeff Bruemmer ’02 how it MIPA’03. “When these new Deutsch ’97 of Brooklyn. He zation, Samaritana, and to do actually feels. He’s been awarded voices [of women] are heard, you was previously the senior com- research at the University of the a prestigious, three-year Michener really start to change the culture.” munications specialist for the Philippines. Her work will inform Fellowship in Creative Writing To that end, Croake has founded NYC Department of Homeless her second novel, The Market, from the University of Texas’s the Young Women Leaders Services. about human trafficking. Michener Center for Writers. Academy Program in Washington, Angel Cruzado MBA’99 D.C., to empower Middle Eastern moved to Seattle in 2006 to “Why can’t we be the next Red Bull?” women to get involved in politics pursue a relationship that even- and democracy. This summer she tually ended. Then, when finding — Dave Kruse MBA’05 brought twenty-two participants a new mate through the Internet to Madison to meet with women and dating services failed him, Stephanie Lundberg A 2010–11 Robert Bosch involved in Wisconsin politics. he co-founded (with his girl- ’01 has left her post as press Foundation Fellowship has gone Julie Hecht ’03’s disser- friend, so there’s a happy end- secretary for U.S. House major- to Madisonian Tammy Gibbs tation research for her master’s ing) his own solution: Cruzado ity leader Steny Hoyer to join the ’02. The transatlantic initia- degree in applied animal behav- is now the executive director of PR and communications firm tive sends twenty accomplished ior and animal welfare from the GuysAndGirlsNextDoor.com, a Burson-Marsteller as manager of young Americans to Germany University of Edinburgh [Scotland] relationship-building company its issues and crisis group. She annually for nine months of high- has taken her to Budapest, where that blends face-to-face events, worked in political communica- level professional development. she’s spent six months research- coaching, and feedback. tion in Wisconsin before heading Would you drink a high-caf- ing the “guilty look” in dogs at to Washington, D.C. feine energy beverage called Flatt Eötvös Loránd University. At the 2000s Now this is dedication to Cola? Paul Pucci ’02, MBA’05 UW, Hecht was the research a plan: Alan Turnquist ’01, and Dave Kruse MBA’05 sure assistant for Patricia Bean The Shaw Scientist Awards are MS’07, JD’07 and Erin Syth hope so. Besides Pucci’s job as Mommaerts McConnell ’81, big deals — $200,000 unre- MA’06 of Land O’ Lakes, a Wisconsin Alumni Research MS’84, PhD’88’s book about stricted prizes go to all recipients Wisconsin, bought a tandem Foundation licensing associate, canine emotions. — and