For University of Wisconsin-Madison Alumni and Friends

Interrogating the Truth Filmmaker Errol Morris ’69 traces his obsession with sifting and winnowing to Wisconsin.

SPRING 2009

Fading Words Can Wisconsin’s native languages be saved?

Flock of Sheepskins The contest to pile up the most UW degrees is fiercer than you’d think.

Forty Winks UW researchers have an unusual theory about why we sleep. WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Before child labor laws, children as young as 9 worked in coal mines.

Many workplace protections we count on came from the University of Wisconsin. At the turn of the past century, university economists helped redefi ne government’s role in the workplace. Because of their guidance, Wisconsin had the nation’s fi rst worker’s and unemployment compensation laws and led the country in enacting child labor and minimum-wage laws.

Through advocacy and education, the Center for Patient Partnerships helps people who face serious illness to make more informed choices. Students and staff at the center guide clients and their families as they explore diagnosis and treatment options, resolve insurance and billing disputes, and navigate employment and disability issues.

FORWARD. THINKING. www.wisconsinidea.wisc.edu

When Parker Summers was 3, the insurance company for the Appleton family refused to cover his cancer treatment. The CPP provided advocacy and support as Parker received vital medical care. Today, Parker is healthy and enjoys a romp in his yard. with his pal, Kahlúa. SPRING 2009 contents VOLUME 110, NUMBER 1

Features

20 Truth, Death, & Taxidermy By Eric Goldscheider Errol Morris’s documentaries are known for being quirky — and brilliant. In the words of film critic Roger Ebert, “After twenty years of reviewing films, I haven’t found another filmmaker who intrigues me more ... Errol Morris is like a magician, and as great a filmmaker as Hitchcock or Fellini.”

28 Weight of the Words By Jason Stein MA’03 When tribal elders die and take their languages with them, it’s akin to a culture burning its libraries. Henning Garvin ’03, other alumni, and UW researchers are hoping to put out the fire by pairing generations and creating enduring records of Wisconsin’s five native tribes. 20 34 A Matter of Degree(s) By John Allen How much is enough when it comes to education? Some UW alumni are gluttons for course work. Meet the candidates in the competition to become UW-Madison’s most-graduated graduate.

38 Bedtime Story By Jenny Price ’96 We all need sleep, and when we don’t get enough, it isn’t pretty. But scientists have yet to discover what exactly 28 happens in our bodies and brains when we sleep. It’s a puzzle well worth solving for those who have sleep disor- ders or certain mental illnesses. So what theory are UW researchers pursuing? One unlike any other, of course.

Departments 4 Letters 7 Inside Story 8 Scene 10 News & Notes 38 16 Cool Tool 17 Classroom 18 Sports

46 Traditions Cover 48 Gifts in Action Filmmaker Errol Morris ’69 has Badger Connections developed unique interview techniques to 49 get at multifaceted aspects of the truth. 66 Flashback Photo by Tracy Powell

SPRING 2009 3 letters

forward takes all of your self-control and Give me a break — I didn’t know it was the focus as you lean forward over the edge of the role of a scientist to change the thinking of the tower wall until you are at about 90 degrees populace. The role of a scientist is to perform and then you run down the wall. This is help- research to solve the riddles of nature, and to ful when you need to see where you are going have that research vetted by peers; changing with a potential enemy below and allows a the minds of the populace regarding so-called free hand for your weapon. stereotypes is the role of politicians. About 1978, the bricks on the tower were Paul Feng ’83 becoming loose, and the use of the tower for Irvine, California rappelling was ended for safety reasons. James Kedrow ’78 Ballroom Dancing Memories Zion, Illinois Thanks for “Ballroom Basics” [Winter 2008, Classroom]. I took Dance 041 in fall 1984 and UPers Can Thank Copper remember what a wonderful time it was. My Everyone Loves a Cliffhanger As a map lover, I was intrigued by “Shaped classmates and I had so much fun learning I thought that [John Allen’s] article on Eric by History” [Winter 2008] and the explanations the dances and going to the four required ball- Gabriel [“Capitan Courageous,” Winter 2008 for how Wisconsin’s boundaries were estab- room dances in Memorial Union’s Great Hall. On Wisconsin] was superb — informative, well lished. As a geologist, I was surprised that I still remember the last day — when the written, and fascinating! Thanks. there was no mention of the primary reason class was over, we all just sat around Lathrop Bill Rock MS’89 that the Upper Peninsula is part of Michigan Hall, willing it not to end. I don’t remember Madison and not Wisconsin: the native copper deposits the names of my old partners, but I’ll always of the Keweenaw Peninsula. Copper had been remember the feeling of being swept across Thank you for the exceptional cover story and discovered there in the early 1830s, and when the dance floor by them. Thanks for the amazing photos in “Capitan Courageous.” I Michigan was set to become a state in 1837 memories! have always enjoyed reading On Wisconsin (more than ten years before Wisconsin would), Sandra Fischer ’87 from cover to cover; however, given that I am annexing the Upper Peninsula was a strategic Hartford, Connecticut Eric Gabriel’s sister, this is by far my favorite economic move. issue! Many readers may not know that Eric’s The copper was considered such an “Ballroom Basics” brought back fond mem- top priority off the job is his family. He is a important resource that in 1844, the U.S. gov- ories of teaching ballroom dance at the UW. devoted husband and father of three children ernment established a remote army outpost, When I entered the university in the late ’60s under the age of six. Their dad is a “super Fort Wilkins, at the very tip of the Keweenaw as a graduate student in the dance depart- hero,” but to them he is Dad who takes them hiking and climbing. All three, like their father, love to climb every boulder they pass by. Eric’s first major climbing feat was at age two. Eric’s first major climbing feat was at age Our parents found him up on the fireplace mantel. two. Our parents found him up on the fireplace mantel. They’d heard a crash and saw that the grandfather clock had fallen, but Eric was safe. Peninsula (probably the safest army posting ment, there were no ballroom classes offered. Jenifer Gabriel Novak ’88, MS’93 an enlisted man could have asked for). Even With my department chair’s blessing, I devel- Streamwood, Illinois more incredibly, the boundaries of Michigan oped the first sessions. were gerrymandered to include copper depos- That first semester, I had to put announce- In the sidebar “Climbing the Walls” [“Capitan its on Lake Superior’s Isle Royale, in spite of ments in every dorm to get enough students to Courageous”], there is a picture of a per- the fact that the island lies much closer to enroll. By the time I got my degree, they were son rappelling down the southwest tower of northern Minnesota. turning students away because the sessions the Red Gym. This appears to be an Army Marcia Bjornerud MS’85, PhD’87 filled up quickly. ROTC cadet performing an Australian rappel- Appleton, Wisconsin It is wonderful to see that ballroom dance ling technique. I practiced and performed this is still offered and that it is making another specialized technique, at this very location, Of Scientists and Stereotypes comeback in popularity. as one of the university’s Army ROTC cadets Regarding “It Doesn’t Add Up” [Winter 2008], Ellyn Sistrunk Kroupa MS’70, PhD’96 between 1974 and 1978. I wish to comment on UW psychology profes- Madison I highly doubt that the Hoofers would sor Janet Hyde’s proclamation that it is her teach this, since the usual way to rappel is mission to change stereotypes and “as a sci- Thanks for your article about the ballroom with one’s back toward the ground. Rappelling entist, [she has] to challenge them with data.” dance elective offered through the dance

4 ON WISCONSIN department. My husband [Justin Ueland ’01] and I met in that class in Lathrop Hall in the fall of 2000. After a semester of danc- ing together in class and studying together at Grainger Library, we started dating. We were married in 2002 and were able to do a mean foxtrot as the first dance at our wedding! April Klima Ueland ’02 Chanhassen, Minnesota

Once a Badger, Always a Badger As my twenty years on the Wisconsin Alumni Association board of directors draw to an end, I want to express my sincere gratitude for the great opportunity to serve our alumni, fans, and friends around the world. I can report firsthand that our beloved alma mater is in excellent shape; certainly not without challenges, but with many outstand- ing faculty and staff in the right places to con- tinue the Wisconsin Idea. Passionate alumni support from Badgers just like you and me will always be the difference in our University of Wisconsin continuing to be a world leader in learning, teaching, research, and growing tomorrow’s great minds. Doug Griese ’75 Troy, Michigan WAA 2007–08 Chair

Please Update Your Address UW-Madison wants to stay in touch with you. To update your contact information, which is maintained by the UW Foundation, please visit www.uwfoundation.wisc.edu/survey. To log in, use the ID number above your name on the magazine label. This information is shared selectively with other campus units and the Wisconsin Alumni Association to ensure that alumni information is consistent and accurate. Thank you!

On Wisconsin Magazine welcomes letters and reserves the right to edit them for length or clarity. E-mail comments to onwisconsin@ uwalumni.com; mail them to On Wisconsin, 650 North Lake Street, Madison, WI 53706; or fax them to (608) 265-8771. We regret that we don’t have room to publish all the letters we receive, but we do appreciate hearing from you.

SPRING 2009 5 2855 UWF617a GrtPpl OnWi ad 1/20/09 :2825 1/20/09 12:55 PM Page 1

Keeping the doors open

Today, three out of five University of Wisconsin-Madison students receive financial aid. For them, the door is open. The UW Foundation wants to make sure it stays open for every talented student who qualifies for admission. When you make a gift to the "Great people. Great place." initiative, you open doors. The UW Foundation will match unrestricted, campus-wide gifts to the initiative for student support dollar for dollar.

For further information, go to www.greatpeoplegreatplace.org, call 608-263-4545 or e-mail [email protected].

University6 ON of WISCONSIN Wisconsin Foundation l 1848 University Avenue l P.O. Box 8860 l Madison, Wisconsin 53708-8860 l 608-263-4545 l [email protected] l www.uwfoundation.wisc.edu insidestory

Welcome to the latest On Wisconsin issue of your alumni SPRING 2009 magazine, which we hope you will view as a longtime friend Publisher who has had a nip here and a Wisconsin Alumni Association 650 North Lake Street, Madison, WI 53706 tuck there. Rather than wait for Voice: (608) 262-2551 • Toll-free: you to politely ask if we’ve had (888) WIS-ALUM • Fax: (608) 265-8771 E-mail: [email protected] a little work done, we’re com- Web site: uwalumni.com/onwisconsin ing clean right upfront. During Co-Editors 2008, while members of the On Niki Denison, Wisconsin Alumni Association Cindy Foss, University Communications Wisconsin team were produc-

Senior Editor ing your quarterly magazine, we John Allen, Wisconsin Alumni Association also carved out time to rede- Writer sign the magazine for the first Jenny Price ’96, University Communications time in a decade. We asked you Editorial Associates Paula Apfelbach ’83 and Ben Wischnewski ’05, how we were doing, digested your answers, added in some ideas of our own, Wisconsin Alumni Association and planned the changes that you’ll now find within these pages. Although the Art Director publication has evolved throughout its century-plus of connecting UW-Madison Earl J. Madden MFA’82, University Communications alumni and friends, and we’ve made incremental changes during recent years, it was time to take an honest look. Production Editor Eileen Fitzgerald ’79, We’ve kept what you like: both short and long stories, a mix of complex and University Communications lighter topics, and a historical photo that closes each issue. We also listened care- Design, Layout, and Production fully when you said that an alumni magazine is in a special category, that you want Barry Carlsen MFA’83, Toni Good ’76, MA’89, Kent Hamele ’78, Christine Knorr ’99, Nancy a printed version that you can pick up and put down, carry on a plane, or — as one Rinehart, University Communications devoted reader admitted — read in the bathtub. Campus Advisers We’ve taken away what you didn’t like: too many distracting elements in the Paula Bonner MS’78, President and CEO, and Mary DeNiro, Vice President of Marketing news section, a lengthy opening essay, and type sizes that made you squint. and Communications, Wisconsin Alumni Association • Albert Friedman, Associate We’ve added what you asked for: reader-friendly type, bigger photos, nostalgia Director, and Amy E. Toburen ’80, Director, (such as Traditions on pages 48-49), and straightforward section names (News & University Communications • Lynne Johnson, Senior Director of External Relations, Notes, for example). University of Wisconsin Foundation So please continue to think of us as your old friend On Wisconsin — but after a Advertising Representative little freshening up. Madison Magazine: (608) 270-3600

Alumni Name, Address, Phone, and E-Mail Changes • Death Notices Niki Denison and Cindy Foss Madison area: (608) 262-9648 Co-Editors Toll-free: (888) 947-2586 E-mail: [email protected]

The Wisconsin Alumni Association® (WAA) encourages diversity, inclusivity, non- discrimination, and participation by all alumni, students, and friends of the UW in its activities.

Production of On Wisconsin Magazine is supported by a UW Foundation grant. © 2009 Wisconsin Alumni Association

SPRING 2009 7 Printed on recycled paper. scene Four Chairs, No Waiting A frigid dinette set — built by art student Hongtao Zhou MFAx’10 — offered less than comfortable seating on the ice near Memorial Union. But the pieces weren’t meant for comfort. They were sculpture. Called “Ice & Snow Furniture Raised from Lake Mendota,” the work was created in late January and then removed by nature as temperatures rose. Photo by Jeff Miller

8 ON WISCONSIN SPRING 2009 9 news ¬es

All Together Now Chancellor calls upon cooperation and innovation during tough economic times.

When it comes to UW-Madison’s The new chancellor has staff, providing domestic partner state, nation, and world, and it is relationship with state legislators, been looking for ways the uni- health benefits, and funding high- essential that we make it through Chancellor Carolyn “Biddy” versity can help tackle the cur- priority projects, including the this difficult period with our great- Martin PhD’85 wants to turn rent state budget crisis and Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. est strengths intact,” Martin wrote the page. innovate in its day-to-day oper- “Higher education is critical in a letter e-mailed to students, Martin has taken steps to ations. She started this win- to the economic, social, environ- faculty, and staff. focus on cooperation, meeting ter with campus brainstorming mental, and cultural future of our Jenny Price ’96 with members of both parties sessions, which generated sug- and with leaders of Wisconsin gestions such as eliminating JEFF MILLER Manufacturers and Commerce redundant academic programs, (WMC), a lobbying organization, conserving energy, reducing and hosting an informal recep- waste, and flattening the levels tion for lawmakers in February. of administration. Before leaving his chan- Some choices “won’t feel cellor post last September, good to do, but will make the John Wiley MS’65, PhD’68 university stronger,” Martin said. accused WMC of undermin- Among them is increasing tuition, ing university support in the leg- which, she said, would need to be islature. Martin got some help paired with an increase in finan- from the November elections, cial aid to lessen the impact on which put Democrats in charge students from low- and middle- of the assembly and senate and income families. deposed one of the UW’s harsh- The UW still has a wish list est critics from a key leadership for the upcoming state budget: position on university issues. increasing pay for faculty and

quick takes

UW researchers are helping The School of Medicine and the sector’s next generation of with the advent of industrializa- unlock the secrets of the deadliest Public Health has proposed doing leaders. The School of Human tion, but five to eight millennia infectious disease in human away with grades — at least for Ecology has launched the Center ago, with the dawn of agriculture. history. The Spanish influenza first-year medical students. In an for Nonprofits, with plans to help Further, they hypothesize that this epidemic of 1918–20 killed as effort to reduce stress, improve undergraduate and graduate warming may have helped fore- many as 100 million people collaboration, and reduce compe- students, as well as returning stall an ice age. around the globe, and scientists tition, the school would institute professionals, gain the skills to have long wondered what made a pass/fail system for first-years. successfully lead nonprofits. Got sweetness? UW scientists it so much more deadly than The subsequent three years of the are developing a new artificial other strains of influenza. A study program would still be graded. Global warming may not be sweetener. Brazzein, created from led by UW virologist Yoshihiro Similar plans have been put in such a new thing — or, at least, the pulp of a West African berry, Kawaoka has now identified place at Harvard, Stanford, and that’s what some UW clima- has a taste close to sugar and three genes that made that virus other universities. tologists suspect. A study by lacks the aftertaste common to so lethal. The discovery could Stephen Vavrus, John Kutzbach, aspartame and other sugar sub- help epidemiologists assess the The number of nonprofit and Gwenaelle Philippon of the stitutes. Expected to receive FDA threat from emerging viruses, and organizations in the United States Nelson Institute for Environmental approval this year, it would form possibly aid the development of has tripled during the last twenty Studies suggests warming didn’t the main ingredient in the com- flu-fighting drugs. years, and the UW wants to train begin two or three centuries ago, mercial product CWEET.

10 ON WISCONSIN A More Perfect Union Bye-bye, brutalism. Hello, welcoming and green.

Bowling lanes might be one of The twenty- the few similarities between the first–century new Union South and the old incarnation one, a concrete behemoth slated has a much for demolition this spring. better shot of drawing people old building and demolishing The final design is more “[Union South is] not a warm, inside and prompting them to the adjacent apartment building welcoming place. It was built in the linger, given its bounty of win- along Campus Drive. organic, with a wood, brutalist architectural tradition,” dows, modern meeting spaces, Early proposals for the new stone, and steel exterior says Dan Cornelius JDx’10, two levels of underground park- Union South were deemed too suggesting some Prairie MSx’10, VP for project manage- ing, and even a climbing wall that modern or not distinct enough ment for the Wisconsin Union. will soar two floors from a base- from Memorial Union. The final School influence, and A group of students, alumni, ment recreation center. design is more organic, with a 10,000 square feet of and staff worked for more than That welcoming presence wood, stone, and steel exterior green roof, creating what two years on the new building’s starts on the outside, where bal- suggesting some Prairie School design, gathering input across conies, patios, and terraces will influence, and 10,000 square feet will be the most sustain- the campus community through open the building to the sur- of green roof, creating what will able structure on campus. surveys and focus groups, and rounding campus. The plan for be the most sustainable structure selecting architects to bring their the southwest side of Union on campus. The project will use ideas to fruition. The primary goal South features a stepped plaza, local resources as much as pos- Garden — for eating, studying, and was to create a campus destina- with water features and areas for sible, and will integrate salvaged informal meetings. tion with spaces and programs seating, where the UW Marching materials, such as carved stone “This is going to be a high- that the iconic Memorial Union Band will perform on football trim rescued from a building that energy space,” says Andrea Bill does not have. Saturdays. North Orchard Street was torn down to make way for MS’06 PhDx’09, an engineer- “We recognize we don’t have will be transformed into a pedes- the adjacent Wisconsin Institutes ing student and member of the Lake Mendota here,” Cornelius trian mall that can also host farm- for Discovery. design committee. says. “We really need this build- ers’ markets and art shows. The building’s main level will A grill offering lunchtime ing to be a people magnet.” Overall, the building and its include a coffeehouse with a stage and evening dining will be Union Some campus groups, it outdoor spaces will have a big- for acoustic music and spoken South’s version of Der Rathskeller, seems, canceled their events ger footprint, eliminating the trib- word performances, fireplaces, an with a stage for live shows. Sliding rather than hold them at the orig- utary of Johnson Street that runs art gallery, a market, food kiosks, walls will create a cross breeze on inal Union South, built in 1971. in front of the north side of the and a sitting area — called the Sun warm days and blur the distinc- tion between indoor and outdoor space, welcoming people into the building from terrace seating areas and the Orchard Street mall. Plans for the second floor include a space three times the size of Memorial Union’s Great Hall. Called Badger Hall, it will overlook Randall Street and hold 1,000 people for a sit-down dinner or 2,000 for dances or concerts, and can be divided into three sep- arate spaces. On the same floor, a 350-seat theater will serve as WORKSHOP ARCHITECTS, INC. AND MOODY-NOLAN, (2) the new home for the Union’s film The new Union South, which will feature an outdoor plaza, indoor climbing wall, and high-tech meeting series and double as a space for spaces, is designed to be a campus destination, rather than a satellite to Memorial Union. lectures and conferences.

