DISPATCHES

Open for Business The MBA gets a makeover for a specialized age.

This fall’s crop of MBA students JEFF MILLER (2) in the School of Business will pioneer a revamped curriculum that shifts its focus to meet their specific career goals. The program allows students to tailor their graduate school experience in one of four- teen career specialties, including applied security analysis, supply chain management, product management, risk management “Cancer is not a death sentence anymore.” and insurance, and applied The UW’s Grainger Hall likely will be expanded to house a revamped corporate finance. The changes MBA program. are part of the school’s drive to — Model Cindy Crawford, strengthen the national rankings sizing a first-year overview with for Entrepreneurship, and the during a reunion of cancer sur- of its MBA program. second-year studies in a broad newly endowed Nicholas Center vivors at UW Children’s Hospital “We have made a conscious area, such as marketing or for Applied Corporate Finance, in November. Crawford’s choice to be the best program accounting. The revamped first which offer students real-world brother, Jeffrey, was a patient at available for students with a clear year will provide a strong busi- experience, interaction with the hospital twenty-five years career objective,” says Michael ness foundation in a range of business executives, and a ago before dying of leukemia. Knetter, dean of the school. areas, but the second year will strong sense of community. Wisconsin’s new approach allow students to home in on Changes to the MBA pro- differs from “general manage- career specializations and gain gram come as the school plans a ment” MBA programs that pro- a depth of expertise. $40 million addition to Grainger vide a first-year overview, Knetter says the career Hall, which would extend from followed by a year of electives specializations will operate out the building’s east side. If the with no specialized major. And of academic centers, such as the expansion is approved, it would it is more targeted than “tradi- A.C. Nielsen Center for Marketing open in fall 2007. tional major” programs empha- Research, the Weinert Center — Dennis Chaptman ’80

President Lyall to Retire

In the fast-burnout world remembered for establishing of higher-ed administration, the UW System as a key player where presidents and chancel- in Wisconsin’s economic devel- lors rarely serve for a decade or opment. Chancellor John D. 29 longer, Katharine Lyall has Wiley MS’65, PhD’68, one of decided twelve years is enough. more than fifty chancellors Number of UW-Madison Lyall, president of the hired during Lyall’s tenure, says professors who appear on a list twenty-six-campus UW System she was a strong advocate for of the most-cited experts in since 1992, announced in students and staff despite a their fields, according to a February that she will retire at trend of dwindling resources. national survey of scholarly publications by a leading the end of the academic year. Toby Marcovich ’52, The fifth person and the first indexer. Fewer than one-half LLB’54, UW Board of Regents Katharine Lyall, president of the woman to lead the system, the UW System since 1992, will of 1 percent of researchers who president, who will head the sixty-two-year-old Lyall said it is retire in September. published during the past two search for Lyall’s successor, “an appropriate time for new decades made the list. energy and fresh leadership.” hopes to name a new presi- says. “It will take an extraordi- An economist who also dent by June. “Katharine is nary individual to follow in her holds a professorship at UW- one of the smartest, hardest- footsteps.” Madison, Lyall may be best working people I know,” he — Michael Penn

SPRING 2004 11 DISPATCHES

Numbers Game Crowning UW-Madison’s ‘Grand Integrator.’

On a Tuesday evening in Febru- “In the beginning, it’s painful — contest, which began with ary, Jeremy Rouse approached you get a lot of water up your twenty-five competitors, includ- a blackboard in Sterling Hall and nose — but once you learn the ing undergraduate and graduate met his opponent. Only one of basics, you can start playing students majoring in mathemat- them was to survive the show- games and having fun.” ics, computer science, chemical down of speed and prowess, Integrals, one of the engineering, and even a few Q AND A thereby going on to the third fundamental building blocks undecideds. Heather Olson round of the university’s first- of calculus, are essentially long “We’ll make better scientists Olson x’06 earned perfect ever calculus competition and summations, which can be used if we encourage students to scores on both the SAT and possibly being crowned the to predict phenomena in math learn more math,” Reardon says. the ACT before enrolling at “Grand Integrator of Madison” and science. Engineers, physi- At the blackboard, the UW-Madison, the only school — a title coveted by math cists, and, increasingly, biologists speed of the chalk picked up to which she applied, in fall enthusiasts. use the tools of math to answer as Rouse and his contestant 2003. She entered with thirty- As Rouse awaited the prob- questions such as how much raced toward their final answers. four AP credits, which means lem, he circled his shoulders and weight a bridge can hold before When the buzzer sounded, it she’s already a sophomore. stretched his back to warm up. it collapses, how long it might was Rouse’s opponent who Finally, the mathemat- Q: Did you ace both tests ics graduate student, JEFF MILLER on the first try? one of fourteen A: I got a perfect score on the finalists, put his yellow SAT on my first time. The first chalk against the time I took the ACT, I got a board and began thirty-five [out of a possible writing figures. thirty-six]. For the next few Q: Thirty-five wasn’t good minutes, fifty specta- enough? tors sat in rapt atten- A: Well, after I took the SAT tion as chalk raced and got a perfect score, I said, loudly across the “Why not?” boards. The scratching slowed, then stopped Q: What prepared you for entirely, as Rouse success on the test? stepped back to A: I got a good night’s sleep review his lines of beforehand. And I guess I paid calculations, momen- attention in class. tarily stumped. A few Q: What are you studying? in the audience scrib- Mathematics graduate student Jeremy Rouse ponders his work in the heat of A: I’m thinking medical science bled calculations onto competition during the UW’s first-ever Integration Bee. or medical microbiology and notebook pages. One immunology, looking toward drew figures in the air. medical school afterward. The scene was exactly take a cup of coffee to turn cold, came away victorious, although the sort of drama the contest’s or how large a population of he, too, would later be beaten. Q: Where will you go then? mastermind, James Reardon, bacteria can grow in a few hours. After four rounds and about A: I’m thinking of the UW wanted to create. An outreach “Math is the language of thirty-five integrals, Boian because I’m in the Medical specialist with UW-Madison’s the universe,” says Reardon. Popunkiov MA’01 was named Scholars program. So I just Wonders of Physics program, “You can’t expect to know the winner. Popunkiov, a mathe- have to keep good grades, and Reardon based the contest on physics if you don’t know the matics graduate student, earned I don’t have to take the MCAT one he competed in at the Mass- language of math.” one hundred dollars, thanks to — that’s nice. achusetts Institute of Technology. But these days, physics stu- a donation from the University By bringing it to Madison, he dents often struggle with math Book Store, and the honor of hoped to show students that more than they do with science, being the university’s greatest math is both important and fun. Reardon says. It’s partly for this integrator. “Learning calculus is like reason that the Wonders of At least until next year. learning how to swim,” he says. Physics program sponsored the — Emily Carlson

12 ON WISCONSIN DISPATCHES

Book Smarts Student site offers option to rising textbook prices. Phillip Certain PhD’69, dean of the College of Letters and Like many students, Michael textbook rental program, as some Science, announced plans to Comstock x’06 knows that other UW System campuses have. retire after eleven years leading hitting the books often means “It’s a reasonable request,” UW-Madi- son’s largest

taking a financial hit. JEFF MILLER (2) says Paul Barrows, vice chancel- “When you’re paying four lor for student affairs. “Students college. The hundred or five hundred dollars are paying higher costs, and in a chemistry a semester for books, that’s a year when our tuition went up professor pretty big strain, on top of 18 percent, the responsible thing developed a tuition and housing,” he says. for us to do is to take an honest reputation as But Comstock, a computer look at what can be done to give a careful science student who dabbles students some relief.” leader and as a Web site architect, thinks Barrows expects to convene problem-solver, particularly for there’s a better way to make a committee of students, faculty, his adroit handling of budget the bookends meet. In Decem- and staff to study the feasibility cuts within the college. At a ber, he launched an eBay-like of textbook rental, although meeting of L&S department textbook-swapping site called UW-Madison’s volume of classes heads in October, Certain Madbook.com, which connects and faculty may make a wide- received a standing ovation students who want to sell their scale program unrealistic, he after announcing his plan for Student Michael Comstock thinks he handling cuts within the college. old books with others who has a better way for students to buy says. At the same time, he want to buy them. Unlike and sell textbooks. encourages students to explore An electronic circuit designed by secondhand bookstores, which other avenues. none other than Chancellor John buy used texts and resell them sored by WisPIRG, which are “If there is a market niche Wiley wound up at the heart of at marked-up prices, Comstock’s gaining in popularity. here, some creative, enterprising a legal battle. The Wisconsin site acts only as a mediator, UW-Madison’s student young entrepreneur will find a Alumni Research Foundation allowing students to negotiate government, meanwhile, is calling way to develop it, and hopefully filed a lawsuit against Sony and directly with each other and for a program that would allow they will come up with something Toshiba, alleging that the elec- strike better deals than they can students to skip buying books that creates a win-win situation tronics giants infringed on one get from stores. altogether. In September, the for everybody,” says Barrows. of its patents by using Wiley’s “The whole point is to save Associated Students of Madison As for whether Comstock design in the PlayStation 2 students some money,” says showed up at Bascom Hall with may be that entrepreneur, Bar- video-game system without Comstock. one thousand student petitions rows says, “I hope he succeeds.” compensation. Wiley and Two weeks after the site’s asking the university to adopt a — Michael Penn engineering Professor John debut, more than nine hundred Perepezko designed the circuit books were listed for sale. And in the mid-1980s. The case was while that may represent only a Good Cops settled out of court. fraction of the usual end-of- semester book trade, it’s indica- The UW Police Department picked up by the Federal Bureau Responding to pressure from a tive of the growing backlash wrote the book on dealing with of Investigation, which has student group, the university against rising textbook prices. campus harassment. Well, really, adapted them for its crime-fight- announced that it will require According to the student- it wrote the pamphlet. ing agenda. FBI representatives companies that manufacture run Wisconsin Public Interest Responding to a request by recently told campus police that licensed apparel to disclose Research Group, the average the Dean of Students office, the they plan to use similar brochures how much they pay their work- UW-Madison student will shell department created literature in their offices around the nation. ers. Chancellor Wiley said he out $898 this academic year for outlining the problem of harass- On campus, thousands of agreed “in spirit” with the textbooks — nearly one-fifth of ment based on sexual orienta- copies of both brochures have Student Labor Action Coalition, annual resident undergraduate tion, highlighting ways people been distributed to improve cli- which has been pushing the uni- tuition. As prices have risen, so, on campus could seek support mate and community relations. versity to assure its products are too, have the calls for alterna- and recourse. The outreach Police officials say the work played not made under sweatshop con- tives. Some students have gone was so successful that the police a large role in the department ditions. UW-Madison currently online, searching for deals from published another pamphlet winning a civil rights award in pays the independent Workers’ overseas or discount booksellers. addressing race-based discrimi- 2002 from the International Rights Consortium to monitor Others have shopped at cut-rate nation and hate crimes. Now, Association of Chiefs of Police. labor practices at licensees’ book swaps such as one spon- both documents have been — Josh Orton x’04 factories around the world.

SPRING 2004 13 RESEARCH

Botox Boom UW researchers continue to probe a poison they helped refine.

Ever since UW-Madison bio- the market for the drug now Six million times more pow- chemist Ed Schantz ’31, PhD’34 exceeds $500 million annually. erful than rattlesnake venom, cooked up his first batches in the But Botox isn’t just for wrin- botulinum toxin works by attach- 1970s, botulinum toxin — better kles, says Eric Johnson, a pro- ing itself permanently to nerve known as Botox — has been on fessor of bacteriology and food endings and blocking chemical a therapeutic roll. microbiology and toxicology signals from reaching a muscle, who has become weakening it and, with enough one of the leading deadened nerve endings, authorities on the causing paralysis. Victims of toxin. In the lab, botulism-induced food poisoning Johnson is exploring usually suffocate after their chest the biomedical appli- muscles are paralyzed.

JEFF MILLER (3) cations for the But the ability to neutralize poison, including its motor neurons and paralyze potential in treating muscles also lends the toxin to pain, a quality mitigating disease. It has been recognized when useful in treating a class of cosmetic users of human ailments known as dysto- the toxin reported nias — runaway muscle spasms diminished effects of caused, scientists believe, by migraine headaches. involuntary nerve impulses from That line of the brain. Other applications inquiry began with have included treating the Schantz, who joined cramps that plague professional the UW Food musicians, calming the muscles Research Institute in of children with cerebral palsy, 1972 and is gener- and relieving the spasms suffered ally acknowledged by some victims of stroke. as the master of bot- “It’s really helped all kinds of ulinum. Now ninety- people,” says Johnson, who has five, Schantz got his seen it injected into the legs of start in the poison a close friend to alleviate the business during symptoms of mild cerebral palsy. World War II, as a “It helps them live a better life.” young Army officer Beginning in 1985, Johnson Botulinum toxin, commonly known by the trade name Botox, is at Fort Detrick, worked hours each day with helping to smooth the wrinkles of the aging process for millions Maryland, then the Schantz to learn the fine points of people. But the potent poison can do a lot more than erase home of the Army’s of making the poison — a frown lines — and its potential has UW scientists smiling. biological warfare process that is as much art as program. His job science. Purifying the toxin has was to develop toxin counter- been likened to making fine Used first to treat crossed measures, as military intelligence wine: even with a recipe, not eyes, the nerve poison made by worried about the potential of everyone can do it, and the the bacterium Clostridium botu- botulinum and other bacteria difference in toxin quality can linum has filled a growing bio- being used against American be the same as that between a medical niche. Most famous by far troops. Because the toxin loses fine Bordeaux and cheap vino. is the cosmetic application of the its potency in the environment, “There can be a lot of batch toxin to smooth frown lines and it would never have measured variation,” Johnson explains. wrinkles — which has spawned up as a battlefield weapon, When used in therapy, the a lucrative industry and the exis- Schantz recalled in a 1992 inter- toxin is injected in minuscule tence of “Botox parties.” With view. But he thought the toxin’s doses, targeting just those mus- 1.6 million people receiving the unique characteristics might be cles underlying a condition. To cosmetic injections in 2001 alone, valuable in other applications. smooth wrinkles, for instance, a

14 ON WISCONSIN RESEARCH

small dose — usually about one- Johnson’s lab continues to cre- “It acts on different millionth of a teaspoon — of ate and study new generations maladies in ways we don’t purified toxin complex is injected of the toxin, and the lab has understand,” says Johnson. If into the forehead, the usual tar- licensed its technology to a you don’t know the basics, “it’s get. There, the agent blocks the company called Mentor, which hard to predict just how some- release by nerve cells of acetyl- has opened in the University thing will be used medicinally,” choline, a chemical that tells Research Park to develop botu- he adds. “But it has helped so muscles to contract. In about a linum-based drugs. Others on many people that we’re almost week, the wrinkles disappear. campus, such as Medical School sure to find new uses. By no Despite its widespread use, physiologist Edwin Chapman, means is it finished in its there are still many unknowns are puzzling out the secrets of development as a drug.” about botulinum’s basic biology. how the toxin enters cells. — Terry Devitt ’78, MA’85

On the Biodefensive But in some cases, new federal including anthrax, botulism, regulations are also bringing costs tularemia, hemorrhagic fever and hassles for researchers. The viruses, and plague. ability of faculty to place students “If we didn’t do this work, in labs, exchange materials, and and agents like these were used host visiting scholars has under- in a mass attack, as a nation we gone fundamental change. would be ill prepared to respond,” R. Timothy Mulcahy says Mulcahy. PhD’79, associate vice chancellor — T.D. for research policy and Graduate School associate dean for the bio- logical sciences, says the univer- sity is working to ensure that labs COOL TOOL are safe and secure without dimin- Two-Ton ishing productivity or hindering Tummy Botox, as Eric Johnson notes, is free inquiry. “The basic research “the most poisonous substance we do is critical to a better basic Hungry enough to eat known.” And while that makes it understanding of how these a cow? UW-Madison’s an important target for science, it organisms and their toxins work,” mobile tissue digester also underscores the need for Mulcahy says. “It’s our best path can down three full-sized careful security surrounding it. to improved treatment and coun- bovines and still have As the federal government termeasures for bioterrorism, and room for side orders. ramps up research on potential it has significant implications for Affectionately known as agents of bioterror, those security improved public health.” the “Big Stomach,” the measures are getting new Recent UW-Madison stainless steel tank can UW’s Big Stomach takes a bite out scrutiny. While the university advances have included discovery hold up to four thousand of the state’s supply of infected meat. has always taken precautions to of the receptors for both anthrax pounds of meat, which is ensure that work with pathogens and botulinum toxin, which may then reduced using heat and chemicals to a sterile slurry. The and toxins is conducted safely, the make it possible to develop strate- Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, one of the main sites terrorist attacks of September 11 gies to neutralize the toxins before for testing deer tissue for chronic wasting disease, has used the have forced universities and the they enter cells. UW-Madison machine to safely dispose of some fifteen thousand samples from government to reassess security researchers are also involved with potentially infected deer. “It’s the world’s only large-scale, mobile measures. Several new proce- the new Midwestern Regional tissue digester,” says Robert Shull, the lab’s director. Previously, dures, ranging from physical bar- Center of Excellence, based at the animals infected with pathogens had to be incinerated, but the riers to stepped-up cyber-security University of Chicago, one of Big Stomach offers a safer, more environmentally sound way of and screening of lab personnel, several new centers the federal deactivating the agents responsible for CWD “and anything else are now in place at UW labs that government funded to coordinate of an infectious nature that might be in there,” says Shull. work with hazardous agents. work on biosecurity threats, — M.P.

SPRING 2004 15 RESEARCH

Going for the Green Can old tires improve your golf game?

Poised to putt a dimpled ball a upon the perfect blocking and Bob Lisi ’01, MS’02, a civil few yards to the hole, Jae “Jim” device: used tires. and environmental engineering Park thinks about what’s hap- Scrap tires pose their own graduate student — took the pening beneath the golf course. environmental problem: most theory to a research site near the states forbid dumping tires in University Ridge golf course. landfills, which has led to mil- They inserted a layer of the tiny lions of discarded tires being tire chips between the layers of stockpiled around the country. sand, peat root mix, and gravel These piles tend to collect commonly found beneath golf rainwater, creating a breeding greens. They then soaked the ground for mosquitoes. Some test greens with water spiked

MICHAEL FORSTER ROTHBART have caught fire, causing severe with nitrate, a chemical often environmental damage. used as a fertilizer. Based on his earlier research, The researchers found that which showed that confetti-sized fields with a ten-centimeter layer pieces of scrap tires can absorb of tire chips released about 58 harmful compounds, Park imag- percent less nitrate than samples ined the chips could soak up without rubber bits. Plus, the pesticides and fertilizers applied plots appeared healthy, suggest- to turfgrass. Nearly one thou- ing the rubber layers didn’t alter sand pounds of these chemicals turfgrass quality or growth. UW-Madison researchers John Stier, Jim Park, and Bob Lisi are applied annually to most But won’t chemicals from are proving that shredded tire chips can help make golf of the country’s twenty-three the tires just percolate into the greens greener. thousand golf courses. environment? Park says the tires “Because many greens are give off minimal amounts of For several years, the profes- built near groundwater levels or chemicals compared to what sor of civil and environmental wetlands,” explains Park, “it is they can trap. He estimates that engineering — not to mention vital to consider the mitigation a rubber layer underneath just avid golfer with a six handicap of environmental contamination one eighteen-hole course could — has investigated ways to keep caused by the pesticides and fer- reuse up to seventy-two thou- the tons of fertilizers used on tilizers applied to golf courses.” sand scrap tires, helping erode golf courses out of the ground- Park — along with John mountains of waste. water. Recently, he may have hit Stier, a horticulture professor, — Emily Carlson

The Joy of Worm Sex Birds do it, bees do it, and worms sense: why thing, they can

do it ... even though they don’t would worms SPENCER WALTS switch sexes — have to. go to the trou- a handy trick, The C. elegans, a species of ble of having since males can worm often studied by biologists, sex when they forage for food comes in two forms: male or her- can get the over greater maphrodite. The latter has the same result on distances. capacity to self-fertilize, which their own? “The advan- would seem to make the former The answer, says tage of having boys pretty much useless. Yet males genetics professor Eliza- around is you have more persist, and hermaphrodites beth Goodwin, is that “sex is flexibility in development and gene often choose to mate with them good.” Her studies have shown expression,” Goodwin says. “It’s rather than ... well ... themselves. that the offspring of sex with probably not the only reason, but Those in the science community males have some cool develop- it seems to be one of the reasons short on romance have pointed mental options not available to C. elegans has kept boys around.” out that this doesn’t make much self-propagated worms. For one — M.P.