two UW-Madison assis- bicycle, quit their jobs, and and Kruse’s work as CEO of the Eight tours, one hundred tant professors have earned them pared down to eight items of Madison start-up Isomark, they’re shows, in a year and a half: this year. They’re Eric Strieter clothing each for a cycling trip also the entrepreneurs who’ve those were the counts, as of ’00, chemistry, and Jon (Anjon) that’s taking them from the created Flatt. “Why can’t we be this summer, of the trips that Audhya, biomolecular chemistry. Arctic Circle to the tip of South the next Red Bull?” asks Kruse. brothers Zachary and Christian The honors provide support to America between May 2010 Well, if they can garner enough ’03 Schauf have made to young scholar-scientists engaged and, they estimate, January investors, sales locations, and entertain troops in Iraq with in groundbreaking research in cell 2012. You can follow along at shelf space, they just may be. Catchpenny, the Minneapolis- biology, cancer, and genetics. www.2totango.net. The International Network of based pop band they’ve founded. The Milken Educator What if you were a classi- Crisis Mappers “leverages mobile While abroad, they travel without Awards are also big deals — the cally trained pianist who had platforms, computational linguis- the benefit of roadies, live and eat “Academy Award” for teachers — the opportunity to turn your tal- tics, geospatial technologies, with the troops, give away loads and Art Wachholz ’00 has taken ents to documentary-film scor- and visual analytics to power of their CDs, and play their hearts home his “Oscar.” As a teacher at ing at Sundance? If you were effective, early warning for rapid out for grateful soldiers. Lauded Bogan Computer Technical High Robin Zimmermann ’01, you’d response to complex humani- for their cooperative spirit, the School in Chicago, he was among say yes! She’s been quietly mak- tarian emergencies” — and Jen band was named Armed Forces fifty-four K–12 educators to ing musical inroads in Boise, Ziemke MA’02, PhD’08 is one Entertainer of the Year for 2008. receive one of the $25,000 honors Idaho, but this summer she made of its co-founders. She’s also You may not be able to in May at a gala ceremony. a big splash as one of four com- a crisis-mapping fellow at the pick a quince out of a lineup, “I am a 2009 Pushcart Prize posers, selected from an interna- Harvard Humanitarian Initiative but Clare ’04 and Matt ’04 nominee,” writes Laura Joyce tional pool, to work with directors and an assistant professor of Stoner Fehsenfeld can, and Davis ’01, “and am grateful to at the Sundance Institute’s Film international relations at John they’ve been making small-batch