SPRING 2009 11 news ¬es

The building’s upper three starting and ending point for cover the cost of both renovating Mark Guthier says the new build- floors will include sixty guest campus tours. Memorial Union and starting from ing will change Union South’s sta- rooms, offices for student orga- Memorial Union, on the lake- scratch to build the new Union tus from a “satellite union” to a nizations and additional meet- front, will also be undergoing a South, scheduled for completion in place with a distinct identity. ing rooms, and space for staff major renovation, with improve- March 2011. During construction, In a few years, when a stu- who are relocating from Memorial ments intended to bring it up to the engineering campus will host dent or professor says, “Let’s meet Union. Union South will also be current safety and access codes Badger Bash prior to home football at the Union,” the natural response the new home for Visitor and while preserving its ambience. games and SOAR programs for may be, “Which one?” For more Information Programs, currently In 2006, UW-Madison stu- incoming first-year students. information: newunion.wisc.edu. in the Red Gym, making it the dents voted to pay higher fees to Wisconsin Union director Jenny Price ’96

STUDENT WATCH See Food? Photographing meals aids healthy eating. Some students say they wouldn’t have made it through college without them. First-Year Interest Groups (FIGs) When it comes to watching what ISTOCKPHOTO (3) give UW freshmen the chance to take three classes you eat, it pays to watch closely — and take a picture. According to a linked by a theme and live together in the same part of study conducted by consumer sci- campus. Topics range from Truth and the Meaning of ence professor Lydia Zepeda and Life — with classes on philosophy, Shakespeare, and graduate student David Deal, peo- ple who photographed their meals Western culture — to Cultural Issues for Health Care tended to follow a healthier diet. Professionals, one of the most popular offerings as The study was conducted student interest in those fields climbs. in 2006, when Zepeda and Deal FIGs started in 2001 with just four groups and sev- asked forty-three volunteers to photograph everything they ate enty-four students; this year, 539 students, or about 10 before consuming it. The goal percent of the freshman class, are enrolled in twenty- was not to encourage weight nine FIGs. Each group has about twenty students, and loss so much as to study how they help each other navigate a large campus, choose people make decisions about the foods they eat. a major, and make friends. “They do get very tightly “We know that food diaries — bonded in a very short time,” says Greg Smith PhD’85, where people record everything the program’s director. they’ve eaten — are a common tool used in dieting,” Zepeda says. Participating students earn better GPAs and gradu- “But journaling is done after the ate at higher rates than those not enrolled in FIGs, while fact, after the food has been eaten. professors who teach the courses say the experience To photograph the meal, you’ve got encourages them to do less lecturing and make their to record it before you eat.” They found that people are classes interactive. increasingly conscious of what’s FIGs, which have operated for more than a decade on their plates — and reluctant to at universities including Indiana and Michigan, earn eat anything inappropriate. high praise at the UW. One student who responded to a The study was funded with the aid of a Vilas Life Cycle grant recent survey said, “I felt that this experience was close from the Women in Science and to perfect.” Engineering Leadership Institute. J.P. J.A.

12 ON WISCONSIN Age, Order, and Autism Keep in Touch Study links family environment and autism. Professor studies why, for some, only fingers can do the shopping. A child’s chances of develop- parents,” Durkin’s study noted, ing autism may be set at birth, “were three times more likely to Joann Peck MBA’93 has spied on people in grocery but not necessarily by genetics. develop autism than were third- stores, and her office is sprinkled with Slinkys, Koosh According to a study led by UW or later-born offspring of moth- Balls, and chenille blankets. It’s all in the name of research pediatrics and population health ers aged twenty to thirty-four and for Peck, a marketing professor in the Wisconsin School sciences professor Maureen fathers aged under forty years.” of Business who studies the role of touch in consumer Durkin ’77, MA’79, PhD’82, Durkin admits she doesn’t behavior. birth order and parental age both know why parental age and birth Peck has developed what she calls a need-for-touch appear to affect development of order affect ASD, nor why the scale, which measures the difference between people who autism spectrum disorders. effects seem to conflict — sec- can’t walk through a store without handling everything Durkin and her colleagues ond- or third-born children would within reach and those who only grab what they are actu- looked at 253,347 children born in have older parents than their first- ally going to buy. Her work is increasingly relevant with the 1994, and they found that 1,251 born siblings. “We were really look- growing popularity of online shopping, as retailers seek showed signs of autism spectrum ing at two distinct variables,” she ways to get people to buy, even when the description of a disorders (ASD), a broad group of says, “and we discovered that they sweater as “soft” just isn’t enough. social and communication impair- have independent effects, that they Peck’s scale reveals why people want to touch prod- ments. While the overall incidence seem to go in opposite directions.” ucts. For some, it’s spontaneous and strictly for fun. For was low — less than .5 percent — Durkin hopes that future others, it’s driven by a need to know something specific some patterns emerged. studies will enable researchers to about a product, such as how heavy a laptop computer The children of fathers past illuminate the effects of family on would be to carry around. the age of forty were 60 per- ASD. In 2009, she will join with About 25 percent of people have an extremely high cent more likely to show symp- researchers around the United need for touch, yet when shopping online, sometimes a toms than those of younger States in the National Children’s description — say the weight of a cell phone — is all they fathers, and the children of moth- Study, a longitudinal study of need, Peck says. With items such as books and CDs, most ers aged thirty-five or older were some 100,000 children born this people don’t care if they get to touch the product, but “if it’s 40 percent more likely. At the year. Durkin and other research- something fun to touch, there isn’t really a way I’ve found to same time, firstborn children also ers will follow the children’s compensate people,” she says. showed an increased incidence development from birth to age Her latest research shows — 30 percent more than sec- twenty-one to examine environ- that touching an object ond-borns and 70 percent more mental influences on health and increases a person’s than those born third or later. development. sense of ownership, a “Firstborn offspring of two older John Allen finding that could have a major impact on new-product devel- First in Their Families opment. “You’re About one out of every five students in the UW’s 2008 freshman class willing to pay more is entitled to say, “I’m the first person in my immediate family to go to if you feel more college.” Among these first-generation students, 49 percent were eligi- ownership, which ble for financial aid, compared to 19 percent of freshmen whose parents also has really inter- have college degrees. Knowing more about these students, UW officials esting implications hope, will identify ways to help them through the college experience. for marketing,” Peck says. In this first-generation group, more of the students are: BRYCE RICHTER J.P. • female

• slightly older • from rural Wisconsin • majoring in non-technical fields • working while in college Source: UW-Madison Academic Planning and Analysis

SPRING 2009 13 news ¬es

Macroscopic BRYCE RICHTER

Blown-up images of the microscopic world become art in the beauty of biology. And anyway, she argues, the space needed lobby of the Genetics/Biotechnology addition. Ahna Skop PhD’00 something. “I’m the daughter of two artists and have an art organized the display, which consists of pictures of UW genet- degree myself,” she says. “When I see a blank wall, I have to do icists’ research. Skop believes that the images show off the something about it.”

Legal Aid The Consumer Law Litigation Clinic takes aim at bad business.

Last July, the students work- The Consumer Law Litigation fifteen students take part in it violated Wisconsin’s consumer ing in the UW’s Consumer Law Clinic helps train future attor- each year, meeting with clients, act in the terms of the loans it Litigation Clinic taught a lesson neys by involving them in aiding assessing their legal difficulties, had offered. The students filed of their own to Tremont Financial some of Madison’s poorest citi- and advocating on their behalf. a complaint in court, and ulti- LLC. In a Dane County court, the zens. “It’s one of the great learn- But though students enroll in mately negotiated a settlement students forced the Internet pay- ing experiences at the school,” the program for a year, its cases with Tremont. day lender to pay $60,000 and to says director Sarah Orr ’87, often take much longer. According to Orr, that’s cease lending in Wisconsin. JD’93. “It gives them a chance to The Tremont case, for typical of the clinic’s work. “We It may not have been the big- do research, improve their writ- instance, began in 2007, when probably settle more than half gest legal victory in the state’s ing skills, talk to folks, and resolve the clinic was staffed by an our cases prior to litigation,” she history, but it was the biggest in legal issues.” entirely different set of law stu- says. “But then that’s something the students’ careers so far — The clinic has been part of dents. They found some 137 important that the students and will, they hope, send a mes- the UW Law School since 1991, people who felt they’d been and their clients also learn. sage to predatory companies when it was established to pro- wronged by Tremont, and then Negotiating is often the best that someone is looking out for vide legal services to lower they convinced the clinic’s fac- thing for everyone.” Wisconsin consumers. income clients. Typically, ulty and staff that the lender had John Allen

14 ON WISCONSIN Doubling up on Vitamin D Daily supplement encouraged for those under eighteen. ISTOCKPHOTO Most Americans — except those And some studies have linked who gamely gulp down a tea- vitamin D to a reduced risk for spoon of cod liver oil daily — cancer, diabetes, and heart dis- don’t get enough vitamin D, ease. Though Greer emphasizes and physicians are trying to there’s not conclusive evidence tackle the problem by increas- to support that, he expects more ing the recommended intake for companies will fortify products children. ranging from yogurt to animal New guidelines from the crackers with vitamin D. American Academy of Pediatrics, Greer says the best way to co-authored by Frank Greer, a ensure children get enough vita- UW-Madison professor of pedi- min D is through a daily supple- atrics, double the recommended ment, which comes in liquid form amount of vitamin D for children for infants. Otherwise, working it under eighteen from 200 to 400 into a child’s diet is a challenge units per day. for most parents; it’s possible The academy is recom- only if a child drinks thirty-two mending more vitamin D for chil- ounces or more of milk each day dren just as reports show an or has a diet that includes fatty One way to get vitamin D is from sunshine. But increased use of sun- increase in rickets — an extreme fish like salmon. screen means that children will need to rely on more supplements. deficiency — especially among Sunshine is another way young children of lower-income to get vitamin D naturally. But to March in most parts of North clothes on and not make any mothers who breastfeed and sunscreen use blocks ultravio- America,” Greer notes, “you vitamin D.” don’t take vitamin supplements. let rays, and “from November could stay out all day with no Jenny Price ’96

UW Wall-to-Wall A look at groups that Badgers have I Love Matt Lepay, Voice of the Badgers, for Badger fans who would “rather listen to the game formed online. than watch it.”

On Facebook, the social net- working Web tool, users can do I Have a Sneaking Suspicion that Professor [Michael] Chamberlain Is Indiana Jones, for just about everything, from let- students who doubt that the UW history professor travels to the Middle East to study: “Right! Raid- ting friends know what they are ing tombs and searching for the Holy Grail is probably closer to the truth!” doing at that very moment to posting pictures from their lat- est vacations. The site is also Bring Baseball Back at UW-Madison, a petition for Badger fans who want to restore baseball home to special groups, with as a varsity sport. membership ranging from a handful to more than a mil- lion. On Wisconsin took a I Support Project Tunnel through Bascom Hill, for students who ask, “Who doesn’t want a peek at Facebook groups — shorter, flatter route to all their classes?” some funny, some puzzling — launched by UW students and alumni. I Am a University of Wisconsin Alum under 40 and I Kick A** Too, for UW alumni who, for J.P. some reason, weren’t selected to receive one of the Wisconsin Alumni Association’s Forward under 40 awards.

SPRING 2009 15 cooltool

Raise a Glass in Class Pilot brewing equipment shows bacteriology students the science of fermentation.

The microbiology department’s use. Rather, it would typically be MillerCoors gave the UW drinking than thinking ought to latest gizmo is causing a ferment used commercially to make sam- $100,000 to buy the gear, which reconsider. of interest. In fall, MillerCoors ples and test recipes. But at the may sound like a lot, but then “It’s a 300-level course,” Roll donated funds to purchase a set UW, says instructor Jon Roll, brewing is an important part says, noting its scientific empha- of pilot-scale brewing equipment the kit won’t be used to research of Wisconsin’s manufacturing sis. “Its prerequisites include so that UW students can learn to taste so much as process. industry, to the tune of $7 billion intro to microbiology, biochemis- unlock the science that fills their “Fermentation is important a year. try, and organic chemistry.” favorite pint. for many foods,” he says. “It’s Roll intends to use the equip- Still, though he limited With a capacity to make relevant not only to beer, but to ment in a class he’s currently initial enrollment to microbiol- about ten gallons of beer at a cheese, yogurt, sauerkraut, soy designing called Introduction to ogy majors, he reports, the class time, the pilot-scale brewing kit sauce. There’s a lot of science Zymology, and those students “filled instantly.” is hardly appropriate for industrial that goes into it.” who believe it will involve more John Allen

Brewing consultant Joe Pulizzano (left) looks over the UW’s new pilot-scale brewing equipment with faculty associate Jon Roll. Though mostly used for instruction and research, the equipment also produced a batch of Bucky’s Inaugural Ale (right), a light, golden ale.

16 ON WISCONSIN classroom

Word Games As America’s Hmong population grows, so does interest in its language.

Pab Xiav and Pab Liab, also BRYCE RICHTER (3) known as Team Blue and Team Red, are locked in a battle for supremacy. During several heated rounds of the game Guess Who?, team members take turns ask- ing questions, trying to figure out which character is on the other team’s card. But there’s a catch: most of the exchanges are in the Hmong language, the focus for the nineteen students enrolled in LCA Language 307: First Semester Hmong. Instructor Choua Lee often uses games, including Pictionary and Scrabble, in this beginning- level course, explaining, “You have to be able to be creative in any way to encourage the stu- dents to use the target language they are learning in class.” While playing Guess Who?, the students are not allowed to Many of the UW students enrolled in Hmong classes grew up in the United States speaking English, use English, except for com- but want to become fluent enough to be able to talk with parents and relatives in their native language. mon words like “okay,” and Lee has replaced English names on UW-Madison began offer- their families after growing up in lenging part of the language is the game pieces with names in ing three levels of Hmong lan- the United States. hearing the tones correctly and Hmong. She intervenes when guage classes in fall 2007; last Pilline Lee x’12, who plans pronouncing the sounds of the students need help, but most are fall, enrollment totaled sixty-four to become a pediatrician, enrolled consonants. on their own, answering ques- students. Most taking the classes in the class so that she can talk “There is no English equiva- tions with yog for “yes” or tsis are ethnically Hmong, but never to her parents without inserting lent sound for them to compare for “no.” At one point, some of became fluent. The “heritage” English into the conversation. But and contrast with,” Choua Lee the students pantomime as they students, as they are called, also she says being Hmong doesn’t says. debate the words for “beard” have little or no experience read- make the class easier for her or Amy Isensee x’10, a and “mustache” before asking ing or writing the language, says any other heritage student. linguistics major who is work- a question to home in on their Lee, a native Hmong speaker who “I knew that it would be ing toward a certificate to teach guesses. moved to the United States as a somewhat challenging, but I English as a second language, For much of the game, the teenager after spending her child- never thought it would be so decided to enroll in the class in students sit at the edge of their hood in Laos and Thailand. hard,” she says. light of America’s growing Hmong chairs, engrossed, cheering at The U.S. Hmong popula- In Hmong, every tone has population. Isensee, who has also victories and laughing heartily at tion, which arrived from south- its own meaning, with the pitch studied Spanish, French, and their own mistakes as they strug- ern China and Southeast Asia of the speaker’s voice going up Mandarin Chinese, says, “Of the gle with the language. The game primarily during the past twenty- and down like a series of musi- four, Hmong is definitely — hands also ties into their next assign- five years, is estimated at more cal notes. The letter at the end down — the hardest language ment: writing a journal entry than 200,000, with 40,000 living in of words dictates the tone used; I’ve studied. The sounds … are describing one of their closest Wisconsin. For many of Lee’s stu- for example, pob means ball, poj unlike anything I’ve had to pro- friends, including unique physical dents, the classes offer a chance means female, and pog means duce before.” and personality characteristics. to bridge the culture gap with grandmother. The most chal- Jenny Price ’96

SPRING 2009 17 sports

TEAM PLAYER Valyncia Raphael

Valyncia Raphael x’09 hopes she’ll make her biggest hit off the field. The senior left fielder helped the Badger softball team go undefeated in fall 2008 play, and team members look to build on that success “I’d like to go back to when the Big Ten season begins in late March. But Raphael has big- ger ambitions. [the Los Angeles area] The California native’s Badger career has been limited by inju- ries. As a sophomore, she suffered a herniated disk and missed much and work in a center for of the season, and as she worked her way back into form during her junior year, she batted .193 with five home runs. But off the field, teens in crisis. Often, if you she’s kept her focus on the future. With a double major in English and political science and a criminal justice emphasis, Raphael aims to can make a small difference attend law school after she receives her bachelor’s degree. “Initially I wanted to work for a D.A. [district attorney] some- for people while they’re in where,” she says. But while at the UW, she landed an internship at the Bockari House, a halfway house on high school, you can make a Madison’s east side, where she learned more about the legal system, and about herself. “My job was big difference in their lives.” mostly reading through policy reports and going through case files,” she says. “And I found that a lot of the clients had delinquency records. They were repeat offenders.” The experience helped Raphael see what she really wants to do with her life — help juveniles break out of that cycle. “I didn’t really think I enjoyed work- ing with kids and parents before,” she says. “I didn’t want to work with juveniles or in a group- home setting. But now, ultimately, I’d like to go back to [the Los Angeles area] and work in a center for teens in crisis. Often, if you can make a small difference for people while they’re in high school, you can make a big dif- ference in their lives.” John Allen UW SPORTS INFORMATION

18 ON WISCONSIN BRYCE RICHTER

Failing the Fitness Test Recreational Sports Board asks for $60 million to pump up facilities.