16 ON WISCONSIN Looking for a Good Bar UW joins the search for environmentally friendly chocolate. A group of lab mice strung out on runner’s high are yielding If you think everyone loves more money planting bananas growing the beans. The goal is evidence that exercise can be chocolate, meet José Alberto or, worse, selling his land to to describe a set of win-win addictive. When three zoology Moore. He’s had plenty of bad developers. conditions — where farmers researchers studied experiences with the stuff. “We’d like not to see that make a decent living while the brain activity It’s not a matter of taste. happen,” says Guries, a professor protecting the ecological wealth of mice with a

Moore runs a small-scale farm in of forest ecology. “But if you of their environment. special affinity SPENCER WALTS Costa Rica, and, while his father want to stop that, part of [the “These are smart guys, and for their exer- made a living growing cacao, solution] has to be creating they understand the connections cise wheels, the bean behind the bars, terri- enough value for cacao so that that can be made,” says Chad they found the ble prices and ailing trees have farmers will continue to grow it.” Wilsey, a conservation biology animals’ soured José on the crop. When For the past few years, graduate student who this sum- love of UW-Madison scientists Ray Guries and a group of scientists mer will begin observing birds running may Guries and Chris Vaughan met from UW-Madison and the on a dozen cacao farms in the be wired into their region. He says studies like his brains. In fact, if the mice aren’t may help demonstrate the allowed to run for a day, the same eco-friendliness of the farmers’ regions of their brains activate as practices, and thus “give them those in addicts when they are leverage” with traders and prevented from getting their daily consumers who may be willing fix of cocaine or morphine. The finding could explain why some

KERRIE CUNNINGHAM to pay a premium for products made in favorable conditions. people demonstrate great desire One key to that equation is to exercise, while others have to a hunk of velvety dark chocolate force themselves to the gym. called Cacao de Vida, or Hospitals usually help people get “chocolate of life,” which the well, but new research suggests Milwaukee Public Museum that they also harbor many began selling in its stores and germs that make patients sick. other retail sites this In one study, Dennis Maki’62, winter. Made from MS’64, MD’69 of the UW Med- beans grown on ical School found that nine in the cooperating fifty EKG wires used to monitor farms, the bars patients’ hearts were contami- benefit the nated with drug-resistant museum’s Organic cacao trees like this bacteria, even after they were one, growing on a lush Costa research cleaned. Many hospitals — Rican farm, may help sustain and including the UW Hospital and rainforests and please choco- educational Clinics — are now re-evaluating late lovers at the same time. programming, but they also their procedures for handling return a greater share of profits medical equipment. Milwaukee Public to farmers by shortening the Wisconsin has more certified him not long ago, he was about Museum have been trying to chain between producer and organic farms than all but two to give up on the beans entirely. keep farmers like Moore from consumer. states, but government and uni- That is news the two abandoning cacao (which gener- “The bars are important, versities provide relatively little researchers don’t like to hear. ally refers to the trees, while the because they provide tangible support for them, according to a Cacao trees often grow in Anglicized word cocoa refers to evidence to the farmers of what new report by the Center for Inte- forested landscapes replete with the products made from them). we’ve been doing,” says Guries. grated Agricultural Systems and plants and animals — just the The team has set up experi- “If farmers can see economic the Gaylord Nelson Institute for sort of lands ecologists want to ments on a number of cacao value to doing what we suggest, Environmental Studies. The state’s protect. But in Costa Rica, which farms, evaluating everything there will be a reason for them organic production grew 92 per- has a higher standard of living from lighting conditions to the to remain in farming.” And cent from 1997 to 2001, which than the West African countries animals that live among the that’s a solution that tastes great the researchers say makes it ripe that harvest most of the world’s trees, in the hopes of finding to everyone. for public and private investment. cacao beans, a farmer can make more sustainable ways of — Michael Penn

SPRING 2004 17 ARTS &CULTURE

Mystical Contemplations Taylor returns to Kennedy Center

Imagine this appointment in EFMILLER JEFF your datebook: give a combined lecture and meditation on the nature of the divine, touching on physical manifestation; spiri- tual transformation; the creation of the universe; the expression of joy, love, justice, and grace; and the acceptance of death as a means of renewal. And you’re to deliver this lecture without uttering a single word. That’s just what Christo- pher Taylor, assistant professor of piano at the School of Music, did on February 18 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. There he performed the Known for the “beauty, tenderness, and white-hot energy of his Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jésus playing,” piano Professor Christopher Taylor turns a performance into a lecture without words.

by Olivier Messiaen, one of the ences are amazed at how invigor- COLLECTION most challenging works ever ating it is. It’s not a grueling slog.” On and on and on written for the keyboard. But Taylor himself revels in the Wisconsin then Taylor has been giving such work’s juxtaposition of intimacy “lectures” regularly. and grandeur. In his first recital Twenty-first-century technology is mak- “After ten performances, it’s after joining the UW faculty in ing UW-Madison history much easier to starting to get familiar,” Taylor 2000, he performed just the first get your hands on. The library’s online laughs, “but it’s still scary. You half, and he gave his first per- archives now offer the University of can’t take it for granted.” formance of the complete work Wisconsin Collection, a digital compila- His February performance in February 2001. His perform- tion sure to prove useful to everyone was a triumphant return to the ances regularly elicit excitement from serious researchers to those who Kennedy Center, where eleven want to see Uncle Ed in his Badger from piano enthusiasts, and the years ago he won first prize in basketball uniform. New York Times’s Anthony The collection is available at the William Kapell International Tomasini has praised the webcat.library.wisc.edu:3200/UW/ and Piano Competition and began a “beauty, tenderness, and white- includes yearbooks dating from 1885 rise to national prominence. hot energy in his playing.” (when it was not yet the Badger but the Trochos) to 1977; issues of The Vingt regards sur Taylor continues to learn The Wisconsin Engineer from 1896 to 1984; and a sizable collection of l’enfant Jésus, which roughly and refine his approach to the historical photos. And for our devoted readers, there are issues of translates as “Twenty Reflections work, concerned now with a UW-Madison’s alumni magazine dating from Volume 1, Issue 1, back of the Christ Child,” was more “coherent vision of pac- in 1899, when it was called The Wisconsin Alumni Magazine, up until completed in 1944 and was ing.” He applauds venues such 1990, when it finally became On Wisconsin. described by its composer as a as the Kennedy Center, which “The collection is full of all sorts of unexpected things,” says work seeking “a language of make a point of presenting university archivist David Null. “And we’ve been adding to it based mystical love.” Messiaen wove a unconventional programs, but on what seems to strike people’s current interests. For the Union’s number of structural influences, he is also thrilled at the prospect seventy-fifth anniversary, for instance, we added a group of Union including rhythmic patterns of someday sharing the work at photos. And at the release of David Maraniss’s [x’70] book about created in thirteenth-century the university. “Madison is up to Madison in the 1960s, we added some pictures of student protests.” India, into the piece. the whole thing,” he states con- The entire collection is searchable, both by text and by images, For all of its technical com- fidently. “There should be no and Null says that it will soon grow to include the Wisconsin Literary plexity, Taylor finds this to be a expectations other than to be Magazine and other UW publications. joyous piece, accessible through open-minded.” — J.A. its honesty and sincerity: “Audi- — Lori Skelton

18 ON WISCONSIN ARTS &CULTURE

Breaking out of Hollywood Wisconsin Film Festival helps moviemaker earn more than Chump Change. You don’t have to call him Sir, but R. Byron Bird PhD’50 is a knight Stephen Burrows ’84 wasn’t Burrows, whose work includes venues: in 2000 at the American nonetheless. The professor emeri- made for Hollywood. With a directing commercials for Bud- Film Institute and SlamDunk film tus of chemical engineering was middle-American background weiser, DiGiorno frozen pizza, and festivals, and in 2001 at the HBO honored by Queen Beatrix of the and looks that his own agent Ball Park Franks, conceived the idea Comedy Festival, where it was Netherlands (by way of her consul describes as “pleasantly unattrac- for Chump Change in February named the audience favorite. general in the U.S.) for his efforts tive,” he’s not the sort of person 1998, wrote the script in twenty- That honor caught the attention to maximize awareness of the who would be prominently fea- five days, and later that year, shot of the Miramax studio, which Dutch language and culture. He’s tured on Entertainment Tonight. the principal footage in just three helped polish the film and now a member of the Order of Perhaps that’s why weeks. But after that, the Chump arranged for its theatrical release. Oranje-Nassau. his first feature Change team had Making a film that pokes fun The story of Madison just received film, Chump run out of money, at the people who make films is an update, thanks to David Mol- Change, is a so the film sat “a dangerous game,” Burrows lenhoff MA’66. The author has scathing (and unseen for more concedes, but he remains excited released an extensively revised hilarious) indict- than a year. about the effort. “Every time I and updated version of his classic, ment of the “We had a see this movie,” he says, “regard- Madison: A History of the For- Hollywood budget of about less of all the troubles we had mative Years, adding new maps film industry. $500,000,” Burrows making it, I see that it’s what I and photos to illustrate the rise of And perhaps says. “I think that was needed to say about the movie Wisconsin’s capital. The UW Press that’s why the budget for one day business.” released the 496-page book in he needed of shooting on Lord of News about Chump Change November. the Wis- the Rings, but it was all is available at www.chump- consin Film we had for our whole changethemovie.com. This year’s The Memorial Union’s Terrace Festival to film.” Wisconsin Film Festival will run at Chairs on the Town exhibit may get that movie off the ground. After Chump Change’s various Madison theaters from be coming Burrows’s film was languish- Wisconsin debut, Burrows was April 1 to April 4. to an end, ing in post-production with no able to get the film seen in other — John Allen but you distributor and an exhausted don’t have budget when he managed to get to bid the a rough cut onto the Madison Welcome to Buddhatopia big ol’ festival’s lineup in 2000. The posi- seats tive feedback the film received “Technology,” says John of appeal because it’s something farewell. helped propel it through the Dunne, “is very Buddhist.” students are familiar with.” The Union Hollywood system and into the And soon at UW-Madison, In the online world of Bud- plans to arms of the film studio Miramax. Buddhism may be very techno- dhatopia, students would be auction off It opened in theaters in Novem- logical — at least if Dunne has able to experience Buddhist the six- ber 2003 and was released on his way. An assistant professor in concepts that wouldn’t be foot-tall artworks. Pictures of all DVD this past January. the Department of Languages as available in a classroom thirteen chairs, as well as informa- The Wisconsin Film Festival and Cultures of Asia, Dunne is environment, such as reincarna- tion about the auction, can be found at www.union.wisc.edu/75. generated “the first good reviews working with artist Scott tion and karma. we got,” says Burrows. He partic- Roberts MA’00, MFA’00 and “During a character’s life, it When the UW Press published ularly cites help from the Wiscon- programmer James O’Keane would do good things and gain Professor Gary Rosenshield’s new sin State Journal, which gave the ’85 to create Buddhatopia, an karma. Then it would be reborn book, Pushkin and the Genres movie repeated and enthusiastic online, three-dimensional, multi- in a more favorable form,” says of Madness: The Masterpieces support. “I could give [State user “cosmological and mandal- Roberts. of 1833, last winter, it was help- Journal reviewer] Tom Alesia a lic space for the interactive study Currently, Buddhatopia ing cement the UW’s reputation kiss on the mouth,” he says. of Buddhism” — in other words, is only in the developmental as the place to go for Pushkini- Chump Change is based on something like a video game to stages, though UW-Madison’s ana. Rosenshield’s book examines Burrows’s early experiences in help students learn the basics of Department of Information the ways in which Pushkin repre- Hollywood, where he tried to this influential religion. Technology. has awarded Dunne sented madness in various works forge a career as an actor, come- “We use the engine of a and Roberts a technology grant. to create a new interpretation of dian, and screenwriter. “It’s about video game, but it’s really more Roberts hopes a prototype will the Russian author’s genius. the inexplicable insanity of the of an educational tool,” says be ready by summer. movie business,” he says. Roberts. “The format has a lot — Staff

SPRING 2004 19 CLASSROOM

Tomorrow’s Tools Biomedical engineers learn by building

On a Thursday evening before Fortunately for them, jump- Webster, is to figure out what finals last semester, Brent ing in is no problem around the they need to know and how Geiger x’05 found himself star- UW-Madison biomedical engi- they can learn it. “They learn ing at a spaghetti bowl of black neering department, where to work contacts and go places wires, protruding at odd angles Geiger is one of 140 students they haven’t gone before to find from a circuit board on a table learning how to design the tools answers,” he says. before him. He and his four of medicine and life science In the case of Geiger’s team, teammates had a problem, research. Majors complete a that meant learning about the and it wasn’t so much that the sequence of six design courses, life of a twelve-year-old boy with project they had worked on all in which they create and build lissencephaly, a rare neurological semester was due the next biomedical equipment for clients disorder that severely impairs morning, nor that they still had around the university and in pri- mental and physical develop- to solder all those wires into vate industry. Beginning as early ment. The students’ client, a place to get the thing working. as a student’s third semester on nurse who oversees the boy’s That night, amid the dark- campus, those courses leave care, had been searching for a ened labs of the Engineering little option but to dive into muscle-activated massage pad Centers building, the problem unfamiliar waters. that could provide positive feed- was that none of them had ever “In almost every other class, back and pleasurable stimulation used a soldering gun. if you give students a problem, when the boy flexed a particular “We’ve designed circuits they can go home and work on muscle. Nothing like it existed and built them on test boards. it, and there’s always an answer on the market, and so it fell to But this was our first time to in a book somewhere,” says the students — four juniors and actually work on a real board,” John Webster, one of six pro- one sophomore — to build one says Geiger. “You just have to fessors who oversee the design from scratch. jump in and try to figure it out.” courses. “This is different.” During fall semester, the team The difference begins with designed a circuit that would pick the projects. Nothing is in the up a signal from two electrodes hypothetical — these are real wrapped around the boy’s thigh problems in need of real solu- and trigger the massage pad to CLASS NOTE SPENCER WALTS tions. Webster and colleagues turn on for two minutes. They The Madison round up more than a dozen ordered the parts and tested them Connection design challenges by asking out on Geiger’s biceps muscle. Film historian Tino Balio knows professors and other contacts in They even made a colorful plenty about the history of Holly- the life sciences what tools they slipcover to put over the pad. wood, and he puts much of it into need to do their work better. Technical knowhow, the course he’s taught since 1990. “Most have some problem though, was only part of what it Still, he recognizes that he’s dealing they’ve always wanted to work took to complete the task. “At in secondhand knowledge. “I can on or have solved,” he says. first, when we got this project, only describe what other people do,” “We say, here’s a team that is we really had no idea how to do he says. Until now. With the help of willing to spend time on it and it,” says Geiger. “We had to go the UW Foundation, Balio has lined get the thing done.” through the process of design- up an all-star cast of guest speakers On the first day of each ing it, and you really learn a lot for his course this spring, including semester, students divide into by doing that.” movie producers Walter Mirisch ’42, teams of five or six and sign on At most universities, hands- Jim Abrahams x’66, and Jerry for projects, which might involve on design comes only after stu- Zucker ’72, studio executive William Immerman ’59, and Home anything from designing a bet- dents have completed a sequence Box Office mogul Lee DeBoer ’74. More than a dozen alumni will ter IV tube to figuring out how of more traditional classes that come back to Madison, and their talks will be open to the public. to respirate a blue whale. It’s teach the basics of instrumenta- “These people can give a perspective most professors just are not pretty much a given that they tion and biomechanics. Wiscon- able to have, because they’re insiders,” says Balio. “And we hope will start in over their heads, sin’s curriculum includes those they give students an indication of what type of success is possible lacking the technical skills or classes, too, but its emphasis on with a UW degree.” specific knowledge to complete design is unique — a product of — M.P the task. The whole point, says a faculty-led overhaul of the

20 ON WISCONSIN CLASSROOM

Opera soprano Julia Faulkner, who has hit the high notes on from a previous semester, when stage at the Metropolitan and his client was a veterinarian who throughout Europe, is back in her wanted students to design a native Wisconsin, teaching voice

JEFF MILLER ventilator for use on mammals in to UW-Madison music students. the field — including animals as After joining the music faculty as large as blue whales. “We had an associate lecturer in the fall to spend all this time just semester, Faulkner is now leading researching how animals the course Language Diction for breathe,” he says. Singing, in addition to individual By the time they become studio instruction. She lent her seniors, students have experi- own accomplished voice to a ence on four or five projects, and faculty music concert in January. their savvy shows. In the past When lakes diminish, climates two years alone, fifteen student change, or animals disappear teams have disclosed their inven- from the landscape, it’s often the tions to the Wisconsin Alumni task of scientists to explain why. Research Foundation for patent Researchers at the Center for consideration, including a new Sustainability and the Global needle insert for breast biopsies, Environment have designed a an apparatus that measures a new course dedicated to that patient’s ability to swallow, and a science. Titled Ecology and a portable device that allows peo- Changing Planet, the course will ple with speech disorders to reg- teach students how researchers ulate the volume of their voice. draw on a broad range of scien- Not all projects go so well. tific observations to evaluate Biomedical engineering is no dif- changes in local and regional ferent from any other tool- environments. Most of the related endeavor, in that it’s rare instruction takes place over the that everything works perfectly Web — although weekend field the first time it’s assembled. Most trips are optional — allowing teams endure prolonged periods teachers and others in the field of trial and error before they to participate. Tom Chia x’05 tests a circuit board, which eventually will power a arrive at functional solutions. muscle-activated massage pad that he and four other students built Speaking of the Web, more and as a project for Biomedical Engineering Design. In the past two years, “Our credo in this class is, ‘Try it, more popular UW courses are fifteen inventions from the class have been considered for patenting see what’s wrong, and fix it,’ ” popping up there as students by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. says Brian Frederick x’05, clamor for flexibility in the cur- whose team hit a dead end riculum. The latest is American curriculum undertaken six years students’ patience. “They just when trying to design a restraint History 102, Stanley Schultz’s ago. Now, the UW program is the hate it. They want to get into that would make it easier for survey of post-Civil War history. only one in the country in which the lab and get going,” he says. researchers to administer eye Taking advantage of its much- students are exposed to open- To ease the culture shock, drops to lab animals. lauded Web site, produced by ended design throughout their But as teammate Ross Webster teams sophomores with multimedia editor William Tishler time on campus. Gerber x’05 points out, you can juniors, who can help them with ’91, the course has moved almost “It’s my favorite class to rudimentary skills and serve as learn as much from the things entirely online as of this spring. teach, because it’s so creative,” mentors. But students say even that don’t work as the ones that Students log on to hear lectures says Webster. He points out that the most experienced team do. “When things fail, you have through streaming audio and the only lectures come at the members rarely have all the to look at different concepts and download readings and supple- beginning of the class, when answers. try other ways,” he says. “One mental materials. Only weekly professors offer a few insights “You’re thrown into a lot of of the most important lessons in discussions draw warm bodies. on teamwork and the design new areas where you have to engineering is to know when to process. But even those paltry learn on the fly,” says Jon Millin give up on an idea.” touches of formality try x’05. He recalls an experience — Michael Penn

SPRING 2004 21 UW’s winningest football coach is ready to take on a new challenge as director of UW ath- letics. Is this former linebacker ready for double coverage?

