FINDING SAFE HARBOR Though she’s gained fame as an author RUTH GRUBER (4) and photographer, Ruth Gruber MA’31 found her greatest fulfillment advocating on behalf of the resi- dents of America’s only World War II refugee camp.

By John Allen

Neither war nor weeks aboard the crowded troop ship U.S.S. Henry Gibbins could dampen the refugees’ enthusiasm at their first sight of the Statue of Liberty. They would pass by and disembark in Hoboken, New Jersey, before heading to Fort Ontario. Photos from the book: Haven by Ruth Gruber. Copyright © 2000 by Ruth Gruber. Published by arrangement with Three Rivers Press, a Division of Random House, Inc.

20 ON WISCONSIN FROM THE COLLECTION OF RUTH GRUBER

Where you go, I will go ... your people shall be my people. BOOK OF RUTH 1:16

In the language of biblical symbolism, The story unfolds1 in the summer of Ruth is a daughter’s name, not a 1944, when, after having largely ignored mother’s. Her eponymous book shows the plight of refugees until then, President Ruth as the good child, so devoted to her Franklin Roosevelt declared that the U.S. mother-in-law, Naomi, that she would should bring a thousand of them across give up her homeland. When Ruth’s hus- the ocean from war-ravaged Italy. The band dies, she follows Naomi to Bethle- decision was partly humanitarian, partly hem, in search of refuge from the public relations, and partly pragmatic. poverty they face in Ruth’s native Moab. “The army was getting ready to make a To be symbolically correct, a Ruth push northward from Rome,” says Gru- Gruber aboard the Henry Gibbins: bringing should be an unfortunate, a wanderer, a ber, “and officers were afraid that refugees the refugees to Fort Ontario was, she says, “the most important assignment of my life.” refugee. Motherhood, stability, and nur- would get in the way of the tanks and turing don’t belong to her — they belong jeeps heading to the front lines.” leave their children behind enemy lines. to Naomi. That’s how the world would Roosevelt’s refugees would fall under And there was Mathilda Nitsch, a Czech be, if life paid attention to its allusions. the administrative control of the Depart- who had run an underground railroad But life, it seems, skipped the class ment of the Interior, and that’s where station helping Jews to escape. Captured on symbolism. With the sort of casual Gruber joins the tale. She was a special by the Italian secret police, she’d been disregard for literary propriety that assistant to that department’s secretary, tortured, locked in a cellar for ten days vexes English majors, one of the best Harold Ickes, who appointed her as his without heat, then shipped off to the real-life refugee stories of the last century emissary. “My mission was to help pre- concentration camp at Ferramonte. Each cast a Ruth in the role of a Naomi. pare the refugees for life in America, refugee had a horror story, and Gruber Ruth Gruber MA’31 is an author, inside the camp,” she says. “But I gave recorded them all for Ickes and, eventu- photographer, and journalist, but “the myself the mission of collecting their life ally, the American public. most important assignment of my life,” histories, their case histories. We needed Gruber’s charges had come from she says, came in 1944, when she to have a better idea of where they’d eighteen different nations, and during the became a virtual adoptive mother for come from, of their culture and what voyage, she gave them a basic course in the 982 residents of Fort Ontario, near they’d been through, if we were to help American life. She introduced some of Oswego, a small city in upstate New them properly.” them to the ship’s other passengers, a York. There, at the only refugee camp Gruber soon discovered that life in a thousand American soldiers wounded in set up in the U.S. during World War II, camp had an ominous sound to many of the bloody battles at Casino and Anzio. she helped a collection of impoverished the refugees. She joined them in Naples, And she began teaching them English Holocaust survivors adjust to life in just before they crossed the Atlantic, and phrases, working in a mix of the mun- America. as she collected their histories, she learned dane and the bizarre — the refugees “The camp was one of the best-kept the full details of the terrors they’d faced. needed to learn not only simple pleas- secrets of the war,” says Gruber, but the She met Manya Hartmayer, who had antries, but also to maintain military secret’s out now — in February 2001, been imprisoned in the concentration secrecy. “Walking around the ship,” she CBS aired a miniseries called Haven, camp at Gurs, in southern France, and says, “I could hear people reciting to based on Gruber’s memoir of the same who’d crossed the Alps on foot and hid- each other in all accents the litany of name, which describes her time among den in a convent until the American army their first words of English: ‘How do you the refugees. Television gave Gruber the came. And she met Samuel and Breindel feel? I feel fine. The name of this ship is a face of Natasha Richardson and cele- Silberman, who’d fought in the Belgian secret. We come from the North Pole.’ ” brated both her work and the camp’s underground and had been forced to Gruber came to feel a parent’s success. According to the program’s responsibility for the refugees’ welfare. tagline, “Her courage saved a thousand 1 Here’s a summation for those of you who She cried with them when one of their lives. A girl from defied the missed the miniseries. And there’s no shame number died; she cheered with them at Nazis, challenged the U.S. government in admitting you did — part of it aired on their first sight of the Statue of Liberty; ... and changed the world.” Valentine’s Day. Maybe you had a date. and she traveled with them to Oswego,

SPRING 2002 21 where they would live behind barbed wire for a year and a half. When the war ended and Congress threatened to deport them, she lob- bied on their behalf, challenging rigid U.S. immigration policies and eventually helping to convince President Harry Truman that the refugees should be allowed to stay. In Jan- uary 1946, they were offered visas, and most of them became citizens. “Even today, I still travel all over the coun- try to meet with them,” says Gruber, who’s now ninety. “And we have the best reunions. They still Many of the refugees had been inmates of concentration camps, and some, like the men here, had no clothes other call me Mother Ruth.” than those that had been issued to them by their German and Italian jailers. Gruber says she’s delighted with the CBS’s treatment. going the experiences that would prepare variety of cultures just beyond her door. Natasha Richardson adds an element of her for that role. An important step in that “Brooklyn was like a little Europe then,” glamour to defying Nazis and challenging education came — though she wouldn’t she says. “There was a Jewish section, a the U.S. government, but the story know it at the time — when she first left German section, an Italian section, an hardly needs glamour to grab a person’s Brooklyn for the University of Wisconsin. Irish section, and the Gypsies wandered interest. If the events described in Haven through it all.” Moving from neighbor- didn’t change the world — and there are hood to neighborhood was like passing plenty of signs to suggest the world is still GRUBER WAS BORN, SHE SAYS, from nation to nation, an environment pretty rough on refugees (see sidebar, in a shtetl. However, her shtetl wasn’t that gave Gruber easy access to different “The Tampa”) — they certainly changed a tiny village in Russia or Poland, but languages. She grew up speaking not Gruber. In the pages of her memoir, she rather the Williamsburg section of just English but Yiddish, and she soon describes her journey with the refugees as Brooklyn, New York. “On Moore learned its close cousin, German, as well. a defining moment: “From this voyage Street,” she says of her birth home, “I A precocious student, she graduated on, I knew, my life would be inextricably thought the whole world was Jewish. from high school at age fourteen, and locked with Jews. I felt myself trembling The butcher, the grocer, the dressmaker, received her bachelor’s degree from in the Atlantic night, trembling not from the corsetière who made my mother’s at eighteen. the wind but from the revelation.” Before corsets — everyone was Jewish.” The She fell in love with the works of then, Gruber was a minor official in the Brooklyn of Gruber’s birth in 1911 was Goethe and Schiller, and so she studied Department of the Interior; afterward, growing quickly, filling with recent German language and literature. But she she became a forceful advocate for Jew- arrivals to America. Her own parents fell in love, also, with the idea of inde- ish refugees (see sidebar, “Exodus 1947”). had both been born in Eastern Europe, pendence. In Brooklyn, she had a large Still, the miniseries hardly gave a full her father coming to America only in and supportive family, with four siblings picture of Gruber’s life. She was no simple 1901. Both sides of her family kept close and nearby grandparents, but an army of “girl from Brooklyn” in 1944, and her ties to relatives they’d left behind in support leaves little room for privacy. voyage with the refugees didn’t spark her Europe, and all her life, foreign affairs “Goethe says that children rebel against transformation so much as culminate it. and family affairs would mix. their parents and return to their grand- Long before she became Mother Ruth, Though Moore Street was predomi- parents,” Gruber would write in her she was developing the skills and under- nantly Jewish, Gruber could find a autobiography, and her rebellion was

22 ON WISCONSIN “against Mama and Papa, against ortho- doxy, and against Brooklyn.” The hours of freedom she found as she attended university classes in gave her a desire to strike out on her own. The University of Wisconsin gave her the opportunity she was looking for. “The UW German department offered the La Frentz Fellowship to one New York student each year, and that year I had won it from NYU,” she says. “So I decided to hitchhike to Wisconsin. My family was so proud of the fellowship that no one uttered a word of protest.” Once she left Brooklyn, Gruber’s education expanded as much outside of classrooms as in them. At the UW, she studied with poets like William Ellery Leonard and Louis Zukofsky, and began

Though the adult refugees had been made wary by their wartime experiences, the chil- dren adapted quickly to their new lives.