When Cheryl Yeung x’10 hits students is the Camp Randall the gym, she hits the books at the Sports Center, or the Shell, where same time. cardio and weight machines Like most UW students, crowd the edge of an indoor track. Yeung is an accomplished multi- “What we’re seeing now are Time for a relaxing workout? Not at the UW’s Natatorium, where students often have to stand in line for equipment. tasker. She has no problem crack- students who live closer to the ing a book while monitoring her SERF going to the Nat because heart rate. Much tougher is find- the SERF is too crowded,” says quated, and they’re too small.” campus life. “It can be hard to ing an open cardio machine at Recreational Sports Director While the number of UW stu- find yourself on this campus,” the SERF (Southeast Recreational Dale Carruthers. The proposed dents hasn’t gone up much since Carruthers says. “This is a meet- Facility). During peak hours, Natatorium facelift would increase 2000, their interest in health and ing place, where they make between 4 and 8 p.m., she needs fitness areas within the complex wellness has, making the problem friends and forge bonds that to sign up to get on an ellipti- sevenfold by adding a large fit- worse for facilities that can’t han- extend well beyond graduation.” cal trainer, treadmill, or stationary ness center, four new gymnasi- dle the demand. Some 85 percent The board hopes to get the bike, and often must wait for one ums, locker rooms, a four-lane of students report using recre- proposal on a student referen- to become available. To beat the track, and an indoor artificial ational services, and facilities saw dum ballot by spring 2010. If crowd, Yeung usually heads to turf facility. The addition would an increase of 26,395 visits in fall approved, it could mean a stu- the gym after 9 p.m. expand to the east, where the 2008 over fall 2007. dent segregated fee hike of $60 According to a report from sand volleyball courts are located. “Over the years, we noticed per semester to pay for a project the Recreational Sports Board, “We started talking about this that there are fewer students who that probably wouldn’t be finished a faculty committee that advises in 2002, and we’ve done four dif- want to commit to a specific day until 2014. Private funding could campus officials, UW facilities ferent assessments over a five- and time for an activity. They want reduce the fees per student. no longer meet the fitness needs year period,” says Carruthers, to come to the facility, jump on It’s a difficult time to ask for of students and staff. The board noting that several peer institu- a treadmill for forty-five minutes more money, admits Carruthers, is recommending a $60 million tions, including Ohio State, Illinois, or an hour, and get back to their adding, “The thing that impresses expansion and renovation to the and Iowa, have recently built fit- studying,” Carruthers says. me about our students is their tre- Natatorium, located on the west ness facilities. “What we heard In addition to mitigating mendous loyalty to this campus. end of campus, to take some from our students is that they’re stress, participating in recre- They want to improve everything pressure off the SERF on West not satisfied with our indoor rec- ational sports can help new stu- for future students that they can.” Dayton Street. A third option for reational facilities. They’re anti- dents in particular acclimate to Karen Roach ’82

BADGER SPORTS TICKER Mark Johnson has been named head cost any more to attend the big game next Former Badger standout Darren coach of the 2010 U.S. Olympic wom- season. For the second straight year, the Niedermeyer ’05 took top honors at the en’s ice hockey team. Johnson, who led UW Athletic Department is looking to hold National Pole Vault Summit in Reno, the UW women’s hockey squad to national the line on ticket prices and find ways to Nevada, in January. While at the UW, he championships in 2006 and 2007, is also a cut expenses to make up the difference. was twice named a Big Ten champion. former Olympian — he was part of 1980’s Ticket sales bring in about $26 million for Wrestler Dallas Herbst won “Miracle on Ice.” During his absence, UW the department, with nearly two-thirds decision number 100 in his career in assistant coaches Tracey Cornell and Dan coming from football. February, making him only the fourth Koch will co-coach the Wisconsin wom- Senior hockey goalie Shane Connelly Badger to reach the century mark under en’s team. is a finalist for the Lowe’s Senior CLASS coach Barry Davis. Herbst, who wrestles There’s some good news for Badger Award, billed as “the nation’s premier at 197 pounds, won 4-3 over his Illinois fans in this tough economy — it shouldn’t award for NCAA senior student athletes.” counterpart, Patrick Bond.

SPRING 2009 19 TRACY POWELL

Truth, Death, &Taxidermy Errol Morris has parlayed a lifelong fascination with universal themes into masterful films that have redefined the documentary genre.

By Eric Goldscheider Errol Morris ’69 didn’t set out to reform the criminal justice system. He was just drawn to the story of a convicted cop killer because he thought it was interesting. But as he researched the case of Randall Dale Adams, he began to uncover evidence that the wrong man was serving a life sentence. Adams was innocent. The release of Morris’s 1988 documentary, The Thin Blue Line, not only helped to free Adams, but also proved to be a landmark event for the so-called innocence movement. “It was immensely important because it really gave credibil- ity to the notion that innocent people were being convicted and sentenced to death,” says Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago. It’s ironic, he notes, that a filmmaker was in a better position to ferret out the truth than a legal system riddled with parochial concerns.

Appropriately enough for a filmmaker preoccupied with death, Errol Morris’s office includes lifelike stuffed animals of all persuasions.

20 ON WISCONSIN SPRING 2009 21 of National Public Radio’s This I Believe Ebert acclaimed it as one of the ten

COURTESY OF ERROL MORRIS (2) series. “We must proceed as though, best motion pictures of all time. “After in principle, we can find things out twenty years of reviewing films, I haven’t — even if we can’t. The alternative is found another filmmaker who intrigues unacceptable.” me more,” said Ebert. “Errol Morris is Turning theoretical, Morris says, like a magician, and as great a filmmaker “I’ve gone to considerable efforts to try as Hitchcock or Fellini.” to distinguish myself from postmodern- Morris, a moose of a man with gan- ism’s [view of the] truth as being subjec- gly limbs who now lives and works in tive. ... It’s an interest that I developed Cambridge, Massachusetts, earned his probably from interviews that I did in UW-Madison degree in history. Ques- Wisconsin years ago.” tions about how to communicate essen- Morris’s latest movie, Standard Oper- tial truths cinematically still occupy the ating Procedure, released in spring 2008, filmmaker today in entries he posts to is also concerned with truth. The film Zoom, his blog at the New York Times uses the photos that came out of the Abu Web site. Ghraib prison in American-occupied However, one might be forgiven for But that irony is perhaps less if the Iraq — depicting the humiliation, tor- thinking that someone who sits for an filmmaker is Morris, who has raised the ture, and even evidence of murder of interview in his office under the watch- University of Wisconsin’s motto regard- inmates and detainees — to delve into ful gaze of a stuffed stork does not take ing truth — its sifting and winnowing the impact and meaning of photographic himself too seriously. The large, life- statement — to an art. The plaque on imagery. The director uses the images like yet lifeless animal seemingly hov- Bascom Hall that states that the univer- as an entry point to a larger discussion ers on its windowsill perch just behind sity will “ever encourage that continual of U.S. foreign policy, message control, the conversation. Across the room is a and fearless sifting and winnowing by and the raw exercise of power. stuffed horse’s head with a long neck, which alone the truth can be found” One of Morris’s biggest successes, mounted on the wall reaching up to a could almost have been written as the documentarian’s personal manifesto. “We must proceed as though, in principle, we can find things out — even if we can’t. The alternative is Grand Themes unacceptable. ... I’ve gone to considerable efforts Morris readily acknowledges a persistent fascination with ferreting out the truth to try to distinguish myself from postmodernism’s — often in conjunction with an obses- [view of the] truth as being subjective. ... It’s an sion with death. Both truth and death interest that I developed in Wisconsin years ago.” are “absolute,” he ventures. There is no turning back from death. And Mor- ris holds that there is always an objec- The Fog of War, a 2003 feature-length 25-foot-high ceiling with industrial sky- tive, underlying truth to any situation, interview with Robert S. McNamara, lights. A chimpanzee head under glass whether or not it is readily understood. President John F. Kennedy’s secretary sits on the desk. “Truth is not relative. It’s not subjec- of defense and a principal architect of “I just like having it. I mean there’s tive. It may be elusive or hidden. People the Vietnam War, won an Academy taxidermy in the house. My wife likes may wish to disregard it. But there is Award. His first film, Gates of Heaven, is it,” explains Morris matter-of-factly. such a thing as truth and the pursuit of a meditation on a pair of northern Cali- Many of his dead creatures came from truth,” Morris proclaimed on a segment fornia pet cemeteries, and critic Roger Deyrolle, a shop in Paris where he shot a

22 ON WISCONSIN dramatically when Gein was acquitted by reason of insanity. By the early seventies, Morris was doing graduate work in philosophy at UC-Berkeley. He decided to write his thesis on the insanity plea, and secured a letter of introduction from the head of the School of Criminology to the super- Morris’s second movie, Vernon, Florida (1981), featured the eccentric residents of a swamp intendent at the hospital where Gein was town. Newsweek’s David Ansen wrote that it was “the work of a true original,” and dubbed it “philosophical slapstick philosophy.” incarcerated. Morris traveled to central Wisconsin, where he moved in with television commercial for Cisco Systems. cemeteries in and around Plainfield, Gein’s former neighbors and conducted “I wish I had bought more,” he muses, where he had lived on his family’s farm. several interviews with the man himself. adding that the shop was a favored haunt Not only did Gein (pronounced geen, “One truly surreal experience,” of surrealist painter Salvador Dali. with a hard g) dig up corpses, but he also recounts Morris, was discovering that used principles of taxidermy to fashion the superintendent “was as crazy as body parts into gruesome trophies. Gein anybody I was talking to in the hospi- Cast of Characters: also ate human flesh. tal.” His perception was cemented by a “Ed Gein is one of the proverbial conversation in which the head of the Ed Gein great monsters,” Morris explains. “He, institution insisted that Gein was not A few years after graduating, Morris in many people’s views, originated the truly a cannibal, because even though returned to Wisconsin to pursue an inter- whole genre of psycho killer movies of he ate people, by Gein’s own account, est in serial killers. He began with Ed the sixties.” His case inspired films rang- he didn’t enjoy it. “Oookaaaay,” Morris Gein, who was then an inmate at what is ing from Psycho to The Texas Chainsaw thought to himself. “I was entering into now the Dodge Correctional Institution Massacre. Though Gein was arrested a sort of strange, surreal world of Loo- in Waupun. The notorious prisoner had in 1957, he didn’t come to trial until ney Tunes.” become a folk legend for killing several 1968, when Morris was a UW student. Not necessarily to his own surprise, people and for exhuming bodies from The notoriety of the case increased Morris liked Gein. “I found him really

SPRING 2009 23 the person Morris is today. “People may “There is a history to be written about SONY PICTURE CLASSICS (2) be interested in avoiding [reality] or all the filmmakers that have come out of rearranging it, or obfuscating it, but it’s Wisconsin — there’s a lot of them.” there in the wings,” he says. Morris’s time in the movie archives At the same time as he was follow- gave him a lens through which to direct ing his self-described “prurient” instincts his curiosity. “I’ve always been inter- in central Wisconsin, Morris was also ested in certain kinds of ideas,” he says, becoming deeply enmeshed in the Wis- “and film seemed a way to actually think consin Center for Film and Theater about stuff.” Research, housed at the Wisconsin His- torical Society in Madison. “It was an extraordinary resource,” he says of the Flashback to Long Island trove of prints that included thousands of A native of Long Island, New York, movies from Warner Brothers, RKO, and Morris arrived in Wisconsin in 1965 a number of Hollywood’s so-called Pov- after having struggled through The Put- erty Row studios. He began viewing films ney School, a small, arts-oriented board- there as a student and then returned after ing school in Vermont where he played strange and funny, perverse, ironic — not graduating. “You could go into a room the cello, an instrument he still practices stupid. Crazy, but not stupid,” says Morris. with a Kodak Pageant projector and start for two hours a day. He recalls being the Discovering along the way that watching movies — you could program only member of his high school graduat- Plainfield had been home to an unusu- your own film festival,” he says. “You ing class of about forty who didn’t get ally high percentage of murderers, Mor- could select a director like William Well- into a single college that he applied to. ris set out to write a book on the small man and watch thirty Wellman films, or, The ignominy was even greater because village. “I never brought it off, which is if you wanted, you could watch Howard several of his classmates were off to Har- unfortunate,” he says, “but I accumu- Hawks or John Ford.” vard. “I was waitlisted at Haverford and lated endless hours of interviews, hun- Morris cites the many hours he spent then rejected,” he laughs, “as if they had dreds of them.” Those 120-minute Sony cuing up classic films in Wisconsin, and finally come to their senses.” His place- cassette tapes are still sitting in a trunk also at the Pacific Film Archive at UC- ment counselor suggested the University safely tucked away in the basement of Berkeley, as seminal experiences on his of Wisconsin as a last-ditch effort, and Morris’s office. “I think it’s some of my best work,” he adds ruefully. “Climbers tend to be eccentric ... yet even amongst Though he hasn’t yet been able to coax a coherent product out of that this company of eccentrics, Errol stood out as a true period of his life, the lessons he learned eccentric.” He rarely tied his shoes, and he tended have stuck with him. “I developed a keen appreciation of how crazy the world to wear a white shirt and necktie for climbing. really is — not only how crazy, but how people are endlessly misperceived by path to becoming a filmmaker. He also it worked. “I thought being sent to the others,” says Morris. Real-life murder credits the many people in Madison who University of Wisconsin was some kind mysteries taught him that “you can were deeply interested in film and in of a punishment,” he says, “but I found talk to five or six people about an event some way attached to The Velvet Light out otherwise.” that they have all experienced, and the Trap, an academic journal founded by The campus “had this odd, incen- accounts are so radically different.” That UW graduate students in 1971. “My diary mixture — I often describe it as epiphany, combined with a strong feel- whole interest in movies comes out of Wisconsin farm girls and boys, and Jews ing that “there is a reality,” helped define the University of Wisconsin,” he says. from New York,” he says. Morris, who

24 ON WISCONSIN NUBAR ALEXANIAN/ COURTESY SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

the flatlands of the Midwest were more eccentric still, yet even amongst this company of eccentrics, Errol stood out as a true eccentric.” He rarely tied his shoes, and he tended to wear a white shirt and necktie for climbing. Rubin describes a certain macabre humor that characterized many climb- ers. For instance, Morris and two friends In Standard Operating Procedure, Morris used re-enactments to examine abuse and who collectively dubbed themselves the torture of suspected terrorists at the Abu Ghraib prison. Terrible Trio Mountaineering Club would tick off the names of their rock- soon became such a devoted Badger on social history packed in more than a climbing heroes when they were con- that he discussed with friends whether thousand listeners), Morris developed a templating a new challenge, noting with he should have the university’s Numen passion for rock climbing. He explored each name that the person was dead. Lumen seal tattooed on his chest, credits Devil’s Lake State Park, about an hour “Most of us shared the same sense of the campus with helping him blossom north of Madison, which he describes as humor, but Errol was the most out there intellectually. “I came into my own some of the best terrain in the country with it,” says Rubin. Morris admits to there in so many, many ways,” he says. for the sport, which was not nearly as cutting classes during college to go rock “I learned to write, and I developed my popular then as it is now. climbing, including taking a number interest in history. … Little did I know He wrote a guide to Devil’s Lake, of marathon thirty-hour road trips to — which I know now, of course — is which he distributed to friends, some of Yosemite National Park in California. that Wisconsin had one of the best his- whom fondly recall Morris’s exploits. tory departments in America.” Alan Rubin ’67 muses, “Climbers tend The Plot Aside from reveling in classes taught to be eccentric, and much more so by professors such as the late William those of us who climbed in the sixties (and Resume) Thickens Appleman Williams, George Mosse, and seventies than is the case today. It took Morris much of the next two and Harvey Goldberg (whose lectures And those of us who were climbers in decades after graduating to find his

SPRING 2009 25 reflection, Morris sees “an enormous down interviews using what he calls connection” between that job and his the interrotron, two teleprompters net- proclivities as an interviewer. “Basically, worked together so the interviewer and the ability to function as an investigator interviewee are looking at live images is the ability to talk to people, to listen of each other as they speak. Subjects to people, to have people talk to you, to for this series included Sondra London, investigate detail, the same damn thing I who has spoken and written extensively do anyway,” he says. about her romances with two serial He struggled through most of his killers, and Temple Grandin, a noted thirties to get the money to start and autistic woman and university profes- then complete The Thin Blue Line, which sor who happens to have designed the centered on Texas prisoner Randall Dale slaughterhouses where more than half Adams and his struggle to overturn a of American cattle are put to death. wrongful conviction for the murder of a Morris still hopes to make good on a Dallas police officer. “It was unendingly pledge he made to Grandin to play cello difficult. ... Very few people stood by serenades for cattle wending their way me,” says Morris. And yet his fortunes toward doom. footing as a filmmaker. His 1978 debut, were soon to shift when, within days Morris has also made hundreds of Gates of Heaven, had little commercial of releasing that film, he won both a television commercials (the irony that success, but it earned him recognition among his peers and found a durable champion in Roger Ebert. Before mak- He humanizes people who have been cast as ing that movie, he had two false starts monsters in the public mind, and ends up discovering as a graduate student, one studying the history and philosophy of science at that “they are like you and me.” The difference is Princeton, and the other at Berkeley. He that “they found themselves in the middle of a kind lived for a period in Cambridge, Mas- of nightmare that was created around them.” sachusetts, where he earned money writ- ing term papers and master’s theses for struggling students. “I wrote a paper on Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacAr- the medium does not lend itself to mak- the Immaculate Conception for a nun. thur Fellowship, often referred to as the ing truth its highest value is not lost … But I probably shouldn’t go into detail genius award. on him) for companies such as Apple, about that,” he chuckles, admitting to Much of Morris’s work reflects his Nike, Cisco Systems, and Miller the potentially felonious nature of that interest in unusual, if not decidedly Coors (High Life beer). It is highly paid enterprise. weird, subjects. Fast, Cheap & Out of work that he counts on to support his Morris released his second movie, Control is an intricately edited intertwin- overhead, which includes a small staff, Vernon, Florida, in 1981. It is an almost ing of four men’s incongruous careers. offices with four digital editing suites, aggressively mundane series of lengthy Mr. Death is a deep look into the work and other tools of his trade. interviews with elderly residents of a and personality of Massachusetts native Florida panhandle town, during which Fred Leuchter, Jr., who was a sought- they tell strange but plausible stories. after technical expert on capital punish- Flash Forward: Iraq After that, Morris supported himself by ment before lurching off into the world These days, a conversation with the working for a high-end private investiga- of Holocaust denial. filmmaker is likely to turn to Standard tor in Manhattan, looking into, among Morris also made a television series Operating Procedure. The film centers other things, securities fraud. Upon called First Person, consisting of sit- on a small swath of the more than two

26 ON WISCONSIN COURTESY OF ERROL MORRIS NUBAR ALEXANIAN

The ire he has experienced has taken many forms, including reviews that accuse him of being sympathetic to tor- ture. “People got angry,” Morris says. “I may be wrong about this, but I think it’s a product of being interested in unappe- tizing stuff; it’s a product of being inter- ested in pariahs, which goes back to my earliest attempts to interview anybody.” Errol Morris directs “I Dismember Mama,” part of a television series called First Person Ed Gein featured prominently in that featured Morris’s trademark quirky interviews. This particular episode dealt with the efforts of a cryogenics buff who sought to preserve the head of his deceased mother. Morris’s early forays into getting pariahs to talk to him. Morris readily acknowl- hundred hours of interviews he did with complicated than what initially meets edges the thread that runs from central American soldiers who participated in the eye. Wisconsin through his latest film, and the scandal that erupted in 2004 when “This film has really shaken me his abiding interest in painting nuanced photos taken in the Abu Ghraib prison up — I caused myself a lot of trouble” and textured pictures of people who are in Iraq became public. Among them by making it, says Morris, “because I easily caricatured as monsters. Being are the now-famous images of Private am wandering into a kind of nightmare, misunderstood goes with the territory. First Class Lynndie England holding where I’m trying to say something “Part of me is a dyed-in-the-wool inves- a leash with a naked Iraqi man crouch- that I think is different and not neces- tigator-slash-interviewer,” says Morris. ing at the other end, and Specialist sarily what people want to hear.” He He admits that his relentless quest to Sabrina Harman smiling broadly and humanizes people who have been cast as know things that are often unknowable giving a thumbs-up in front of the head monsters in the public mind, and ends takes a toll. In spite of his many acco- of a corpse packed in ice. Through his up discovering that “they are like you lades, Morris says, “I feel like a thwarted interviews with England, Harman, and and me.” The difference, he says, is that artist and probably always will.” n a number of their compatriots, Morris “they found themselves in the middle Freelance writer Eric Goldscheider is work- discovered that those photographs tell of a kind of nightmare that was created ing on a book about a wrongful conviction in stories that are far more intricate and around them.” Massachusetts.