58 ON WISCONSIN preserves through their Madison- If you’ve ever wondered — based company Quince and or worried — about what will Calendar Apple. The spouse team orches- happen to your Facebook pro- trates every step of the process, file, e-mail box, or online bill- February from developing recipes to paying accounts after you die, 5 Founders’ Day labeling filled jars, and delights in Jesse Davis ’09 and Nathan Students, alumni, faculty, and staff are invited to commemorate creating unexpected flavor com- Lustig ’09 have some answers. UW-Madison’s first class with free birthday cake on campus. binations, many of which come Their Madison-based start- Then, celebrate the university’s beginnings and kick off WAA’s from locally sourced ingredients. up, Entrustet, allows clients to 150th anniversary celebration at a Founders’ Day in your area, The standard two years’ securely identify their digital scheduled in cities across the country throughout the spring. service in the Peace Corps assets and to name executors These annual events bring the best of the UW to your community, wasn’t quite enough for Aaron and heirs. Their business model from presentations by leading faculty members to well-loved Groth ’06 — he’s signed on for also includes an “account inciner- Badger traditions. • uwalumni.com/foundersday two more. Groth is an environ- ator,” digital heirloom service, and 21 Whys and Wows at Discovery World in Milwaukee mental education volunteer who directory of digital-savvy lawyers. Designed to engage kids ages ten and younger, Whys and Wows works with policy implementation Madisonians Josh Estep at Discovery World — a 120,000-square-foot facility with interactive and management of the Junín ’09 and Elliot Bennett are off and science, technology, and freshwater exhibits — offers youngsters National Reserve near Lake Junín, running — literally. Bennett, who and parents quick, hands-on activities led by expert UW-Madison Peru. His parents are Janice is autistic, had shown a great faculty at various discovery stations. • uwalumni.com/uwforyou Pierce and Philip Groth ’67, interest in running when Estep, a MS’72, PhD’75 of Janesville, competitive marathoner, began March Wisconsin. working with him as his personal 24–26 They Marched Into Sunlight Dance Many people try to catch trainer. Now the twenty-year- Premiere and Symposium Gwen Jorgensen ’08, old Bennett is doing marathons An original dance based on David Maraniss x’71’s They MAcc’09, but very few succeed. himself, and the dynamic duo Marched Into Sunlight and partly choreographed by UW-Madison The former Badger swimmer, is set to run the New York City dance department chair Jin-Wen Yu will premiere as the center- cross-country runner, and track Marathon in November. piece of a symposium addressing war, violence, and tectonic standout has had amazing suc- cultural shifts. Maraniss will deliver the keynote for the event, cess in her latest endeavor, the which is part of UW-Madison’s Year of the Arts program. obituary • yearofthearts.wisc.edu triathlon: USA Triathlon recruited her in 2009, and after her first Edwin Newman ’40 — erudite event in May, she earned her pro and witty NBC journalist, author, April card, immediately jumping from defender of the English language, 7–14 Senior Week amateur to professional status. and ever the gentleman — died WAA invites members of the 2011 graduating class to a free series There’s even talk of Jorgensen in August in Oxford, England. of events to celebrate their time on campus and to acquire a host making the U.S. Olympic team He began working with NBC in of career and financial skills. • uwalumni.com/seniorweek for the 2012 Games in London. the early 1950s as a correspon- 28–30 Alumni Weekend Oh — and she’s also a CPA with dent, and went on to serve as a Plan now to reconnect with campus, meet up with old friends, enjoy Ernst & Young in Milwaukee. European bureau chief, documen- an interesting class, and take an open-house tour. • uwalumni.com/ As a member of the student tary narrator, commentator, mod- alumniweekend. team that “greened” a Chevy erator, anchor, host, and critic. Big Red Rally Equinox for the Challenge X com- Retiring in 1984, Newman hosted Don’t miss this fan-favorite season recap with Badger football petition — a program sponsored a memorable episode of the net- fans, players, and head coach Bret Bielema and athletic director by the U.S. Department of Energy work’s Saturday Night Live. Said Barry Alvarez in Milwaukee. You’ll get the inside scoop on the and General Motors from 2004 to Brian Williams of NBC’s Nightly newest Badger recruits shortly after college football national 2008 — Dan Mehr ’08 had the News, “To those of us watching signing day in early February. • uwalumni.com/milwaukee. satisfaction of earning second- at home, he made us feel like we Global Hot Spots Lecture Series place honors and a job at GM. had a very smart, classy friend in Go beyond the headlines with Madison-area learners and UW Mehr is now an energy-storage the broadcast news business.” faculty experts to get a better understanding of the events shap- integration engineer in the influx ing our society during the free, monthly Global Hot Spots Lecture Series. • uwalumni.com/ghs. plug-in hybrid vehicle program, as Class Notes compiler Paula well as a mentor for Challenge X’s Wagner Apfelbach ’83 rarely For more information on these events, call (888) WIS-ALUM or successor program, EcoCar. He exceeds analysts’ expectations. visit uwalumni.com. lives in Wixom, Michigan.