22 ON WISCONSIN From the renovated Camp Randall football office he’ll occupy this fall, Barry Alvarez catches a view of his own future — one in which he will oversee much more than the football program he has led for the past fourteen seasons.

cleared out their lockers, abandoning national powerhouse, both on the field the sopping towels and dampened hopes and on the balance sheet. of a long season — one that had ended Since that first night of the 1990s in miserably, with a 2-9 record. Outside the Miami, their careers have been inter- locker room, seated on red couches, twined. But in the coming months, there coach Don Morton and athletic director will be new snapshots and a new evolu- Ade Sponberg — their jobs tethered by tion. Richter, the 1960s Badger sports friendship and frustration — wore legend who tested the toughness of the saggy-baggy postures as they passed a job and prevailed, will run a short out into tin of chewing tobacco between them. retirement, leaving behind a legacy of Sponberg, defeated by the founder- accomplishments. But it is Alvarez’s move ing football program and the persistent that will be scrutinized by alumni, fans, budget ills it spawned, acknowledged administrators, and the national media. that he had one tough job. It was a job he On April 1, he will make a move uncom- would lose within days. Morton, too, was mon in modern college athletics, assuming soon spit out like the Red Man tucked Richter’s old job while continuing to into his cheek. carry out the demanding duties of being The second snapshot came nearly Wisconsin’s winningest football coach. two months later, after freshly hired For Alvarez, who counts three Rose athletic director Pat Richter ’64, JD’71 Bowl titles among his ninety-nine head chose an assistant coach from the coaching victories, the challenge of keep- University of Notre Dame, Barry ing the UW athletics enterprise function- Alvarez, as Wisconsin’s new football ing at a high level will be vastly different, coach. The Irish had just delivered a but perhaps no less difficult, than the New Year’s Day upset, defeating top- rebuilding job Richter performed. He ranked Colorado, 21-6, at the Orange takes the job at a time when the margin Bowl in Miami. Not long afterward, the of error available both to athletic direc- phone rang in Richter’s hotel room. It tors and football coaches is exceedingly was an ebullient Alvarez. “How’s that?” thin. The big money of collegiate sports, he asked. It was just fine with Richter. massive upgrades in facilities, and expec- That night, Alvarez passed Richter a tations to perform while running a LEE LARSEN small medal that Notre Dame had given squeaky-clean operation all put pressure to its players and coaches just before the on even the most successful programs. bowl game. He told his new boss to hold All that will have to be done while By Dennis Chaptman ’80 onto it until Wisconsin got back to the Alvarez tends to the care and feeding of Rose Bowl. Four years later, after the the football program, which generates Badgers’ astonishing run to Pasadena, 40 percent of the department’s revenue, Deep in the album of Richter reached into his pocket and a reliance that binds football’s success Badger sports history are handed it back to Alvarez. to that of the entire department and the two dog-eared snapshots, “We haven’t waited as long as I nearly eight hundred student-athletes moments captured in the thought, quite frankly,” Richter said. and twenty-three sports it serves. Such passages have marked the fif- unforgiving contrasts that teen-year comeback at the UW athletic led up to a dramatic rever- department, one that has been the envy S UW’S TENTH ATHLETIC sal of UW athletic fortunes. of the college sports world. Former director, Alvarez will oversee a One is set on a night in Chancellor Donna Shalala handed A $52-million-a-year operation Richter and Alvarez tough jobs, and, whose physical complex has been sub- November 1989, not long together, they propelled the Badgers stantially remade since his arrival on after UW football players from a model of Big Ten futility into a campus. The $76 million Kohl Center,

SPRING 2004 23 the renovated McClimon Track and “No. I really don’t see one. I don’t Soccer Complex, the Fetzer Student- think it helps me as a football coach,” says Athlete Academic Center, and the Brown, who agreed to take on both roles Goodman Softball Complex are monu- in 2002 after the university went through ments to Richter’s ability to find and two athletic directors in three years. cultivate donors — as well as Alvarez’s “I am nuts, because I’ve done it ability to inspire them with winning before,” he adds, noting that he held both football. A new crew house is under jobs at Rice University in the mid-1980s. way, and, at Camp Randall Stadium, “The demands are so much more than

work continues on a $100 million reno- STLUKA (2) UW SPORTS INFORMATION/DAVID they were in the 1980s. That’s why vation that will ring the east side of the there’s just a couple of us doing it. You field with seventy-two luxury suites have to have good people.” and increase capacity to around eighty Alvarez knows the risks. For him, thousand fans. risk isn’t the issue. Performance is. Running such a massive enterprise “You think it wasn’t risk-taking when is no small task, which is why so few I came here in 1990? That’s what this people have done it while also coaching. profession is about,” Alvarez says. Such dual roles were common at univer- “Donna Shalala said that, when she sities from the 1930s through the 1960s, arrived, this department was run like a but the unprecedented expansion in mom-and-pop grocery store. Now, we’re athletics budgets and operations has a full-fledged chain store. Pat started made them rare today. Those who have Alvarez “can’t live with losing,” says mentor from scratch. I’ve inherited a far better Lou Holtz, who predicts his friend will find a held the two titles usually haven’t done way to succeed in both jobs. situation than he did.” so for long. The last person in the Big Ten to do both jobs, Michigan State’s Others have been less certain. George Perles, lasted only three years, ABC play-by-play announcer Tim Brant, HE PROGRAM PAT RICHTER from 1990 to 1992. John Mackovic for example, wondered aloud about joined ran on typewriters and managed the dual roles at the University Alvarez’s new role during last Novem- T mimeograph machines, with anti- of Illinois from 1988 to 1991, while ber’s broadcast of the Wisconsin-Iowa quated accounting procedures and slip- Michigan’s Bo Schembechler held both game. “You have to wonder what Barry’s shod records management. A 1989 review titles from 1988 to 1989 and Penn State’s thinking,” he said. by the state’s Legislative Audit Bureau Joe Paterno did the same from 1980 to Dale Hofmann, sports columnist for found that department files were ill-kept, 1982. At Wisconsin, no one has led the the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, also has budgets were not given ongoing review, department while coaching football since expressed skepticism about whether any- and athletic board and committee min- Harry Stuhldreher, one of Notre Dame’s one could do both jobs, regardless of his utes were vague or nonexistent. Auditors famous Four Horsemen, held the posts or her personal attributes or the quality could not find a copy of an agreement from 1936 to 1948. of the staff. He likens the arrangement to among various parties to fund a $9.5 Those precedents made Alvarez a a recent phenomenon in the National million indoor practice facility, for which surprising choice when Chancellor John Football League, which has been littered officials broke ground despite having D. Wiley MS’65, PhD’68 pegged him to with failed efforts to combine the coach only 7 percent of the needed funds in succeed Richter last spring. Wiley says and general manager titles. hand. As the rest of college sports was Alvarez’s profile and management skills, “God bless him if he can do it,” Hof- dialing up in the dawn of the ESPN age, as well as the prospect of a smooth mann says. “When someone does this, I Richter found a department using Alan transition from Richter to his longtime always wonder, ‘What was he doing with Ameche-era tools. colleague, all appealed to him. his spare time beforehand?’ It seems to “I came into this office and there was “Barry is a superb manager who me that both jobs are full-time jobs.” a red push-button phone. If it rang, you delegates well and thoroughly,” Wiley The University of Alabama-Birming- had to pick it up. You couldn’t put it on says. “He has the right skill set to do the ham’s Watson Brown, the only other per- hold. There was no one outside to answer job. He’s an icon for Wisconsin fans and son in the nation to currently hold down it. It was just a phone,” Richter says. donors. I don’t see any downside, except the combined roles at a major program, From his office in Camp Randall, for the one that everyone notices: that provides an unvarnished assessment of Richter looks over the superstructure of these are two very different jobs, and can the difficulty of doing both jobs. Asked if a new office complex and renovated sta- one person do both well? I’m confident he saw an upside in handling the responsi- dium taking shape. But he remembers that he can.” bilities simultaneously, Brown was blunt. how different the landscape looked just

24 ON WISCONSIN fifteen years ago. Early in his tenure, dle both jobs, but he does allow that to officials discovered an accounting glitch leave coaching while keeping the direc- that ballooned what they had believed to tor’s job would be a “logical progression.” be a $1.4 million deficit to an astonishing Wiley says there is no timetable for $2.1 million. Alvarez to give up one job or the other. “Once that happened, it threw us “The only agreement we had was that he into a bunker mentality,” Richter recalls. can continue to do both jobs as long as “We were living hand to mouth. Strate- he wants to, as long as he and I both gic planning wasn’t for something that agree it’s working,” he says. “We’ll keep happened in a year or two — it was what an eye on that, and if either one of us was happening this afternoon.” concludes that it’s too much, we’ll have Coaches told Richter they needed some discussions on what to do next.” resources, not just to field teams, but also But it wouldn’t be too surprising to to be competitive and win. That, and the see Alvarez move into a full-time admin- pressures of having to achieve gender istrative role down the road. That is the equity, prompted Richter into the most progression of Alvarez’s college football painful and controversial decision of his coach at the University of Nebraska, the tenure. He eliminated five varsity sports, late Bob Devaney. The Hall of Fame including men’s and women’s gymnastics, coach held both jobs in Lincoln from men’s and women’s fencing, and the 1967 to 1972, before becoming a full- baseball program where he lettered time athletic director until his retirement three times in the 1960s. Pat Richter inherited a program that was in in 1993. Devaney took on the dual roles debt and in trouble, and it wasn’t always Although the cuts allowed the smooth sailing as he righted the ship. when Alvarez was a junior linebacker department some maneuverability to for the Cornhuskers, and his success in right the financial ship, football was still three NCAA national titles, and fifty Big juggling both positions wasn’t lost on the money-making engine of the depart- Ten team titles. It also has produced Alvarez. “I looked up to him as a football ment. When Alvarez led the Badgers to more academic all-Big Ten honorees than coach, and I thought, ‘Boy, I’d like to Tokyo in 1993 to play Michigan State, a any other conference school. do that someday,’ ” Alvarez says. Rose Bowl berth and the department’s Alvarez knows that act will be hard Another of Alvarez’s mentors, future were at stake. A victory there, to follow. Before accepting the job, he University of South Carolina coach Lou and another in Pasadena on New Year’s consulted with John Mackovic, who had Holtz, who hired Alvarez onto his staff at Day 1994, sealed the turnaround. done both jobs at Illinois, and John Notre Dame, says Alvarez has the drive Licensing money poured in, tickets Robinson, who was both football coach to be one of the exceptional few who can became a hot commodity again, and and athletic director for the University of pull off the double duty. “He can’t live donors were invigorated. Nevada-Las Vegas for eighteen months, with losing, and he will find a way to be “I got a note from this fan in Chicago until shedding the latter role last spring. successful wearing both hats,” says a few days after we got back from Both, Alvarez says, were encouraging. Holtz. “He is well organized, a great Tokyo,” Richter recalls. “I hadn’t met “They felt it would be good for the motivator, and hires excellent people.” him, and still haven’t met him to this day. school and good for the league to have a A key variable in Alvarez’s favor may He said, ‘Thanks so much. You don’t coach in that position, providing a voice be the situation he inherits. UNLV’s know what it means to have bragging in two arenas,” he says. “Robinson asked John Robinson notes that Alvarez takes rights in my own office.’ Inside, there me how old I was. When I told him I was over a department in much better shape was a check for ten thousand dollars.” fifty-six, he said, ‘You’re still a young kid. than the one he tried to run. “We were in Success in football paid dividends You could do both jobs and still pump a financial crisis when I walked into the across the board. On a foundation of gas on the side.’ ” job. Everything we did had to do with facilities, finances, and fans, Richter Being an athletic director has long turning off the lights and rationing toilet built one of the more impressive edifices been among the coach’s goals. Alvarez paper,” he says. “But Barry’s at a pro- in college athletics, a department that expressed that aspiration when he first gram that’s well funded. He’s at a place, usually ranks among the top twenty-five interviewed for the head coaching posi- like Joe Paterno was, where he is an icon programs in the nation in terms of suc- tion in 1989, and he restated it to Wiley and has the prestige that makes his deci- cess in all sports. Richter’s tenure has in 2001, when Shalala, now president sion the next logical step, one that’s good seen nine bowl berths and seven victo- at the University of Miami, tried to woo for the university. ries, six NCAA men’s basketball tourna- Alvarez there to coach the football team. “Barry Alvarez is the best athletic ment berths, a Final Four appearance, He won’t say how long he plans to han- fund raiser the university could have,

SPRING 2004 25 coaches out the door when they haven’t performed up to his standards, such as after the 2001 season, when the contracts of assistants Darrell Wilson and Todd LEE LARSEN Bradford were not renewed. But his loyalty is also well known. Because football is the department’s meal ticket, much of Alvarez’s focus will be on maintaining and improving the reputation he has built in that sport. “The first thing I will do is not allow the football program to slip,” he says. “I’m not going to take away from the football program so I can be at all the meetings. Yet I can have someone there, and I can have the information.” He adds that players won’t notice much of a difference when he officially takes over both jobs. “Nothing’s going to change for them,” he says. “The first time I walked into the office after it was announced, [Badger running back] Anthony Davis x’04 said, ‘Hey, A.D.!’ I said, ‘No, you’re A.D.’ ” Richter agrees that, given football’s Alvarez, with women’s hockey coach Mark Johnson, says he will be empathetic to the needs of UW’s coaches. “I sense that there’s something I can communicate that most athletic directors importance to the bottom line, the best can’t. I live in their shoes. I know their problems,” he says. thing Alvarez can do for himself as ath- letic director is to be a good football and knows the terrain well enough to Street and Smith’s Sports Business Journal coach. But care has been taken to put a have visionary concepts,” Robinson named him as the only university athlet- firewall between the two jobs to avoid says. “If he gets mired in minute budget- ics official among its “Top Forty Under conflicts. If rule violations or academic ary and administrative things, then Forty,” a list of the most influential and problems crop up in the football you’re in trouble.” creative young minds in sports. Wiley program, Pollard says the chancellor calls him an “absolutely superb sports and other top university officials will be administrator,” and it’s clear that he will notified immediately, and they will take VEN AS ALVAREZ GREW have a large part in Alvarez’s fate as charge of decision-making. more involved in the daily athletic director. “There’s too much at stake here to E management of the department But Pollard is also gaining new even have the appearance of a conflict,” during the past year, he has taken that respect for his boss. “Most people don’t Pollard says. message to heart. One of his first moves get a chance to see his human side. You Alvarez has also worked during the was to appoint a management team. tend to see him as coach and icon. But he past year to meet with coaches in the Jamie Pollard, the department’s former has fears and concerns, and he’s more other twenty-two varsity sports and erase chief financial officer, was tapped as his like us than he’s not,” Pollard says. “He’s any doubts about his commitment to the top deputy — whom Alvarez will lean on very results-oriented, and he’s taught us whole department. “I haven’t felt that as his day-to-day alter ego. “I have the that you don’t get paralyzed. Don’t be there is anyone who felt threatened,” he utmost respect and confidence in him,” afraid to make a decision because you’re says. “I made it clear that I wasn’t here to Alvarez says. “I’ve told my senior staff, afraid to be wrong. They do that every build the football program even bigger. I ‘You can get to me or Jamie. It will be play call. If it doesn’t work, adjust.” want to sustain the football program, but the same person. You’ll know how I’m Alvarez’s management style is a I want to give them whatever they need thinking.’ If I didn’t feel that I could put reflection of his coaching style: straight- to be competitive.” He believes his empa- strong people in place, I wouldn’t have forward, highly organized, and, in many thy with coaches could be an attribute. taken this job. I only have one body.” ways, drawn from his blue-collar “I sense that there’s something I can Pollard’s reputation as an administra- upbringing in western Pennsylvania. He communicate that most athletic directors tor has been on a steep incline. Last year, has not been reluctant to push assistant can’t. I live in their shoes. I know their

26 ON WISCONSIN problems. They can come to me and I’ve assistant coach Kevin Cosgrove, inviting realize that I’m not just a guy they see on been there,” he says. him to a get-to-know-you lunch. Alvarez, the sidelines, or on TV or in the paper. At the top of Alvarez’s agenda will be Cosgrove said, wanted to reach out to “There is a danger of losing touch, seeing the Camp Randall renovation the campus to form relationships. A because your time is in such demand. through to its fall completion — a task surprised Wiley turned him down flat. People are pulling at you from every- made easier by the fact that all seventy- “I didn’t want to have anything to do where. I want to do more on campus and two of the new luxury suites have been with athletics. I didn’t want to go to the be involved,” he says. sold. Officials continue working to sell games, read the scores, or have anything But doing so while still dealing with club seating, and serving the needs of to do with sports,” Wiley recalls. “There the expectations of football fans will those new customers will be important to was this long pause and Kevin said, require an even greater time commit- the program’s future. ‘Dean, I can’t go back to Coach and tell ment. Skeptics are bound to surface at But Alvarez has bigger goals — and the first sign of weakness in either of chief among them is to make sure the Alvarez’s worlds. department is an integrated part of the As chancellor, Wiley has Alabama-Birmingham’s Brown, university, while supporting athletes and who is coming off back-to-back 5-7 coaches. placed a premium on seasons, has felt that sting. “Any time “Buildings and fund-raising and the you lose a game, they say, ‘Can he han- whole business side of things can obscure drawing athletics into dle both jobs?’ It’s not just at the end what we’re really here for, and that’s to of the season; it’s every Sunday and make sure that the athletes have the most the mainstream of uni- Monday,” Brown says. Conversely, if positive experience possible, and that we versity life. But he the football team keeps winning, few support them academically,” he says. pundits are likely to credit Alvarez The fallout from three major NCAA admits that Alvarez for focusing his efforts and capably rules violations during Richter’s tenure handling the two jobs. will spill onto Alvarez’s desk. The depart- actually arrived at the Alvarez has endured plenty of media ment is under NCAA probation until criticism over the years, and he’s no October 2006, and the effects of the need for that culture stranger to talk-show Einsteins. “Coach- Shoe Box scandal, which involved ing is so much harder today because of athletes receiving improper benefits at an shift before he did. the media, the Internet, and talk radio. area shoe retailer, still linger. “You read Any faceless wonder can say anything he about guys paying kids, sending checks, him we didn’t have lunch. We have to wants, with no credibility. It’s open sea- academic fraud — it was never anything have lunch.’ ” son,” he says. “People are going to say like that,” Alvarez says. But he allows Wiley finally agreed to lunch at the what they’re going to say.” that the reputation of the program has University Club, but only if Cosgrove He takes a football coach’s classic been dented by the affair. “There is a refrained from discussing football. There point of view: if you can’t control it, why cloud over us. I’ve warned the coaches, was no talk of blitzes and slants, and the worry about it? Come April, though, and I can’t say it’s ever hurt us in recruit- engineer and the coach hit it off nicely. Alvarez will be faced with controlling ing, but we [had] better be aware of it as “Years later, I find myself chancellor more than he ever has. This high-stakes coaches,” he says. and urging the athletic department to game comes with more responsibility, forge more ties with the campus. Barry more scrutiny, and more worry than any was more than ten years ahead of me on he has faced yet. S CHANCELLOR, WILEY that,” Wiley says. But Alvarez’s old boss, Lou Holtz, has placed a premium on draw- Now, Alvarez agrees that there are has confidence that he will thrive in that A ing athletics into the mainstream more bridges to be built. In his early role. “When he wants to do something of university life. But he admits that days on campus, he and assistant coaches and wants to be successful, he will find a Alvarez actually arrived at the need for used to show up at residence halls and way,” Holtz says. “The average person that culture shift before he did. The fraternities, trying to sell tickets and may not be able to do both, but Barry is chancellor’s introduction to Alvarez’s pump up football’s image. But after the not average.” thinking came in the weeks after he and team turned the corner and began selling his staff arrived in Madison. Wiley — out the stadium regularly, Alvarez Dennis Chaptman ’80 witnessed the athletic department’s then dean of the graduate school and acknowledges that his campus emphasis turnaround as he covered UW and national college keeper of the university’s research waned. “We need to do more of that,” he football and basketball for the Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel from 1989 through the 1999 mission — received a phone call from says, “so that people on this campus Rose Bowl. He now writes for University Communications.

SPRING 2004 27 THEToughest Job For the many UW YOU’LL EVER Leave students and alumni

who enter the (3) OF ANNE GARVEY COURTESY PEACE CORPS, adapting to foreign cultures often isn’t nearly as hard as readjusting to their own. BY JASON STEIN MA’03

hen Anne Garvey ’99 returned villagers had opened up to her, revealing from the Peace Corps to her secrets they had never told their neigh- W parents’ home in Wausau, bors? How could she explain the death Wisconsin, she came in secret. of her friend Tomasa, a single mother Her plane had been delayed, and it who had hung herself and orphaned a wasn’t until 2 a.m. that she crossed the five-year-old daughter? Or the reaction threshold of the rustic house, already on of another villager, a married woman, a high from talking with her parents on who’d told her, “I can’t believe Tomasa the way home, and eager to see her killed herself. She must have been so brother and sister. It was June 2002, happy — she didn’t even have to put up and in five days, Garvey’s parents would with [a husband]”? throw her a welcome-back barbecue. How, Garvey wondered, could she There would be old teachers, friends, pick up her old life, having seen these and family — people she’d missed during things, having carried them home? her stay in South America, people she During the first days at home, wanted to see. Garvey sat in the sun on her parents’ But not just then. Until the day of the deck, content to be among family once party, Garvey didn’t want any of them to again. But at night, she lay awake, know she was back. waiting for sleep to come. Don’t tell anyone, the twenty-five- year-old had requested of her parents. n 2003, 153 UW-Madison graduates “I just want to be alone with you all until tucked away their diplomas, shoul- I’m prepared to talk about the last two I dered their backpacks, and headed and a half years,” she added. off to join the Peace Corps. For the eigh- Garvey didn’t feel ready for the ques- teenth year in a row, the UW contributed tion, “How was Paraguay?” How could more volunteers than any other univer- she describe her time in the rural village sity in the country. These alumni con- of San Cristobal, the way that slowly, tinue a relationship that extends to the over months, meals, and sips of green tea, nascent days of the Peace Corps in the

28 ON WISCONSIN After two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay, Anne Garvey brought home a hammock and a cat, both of which reside with her at her Madison apartment. MICHAEL FORSTER ROTHBART

it takes most volunteers several months to readjust to the pace in the United States and the “mere availability of goods and services. “The bountiful life that we live is just really shocking when you come from someplace that doesn’t have supermar- kets or fresh vegetables year-round,” Lore says. That culture shock has been there since the start of the Peace Corps. Fred Brancel ’51 felt it in 1963, when he came back from directing one of the organiza- tion’s first three pilot programs on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. After years in Africa and the Caribbean, Bran- cel returned with new eyes for America. Many of his fellow citizens seemed to him caught in cycles of “achieving, acquiring, and climbing,” he says. “I felt a great relief I was not a part of that,” he adds. But being stuck outside the main- stream of American life is not always cause for relief. James Delehanty, a faculty associate in the African Studies program, thought he would “slip back in rather easily” when he returned from a Peace Corps post in Niger in 1981. A driven student who had gained his mas- ter’s by age twenty-three, he couldn’t early 1960s, when UW-Madison served Returning volunteers receive $6,075 handle the workload in his PhD program as one of the first institutions to help and some help in job hunting. Yet that after coming back. He dropped out and train volunteers bound for Africa and doesn’t ensure a smooth re-entry. The spent six months working in a factory. other faraway places. In all, more than Peace Corps has changed the way many “I’d always been a good — a great — 2,800 UW alumni have served in the participants think and want to live, just student,” Delehanty says. “But I just Peace Corps since its beginning in 1961. as it did for Garvey. That experience, the couldn’t cope.” Today, alumni serve as English teach- very thing that makes returnees valuable Delehanty also faced another prob- ers, agricultural extension agents, and back in the United States, also makes it lem common to returned volunteers: public health workers in lands as varied hard for them to readjust. It sets a chal- few people could relate to his time in as the earth itself, scattered around the lenge — how do they adapt lessons Africa, two years in which he changed globe. When they finish their two-year learned abroad, often in a profoundly from a Type A to a Type B personality. terms, they will leave their posts in some rural setting, to the whirling, bustling “You have to learn to put that [experi- fifty countries and begin what can prove plenty of American life? ence] away in a basket in your house to be the hardest part of the journey — Gary Lore, a spokesman for the somewhere and not cart it out very the return to life in their home country. Peace Corps’s Minneapolis office, says often,” he says.