Gruber was in Haifa at the time, working as a reporter for EXODUS 1947 the Tribune and covering the U.N. Special Committee on Palestine. She saw the Exodus 1947 limp into Haven isn’t the only movie inspired by Gruber’s writing. The 1960 film Exodus also owes her a debt. A year and a half after port and watched as its passengers were unloaded. Three were the Fort Ontario saga reached its happy conclusion, Gruber dead, and hundreds were wounded. The refugees were then was following another ship loaded with Jewish refugees, one reloaded onto three so-called “hospital ships,” and Gruber that would take a different course altogether. As a reporter, followed these vessels as they were shunted back across the Gruber would give the world one of the most extensive Mediterranean. accounts of the fate of the Exodus 1947 and its passengers. “I was the only reporter chosen by the British to represent In 1947, Palestine was under British control as the United the American press and go aboard these prison ships and Nations tried to divide it into two independent states, one speak to the people of the Exodus,” she says. “The British Jewish and the other Arab. The process was far from peaceful, called them hospital ships, but they were prisons. The condi- and a rush of post-World War II immigration didn’t make the tions were awful. In one of the vessels, the Runnymede Park, situation any more stable. The British tried to block all new the refugees were kept in a hold where the temperature was settlers, hoping to ease tensions between incoming Jews and 108 degrees. There were two latrines with six holes to serve the current Arab population. But that was no simple matter. over a thousand people. The refugees called it ‘our floating In 1947, Europe was still dotted with DP — displaced person Auschwitz.’ ” — camps, full of hundreds of thousands of people the war- Ultimately, the British sent the refugees back to . torn continent could hardly supply or feed. Many of the DPs This treatment generated sympathy in the U.S., Europe, and were Holocaust survivors who wanted nothing more than to even Britain for granting Israel’s independence, which came escape the scene of their persecution and live in the promised in 1948. That year, Gruber compiled her reports into a book, Jewish state in Palestine. Exodus 1947: The Ship that Launched a Nation. Enter the Exodus. Its crew, indignant that the British were Ten years later, the novelist Leon Uris wrote Exodus, an barring Jews from Palestine, took on some 4,500 passengers epic romance about the founding of Israel. One of the most from among Europe’s DP camps and attempted to run the important scenes in the tale is a confrontation between British Palestine blockade. On July 17, a squadron of British destroy- destroyers and a fictionalized refugee ship called the Exodus. ers sighted the Exodus 1947, took control of the vessel, and The book became the best-selling novel since Gone with the brought it into the harbor at Haifa. Wind, and in 1960, Hollywood transformed it into a movie. — J.A.

SPRING 2002 23 a thesis on Faust. She perfected her German and expanded her knowledge of literature and philosophy. However, the Madi- son of the 1930s could be far from welcoming, and it presented a for- eign landscape to some- one who’d grown up in the shtetl of Williams- burg. She describes several members of the German department and some of the staff at Das Deutsche Haus, where she lived, as “suf- focatingly anti-Semitic.” Most of her friends were from her home state — the university, she says, was a mecca for New Yorkers — and The refugees arrive at Fort Ontario: each wears a tag labeled “U.S. Army Casual Baggage.” From August 1944 until they stuck together like the camp disbanded in January 1946, the refugees were required to live behind a barbed wire fence, legally neither expatriates, taking com- in the U.S. nor anywhere else. “It was as though they were on a planet swimming through space,” says Gruber. fort with each other in a strange land. She spent only a year in Germany would teach her about politics dissertation on and earn Madison, quickly wrapping up her and the hard realities forced on Euro- her doctorate, even though she had just master’s degree before moving on. pean Jews. Gruber made contact with one year to complete it — her fellowship But Madison had given Gruber more the local Jewish community, and shared money would last only twelve months, than Goethe — it had given her a taste of their political discussions and fears. On and her parents would never have paid the wider world. While at the UW, she the streets of , she saw fights for her to stay on in Germany after that. had applied for another fellowship, this between Nazis and Communists and “In Germany at the time,” she says, “the one from the Institute of International read handbills accusing the “insatiable requirements for a PhD weren’t the same Education, which allowed her to study at Jew” of “race-lust and fanaticism.” as in the U.S. It wasn’t the course work the University of Cologne in Germany. Politicians openly advocated violence. that counted, but the dissertation and the Whereas the UW had impressed her “Thugs in brown shirts marched inso- orals — and I could finish them as soon family, Germany terrified them. Though lently,” she says, describing one Nazi as I was ready. No one had ever done it Hitler had not yet come to power, the parade, “stopping pedestrians, halting in a year before, but the department head Nazi party was already strong, and Gru- traffic, screaming their curses: ‘Death to said I should try.” ber’s decision to go to Cologne, even for a the Jew-Weimar Republic!’ ” When she succeeded, Gruber became year, shocked her parents. “When I hitch- At the same time, the German uni- a minor sensation on both sides of the hiked back to New York, my mother told versity system helped Gruber’s academic Atlantic. On her return to the U.S. in me she was afraid I’d gotten pregnant,” career thrive. While she had studied 1932, the New York Times lionized her as Gruber says. “When I told her I was German in America, she turned to mod- the youngest PhD in the world. “But even going to Germany, she said she wished ern English literature while in Germany. with that publicity,” she says, “I couldn’t I was only pregnant.” Her parents did The head of Cologne’s English language get a job. The Depression was on, and everything they could to convince Gruber department urged Gruber to write a when there were any jobs available, they to stay in the U.S., even offering to buy went to young men, not young women.” 2 her a car, but she went anyway. 2 “There are two kinds of people,” Gruber Here the UW had one more part to If the UW had taught her about says. “Those who drive and those who are play in forming Gruber’s career. Along facing prejudice in a foreign landscape, driven. I’m the second.” with Barnard, Cornell, and New York