WINTER 2010 59 bookshelf

n The Mindfulness Workbook: A Begin- term “gigs” rather than in long-term, full-time ner’s Guide to Overcoming Fear & employment. Cardinale is a consultant, educa- Embracing Compassion (New Harbinger tor, speaker, and serial entrepreneur. Publications) guides readers to experience n Milwaukee Journal Sentinel roving-travel- mindfulness as a “practical, attainable state writer-turned-freelancer from which they can see their lives more Dennis McCann ’74 clearly.” It’s the work of has completed a warm, Thomas Roberts ’76, a humorous, yet compas- private-practice psycho- sionate book that’s therapist and clinical hyp- been “haunting” him for notherapist in Onalaska, years about our state’s Wisconsin. cemeteries and their n For a brief background on all things Badger n If you’re concerned inhabitants: Badger State — truly — look no further than Erika about identity theft, Mari Boneyards: The Eter- Janik MA’04, MA’06’s authoritative, yet (Marion) Bear Frank nal Rest of the Story accessible A Short History of Wisconsin ’70 has a book for you: (Wisconsin Historical Society Press). McCann (Wisconsin Historical Society Press). The The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Recover- lives “up north” in Bayfield, Wisconsin. Madison author is a travel writer and historian, ing from Identity Theft (Alpha Books). The n Gerald Schaefer ’83, with grief coun- and was recently married at the National author is a Laguna Niguel, California-based selor Tom Bekkers, has created a helpful, Mustard Museum in nearby Middleton. attorney, professor, and expert witness who’s restorative guide after losing his wife to breast also hosted the PBS special “Identity Theft: n For nearly fifty years, cancer: The Widower’s Toolbox: Repairing Protecting Yourself in the Information Age.” Darold Treffert ’55, Your Life After Losing Your Spouse (New MD’58 of Fond du Lac, n Love Over 60: An Anthology of Wom- Horizon Press). The duo explains men’s Wisconsin, has studied en’s Poems (Mayapple Press) features poetry grieving and shares thoughts and activities on savant syndrome, a rare by more than eighty female poets — some how to “pick up the pieces,” heal from within, condition in which a well known, and some not so very — that give back to others, and love again. Schaefer, brilliant ability co-exists originates from a particular age frame of refer- of Green Bay, Wisconsin, is a large-capital alongside a develop- ence, but speaks timelessly of the many forms project manager in the utility industry. mental disorder. Now of love. Madisonians Jeri (Geraldine) Dixon n Retirement was the catalyst for Alice Van the esteemed psychia- McCormick MS’77 and UW professor emer- Deburg Honeywell ’84 and her friend Bobbi trist, UW clinical professor of psychiatry, and ita Robin Chapman edited this collection. consultant for the film Rain Man has written Montgomery as they executed a bicycling Islands of Genius: The Bountiful Mind n Co-author George trip from Oregon to Maine, carrying all they of the Autistic, Acquired, and Sudden Goens PhD’73 describes needed for three months. Now the co-authors Savant (Jessica Kingsley Publishers). his latest book, Resilient have turned their entertaining, very human Leadership for Turbu- diary of the journey into Across America by n Jenny Pavlovic ’84’s lent Times (Rowman and Bicycle: Alice and Bobbi’s Summer on first book, 8 State Hur- Littlefield), as a “research- Wheels (University of Wisconsin Press). ricane Kate: The Journey based analysis of the n Through Endan- and Legacy of a Katrina thinking, capacity, and gered Eyes: A Poetic Cattle Dog, shared her action skills necessary to Journey into the experiences with animal lead and thrive in a com- Wild (Windward Pub- rescue following Hurricane plex and dynamic context.” He’s senior part- lishing) has earned Katrina and garnered ner at the consulting and search firm Goens/ author and illustrator eight national awards. Esparo in West Hartford, Connecticut. Her latest work, The “Not Rachel Allen Without My Dog” Resource & Record Book n Kristin Cardinale PhD’00 of Milwaukee Dillon ’94 of Folsom, (www.8StateKate.net), provides the recording has written a “user’s guide to an innovative California, an honor- space and resources you need to keep your career lifestyle that combines the very hot able mention in the 2010 Eric Hoffer Award canine safe every day and in emergencies. topics of lifestyle design and gigonomics” competition. Its poetry about endangered spe- Pavlovic is a biomedical engineering con- called The 9-to-5 Cure: Work on Your Own cies is paired with facts, activities, resources, sultant at Frestedt, Incorporated in St. Louis Terms and Reinvent Your Life (JIST Works). and illustrations made of colorful assortments Park, Minnesota. Gigonomics refers to people working in short- of dots.