SPRING 2004 29 nne Garvey’s homecom- “All of it,”Garvey wrote in her journal,“the whole two years of stress, ing brought many of the A same challenges and depression,illness,and tears,was really worth it.” turmoil. Her ambivalence began at another cookout held in her — like Paraguay never hap- honor, this one not in Wisconsin, pened ... I just wish I knew what but in her village in the south of I wanted to do with my life.” Paraguay. For that farewell party, Garvey bought a cow for eturning volunteers often the equivalent of $120. Her deal with such dilemmas neighbors helped butcher it, R by carrying some aspect of roasting the beef and stewing their Peace Corps years into their the tripe in tomato sauce. Other new lives. After his time in St. villagers brought corn bread, Lucia, for example, Fred Brancel cassava, and sweet rice. worked in mission projects in One hundred people from Zimbabwe and Zaire and later the village gathered on the grass directed a Christian summer and hard-packed dirt of her camp in Wisconsin. James Dele- neighbor’s yard and pasture. Dancers in traditional Paraguayan dress perform in the village hanty wrote his dissertation on of San Cristobal, where Garvey came to feel like a kindred spirit The party stretched from late with the residents. migration and land use in Niger. morning well into the night, as Another volunteer who villagers danced to the music of served in Niger, Charles San Cristobal’s only stereo. topics like sexuality, alcoholism, domestic Dufresne MS’94, found a way to stay Garvey had worked for two years in violence, and depression. in development work. He joined this village of six hundred people, where One teenager wrote to say that her InterWorks, a Madison firm that does residents grew corn and other vegeta- boyfriend had broken up with her when training and consulting in disaster man- bles, raised cattle, and mined a red stone she told him she was pregnant. She agement for the United Nations, the they identified only as “rock.” At first, hadn’t told her parents, and she was U.S. Agency for International Develop- she offered meetings on stove-building thinking, her letter said, “about trying ment, CARE, and other relief agencies and wondered why so few people came. to not be pregnant anymore.” around the world. She gave parents workshops on how to “Give her options,” Garvey told From a renovated church on the boil their water and keep their children her group during a commercial break. city’s east side, Dufresne and his five from getting parasites. But in the houses “You can tell her abortion is illegal in partners — all but two are ex-Peace of her neighbors, Garvey politely drank Paraguay, but you can’t tell her not to Corps volunteers — advise relief work- whatever water her hosts offered her, have one.” ers on handling fires and floods, earth- and came down with dysentery herself. Her farewell party confirmed what quakes, and wars. Their work has sent Garvey knew she’d come to give Garvey had come to see in her work and them to eighty countries since 1990, choices, not dictate solutions. But after in her friendships with villagers. “All of or as one partner puts it, “all the bad the first frustrating months, she started it,” she wrote in her journal, “the whole places all the time.” asking herself, “Do people want options? two years of stress, depression, illness, Garvey is also putting her experience I’m offering options, and people aren’t and tears, was really worth it.” to use. More than a year after her return, showing up at my meetings.” And so when it came time to leave she finds herself once again surrounded In time, some did. Garvey formed a San Cristobal, Garvey found it was the by Latino youth. She’s in the cafeteria of youth group, which grew to twenty-five hardest thing she had ever done. She Madison’s Cherokee Heights Middle members. With her help, they raised left a place where she had known every School, encircled by some forty-seven money for sick villagers, held day camps face, known the webs of kinship that students, mostly Mexican immigrants. for village children, and even started a bound them to one another. More than Garvey runs this after-school program radio program. Once a week, Garvey that, Garvey knew that what she did through a nonprofit agency for local and several of the youths hiked six miles mattered. That certainty was something Latinos, Centro Hispano. to a radio station in the state capital. In she couldn’t take back to Wausau. As Garvey finishes giving the kids the broadcasting booth of the two-room “I’m less happy now than I was their instructions in Spanish, the circle building, the group answered letters and when I got home,” she wrote in her around her breaks up — and with it the phone calls from young people through- journal a few months after her return. momentary sense of order. Twelve- and out the region, taking questions on taboo “Now I feel like I’ve never left the U.S. thirteen-year-old boys take to throwing

30 ON WISCONSIN mock punches at the girls, and “The bountiful life that we live is just really shocking when you come from then to throwing grapes from their snack bags, before finally someplace that doesn’t have supermarkets or fresh vegetables year-round.” collapsing upon themselves, laughing, jostling, and issuing an assistant vice chancellor sailor-strength curses in Spanish. who coordinates service learning Outside, the smells of spring are projects at UW-Madison. “If rising from the damp earth, and you had commitments to public inside, Garvey is missing four service when you went in, those of her six volunteer tutors. It’s a commitments are solidified.” struggle just to keep these kids For Anne Garvey, that sitting down. commitment swirls in a pool But unnoticed amid the of memories from her time in adolescent chaos, other students Paraguay — such as the recol- are actually studying. lection of her farewell party in “They’re good kids,” Garvey San Cristobal. That evening, says later. She spends twenty after a guitarist and a children’s hours a week with her students. dance troupe had performed for She’s learned their tricks, visited Children in San Cristobal practice the proper method of brush- her, another dancer approached. ing their teeth, one of the small lessons Peace Corps volunteers their homes, and even had one of try to impart to their host communities. The woman wore traditional those tough talkers fall asleep in dress — a long, red skirt, a the back of her car. They’ve given woven belt, and a white shirt Garvey what she was missing since and applied economics, agronomy, with a scoop neck. She sang a plaintive her return — a purpose. animal sciences, forest ecology, horticul- lyric that seemed adapted from an old “I just feel like I’m doing something ture, life sciences communication, and love song: “Why are you leaving us?” worthwhile now,” she says. “It was hard urban and regional planning — offer the The singer began to dance around to come back and feel that I didn’t have degrees, more than any other school in Garvey. She brought a handkerchief a direction and a goal — that my life the country. to her eyes with a dabbing motion, sway- wasn’t helping anyone else.” Students will “come back and have a ing back and forth with a simple step, And on days like today, when the tremendous opportunity to integrate that encircling the young American with a boys’ highest aspiration seems to be practical experience and the academic kind of ritual of loss, a dance of grief. sneaking into the girls’ restroom, Garvey training,” Barrows says. “It’s the integra- Garvey bawled. can fall back on a lesson she learned in tion of theory and practice, if you will.” The song ended and the singer Paraguay: changing lives — whether it’s These international master’s brought forward a woven belt, one of hers or theirs — is never easy or quick. programs are just one effort to expose dozens of gifts from villagers. Garvey students to the Peace Corps’s ideal of spoke to the crowd: s a Peace Corps volunteer in serving others. Another taste of that mes- “When I first arrived, or when I was Sierra Leone, Richard Barrows sage comes during fall orientation, when thinking of coming to Paraguay, I didn’t A MA’70, PhD’72 made a similar prospective students and their parents think I would get close to people because discovery — that change is slow, messy, file into a meeting room in the Red Gym that language and cultural barrier is so and utterly dependent on the acceptance to hear about life at the university. The high,” she said. “I didn’t think I would of those it’s meant to help. Now an asso- first thing they see is a display covering a feel as close [to you] as I do ... I was ciate dean in the College of Agricultural large wall, which tells the story of the wrong. I was so wrong. Thank you for and Life Sciences, Barrows is helping UW’s connections to the Peace Corps. opening your community to me. I will ensure that such lessons are put to good Mary Rouse, the woman responsible miss you so much. You have become part use at UW-Madison. The college now for the wall, thinks the Peace Corps can of me and changed me.” allows students to enroll in both the start volunteers on a lifetime of public The crowd clapped and drifted back Peace Corps and a master’s program, service. As proof, she points to into the empty space of the yard. The making UW-Madison one of several prominent names in the display, such dancing continued. dozen universities to offer this option. as Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle ’67 Students do a year of course work, serve and his wife, Jessica ’67, MS’76, who in the Peace Corps, and then return to volunteered together in Tunisia. Jason Stein, who spent two years volunteering in Latin America, graduated with a master’s degree from write a thesis on their experience abroad. “Service in the Peace Corps is liter- UW-Madison’s School of Journalism in May 2003. He is Seven UW departments — agricultural ally a life-changing event,” says Rouse, now a business reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal.

SPRING 2004 31 THE freeing OF CHRISTOPH

After losing twelve years of his life to a MICHAEL FORSTER ROTHBART miscarriage of justice, Christopher Ochoa has come to UW-Madison, hoping to help fix the system that failed him.

By Michael Penn MA’97

hortly before nine o’clock in the the question on the lips of the assembled morning on a brilliant autumn news media before it was even asked. day last year, Steven Avery “I’m out,” he said softly, as his beard walked through a chain-link puffed out from a broad smile. “Feels Sgate that had been closed to him for wonderful.” eighteen years. On one side was the The next morning, Christopher Stanley Correctional Institution in New Ochoa read the newspaper accounts of Lisbon, Wisconsin, where Avery had Avery’s release at his apartment in been incarcerated for brutally assaulting Madison, where he’d arrived a few a woman in 1985 — an attack, as it turns weeks earlier to begin studies at the UW out, he didn’t commit. On the other side Law School. The halls of the law build- was freedom, exoneration, and, Avery ing had been buzzing about the case all hoped, a decent plate of ribs. week. UW-Madison’s Innocence Proj- A round man with bright eyes and an ect, the clinical program run by Profes- enormous, shrublike beard, Avery sors John Pray and Keith Findley, had stepped through the gate and answered devoted hundreds of hours to securing

32 ON WISCONSIN P HEROCHOA

Christopher Ochoa studies under the watch of John Steuart Curry’s The Freeing of the Slaves, a mural that overlooks the Law Library’s reading room. Originally intended for the U.S. Department of Justice, the mural found a home in Madison in the 1940s, after it was deemed too political for the nation’s capital. Now, it stands as a reminder that at the root of all laws are human beings — a sentiment that Ochoa knows from experience, and one that now fuels his desire to be a lawyer.

looking back. But now there Ochoa had no criminal record. In was Avery, and all the echoes high school, he was an honors student he caused. This is what hap- who managed the football team and pens once someone has taken worked on the school literary magazine. your freedom: it’s never yours But he and Richard Danziger, who again, not entirely. worked with him at another Pizza Hut, Later, when I asked Ochoa aroused police suspicion by showing up his reaction to Avery’s release, at the crime scene two weeks after the he told me he thought about murder and toasting DePriest over beers. buying a toothbrush, about It was an innocent gesture to honor how, on the day three years ago someone Ochoa had never met, but, to when he had his own march out police, their actions seemed curious. of jail, he realized that he was a During more than ten hours of thirty-four-year-old man who interrogation, detectives insisted Ochoa didn’t own one. “I would look knew something about the murder and at my brothers and friends, who pressured him to admit his involvement. had good credit and were get- When he repeated that he had nothing ting their lives together, and to do with the crime, a detective threw a think I’m so far behind them,” chair at him. He made Ochoa look at he said. “It’s lonely. You’re pictures of Texas’s notorious death row, happy for your freedom, but it telling him, “You’re going to die on a gur- can be really tough.” ney with a needle in your arm.” He was You could do a lot of things told he’d be put in a cell as “fresh meat” with that feeling: wallow in for other inmates. He was told he’d never it, get angry about it, be con- see his family. He was told that the only Avery’s release, and some of the team sumed by it, seek revenge for it. Chris way to save his life was to confess. had been in Stanley to usher him to free- Ochoa bought a toothbrush. And then Eventually, Ochoa crumbled, signing dom. In the photographs that accompa- he went to law school. a typed statement that he says he still has nied the news stories, Ochoa saw tears yet to read, in exchange for a life sen- of joy and relief on Avery’s face. But he t all came crashing down one tence in prison. “He made a deal to save wondered about what he didn’t see, the morning in November 1988. The his life,” Pray says. But it was a Faustian emotions that had yet to surface from police wanted to talk. Ochoa left bargain that required that Ochoa testify somewhere underneath those glorious his car at work, expecting to return against Danziger, who asserted his inno- whiskers. inI a few minutes. He never came back. cence throughout. At his friend’s trial, The irony was the timing of it all, so Two weeks earlier, Nancy DePriest, Ochoa was the state’s star witness, soon after Ochoa had carted his posses- a twenty-year-old manager of an Austin, regurgitating grisly details that he says sions up from El Paso, Texas, to start Texas, Pizza Hut, had been killed while were fed to him by police. The testimony this new chapter of his life. He didn’t preparing to open the restaurant. Police brought a life sentence for Danziger and want to dwell on the past. When you found her body, naked and bound, by the seemed to leave little doubt that Texas lose twelve years for no good reason, women’s restroom. She had been raped had convicted the right men. Many in you don’t waste precious minutes before being shot in the head. the courtroom interpreted Ochoa’s tears

SPRING 2004 33 on the witness stand as signs of remorse, prisoners who are trying to prove their Project in 1998 as an offshoot of the not understanding that they were actu- innocence. “Can you help me?” he national effort, started by attorneys ally signs of terror. pleaded. “I have just given up on the Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, to If the Austin detectives were looking system. I’ve lost faith in everything and use DNA evidence to free wrongfully for someone to bully, Ochoa was a per- everybody — but I haven’t lost faith in convicted prisoners. fect choice. Even now, after fifteen years myself.” DNA testing has overturned 138 of maturity and hard-won wisdom, A few months later, UW Professor convictions in the United States since he is unassuming in both appearance Pray and two law students were in 1992, but Ochoa’s was Wisconsin’s first and manner, a quiet, polite man whose Huntsville, Texas, an iron-barred mega- big case. Beginning in 1999, the two studious looks are amplified by wire- lopolis that is home to some fifteen thou- professors led a team of three law stu- rimmed glasses. As a child, he wanted sand inmates of the Texas penitentiary dents and several volunteer attorneys in to be a priest, and he has an inward spiri- system, to meet their prospective client. picking apart the evidence, looking for tuality that would have served him well Ochoa sat on the opposite side of a thick anything that might prove his innocence. in that calling. Confronted by men he metal screen that almost completely Preliminary DNA tests were completed believed would kill him, he sought to pla- obscured his face. The only way they in September 2000, paving the way for cate. The experience stamped him with could look at him was to move quickly Ochoa’s release in January 2001. such suspicion and paranoia that in 1998 from side to side to see through the grate. In law, it’s not what you know, but — after another man doing time in Texas “For me to have dreamt that one day what you can show, and in that regard, wrote a letter confessing to DePriest’s he would be a student of mine — I could Ochoa is a fortunate man. Even with the murder — he reiterated his confession never have imagined such a thing,” Pray allegations of police intimidation and when detectives visited him in prison. He says now. “I wasn’t even allowed to another man confessing to the crime, believed that the truth would cost him shake his hand.” Ochoa’s case swung on a few pieces any shot at parole, which at that point he Pray entered law after a decade as a of crime-scene evidence that Texas considered his only remaining hope. social worker. He met Findley, a former authorities fortuitously had preserved Instead, Ochoa looked for someone public defender, when he joined the Law after the trial. he could trust with his story. He wrote a School’s Frank J. Remington Center in Without those samples, there would letter to the Wisconsin Innocence Proj- 1986. After working together on a num- have been no new DNA tests, no way to ect, having picked the name off an Inter- ber of criminal justice projects there, prove that Ochoa and Danziger weren’t net list of law-school programs that help they formed the Wisconsin Innocence the ones who raped DePriest, and no biological evidence that the jailhouse confessor was telling the truth. Steven

JEFFREY PHELPS ©2003 Avery, the second prisoner proved inno- cent by the Wisconsin team, may have been even luckier. In his case, it was a single human hair, kept in a crime lab

JOURNAL SENTINAL for eighteen years, that set him free. “Think about how many pieces of luck have to fall into place for someone like Chris or Steve,” says Findley. “If any

, INC. one of those pieces weren’t there, the cases probably wouldn’t have gone through. And given the improbability of all of those things happening, it seems almost certain that there are a lot of people for whom all of the links in the chain aren’t there.” On average, Findley and Pray receive five new letters a day from pris- oners who want that kind of luck. Even with the help of twenty law students, the In September 2003, Steven Avery walked out of a Wisconsin prison after serving eighteen years for an assault he didn’t commit, becoming the second person proved team can manage only about thirty of innocent by the UW legal team. DNA tests on a single human hair recovered from the the most promising cases, and many of crime scene ultimately showed another man was guilty of the crime. those still face slim odds of reaching

34 ON WISCONSIN RODOLFO GONZALEZ/

only one choice. “Wiscon- sin was my dream school,” he says. “I owe Wisconsin AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN my life.” Now, as he grapples with introductory torts and contracts, the people who helped exonerate him are elated by the prospect of graduating him. “We’re delighted he’s here,” says Findley. “He’s endured hardships, but he’s risen above them, and that shows a kind of grit and determination you need to be a good lawyer.” “People who meet him Moments after a Texas judge declared his case a “miscarriage of justice,” Christopher Ochoa often think he’s a quiet per- hugged his mother, Dora. It was a day he thought would never come. “I had pretty much given son, but he’s very thought- up all hope,” he says. ful,” says Cory Tennison JD’01, who befriended a judge, who may or may not rule that Ochoa could do nothing about the Ochoa while working on his case as a injustice has been done. past, but he had been given back his UW law student. “He’s intelligent and a “There’s no doubt we turn down future. After the stories were published very good listener, and those are qualities innocent people,” says Findley. “That’s or broadcast, and the celebrations sub- that will make him a good attorney.” what makes Chris’s story so remarkable.” sided, the only question left was how to Now an assistant prosecutor for a spend that future. He was determined to county near Minneapolis, Tennison talks t first, it was easy to be free, invest his time wisely. with Ochoa frequently by phone, coach- as easy as the taste of steak or Against the urgings of his mother to ing him through the cutthroat first-year the feel of blue jeans. In take things slowly, he bull-rushed back curriculum and helping him weigh the prison, Ochoa wore a uniform into life, intent on making up for lost options for his career after law school. Awith no pockets, and for a while, after time. He enrolled in accounting classes And while ostensibly that could include the day when a judge set him free, he at the University of Texas-El Paso writing wills or chasing ambulances, reveled in the simple pleasure of reaching (UTEP), hoping to add a bachelor’s to most people assume that Ochoa will ulti- for his car keys. the two associate degrees he’d earned mately bring his experiences to bear by There were interviews and press while in prison. He’d always done well in working with those accused of crimes. conferences, his life suddenly alive business classes, but he found that he no “I don’t know that he’s ever going to with engagements. After his release in longer had a taste for the subject. be able to escape criminal law, because Austin, he flew home to El Paso to At the same time, he was constantly there are going to be enormous opportu- reunite with family and friends, travel- invited to talk to justice-reform and nities for him,” Tennison says, adding that ing with two small bags and no money anti-death-penalty groups, and he found he wouldn’t rule out Ochoa ending up on in his pockets. When passengers learned the experience therapeutic. The events the other side of the courtroom, where his he was on board, they passed an airsick- helped with the bitterness, helped him perspective would make him an equitable ness bag around the plane and filled it feel that he could grow something advocate for justice. “Working on his case with five hundred dollars. Ochoa good from this empty hole in his life. has made me a better prosecutor than I understood the significance of such At UTEP, he switched into pre-law, ever could have been,” he says. “It’s my gifts. He knew others weren’t so fortu- telling himself that if he couldn’t change calling, and it could be his, too.” nate — like Danziger, who suffered a what the justice system had done to him, Like most first-year students, Ochoa devastating brain injury during a prison the next best thing would be to change has been too busy keeping up to give the fight in 1991, and, though also free, will the system. future much thought. “There’s a lot of likely spend the rest of his life under When it came time to apply to law work to be done in the justice system,” special care. schools, Ochoa says there was really Continued on page 64

SPRING 2004 35 Ochoa

Continued from page 35 JEFF MILLER he says. “The one thing I do know is that I want to help the less fortunate of soci- ety. I want to fight for the little guy.” That likely includes working for the program that freed him, perhaps as soon as next year, when the Innocence Project enrolls a new crop of second-year stu- dents. And as much as Findley and Pray take care not to burden Ochoa with expectations, they don’t deny that his experience would be a tremendous asset to the program. “Let’s just say I’d have a hard time turning him down,” says Pray. At the same time, Pray knows that going down that path would require Pray, left, and Findley now receive as many as five letters a day from inmates who Ochoa to lug along the emotional bag- believe they should be set free. The professors enlist the help of volunteers to gage of his experience — and that may review the letters and earmark those that seem worthy of more exploration. be too much to ask. Already, Ochoa has confronted occasions in classes when the occasionally have to warn him about try- time? At thirty-seven, Ochoa is older legal system presented in lectures doesn’t ing to do too much. than most of his classmates, and yet resemble the one he has encountered He allows that there are frustrations, seems younger. Prison cost him a chunk firsthand. “There is still a part of him often boiling up over discussions of due of maturity that most people spend build- that, when he reads a textbook, wants to process and criminal procedure — things ing families, careers, and wealth, and tear his hair out and say, ‘That’s not the that look perfect on paper, yet rarely play now he feels painfully behind in all of way it really is,’ ” Pray says. out that way. “Because of what I went those pursuits. When he went to sign the through, I used to be very distrustful of papers on his Madison apartment, he n a Friday afternoon last the system,” he says. “Now I’m feeling took Pray with him, worrying that ques- semester, it was contracts like I can help make a better society and tions might arise about the twelve-year that had Ochoa excited. His a better world. That’s probably not just a gap in his employment. studies in that subject had product of law school, but of my adjust- “That’s what Chris has to face every goneO well, and he was entertaining ment to society in general. I really feel day,” says Pray. Given those circum- notions about it as his chosen field. A I’m finding peace.” stances, he finds it remarkable that nei- fleeting idea, perhaps, and it probably There are always echoes. Not long ther Ochoa nor Steven Avery harbor didn’t survive the weekend. At this point, before he moved to Madison, on a Sun- resentment for the injustices done to the joy is in the possibility. day evening in Texas, he was out driving them. “They don’t see themselves as vic- Immersed in what is supposed to be a with his girlfriend, whom he met in El tims, and I think that’s extraordinary, wrenching first year, Ochoa is, by all Paso two years ago. It had been a bliss- because if it were me, I probably would accounts, having a blast. His legal battles fully normal day — church, then a stop be resentful.” are behind him — in December he settled for a burger. In a reverie, he didn’t see But when the rent bill arrived, a civil suit against the city of Austin for that a police cruiser had wheeled around Ochoa paid it happily, one of a thousand $5.3 million — and he feels ready to turn behind him. He panicked. His girlfriend daily banalities he welcomes as he coaxes his mind to a different view of the law. kept telling him nothing was going to his life back into routine. Among the new “It’s funny — they say law school is happen, that he hadn’t done anything freedoms in his life is that of choice, and really hard, but it’s changing me,” he wrong. “You don’t understand,” he said. lately he is choosing to relish the things says. “I don’t really drink much anymore, “I didn’t do anything wrong then, either.” he has, rather than those he has missed. and I’m more organized and more disci- There are episodes like that, when it’s There may come a day for extraordinary plined. I even use my planner now.” He like his mind is still doing time, and he things, but for now, it’s enough to be has been so eager to soak up the new wonders if he will ever feel truly free. ordinary. challenge of law that the bigger danger is Time supposedly heals all wounds, getting overwhelmed, and his professors but what do you do when the wound is Michael Penn MA’97 is senior editor of On Wisconsin.