24 ON WISCONSIN University, it refused to hire the “girl PhD.” Instead of entering academia, she THE TAMPA turned her attention to journalism. “I On August 26, 2001, the Norwegian cargo ship M.V. Tampa responded to a distress started sending out articles as a free- call. An Indonesian ferry, overloaded with more than four hundred refugees, was lance writer,” she says. “And I got foundering in the Indian Ocean. Aiming for Australian waters, the ferry planned to enough rejection slips to cover the walls land at Christmas Island, where its passengers, mostly Afghan nationals, hoped to of my bedroom.” But eventually her receive asylum. The Tampa changed course, plucked up the refugees, and carried work began to sell, and she found in them the rest of the way. The Sydney Morning Herald reported the rescue the next journalism a source of power — she day with a dozen dry sentences, giving no sign that the Tampa’s predicament could use her writing to help people see would become the biggest scandal in international politics for the next two weeks. the world as she had seen it. But that’s what happened. Australia, it seems, didn’t want to see any more of what its prime minister, John Howard, referred to as “illegal immigrants.” It sent a team of commandos to GRUBER WAS NOW ON THE ROAD take control of the Tampa and ensure that it did not reach port. that led her to Naples and a ship full of The world went into an uproar. Norway, Indonesia, and even Afghanistan’s refugees. All she needed was a series of Taliban complained that Australia was acting very badly, but no one offered to happy coincidences to put her in the take the refugees in. Ultimately, Australia worked out a deal with New Zealand right places at the right times. and the island nation of Nauru, several thousand miles to the east. Those two Her journalistic skill and academic countries would each take a share of the refugees. This worked well for the prowess would land her another fellow- government of Nauru, which received several million Australian dollars, in John ship, this one sponsored by the Guggen- Howard’s words, to “underwrite the whole cost” of caring for the castaways. heim Foundation, in the mid-1930s. With But just about nobody else was happy with the deal, and grumbling continued. that money, she returned to Europe to Then came September 11, and the plight of the Tampa’s refugees was forgotten. study the differing conditions of women’s But the situation in Afghanistan hasn’t improved. There may be as many as 3 lives under democracy, fascism, and com- million Afghan refugees living in Pakistan and Iran, says Geno Teofilo ’88, an infor- munism. There she came into contact with mation officer for the American Red Cross. Perhaps another million are “internally Jews who hoped to escape from Germany displaced,” wandering within Afghanistan’s borders. “Ideally, the Red Cross would but couldn’t, as U.S. immigration policies like to get them all to go back home,” says Teofilo. “But they’ve got to have a safe kept them waiting, often for years. These home to go to, first.” policies would continue, even when the Since the U.N. estimates that there are currently nearly 28 million refugees American government and public were around the world, it’s likely that incidents like the Tampa affair will only become well aware of the extent of Nazi persecu- more common. tion. “During World War II,” Gruber — J.A. says, “we brought 450,000 Nazi and Fascist prisoners across the Atlantic, but fewer than a thousand refugees.” rest of the country about what was going her students,” Gruber says. “One child Gruber’s articles, particularly on con- on under the Nazis, yet we were doing so was a Cambodian refugee, and he wrote, ditions in the , would gain little to help. So I went to Ickes, and ‘This is my story; Haven is my story. How the attention of Harold Ickes, whom she I said, ‘These refugees are going to be did you know my story?’ But then, what describes as the most sympathetic mem- terrified, traumatized. Someone has to refugees face is a universal problem. It’s ber of Roosevelt’s government. “Of all fly over there and hold their hands.’ He a problem of humanity.” the cabinet members, Ickes was the most said, ‘Right. I’ll send you.’ ” Since Fort Ontario was disbanded, passionate in denouncing the Nazi atroc- With those few words, Ickes would Gruber has written more than a dozen ities against Jews, and the angriest that turn Gruber into Mother Ruth, the stuff books. She continues to speak to audi- the doors of America were shut.” She of a TV miniseries.3 As the Fort Ontario ences around the country, and her photos jumped at the chance to work with him, story has gained more publicity in recent appear in nearly twenty books, museum and when she learned that he would years, she’s worked to remind people that exhibits, and documentaries. “I fight have executive responsibility for it has implications for the current world. injustice with words and images,” she Roosevelt’s refugee camp, she was finally “After a schoolteacher showed the mini- says. “My typewriter and my camera able to act on her desire to help. series in her class, I received letters from are my tools.” “Until then,” she says, “I’d been 3 feeling so frustrated, so helpless. We in Now also a musical play. The stage version John Allen, associate editor of On Wisconsin Magazine, Washington knew a little more than the of Haven premiered in Los Angeles in 2001. recently conquered his cheese phobia.

SPRING 2002 25 JEFF MILLER

WORKING BEYOND EUREKA! You may have heard of Carl Gulbrandsen as the man who holds the key to stem cells. But his often-unappreciated organization has a long history of helping researchers get their discoveries into the real world.

By Michael Penn MA’97 Paulanne Chelf recalls that once, during a meeting in late 1994, the researcher warned her what was coming. The man, then not yet forty years old, came to the offices of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foun- dation, where Chelf works as an intellectual-property manager, to dis- cuss patenting some new techniques he’d invented in his laboratory. He was tall and walked with a slight stoop, and he was relentlessly quiet, talking only reluctantly, as if he enjoyed nothing more than not talking.

26 ON WISCONSIN It was at the end of the meeting that most envied file cabinets in science. One “We consider it our margin of excel- James Thomson looked at Chelf and London Times article said that those docu- lence,” says Martin Cadwallader, interim said, matter-of-factly, “You know, this ments together form “one of the most dean of the Graduate School. John Jenk- is going to be really big someday.” potentially lucrative pieces of intellectual ins MA’73, PhD’78 and David Cronon At the time, Chelf didn’t think much property in biomedicine.” MA’49, PhD’53, authors of the official about the prediction. Thomson was still history of UW-Madison, go even further, three years away from his historic work writing, “WARF . . . is arguably the sin- isolating human embryonic stem cells. In “WARF . . . is arguably gle most important reason why the Uni- 1994, when Chelf was assigned to handle versity of Wisconsin emerged as one of his patent case, he had accomplished the the single most impor- the nation’s great research universities in feat only in monkeys. And while she had tant reason why the the second half of the twentieth century.” worked for the foundation, known University of Wisconsin around campus as WARF, for only two months, Chelf had met with enough emerged as one of the WARF’S OFFICES OCCUPY investigators to know that they some- nation’s great research the thirteenth floor of a high-rise building times got caught up in the optimism of near the UW Hospital and Clinics, a loca- their professions. universities in the second tion that affords a panorama of the cam- “Everybody thinks that their inven- half of the twentieth pus WARF helped to build. The list of tion is the greatest thing that ever hap- century.” campus facilities constructed, renovated, pened,” she says. “It was one of dozens of or assisted by WARF is as extensive as disclosures I was working on at the time.” the view, beginning with the Elvehjem If Chelf has learned to temper the While owning valuable paperwork is Museum of Art on the far eastern fringe enthusiasm of UW-Madison inventors, nothing new for WARF — which cur- of campus, and sweeping all the way to however, she has also learned to bank on rently holds about 1,700 active patents the Waisman Center on the west. their abilities — a formula that has rarely on UW-Madison research — getting The floor is usually abuzz. Faculty failed her employer, which has been noticed for it is. Since its founding by are often there, meeting with intellectual- patenting and licensing UW research for nine UW alumni in 1925, the nonprofit property managers. Those managers more than seventy-five years. In his early foundation has operated mostly below meet with attorneys and licensing man- discussions with WARF, Thomson was the radar, fulfilling its mission of protect- agers. The licensing managers meet with unequivocal in his belief that the tech- ing and commercializing the fruits of industry representatives. Moving inven- niques he’d used to isolate stem cells in UW research with little fanfare. Before tions from the lab to the marketplace rhesus monkeys and marmosets would stem cell coverage landed WARF’s name involves handshakes and conference also work in humans, potentially unlock- in the world press, many people confused rooms, and the air around WARF is ing a treasure chest of new medical ther- it with the Wisconsin Alumni Association tinged with imminent deal-making. apies. Based as much on his confidence or the UW Foundation. (In fact, both of WARF’s work begins at the moment as his results, WARF, as Thomson’s these organizations still occasionally get after “Eureka!” As Chelf says, “When designee to own and control his intellec- calls asking about their stem cell patent.) you break out the champagne in your tual property, filed an application to Now, a few national media have taken to laboratory — that’s a good time to call patent the cultivation techniques for all calling WARF, somewhat ignominiously, us.” Most of the researchers WARF sees primates, including humans. the “800-pound gorilla” of stem cells. have federal funding, and are required to By December 1998 — just three The label is ironic, considering that disclose their inventions. Investigators weeks after Thomson announced his stem cells are far from a ripe banana in who use federal money report their work lab’s success with human stem cells — the intellectual-property jungle. If there to a campus office called University- WARF had in its possession an exceed- is a gorilla in the mist, it’s WARF’s formi- Industry Relations, which routes the dis- ingly significant piece of paper. U.S. dable endowment, built from a long list closures to WARF’s intellectual-property patent number 5,843,780 makes WARF of past patenting successes. Income from managers. In about six cases out of ten, one of the most important players in the that fund is dedicated to enhancing UW- WARF decides that there is sufficient future of stem cell science, giving it con- Madison research, and over the years, reason to go after patent rights, and it trol over who uses Thomson’s technology it has paid out more than $620 million. commences the long, often tumultuous, and for what purposes. Combined with a While WARF money makes up only road to acquiring U.S. and foreign second patent (number 6,208,806) that about 5 percent of the university’s total patents. Patents are almost never was issued following Thomson’s work research budget, administrators regard it approved when they’re first filed, and the with human cells, WARF has one of the as the gear that drives the bigger wheels. negotiations can take years to resolve.