60 ON WISCONSIN sifting &winnowing RICK NASS

All’s Well That Ends Well Glenda Gill MA’64

I had not the slightest intention of going to graduate school when I earned my bachelor’s degree from Alabama A&M in 1960. I was headed for Broadway or Hollywood. While in college, I had played the plum role of the cannibal mother who devours her sons in Sidney Howard’s The Silver Cord, and I had also acted in seven other productions. There was no doubt in my twenty-year-old mind that I could succeed at acting as a profession. Fate, however, had other plans. Richard Jefferson PhD’55 permit- ted me to audit his Shakespeare class at Alabama A&M in the fall of 1960, as I awaited work teaching at a local high school. Dr. Jefferson lived in the faculty apartments near me, and his constant cry was, “On, Wisconsin!” So, in my first year of teaching high-school English, I sent my only extra $10 to the English department at the University of Wisconsin, where I was admitted and given a scholarship that waived out-of-state tuition. Graduate degrees were not offered at Alabama’s historically black colleges, and as an African-American, I could not attend either of the white state institutions in Alabama. John Patterson and George Wallace, governors of Alabama in the early 1960s, had vowed to keep educational institutions rigidly segregated, so they paid African- American students to go to school out of state. Alabama Out-of-State In December 1962, director Ronald Mitchell cast me in three non- Aid for Negroes paid first-class railroad fare (round-trip, one time), and traditional bit roles in Bertolt Brecht’s Galileo — rare, indeed, at a time the difference in tuition, room, and board at Alabama or Auburn and the when the servant roles were often the plight of the actor of color. school of one’s choice. But then, in June 1963, the master’s committee told me that I had This policy helped Alabama evade the 1954 Supreme Court Brown failed my comprehensive examination. This was the darkest day of v. Board of Education decision, which prohibited states from cre- my life. I returned home to the news story of Governor Wallace deny- ating separate public schools for black and white children. People ing Vivian Malone and James Hood admission to the University of at Wisconsin believed Alabama’s policy was wrong, but they also Alabama. I studied two hours each evening, after teaching full time for believed that by attending the UW, I would obtain a superior education. six months, then re-took the exam. The committee wrote that I had I enrolled in the master’s in English program, where I had outstanding passed, but recommended that I not continue on for a PhD. Reading professors. I read fascinating books, saw compelling films, and about Joyce Carol Oates’s comparable experience in the Summer witnessed moving cultural events. 2009 issue of On Wisconsin made me feel better. If someone of her But I also experienced discouragement. One young white male caliber could be dismissed, then surely I should not feel ashamed. professor told me, “You have ability, but no background — why don’t I taught college from 1963 to 1969 at Alabama A&M, and then at you go home?” Some northern students, Caucasian and African- the University of Texas at El Paso for five years. I ultimately went on to American, made fun of my southern speech. Others in Chadbourne Hall receive a PhD in English and Theatre at the University of Iowa and con- asked me to dance for them. One white male graduate student said, in tinued teaching college full time — forty years in all. I published two derision, “You went to Alabama Ag.” One dormitory mother remarked books in theater history, and held four summer stints with the National to my face that I dressed poorly. Endowment for the Humanities. I spoke at more than fifty venues, But in a time when African-American students comprised one- including the World Congress of Theatre at Stockholm and Dublin, tenth of 1 percent of the student population, I found community with and I held Smithsonian, Rockefeller, and Roothbert fellowships. Wisconsin Players. In July 1962, Director Lowell Manfull cast me as the Wisconsin Players helped to make it all possible. Denied oppor- maid in James Thurber’s The Male Animal. I met two lifelong friends, tunities at the graduate level in Alabama, I found studying at a world- Maurine Kelber Kelly MS’63, who worked makeup, and Daniel Larner class university like the University of Wisconsin to be the most MS’62, PhD’68, who played the protagonist. Three African-American life-changing experience I’ve ever had. women graduate students housed in Botkin-Tripp attended and sent congratulatory cards. Judy London ’65 invited me to Thanksgiving Glenda Gill, professor emerita of drama at Michigan Technological dinner. Dan Larner or the Manfulls saw me home after rehearsals University, lives in active retirement in Huntsville, Alabama. This essay is ended. The Daily Cardinal chronicled our achievements, and the local from an unpublished memoir, Pebbles In My Shoe: The Journey of One paper published a review. African-American Woman of the South in Educational Theatre.