SPRING 2009 27 Weight of the Words When Henning Garvin realized that the Ho-Chunk language – heavy with his tribe’s history and culture – was in danger of extinction, he stepped in to help.

BY JASON STEIN MA’03 PHOTOS BY JEFF MILLER

moke rose from the lips of enough to laugh. Then his boss walked patrons and the tips of their ciga- over with a fateful question. rettes, clouding the high ceiling “What did he say?” the older man of the Ho-Chunk tribe’s Majestic asked. SPines Casino in Black River Falls, Wiscon- “I [didn’t] pretend I spoke Ho- sin. It was spring 2000, and then-twenty- Chunk, but it struck me that this guy is four-year-old dealer Henning Garvin older than me, and he doesn’t know what ’03, wearing a bow tie and tuxedo shirt, that means,” Garvin says, recalling how fanned out cards on a green felt table and the joke lost its humor when he explained wondered how many more nights he — a it in English. “I remember thinking, UW-Madison dropout with no degree and ‘That’s what they mean when they say no prospects besides tips from gamblers — lost in translation.’ I understand that could keep dealing blackjack until 2 a.m. now.” Then, the bad luck that had taken Concerned, Garvin called a Ho- him there changed, reversed by an off- Chunk Nation office the next morning to color joke. ask about the state of the tribe’s language. A man — a grandfather to Garvin The answer was sobering: like so many in the Ho-Chunk way of reckoning — languages around the nation and the walked past, clasping two buckets of world, Ho-Chunk is endangered. Once quarters he’d won. Making an earthy spoken by many thousands, the language pun in the tribe’s traditional language, he is now down to some two hundred aging compared his jackpot to a mother’s milk native speakers. The reasons vary widely. and breasts. In past decades, Ho-Chunk students Back then, Garvin didn’t know Ho- faced sharp punishments for speaking Chunk well, so he can’t recall exactly their language in white-run schools. what his relative said. But he understood Today, young tribal members like Garvin

28 ON WISCONSIN Above: Chloris Lowe, Sr., a Ho-Chunk elder, speaks to children using his native language at a day care facility in Tomah, Wisconsin. Pairing the tribe’s oldest and youngest generations, tribal leaders hope, will preserve the Ho-Chunk language. Opposite page: Henning Garvin, right, and his father, Cecil Garvin, listen carefully as students repeat the Ho-Chunk phrases they are learning during a new language class at UW-Madison.

SPRING 2009 29 are growing up in a society dominated by the language once known as Chippewa, English and by economic demands that Valentine said the likely death of most force them to leave their homelands for of the native languages across Wisconsin education and jobs. and the rest of the nation represents an Garvin had planned on leaving Ho- incalculable loss to the shared history and Chunk country the same way many of his culture of Indians and non-Indians alike. people do — in uniform. Military service “It’s like burning your libraries,” has been part of his family for three gen- Valentine says of the loss. “It’s like killing erations, and he had planned to earn a your past.” degree from UW-Madison and become For Garvin, that past was represented an army officer. But a minor heart condi- by his grandmother, the woman who tion had led to an unexpected medical had helped raise him while his German discharge just a month and a half before immigrant mother worked on her mas- graduation in spring 1999. His plans ter’s degree in finance and his Ho-Chunk upended, Garvin lost his motivation to father worked to support the family’s finish his classes and ended up drifting life in their Stevens Point trailer home. through nights at the casino. Garvin grew up hearing the language Now, after an offhand joke, Garvin from his grandmother, a native Ho- decided to return to UW-Madison to Chunk speaker who lived next door. If study the modern discipline of linguistics the language disappeared, Garvin stood as a means to learn the ancient language to lose one of the most basic ties to of his people. That language, he saw, was his grandmother and her generation the key to Ho-Chunk culture, carrying of Ho-Chunks, forfeiting their prayers, everything from its legends to its kinship songs, and stories along with the very system. Under the Ho-Chunk way and words that formed them. language, the casino jokester — a distant “I thought about — on my mother’s In Madison, Garvin’s first stop was relative to Garvin in European terms side — if I don’t learn German from her, coffee with Valentine. As the professor — was a grandfather. The traditional I can always go to Germany if I want to,” talked about how linguistics could help religious ceremonies that Garvin had Garvin recalls. But with Ho-Chunk, he make sense of a language like Ho-Chunk, attended since boyhood were conducted realized, “Wow, if it ends here, it ends Garvin grew excited. in Ho-Chunk. Even the preferred name here.” “He’s really quiet and soft-spoken, of Garvin’s people, who are called Win- When Garvin initially called the but there’s just this energy, just this nebagos by some outsiders, is rooted tribe’s language division in 2000, the incredible energy in his eyes,” Garvin says in their language. Ho-Chunk means agency had already been working for of the professor who became a mentor to “people of the big voice” or “people of seven years to save Ho-Chunk, but hadn’t him. “That was really inspiring to me at the sacred language.” made enough progress. In time, Garvin the time.” would use his studies to try to help, put- Valentine, now the director of the ne prophecy among Ho- ting him among a younger generation of university’s American Indian Studies Pro- Chunk elders holds that tribal leaders that is marrying a love of gram, called Garvin a natural linguist. when their language is lost, ancient traditions with the latest findings “I’ve always had the dream — I tell the world itself will end. about how to preserve them. In doing so, Henning this all the time — of him com- O UW-Madison linguist Rand Valen- these leaders are grappling with a paradox ing back and teaching Ho-Chunk at tine, who became one of Garvin’s profes- of modern Native American life: how can the university,” Valentine says. “This is sors, sees the loss of languages in terms tribes hold on to their past while meeting Ho-Chunk land, and ... we very much almost as stark. A specialist in Ojibwe, the challenges of the present? want to honor them and recognize

30 ON WISCONSIN What’s that called? Children at a day care facility in Tomah, Wisconsin, point to objects in a painting as they learn Ho-Chunk words from tribal elder Chloris Lowe, Sr., left. Henning Garvin, right, conceived the idea of pairing his tribe’s generations to preserve the language.

recordings and other work with elders to produce three dictionaries in Menominee. Macaulay is putting the final touches on a three-hundred-word picture dic- tionary for tribal students and others beginning to learn Menominee. By this summer, she hopes to have a draft of a five-thousand-word dictionary in Menominee and English for intermedi- ate learners. Then comes the work of a lifetime — a comprehensive electronic dictionary of the severely endangered lan- guage, complete with digital recordings of the pronunciations of its words. “Of course, [the electronic dictionary] will probably not be finished until I’m in my nineties — but you know, I’ll just work on it. It’s fun,” Macaulay says. “It’s a linguist’s idea of fun.” their preeminence here by offering the “Taking a photograph is not saving Macaulay once approached languages language.” the person, and that’s what we can do to such as Menominee as the mere subjects The son of a Canadian mother and some extent,” he says. of her scholarly studies, which were some- an American father, Valentine has stud- times of no interest to a tribal audience. ied the many dialects of Ojibwe in both till, an enduring record of a lan- Now she also sees in her work an oppor- countries. He’s written a grammar of guage can mean everything. In tunity for service through projects such as Odawa, a prominent dialect of Ojibwe a spare office on the eleventh the beginner’s dictionary. “The Menomi- that is spoken along the northern shores floor of Van Hise Hall, the sole nee [people] have really kind of retrained of Lake Huron. He’s also working with Samenity of which is a sweeping view of me in a way,” she says. “It’s become more collaborators on dictionaries of both Madison’s isthmus and the capitol, linguist and more apparent to me that — as much Odawa and Western Ojibwe, a dialect Monica Macaulay has stacked 465 com- as I may love doing my linguistic analysis that is spoken in Wisconsin, Minnesota, pact discs. They hold hundreds of hours of — [it] doesn’t help them very much and and northern Ontario. digital recordings of tribal elders speaking that I do owe them something.” Valentine stresses that while linguists in Menominee, a language found nowhere Sasanehsaeh Pyawasay ’07, one of can document and teach about endan- else but Wisconsin. Only about fifteen Macaulay’s former students, is likewise gered languages, only tribal members like native speakers remain on the tribe’s reser- thinking about service as she works on Garvin have any chance of reviving their vation northwest of Green Bay. her master’s in education leadership and use. He likens an academic linguist’s work Using a three-year, $310,000 federal policy at UW-Madison. to that of a photographer who captures an grant, Macaulay and a rotating cast of “I really want to give back to my image of a dying patient. graduate students are drawing on these community, whether that be on campus

SPRING 2009 31 of her peers who had never left the res- ervation. In time, her work with Paap and tribal teachers and elders led to the charter school. Waadookodaading, which means “the place where we help each other,” opened in 2000, and now has twenty-seven students — and a waiting list — in pre-K through fourth grade. To help teach students and their par- ents, the school uses computers and MP3 players, and draws on academic research about language acquisition. Being open to these outside influences can be chal- lenging for some tribal members and elders who remember a time when white schools punished native students for Henning Garvin explains the role of positionals — whether someone is standing, sitting, or speaking their own language. But to La lying down, for example — in the Ho-Chunk language during a new course he is teaching with his father at UW-Madison. Ronge, using the tools of modern tech- nology and linguistics is no different from working with American Indian students, state, La Ronge grew up away from her tribal members using electric lights and or whether that be working with my tribal community. At her school in Eau motorboats as they carry on the ancient tribe,” says Pyawasay, a Menominee Claire, she was the only native student, practice of spearing walleye, a task once whose first name means “Little Suzi.” which made her appreciate her frequent accomplished by torchlight and canoe. On behalf of the Wisconsin Depart- trips back to the Lac Courte Oreilles “Why wouldn’t you use [these tools]?” ment of Public Instruction, Pyawasay has reservation. she asks. reviewed emerging research that suggests “There were times in my life grow- Native American students do as well or ing up when I realized that something or his part, Garvin was also better academically in classrooms that was missing,” La Ronge says. “There was determined to use every means integrate their culture and language as something in me that I knew was home, at hand to further the use of they do in classrooms that do not. and I just had this device that was pulling Ho-Chunk. He went “berserk,” me home.” Fhe says, as he studied the language, speak- hat’s good news for Lisa La While still at UW-Madison, La ing whenever he could with his father and Ronge x’94, an Ojibwe teacher Ronge listened as Winona LaDuke, grandmother, and devouring the scarce who attended UW-Madison the Ojibwe environmental activist and materials available. Once he graduated in the early 1990s. Along with a future Green Party vice-presidential from UW-Madison with a bachelor’s Ther husband, Keller Paap, and many oth- candidate, used a campus speech to urge degree in linguistics in 2003, Garvin ers, she founded a charter school for native native students to learn their languages. began working at the tribe’s language students in Hayward, near the reservation “I remember thinking about [Ojibwe] division. Along the way, he met his future of the Lac Courte Oreilles band of Ojibwe and wondering, ‘Well, how would I learn wife, Kjetil, also a Ho-Chunk language in northwestern Wisconsin. Students at it?’ ” La Ronge says. worker, who graduated from Dartmouth Waadookodaading school, the first of its Studying Ojibwe with her grand- College’s anthropology program. kind in the state, are taught every subject parents, both native speakers, and at the During those years, the language divi- except English in Ojibwe. University of Minnesota as a transfer sion’s leadership acknowledged a problem: Like Garvin, Paap, and some other student, La Ronge plunged deeper into despite an investment of tribal casino young native language learners in the her tribe’s language and lore than many money, the program wasn’t producing

32 ON WISCONSIN WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL

1830 Before Reservations n Ojibwe 1855 n Menominee Transition Era 2008 n Ho-Chunk n Ojibwe Current Lands Menominee-Ho-Chunk n Menominee n Ojibwe Menominee-Ojibwe n Ho-Chunk n Menominee Ojibwe-other tribes (Disputed zone) Menominee-other tribe n Ho-Chunk

FADING WORDS: The territories of native languages, once blanketing Wisconsin, today have nearly disappeared. enough fluent speakers. When Henning’s for their uncles. He thought about the serving as an honorary fellow at UW- uncle, Richard Mann, took over as the language work to be done in Wisconsin; Madison, working under a contract with division’s manager in 2006, the Garvins about his infant son, Haakon; and about the tribe — with support from Garvin’s suggested some changes. The couple first his dream that someday the boy would father — to write an introductory gram- proposed pairing fluent tribal elders with learn to speak Ho-Chunk. By that night, mar to the language. young adult apprentices who would be he and Kjetil had decided to stay. With In time, Hartmann and another dedicated to learning the Ho-Chunk lan- the help of older native speakers such as German researcher want to compile an guage. They also suggested starting, at the Kjetil’s now eighty-one-year-old grand- academic grammar of Ho-Chunk that same time, a day care program for infant father, Chloris Lowe, Sr., they started the would delve into features such as its lack children where only Ho-Chunk would be new language programs in summer 2006. of adjectives (it uses verbs to express simi- spoken by the elders and apprentices. Mann hasn’t forgotten the couple’s lar ideas). If documented, Ho-Chunk’s The couple thought they were just decision. “I’d do anything for those kids,” unusual features can serve as data for offering advice. Henning Garvin, who he says. “They gave up a lot just to work future linguists studying how both lan- had pursued linguistics solely as a way to here.” guage and the human mind work. learn Ho-Chunk, had developed a pas- Garvin is once again considering sion for the field itself and decided to oday three-year-old Haakon graduate school, with a goal of becom- enter graduate school. The Massachusetts chatters in Ho-Chunk with his ing a professor. In the meantime, he, his Institute of Technology, his school of great-grandfather, along with father, and Hartmann are teaching a new choice, accepted him for fall 2006. But as the other children in the small UW-Madison class this spring — the first the start of the academic year approached, dayT care. When it came time for Garvin to Ho-Chunk course on campus designed Mann called Garvin into his office. report back to tribal leaders that the chil- for learning the language rather than lin- “Cuųŝge,” Mann said, using the dren were saying their first words in the guistic analysis. Ho-Chunk word for nephew. “I really language, he was unexpectedly moved. Soon, he hopes, a hallway in Van Hise need help, and I wonder if you and Kjetil “I’m not a very emotional person, but will echo with the voices of students try- would consider putting off your schooling I felt very emotional,” he says. ing out phrases in the language he loves. for a while so we can get things going.” Another sign of progress is a team of “I think that would be incredible,” Garvin’s first reaction, he recalls, was German linguists who have used a grant he says. n to laugh — given that in a week, he was from the Volkswagen Foundation to work leaving to find an apartment in Boston. on documenting Ho-Chunk in a diction- Freelance writer Jason Stein MA’03, who holds But all that day, he thought about how ary, grammar, and body of texts. One a master’s degree in journalism, is also a state nephews in his tribe should show respect of the linguists, Iren Hartmann, is now capitol reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal.