36 ON WISCONSIN AS DOCTOR TO THE ELITE ATHLETES OF THE DOG WORLD, MARGARET TERHAR DVM’93 DEALS WITH COLD, KIDS, AND A PACK OF CONTROVERSY.

BY “They’re awesome,” she exclaims to through woods to Twin Bears camp and CANDICE GAUKEL ANDREWS ’77 her patient. “Looks like they haven’t seen back. It’s often considered a proving a lot of snow.” ground for the annual adult Yukon PHOTOS BY Although Terhar isn’t a podiatrist, Quest, which is held a week later and PATRICK J. ENDRES looking at feet takes up a lot of her time. touted as the toughest dog sled race in In fact, her patients usually have four of the world. them. Today, on this February Friday in Like the more famous Iditarod held “Alright, handsome. Fairbanks, Alaska, she’s addressing Bris- in March every year, the Yukon Quest tol, a pure Siberian Husky who’ll be run- covers more than a thousand miles. Let’s see your feet.” ning in the Junior Yukon Quest dog sled However, while the Iditarod starts in It may not be the best opening line race that starts tomorrow. Anchorage and ends in Nome, the Quest to ensure you won’t be spending Satur- The junior race is for mushers four- runs between Fairbanks and Whitehorse day night alone, but it sure works for teen to seventeen years old and runs 120 in the Yukon, making it an international Margaret Terhar. miles along the Chena River and race. The Quest winds up three Alaskan

36 ON WISCONSIN ©PHOTOS BY PATRICK J. ENDRES/ALASKAPHOTOGRAPHICS.COM

mountain summits — Rosebud, Eagle, But on this twenty-five-degrees- Margaret Terhar says that being at the and American — and over King below Friday, a day before the start of starting line of her first race “was enough to bring tears to my eyes. Lines of twelve dogs, Solomon’s Dome in Canada, traveling the Junior Yukon Quest, foot care is as banging in their harnesses, barking and through some of the most spectacular important for a 120-mile race as it is for anxious to go. It was the greatest thrill.” geography on the North American conti- next week’s thousand-miler. And with nent. And all in the coldest month of fourteen registered teams with ten dogs ued as head veterinarian for that race. the year. each, that’s 560 feet. “I’m really looking forward to working Says Terhar DVM’93, “Fairbanks Terhar’s current post as trail veteri- with the juniors this year,” she said is on the Chena River, and the Iditarod narian on the Junior Yukon Quest before the start of the race preparations. mushers will tell you the river portion follows her previous positions on adult “These are the up-and-coming mushers. of a race is always the coldest. Every races. In 1999, she was trail veterinarian These kids choose the dogs, they train musher I talk to says, ‘Oh, you’re going on the Iditarod; in 2000 she worked as a the dogs, they feed the dogs. The rap- to the Quest? When I was at the Yukon rookie doctor on the Yukon Quest; and port they have with them is awesome. Quest, it was fifty below!’ ” then for the next three years, she contin- It’s a great opportunity for me to work

SPRING 2004 37 smack dab in the mid- themselves,” she counters. “It does not dle of a controversy. behoove you to treat your dogs poorly if When Terhar came you are a musher. You will not do well. to Madison to make a Any musher who’s ever been parked on presentation on her the trail because the team was ticked off Yukon Quest experi- will tell you — you can’t make your dogs ences for the School of run. If they don’t want to go, they won’t.” Veterinary Medicine’s In fact, says Terhar, just two years twentieth anniversary ago, a team decided to stop a hundred last September, her miles from the finish of a race. “That was appearance drew criti- it,” she says. “The musher couldn’t do cism from the Sled anything. I would encourage anyone Dog Action Coalition, an animal-rights group “The greatest proponents that condemns dog racing and the condi- for sled dog welfare, next tions under which sled to the veterinarians — or dogs typically live. One of the problems maybe even before the groups such as the veterinarians — are the Sled Dog Action Coalition have with mushers themselves. It racing is that it forces does not behoove you to dogs to run for miles in extreme temperatures. treat your dogs poorly if Paula Kislak, board you are a musher.” director for the Associ- ation of Veterinarians who thinks mushing is cruel to spend for Animal Rights, says some time with a musher. These dogs get there’s a big difference to do what they were bred to do, unlike a between making a dog lot of our pets. They spend endless hours run and letting a dog a day with their owners, unlike dogs who At the all-important pre-race checkup, Terhar tests Bristol’s run. “To let dogs run or are chained alone in their yards.” muscles for flexibility. race at their own pace But the circumstances under which is far different than sled dogs in particular are kenneled and with young people and do some real forcing them to, burdened with hundreds tethered is another sore spot for animal- educating. They’re so anxious to learn.” of pounds of equipment,” says Kislak. rights proponents. “Most dogs do not enjoy or willingly Margery Glickman, director of the Checking Up engage in such extreme exertion that may Sled Dog Action Coalition, wrote in her result in cardiac failure, pulmonary col- letter of protest regarding Terhar’s and Speaking Out lapse, urinary excretion of decomposed appearance at the university, “It is stan- At this morning’s mandatory pre-race muscle, hypothermia, and seizures. When dard for sled dogs to spend their entire checkup for the dogs, Terhar looks at dogs run freely, injuries do occasionally lives outside, tethered to metal chains Bristol’s footpads, examines her teeth occur, but they have not intentionally that can be as short as four feet long. and gums, checks her temperature, tests been put in danger.” A dog who is permanently tethered is her muscles for flexibility, listens to While Terhar says she admires any- forced to urinate and defecate where he her heart and lungs, and probes her one who looks out for the welfare of sleeps, which conflicts with his natural abdomen. “It’s very much like what I do animals, she thinks there needs to be a instinct to eliminate away from his living with my patients at my animal clinic in balance between education, understand- area. Each dog is kept in one spot and Green Bay,” she says, “with a little more ing, and stewardship. “The greatest pro- cannot interact normally with other dogs. emphasis on orthopedics.” ponents for sled dog welfare, next to the A dog kept chained in one spot for hours, But there is a bigger difference. Ter- veterinarians — or maybe even before days, months, or even years suffers har’s clinic practice has never put her the veterinarians — are the mushers immense psychological damage.”

38 ON WISCONSIN While Terhar agrees that dogs, especially Huskies, are very social, she sees the kennel yard as an extremely interactive place. “When they’re in their yards, these dogs are communicating in a lot of ways we don’t see,” she says. “So it’s not boring out there. Successful mushers do well by their dogs because that’s how they’re successful. Sled dogs eat better than a lot of pet dogs, they get more exercise, they live longer, they spend more time in the companionship of their person. For a lot of them, they have the ideal life.” Terhar acknowledges that in any realm of pet ownership, there are good owners and bad owners. “I will give you that there are mushers who are very con- scious of the welfare of their dogs, and mushers who are less conscious,” she says. “But that is no different from any other group of pet owners. As far as the actual sport goes, there are mushers who are competitive and can balance that competitiveness with the welfare of their team, and there are mushers who some- times make mistakes and who push their dogs too hard.”

Young Mushers Making mistakes is of particular concern to Glickman when it comes to junior races. She believes young people some- times lack the experience to make appro- priate decisions and that dogs may be at “These are the up-and-coming mushers,” says Terhar of the juniors. “These kids choose the increased risk when raced by juveniles. dogs, they train the dogs, they feed the dogs. The rapport they have with them is awesome.” Terhar agrees that junior mushers have less experience, but that’s what narians who have worked in at least one The ISDVMA has since compiled a the Junior Yukon Quest is all about — major sled dog race, and general mem- body of knowledge that has now become training future mushers who will have bership is open to anyone who supports the introductory seminar for Iditarod to become amateur veterinarians. the group’s objectives. participants and for other symposia “That’s the reason this race is 120 miles, Before the ISDVMA was formed every year. “We keep adding to this not one thousand,” she says. “Kids about ten years ago, there was no real body of knowledge and, in turn, dissemi- learn here. Our focus is on dog care, body of common knowledge about the nating it to the mushers, so we’re all even with the competition going on in specific problems relating to sled dogs, operating on the same premise,” explains the background.” says Terhar. “So when we’d go out on a Terhar. “We all know dogs with higher Terhar is a member of the Interna- trail, we’d be looking at these working serum levels of Vitamin E are statisti- tional Sled Dog Veterinary Medical dogs like we would a Labrador who cally more likely to finish a race, and we Association (ISDVMA), a group that came into our clinic. To some extent all know what sled dog myopathy [signs “promotes and encourages the welfare that’s okay, but in terms of orthopedic of muscle damage] looks like. We all and safety of the sled dog athlete.” problems, we weren’t as helpful as we know the best way to treat a swollen Voting membership is limited to veteri- might have been.” wrist, versus one veterinarian knowing

SPRING 2004 39 and one not, and the wrong one being at the bottle above her open palm and miles of the trip. It depends on what the checkpoint. We’re like trainers on shows him that nothing comes out. “You their goals are,” she says. the trail.” need to keep this in your pocket to keep In many cases, it’s an advantage to And part of that training, especially it from freezing,” she tells him. She drop dogs. “Often, it’s easier on the for the younger mushers, involves teach- reaches into her own pocket for oint- mushers to have fewer dogs at the end ing them to become adept at the “art ment, and proceeds to massage it into of a race because [the mushers] are tired, of bootying.” Patch’s foot. “These are your dogs, and they’ll have less to take care of,” Mandatory gear for each Junior explains Terhar. “Most dropped dogs Yukon Quest participant includes eight aren’t dropped because they fell terribly booties for each dog. While booties pro- “You know how, when ill. They may have a wrist injury, and we tect a dog’s feet from rough terrain and you’re young, you think may be able to do physical therapy to get cuts, they also diminish the dog’s traction. them through a few more checkpoints. “In icy, slick conditions, having you want to be a cowboy But if the dog starts to stiffen up, the booties on would be like running on a or an astronaut? I wanted musher has to decide what’s the best wood floor in your stocking feet,” says allocation of time: spend it nursing this Terhar. “So you have to be careful and to be a veterinarian for wrist or move on with fewer dogs.” think, When can I keep my dogs from the Iditarod. It sounded so hurting their feet, but go without booties? Because if your dogs have out there.” The Trail from booties on when they shouldn’t, they’ll Madison to Fairbanks slip and risk a musculoskeletal injury.” The path that led Terhar to embrace her Daniel,” she says. “I’m going to show controversial work with sled dogs began you how to use Vetrap to keep the at UW-Madison. In 1993, she graduated Race Injuries swelling down.” from the School of Veterinary Medicine Terhar unwinds the stretchy wrap At Saturday’s Junior Yukon Quest mid- at age twenty-four, becoming the and rewinds it to loosen the tension, pulls race checkpoint, something did go wrong youngest veterinarian in the state. a plastic baggy and scissors out of her for Patch, a lead dog who belonged to a “When I was in third grade, my pocket to fabricate a plastic patch, places fourteen-year-old musher named Daniel. grandma took my sister and me to it around Patch’s foot, and counsels At the checkpoint, a twelve-hour layover Madison,” recalls Terhar, who grew up is required, giving the veterinarians a Daniel on how to apply a wrap. Then, in De Pere, Wisconsin. “I remember chance to circulate among the teams and she makes sure Daniel’s foot ointment is feeding ducks behind the Red Gym and inquire about how the dogs are doing. returned to his pocket, not his sled bag. thinking the Memorial Union looked like “My dogs are good dogs,” says “We’ll check Patch together in a few a palace — I couldn’t believe you could Daniel. “But Patch is running sideways hours,” she tells him. eat hamburgers in there. I thought, This and looking back at me.” According to Terhar, sore wrists and is what you do when you grow up. You Terhar kneels by Patch’s side and flexor tendinitis are the most common go to Madison.” turns on her headlamp in the dwindling injuries she sees on the trail. Sometimes, During junior high, Terhar found her light of a February Fairbanks afternoon. a twelve-hour layover is all a dog needs true calling. “There was a veterinarian in She feels each of Patch’s feet, and then to recover. By the time Daniel’s layover Sturgeon Bay, Dr. Tom Cooley, who was asks Daniel to take hold of the dog’s left time had elapsed, however, the swelling on the local Green Bay news because he front foot. “See how this foot feels?” she was not down, and Patch was dropped was going to go work with the Iditarod,” asks Daniel. “Now feel this one,” she from the race. she says. “And I thought that was so says, as she puts his hand on the back- During the Junior Yukon Quest, cool. You know how, when you’re young, side of Patch’s right front foot. “The ten- each musher is allowed to start with ten you think you want to be a cowboy or an dons feel different, don’t they?” Terhar dogs and must finish with at least five. astronaut? I wanted to be a veterinarian asks him. “Yeah,” Daniel says. “I can Dogs can be “dropped” at any of three for the Iditarod. It sounded so out there.” feel the difference.” points. “ ‘Dropped dogs’ are dogs who Her first chance to actually see sled Patch has tendinitis, and to treat it, just aren’t going to continue,” explains dogs up close came during her veterinary Terhar asks Daniel to get out his foot Terhar. “Maybe they aren’t eating well, school years. One of Terhar’s classmates ointment, a mixture of hydrogenated or you never intended to take them the was from Marquette, Michigan, the start- peanut oil and rosemary, from his whole way. There are a lot of mushers ing place for the UP 200 sled dog race, pocket. Daniel admits he’s left it in his who’ll take young dogs on the trail and which runs from Marquette to Escanaba sled bag and retrieves it. Terhar squeezes want them to see only four hundred and back. With a free weekend on their

40 ON WISCONSIN hands, the two decided to go up in one spot, and I try to assess and watch the race. what they did the last two hun- “When I got there, I dred miles and what they’ll do expected Siberian Huskies — the next two hundred. It’s good beautiful dogs like you see in to have a musher help you pictures,” says Terhar. “But they assess things, especially if looked like barn dogs. Nobody you’re not experienced at what looked like anybody else. They dogs should look like at this were all mixes, and I thought, point in a race. Being a sweep, ‘These aren’t the real sled dogs.’ I had the time to take my judge That was my first exposure.” out with me to see a team and The race veterinarians say, ‘Now, what’s the advantage noticed the two students and of doing things this way?’ I spent time explaining their learned more about the sport in work. “While I wasn’t general so I could apply my vet- impressed with the dogs at erinary knowledge to be a lot first,” remembers Terhar, more helpful to the mushers.” “when they were at the starting line, it was enough to bring tears to my eyes. Lines of Making a Better twelve dogs, banging in their Veterinarian harnesses, barking and anxious Terhar believes her work with to go. It was the greatest thrill.” sled dogs has made her a bet- After that, there was no ter veterinarian in her practice turning back. in Green Bay as well. “I can “The upper Midwest has diagnose lameness better now a lot of mid-distance races,” because of my work with sled explains Terhar. “After the dogs,” she says. UP 200, I worked with the And because of what the John Beargrease Sled Dog Yukon Quest has given her, she Marathon, a 500-mile race that sees it in her future from now starts in Duluth, goes to Grand on, controversy or not. Portage, and comes back. I’d Patch, a lead dog for fourteen-year-old musher Daniel, suffered an injury during the race. Terhar’s diagnosis was tendinitis, and Patch “The second biggest dog never been so cold in all my life. was dropped halfway through. sled race in the world had That was my first experience enough confidence in me to with forty below — but not my clump of people, followed by the strag- make me a head veterinarian,” says Ter- last,” she says. glers at the end. Veteran Iditarod mush- har. “Even I didn’t have the confidence With the UP 200, the Beargrease, ers might take only eight days to finish in me they had.” Since she had worked and the Grand Portage Passage — a the race, while rookies could take as long for good head veterinarians at other more recent 300-mile race — under her as two weeks. races, she was able to put together a belt, Terhar felt she was qualified for the “With three veterinarians at each veterinary program from pieces she had Iditarod. She applied and was accepted. checkpoint, two will get pulled out to learned from them. “There are a lot of “There are a lot of differences go to another one when the majority of people I met on the Iditarod that I’d like between a 500-mile race and a 1,000-mile teams have passed through,” explains to see again,” says Terhar, “but my heart race,” says Terhar. “The Iditarod is a Terhar. “As a rookie, I was the sweep remains at the Quest. In many ways, leapfrog. They have about twenty check- and left the checkpoint last.” But that it’s a grassroots race. The footprints of points, and they’re only air accessible. worked to her advantage, because individuals are very visible.” Typically, a race veterinarian will see checkpoints typically have a judge, and And footprints are something Dr. three of them.” race judges usually have a lot of mush- Terhar knows a lot about. Approximately thirty-five veterinari- ing experience. It’s an opportunity to ans fly out before the start of the race to pick the brains of a real musher. be in position for the first teams that go “I know dog physiology,” says Terhar. Candice Gaukel Andrews ’77 hears the patter of through. Usually, with sixty total teams, “But I need to really understand what the numerous furry feet at her home. She lives with four veterinarians will see a two- or three-day mushers are going through out there. I sit rescued racing greyhounds and three cats.