WINTER 2010 61 Forgiveness During their first meeting with that I’m allowed to learn some things Continued from page 37 Green, Dave Munz recalls being inquisi- from her.” tive, asking Green to share details about Millar acknowledges that most people says. “Forgiveness has a way of tak- the night his son died. don’t understand why she wanted to meet ing resentment … and getting rid of it “He was very truthful with us. … I Sussek and have an ongoing relationship enough so that it’s not part of a person’s think I had to have that experience with with him. everyday existence.” him,” Munz says. “I have love for you, and I don’t like Dave Munz and his wife, Kathleen, Behrens, one of the student facilita- the fact I was shot, but I don’t think of have paid several visits to Michael R. tors, met several times with a woman who you in that way,” Millar says to Sussek. Green, who in 2006 shot and killed their had found her eighteen-year-old son’s “You have grown by leaps and bounds. son, Joseph Munz, a UW-Milwaukee body after he had been killed at home by You say it is because of me, but it is student, as he was delivering sandwiches. a group of his peers. She was meeting one because of you. You made the change.” Their relationship with their son’s killer has of the boys who’d been involved in the Sussek tells her that others in prison its roots in Green’s trial. As it was wrapping murder. At the end of the meeting, the know about his meetings with her, but up, Green’s foster mother approached the mother surprised everyone by telling the adds that not everyone in prison under- Munzes. Over time, they began exchang- offender she forgave him for his part in stands their relationship or Millar’s ability ing letters with her, and Dave Munz felt he killing her son. Through all of the prepa- to forgive him. should try contacting Green. ration for the meeting, she hadn’t given “You and I are the only people on Munz says his Catholic faith and his any indication that she’d offer a statement earth who understand,” Sussek says. belief in God led him to a relationship of forgiveness. Millar tells him she’s at peace with with Green. He also believes that by “It’s not something I think I could what has happened with her, and then asks seeing Green, he can encourage him have done,” Behrens says. “Most of the Sussek why he’s willing to meet with her. to better himself and get an education restorative justice participants are doing “I was thinking about that last night,” while in prison. things I don’t think I could have done. To he tells her. “For a lot of years, I couldn’t “I believe in forgiveness … and I hug the mother after she left the meeting get past looking at you as Jackie Millar, the believe I’m doing the right thing by visit- and to feel the weight off her shoulders lady I shot. … Now I look at you as my ing with him,” Munz says. was a pretty powerful feeling.” friend, and that’s why I want to see you.” Green, who earns a prison wage of Millar talks through why she wants about $2 a day doing assembly work, to meet with Sussek. “I see you as a asked Munz how he would react if Green “Changing the fellow human being that I love,” she donated a month’s income to a scholar- says. “I think you are doing a good job ship fund Joseph Munz’s friends set up in Person that I Was” at being yourself.” his memory. Sussek recalls that he expected Millar “I’m trying,” Sussek responds. “It’s through our talking, the relation- to scream and yell at their first meeting. Toward the end of their meeting, ship we have built between us, that he’s Instead, Millar said that she forgave him Millar tells Sussek she’ll continue the able to open up and do that,” Munz says. and asked if she could give him a hug. annual visits as long as he wants her to. “We haven’t all gone out and killed some- Sussek says he then promised Millar that “I would be a little bit sad if you said body, but we’ve all done wrong things.” he would do all that he could to make up one year, no, you won’t see me,” she says. Munz believes that having a relation- for what he had done to her. “We have grown for fourteen and a half ship with Green has helped both him and “There are ways to make up for it by years, and what we had to grow through his wife to cope with their son’s death. changing the person that I was … and, is unbelievable — but we did it. We can “The value in it is that it has brought us a hopefully, be able to help people do not say we came out as friends.” n little peace of mind,” he says. “Whether something like I did,” he says. “This we want to admit it or not, he’s a human whole process is part of that. I like sitting being also — and, yes, he’s been wrong, down and talking with Jackie. … For me, Stacy Forster is a writer for University and he’s paying the price right now for it.” it’s part of the continued healing process Communications at UW-Madison.