SPRING 2009 33 JULIA SONMI HEGLAND

a matter of It seems to me that finishing a program Frankie “Prince of Pals” Yale, an associ- The UW just can’t get rid of study ought to count for more than ate of Al Capone’s). No: if we open the Tenacious Indecision of some alumni — no matter simply starting one, so I prefer to tally the door to such manifestly shady institu- Schubert didn’t come to the UW bent on number of degrees a student earns, not tions as these, we might as well accept academic extravagance. His initial ambi- [ ] how often they graduate. merely the credits accumulated. the validity of degrees granted by the tions were much more modest. DegreeBy John Allen s But still, there are questions: Do dou- Consolidated University of the Moons “I always wanted to be a farmer,” he ble-majors count as two degrees? What of Neptune. says. elieve it or not, UW-Madison’s signing up for classes through USAFI, But for all that, Green got his actual about certificates, for those non-degree So for this little experiment, I decided But as a Milwaukee native with no most-educated — or at least most- which was then headquartered at the degrees elsewhere — at the University of programs such as women’s studies or only UW-Madison degrees count. And farmers in his family, he needed a bit of Boften-educated — student is not UW. It wasn’t entirely intellectual Toledo and, later, at Michigan’s Wayne teacher training? Should graduate degrees for simplicity’s sake, double-majors are training before launching an agricultural an alumnus. curiosity that drove him. Rather, his State. Which raises a question: who’s the be weighted more than a bachelor’s? out, and we’ll count only completed career. After two years at UW-Milwau- George Green, a retired auto execu- recuperation, combined with his pre- UW’s most-educated student who’s also Add in education gained else- degrees and weight them all equally. kee, he transferred to UW-Madison and tive, completed some twenty distinct aca- mobilization engagement to a girl in his an actual alum? where, and the matter becomes even By this standard, the UW’s most enrolled in the dairy science program. demic programs under UW guidance, yet hometown — Toledo, Ohio — limited Believe it or not, it’s a difficult ques- more complicated. The curricula vitae (often)-educated alum is one Rob- But the more he learned, the more he he never earned a degree from the school, his other options. “I didn’t really have tion to answer. of some UW alumni are defaced with ert Schubert ’74, ’75, MS’80, MA’83, met distractions that would require yet or even set foot in a classroom. any reason to go into town,” he says. degrees from a variety of institutions, MBA’92, JD’93, and that ain’t all. Believe more study. Green undertook his studies through So instead he stayed at his base and Keeping Score but frankly, I wouldn’t want to have to it or not, he supplemented his six degrees When he was nearly finished with his the United States Armed Forces Insti- studied. A lot. In just fifteen months in vouch for their quality: for instance, the with the UW Extension’s agricultural bachelor’s degree, for instance, a roman- tute, and he did so by correspondence. 1945–46, he scored a score of correspon- The trouble is, how does one really mea- Massachusetts Institute of Technology short course (1973) and an ABD (all but tic entanglement pushed him off course. During World War II, Green was a GI dence diplomas, setting something of a sure education? You could count all of (which is evidently some sort of trade dissertation) doctoral program that earns “My girlfriend at the time thought serving in Europe, and while recovering record. It’s right there in Ripley’s Believe It the classes students take, but that doesn’t school) or a “university” called Yale him the additional alumni-magazine dis- we should both become vocational ag from frostbite in England, he started or Not. You can look it up. really say whether they learned anything. (named, I’m told, for Brooklyn mobster tinction of PhDx’88. instructors,” he says. “So even though I

34 ON WISCONSIN SPRING 2009 35 was in my senior year, I decided to get a and through an extension program at second degree in agricultural education.” the federal prison in Oxford. And he Heads of the Class That degree marked the beginnings did buy a farm — a hundred acres in the Believe it or not, Schubert doesn’t actually of a sense of — call it tenacious indeci- Town of Vermont, Wisconsin, which he have a very large lead in the race for the sion. He had the gumption to stick worked for several years and rented out title of the UW’s most-graduated gradu- through almost any academic program for many more, and eventually sold for a ate. Some twelve others have five distinct to its conclusion, but found that careers half million dollars in 2004. degrees, although two of the alums are were far less interesting to pursue than But ultimately, Schubert decided he dead and so unlikely to catch up. to plan. The ag ed program included a needed to improve his marketability with It wasn’t always such a tight competi- stint as a student teacher, which taught another degree. He returned to the UW tion, though. Iva Mortimer ’20, MA’26, Schubert one important lesson: “I really for an MBA, a plan that seemed wise until ’39, MS’40, PhD’47 was the first grad to don’t like teaching high school,” he says. about halfway through. “Then,” he says, cross the stage five times, and she held the “The instruction is okay, but I didn’t like “I realized that if I wanted to make seri- record for nearly a quarter of a century. the disciplinary aspects.” ous money, I ought to become a lawyer.” Mortimer had good reason for seeking So he reverted to dairy science, picking While completing his business so much education, though it cost some up a master’s but stopping short of a doc- degree, he enrolled in law school, first at thirty years of her life (making her, I guess, torate. “The biological sciences require a Marquette and then transferring to the the UW’s most gradual graduate). She’d lot of lab work, and I’m not really a labora- UW, where he finished up in one year. first come to the UW to study zoology, tory research kind of guy,” he says. “I kind But he didn’t go into practice. Instead, but had given up academia for love, marry- ing agronomy professor George Mortimer Call it tenacious indecision. He had the after she received her first master’s. After gumption to stick through almost any academic George died in 1934, she was left with a program to its conclusion, but found that careers family to support, and as there were few zoological jobs for women in the 1930s, were far less interesting to pursue than to plan. she turned to the more promising field of home economics. After completing three of prefer the social sciences. So I switched he stayed on at the UW’s School of Busi- more degrees, she joined the faculty of to agricultural economics.” ness, becoming a member of the academic what is today the UW School of Human This provided a second master’s and staff and serving as a proctor and grader Ecology, teaching food and nutrition until nearly a doctoral degree. (“You know for midterms and finals. He held that her retirement in 1965. how some people say their dissertation position for the last fifteen years, until his The Badger who finally came along wrote itself?” he explains. “Well, mine retirement in January 2008. to tie her record was Giancarlo Maiorino didn’t.”) He admits that he might not Now that he’s left the working MA’68, MA’69, PhD’71, MA’71, PhD’73, have been able to afford all this study at world, Schubert doesn’t plan to finish and he did it in much less time. The key today’s tuition prices. Even in the 1970s his nearly complete doctorate, “though to his speedy collection of sheepskins, and 1980s, it was a struggle, and he sup- I admit it occurred to me,” he says. But believe it or not, was simple. ported himself with a range of work, he will continue to take courses, audit- “I pushed the system to the brink,” on campus and off. He held standard ing them through the UW’s adult senior he explains. student jobs, such as research assistant, services program. Maiorino had taken his first steps but also nonstandard ones, including It is, he admits, a difficult transition. toward higher education in his native life model for the art department. He “What I really enjoy is the excitement Italy, though opportunities there were drove a bus for Greyhound and worked of taking classes,” he says. “And trying limited. His parents couldn’t afford to as a meat inspector for Peck Packing in to get the top grade is part of that. I’m provide him with a classical education, Milwaukee. (“How I hated that job,” he still as much of a grade-grubber as any and instead he received vocational train- says.) He also taught at UWC-Baraboo undergraduate.” ing to become an accountant.

36 ON WISCONSIN “The one thing I learned,” he says, block his second doctorate. But as he’d After receiving his bachelor’s in nurs- “is that I could not be an accountant.” amassed some 180 credits with the full ing, Schmitz left the UW for the working He emigrated to America, ostensibly support of his department, there was little world. Though he says his siblings often to study English at New York’s Long anyone could do to stop him. He picked ask him when he’s going to get a “real Island University, but while there he dis- up his fifth degree and soon left to join job,” he has one: he works weekends in covered a love of literature. He enrolled the comparative lit department at Indiana the intensive care unit at Meriter Hospi- at UW-Madison because “it was the only University in Bloomington, where he tal, a position that pays a full-time salary, western university anyone in New York became the Rudy Professor of compara- but leaves his weekdays free. He chose to had ever heard of,” he says, “and it was the tive literature. He retired in 2008. use that free time on campus. first university to accept my application.” Within a couple of years of Schmitz became fascinated with the Then things get a little dicey. In Maiorino’s departure, the number of subject of workplace injuries, and began Madison, Maiorino knew that he wanted mega-degreed graduates would shoot studying biomedical engineering. But he to study Italian, art history, and com- upward: Jaafar Al-Abdulla MS’57, ’64, found that discipline “too boring,” he says, parative literature, which would mean MS’67, PhD’74, MS’75; Kathleen Lindas and eventually switched to the School of covering several different — if related — MS’64, MS’74, MS’75, PhD’77, MS’77; Education, hoping to teach people about academic areas. Yet with limited finances, Lynette Korenic ’77, MA’78, MFA’79, safety. He earned his first master’s in cur- he also knew he didn’t have forever to MA’81, MA’84; Farhad Jafari ’77, MS’79, riculum and instruction, then a second in spend in school, so he’d have to be clever PhD’83, MA’86, PhD’89; Karen Michae- industrial engineering, and then followed as well as bright. lis ’72, ’74, MS’85, PhD’88, JD’89; and that with a doctorate in the same field. “I used my imagination and street Teri-Christine Hall ’76, ’78, MS’82, A later master’s in nursing was, he says, smarts,” he says. Graduate students were MS’87, PhD’90 all tied Mortimer and largely for professional development. allowed to take only three courses a Maiorino before Robert Schubert came Over the following decade, Schmitz semester, and needed special permission along. And after Schubert, Joan Price kept active on campus, taking classes and from their department chair and dean ’84, MA’86, PhD’91, MA’92, MFA’93; working occasionally as a teaching assis- to take a fourth. “But registration wasn’t William Schmitz ’85, MS’92, MS’93, tant. He took part in the 2004 TA strike, done with computers then,” he says, “and PhD’97, MS’99; Terence Ow ’88, MS’90, helping to push for health care coverage you were allowed to add or drop courses MBA’92, MS’94, PhD’00; and Ryan for graduate assistants. That experience at will during the first week of each Toonen ’99, ’02, MS’05, MA’07, PhD’07 sparked an interest in the interactions semester. So I just added more courses also reached the five-degree plateau. But between labor and management, and he than I dropped. It worked.” no one has broken Schubert’s mark, or followed up with graduate study in the To ensure his workload didn’t over- even tied it. UW’s industrial relations program — whelm him, Maiorino again relied on Until, believe it or not, this August. which will grant him a master’s degree this street smarts. As most of his courses were summer, tying him with Schubert at six. related thematically, he coordinated top- But Schmitz may not stop there. He ics for his papers, using them for multiple The Challenger would have liked to get a second doctor- classes and combining them to form the Like Robert Schubert, William Schmitz ate, also in industrial relations, “but the heart of his theses and dissertations. By came to the UW from the Milwaukee area, university canceled the program,” he says. 1973, as he was finishing up his second and like Schubert, he also revels in the Still, there are other degrees. In 2010, he doctorate, he realized he was accomplish- pleasures of course work, from intellectual plans to start work on a doctorate in nurs- ing something unprecedented. discovery to the competition for grades. ing practice. And then what? “I thought the university would be “That desire to have the top score on “Maybe I’ll go to law school,” he says. so proud of me,” he says. “Instead, I was every test, in every class, it’s in me,” he Believe it. Or not. n treated like a criminal.” says. “After I got my PhD, I told myself I When the grad school discovered should just learn for the sake of learning. On Wisconsin senior editor John Allen has two degrees, but none from the UW. Loser. Maiorino’s actions, a dean threatened to But [the competitive spirit is] still there.”

SPRING 2009 37 Why do we snooze? UW researchers are pursuing an unconventional theory — that our brains downsize while we sleep, getting us ready to face another day.

By Jenny Price ’96 Illustrations by Earl Keleny

We all need sleep. Without enough of it, we’re irri- table, can’t focus, and are more likely to catch the latest bug going around the office. Entire industries — high-tech mattresses and pharmaceuticals, for starters — are devoted to both our pursuit of sleep and our lack of it. Starbucks, anyone? Sleep can be elusive in today’s world, though it’s just as crucial for our survival as it has always been. But why, exactly, do we need it? It’s not because we have nothing better to do. Every species sleeps, though, including lowly fruit flies, regardless of the danger that doing so poses by making them vulner- able to would-be predators. “Nobody has a question about what the heart does, or why do we eat, or why do we have sex, or why do we have emotion — all of those things are perfectly obvious. But why do we sleep? A third of our time we become unconscious to the world,” says Giulio Tononi, professor of psychiatry and part of the newly established University of Wisconsin Center for Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research.

38 ON WISCONSIN SPRING 2009 39 That fact alone — the hours that we untraditional way to get results. Doctors are dedicated to the clinic’s main focus: devote to sleep — tells Tononi and other use what looks like a high-tech hairnet, treating patients who range from children UW researchers working to unravel the a skullcap made of 256 electrodes, rather to the elderly. The clinic’s patients and mysteries of sleep that it serves a core than applying two or three electrodes indi- research subjects spend the night under function, beyond the other benefits that vidually to patients. The result is a func- the watchful eye of an infrared video it appears to provide to our health. But tional map of the brain that allows analysis recorder, which is hooked up to a control so far, scientists have not been able to of each brain wave in detail, serving as a room of sorts down the hall where clinical determine precisely what is happening in major tool for research as well as helping staff can monitor sleep patterns and brain our bodies, and particularly in our brains, patients with serious sleep problems. waves. Graduate students come from all while we slumber. There’s more to their Among other studies, the UW over the world to train here, says Ruth search than the reward of discovery: find- researchers are using EEG to measure Benca, director of the UW Center for ing out could someday lead to relief for how the patterns of brain activity change Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research. the tens of millions of people who suffer in people with depression or schizo- Many of the patients suffer from from sleep disorders, as well as provide phrenia, or those who take antipsychotic sleep apnea or breathing disorders, but tools for diagnosing mental illnesses such drugs. The technology provides a window the clinic also sees people with circadian- as depression and schizophrenia. into a patient’s brain; Tononi compares rhythm problems — those who can’t Tononi and the UW research group it to a mechanic listening to a car engine sleep at night — and patients with cases are not the only scientists working to find while it idles to figure out what’s wrong. of insomnia that are too complex for fam- the answer. But what makes them unique “When we sleep we are all alike,” he says. ily doctors to evaluate. are their multiple investigative approaches “That’s why sleep is a good way to look “Understanding what’s functionally and their working theory about the func- important about sleep will help us devise tion of sleep, which just happens to be “Understanding what’s better treatments to take care of these quite unlike what many of their fellow disorders,” Benca says. sleep researchers are trying to prove. functionally important Choosing a specific treatment about sleep will help us depends on each patient, but ultimately, because of the unanswered questions devise better treatments to Sleep Lab about the function of sleep, the clinic’s take care of these disor- work is not an exact science. What doc- of the Future tors can do is try to help patients fall In ancient Greece, Hippocrates, consid- ders.” In other words, the asleep faster and stay asleep longer, in ered the founder of medicine, observed kind of sleep we get may hopes they will feel more refreshed in that sleeplessness was connected with the morning. “sorrow and pains.” But the modern era matter more than how But if researchers could uncover sleep’s true function, Benca’s team at of sleep research did not begin until the much sleep we get. twentieth century, with the invention of Wisconsin Sleep could then determine electroencephalography (EEG), which uses how well that job is being performed for electrodes attached to the head to record at the brain by itself, without asking the an individual patient during sleep. brain activity. In 1953, scientists using EEG brain to do anything.” In other words, the kind of sleep we achieved a landmark in sleep research by UW sleep researchers peek inside get may matter more than how much sleep discovering rapid eye movement, the stage sleeping brains at the Wisconsin Sleep we get. of sleep during which we dream. clinic in University Research Park on Today the UW can claim the world’s Madison’s west side, where rooms resem- largest high-density EEG facility, called ble those at a comfortable hotel more Sleep Pioneers Wisconsin Sleep, where researchers are than a medical setting, complete with flat In 2005, the National Institutes of Health collaborating across disciplines in an screen satellite TVs. Most of those rooms (NIH) gave Tononi a Pioneer Award,

40 ON WISCONSIN apnea, affecting 24 percent of men and 9 percent of women. “I did the estimates over and over and over, because I could not believe they were so high, especially for women,” says Young, the study’s principal investigator. The paper remains among the top ten most cited articles on the New England Journal of Medicine’s Web site. An estimated 12 to 18 million adults in the United States have untreated breathing disorders associated with their sleep, a number that is expected to rise with the country’s epidemic of obesity. Since the paper’s publication, the study has linked sleep apnea with depression, hypertension, stroke, diminished quality of life, increased health care costs, and most recently, mortality. Last year, Young and her team reported that the death rate was three times higher for people with untreated sleep apnea than for those who don’t suffer from the condition. Another study Wisconsin Group by Khin M. Hla, the cohort’s medical director and a professor of Snoozes Its Way to Fame medicine, concluded that people with obstructive sleep apnea are “ticking time bombs” for developing cardiovascular disease. Terry Young MS’79, PhD’83 had never heard of sleep apnea — The Wisconsin Sleep Cohort also serves as a valuable a condition that causes people to stop breathing repeatedly resource for studies of other sleep disorders, including restless during their sleep, sometimes hundreds of times a night. She leg syndrome, sleepwalking, narcolepsy, and insomnia, and it was an epidemiologist hard at work studying cancer in 1987 draws researchers from all over the world. Its next study focuses when she got wind of a proposed long-term UW interdisciplin- on how insomnia can predict the development of depression ary study of breathing disorders during sleep. To her, the study’s during a ten-year period; future work could include examin- most exciting aspect was how little was known about sleep ing whether the development of neurological problems such apnea, including how widespread it was, its risk factors, or its as Alzheimer’s disease develop over time in a way that can be long-term health consequences. picked up by sleep patterns. The circumstances were, Young says, “just absolutely an Paul Peppard ’90, MS’94, MS’97, PhD’99, Young’s co-prin- epidemiologist’s dream.” cipal investigator, says the aging of the cohort drives the direction For more than twenty years, Young and her colleagues at the of the research. UW School of Medicine and Public Health have been studying “One of the areas in which there’s a vacuum of knowledge is 1,500 randomly selected state employees, an anonymous group what happens to sleep from the middle age to an older age,” he now known worldwide as the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort. The effort, says. “The sleep cohort is a rare example of being able to look funded by the National Institutes of Health, put Wisconsin on the through this transition.” map for sleep research and played a role in attracting star faculty When the study began, its members were between the ages to Madison: no one else has been studying a single group of of thirty and sixty. Now that they range from fifty to eighty years people and their sleep for as long. The nature of the study allows old, mirroring the aging of the population overall, the data from UW researchers to look at how sleep-related disorders progress the sleep studies are even more valuable. Young says the partici- as people age and gain weight, and determine the risk factors for pants have been absolutely critical to the study’s success; some these problems. are now returning to the lab for their sixth overnight study. “Having a large, random sample — people recruited from “They’re so cooperative, and I think it’s their attitude toward the community, rather than a clinic — to be followed over a long helping [to] ‘sleep for science,’ and their own scientific interest in period of time with repeated measures, provides extensive data it — getting their reports back and finding out how much REM that compose a unique population laboratory to answer many, sleep they had, for example,” Young says. “Their curiosity and many questions,” Young says. their interest have been special and vital to the twenty-year In 1993, Young and her group stunned the sleep-research success of the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort.” community with a discovery about the prevalence of sleep J. P.

SPRING 2009 41 a grant program designed, according to Some researchers, including those The traces of everyday experience in NIH, to support scientists of “exceptional at the UW, have shown that people our brains — what we do, what we see on creativity who propose pioneering — and improve in particular tasks by 10 to 15 our way to work, and all of the brief con- possibly transforming — approaches percent after a night of sleep. Based on versations we have — are huge. Synapses to major challenges in biomedical and those findings, the hypothesis that many are the bank for those memories, and behavioral research.” The five-year, sleep scientists are hotly pursuing holds those connections get stronger the more $2.5 million award serves as recognition that during sleep the synapses — the we “learn,” getting bigger and taking up that the practical potential of Tononi’s connections between nerve cells in the more space and energy. Literally, your work at the UW is major. The program brain — get stronger as the brain replays head is heavy, Tononi says, and the price rewards researchers whose work is “sub- what it sees and learns during the day we pay for a brain that continues to learn stantially different” from that being pur- and consolidates all of those memories. is that those connections are weakened. sued in other laboratories — and Tononi But Tononi and other UW research- “In the morning, you’ve got a V6 is just fine with that, believing that his ers think that cannot be the whole story [engine] that’s idling. In the evening, you’ve research group is on the right track. of sleep. got a V8 that’s idling,” Tononi says.