SPRING 2004 41 42 ON WISCONSIN SPENCER WALTS

t was news I could easily have skipped. When John Baumgaertner ’01 contacted On Wisconsin Ijust to tell us he was an average Joe, I came close to ignoring him. Many of my colleagues certainly did. John Baumgaertner is average, I told one of them. “Why should we care?” she asked. I dunno, I admitted. But secretly I thought, Why not? I’ve never liked On Wisconsin’s prejudice toward the outstanding at the expense of the average. Just look at our alumni news section. It’s full of notes about prizes and promotions: discoverer of the cure To make his life less ordinary, to this, first human to walk on the surface of that. It can be depressing to those of us who inhabit the vast one average Badger turned to middle of the bell curve. reality TV. And others are So I looked into Baumgaertner and discovered that he isn’t your run-of-the-mill average Joe. Rather, eager to share the experience. he’s one of sixteen men selected by the NBC televi- sion network to appear on a reality program of that title. Immediately my mind grasped the implication: television, America’s arbiter of truth, was using its By John Allen considerable resources to collect the most everyday

42 ON WISCONSIN people and determine which of them was Clearly, the collegiate crowd has a After four episodes, she eliminated the averagest of all, the epitome of typi- taste for reality dating shows, and in him. cality, the absolute middle on the scale of Wisconsin, that taste is particularly “A lot of people think that the mediocrity. acute. According to Jill Genter ’85 of emotions on the show are unwarranted,” Of course, I was wrong. WKOW-TV — the ABC network’s Baumgaertner says. “But they’re real. Madison affiliate — Wisconsin is the It’s kind of like being at summer camp. highest-rated state for The Bachelor, the You’re flung in there not knowing any- It turns out that Average Joe was just a body, and you’re isolated. You can’t call new form of reality dating show. The Mom or anybody. It makes for premise was this: a beauty queen (Miss intense relationships — intense Missouri USA 2002) and former NFL and frustrating.” cheerleader named Melana Scantlin It’s understandable to doubt spent six weeks selecting her ideal match the sincerity of reality-show emo- from a pool of sixteen “average” men tion, however. Each episode of (described, perhaps ungenerously, by PHOTO COURTESY NBC (3) Average Joe ended with a disclaimer: the Detroit Free Press as “a bunch of “Participants may have consulted geeks, dorks, shorties, fatties, and los- with producers regarding their ers”). Episodes aired during November choices and decisions; however, all and December, and each week the decisions are made solely by the par- average Joes would face off in a series ticipants.” Furthermore, most of the of physical challenges (golf, rock cast had at least a little contact with climbing, basketball) for the opportu- the entertainment world — including nity to spend time alone with Scantlin. Baumgaertner. At the end of each show, she told one or Before joining the show, he was liv- more of the fellows to get lost. It was sort ing in Los Angeles, working as a direc- of like high school — a seemingly endless tor’s assistant on a promotional video. series of gym classes in which everyone At a Web site called craigslist.org, he dreams of dating the cheerleader. discovered a notice that NBC was look- Everyone who’s anyone knows the ing for extroverts to try out for parts on show was like that — and by everyone a program called Life of the Party. The who’s anyone, I mean TV-watching Ameri- announcement made him curious. cans between the ages of eighteen and king of the genre. It doesn’t seem too “They asked for headshots,” he says, forty-nine. The composite of their opin- great a stretch of logic to guess that UW- “and they said models and actors need ion is just about the only average Holly- Madison students are the ideal average not apply. Well, the only people who wood really cares about — that’s the viewers that Average Joe was aiming at. have headshots are models and actors.” crowd that advertisers most desire. Though Baumgaertner had a little Consider this: for five weeks, Average acting experience, it was far from profes- Joe consistently scored lower overall Measuring Up sional. He’d appeared in dramatic pro- ratings than its major network rivals, It’s not easy being average. Before John ductions at the UW, but he hadn’t been Monday Night Football on ABC and CSI: Baumgaertner could be known nation- a theater major, and he’d done no acting Miami on CBS. But after the show’s final wide for his lack of outstanding qualities, since graduation. “It’s so tough out here,” airing, NBC gloated that “Average Joe he first had to suffer. he says. “Hollywood is a machine built dominated its two-hour time period in all During his time on the show, he for crushing dreams.” key adult and adult-female demograph- played basketball and was bullied, sang He decided to go to the audition to ics, outperforming ABC’s second-place in German and was mocked, played polo make contacts among the program’s football telecast by 44 percent.” In total and fretted. He entered a movie trivia production crew, who might help him viewers, Average Joe was the eighth-high- quiz and bombed out. He was caught on find future behind-the-scenes work. He est-rated program that week. Monday film complaining and even crying. (“Let submitted a picture of himself, and was Night Football was tenth, separated by me clear this up,” he insisted to me. “I chosen to participate from perhaps a fewer than 300,000 households out of cried once. People said I cried like three thousand applicants. Told that he would about 24 million. The “dominating” dif- times, but it only happened once.”) He be secluded for a period that might run ference is that Average Joe’s audience was dated Scantlin once, kissed her once, as long as six weeks, he asked for time heavily weighted toward the “key” eight- and talked about it endlessly, proclaim- off. His boss told him, more or less, to een-year-old end of the adult scale. ing that he was falling in love with her. take as many days as he needed.

SPRING 2004 43 Decision time: “To tell the truth,” she said, “when I Scantlin gives Baumgaertner the heard that, I kind of hoped he’d gradu- boot. Although he ated from Eau Claire. He isn’t exactly was in competition what we mean when we talk about people with the other average Joes, using their education in different ways.” Baumgaertner says But away from Bascom Hill, the that it was just as average Badger was less disdainful. difficult to survive an elimination. According to the Coalition for a TV-Free “With each elimina- America (which clearly has its work cut tion, I felt I was losing a friend.” out), the typical American watches more than four hours of television a day — thirteen years out of an average lifespan — and Madisonians are no different. The UW loves its reality TV, and the shows love the UW in return. In the closing months of 2003, such programs as The Bachelor, The Real World, and elimiDATE all came to Madison to hold auditions. In dens and common rooms across “I lost my job,” Baumgaertner says. campus, Average Joe fans met to watch the Not until he and his average col- show in cells — TV guerrillas avoiding leagues were removed to the shooting the notice of Madison’s intellectual police. location — a resort in Cathedral City, One such cell gathered in a duplex on near Palm Springs, California — were Mifflin Street. There, a fluid crowd of they told that they’d been chosen not between eight and twenty students, most so much for their exceptional person- of them women, met devoutly to follow alities as for their unexceptional looks. Baumgaertner’s exploits — though not “It wasn’t hard to figure out, once necessarily to cheer him on. you saw the cast of characters,” “I tried to support John [Baumgaert- Baumgaertner says. “You’d have to be ner] at first,” says Nancy Luedke x’04. kind of dumb not to realize.” “He’s from here, and my boyfriend kind of Still, Baumgaertner maintains that knew him. But he was just one of the most the show revealed some of the partici- pathetic people on the show. One date pants’ less desirable qualities. Though he’s produced few tangible benefits for his with her, and he says he’s in love? I just “a self-proclaimed geek,” he says his geeki- career — but high hopes for future work wanted to shake him. He’s too sad — like ness was enhanced for television. Through either in front of or behind the camera. he’s been hurt in his past or something.” most of the program, for instance, Baum- Still, Baumgaertner describes the That opportunity to play amateur gaertner was shown wearing glasses with experience as “really good, really positive, psychologist is one of the most appealing thick, black frames. “Actually, I almost if not always comfortable.” He says he aspects of shows like Average Joe, says never wear them,” he says, “except at became friends with most of his castmates, night and when I’m driving. I happened and his appearances have resulted in a few Jacqueline Vinson, a doctoral candidate to drive to the audition, so I kept wearing gigs for his band, The Baum Squad. “Now in communication arts and part of UW- them on the show.” I’m recognized in the street,” he says. Madison’s small community of serious tel- Baumgaertner survived four weeks evision scholars. Her dissertation analyzes — longer than thirteen of his compan- the commoditization of romance in reality ions, but not long enough to get the girl. Analysis dating shows, and she regularly followed After he was bounced, he was sworn to It can be terrible, being typical. When Joe and discussed it with grad school col- secrecy. He’d signed a contract promising I first heard about Baumgaertner, I leagues Ron Becker and Jennifer Fuller. not to reveal the show’s finale — or face a asked a university administrator what “It’s funny that it’s such a guilty million-dollar penalty. The network also she thought of having graduated such a pleasure,” says Vinson. “We tend to requested that he not contact any mem- signally average alumnus. She asked, justify why we watch them, but they’re ber of the cast or production crew until “Why should we be interested in him?” titillating and fun. They present a norm the show’s entire run was complete. By I dunno, I admitted. Why not? He’s a for private, intimate relationships. And the end of the year, the program had UW graduate. there’s something therapeutic about the

44 ON WISCONSIN confessional segments, when the charac- She could have been in Scantlin’s place. career into a television appearance. ters talk directly to the camera and Several different reality dating shows “People make stupid decisions, decisions explain their actions.” wanted her to bare her soul, if not more. they’ll regret later, when they think they Average Joe, says Becker, “was really Willowy and blond, Van Berkel has might get a little fame,” she says. “Some- some amazing television. It displayed the look that Hollywood desperately times I think my whole generation a whole range of masculinity, and the wants America to want. A model since her doesn’t stand a chance.” ways in which it represented gender were high school days, she’s appeared in maga- intriguing. I mean, John made it almost to zines such as Seventeen, though she tried to the end, and he was geekier than most.” keep her work quiet while she was at the But Baumgaertner is far from the only Being a television scholar demands UW. “People can be catty,” she says. Badger of his generation to grasp at real- sacrifice. All three graduate students In 1999, the show Baywatch — a ity show fame. Last December, when log long hours before the tube — fictional representation of the glamorous The Bachelor came to Madison to audition Becker says he typically puts in up lives of California’s crime-fighting life- new bachelorettes, there was no shortage to six hours a day. (“Thank God for guards — was looking for new talent and of young women eager to take their shot. TiVo,” he says.) But insight into the sent scouts to campuses across the coun- WKOW-TV hosted the event at the American psyche isn’t all they got out try to conduct “Baywatch Searches.” Van Great Dane Brew Pub on East Doty, of watching Average Joe. “I’m a huge Berkel tried out and was judged to have and Jill Genter, who coordinated it, fan,” Fuller admits. She discussed each the right look. Her reward was a trip to expected a turnout of at least two hun- episode at length with her friends, and Hollywood for an audition, and though dred. It’s safe to assume these women when that wasn’t enough, she joined the she didn’t end up on the show, she did were not coming to compete for the affec- vast community of Joe faithful on the catch the eye of producers for a new tions of a former director’s assistant in a Internet, where viewers have a safely reality dating show called elimiDATE. goatee and Buddy Holly specs — an aver- anonymous place to share their psycho- The show’s premise is that a participant age Joe like Baumgaertner. They wanted logical hypotheses. At NBC’s official puts a collection of attractive members of ... well, I suppose a relatively wealthy, rel- Average Joe message board, a viewer the opposite sex through a series of titil- atively hunky specimen like those fea- calling herself “JOHNrocksTMS” lating situations to determine which is his tured on earlier editions of The Bachelor, found Baumgaertner “genuine and car- or her dream date. Van Berkel, who had though it’s hard to be certain. At the time, ing,” while another viewer, “iluvjohn,” a boyfriend at the time, declined. no bachelor had been announced. thought he was “complex, analytical, Later, she was contacted by Blind Date, At four o’clock, when the auditions and intellectual” and admired his deter- a similar program. She turned down that began, the initial pickings were slim — mination to bring himself “closure.” opportunity, too. In 2003, NBC asked tall and slim, mostly, though some were The majority of viewers were less Van Berkel to audition for Meet the Folks, short and slim or midsize and slim or kind. “Extremely strange” was the ver- in which potential dates are evaluated by busty and slim. They stood in line and dict of viewer “broccoli,” who suggested the lead participant’s parents. Van Berkel waited for the opportunity to answer a that Scantlin “get a restraining order was tempted by the offer, but her folks few questions posed by Tina “Fabulous” against that stalker.” Viewer “smokin- weren’t, so she passed. Later, the network Pasan, a former Bachelor participant, and comb” suggested that Baumgaertner be asked her to try out for a new program Johnny Gaines, an ABC casting direc- put on Strattera, a medication designed called Around the World in Eighty Dates. She tor: What’s your name? Where are you to treat hyperactive children and adults. went, hoping the show would mean a free from? Why do you like Madison? Why Baumgaertner doesn’t entirely appre- trip overseas. do you want to be on The Bachelor? ciate the insights. “If I did something like “They asked me a lot of really per- I cornered one — law student Olivia this again,” he says, “I probably wouldn’t sonal questions,” she says. “ ‘What’s your Schmitz ’01 — as she left the stage and be so free with my emotions.” craziest sexual experience? Have you asked how she’d answered that last ques- ever been with a woman? Have you ever tion. “Well,” she said, sizing me up for a Rounding out the Curve had an STD?’ ” Again, she turned the long moment. Then, all in one breath, she network down. “They seemed to have the said, “I’m looking for a relationship and I The promise of Internet fans isn’t enough idea that dating equals embarrassment, couldn’t find one in the traditional way so to entice some Badgers to undergo their and I don’t want to be made a fool of.” I thought why not try The Bachelor?” peers’ analysis. “I felt bad for those Still the calls kept coming, and for I dunno, I said. Why not? guys on Average Joe,” says Katie Van a while, Van Berkel changed her voice Berkel ’03, “and the show made Melana mail message to say, “If you’re from a [Scantlin] look even worse.” reality show, don’t call back.” Although John Allen, associate editor of On Wisconsin, Van Berkel’s opinion carries a little Van Berkel doesn’t regret passing up is not a reality TV addict, he does admit to being stunned that Dr. Marlena Evans is the Salem Stalker on Days of more weight than those of typical TV fans. the opportunity to leverage her modeling Our

SPRING 2004 45 SPORTS

Feeding the Badgers ‘Chef Herb’ sets the table for athletes’ success

Last year, when incoming men’s meal of lasagna, TEAM PLAYER hockey coach Mike Eaves ’78 green beans, Dan Boeser decided that his team could barbecued afford to drop a few pounds, chicken, mashed Five things to know about men’s he didn’t turn to the Atkins diet. potatoes, and hockey player Dan Boeser: He turned to Chef Herb. yogurt. Now, he’s • A senior from Savage, Min- Herbert Hackworthy, leaning over a

nesota, he has a reputation MICHAEL FORSTER ROTHBART (2) executive chef for the UW ath- menu, preparing for helping others. letic department, helped Eaves for an almost • Like helping others score: in turn his charges into a lean, 180-degree shift four years of bolstering the mean (and, sometimes, fighting) to filling the UW’s defensive line, Boeser machine. After twenty-three custom orders of has sparked the offense, too, years cooking in country clubs, the luxury suites racking up more than fifty the man everyone calls “Chef upstairs. (The career assists. Herb” took over the kitchens at concourse con- UW’s Kohl Center two years ago. cessions stands, • Or helping others play their Now, he’s as integral to the on the other best: this year, coaches success of UW athletes as their hand, are run by named him one of three trainers and advisers. vendors.) captains for the Badgers. Chef Herb oversees the care Some suite He wore the coveted C on and feeding of the Badger teams orders are his jersey in December. who practice and compete at the predeter- • Or just helping others: Kohl Center, a responsibility that mined, but before his junior year, Boeser puts him in direct consultation customers was diagnosed with non- with coaches and trainers. Work- may ask for Hodgkin’s lymphoma. After Herb Hackworthy, ing out of a large industrial right, oversees a staff an extra meeting many young cancer kitchen inside the arena, he and known for its efficiency homemade sufferers during his treat- his staff prepare meals for Badger — and its homemade pizza. pizza or a plate of ment, Boeser vowed to athletes before all home games potato skins — a favorite. stay involved. Now fully and at least one or two practices It’s a big job — and it’s about Before game time, the kitchen recovered, he has organized per week. Hackworthy’s job is to to get bigger. In January, new will turn out dozens of pizzas, several visits to the ensure that those meals are kitchens will open in the reno- deli platters, and even plates of UW Children’s healthy and provide vated Camp Randall Stadium, at prime rib. Hospital, energy, and that they which point Hackworthy will take Hackworthy has plenty of where he fulfill the specific goals over food preparation for the help. With a rotating staff that and his the coaches have for football team, currently handled includes a sous chef, a chef who teammates athletes’ diets. by the Wisconsin Union. works with each of the teams, have spent Feeding the UW’s And the athletes are only and as many as eighty student time with athletes only begins with one group of customers. There’s employees, the kitchen is geared those battling nutrition. They’re also cus- another audience Hackworthy for high-volume production. the disease. tomers, and any chef knows caters to — literally. Once everyone has assignments, The second part of his job • That work has made him the customer should always be the chorus of bangs, clanks, comes on game nights. About one of five national finalists happy. Hackworthy never serves splashes, and sizzles starts up. an hour before the doors open for the College Hockey a team the same meal twice in a “We turn our hats around, and to the general public, you’ll find Humanitarian Award, to be month, for example. And never we have a whole different oper- Hackworthy way down in the presented at April’s NCAA will he repeat a mistake he ation,” says Hackworthy. “By six Kohl Center, past the parked Frozen Four. The Badgers are made his first year on the job, or six-thirty, we’re humpin’.” Zamboni machines and stored still hoping to qualify as a when in a rush he served Standing in the middle hockey goals, behind a door team for that championship sausage to hockey players in a of the culinary commotion, marked by a large Bucky Badger tourney — and you can bet pre-game meal. wearing a double-breasted wearing a chef’s hat. By that Boeser will do anything he “I got a lot of e-mail the next white uniform topped by a time, he’s already fed the men’s can to help get them there. day,” he says. “Thank goodness Badger cap, Hackworthy keeps they won.” basketball team a pre-game watch over it all, but he doesn’t

48 ON WISCONSIN SPORTS

Fresh off winning the individual Big Ten championship race, cross waste time peering over shoul- Miracle Déjà Vu country runner Simon Bairu x’06 ders at every moment. Instead, finished ninth overall at the NCAA he lends a hand working the Mark Johnson ’94 is again Peter-Kaiser, a college hockey meet to lead the Badgers to a deep fryer. The kitchen, he scoring goals against the Soviet player making his movie debut. promising finish. The young team explains matter-of-factly, is a Union in the Olympics. Only this The cast of Miracle collabo- finished behind only national team, and tonight there’s more time, the shots are coming on rated with Johnson and other champion Stanford for the second frying to do than normal, and so the big screen. members of the 1980 team to year in a row. Behind Bairu were that’s the hat he’s wearing. Johnson is one of the main make the movie authentic. “I two UW freshmen — Chris Solin- The kitchen fills with long characters in Disney’s new spoke to my actor a number of sky, in fifteenth (best among all rows of homemade pizzas, movie Miracle, based on the times during the filming,” John- freshmen at the meet), and Tim hundreds of cheese curds and inspirational story of the 1980 son says. “You could hear the Nelson, in sixty-first. UW’s jalapeño poppers, and even a U.S. Olympic hockey team’s excitement in the actors’ voices.” women’s team also earned a special-order tray of sushi — gold medal run. A former UW Back in Madison, Johnson trip to the NCAA championships, although Hackworthy admits he center and current head coach is going for the gold on the finishing twenty-sixth overall. ordered out for that. (Less waste of the Badger women’s hockey bench, too. At press time, the that way, he says.) Once the team, Johnson scored two goals Badger women’s team was Wisconsin’s temporary loss turned action begins upstairs, it slows in in the fateful “miracle on ice” ranked fourth in the nation and into a huge gain for United States the kitchen, with only a few on- 4-3 victory over the heavily was making a strong push for hockey, as four members of the the-fly food orders from suites favored Soviet Union team and the program’s first-ever appear- UW men’s hockey team helped to prepare. That gives the chef was named the championship’s ance in the NCAA Frozen Four earn a historic gold medal for the an opportunity to walk around most valuable player. In the championships, which will take U.S. National Junior squad at an the arena, checking in on suites movie, which opened in Febru- place March 26–28. international competition in and even popping in to watch ary, Johnson is played by Eric — Erin Hannan Hueffner ’00 Helsinki, Finland. UW Coach Mike the Badgers sink a couple buck- Eaves took time away from the ets. As he wanders, he con- collegiate season to lead the U.S. stantly passes people who greet team, which included Badger him with a fond, “Hey, Chef!” IN SEASON INFORMATIONUW SPORTS (2) freshmen Ryan Suter, Jeff Likens, While working so close to Track and Field and Jake Dowell. The United competitive athletics might States defeated Canada, 4-3, to strike some as the best part of The coming women’s track and field earn its first gold medal in the the job, Hackworthy admits that season will be the last for Peter twenty-eight-year history of the he doesn’t watch as much of Tegen, the only coach the program International Ice Hockey Federa- the games as some may expect. has ever known. Tegen led both track tion’s junior championships. “It’s still a job,” he says, “and by and cross country for thirty years, a the time we’re winding down span that included two national cham- For a stretch in winter, no here in the middle of the game, pionships in cross country, thirty-nine member of the Badger wrestling I’m ready to go home.” Big Ten team titles, and 225 confer- team was hotter than Tom Clum. But none of it takes away ence champions in individual events. Wrestling in the 125-pound from what he considers one of Look for at least that last number to weight class, the redshirt sopho- the best working atmospheres climb during his final campaign. more defeated opponents ranked anyone could imagine. He says Circle the dates: May 8, the Wisconsin Twilight (UW’s only home- third, eighth, and eleventh nation- coaches and staff couldn’t be track appearance of the year); May 14–16, Big Ten championships, ally in consecutive matches to nicer, and he enjoys the chance in West Lafayette, Indiana; June 9–12, NCAA outdoor champi- earn a place among the top ten to see them out of the media onships, Austin, Texas. wrestlers in his weight class. spotlight. One day, he recalls, The Badgers, ranked as high as men’s basketball coach Bo Ryan Keep an eye on: Hilary Edmondson x’05 and Linsey Blaisdell twelfth in the nation during the came zipping into the kitchen x’05 appear to be the next in UW’s long line of great 1,500-meter season, competed at the Big Ten on a Segway scooter, looking for runners. Both were qualifiers for the NCAA championship meet Championships March 6–7, after a quick bite. last year, and either could extend the UW’s incredible streak of press time. “Hey, Chef!” he called out. seventeen straight Big Ten titles in the event. Hackworthy got him a sandwich in no time. Think about this: Tegen has coached seventy-one All-Americans — — Josh Orton x’04 more than any other coach in UW history — and three Olympians.

SPRING 2004 49 WAA NEWS

Get Connected Online career services get a boost.