SPRING 2002 27 “It’s a process of coming to agree- WARF’s most lucrative patents over the researchers by refusing them access, or, ment with the patent office over what years — which include vitamin D fortifi- more likely, by letting them work on you’re entitled to,” says Chelf, a former cation techniques, magnetic resource material only after they’ve agreed to hand microbiologist who, like many of imaging (MRI) technology, and the rat over anything valuable that might result. WARF’s employees, is more or less poison Warfarin — have been veritable James Thomson says it’s not merely a bilingual, speaking the lingo of research gold mines during their active lives. hypothetical scenario, but is precisely as well as patent legalese. But Carl Gulbrandsen PhD’78, how many businesses routinely deal with Patents essentially give their holders JD’81, WARF’s managing director, says academic researchers. the right to operate as a government-pro- the foundation shouldn’t be judged by Some have argued that there’s noth- tected monopoly for a designated period the depth of its revenue stream alone. He ing stopping WARF from doing the same of time, usually twenty years from when says an equally important mission is to thing. Seth Shulman, in a November a patent application is filed. It’s a trade- facilitate the flow of research from idea 2001 issue of MIT’s Technology Review, off: you, as the inventor, have to publicly to finished product — to help it along its suggests that WARF’s stem cell patents disclose what you’ve done and how you way to becoming a product or service could be used to close off the science did it, and in return, the government that people need. WARF’s stem cell from some researchers. “That outcome, gives you a window of time to control patents, he says, are a good example. desired by no one, would be the biggest your invention. Without your active While many have voiced concern that — and sorriest — lesson of the debate,” enforcement, your patent isn’t worth the patents put WARF in a position to he writes. But Thomson doesn’t see that much. It doesn’t legally include you in control the research, Gulbrandsen sees happening. He points out that WARF is business related to your work — but it the patents as a way to assure that stem already distributing cells to scientists gives you the right to exclude others. cell research won’t be dictated by a small with almost no impediments to using It’s up to you to take advantage of the number of labs. them. (WARF does forbid scientists from protection, either by developing your “One reason we have filed patent using stem cells in cloning experiments.) invention yourself, or cutting deals with applications in some areas is to ensure “This is true with any important new companies that will. that researchers here have freedom to intellectual property — somebody con- Thus, even when a patent is issued, operate,” he says. “It takes the fun out of trols it,” Thomson says. “I’m very happy it’s too early to pop the champagne your research if somebody else owns it, that WARF is the one. I think that corks. To move research into the public and particularly if someone else can WARF will control it in a very responsi- sphere, WARF turns to its deal-makers. direct what you can do with it. If indus- ble way. I can’t think of another institu- Even before the patent is in hand, licens- try is going to own all the technology, tion that would be more responsible.” ing managers work out agreements with and we’re beholden to them to have The argument may seem paradoxical: companies that want to use or sell the rights to do the research, industry is how can the exclusionary rights afforded work. Typically, a company agrees to pay going to set the agenda. If academia by patents actually assist the spread of royalties to WARF for the right to com- owns the technology, then academia can research? But that, basically, is what the mercialize the invention. Last year, the use it the way it wants to.” founders of WARF intended. In fact, it’s foundation signed more than one hun- Say that a small biotech firm con- possible that WARF may not have come dred such agreements, which could end trolled the stem cell patent. That com- to be if some early inventors had been up returning millions in income. Some of pany could use its rights to muscle out more willing to take the money and run.

The JEFF MILLER January 20, 1995 January 18, 1996 WARF applies to the U.S. Patent WARF files a “continuation” Office for rights to embryonic with the U.S. Patent Office, stem cells in all primates. updating its application to STEM reflect Thomson’s progress. 1995 Cycle Thomson begins work in a sep- January 1998 When a researcher makes a arate lab to try to cultivate Thomson succeeds in freezing breakthrough, work at the Wis- human stem cells from the development of human consin Alumni Research Foun- donated embryos. Geron, a embryonic stem cells, narrowly June 13, 1994 California biotech company, beating teams in California and dation is just getting started. Biologist James Thomson informs agrees to provide funding for at Johns Hopkins University. Here’s a look at how WARF has WARF of a promising discovery in Thomson’s new lab. Meanwhile, WARF and the helped stem cells move beyond his Primate Center laboratory: Patent Office are locked in the lab — the critical first steps the successful cultivation of stem negotiations about the stem cell of the long journey to come. cells in rhesus monkeys. patent application.

28 ON WISCONSIN “A COUNTRY WITHOUT A GOOD calibrated equipment and poor-quality any personal profit from the work. (In patent office and good patent laws was materials that broke easily. Most of those fact, he had just turned down $900,000 to just a crab, and couldn’t travel any ways “Babcock tests” failed to work, which sell the invention to Quaker Oats.) but sideways and backways,” wrote diluted confidence in Babcock’s inven- Instead, he came up with a truly revolu- Mark Twain, in A Connecticut Yankee in tion. And there was nothing Babcock or tionary idea: WARF. A campus-based King Arthur’s Court. Through Hank the university could do about it, because patent office, he reasoned, could both con- Morgan, the Yankee of Yankees, Twain, they’d given the technology away with trol his technology and funnel proceeds a patent holder himself, voiced the no conditions. progressive enthusiasm that the United “The dairy industry was thrown into Mark Twain wrote States has long held about its patent sys- disarray,” wrote Clay Schoenfeld, a UW tem. With roots in the U.S. Constitution, emeritus professor who studied WARF’s that “a country with- patent laws have formidable history history. “Not until several state legisla- out a good patent behind them. Created to spur innovation, tures stepped in with standardization office and good while discouraging companies from hid- regulations did the Babcock test achieve ing important discoveries, the first U.S. its potential.” Babcock, terribly embar- patent laws was patent laws went on the books in 1790. rassed and discouraged by the episode, just a crab, and Abraham Lincoln once said of patents: reportedly said late in his career that he “The patent system added the fuel of wished that he had patented the test, so couldn’t travel any interest to the fire of genius.” that he could have regulated the shysters. ways but sideways Many university researchers in the Three decades later, UW biochemist and backways.” days of Twain and Lincoln, however, saw Harry Steenbock devised a method for patents as antithetical to their role as enriching the vitamin D content of food, back into the laboratories responsible for public scholars. UW-Madison professor a technique that he realized could effec- producing it in the first place. With the Stephen Babcock, for one, thought it tively wipe out the disease rickets. Steen- help of George Haight, a Chicago patent wholly inconceivable that he, or a uni- bock, who was a young professor when attorney who was then president of the versity, might profit from work that was Babcock’s test hit the market, worried Wisconsin Alumni Association, Steenbock primarily paid for by the public. In 1890, that a similar debacle might occur with proposed an independently operating when Babcock developed the nation’s his research. “He was hearing from ciga- foundation, the first of its kind affiliated first effective method for testing the but- rette companies and beer manufacturers, with a university. In 1925, he and eight terfat content of milk, he dismissed any who wanted to use the process to put other alumni each contributed $100 as an notion of patenting the process, insisting vitamin D in their products,” says endowment — funds that still appear on that it be shared freely with all. Hector DeLuca MS’53, PhD’55, a bio- WARF’s ledger as “dues paid in.” Babcock’s noble gesture resulted in chemistry professor who was Steen- During the first ten years, WARF chaos. Eager to meet high demand bock’s last graduate student. “Harry had returned more than $17 million from among dairies for the new Babcock tests, knew that there was no way that these Steenbock’s vitamin D patents, and had dozens of manufacturers began develop- kinds of things would benefit mankind.” seen rickets virtually eliminated in the ing the testing equipment. Many did Neither, however, did Steenbock want United States. And all that despite turn- haphazard work, using improperly to control patents himself or wish to see ing down the first people who came seek-

November 6, 1998 December 2, 1998 October 1, Thomson’s team publishes its Thomson testifies before a U.S. 1999 findings in Science, creating a Senate committee that the bene- WARF cre- Stem Cell Cultivation worldwide media buzz that fits of stem cell research will be ates WiCell, causes Thomson to hole up in a more quickly reached if the gov- a private Bascom Hall office to handle the ernment allows federal funding institute, to influx of calls from reporters. on the work. It’s the first of sev- handle the eral public testimonies Thomson distribution December 1, 1998 will make supporting the science. of stem cells U.S. Patent Office issues patent and begins providing vials number 5,843,780, covering pri- 1999 containing about one million mate stem cells. WARF prepares Debate continues about federal stem cells to scientists for a another patent application, funding. Ethics commissions $5,000 fee (which WARF based on Thomson’s new work weigh the potential of stem describes as “below cost”). with human cells. cells against the moral issues of working with human embryos.