Desperately Seeking Sleep

One thing is certain about sleep: when we don’t get enough of it, bad things can happen. Sleep is often viewed as a luxury — something reserved for vacations and weekends — or even as a sign of laziness. But it’s pretty clear that many of us are overtired, and we are paying for it. Lack of sleep has been identified as the cause of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl and the grounding of the Exxon Valdez, as well as the reason for numerous automobile accidents. Some research shows that one sleepless night renders a person’s ability to perform about the same as having a blood-alcohol level of .10, above the .08 legal standard for drunken driving. “Sleepy driving is almost as bad, if not worse, than drunk driving,” says Giulio Tononi, a UW psychiatry professor and sleep researcher. “So it’s clear that something is going wrong — especially with the brain — if you don’t sleep.” It might even be the reason for gridlock in Washington. For- mer President Bill Clinton has argued that constant fundraising makes members of Congress chronically sleep deprived, con- tributing to the decided lack of civility in the capital. Anyone who many to conclude that skimping on sleep doesn’t cause much watches overtired contestants on reality TV shows sees how harm. emotions run high when people go for days or weeks without But new research is showing just how important sleep is to proper sleep. our health. Benjamin Franklin once said, “There will be sleeping A lot has changed since Randy Gardner set the world record enough in the grave,” but research suggests that not getting in 1976 for going without sleep. The California seventeen-year- enough might get you there even faster. A study undertaken old lasted for eleven days. Researchers who followed him during at Harvard Medical School found that first-year medical interns and after his stunt didn’t find any major adverse effects, causing working a traditional schedule of eighty-five hours per week

42 ON WISCONSIN The problem is that this pattern is not out the night, reflect how strong connec- “This is direct evidence for the sustainable. That’s why Tononi and other tions in the brain are, and that they also hypothesis,” Tononi says. “So we are UW researchers believe the synapses play an important role in weakening those pleased because the likelihood that it was actually “downscale” and the connec- connections during sleep. With high- wrong [was] high. tions between nerve cells weaken while density EEG, researchers can see where It seems the brain is the organ that we sleep. When we wake up, the brain slow waves are born, how fast they travel, needs sleep the most, Cirelli says. Other- is consuming less energy, occupying less and to which regions of the brain. wise, resting on the couch while watch- space, and ready to learn again. Tononi and his colleague Chiara ing TV or reading would be enough EEGs show that 80 percent of sleep is Cirelli, an associate psychiatry professor, to restore us. The importance of slow characterized by strong, slow waves, like a proved their basic premise when they waves in the brain during sleep could also stadium full of people shouting in unison, measured the strength of brain connec- explain why some people seem to do just while weaker waves are like the buzz in a tions in rats and found that after the rats fine on four hours of sleep, while the rest crowded restaurant. Tononi thinks that had been awake for a few hours, the con- of us don’t function well with fewer than those waves, which get smaller through- nections were 50 percent stronger. eight hours.

made 36 percent more serious medical errors than peers who UW psychiatry professor Ruth Benca, director of the UW worked twenty fewer hours per week and had no shifts lasting Center for Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research, says modern longer than sixteen hours. society is partly to blame. Electricity allows us to turn on the For many, the issue is sleep restriction — cutting a night’s lights anytime during the day or night and interfere with what sleep short by an hour or two here or there, or every night, in experts call “sleep hygiene,” the habits you engage in before some cases. It appears that the result is still harmful. Staying up going to sleep each night. Watching TV while sending messages late on weekends is akin to flying across three time zones and on your BlackBerry or eating a big snack in bed before you fall experiencing jet lag each weekend. asleep would be considered bad sleep hygiene. “There is very good evidence that sleep deprivation is “We also now have a twenty-four-hour society, and I think bad for memory, for vigilance in general, for cognition,” says that’s been a big change over the last fifty years or so,” says Chiara Cirelli, as associate psychiatry professor and UW sleep Benca, noting that now more than just television affects sleep. researcher. “Now, it is very clear that it’s not only total sleep “We have a world that’s kind of constantly in connection with deprivation … but now sleep restriction is what is usually being each other, and people can stay online all night, so there are a studied, because that’s what everybody is under normally during lot of — how shall we say — distractions, interruptions, and sort the weekdays.” of competitive interests for our time at night.” One study shows that sleep restriction can increase the And even though sleep deprivation is what Benca risk of cardiovascular disease; just five nights of a sleep deficit considers an “epidemic problem” in industrialized societies — is enough to significantly stress the heart. And researchers more than 70 million people in the United States have some have also found that losing just one night of sleep causes the kind of sleep problem, according to the National Institutes of brain to experience what amounts to a power failure — brief Health — it doesn’t mean it’s always a top priority. episodes during which a person is between sleep and wakeful- “We do know that doctors don’t ask about sleep problems ness. Lack of sleep is also linked to lower grades for students, as much as they should, and most sleep problems are never increased risk of adolescents taking up smoking and drinking, brought to a physician’s attention,” Benca says. “One goal of unhealthy eating, obesity, and even bad decision-making at the field is for physicians in general and people in general to be gambling tables. more aware of the importance of sleep and the common preva- Given these findings, it’s easy to see why a worker with lence of sleep disorders and the fact that there are treatments insomnia costs an employer $3,000 more per year in health care available for them.” bills, for a total of $20 billion in costs across the U.S. workforce. J. P.

SPRING 2009 43 If the job of sleep does, in fact, rely on The UW team is searching for spe- Although the UW researchers haven’t slow waves, the number that a person’s cific genes that are the most important found a mutation that creates a fly that brain produces during sleep would be in carrying that sleep signal, which they never sleeps, they have identified a gene crucial and could explain that huge vari- believe gets activated when connections that causes flies to sleep one-third the ability among individuals, Cirelli says. in the brain become too big and strong. amount of normal flies, a process that “People always ask … ‘How many “There is something that puts you to took five years. The goal is to find other hours should I sleep?’ I don’t know. sleep,” Cirelli says. specific genes involved in sleep, including Really — I don’t know. The answer is She’s been researching sleep at the those that tell synapses to take a break and you should sleep as many hours as you molecular level for fifteen years, and weaken connections between nerve cells. feel you need,” Cirelli says. “Hopefully there’s no shortage of work to do — “It’s almost impossible to get funding in the future … you could measure how hundreds of genes change between sleep for doing these kinds of studies because much synapses have been downscaled, and waking. “People thought that at the they are considered fishing expeditions, if that’s really crucial … but we are not which is a very, very negative term in there yet.” Tononi and his colleagues research, meaning that you have no clue,” Cirelli says. But since other sleep- Finding the have stimulated slow research efforts in the 1990s were not waves like those found explaining sleep function, she says, the Right Genes UW researchers “had to be completely Cirelli is at the forefront of one of the during the deepest stages unbiased and just try to check and look fastest growing areas in sleep research. at all the genes.” She is trying to identify the genes that of sleep. These slow are responsible for sleeping and waking, waves on demand could and, in particular, which gene carries the signal that shuts down connections in the someday lead to treat- What Lies Ahead brain during sleep. She and Tononi both ments for insomnia and The promise of the research surround- got their start at the University of Pisa in ing sleep is tantalizing, even if the clinical Italy, home to Giuseppe Moruzzi, a major a magnetically stimulated applications are not remotely close to becoming reality yet. player in sleep research who also used “power nap,” providing EEG to study the brain during sleeping Tononi and his colleagues have stimu- and waking. the benefit of a full night’s lated slow waves like those found during the deepest stages of sleep by placing a “When you go into sleep [research], it is sleep in just a few hours. such a fascinating world, and because there specialized electromagnet on the scalp of are still so many things to study, it’s easy to sleeping patients, generating short, mag- get trapped,” Cirelli says with a laugh. molecular level, sleep was silence,” she netic pulses that activate electrical impulses A collection of networks forms sys- says. “Instead, that’s not the case; it’s just in the brain. These slow waves on demand tems for sleep and waking, rather than that there are different kinds of genes that could someday lead to treatments for one specific center in the brain. But sci- are active during sleep.” insomnia and a magnetically stimulated entists still don’t know why the pressure In an effort to identify those genes, “power nap,” providing the benefit of a full to go to sleep increases if a person stays Cirelli is screening thousands of lines night’s sleep in just a few hours. awake for too long, something they’ve of fruit flies. The flies are a good fit for And with studies of brain activ- seen in studies of animals and humans. this work because their nervous systems ity during sleep using the high-density “Why is it that the brain cells need to are complex enough to apply to humans EEG, researchers could also develop sleep? That’s a different story, and that’s and other mammals — they even stay diagnostic tools for identifying men- really what we are trying to understand,” awake when they have caffeine — yet they tal illnesses and assist doctors who are Cirelli says. also allow for rapid genetic screening. working with stroke patients to deter-

44 ON WISCONSIN mine how successfully rehabilitation sessions are restoring language. The Hours of Our Lives While it may sound strange to some- How much time do we sleep during a one who hasn’t devoted hours and hours in a laboratory, tirelessly repeating the lifetime, compared with other activities? same experiment over and over again, the UW’s sleep researchers are willing to spend significant time essentially trying to disprove their own theories. “You always have to remember that we are all wrong — [which is] based on the fact that now we know too little to be right,” Cirelli says. Sleep is a comprehensive field, cutting across every branch of medicine. Residents Sleeping from UW programs in psychiatry, neurol- ogy, internal medicine, and pediatrics can elect to do rotations in the sleep-research center. UW researchers have elected to collaborate extensively among the disci- plines and employ a broad range of meth- ods, including the study of both animals and humans using electrophysiology, biochemistry, and computer modeling. “I think there is a cooperative spirit here. People like to work together,” Tononi says. “It is not a cutthroat envi- ronment where the next guy is your Activity % of lifetime worst enemy.” Sleeping 36 And what motivates them is the scope Other activities 19 of problems that could be addressed by dis- Working and work-related activities 16 covering the whole story of why we sleep. “People have learned by previous Watching television 11 disasters, so to speak, to stay away from Household activities (housework, lawn care) 8 this question because you’re almost cer- Eating and drinking 5 tainly going to be wrong,” Tononi says. Socializing and communicating 3 “Despite everything, I think that’s what’s Sports, exercise, recreation 1 worth doing. Give it shot. Maybe you’re lucky. Maybe not.” n Telephone calls, mail, and e-mail 1

Source: American Time Use Survey, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2007 annual Jenny Price ’96 is a writer for On Wisconsin. averages. Calculations based on U.S. life expectancy of 77.8 years, per National She was preparing for a sleep-deprivation Center for Health Statistics, which includes an average 243,362 hours of sleeping. experiment as this issue of the magazine went to press, thanks to the arrival of her second child.

SPRING 2009 45 traditions

The cheering mass of students clad in tie-dyed T-shirts debuted at men’s basketball games at the Kohl Center in 2002. JEFF MILLER The Grateful Red They may not have the best seats in the house as Wisconsin tries to secure an invite to the NCAA tournament, but their voices carry. The cheering mass of students clad in tie-dyed T-shirts — called The Grateful Red — debuted in 2002, a few years after the men’s basketball team moved to the Kohl Center from the Field House. Some feared that the new venue wouldn’t have the same intimidation factor as the Old Barn, but anyone who has attended a home game in recent years can see (and hear) that they needn’t have worried. The Grateful Red’s members still make opposing players flinch during free throws and guide them to the bench after they foul out with helpful directions of “left, right, left, right …” Despite the high demand for tickets, Wisconsin has one of the smallest student sections in the Big Ten Conference. A lottery system determines who gets the right to pack the 2,100 seats in three tiers at the south end of the Kohl Center. So where did the group get its name? After Coach Bo Ryan objected to any ideas that played off his name, Saul Phillips, then director of basketball operations and now head coach at North Dakota State University, stumbled on “The Grateful Red.” It stuck. Although there’s no prescribed dress code, student season- ticket holders get the latest version of the tie-dyed T-shirts for free each year. Other members of The Grateful Red choose to exercise their sartorial creativity. Last year, one fan came dressed in a polar bear costume, a nod to center Brian Butch’s nickname. And a few years ago, a group of five female students, known as the “Front Row Girls,” outfitted themselves with different match- ing outfits for each home game, attracting fans of their own. The Grateful Red’s antics don’t always thrill regular season- ticket holders. When the students decide that other fans aren’t doing their part to give the Badgers home court advantage, they chastise them, chanting, “Old people, stand up!” Jenny Price ’96

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

46 ON WISCONSIN SPRING 2009 47 gifts in action

A Crescendo is Building The plans for a new campus performance center are music to many ears.

A new performance center for rent music halls in the Humanities nity, the new performance cen- If the project progresses the School of Music is evolv- Building — 100-seat Morphy Hall ter will provide an additional as planned, an architect will be ing from a dream to reality, bring- and 720-seat Mills Hall — may benefit, Schaffer believes. The selected this year, leading to an ing closer to fruition another jewel host wonderful performances. classical music recording indus- opening in spring 2013. in the crown of the East Campus But acoustically, they are not up try has nearly disappeared, he The UW’s School of Music Gateway, part of the UW’s mas- to par, according to an acousti- says, explaining that perform- is regularly listed in the top 5 ter plan to transform a core region cian who assessed the spaces in ing ensembles — even those percent of public music schools of campus. December. as famous as the New York in the United States. It is also the The project received a huge The new center, to be Philharmonic Orchestra — must largest provider of music perfor- boost in September from two located on the northwest corner now make and distribute their mances in Wisconsin outside of anonymous donors. One com- of University Avenue and Lake own recordings. the greater Milwaukee area, offer- mitted to a gift of $15 million; Street, will have approximately “We can make sure these ing more than three hundred the other pledged $5 million. 56,000 square feet of space and halls become beautiful record- events a year, most free. Additional private support will contain an 800-seat main hall and ing facilities,” he says. “I really Chris DuPré fund the remainder of the esti- a 350-seat recital hall. want to keep Wisconsin on the mated $38 million cost. The gifts “A performance space is forefront of this, so five or ten For more information on how were announced last fall dur- like a beautiful instrument,” says years down the road, we can be a you can help UW-Madison, visit ing an “Evening of Celebration,” John Schaffer, director of the national leader in the production the UW Foundation Web site at which featured student perfor- School of Music. “A great hall can and distribution of this recorded www.uwfoundation.wisc.edu mances at Madison’s Overture do wonderful things for a musi- art form.” or call (608) 263-4545. Center for the Arts to honor for- cian. … The halls we are look- mer chancellor John D. Wiley ing to build will not only give our JEFF MILLER (2) MS’65, PhD’68. students and faculty the oppor- “These two commitments tunity to perform and record in are acts of outstanding gener- truly world-class spaces, but will osity and humility from anony- also be of a size and nature as to mous friends of the university,” serve a completely complemen- says Chancellor Carolyn “Biddy” tary role with the bigger halls in Martin PhD’85. “They not only the Overture Center. continue the tremendous momen- “As a city, we don’t have nice tum we’ve experienced in reshap- music halls in that smaller to mid- ing the East Campus Gateway; range size,” he continues. “We do they also serve as a fitting honor have the renovated Oscar Mayer to Chancellor Wiley and his inspir- Theater in the Overture Center, ing legacy as both a patron but that’s a proscenium stage and a champion of the arts in not designed solely for music. A Wisconsin.” lot of medium-sized halls at high As the development effort schools and, say, Mitby Theater at to build the performance center Madison Area Technical College kicks off in earnest, the finale is — those are all proscenium the- yet to be written. But there’s no aters, not music halls. These doubt the ensemble in charge of spaces would fill a definite gap.” the project is in harmony when it Beyond meeting the needs Conductor James Smith and the University Symphony Orchestra comes to its necessity. The cur- of the school and the commu- perform during an event last fall.

48 ON WISCONSIN Badger connections JEFF MILLER

50 Class Notes Having a Ball Students hurled icy missiles at each other across Bascom Hill in January during an attempt to set the record for the world’s 56 Calendar largest snowball fight. The effort came up a bit short, however. Organizers guessed that about 2,000 students took part, some- 57 Bookshelf what shy of the previous record of 3,745, set at Michigan Tech in February 2006. 58 WAA News

60 Sifting & Winnowing

SPRING 2009 49 classnotes

Please tell us about your recent McElhinney, started the athletic- When the first Education B. Roberts, 1885–1952 (Rustic accomplishments, transitions, and casual-clothing line in 2006. Council convened this fall in Enterprise) — the history of the and other significant life hap- Best wishes go out to Washington, D.C., the Milwaukee first African-American to be penings by e-mailing the (brief, Madisonian Emery Bainbridge School of Engineering’s dean of awarded a new-car franchise. please) details to papfelbach@ ’33, MPh’43, who celebrated his applied research, Thomas Bray waastaff.com; mailing them to one-hundred-and-first birthday in ’54, was there. The group of edu- ’60s Alumni News, Wisconsin Alumni November. In 2007, his birthday cation leaders from across the Association, 650 North Lake party featured Bucky Badger as a nation is charged with develop- If you’ve spent much time around Street, Madison, WI 53706-1476; guest. Bainbridge spent forty-six ing strategies that will keep the Madison over the last decade, or faxing them to (608) 265-8771. years as an educator, primarily in American manufacturing work- you’ve probably seen one of the Our submissions far exceed our Madison’s schools. We thank his force globally competitive. Dane County Cultural Affairs publishing space, but we appreci- daughter, Deirdre Bainbridge Happy eightieth birthday to Commission’s gorgeous calen- ate hearing from you nonetheless. Nalven ’64 of Englewood, Calvin Fowler ’55, who spent dars, which feature the work of Colorado, for sharing this. thirty-eight years working on the area artists. The 2009 edition, You may e-mail death notices and Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Luscious Landscapes, marks all address, name, e-mail, and tele- ’40s–’50s Shuttle manned space-flight pro- the tenth in a series. Wisconsin- phone updates to alumnichanges@ grams. He’s now fourteen years based artists whose work uwalumni.com; mail them to It’s a family affair! Madison’s into this second career as an appears this year include Dagny Alumni Changes, Wisconsin Stark family — proprietors of the adjunct professor and dean at Quisling Myrah ’60, MA’61; Alumni Association, 650 North Stark Company real estate firm — Webster University’s Merritt Sarah Wiesen Aslakson ’69, Lake Street, Madison, WI 53706- has received the United Way of Island, Florida, campus. MS’70; Jonathan Wilde x’70; 1476; fax them to (608) 262-3332; Dane County’s 2008 Tocqueville The Berlin Prize — and its (Margaret) Leslie De Muth or call them in to (608) 262-9648 or Society Award, which acknowl- accompanying residential fellow- MFA’81; Linda Koenig ’82, toll free to (888) 947-2586. edges those whose excep- ship at the American Academy of MFA’88; and S.V. (Susan) tional service and commitment Berlin — have gone to Donald Medaris x’88. UW emeritus pro- Most obituary listings of WAA have made a major impact on Kommers MA’57, PhD’63. The fessor of art Phil Hamilton has members and friends appear the quality of life in the county. University of Notre Dame pro- designed all ten calendars, and in the Badger Insider, WAA’s Both Phil Stark ’48 and his son fessor of political science and Karen Crossley EMBA’97 is publication for its members. Dave Stark ’76 were on hand to law plans to finish a book on the commission’s director. receive the honor. Germany’s constitutional culture Yvonne Gionet Schmidt x-planation: An x preceding a ’61 and Bonnie Butzer degree year indicates that the McLaughlin ’63 were room- individual did not complete, or Since earning a degree in correctional mates in 1959–61, and they’ve has not yet completed, the degree been following each other ever at UW-Madison. administration, “my career has been an since: in the ’60s to Michigan, in interesting ride,” says Dianne Post ’69, JD’78. the ’70s to New Jersey, and when early years the McLaughlins moved to North Carolina in 1984, they said, “See You may know about Dude Girl Fay Ajzenberg-Selove during his January-to-May stay. you here before long!” It took until clothing, but did you know that its MS’49, PhD’52 became a pio- In August, the Italian 1990, but the Schmidts followed, namesake was the late Dorothy neer in a male-dominated field American Psychology Assembly and both families are still there. Dodge McElhinney ’24? She almost as soon as she arrived honored Peter Merenda PhD’57 Most of the moves were transfers hitchhiked from Madison to in the U.S. as a fifteen-year-old of Warwick, Rhode Island, with a with different companies. Laramie, Wyoming, each sum- World War II refugee. Now she’s certificate of appreciation for his Ladies Must Swing — a mer to tame horses, lead pack earned America’s highest honor many distinguished contributions Madison-based, eighteen-piece, trips in the Rockies, and win for scientific achievement, the to psychology in Italy since 1967. all-female Big Band led by June rodeos against male competitors. National Medal of Science, for her Rusty (Bernard) Restuccia Bergemann Dalton ’63 — trav- Following a two-month horse- work in nuclear physics to explain ’57 of Ann Arbor, Michigan, eled by bus to Moton Field out- back journey in 1928, one of light nuclei. Ajzenberg-Selove is has established a Web site side of Tuskegee, Alabama, to McElhinney’s companions wrote also a University of Pennsylvania (aacardealers.org) that chronicles perform at the October grand a book about the trip called Dude professor emerita of physics and African-American new-car deal- opening of the Tuskegee Airmen Girl, and the seed was sown. the author of A Matter of Choices: ers since 1923. He’s also writ- National Historic Site. They Dorothy’s granddaughter, Kim Memoirs of a Female Physicist. ten An Extraordinary Man: Homer “played tribute” to those who