UW grads now have an inside Service, alumni club chapters are Access isn’t available to the gen- edge when it comes to job seek- recruiting volunteers for WAA’s eral public, because employers ing, thanks to two WAA career online career program, SEARCH. who post to this job board are initiatives. This April, Badgers Through the career resource, looking only for UW grads. across the country will be com- alumni can help students and But Badger Access doesn’t peting to see who can give more fellow graduates navigate the aid just job seekers — it helps career advice on behalf of their working world. WAA will honor those looking to hire, as well. “It’s alma mater. As part of WAA’s the alumni club with the most a great resource for employers,” National Month of Volunteer new SEARCH volunteers at the says Amy Manecke ’97, WAA’s end of the competition. career and outreach specialist. “In this job market, it’s not “Now they can easily find quali- just what you know, it’s who fied UW alumni for job openings.” you know,” says Paula Bonner Powered by monsterTRAK, MS’68, WAA president and an affiliate of monster.com,

JEFF MILLER CEO. “The national SEARCH Badger Access is also available competition will really broaden to UW students looking for the career network for Badgers internships or just seeking career nationwide.” advice for life after college. For And SEARCH isn’t the only those who’ve decided on a way for UW grads to make a degree but not a career path, red-and-white career connection Badger Access offers a “major- — WAA recently launched Bad- to-career converter” tool that ger Access, an online career searches job opportunities by tool. Alumni can post resumes, academic major. search job listings, get advice For more details on from fellow job hunters on SEARCH, Badger Access, message boards, and even prac- and WAA’s other online tice interview skills with online career resources, visit quizzes. The best part is, it’s free. uwalumni.com/career. Unlike many job boards, Badger — Erin Hannan Hueffner ’00

Campus’s Creek Lane is gone, and Easterday Lane has risen in its place. The name change honors Barney Easterday (second from right), dean emeritus of the School of Veterinary Medicine and recipient of a 2003 UW-Madison Distinguished Alumni Award. WAA President and Switch Your Service, Support WAA CEO Paula Bonner, left, joined with Daryl Buss, current dean of the veterinary school, and Chancellor John Wiley for the raising of the Supporting alumni programming is now as easy as pushing a button new street sign last November. — or, rather, pushing several buttons, whenever you make a phone call. In January, WAA partnered with Arista Communications to offer a variety of residential local and long distance telephone services at competitive rates. Arista will donate a percentage of its proceeds to Please Forward! support alumni programming through WAA. To all alumni: don’t forget to keep WAA “The funding generated from Arista will benefit UW student updated on your temporary changes of scholarships, alumni lifelong learning, and career resources,” says address. While it used to be the case that Cheryl Porior-Mayhew ’86, WAA’s vice president of marketing ice and snow drove some of you south and communications. “Signing up for the Arista service is a simple, each winter, we now know that many one-time decision that can provide long-term support for your alumni experience short-term changes in alumni association.” address for a variety of reasons. For all Arista also offers phone services to Badger business owners. address changes, including seasonal ones, For details about both residential and business plans, visit contact [email protected] or uwalumni.com/arista/. Or, to sign up immediately, call Arista write Address c/o WAA, 650 North Lake Communications at (888) 349-7108 for residential service or Street, Madison, WI 53706. (800) 509-0045 for business service. — E.H.H.

50 ON WISCONSIN WAA NEWS

Kite Tale WAA and Union open a window on Madison festival.

In February, Madison’s Kites on people attended the five-hour best spot for viewing — was Ice festival brought its endless reception, which provided food undergoing renovations, so the strings of streamers to Lake and drinks, prizes, and a chance festival’s organizers decided to Mendota for the first time in to watch the kites from a warm relocate Kites on Ice to Union its six years. And WAA and the spot, sheltered from the twenty- Pier on Lake Men- Wisconsin Union gave their mile-per-hour winds. dota, directly in members an exclusive window WAA and the Union found front of WAA’s cam- on this bit of history — literally. themselves in a particularly kite- pus home. During Kites on Ice, the friendly position this year. Since “We wanted to Union and WAA offered a joint the festival began in 1999, it host this reception member-appreciation reception had been held across the isth- to honor our mem- in the Alumni Lounge of the Pyle mus on Lake Monona. But this bers for the unwa- Center, overlooking the shore year, the Monona Terrace con- vering support and of Lake Mendota. Nearly 1,700 vention center — formerly the generous contribu- tions they’ve offered both organ-

BRENT NICASTRO (2) izations over the years,” says Adrienne Rotzoll ’00, WAA’s mem- bership and market- ing specialist. “It was a terrific opportunity for us and the Union to combine resources and thank some of the UW’s most loyal alumni.” WAA and the Union are also planning joint events to take place during Alumni Weekend, May 7 and 8. — Maiyaz Al Islam x’05 CYNTHIA WILLIAMS

Raphael Reiss (far right), son of Richard Adelman MS’84, gets a Bucky tattoo, while the furry Badger himself greets a couple of young guests at the Kites on Ice member appreciation reception. WAA and the Wisconsin Union jointly sponsored the February event.

Survey Says ...

You don’t need a megaphone to get your voice heard on campus — not if you’re a WAA member, at least. Last fall, UW-Madison and WAA conducted an alumni survey called U Review, polling association members about the UW’s performance in such areas as education, research, and outreach. The data are now in, and Chancellor John D. Wiley MS’65, PhD’68 will offer his response in the summer 2004 issue of the Insider, WAA’s member magazine. U Review will be Chancellor John Wiley, right, meets with Pornchai Mongkhonvanit an annual benefit for WAA members. If you aren’t already receiving MBA’83, the president of Siam University, in Thailand. Last January, Wiley spent eleven days in Asia, where he met with alumni and the Insider and you’d like to join the dialogue, call (888) WIS-ALUM helped inaugurate a new chapter, the Wisconsin Alumni Society of (947-2586) or visit uwalumni.com for membership information. Singapore.

SPRING 2004 51 ALUMNI NEWS

Compiled by Paula Wagner poetry, and “Swimming aspects of the educational Apfelbach ’83 Upstream” placed third in the arena: she’s been a teacher, nonfiction category. The national counselor, school psychologist, What’s Up? event is sponsored by the UW’s and administrator, and following early years Division of Con-tinuing Studies. her 1992 retirement, she spent Please send us news of your recent Thank you to Gruen’s son-in-law, eleven years as a volunteer accomplishments, transitions, A sculptor and former student Bill Nagler ’77 of Germantown, English teacher at Hwa Nan of Alexander Meiklejohn’s Tennessee, for letting us know. Women’s College in China. and other significant life happenings, Experimental College at the UW, Jodie (Joan) Zeldes Now back home in Orange, but remember that less — especially Professor Emeritus David Goode Bernstein ’48 received the California, Rivét remains active Parsons ’34, MS’37 has retired 2003 Miles W. Kirkpatrick in leading the International here — is truly more. You can reach from Houston’s Rice University Award for Lifetime FTC Achieve- School Psychology Association. Alumni News HQ by e-mail at and is residing in Guanajuato, ment in December. She joined If you’ve never had a moun- Mexico. His sculptures in wood, the Federal Trade Commission tain named after you, Osmund [email protected]; stone, bronze, and welded steel (FTC) in 1970, and during her Holm-Hansen PhD’54 can by fax at (608) 265-8771; are displayed throughout the U.S., most recent service as the direc- tell you what it’s like. Mount but he’s especially pleased that tor of its Bureau of Consumer Holm-Hansen in the Antarctic or by mail at Alumni News, a cast-bronze Mother and Child Protection, she led attacks on was named in honor of this Wisconsin Alumni Association, was recently accepted into the fraudulent Web operations and graduate’s extensive, ongoing identity theft. Bernstein is now studies on that continent and in 650 North Lake Street, permanent collection of the UW’s Elvehjem Museum. Parsons would with the law firm of Bryan Cave the Southern Ocean, beginning Madison, WI 53706-1410. enjoy hearing from fellow Badgers in its Washington, D.C., office. in 1959. Since 1963, he’s been “My career has been a research oceanographer at We lack the space to print every c/o Susan Crawford, 5804 Olney Street, Duluth, MN 55807, or at exciting, both as a mentor and Scripps Institution of Oceanogra- item we receive, but we do [email protected]. a physician,” reflects Sheldon phy in La Jolla, California. Burchman ’49, who recently The 2003 Seventh Genera- appreciate hearing from you. retired from the Department of tion Research Award has gone 40s–50s Anesthesiology in the Pain Clinic to Bill Liebhardt ’58, MS’64, at Milwaukee’s Medical College PhD’66, who spent many years In November, the online Wall of Wisconsin. The emeritus at UC-Davis as the director of Please send death notices and Street Journal hosted a discus- professor notes that his work to the University of California’s address, name, phone, and e-mail sion with Silver Spring, Mary- found the first hospital-based Sustainable Agriculture Research land, resident John Withers hospice at St. Mary’s Hospital in and Education Program. The changes to Alumni Changes, MPh’41, an African-American Milwaukee was among his most award is sponsored by the Wisconsin Alumni Association, army lieutenant who led an rewarding. Burchman is now Center for Rural Affairs and the 650 North Lake Street, all-black supply convoy during affiliated with UW-Milwaukee’s Consortium for Sustainable Agri- World War II. Violating army College of Nursing. culture Research and Education. Madison, WI 53706-1410; orders, he allowed his men to “I have always worn two Now retired in Davis, Liebhardt e-mail them to hide two young concentration- caps: one as a musician and still works with some nonprofit camp survivors — nicknamed another as an outdoor writer,” groups that are “attempting to [email protected]; Salomon and Peewee — for says Richard Bowles MS’50 of make the planet a better place.” fax them to (608) 262-3332; more than a year. After the war, Gainesville, Florida. Involved with When in Rome, do as (Mar- Withers taught at several univer- the summer band camps estab- garet) Jeanne Barry Oelerich or call us at (608) 262-9648 sities and spent twenty-one lished by the late UW Professor ’59 does: consult a walking or toll-free at (888) 947-2586. years with the U.S. Agency for Leon Iltis, he went on to lead guide! This Glencoe, Illinois, International Development. His several bands, including that of travel writer and tour leader has Most obituary listings of WAA son eventually located Peewee, the University of Florida, and produced pocket guides about members and friends appear in and at age eighty-four, Withers has published more than one what to do and where to eat was reunited with his old friend. hundred musical pieces. Bowles, when you’re on foot in Rome, WAA’s semiannual publication Gerald Gruen ’47 of now eighty-five, has also been Paris, London, Florence, Venice, for its members, the Insider. Grafton, Wisconsin, did very well writing for Florida Sportsman or Chicago (www.walkingguides. at the fourteenth annual Writers magazine for twenty years. com). Published by Just Mar- Institute, held in Madison in July. The career of (Marion velous, the concise editions His poem “Reproductive Bette) Betts Van Liew Rivét include maps, historical time- Schemes” earned first place for MS’53 has encompassed most lines, and museum diagrams.

52 ON WISCONSIN ALUMNI NEWS

60s in additional Chicago-based entrepreneurial businesses. Part of a ‘High Purpose’ Offerings: The Collected Works of In 2003, San Francisco attor- When the Mars Spirit and Opportunity rovers landed on the Red Thayer Drake Thompson, 1951 to ney Alan Caplan ’66 was voted Planet early this year, Scott Tibbitts ’80 was one ecstatic guy. 2003 (Inter-State Printing) is an the Trial Lawyer of the Year by As president and founder of Starsys Research Corporation unusual collection indeed. Thayer the national organization Trial of Boulder, Colorado, which makes motors and actuators for (Ted) Thompson ’60 of Sedalia, Lawyers for Public Justice for space-mission vehicles, the

engineering graduate experi- TIMES-CALL PHOTOS/ RICHARD M. HACKETT Missouri, chronicles his life — litigating anti-sweatshop cases. enced “an amazing emotional including his UW years — through And, in 2002, he was voted connection to what was materials such as research papers, Appellate Lawyer of the Year in happening on Mars.” essays, Haresfoot program notes, California by California State Bar Magazine as counsel for the Starsys provided the plays, speeches, letters, poems, rovers’ temperature controls and a candidate’s position paper. plaintiff in Kasky v. Nike. Caplan is with the law firm of Bushnell, and nearly two dozen actua- The new menopause host tors, driving virtually every Caplan & Fielding. at the Web site BellaOnline for moving part. “In the fall of 2002, I made Women is Carolyn Stark Cham- “When the first pictures an unlikely return to teaching bers Clark ’64 of Minneapolis, from Mars showed our logo after a twenty-four-year hiatus, who also serves as BellaOnline’s and the NASA program director of wellness resources. during which I worked as a dairy manager said the mission At the site (www.bellaonline. farmer and newspaper editor, couldn’t have been accom- com/site/menopause), Clark among other things,” writes plished without companies offers articles, quizzes, links, and Mike O’Connell MA’66, who’s like ours, we whooped and a newsletter that covers the now an instructor at UWC- hollered,” says Tibbitts. spectrum of menopause topics. Baraboo/Sauk County. His His interest in space Sisters (Mary) Rosemarita piece “Rethinking Robert Frost” began with watching Gemini and Mercury flights and a shuttle MS’65, MFA’67 and (Mary) appeared in the November/ launch with his father, UW Emeritus Professor Theodore Carla MA’75 Huebner — two December issue of the Dart- Tibbitts ’50, MS’52, PhD’53, a horticulturist and a leader in sisters (in the biological sense) mouth Alumni Magazine. growing plants — notably potatoes — in space. who are also sisters (in the reli- The Long Island [New York] At the UW, Scott Tibbitts worked with Professor Edwin Lightfoot, now an emeritus professor of chemical engineering, gious sense) — both received the Board of Realtors named a Long taking sheep on simulated scuba dives to determine at what depth 2003 Outstanding Art Educator Beach, New York, Badger its they suffered from the bends. Higher Education Award from 2003 Realtor/Broker of the Year: After graduation, he worked for five years in nuclear the Wisconsin Art Education Neil Sterrer ’67. He’s been in the business since 1980, after weaponry for Rockwell International, but the entrepreneurial Association in October. They’ve spirit he’d possessed since grade school resurfaced. Tibbitts left been teaching at Milwaukee’s retiring from a teaching career that was crowned by a nomina- Rockwell, and, with an inventor friend, began building home Mount Mary College for thirty water heaters in a garage. tion for the 1980 New York and twenty years, respectively. Eager to get into space and high-tech fields, he convinced State Teacher of the Year award. Bob Tarrell MFA’95, an art pro- NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to use his fledgling company’s When George Antonelli fessor at Madison’s Edgewood actuator, and seventeen years ago, Tibbitts started Starsys, which MA’68 won the fifty-and-over College, received the 2003 Art now employs one hundred people. Educator of the Year Award at age category of the Duke As for projected human space exploration, he considers it a the same ceremony. University 5K race in November, “high purpose, an incredible expression of the very best of what It was a notable summer for he also set a new course record. humans are about, what they can accomplish.” — Joel H. Cohen Ed Rogan II ’65. After twenty- (We should all be so fit at age five years as the sole owner and sixty-two!) Antonelli lives and president of the Rogan Corpora- runs in Mebane, North Carolina. tion in Northbrook, Illinois, he Christopher Browning Pat Fabiano MA’68 had became its chair. He also MA’68, PhD’75, a University the pleasure of receiving an accepted a 2003 Silver Industrial of North Carolina-Chapel Hill award from Washington’s lieu- Design Excellence Award from professor of history, delivered tenant governor in October. The BusinessWeek and the Industrial the first of the George L. Mosse occasion? As the director of pre- Design Society of America for the Distinguished Lectures at UW- vention and wellness services at company’s line of soft-grip knobs Madison in 2002. Now the UW Western Washington University and handles. Rogan, whose Press has published Browning’s in Bellingham, Fabiano accepted management practices have been book based on that lecture: the Exemplary Substance Abuse lauded in the Chicago Tribune Collected Memories: Holocaust Prevention Award for the institu- and Inc. magazine, is now active History and Postwar Testimony. tion’s WE CAN Works program.

SPRING 2004 53 ALUMNI NEWS

The International Associa- The American Psychological Grinnell [Iowa] College, counters Bookmark tion for Plant Taxonomy has Association has recently honored earlier treatments of the presented its Engler Medal in several Badgers. Robert reformer’s life by drawing on Silver to Scott Mori MS’68, Gatchel MS’71, PhD’73 previously unexamined sources. PhD’74, the curator of botany received the 2004 Award for As the newly appointed Pales- at the New York Botanical Distinguished Professional Con- tinian minister of housing, Abdel Garden, for co-authoring the tributions to Applied Research. Rahman Hamad MS’72, PhD’75 Guide to the Vascular Plants of He’s a professor of psychology plans to improve and provide Central French Guiana, Part 2: at the University of Texas South- more housing, as well as develop Dicotyledons (New York Botani- western Medical Center in public-works projects. Formerly, cal Garden Press). Dallas. The roster of 2004 fel- Palestinian President Yasser Arafat Rhinebeck, New York, lows includes Rafael Klorman appointed Hamad chair of the author Scott Spencer ’69 was MA’67, PhD72, a professor of Palestinian Energy Authority, for among the five finalists in the clinical and social sciences in which he supervised the construc- Way out Here in the Middle fiction category of the fifty- psychology at the University of tion of the first electrical power (Jones Books) is Madison fourth National Book Awards Rochester [New York]; Herbert distribution station in Gaza. author John Roach ’77’s take on life. A compilation this fall, chosen for his work Heneman III MS’68, PhD’70, Best wishes to Paul Mayer of fifty-one columns that he A Ship Made of Paper (Ecco/ a UW emeritus professor of MS’72 as he serves a three- wrote for Madison Magazine HarperCollins). Shirley Hazzard’s business and a senior research year term on the board of the from 1993 to 2003, they take book The Great Fire was the associate at the UW’s Wisconsin International Housewares Asso- the form of letters to the eventual fiction-category winner. Center for Education Research; ciation. He’s the president of the magazine’s editor, who was, Washington, D.C., private Lake Geneva, Wisconsin-based at the start, Doug Moe ’79 practitioner Ellen Baker MS’74, Chaney Instrument Company, and later became the late 70s PhD’76; and Jill Fischer MS’81, a manufacturer of time and Brian Howell. The first letter PhD’85 of Winnetka, Illinois, temperature products. begins by looking at the Through her roles as the founder Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceuticals’ There can be no doubt positive side of turning forty: and executive director of the scientific liaison in neuroscience. that Sonia Parry Tyson MA’72 “I don’t have zits. I am not Milwaukee-based Endometriosis Drawing on his knowledge is devoted to teaching Spanish afraid of sex. I don’t live in Association, Mary Lou Ballweg — MD and JD degrees — and — she’s been doing it for the an apartment with nine other ’71 provides education, support, experience in both medicine and Montclair [New Jersey] Kimber- guys. My car starts.” Roach and research to help combat the law, Rick (Richard) Goodman ley Academy since 1975. Previ- ends on a somewhat more disease. Now her association ’71 served as the lead editor of ously the chair of its middle sentimental note in the final (www.EndometriosisAssn.org) Law in Public Health Practice school foreign language depart- entry, written during the has also produced Endometriosis: (Oxford University Press). He’s ment, Tyson is now creating a month he turned fifty. In The Complete Reference for also the co-director of the public Spanish program in the primary between are musings on Taking Charge of Your Health health law program at the U.S. school. Gracias to Tyson’s friend everything from home (Contemporary Books/McGraw- Centers for Disease Control and Deborah Myers Rheinstrom repairs, Christmas, ice Hill). Ballweg launched the book Prevention in Atlanta. MA’72 of Lincolnwood, Illinois, fishing, and travel to birth, in October at a Fluno Center gratitude, aging, heroes, and Aurora Health Care has a for bringing us up-to-date. event that included UW Professor honor. Roach also runs John new VP of philanthropy: Nancy We were pleased to hear David Olive and Madisonian Roach Projects, a TV and Foreman Kaufman ’71, MS’83 from Brewster, New York, author Marla Ahlgrimm ’78, the presi- video production company; of Bayside, Wisconsin. Previously a Linda Dahl Vogl ’72, who’s co-wrote the screenplay for dent of Women’s Health America. VP with the Robert Wood Johnson published (as Linda Dahl) Stormy The Straight Story, which James Dumesic ’71 isn’t Foundation, she’s been a represen- Weather (Pantheon Books); became a David Lynch film; waiting for the “hydrogen-fuel tative to the World Health Organi- Morning Glory: A Biography and created and produced economy” to arrive — he’s help- zation, and as a registered nurse, of Mary Lou Williams (University the cult cable show The ing to make it happen. Named Kaufman was nominated for the of California Press); and Come Sports Writers on TV. Author one of Scientific American’s top American Red Cross’s Nurse Hero Back, Carmen Miranda: Stories Jacquelyn Mitchard, a close fifty research leaders of 2003 in its award for her post-9/11 work. of Latin America (Xlibris Corpo- friend of Roach, penned the December issue, the UW professor The Jane Addams Hull-House ration). “I was introduced to foreword for Way out Here, of chemical and biological engi- Museum in Chicago offered the jazz while at Madison,” Vogl in which she says, “Enrich neering and his colleagues have perfect December setting for writes, “and it became one of yourself. Read this book.” developed economical, catalytic author Victoria Bissell Brown two professions, the other being methods for turning the carbohy- ’72, MA’74’s discussion of The a Latin Americanist.” drates in biomass into hydrogen Education of Jane Addams One of the chapters in White — and they’re doing it with no (University of Pennsylvania Press). Men Challenging Racism: 35 net greenhouse-gas production. Brown, who teaches history at Personal Stories (Duke University