SPRING 2002 29 ing to license Steenbock’s work; WARF most prolific inventors, who has held researcher. “No other schools had any said no thanks to a firm that wanted to more than one thousand patents during money to support them,” he says. make vitamin D-rich cigarettes. his career. “Patenting puts the invention The same pattern exists today. Since that time, WARF has patented into the hands of the public that was Because of WARF money, says interim everything from potato variants to responsible for developing it.” graduate dean Cadwallader, “we can mechanical gizmos to advanced labora- respond to opportunities that come up tory techniques. In 1999, WARF fielded in ways that school or college budgets 279 inventions — the third-most of any AT SEVENTY YEARS OLD, might not allow,” such as the impromptu U.S. university agency — up from 136 in Hector DeLuca is WARF’s past, present, purchase of lab equipment to help land 1994. Gulbrandsen says the growth is a and future, wrapped up in one bundle of a faculty recruit or to secure a grant. confluence of two factors: University relentless energy. Many of his laboratory Similar fingerprints can be found researchers are producing more, and breakthroughs have sparked the devel- throughout the campus. Although most they’re also discovering what Babcock opment of new pharmaceuticals and lucrative patents have come from the and Steenbock realized — that a patent, nutritional aids, and income from his sciences, WARF’s income does not play in the right hands, can be a faculty work more or less built the $36 million favorites. Under its current formula, the member’s best friend. wing of Biochemistry, where he operates inventor gets 20 percent of royalties from “WARF is by far the best vehicle his lab. As Gulbrandsen says, “He owns WARF patents, and the rest goes into around for bringing new technology for- a piece of the rock.” an investment fund. The foundation’s ward,” says Mark Cook, a professor of The seemingly ageless professor annual contributions to the university, animal science who has patented inven- recently hosted WARF officials on a tour now exceeding $35 million, support tions both through WARF and on his of the new facility, which was completed faculty grants and graduate student own. Because much of Cook’s work is in 1998. “It was like a father showing off fellowships in every division, as well as privately funded, he has the option to his kids,” says Andy Cohn ’70, MS’74, a diverse menu of building projects and pursue patents elsewhere, but he takes WARF’s director of public affairs. “He other initiatives. The best part, says technology to WARF almost exclusively knew every student who walked by. He Cadwallader, is that the money is flexi- now. He says he grew tired of investing knew every cranny of that building.” But ble. WARF dictates only that it be used the exorbitant time and effort it takes to DeLuca was also showing off something in ways consistent with its mission to apply for and protect patents, only to see else — just how broad the ripple effect of advance research. them mismanaged and his work fail to patents is on campus. The university often uses WARF find a market. During the 1930s, when the Depres- income to speculate on young “Everything that I’ve ever done out- sion virtually evaporated all federal researchers with promising ideas. side of WARF has never amounted to a research funding, WARF income was “You often need seed money to run pilot hill of beans,” he says. a life line to departments such as bio- experiments before you can apply for big “You want to be sure that your chemistry. While other universities lan- federal dollars,” says Cadwallader. “If inventions are used in the right way, and guished, the UW tapped into its WARF you go to them with an idea and no one way to do that is to be very careful purse to hire away their best students empirical back-up, it’s a much harder about whom you license your work to,” and faculty. In biochemistry, DeLuca sell.” Several projects have followed this adds DeLuca, one of the university’s says, UW boasted nearly every top path to major grants, he says.

March 13, 2001 given Bush’s decision. Thomson goes hang September WARF receives U.S. patent number 6,200,806, gliding, to clear his mind. 4, 2001 covering Thomson’s techniques for cultivat- Researchers in ing human embryonic stem cells. August 17, 2001 Thomson’s lab WARF managing director Carl Gulbrandsen announce suc- August 9, 2001 makes the New York Times quote of the day, cess in guiding President Bush announces limited federal saying “I don’t want people to see us as an the develop- funding on certain stem cell lines (including 800-pound gorilla.” “I was set up for that ment of stem WARF’s). Thomson, who doesn’t own a TV, quote,” Gulbrandsen laughs. cells into asks WARF public affairs director Andy Cohn blood cells. if he can come over to watch. August 20, 2001 Thomson is on the cover of Time magazine; August 10, 2001 editors note his “astonishing” research. WARF handles a barrage of media inquiries about what the foundation’s role will be,

30 ON WISCONSIN “There’s no question,” Cadwallader pletely transformed. Where once he was who are prowling WARF’s hallways. Not says. “If we didn’t have WARF, we among the few professors who actively to be outdone, DeLuca now has a start- would certainly lose more than the engaged the patent process, today there up company, and he visits the thirteenth- $35 million that they give us.” are hundreds who bring their own entre- floor offices weekly to massage details Among the losses in a world without preneurial vision to their work. WARF’s and peruse contracts with attorneys. WARF would likely be DeLuca himself. clients now include people like Nicholas “I have a few products that I whole- His maturity as a researcher came during heartedly believe should be in the hands the 1960s and early 1970s, when all “There’s no question,” of the public, and I want to make sure inventions produced with public money that they get there,” he says. normally reverted to government owner- Cadwallader says. “If DeLuca, like many professors, con- ship. DeLuca says the system made it we didn’t have WARF, siders patenting an alternative form of next to impossible to find private sources we would certainly publishing. Because patents are public willing to put money into his research, disclosures, they carry an element of since they couldn’t be assured of licens- lose more than the teaching to them. “You have to enable ing rights to any resulting products. “No $35 million that they the invention so that others can repeat company is going to invest in research it,” says Thomson. “That is the best part and development unless it can see that its give us.” about patents.” And compared to the ability to make money from that invest- often snail-like pace of academic publish- ment will be protected,” he says. Abbott, a chemical engineer who has ing, the patent process can look compar- WARF forged special agreements devised a series of sensors that detect bio- atively swift. Mark Cook recalls an with government agencies, allowing the logical and chemical agents. Abbott took instance when he accidentally discussed foundation to own the patent and negoti- a business short-course to learn how to an invention with a reporter, not realiz- ate directly with companies to license develop his technology and has now ing that the patent application hadn’t DeLuca’s work. The arrangement launched a start-up business. WARF been filed. (Disclosure of an invention became a model for the Bayh-Dole Act, helped him land patents on his work — starts the clock on U.S. patents and which Congress passed in 1980. Coinci- and then license them to his own firm. could invalidate patent claims entirely in dentally, it was that law that convinced “I’d very much like to see the work some countries.) many educational institutions to dive into translate into technology that has an “I called WARF and said, ‘You’ve got managing patents, spurring universities impact on society,” he says. “We’ve until the evening news to get it done.’ across the country to seek WARF’s developed this to the point that we can They got it filed by five o’clock,” Cook advice on how to set up similar organiza- publish our work in about whatever says. “WARF can move very quickly if it tions. “For university technology transfer journal we want. I think we all find it needs to.” Just never sideways and back- generally, [the law] has been a very won- very satisfying to see the technology ways, but only ahead, traveling on derful and valuable success for the entire translated into products that are useful.” toward the next big thing. country,” says Gulbrandsen. “But we To help the new generation of faculty were already operating as if it existed.” like Abbott, WARF holds seminars and Michael Penn, senior editor of On Wisconsin, spent most Since Bayh-Dole, DeLuca has seen has assembled a Web site on patenting of the time he worked on this story trying to think of the landscape of technology transfer com- (www.warf.ws). But it’s not just newbies things he could patent.