62 ON WISCONSIN Collision have, in a population of football players leaders have met with McKee, Stern, and Continued from page 27 [with CTE], an acquired injury, some- Cantu to discuss current studies, and the “The VA has been very, very supportive thing they did to themselves or some- league also drew upon their research to of this work,” she says. “They’ve supplied thing they were exposed to that actually launch a head-injury education campaign nearly all the infrastructure for the brain promoted a neuro-degenerative disease.” among its athletes, telling them of the bank. So we want to take what we’ve Studying those players, she hopes, may signs and symptoms of concussion and learned from the athletes and apply it to shed light on how Alzheimer’s, Parkin- warning them of the consequences of the military population, and hopefully son’s, and ALS develop in their early ignoring traumatic brain injuries. “Help come up with some answers.” stages, ultimately giving medicine a make the game safer,” it says. “Other And then there’s the similarity chance to treat such patients before their athletes are watching.” between CTE and other neuro-degener- symptoms become too severe. If McKee can help football become ative diseases. Scientists have had a hard But most importantly, McKee and her a safer game, she can settle the struggle time studying the early stages of Alzheim- colleagues are focusing on football because between head and heart. “Ultimately, er’s, Parkinson’s, and ALS because those of its place in American culture. we’re going to have to nip this in the diseases’ development is unpredictable. “If football doesn’t change,” Nowinski bud,” she says. “Hopefully, a lot of it “In 85 percent of the individuals who says, “nothing else would change. If foot- is prevention — changing the way the develop these diseases, we have no idea ball didn’t see this as a problem, no one football is played, changing the culture, why it happens,” says McKee. “There are else would see this as a problem. Football so that we’re not all an audience at the about 15 percent of individuals who have is where you [change] the other sports.” gladiator pit.” n a family history or have a genetic com- In the last year, the National Football ponent. But there’s always been a huge League has given the CTE group at Bos- John Allen, senior editor of On Wisconsin, subsection of the population who develop ton University an unrestricted, $1 million hopes never to need Dr. McKee’s professional symptoms out of the blue. And here we grant to assist in their research. League services.

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WINTER 2010 63 You can have an impact on the University of Wisconsin-Madison through a planned gift. Your foresight now will benefit a campus program or area that you value far into the future. It also can pay off with tax advantages. To find out more, contact the UW Foundation’s Office of Planned Giving at 608.263.4545 or [email protected].

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64 ON WISCONSIN Join Badgers from around the world International for the UW’s International Convocation, a Convocation celebration of the UW’s role as a global university. Come back to Madison to reconnect with your July 26–28, 2011 alma mater, meet with faculty and alumni, and make business and public sector contacts from across the globe. uwalumni.com/international

WINTER 2010 65 flashback UW-MADISON ARCHIVES

GLU-Madison

The location is familiar, the colors on the sweatshirt look right, but of his film career, coming on the heels of hits Caddyshack and Easy what’s the name of that academic institution? Ah, yes — Grand Money. In his subsequent movies, the roles and financial returns were Lakes University, home of the Hooters: the fictitious college attended never quite so large. by Thornton Melon (Rodney Dangerfield) in the movie Back to The movie may also be the high-water mark of the UW’s film School. Twenty-five years ago, Dangerfield and company came to fame. In spite of Back to School’s success, campus didn’t catch on Madison, using the UW campus as their backdrop while filming exte- as a substitute studio. Evidently, Madison’s distance from Hollywood rior scenes. The movie featured not only Dangerfield, but also Sally — plus its eleven-month-long winters — are cinematically incon- Kellerman, Adrienne Barbeau, Sam Kinison, Kurt Vonnegut (yep, that venient. Even Back to School shot many of its scenes elsewhere, Kurt Vonnegut), and Robert Downey, Jr. including the diving competition that formed a critical component in Back to School was released in June 1986 and grossed more the plot. Dangerfield did his famed “Triple Lindy” not in the Nat, but than $91 million, making it the sixth-highest earning film that year. at the Industry Hills Aquatic Club in Industry, California. Dangerfield was both writer and star, and it was perhaps the peak John Allen

66 ON WISCONSIN Invest in Great PEOPLE Ensure that the leaders of tomorrow can afford a world-class UW-Madison education today.

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