50 ON WISCONSIN trained at Moton, as well as to the the College of Charleston [South and as an adjunct professor at Purves so that it could become a “girl bands” that performed there. Carolina], where he’s a senior Kaplan University for Business floating exhibit at the Door County After a long career in human fellow. Peterson’s commentary Law and Accounting. Maritime Museum. Assisting him resources for Silicon Valley firms, has also appeared recently in Since earning a degree in were his brother, Charles Asher James Duffy ’64 decided to Education Week. correctional administration, “my ’64 of Bellingham, Washington; give back to his community. The Aurora Health Care career has been an interesting his sister, Susan Asher ’66 of His method? He’s joined the board has added Joanne Disch ride,” says Dianne Post ’69, Sturgeon Bay; stepson David California Highway Patrol (remem- ’68 and John Daniels, Jr. JD’78. She was a parole offi- Schanock ’01 of Chicago; ber CHiPs?) as a Truckee-based MS’72. Disch is a Minneapolis- cer in California, studied psychol- daughter Mariah Asher x’11; public-safety radio dispatcher: the based nursing educator, chief ogy in grad school, worked in that neighbors Jan and Ron Sowle 911 dispatcher for all law-enforce- nurse executive, researcher, and field in Wisconsin, earned a law ’61; and Ron’s daughter, Lisa ment, fire, and other emergency policy maker who recently com- degree, and defended abused Sowle ’84 of Sussex, Wisconsin. services in a large territory. pleted two years as AARP’s women and children in Arizona — The permanent collection at One of the UW’s first gradu- national board chair. Daniels is ates in urban and regional plan- the chair of Quarles & Brady, a ning — William Majewski ’64 law firm based in Milwaukee. The John Roen Asher ’72 wanted us to know — has earned the Minnesota National Law Journal has named that Door County Badgers “aren’t just sitting Planning Association’s Lifetime him one of the country’s most Achievement Award. The Duluth influential minority lawyers. around eating cherries all day.” resident retired in 2001 after three The work of Lea Hopkins decades with the city’s planning Thompson ’68 as a chief corre- all before launching an interna- Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of and development department. spondent for Dateline NBC and tional career in women’s human Art now contains a work of com- The Indonesian Institute of with WRC-TV in Washington, rights. Since 1998, Post has putational art — Diskfield, 2008 Sciences has honored economic D.C., has spurred legislation, lived in Russia, Cambodia, and — created by George Roland researcher Thee Kian Wie product recalls, and company Hungary, and consulted in many MFA’72. He focuses on paint- MS’64, PhD’69 with its Sarwono reforms, but she fears that con- other countries. She’s now work- ing and computer art as a profes- Prawirohardjo Award for his sumers are becoming increas- ing in Algeria. sor of art at Allegheny College in contributions to the nation’s ingly vulnerable. The Potomac, Meadville, Pennsylvania. sciences. A staff researcher at the Maryland, resident has won ’70s Imagine receiving one of institute from 1962 to 2000, he’s every major broadcast-journalism the largest individual-achieve- now a resident expert there. award, and after fifteen years with A 2008–09 Albert Einstein ment prizes in the world: the Upon his 2006 retirement Dateline NBC, she’s now free- Distinguished Educator $250,000 Heinz Award for the as the director of the Wisconsin lancing for Retirement Living TV. Fellowship is allowing Lorna Human Condition. Pioneering Supreme Court’s board of bar It might be a tossup whether Thomas Vazquez ’70 to share foster-care advocate Brenda examiners, Madisonian Gene Richard Antoine ’69 of her expertise with the Office Krause Eheart MS’73, PhD’76 Rankin ’66, MS’75, JD’80 Cincinnati is busier now or before of Workforce Development of Champaign, Illinois, needn’t helped friends to sail their fifty- he retired. He’s left Procter & for Teachers and Scientists at imagine — she’s done it. In 1994, foot sailboat from Greece to Gamble after thirty-nine years, the the Department of Energy in Eheart forged a breakthrough France, then from the Canary last ten of which he spent as the Washington, D.C. The only math model of intergenerational, Islands to Barbados and Trinidad, global human-resources officer teacher at Granton [Wisconsin] community living in Illinois called and then from Hong Kong to the … but now he serves on four UW High School, she also received Hope Meadows. It’s being repli- Philippines in the South China boards, consults, golfs, and trav- the 2007 Presidential Award for cated in other states. Sea race. Rankin also continues els internationally with his spouse, Excellence in Mathematics and What a year 2008 was for a private law practice. Dorothy O’Brien ’70. Science Teaching. David Marcou ’73! His piece Terry Peterson ’67 Chicagoan Thomas Fraser John Roen Asher ’72, about John Loengard’s photo has become chair of the ’69, MS’73, JD’79 has retired the president of Roen Salvage of photographer Annie Leibovitz national Afterschool Alliance in as senior counsel for United Air Company in Sturgeon Bay, shooting atop the Chrysler Washington, D.C.; joined the Lines and as a lieutenant colonel Wisconsin, wanted us to know Building appeared in Smithsonian executive committee of the in the Air Force Reserves, but he that Door County Badgers “aren’t magazine; two versions of his Center for Summer Learning now serves as an executive VP, just sitting around eating cherries Irish play, Song of Joy, or the Old at Johns Hopkins University; general counsel, and secretary all day.” As proof, he shared how Reliables, took the stage in his and moved his Afterschool and of SCI Marketing; as a trustee for he acquired and renovated the home community of La Crosse, Community Learning Network to New Woodstock Global Partners; eighty-nine-year-old tugboat John Wisconsin; thirty-one of his

SPRING 2009 51 classnotes

photos joined the permanent Leaf ’74. He joined the corpora- PublicisLive, its event-manage- of Somerset, New Jersey, as its collection of the Smithsonian’s tion after more than thirty years ment firm. inaugural Award of Distinction National Museum of the American in the U.S. Air Force — most After seven seasons on the recipient. She’s been hailed for Indian; and as the director recently as deputy commander sitcom Malcolm in the Middle, her leadership as a coach, admin- of the American Writers and of the U.S. Pacific Command in Jane Kaczmarek ’79 of istrator, and commissioner, and Photographers Alliance, he’s Hawaii — and after retiring as a Pasadena, California, needed a for the great progress she’s made published his twelfth group book, lieutenant general last year. break from the grueling demands in the NEC in only two years. Spirit of America, The Second Congratulations to the new of the show, for which she earned Thomas McAdams ’83, Volume (Speranza Publishing). vice president for academic seven Emmy nominations. She JD’87 is pleased to share Envision thirty colorful, affairs at Rhode Island College declined prominent roles to enjoy that Wisconsin Governor Jim sparkling glass carpets float- in Providence: Ronald Pitt ’74, some down time with her three Doyle ’67 has appointed him ing high above your head: MS’77. He was previously asso- kids and spouse, Madison native to the state’s three-member Tax that’s what Tucson glass art- ciate VP for academic affairs at and West Wing alumnus Bradley Appeals Commission. McAdams ist Tom Philabaum MA’73 Bridgewater [Massachusetts] Whitford, but producer Steven has served as an assistant district recently installed at the Tucson State College. Bochco tempted her to join his attorney in Milwaukee County new legal drama series by offer- since 1987. He and his spouse, ing her a lighter filming sched- Patrice Delisle McAdams ’85, Fabu Carter Brisco MA’80, MA’81 has found ule. Kaczmarek now plays Judge live in Greendale, Wisconsin. that “to be black is to be political.” Trudy Kessler on Raising the Bar. “An early pioneer in ‘target’ marketing,” writes Derek White ’80s MBA’83, “I recently graduated International Airport for its sixtieth The Wisconsin Association of from twenty-five years of youth anniversary. The artist says that Taxicab Owners has bestowed its If you didn’t know that Madison marketing (as executive VP of the creation, called Another Way Cab Driver of the Year award on has a poet laureate, then please Alloy and president of 360 Youth) to Fly, suggests wonder and awe two local Union Cab employees, meet its third: (Phyllis) Fabu to the affluent-marketing indus- — that “anything is possible when but it wasn’t for their driving skills Carter Brisco MA’80, MA’81, try.” He’s now president of Hotel it comes to flying.” — it was for their literary prow- or, simply, Fabu. In her poetry Networks in New York City — a A record of extraordinary ess. Allen Ruff MA’76, PhD’87 and Capital Times columns, she’s media, marketing, and program- environmental and conservation has written Save Me, Julie Kogon been neither quiet nor euphemis- ming firm that services more than work has earned Judy Alderson (Trafford Publishing), and Fred tic about America’s racism, and one million hotel rooms. ’74 both the Lowell Thomas, Schepartz ’85 has authored says, “To be black is to be polit- Kumar Sridharan MS’84, Jr. Award for Outstanding Civil Vampire Cabbie (Literary Road). ical.” Fabu is also a private con- PhD’89 is a distinguished Service from the state of Alaska, William Horn ’78, JD’81 sultant and a natural community research professor in the UW’s and the Wes Henry National and Jerome Maynard JD’88 leader and mentor who encour- Department of Engineering Excellence in Wilderness were named in the latest Best ages the appreciation of poetry, Physics. He was elected a fellow of Stewardship Award from the Lawyers in America guide literature, and African-American the American Society for Materials National Park Service. Alderson, (Woodward/White), which history and culture. in 2008 for his outstanding contri- of Anchorage, is the regional includes attorneys based on Thirty years of excellence as butions to the field of materials wilderness coordinator for the a national, peer-review sur- a teacher, academic director, and science and engineering. National Park Service in Alaska. vey. Horn is with Mika Meyers principal have earned Kathleen Tom Yorton ’85 had a per- The Big Brothers Big Sisters Beckett & Jones in Grand Rapids, McCrindle MacDonald MS’80 fectly good marketing career (BBBS) of Metro Milwaukee gave Michigan, and Maynard is based the title of 2008 Wisconsin High going, but when he took a its 2008 Martin E. Stein Champion in the Chicago office of Dykema. School Principal of the Year. At chance on becoming the VP for Children Award to Curt Serving as BusinessWeek’s Nathan Hale High School in West of business solutions for The Culver ’74, MS’75 in November Paris correspondent, Rome bureau Allis, she’s focused on account- Second City, he gained hap- for his “long history of helping chief, Middle East correspondent, ability for learning, personalizing piness, too. Today Yorton children through one-to-one men- and Europe editor was just the the educational experience, and is president and COO of the toring.” Culver is also the chair beginning for John Rossant ’78. fostering a sense of belonging. Chicago-based comedy com- and CEO of MGIC Investment In 2005, he joined communica- The National Association pany, which runs theaters in four Corporation in Milwaukee. tions giant Publicis as VP of com- of Collegiate Women Athletics cities, as well as training, touring, The new VP of strategic ini- munications and public affairs, Administrators has honored TV, and digital businesses. tiatives at Northrop Grumman’s and in May, he was named exec- Northeast Conference (NEC) com- After working together for mission systems sector is Daniel utive chair of the Paris-based missioner Brenda Weare ’80 the last eight years, Robert

52 ON WISCONSIN national secretary. She previously John Ruf JD’93: The Man Who Loves Sailing served as its national alumnae officer and on its information- Nothing has ever stopped John Ruf systems task force. JD’93 from sailing — not the opera- From his post as the director tions or radiation he underwent as a DAN TUCKER (2) of media relations at the Natural child to treat a tumor on his spine, nor Resources Defense Council, Jon the paralyzing injury he suffered after a Coifman ’89 has joined the inte- car accident in 1998, when his mode of grated-communications agency transportation became a wheelchair. Waggener Edstrom in its New During his recuperation, Ruf York City office. He’s a VP who’s learned about disabled sailing and rac- co-leading the firm’s environment ing 2.4-meter craft (2.4mR) — a single-person boat class that practice and focusing on new- also attracts able-bodied sailors — and decided to switch from business development. X-boats, M-16 Scows, and E-Scows to the 2.4mR. “The thought Campus Advantage — a that I could get the same medal as an Olympic Finn sailor was private student-housing manage- intriguing,” he says. “There might be a ramp to the podium, but ment company based in Austin, the road to it is exactly the same.” Texas — is now managing two It was during the 2000 U.S. Paralympic Team trials that Ruf Madison stalwarts: the Towers and first faced the 2.4mR. Being used to conferring with crew on tac- the Statesider. Says Mike Peter tics and having extra hands available to trim sails, “single-hand- ’89, the firm’s president and CEO, ing” took some adjustment. What didn’t take adjustment was it’s a homecoming of sorts: many “Being on the podium was a of Campus Advantage’s earliest competing against able-bodied sailors: that’s how Ruf grew up wonderful dream,” says John Ruf on Pewaukee Lake, Wisconsin, and the majority of his training has of his bronze-medal win at the employees began their careers in been in mixed fleets of disabled and able-bodied sailors. 2008 Paralympic Games. “I had Madison. Tonya Neumeier ’90 is It frustrates him, then, that the label of “disabled sailor” is goose bumps watching our flag a regional VP. ascend the pole.” attached to his sport, because it’s the same sailing that he did as Anyone who says you can’t a youth in E-Scows. Ruf views the water as a great equalizer, and he wishes that the rest of the world make a living in the circus should would see it that way. “I have this crazy fantasy,” he says, “that what I do could just be called sailing.” meet Peggy Williams ’89 Ruf threw vigor, determination, knowledge, and extensive international travel into excelling at the of Palmetto, Florida. In 1970, 2.4mR, but came up a bit short when attempting to qualify for the 2004 Athens games. After taking some she was the first female clown time to center his goals, however, he became so skilled by the next Paralympic Team trials in October to graduate from the Ringling 2007 that he took first place and thus earned a berth. Brothers and Barnum & Bailey And so it was that in September, Ruf went to Beijing to compete in his first Paralympic Games — Clown College, and today she’s billed as the largest athletic competition next to the Olympics, and held at the same venues. There, at the circus’s education-outreach the Qingdao Olympic Sailing Centre, he earned the bronze medal. manager. Williams has also When he’s not sailing, Ruf is a Milwaukee-based attorney, vice president, and compliance officer at created Circusworks, an inter- the investment advisory firm of R.W. Baird … but when you’re a competitive sailor, your mind is never far active seminar for teachers that from the next race. explores facets of school curri- P. A. cula and fitness.

’90s Cigale ’87 and Kirk Kapf- Loyola Marymount University in special; two semifinals in NBC’s hammer ’92 have joined forces L.A., where he was dean of the Last Comic Standing; appear- Following a promotion, the to found Endpoint Solutions in Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts. ances on NBC, CBS, and VH1; new gent in the VP and gen- Hales Corners, Wisconsin. They The path that Jackie and fifteen years of national eral manager’s chair at Novellus provide environmental and engi- Kashian ’88 took to become touring. Systems in San Jose, California, neering consulting services. a stand-up comedienne began The five-member govern- is Kaihan Ashtiani MS’90, The twenty-eighth presi- with heckling Sam Kinison at his ing council of Chi Omega — the PhD’95. He’s been with the dent of Santa Clara [California] brother’s Madison comedy club world’s largest women’s fraternal global firm, which produces University is Michael Engh in 1985. Since then, she’s built organization — has welcomed process equipment used in the PhD’87. A distinguished histo- a twenty-year stand-up career, Andrea Derouin Bechtel ’89 manufacture of semiconductors, rian, he’s arrived at the post from including a Comedy Central of Winnetka, Illinois, as its new since 1997.