September 5, 2001 SU-CHUN ZHANG researchers. Geron receives rights to poten- WARF officials sign an agreement with the tial products that may be developed from National Institutes of Health that facilitates some heart, nerve, and pancreas cells. getting stem cells to NIH scientists. Now November 30, 2001 Researchers around the world are trying to UW researcher Su-Chun Zhang announces unlock stem cells’ potential. Thomson notes that his team has coaxed stem cells to that six years have already elapsed on WARF’s develop into neural cells. original stem cell patent. “It is likely that the real dollars may come after this patent is December 31, 2001 January 9, 2002 WARF and Geron amend their earlier licens- gone,” he says. “The important patents may People magazine profiles Thomson in its be the next generation of patents.” WARF’s “Most Intriguing People” issue. ing deal, guaranteeing that WARF will con- tinue to distribute stem cells to academic work goes on.

SPRING 2002 31 MAKING MATH AddUp

Why do American kids, plus long-established teaching methods, sometimes equal struggle in math classrooms? A UW-based project is studying that equation.

BY JOHN LUCAS PHOTOS BY JEFF MILLER

32 ON WISCONSIN ore than a decade later, class you’re looking at by simply noting I’ll still have an occa- the color of the students’ skin or the sional nightmare about quality of their clothes,” he says. “And my third period that is abominable.” advanced algebra class. Through the years, testing has shown MIt’s always the same scene: I’m sitting that, as a whole, older American students alone, before school, in the dark, are lagging behind other nations in math deserted “math resource area” of my and science. As recently as 1998, the suburban Chicago high school. I’m there Third International Mathematics and to retake a test loaded with equations, Science Study (TIMSS) showed that graphs, and functions. As I stare at the American eighth-grade students scored jumble on the page, it slowly dawns on well below average and twelfth-grade me that it’s not even a matter of not students performed near the bottom rela- knowing the right answers. I can’t begin tive to their peers around the world. to comprehend whether the right answer Consistently poor results have fed would take the form of a number or an into the “math wars,” an ongoing contro- equation — or what type of math opera- versy over “old” versus “new” math, and tion would get me to the general neigh- “hard” versus “soft” math, among others. borhood of an answer. Recognizing that students learn in different Much of the discussion centers around ways is the first step toward success in My “didn’t study for the test” night- math, UW researchers say. whether the value of drilling and proce- mares don’t stray far from real life. dures (old and hard) outweighs concep- I never really clicked in class with my UW-Madison’s Wisconsin Center for tually based (new and soft) methods. algebra teacher, a stocky football coach Education Research, a department of the According to Secada, these wars and with a long beard and a blunt teaching School of Education, has been looking at the labels that the media use miss the style. He seemed to be a nice enough ways to improve math teaching. point. “We want students to know skills guy, but to me, the lessons were deadly The five-year, $11.5 million project, and to understand them; society also dull. I’m a word person, I reasoned, so funded largely by a grant from the needs students who can apply what they why bother? National Science Foundation (NSF), is know to solve problems that are becom- From his perspective, I probably concentrating on methods for teaching ing increasingly complex,” he says. seemed like one of his worst students. It’s math to a diverse group of students at At the same time, Secada, who is true that I spent a good chunk of third levels at which they can find success. Hispanic, says there’s been a growing hour chatting with classmates, discussing Organizers hope their efforts will influ- recognition that America’s culturally, sports or music. Of course, my indiffer- ence the field over the next decade. socially, and linguistically diverse K–12 ence caught up with me in the end; I Known as DiME/CLT — for Diver- student population plays a major role in flunked most of my quizzes and tests. sity in Mathematics Education Center on the nation’s scores and its future econ- For all his faults, my teacher graciously Learning and Teaching — the consortium omy. A significant math “achievement allowed me a handful of early morning is one of the first programs to take a con- gap” exists between white students and retakes — which I also proceeded to certed and serious look into how differ- students of color, and the gap relates to flunk — hence, my psychological scars. ences in race, gender, and class affect the how teachers instruct — or fail to Much to the dismay of my parents, I teaching and learning of mathematics. instruct — students of differing lan- ended up with a D — and an appoint- Many underprivileged students, for guages, cultures, and economic classes. ment to retake the class with a remedial example, struggle with math, often lead- What’s worse, math — and algebra section the next semester. ing them to lower-track classes that won’t in particular — is viewed as a key aca- It’s a simple equation that is still prepare them adequately for college, says demic “gatekeeper” subject. Students repeated day after day in classrooms Walter Secada, a UW-Madison professor who do poorly are more likely to be across America: uninspired teacher, plus of curriculum and instruction who is placed in lower-track courses and are unmotivated student, equals math failure. directing DiME. Less clear are the best less likely to go to college and be compet- But help is on the way. Since ways to solve the problem. itive in the job market. November, a forward-looking research “In too many middle and high “If a student leaves high school hav- and development consortium based at schools, you can tell what track of math ing been taught just checkbook math,

SPRING 2002 33 Chris Stafslien, above, is taking what she’s learned in UW-sponsored seminars for math teachers and bringing those methods into her Madison high school classroom. “The goal is to get them involved and get them to take ownership of their math,” she says of her students. that person won’t have a checkbook “Society needs students who two years, and almost 80 percent will worth doing math in,” Secada says. be eligible for retirement within the “Our society’s demands for math lit- can apply what they know next ten years. eracy are going up and up,” says Secada, to solve problems that are One major component of the DiME who visited the White House during the center’s work is a plan to produce thirty Clinton administration for the release of becoming increasingly new doctoral students in math education the twelfth-grade TIMSS results. “It’s complex.” research and teaching. In the future, the not the case that schools aren’t improv- group will eventually develop its own ing,” he says. “They are — but they are research and ideas on diversity issues, not improving fast enough to keep up cover more about the reasons behind the particularly relating to the teaching of with the increased demands for technical “achievement gap” and develop ways to algebra. Teachers already in the class- skill and mathematical knowledge.” close it. room will also receive ongoing profes- When the NSF decided to commit The idea of training a new generation sional development along with college millions of dollars toward rebuilding the of math teachers is designed to address students at the consortium’s partner nation’s math and science leadership, some sobering facts: institutions. Secada, along with UW-Madison col- Ⅲ One-third of mathematics teachers in “We want to close those achievement league Thomas Carpenter PhD’71 and grades seven through twelve have gaps,” Secada says. “How we get there, their colleagues at the University of neither a major nor a minor in the we don’t know all of the details, but we California-Berkeley and the University field, yet they teach one in four of all want our best and brightest minds to be of California-Los Angeles, seized the mathematics students. a part of it. It’s a challenge.” opportunity. Ⅲ During the next decade, the nation’s “The project will create new Their approach underscores the sig- schools will have to replace more research, new tools, and more impor- nificance that diversity plays in teaching than two-thirds of current teachers tantly, a generation of researchers capa- and learning math. They propose train- due to attrition. ble of making significant strides on issues ing experts who will do research, apply Ⅲ More than half of university faculty of diversity in mathematics education,” ideas in the classroom, and teach college in mathematics education will be eli- says Rogers Hall, an associate professor students. In the process, they will dis- gible for retirement during the next of education at UC-Berkeley and an