54 ON WISCONSIN ALUMNI NEWS

Press) describes the involvement Dennis Melvin MA’76, the Publishing) — a compilation of of Rick Whaley ’72 in the city administrator of West Bend, wisdom “from the heart and Bookmark Chippewa treaty-rights solidarity Wisconsin, since 1984, recently from the hip.” The Kenlaws live work of the late 1980s and early received the 2003 International in Silver Spring, Maryland. 1990s — efforts that Whaley City/County Management Associ- The news this fall from himself wrote about in Walleye ation’s International Professional Medellín, Colombia, was that Warriors: The Chippewa Treaty Award for nurturing international Sergio Fajardo Valderrama Rights Story. He’s now a teach- relations through exchanges with MA’81, PhD’84 was elected the ing assistant at Craig Montessori its partner city, Pazardjik, Bulgaria. new mayor by a wide margin. School in Milwaukee. There’s no such thing as a Reports Tom Yuill MS’62, Anand Joglekar PhD’73 career rut for Adrienne Berg PhD’64 — who was in Medellín of Plymouth, Minnesota, has Yorinks ’77 — she’s on her third. to celebrate the veterinary distilled fifteen years’ experience Career one: professional dancer. collaboration between the UW as president of Joglekar Associ- Career two: operator of the Gal- and the Universidad de Antioquia ates — which provides training, loping Groomer dog-grooming — Fajardo is not from one of the consultation, and software to business, and the author of The traditional political parties and is implement statistical methods Home Grooming Guide for Dogs viewed as a breath of fresh air. in industry — into a new book: (Crown Publishers). But, Yorinks Jim Butts ’82, of the UW’s Statistical Methods for Six Sigma says, “I always felt I belonged entomology department, let us Author and artist Dan Graves (John Wiley & Sons). in another century,” and thus know that a symposium honor- ’91 may have a hit on his Destination Europe: The was born career three: creating ing the work of UW Emeritus hands with his first illustrated Political and Economic Growth award-winning quilts. She lives Professor Gene DeFoliart on children’s book, a “quirky, epic of a Continent (Manchester in Staten Island, New York. insects as a global food source adventure story for all ages” University Press) was a large Peter Botham ’79 is pursu- took place in October as part of called Pparcel’s Notebook Presents: undertaking, but author Kjell ing his passion, and he told the the Entomological Society of The Search for the Giant Stone Torbiörn MBA’73 was up to Madison-area Business Forum all America’s annual meeting. Its Monkey Head, Truth, Friends and the task of discussing the major about it in December. Combin- title? Eating Healthy: Nutritional Strange Food (Love Cultivating political, economic, and societal ing a lifelong love of farming Aspects of Insectivory. Editions). The story follows developments in Europe since the with a serious interest in wine, The new dean of the College Precious Pparcel Perkins end of WWII — and projecting he spent several years at a Mary- of Agriculture and Life Sciences through the Ecuadorian jungles into the future. Torbiörn heads land vineyard before settling in at Seoul [South Korea] National and recounts her encounters the economic secretariat of the Barneveld, Wisconsin, to found University is Mooha Lee PhD’82, with exotic insects, tropical Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Botham Vineyards in 1989. who notes that there are six foods, and some very odd Assembly in Strasbourg, France. Badger alumni at the institution. characters. Graves is also a published poet, sculptor, and James Hecker ’75, MS’77, This sounds like a big job: chef in an organic restaurant an assistant professor of 80s as the director of information in Minneapolis. anesthesia at the University of technology (IT) for PPG Indus- Child Working from the premise that magazine has named Pennsylvania School of Medicine tries’ fiber glass businesses, Julie What Are You So Grumpy About? “spiritual ignorance gets people in Philadelphia, is the primary Otto Poepping ’82 of Sewick- (Little Brown) one of the Best into trouble,” Dan Meyer investigator testing a technique ley, Pennsylvania, oversees the Children’s Books of 2003 — PhD’80 has written and self- that would protect neurons from IT strategy and development and that makes its author and published Solving Life’s Problems trauma during brain and spinal for fiber glass applications illustrator, Tom Lichtenheld ’79, surgeries. The work is courtesy Quicker (www.geocities.com/ worldwide. Thanks to proud anything but grumpy. He talks to of a $1.7 million National my77772003). The Fayette, father Bob Otto ’57 of Alvaton, kids on their level, empathizing Institutes of Health grant. Iowa, author focuses on divorce, Kentucky, for this update. with their very real, very The educational initiative but also discusses dysfunctional Chicago’s fifth ward has “grump-inducing” moments, called Space Day 2004: Blazing families, substance abuse, a new alderperson: Leslie such as when their gravy Galactic Trails (www.spaceday. violence, and suicide. Hairston ’83. An attorney in touches their peas, or their org) is coming up on May 6, and Will Kenlaw III ’81 says private practice and a former fathers take them to the “most Anne Bentsen Kinney ’75 of that when he envisioned his assistant attorney general for boring museum in the universe.” Washington, D.C., will be an future family, he saw both gen- the state of Illinois, she has Lichtenheld, of Geneva, Illinois, official spokesperson. As NASA’s ders — especially a Will IV. Four taught litigation and business has also created Everything I division director for astronomy daughters later, however, he felt law and has a long record of Know about Pirates (Simon and and physics, she oversees thirty- compelled to write A Father’s community service. Hairston is Schuster) — one of the best five missions that extend beyond Guide to Raising Daughters: also a member of WAA’s African children’s books of 2000, accord- Newsweek the solar system. Because I Need One! (Trafford American Alumni Association. ing to .

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Cleveland Bridge Builders Flag- adviser to the International Continuing the Culture ship Program, which identifies Security Assistance Force in and nurtures young civic and Kabul, Afghanistan, when NATO Susan Chapman MBA’98

WWW.DIANEHUNTRESSPHOTO.COM ©2003 economic leaders. took command of it. likes telling her grand- Dedicating his career to The Milwaukee Journal mother that she’s done more improving the health of young Sentinel recently profiled Gary in her thirty-five years than most people do in a lifetime. people — especially in the area Mueller ’86 as one of its Faces And Chapman isn’t of substance-abuse prevention of Hope. As a senior VP/creative exaggerating. — has earned Chad (Chudley) director at BVK Direct in Glen- Named one of the fifty Werch PhD’83 the 2003 dale, Wisconsin, he had the “best and brightest” under Research Council Award from idea to spin off the ad agency’s age forty by Black Enterprise the American School Health pro bono work into a nonprofit magazine, she’s the director Association. Werch is a graduate subsidiary called Serve, Inc. As of global real estate for research professor at the its president, Mueller now works Level 3 Communications, a University of North Florida in with volunteer Serve staffers broadband communications Jacksonville, as well as the during their off hours to provide and software company and director of the Center for Drug marketing for small, under- one of the nation’s largest bandwidth providers. Prevention Research. funded charitable organizations. With residences in Denver and London, Chapman clocked The first textbook on tissue Two Badgers found their 140,000 travel miles in 2003 on assignments around the globe, engineering has been co- way into the glow of TV’s lime- enjoying the chance to “get to know different cultures and authored by Bernhard Palsson light this winter. Patrick Fernan make friends all over the world.” PhD’84, a professor of bioengi- ’87, MA’90, JD’90 of McFar- She describes her biggest satisfactions as achieving some neering and an adjunct profes- land, Wisconsin, did a fabulous amazing results in a basically dead real estate market, raising sor of medicine at the University job on Jeopardy in December, or saving $250 million in a year and a half, and growing Level of California-San Diego. Tissue winning $58,000. New Yorker 3’s real estate acquisitions from zero to some 13 million square Engineering (Prentice Hall) is Pete Monty ’97 — formerly feet in five years. considered a comprehensive with the Minnesota Vikings — But Chapman isn’t all business. A pianist since childhood, resource for teaching about this was one of the groomsmen in she’s composing music for a children’s gospel CD she’s producing; writing two non-fiction books; and, with one of field, which combines biological the wedding of Trista and Ryan her brothers, working on a family cookbook. sciences, engineering, medicine, of ABC’s The Bachelor fame. She chose Wisconsin because “it has one of the country’s and biotechnology. Thanks to Angela Smith best real estate MBA programs and one of the best alumni Dave Rosen ’84 finds Wellsmith ’98 of Waukesha, networks I’ve ever seen. So many alumni remain active in the himself in Edinburgh, Scotland, Wisconsin, for letting us know! Wisconsin Real Estate Alumni Association.” Chapman does, these days. Why? He’s the new Catholic Charities USA hon- too, and she keeps in touch with several professors and former managing director of FLEXcon ored Jackie Bushong-Martin classmates, noting that the UW’s real estate program “breeds a Europe. Headquartered in ’88 of Rhinelander, Wisconsin, culture that continues” (see Philanthropy, page 61). Spencer, Massachusetts, the with its 2003 National Volunteer She’s been blessed with mentors throughout her life, FLEXcon company manufactures of the Year award this fall. She including the engineering dean at Vanderbilt, where she pressure-sensitive film. mobilized the talents of hun- majored in engineering before earning a master’s in planning “I just wanted to let On dreds in the Retired and Senior at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Wisconsin know what I was Volunteer Program to sew nearly Goal-oriented Chapman plans on staying in the corporate up to these days,” writes two thousand school uniforms world, preferably as a Fortune 400 CEO. Meanwhile, she Madeleine Marie Slavik ’84. for Haitian children. She also mentors young women in order to give them the same Since emigrating to Hong Kong runs a nonprofit, therapeutic, opportunities that she had.— Joel H. Cohen in 1988, she’s worked as a pho- horse-riding program from her tographer, writer, curator, editor, farm, Razberry Ranch. activist, guidance counselor, and Samir Gupte ’88 is the Two eighties grads are doing poet. In 2002, Slavik co-founded new VP of human resources for good things for Cleveland, Ohio. Sixth Finger Press to publish liter- Bahama Breeze, a Caribbean- In October, 100 Black Men of ary works in Chinese and English inspired chain of eateries owned Greater Cleveland recognized (www.sixthfingerpress.com). by Darden Restaurants. The Erbert Johnson, Jr. ’83, the Normally the legal adviser Orlando, Florida, resident is also chief financial officer of the to NATO’s Joint Headquarters pursuing a culinary arts degree Cleveland Municipal School Centre in Heidelberg, Germany, from Sullivan University in District, for his commitment to U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Louisville, Kentucky. education. Meanwhile, Colette Michael Hokenson JD’86 was School of Business grads: Taddy Hart ’86 has joined the reassigned this fall as the legal what’s your guess as to which

56 ON WISCONSIN ALUMNI NEWS

of you was the first to be award, Tews said, “This is defi- Treasures of Ancient Egypt, inducted into the UW’s Entrepre- nitely the highlight of my career.” which opens on March 28 Bookmark neur Hall of Fame? If you said When D.R. Ellis — a.k.a. (see page 62). Aaron Kennedy MBA’89, Deborah Ellis ’92 of Palmyra, The Academy of you’re right on the money. Wisconsin — wrote Luciferin Motion Picture Arts and Kennedy, the founder and CEO (1stBooks Library), she built a Sciences has given one of of the Boulder, Colorado-based double reference into the title. its five 2003 Nicholl Fellow- Noodles & Company national Luciferin is a pigment found in ships in Screenwriting to restaurant chain, was inducted bioluminescent creatures such as Bragi Schut, Jr. ’96. in October as part of the fireflies, but its devilish implica- The L.A. resident’s script, Weinert Center for Entrepre- tion reveals the book’s nature as Season of the Witch, was neurship’s alumni reunion. a psychological thriller — one in chosen from more than six What was Charles which a long, hot summer turns thousand submissions. Schut Lindbergh x’24 like before nightmarish for a special-educa- will be expected to complete a he became, well, Charles 90s tion teacher and her nephew. feature-length screenplay during Lindbergh? Madisonian and The entrepreneurial spirit the fellowship year. former UW librarian Anne Camille Hempel ’90 knows — is alive and well among these Brenda Velasco ’96 is also Vandenburgh MA’82 offers and loves — a hideous couch nineties grads: Melanie involved in the movie “biz,” a look at the pre-aviator when she sees one. Her love Paulsrud Schmidt ’93 has but in a very different way: Lindbergh who spent time affair began with one she tossed opened AdHouse Creative, a she’s the new media/education at UW-Madison from 1921 out to the curb in college and Madison communications firm specialist at Burbank, California’s until 1923 in her new book, culminated in September with that’s also the professional home Providence High School, which Lindbergh’s Badger Days an appearance on Live with of Emily Tuszynski-Shea ’96, offers an intensive, film-career (Goblin Fern Press). At age Regis and Kelly as one of three Candice Niemuth Nielsen ’97, curriculum. “I can’t believe eighteen, Lindbergh and his finalists in an ugly-couch compe- and Sara Sieb ’98. Noting that I’m helping aspiring young mother moved to Madison, tition. A Brooklyn, New York, this is her “first time having news filmmakers seek their dreams,” where he began studying in jewelry designer, Hempel won to share with fellow alums,” Velasco says. “I’m sure there is a the UW’s School of Engi- the contest, garnering a $5,000 Michelle Lock Jonson ’95 of future Academy Award-winning neering. Instead of serious prize, a New York Times article, Geneva, Illinois, writes that she’s director among the bunch!” study, however, he preferred and a contact by a publishing become a self-employed agent The McGrath siblings are spending time with friends house to see if some of the hun- for Farmers Insurance and Finan- giving back, each in his or her and racing across campus dreds of ugly-couch photos she’s cial Services. And former Badger own way. Ted (Edward) on their motorcycles. After Lindbergh’s interest in avia- taken might become a book — football punter Sam Veit ’95 has McGrath ’97 is practicing tion overtook his interest in perhaps one you’d display on an founded Veit Direct Marketing in dentistry at La Clinica de Los college, Vandenburgh notes ugly coffee table? Muskego, Wisconsin. Campesinos, a Wautoma, Wis- that he was dropped by the On the fiftieth anniversary The new executive director consin, community health center university and moved on to of the landmark Brown v. Board of the Wisconsin Academy of that treats migrant farm workers a flying school in Nebraska. of Education decision, Cather- Sciences, Arts and Letters in and the underserved. His identi- He did return to the UW ine Prendergast MA’91, Madison is Michael Strigel cal twin sisters, Erin ’00 and twice after his historic flight, PhD’97 has published Literacy MS’94, who’s stepped up from Molly ’00 McGrath, both live in however, to promote avia- and Racial Justice: The Politics of his two previous roles there. The Washington, D.C. Erin works for tion and receive an honorary Learning after Brown v. Board of academy has also welcomed a U.S. Labor Against War and the doctorate. To produce Education (Southern Illinois Uni- new associate gallery director — Graphic Communications Inter- Lindbergh’s Badger Days, versity Press), with UW Professor Martha Appleyard Glowacki national Union, while Molly is Vandenburgh worked with Gloria Ladson-Billings provid- ’72, MFA’78 — who will help with the AFL-CIO. “We all came indexer and researcher ing the foreword. Prendergast move the Wisconsin Academy away from Madison with a sense Robin Willard MA’91 and teaches English at the University Gallery to downtown Madison’s of humility and compassion for book coach Kira Henschel of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Overture Center this fall. humanity,” writes Ted McGrath. ’77 at Henschel’s Madison- The library at the Kadena Air Coming from the director- “This is, I guess, a thank-you to based Goblin Fern Press. Force Base in Okinawa, Japan, ship of the Cranbrook Institute the UW. You gave us the tools Affiliated with the Press is recently underwent a technologi- of Science in Bloomfield Hills, to make ourselves better people Goblin Fern Cooperative, cal and interior transformation Michigan, Michael Stafford and the world a better place.” the first author-owned-and- under the leadership of Director PhD’95 has become the new Neal Vermillion MA’99 operated retail bookstore of Cindy (Cynthia) Tews MA’91. president of the Milwaukee Pub- writes that he began a foreign- its kind in the nation. After her hard work was lic Museum. He’s arrived in time service tour in August as vice acknowledged with the 2003 Air to host the only Midwest show- consul in the U.S. embassy in Force Library Program of the Year ing of The Quest for Immortality: Sofia, Bulgaria. Congratulations!

SPRING 2004 57 ALUMNI NEWS

2000s teacher, died in January in UW athletic director, and NFL Manhattan, New York. A wide- Hall of Famer — died in January The Bentley Company — a Mil- ranging stage actress, she was in Madison. A Wausau, Wiscon- waukee construction services firm best known for her Tony Award- sin, high school athletic star, since 1848 — added a sixth gener- winning performance as Martha Hirsch made football history at ation of family involvement this fall in the original Broadway produc- the UW, which retired his num- as Todd Bentley ’00 joined the tion of Edward Albee’s Who’s ber 40. He joined the Marines business development depart- Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in during WWII and was transferred ment. Other Bentley Badgers 1962, and last played the role at to Michigan, where he became include chief operating officer Bob age eighty. At age seven, Hagen the only Wolverine to letter in (Robert) Stelter ’79, as well as moved to Madison, where her four sports. Hirsch also played R.J. (Rodney) Adel ’77, Joe Wid- father, Oskar Hagen, founded for the Chicago Rockets and Los mann ’82, and Nate Keller ’98. the UW’s art history department. Angeles Rams, and served as the Marry Me Marisa — a Madi- She attended the UW, but then UW’s athletic director from 1969 son wedding consulting firm — left to pursue an acting career. until 1987. His movie career is in its fourth year of business, Following her professional debut included appearances in says owner Marisa Menzel ’00, as Ophelia in Hamlet at age Unchained and Zero Hour, and who assists with everything from eighteen, Hagen played many playing himself in Crazylegs, All budgeting and vendor selection roles over seven decades, includ- American. The twenty-third to decorating and the ceremony. ing Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar annual Crazylegs Run — a popu- Named Desire. With her late lar run/walk fundraiser for the spouse Herbert Berghof, she UW athletic department — will obituaries operated the HB Studios in be held in Madison on April 24. Manhattan and was a respected teacher and textbook author. Uta Hagen x’41, honorary Paula Wagner Apfelbach ’83 compiles doctorate ’00, the German-born Elroy “Crazylegs” Hirsch Alumni News when she isn’t busy seeking Broadway star and acting x’45 — football hero, former out the city’s best chocolate-chip scone.

58 ON WISCONSIN Letters The Union and the university have giving it the credit and respect it Continued from page 8 changed a good bit in the past half- deserves. Author Josh Orton is obvi- century, but both, as I knew them, are ously very perceptive — Mike Ginter’s I loved “The Union 75.” What wonderful among my most precious daffodils. “nose scrunching” is famous in the deaf memories we all have of this “home away John Kuhlman PhD’53 and interpreting communities in Wiscon- from home.” Graduating in 1954 and Weaverville, North Carolina sin. My hands are waving in applause! having returned to UW-Madison only Amy Free ’96 occasionally, I am unaware of the Union Milwaukee, Wisconsin South referred to so often in your fine Rockin’ the Rankings article, and could find no information I enjoyed Christine Lampe’s feature, about the location or nature of the build- “Rockin’ the Rankings” [Winter 2003]. Checking out Library Collapse ing. Could you fill me in? But I have to side to some degree with While reading my Fall 2003 On Wisconsin, Kari Reymert Morlock ’54 the naysayers who doubt that Madison I was pleasantly surprised to find a bit of Lansing, Illinois belongs in the top “rocking” cities in the nostalgia on page 12 [Dispatches] about U.S. My experience with the Madison the fall of the steel frame of the library (Editor’s Note: Union South is located at 227 local music scene was in the years under construction. North Randall Street (near the engineering 1982–84, primarily as a music critic with I was a junior that year, and I was campus) and was opened in 1971 when it the Badger Herald and Daily Cardinal — walking up Langdon Street when I heard became clear that Memorial Union was not and as a freelancer writing reviews for an this tremendous roar. I turned around large enough to serve the entire campus. Union indie music magazine. and ran in the direction of the noise. South features modern-style architecture, and I looked for it, but was never able to There, in front of me, spread around like it is perhaps best known to alumni as the site find a distinctive Madison musical “scene.” so many pick-up sticks, was a mass of of tailgate parties that feature the UW march- I define a musical “scene” as a locality that steel beams on the ground. ing band before home games.) has one or more of the following: a domi- I recognized myself standing among nant musical style, culture, community, the many curiosity seekers [in the photo]. It was in 1948 that I first ventured into club, publication, artist, record store, radio I’m in the lower left hand, wearing a the Union as a veteran of World War II station, or identity. The Madison of leather jacket and light pants with the and a first-year graduate student in eco- 1982–84 had none of these. In this regard, sun shining on my back. nomics. I walked out on the Terrace, and I don’t think Madison was any worse off Actually, I should not have been in there was that beautiful lake. My than many other college towns. Anyway, I that picture. I should have been in class! thought was, “Life isn’t going to get any appreciated your article. It brought back Shhh! Don’t tell anyone. better than this!” One could always go to memories I’ve kept buried. Edwin Saul ’52 the Union, and there would be something James Kobielus MA’84 Port Jervis, New York to do. During my second year, I lived at Alexandria, Virginia the faculty club and made a daily journey Charles Siefert Memorial to the Union for my evening meal, which Hand-Waving Applause A Basketball Scholarship Fund has always included custard for dessert. Thank you for the wonderful article been established in the name of Charles My undergraduate years at Washing- “Seeing Signs” about the American Sign Siefert by his family and former team- ton State College and my graduate years Language classes taught by Michael mates. Chuck was co-captain of the 1953 at Wisconsin opened the gates to an Ginter [Winter 2003]. You touched on Badger basketball team. To date, the absolutely wonderful life as a faculty so many important concepts like deaf fund exceeds $9,000. Contributions can member at the Universities of Richmond, culture and the intricacies of non-verbal be sent in care of Trent Jackson, UW Cincinnati, and Missouri. Wordsworth, communication, and you did all of this Foundation, P.O. Box 8860, Madison however, said it much better than I can: without using the repulsive label of WI 53708. For oft, when on my couch I lie “hearing impaired.” In vacant or in pensive mood, As an undergrad at the UW, I Correction: In the article about Home- They flash upon that inward eye majored in zoology. Since then, I have coming [WAA News, Winter 2003], a Which is the bliss of solitude; switched paths to become a nationally caption listed Larry Reed’s degrees as And then my heart with pleasure fills, certified ASL interpreter. I am proud to MA’69, PhD’78. His correct degree is And dances with the daffodils. see my alma mater embracing ASL, MS’76.

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