34 ON WISCONSIN associate director of the new consortium. pre-algebra or other algebra sections. Her “If we are successful, the field will be task is to devote as much time as it takes changed fundamentally by this new on each key topic until students seem to generation of scholars.” “get it.” On this morning, the class mem- DiME represents just one of the sub- bers happily grab graphing calculators stantive contributions that UW-Madi- and dig into practice problems. After a son’s math education experts have made few minutes, Stafslien reviews homework to their field. Over the years, Carpenter and then begins an “investigation,” an and others in the School of Education, activity in which the class pairs off with including emeritus professors Thomas partners and begins working together to Romberg and Elizabeth Fennema, and solve problems on a graph. active faculty such as Richard Lehrer, Talking about the problems with Leona Schaubel, and Andy Porter, have classmates makes them easier to solve, been instrumental in curriculum reform, says freshman Ashley Huff. “Most other standards development, and many other teachers move too fast,” she says. “But innovations in math education. [Stafslien] moves slowly, and she’s Until the new generation of DiME Providing on-the-spot help is just one way always around to help. It’s gotten to be teachers can guide students toward success scholars emerges, the consortium is in math. fun, because it comes easier to me.” likely to have immediate beneficiaries in With the “investigation” complete, the teachers and students in the Los Ⅲ More real-time assistance in which Huff and a few other students show their Angeles Unified School District, the students can get immediate help to work on the board before getting a jump Berkeley Unified School District, and understand a problem. on homework problems. Stafslien circu- the Madison Metropolitan School Ⅲ The development of student reason- lates through the room, asking questions District (MMSD). These districts have ing based on problem-solving strate- about each student’s progress on the partnered with UW-Madison to become gies that are often different from assignment. learning labs for diversity education. standard, by-the-book procedures. Stafslien says her approach is Through in-services and workshops, Some of Secada’s ideas are playing designed to encourage students to think Secada and Carpenter have already out every day in the classroom of Chris through the concepts they find most dif- been active in the Madison public Stafslien ’98 at La Follette High School ficult to understand. Following Secada’s schools, supporting dozens of teachers on Madison’s east side. At 9:40 on a Jan- idea on the importance of how students as they explore ideas on the diversity uary morning, students in her basic alge- learn to reason, she says she keeps in components of math, says Mary bra class listen to school announcements mind that many may approach the Ramberg, teaching and learning director before slowly beginning to focus on the problems differently than she does. for the district. day’s lesson: functions and absolute value. “We’ve made a lot of progress,” she “We have a wonderful symbiotic Stafslien, a third-year math teacher, is says. “These kids have failed before in relationship with UW-Madison,” she also pursuing her master’s in education. the system. They’ve always looked at says. “We’ve learned a lot from each For the past three years, she has partici- math as a dry set of rules and theorems other. We believe that all kids can learn pated in a seminar for mathematics teach- they didn’t want to memorize. math, and a focus on kids who have been ers of low-track students run by Secada, “At the beginning of the year, every- left behind is sorely needed.” his graduate students, and the MMSD. one was unhappy with math and kind of In spite of the small amount of sys- “At first, I wasn’t sure what kids resigned to being here,” she adds. “Now temic research in the field, Secada says were thinking about or what they were they’re getting excited.” he has ideas on how to teach math to understanding,” she says. “The goal is to Maurice Dean, a freshman, says he diverse populations. Among them: get them involved and get them to take doesn’t expect to ever have test retakes, Ⅲ A focus on smaller class sizes for stu- ownership of their math. The idea is to let alone nightmares about algebra. dents who are on the bottom tracks. take kids with really low math esteem “It’s become my favorite class,” he Ⅲ A more balanced curriculum, and show them what they’re capable of.” says. “I love the way she teaches.” stressing understanding and skills, The twenty students in her racially operations, applications, contextual mixed group have been recommended for John Lucas, a writer for University Communications at UW-Madison, tried his hand at a few math problems problems, and how they all relate to the class by their previous teachers while observing Chris Stafslien’s class — and claims each other. because of difficulties they experienced in that he got the answers right.

SPRING 2002 35 UNCONVENTIONAL The inner workings — and inner workers — of WORKUW-Madison reveal that it takes more to make a university run than teaching and research. ■ Now We’re Cooking “I’m a firm believer that, as a manager, And Peek enjoys introducing I need to be out on the line, doing the Rathskeller diners to new specials. If If the Rathskeller is a UW-Madison same kind of work as the staff,” he says. not for him, there would be no Messy institution, you might say John Peek ’84 So he faces fifteen hours of splatter- Veggie sandwich today. Nor would has been institutionalized. On any ing grease every week. But the there be a Jackhammer. Or a given weekday, during the shifts allow him time to be Deutschland Delight. lunch rush, you’ll find him with his family, and besides, “Since 1995,” he says, “I’ve created by the Rathskeller’s grill. management has its perks. or introduced more than a hundred new BY OHN LLEN upporting a total population J A He’s easy to recognize — of 60,083 — 41,219 students, Among Peek’s duties is the recipes here. I enjoy experimenting in PHOTOS BYBOBRASHID’87 he’s the guy who serves responsibility for making the kitchen.” 2,175 faculty, and 16,689 staff up a standup comedy act sure the restaurant’s Many of Peek’s creations grow as — UW-Madison isn’t just along with the Paul pantry is stocked. This much out of necessity as inspiration. Bunyan burgers. He’s one of the nation’s largest gives him the opportunity Sometimes he’ll find that the Rathskeller been at the Rat, off and not only to keep the has far more than it needs of one food universities. It’s a whop- on, for eighteen years, Rathskeller’s food fresh, but item or another. Then Peek will feel the ping big community. When climbing his way from stu- to keep its menu fresh, urge to create a new special to see if he class is in session, the 933 acres of dent worker to assistant as well. can work through some of the back S manager. inventory. central campus pack in a higher population density than “That’s how the Jackhammer came does New York City. about,” he says. “Jack is one of our less Just about everyone knows the main industries of our quasi-city popular cheeses — I don’t know why, exactly. Once we were stuck with a lot of on the shore of Lake Mendota — minting new university it, and I had to come up with a way to graduates and extending the boundaries of knowledge. But though get it moving, so I thought, hey, ham and instruction and research get all the glory, they’re only a small part of the cheese — people like that.” work going on at UW-Madison. On the following pages, you’ll meet Over the years, Peek has left the grill behind several times — to people whose jobs may, on the surface, seem far removed from the business supervise at the Stiftskeller, to run of education. They virtually never coordinate a syllabus or publish a research the sandwich deli, and, for a paper, but their work ensures that the UW’s teachers can teach, its researchers four-year stretch in the early 1990s, to give up salaried work can investigate, and its students can learn. altogether and be “Mr. Mom” This list of hidden professions isn’t exhaustive — not by a long stretch. With to his young daughter. But he’s our limited space, we couldn’t fit, for instance, Doug Thiessen ’77. Known as always been drawn back. “I like serving and being in the public the Critter Catcher, Mouse Man, or Batman, he’s UW-Madison’s sole pest con- eye,” he says. “The best thing about trol specialist, and he’s climbed through just about every nook, cranny, passage, working in the Rathskeller is being and crawlspace on central campus. Nor could we fit the cheese makers at the able to interact with the customers.” Babcock Dairy, the person who oils the Union’s bowling lanes, the School of Music’s instrument tuner — the list goes on. Consider this only the beginning. Despite years of working at the Rat, you’ll seldom see John Peek buying his lunch there. He prefers to brown-bag it. “What I make is basically a deli sandwich anyway,” he says.

36 ON WISCONSIN SPRING 2002 37 ■ A Scientific Undertaking

Once upon a time, it was almost a cliché: “I’m not going to be buried,” people would say. “I’m leaving my body to science.” Well, in Wisconsin, science has the face of Bob Schlotthauer. He’s the senior mortician with UW-Madison’s body donation program, and he and his part- ner, Phil Schadler, are responsible for keeping the medical school’s cadavers as healthy as corpses can be. “Some people get a little queasy about the idea of body donation,” says Schlotthauer. “But it’s important that medical students learn from real bodies. If I’m going to see a doctor, I’d rather see one who’s actually practiced on the real thing than one who’s only dealt with plastic models.” Schlotthauer and Schadler log more than 30,000 miles annually, fetching bodies back to Madison. About sixty of the hundred or so bodies they embalm Above: One of the aspects of Chris Ott’s job every year will be dissected in UW that he enjoys most is going into the field to Medical School gross anatomy classes. collect new specimens. But the Geology Museum is largely dependent on volunteer Others may go to hospital residency pro- diggers. “We have a fieldwork budget of grams or to other body-related classes, $500 and a van,” he says. such as kinesiology or physical and Left: Farshid Feyzi holds one of the tools of occupational therapy. his uncommon trade: the Superbolt. These Schlotthauer has been a UW are some of the largest screws in the world, able to apply 250 tons of clamping force. mortician since 1980, and in that time, Even so, his lab, the PSL, will need about he’s never misplaced a body — or even Though it makes their jobs more hectic, Bob Schlotthauer, above, and Phil Schadler prefer to do 1,600 of them for the compact muon their own embalming. “Our material is superior to what other [morticians] use,” Schlotthauer solenoid it is helping to build. part of one. But in 1996, he managed to says. “Once we seal a body in its plastic bag, it’ll mummify before it goes bad.” lose his own heart in the embalming room. While on the job, he met medical student it the second most popular on campus, Barbara Knox MDx’02. She had stuck And there will be only one — when director, supervising the thirty members after the Elvehjem Museum of Art. around after anatomy class, and struck up it’s finished, that is. The solenoid, a sub- of PSL’s technical staff — the engineers Ott’s duties include not only creating a conversation with Schlotthauer. Eventu- atomic-particle detector that scientists who design such instruments, the eye-catching displays, but also cleaning ally they went out for a beer, and dating will use to seek evidence of a certain kind machinists who build them, and the and classifying new additions to the led to marriage in 2001. “After all these of particle known as a Higgs boson, will specialists who calibrate them. museum’s collection and even going into years,” he says, “I finally got something be assembled in Geneva, Switzerland, in PSL exists, essentially, to help the field to collect specimens of his own. lively out of this job.” a couple of years. Currently, its compo- researchers overcome one problem: the For the last several summers, Ott’s nents are under construction at several gulf that separates scientific hypothesis been digging in the Hell Creek Formation labs around the world. PSL is one of from real-world conditions. Feyzi’s team thousand projects, and each one is differ- ter dust and the dirt of millennia. His in Montana, “an amazing site” where he ■ Massive Production those labs, with responsibility for the has constructed speech therapy monitors ent. But overcoming unique problems — work space, an overgrown closet has identified at least fourteen different instrument’s two endcaps, each of which for the Waisman Center, vacuum cham- that’s what we’re good at.” crammed with tools on the ground floor dinosaur skeletons. Recent digs have If you need a compact muon solenoid, weighs about 3,000 tons. bers for the physics department, rainfall of Weeks Hall, is covered in clumps and brought in some impressive specimens, Farshid Feyzi ’80, MS’82 is the man But the compact muon solenoid isn’t run-off samplers for the Wisconsin ■ Stones and Bones lumps and specks and motes that are including bones from a Triceratops to see. He and his colleagues at UW- PSL’s only project. In its cavernous, alu- Department of Natural Resources, older than ancient. and one of its distant relatives, a Madison’s Physical Sciences Laboratory minum building north of Stoughton, the and neutrino detectors for the UW’s No one knows better than Chris Ott ’99 Ott is in charge of specimen prepara- Leptoceratops. (PSL) are some of the few people in the lab designs and builds unusual — often astronomy department. that the keys to the future lie buried in tion at UW-Madison’s Geology Museum. When not cleaning or preparing dis- world who know what the device is — unique — scientific instruments. Since “In the years PSL has been here,” the past. But then, for Ott, the present More than five hundred tours pass plays, Ott is busy cataloging materials in and how to build one. 1995, Feyzi has been the lab’s associate Feyzi says, “we’ve done more than six lies buried in the past, too — under plas- through that museum every year, making the museum’s collections, which include

38 ON WISCONSIN SPRING 2002 39 Right: According to Edie Brogan, “In a Tortorice. “He wanted to know how he crowd situation, the most important things for an officer to do are to see and could’ve gotten a zero. We looked at our to be seen. Horses are perfect for this, records and saw that the machine had read because they get you up above crowd his sheet as blank, and I knew, this kid did level, and they attract attention.” his final in pen. The machine isn’t cali- Below: Bubble sheets continue to grow brated to read ink. It’s got to be graphite.” ever more common at the UW. “In the last five years,” says Char Tortorice, “there’s been a 23 percent increase in the number of sheets that pass through our office.” ■ Sell Out

With a name like his, Timothy Sell was destined to work in sales. And as busi- not only the items on display, but thou- ness manager for UW-Madison’s SWAP sands of specimens stored below Weeks Shop, he faces an unusual sales chal- Hall. “Invariably,” he says, “they were lenge: to perfect the theory that one collected by one professor or another office’s trash is another’s treasure. way back when. I’d like to get an inven- SWAP is the university’s surplus pro- tory of it all.” This will be no simple task. gram. Its name is an acronym for Surplus Some drawers, crammed full of speci- with a Purpose, and that purpose is mens collected decades ago, are simply twofold: to reduce the amount of material labeled “Rocks.” sent to Wisconsin’s junkyards, and to make money. Last year, the SWAP Shop ■ Sergeant Brogan did more than $1 million in sales and of the Mounties recirculated nearly 700 tons of stuff that otherwise would have gone to the dump. Not many UW-Madison staff have their Sell, who’s been with SWAP for five own trading card. But then, not many years, says the variety of that stuff runs UW employees have four legs, either. from the mundane — “We’ve got old McAllister is gifted with both — he’s the computers, office supplies, beakers, and horse who puts the “mount” in the UW- athletic shoes” — to items you won’t find Madison Mounted Police (UWMP). at the local mall. Some of the things that That, says his companion, Sergeant have passed through SWAP’s sales regis- Edie Brogan, makes McAllister something “We get anywhere from two to seven semitrailers full of merchandise every week,” says Tim ter include horses, chairs that belonged of a celebrity. “Kids love to see him and Sell. “Most of it is gone within a week and a half.” Very little of SWAP’s inventory ends up at to the UW System board of regents, pet him. They’re who the cards are for.” the recycler. Instead, most of it (like these chairs) finds a home in a new office or classroom. glass globes from the capitol, and a Brogan established the UWMP $400,000 laser that could cut through six at the beginning of the 1989 football inches of steel. “Of course,” says Sell, ■ Connect the Dots course evaluations, and as answer pages season, when her partner was a horse “you’ve got to go through a background for multiple-choice exams. More than a named Kiddo. The unit showed its worth check if you want to buy that one.” If you ask Char Tortorice ’72, MS’75 million of them pass through UW-Madi- almost immediately. The shop works like an enormous which tool has done the most to improve son every year, an average of nearly “During the second home game that consignment store. University and state efficiency at UW-Madison during the twenty-five per student, and all of them year, our captain and another officer were offices send old equipment to SWAP last thirty years, she’ll probably tell you go to Tortorice and her colleagues. They arresting a suspect, and he took off,” says and receive a share of the sale price. it’s the number two pencil. possess Madison’s only NCS 5000i opti- Brogan. “Kiddo and I gave chase, and by Most offices then use their earnings to Tortorice, associate director of the cal scanner — the bubble-sheet reading the time the other officers caught up with purchase other items from the SWAP Office of Testing and Evaluation Ser- machine. “Any data that can be collected us, we had the suspect pinned against a inventory. Once a week, SWAP is open vices, can tell you all about the low-tech on a sheet will be,” says Tortorice. “And tree and cuffed.” to the general public, to keep the goods number two, just a soft graphite rod all those sheets come to us.” Brogan will occasionally patrol in moving. “We’re like a giant garage sale,” jacketed in pine. When used properly, But though everyone who passes areas such as the Arboretum or Picnic After September 11, she even tapped the way of emergency vehicles, they’ll still Sell says. it makes a dark, even dot on a bubble through UW-Madison is touched by the Point, where vehicles can’t go, but the City of Milwaukee Mounted Unit for move for horses. Their presence is intimi- sheet. “A number two works perfectly,” bubble sheet, there are still students and unit’s most important duty is crowd con- help at two Badger games. dating. But horses are also excellent PR she says, “especially if it isn’t too sharp.” faculty members who fail to remember the John Allen, associate editor of On Wisconsin, spends a trol. For special events, the UWMP can “Horses present a dichotomy,” Brogan — those who aren’t intimidated by horses Bubble sheets — those fill-in-the-dot importance of the number two pencil. lot of time wondering what other people do for a living expand, adding a freelance force of five says. “They’re great for moving crowds. — which probably doesn’t sit too well with his boss. If are attracted to them, which makes them forms — have become ubiquitous on “Just last term we had a student call us you’d like to read more about the people profiled here, other mounties from around the state. Even when people won’t get out of the wonderful for community policing.” campus for use in surveys, applications, up because he’d failed his final,” says visit www.uwalumni.com/onwisconsin.

40 ON WISCONSIN SPRING 2002 41