SPRING 2009 53 classnotes

A group of Badgers led by Kenny Dichter ’90 and Jacquie Berg ’05: Soul Survivor Todd Deutsch ’94 is help- ing to strengthen the future of Jacquie Berg ’05 doesn’t just conquer challenges; she welcomes OF CBS PHOTO COURTESY Wisconsin football by funding them. The California resident recently competed as a contestant on the Dichter-Deutsch Conference the CBS reality show Survivor: Gabon, where her daily life included Center at Camp Randall: a state- meals of termites and ferns, and a less-than-ideal survival wardrobe. of-the-art complex featuring audi- When she applied to the show, Berg was employed as a medi- toriums, a video facility, and a cal sales representative with the Santa Barbara-based Medtronic. She Big Ten Network studio. Dichter, was promoted five times in three years, accomplishing career goals of Livingston, New Jersey, is the she thought would take ten years or more. But her busy schedule founder and CEO of Marquis Jet, allowed little time to do anything else, and Berg applied for the show and Deutsch, of New York City, is just one day before the deadline. a partner with the Galleon Group. “I actually hadn’t watched the show much,” she admits, “but it The UW business school’s looked fun and extremely challenging, and I love trying to overcome executive-education division obstacles like that.” — recently ranked number one Berg’s application was a hastily made, three-minute video, but in the world for “value for the interesting enough to capture the attention of the producers, who money” by the Financial Times of then asked her to submit a new video. This time, she carefully demon- Competing on Survivor: Gabon London — has welcomed Maitri strated her active lifestyle, including clips of her running, swimming, gave Jacquie Berg a new life (Melissa) Rowlands Meyer cliff jumping, and even boxing. direction. ’90 to the new post of corpo- “Madison made me very well rounded,” says Berg, who was a member of the UW track, crew, and rate connections manager. She water polo teams, as well as Kappa Kappa Gamma and the 2004 UW Homecoming Court. “Going to was previously the director of school with forty thousand other students, you try to stand out as much as you can. There were so many membership development at things to do at the UW that I was constantly looking for a new adventure.” Downtown Madison. That love of adventure served her well with Survivor: Gabon. Berg and her fellow contestants were Who’s the new dean of the taken in for (what they thought was) a photo shoot in their business clothes, at which point the competi- School of Pharmacy at Pacific tion abruptly began — with Berg in her shirt, skirt, and heels. Dehydrated and hungry, she found the first University in Hillsboro, Oregon? few days difficult, eating handfuls of termites, ants, and grasshoppers for food. It’s Susan Pok Stein ’90, “I think the hardest part was sleeping on the rocky ground,” she says. “We had no blankets, and it MS’99, who had been serv- got extremely cold at night. We could hear live animals all around us, including panthers. I wasn’t ready ing as acting dean and has held for the loss of mental clarity and sharpness [that came] from being dehydrated and sleep deprived.” administrative, research, special- Contestants compete for cash and other prizes, progressively voting members off the show until ist, and faculty positions at uni- only one remains, deemed the “Sole Survivor.” Reaching that goal includes equal amounts of skill, strat- versities and hospitals in Oregon, egy, and luck … and Berg, unfortunately, was unlucky. She kept a low profile, forming close alliances Wisconsin, and Indiana. The with several other contestants as a member of the Kota tribe (opposite the Fang tribe) and was ranked pharmacy school will graduate the most useful woman and the fifth most useful tribemate overall. But a surprise shake-up exposed her its first class in May. prowess for the game, and she soon found herself on the Fang tribe and the fourth contestant voted off. New to the board of the A born competitor, Berg was devastated. But she put her experience to use as motivation to accom- Association of Fundraising plish several big goals, recently writing a book and founding her own charity, 2nd Family, which matches Professionals as its vice chair of underprivileged children with mentors around the world. membership services is Alice “When you step away from the busy pace of life, it’s a great time to truly figure out what you want Lin Ferris ’91, MBA’94. She’s to do,” she says. “Knowing that I could accomplish this made me want to accomplish a lot of other also been appointed to the prac- challenging goals, and I’m grateful for that opportunity.” tice analysis task force for CFRE Ben Wischnewski ’05 International, the certifying body for professional fund raisers. Ferris is a partner at GoalBusters years. This fall he journeyed to Extraordinary Travel Journals (and producer on the new, one-hour in Flagstaff, Arizona. Madison to speak at the 2008 Still Have Time to Enjoy Your comedic crime procedural in Professional travel writer Wisconsin Book Festival and to Trip!) (both Inkwater Press). which a famous mystery novelist Dave Fox ’91 of Seattle has share his books, Getting Lost: Be sure to check out Castle gets bored with his success and been a tour guide for PBS travel Mishaps of an Accidental Nomad on ABC this spring. Steve teams up with a female NYPD host Rick Steves for fourteen and Globejotting: How to Write Kriozere ’91 of L.A. is a writer- homicide detective to help her

54 ON WISCONSIN solve crimes. Kriozere says that, council in the November elec- This fall the Project Lodge, to associate at Hamilton Brook like his other shows, he hopes tion. Whitburn lost his bid to a fel- an independent art space in Smith Reynolds in Concord, to slip in some UW references. low Democrat, but would have Madison, hosted Western by Massachusetts. San Francisco’s Castle’s executive producer is become only the second openly Northwest: an exhibit by Badgers Farella Braun + Martel has added Armyan (Barry) Bernstein ’70. gay man to win a council seat in who’ve also shown their work at Philip Milestone ’99. Craig Felicitations to Frank the nation’s eighth-largest city. Chicago’s Western Exhibitions Miller ’02 is the newest addi- Durham PhD’93! In 2007, he Clear-air turbulence forecast- gallery, owned and directed tion to the Madison firm of was tenured and promoted to the ing: John Knox PhD’96 knows a by Scott Speh MFA’97. Neider & Boucher, while Brock rank of associate professor in the lot about it. An assistant professor Kendra Larson MA’08 co- Alton ’03 has joined Gislason & School of Journalism and Mass of geography at the University of owns the Project Lodge. Artists Hunter in its Minneapolis office. Communication at the University Georgia in Athens, he’s the leader included Mark Wagner ’95 Jacqueline Helmrick ’05 of Iowa in Iowa City. of a research effort that had its ori- of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin; has accepted a position with In September, a group of gin in his UW thesis work. The (Richard) Stan Shellabarger the Chicago firm of Aronberg researchers at the University of new method for forecasting sud- MFA’96 of Chicago; Adriane Goldgehn; Courtney Lawrence Puerto Rico-Mayagüez (UPRM) den bumps and plummets of air- Herman MFA’97 of South ’05 is now with Schwebel, Goetz received a $5 million, five- craft in these patches of rough, but Portland, Maine; Dan Attoe & Sieben in Minneapolis; and year grant from the National Aaron Mitchell ’05, JD’08 has Science Foundation to estab- “There is quite simply no other band in the parlayed a summer position into lish a Nanotechnology Center for a role as an associate with Brinks Biomedical and Energy-Driven country, or on the planet, like us right now,” Hofer Gilson & Lione in Chicago. Systems and Applications. Its says Sam Reicher ’06. project director, UPRM asso- 2000s ciate professor Oscar Suárez clear air was covered this fall in the ’98 of Washougal, Washington; MS’93, PhD’00, says these Journal of Atmospheric Sciences. Madisonian John Neff ’98; and Nick Holle ’01 has made ample Badgers are also participat- Marie Paretti PhD’97 Aaron Van Dyke MA’99 of St. use of his hometown of Chippewa ing: Jeannette Santos MS’82, has huge news: she’s earned a Paul, Minnesota. Falls, Wisconsin, as the lead actor, Nelson Cardona-Martínez $405,308 Faculty Early Career Susan Chapman MBA’98 writer, and producer of a new, fea- PhD’89, David Suleiman ’90, Development (CAREER) Award is a woman of distinction in many ture-length suspenseful comedy and Jaquelina Alvarez MA’97. from the National Science peoples’ eyes, but in October, called Illegal Use of Joe Zopp. It was Greg Fellman ’94 cultivated Foundation. As an assistant pro- the Girl Scout Council of Greater filmed and produced in the area, a knowledge of and a passion fessor in the Department of New York honored her as such at and had its world premiere there in for tea while teaching English in Engineering Education (among its annual Women of Distinction August before hitting the Landlocked China, and he’s channeled both other roles) at Virginia Tech in Breakfast as a female leader who Film Festival in Iowa City, Iowa. Holle into Seven Cups Denver, a new Blacksburg, she’s been research- exemplifies its mission to help now lives in Los Angeles. Chinese teahouse. The first fran- ing the experiences reaped from girls become outstanding women. Shawn Ryan ’01 writes that chise of Tucson’s Seven Cups, it engineering capstone design Chapman is global head of opera- after just two years with Tefen insists that fair-trade and organic courses — culminating experi- tions at Citi Realty Services. Management Consulting, he was growing practices are followed. ences in which students apply If you’re a fan of the National promoted to senior project man- Kevin Allexon ’95 of their knowledge to major, open- Geographic Channel’s DogTown, ager and presented his first all- Alexandria, Virginia, writes ended design projects. you may have seen Michael Dix day professional seminar — “Risk that he’s recently arrived at “I attended the 2008 DVM’98 on the reality show. He’s Mitigation in the Modern Supply ExxonMobil Public Affairs as a Democratic National Convention the medical director of the Best Chain” — to two chapters of the government and media-relations with Illinois State Representative Friends Animal Society in south- Institute for Supply Management. adviser after nearly four years Deborah Mell,” writes Chicagoan ern Utah, where DogTown is He resides in Oxford, Michigan. of working for the administra- Leah Cunningham Pouw ’97. filmed. The 33,000-acre facility The National Association of tor of the National Oceanic and Working first as a consultant, has a no-euthanasia philosophy Criminal Defense Lawyers has Atmospheric Administration. Pouw became Mell’s chief of staff and works to rehabilitate problem a new board member: Anthony Stephen Whitburn ’95 in December. Previously, she led canines. About fifteen hundred Cotton ’02. He practices at began his career as an award- national media relations for YMCA dogs and other animals live there Kuchler & Cotton Law Offices in winning reporter and news direc- of the USA in Chicago, and was at any one time. Waukesha, Wisconsin, and his tor at Madison’s WIBA radio. In the communications director for Badger attorneys are mov- concern for justice issues has 2000, he moved to San Diego, the New York City Mayor’s Office ing up and around. Ion Abraham taken him to Eritrea, where he’s where he ran for a seat on the city to Combat Domestic Violence. PhD’99 has been promoted investigated human-rights abuses

SPRING 2009 55 committed by Ethiopian soldiers. Houston-Clear Lake. In addition to being a teacher Amber Field King ’05 went Calendar in Santa Monica, California, to Tanzania this fall with the IBM Jeffrey Schwartz ’02 is also Corporate Services Corps, a a five-year cancer survivor who new corporate social-responsi- April received the 2008 LIVESTRONG bility program modeled after the 2–5 Wisconsin Film Festival Award from the Lance Armstrong Peace Corps. She worked with Take your pick of more than 150 films at the eleventh annual Foundation in July. Armstrong the African Wildlife Foundation to Wisconsin Film Festival. www.wifilmfest.org acknowledged Schwartz person- conserve land corridors, and with ally for developing programming Kickstart to help entrepreneurs 16–18 UW Varsity Band Concerts that promotes cancer awareness rise out of poverty. King is the VP Join music lovers at the Kohl Center in Madison for a live perfor- and advocacy among middle- of WAA’s Rochester, Minnesota, mance by the Badger band. Tickets: (608) 265-4120 school students. alumni chapter. 16–18 Engineering Expo Can money bring people From January to September This campus event brings together K–12 students, families, together? Well, working on the 2008, Amanda Leipold ’06 of university staff and students, and industry representatives for UW Foundation’s (UWF) Telefund Madison was also in Tanzania. an informational and hands-on look at the world of engineering. brought Milwaukeeans Sarah De She worked with the Students http://engineeringexpo.wisc.edu/ Ruyter ’03 and Joe Johnson Partnership Worldwide Kijana ni ’03, JD’06 together, and at Afya (Healthy Youth) Program to 23 Distinguished Alumni Awards their August wedding reception, do what she could to abate the Help honor this year’s four distinguished graduates at a program they announced that the assem- AIDS crisis there through pub- in the Wisconsin Union Theater. uwalumni.com/daa bled Telefunders had raised more lic health education. Leipold now 24 Made in Wisconsin: Yerkes Observatory than $3.5 million for the univer- plans to earn master’s degrees in Tour the historic Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, sity. Band members played a public health and law. as part of WAA’s Lifelong Learning series. uwalumni.com/learning Fifth Quarter, and the newlyweds Sam Reicher ’06 is kissed in return for donations hardly shy when he talks about to the UWF. Thanks to Melissa Blackdog — the Chicago-based May Smith ’08 of Madison for sharing rock ’n’ roll band that he founded this “ultimate UW wedding” story. at the UW in 2005 with Antony 8 Made in Wisconsin: O.J. Noer Turfgrass Facility Fourth-year Wisconsin med- Ablan ’06 and Andrew Elbert Join lifelong learners for a fun and informative behind-the-scenes ical student Anne Kolan ’04 ’06. “There is quite simply no look at the Wisconsin turfgrass industry in Verona, Wisconsin. is one of five 2008 Pisacano other band in the country, or on uwalumni.com/learning Scholars, and only the third the planet, like us right now,” 8–10 Alumni Weekend selected from the UW since the Reicher says, and the Chicago WAA invites all grads to come back to campus for a memorable program began in 1993. The Sun-Times has called Blackdog’s weekend among friends. uwalumni.com/alumniweekend recipients — all students who live show “unforgettable.” are pursuing family medicine — Baby Boomers sometimes Founders’ Days receive scholarships of up to claim that today’s college stu- More than fifty Founders’ Day celebrations are scheduled across $28,000 each. Kolan has been dents aren’t as politically engaged the country this spring. Visit uwalumni.com/foundersday to see lauded for her humanitarianism, as they were. To study this, Mark when the UW will be in your area. leadership, and focus on wellness Korshak ’08 of Beverly Hills, For more information on these events, call (888) WIS-ALUM and interdisciplinary care. California, compared college or visit uwalumni.com. Gary (Gerald) Schumacher students from 1967 to those PhD’04 has retired after thirty- of today in Youthanized, the four years in K–12 public edu- short documentary that he co- experimental-textiles course, fall at the Smithsonian’s Ripley cation, most recently as the created. Former Madison mayor she didn’t know that the “fab- Center. Muehlbauer, who has superintendent of the Monona Paul Soglin ’66, JD’72 and ric” would eventually morph into severe Crohn’s disease, is now Grove [Wisconsin] School Washington Post journalist and a floor-length halter dress or in a fiber-art MFA program at District. Now he’s an assistant author David Maraniss x’71 become the subject of Rustle, Philadelphia’s Temple University. professor, teaching in the mas- were both interview subjects. a video that earned the $20,000 ter’s and doctoral programs in When Sarah Muehlbauer grand prize in Green Light, a Paula Wagner Apfelbach ’83 is a the department of educational ’08 began sewing together small juried exhibit of emerging artists believer in the notion that things leadership at the University of circles of wax paper in her UW with disabilities that opened this could always be worse.

56 ON WISCONSIN bookshelf

n Explore Wisconsin Rivers by Doris n Critter Sitter (Walker Green ’70, MA’73 and her spouse, Michael Books for Young Read- Knight ’81, is part guidebook, part refer- ers) by Chuck Richards ence, and part travelogue — the first in a new MFA’83 is a children’s Trails Books series. The couple lives in Spring book about the problems Green, Wisconsin. a young entrepreneur has with the unruly pets under n Bo Ryan: Another his care. The author and Hill to Climb (KCI illustrator is an associate Sports Publishing), by professor in the Integrated Studio Arts Bo Ryan with Mike Program at Iowa State University in Ames. Lucas x’72, is full of reminiscences about n European Perceptions of Islam and n Delicate Edible Birds and Other Ryan’s years in basketball America from Saladin to George W. Stories (Voice) by Lauren Groff MFA’06 of and as head coach of the Bush: Europe’s Fragile Ego Uncovered  Gainesville, Florida, is a new collection of short UW men’s team. Lucas is (Palgrave Macmillan) is authored by Peter stories that “exposes the dark undercurrents a longtime Capital Times O’Brien MA’84, PhD’88. He’s a political and quiet joys of women’s lives.” Groff has sports columnist in Madison. science professor at Trinity University in San also written The Monsters of Templeton, about Antonio, Texas. which Stephen King said, “I was sorry to see n Beyond the Deal: Mergers & this rich and wonderful novel come to an end, Acquisitions That Achieve Break- n Empowering Youth: and there is no higher success than that.” through Performance Gains (McGraw- How to Encourage Hill) is co-authored by Jay Chatzkel MS’88, Young Leaders to Do n Lucky Dog: The principal of Progressive Practices in New Great Things (Search Experiences of One River, Arizona. Institute Press) is the Member of the U.S. work of Kelly Curtis Army Air Corps n The Clinch Knot (Bleak House Books) ’90 — a school coun- during World War II  is the third in the fly-fishing mystery series by selor in northwestern (Stone Hedge Graphics) John Galligan ’79, MA’84, and stars Ned Wisconsin, an advocate is a memoir by Douglas “the Dog” Oglivie as its “anti-hero.” Galligan of the Developmental Holt ’49, who spent teaches at Madison Area Technical College. Assets approach, and the most of his career with founder of Empowering Youth. Milwaukee’s Harnisch- n Primal Manage- feger Corporation, retiring ment: Unraveling the n Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We as president of Harnischfeger Engineers. Secrets of Human Do (and What It Says about Us) (Knopf) Nature to Drive High by Tom Vanderbilt ’91 has recently spent n Civil Society and Social Movements: Performance (AMA- time on the New York Times bestseller list. Building Sustainable Democracies in COM) may turn corporate The Brooklyn, New York, author got his start Latin America (Inter-American Develop- America on its head, says at the Daily Cardinal. ment Bank) is edited by Arthur Domike, Jr. author Paul Herr ’77, MS’53, PhD’61. After nineteen years with the MS’80 of Madison, by n Trucking Country: The Road to United Nations, he’s now a faculty fellow at demonstrating that “emo- America’s Wal-Mart Economy (Princeton American University’s School of International tions tell us what we need to survive, and the University Press) is the debut book of Shane Service in Washington, D.C. logical mind tries to fulfill those needs.” Hamilton ’98, an assistant professor of history at the University of Georgia in Athens. n Posters, Propaganda, and Persua- n On-the-Road Histories: Wisconsin  sion in Election Campaigns around the (Interlink Books) by Mark Van Ells ’90, n The Vanishing Present: Wisconsin’s World and through History (Peter Lang MA’92, PhD’99 starts with our once- Changing Lands, Waters, and Wildlife  Publishing) reminds us that the American prominent glaciers and brings readers to the (University of Chicago Press) is co-edited by election process is hardly the only one. Author present with all that they should know about Thomas Rooney PhD’00, an assistant Steven Seidman ’67 teaches in, and is the the Badger State. The author is an associate professor of biology at Wright State University chair of, the Department of Strategic Commu- professor of history at Queensborough in Dayton, Ohio, and UW-Madison botany nication at Ithaca [New York] College. Community College in New York City. professor Donald Waller.

SPRING 2009 57 waa news

Looking for a New Job? WAA speaker and resources offer encouragement.

The job market will not always “The good news is that long- ANDY MANIS be this bleak, according to Steve term prospects have never been Pogorzelski ’83, former presi- brighter, due to the changing dent of Monster North America, demographics of the workforce,” which hosts the employment site he said, adding that the nation Monster.com. Pogorzelski, who is already experiencing a short- spoke at WAA’s Day on Campus age of health-care workers, car this past fall, predicts a major mechanics, accountants, and talent shortage once the eco- auditors. nomic crisis passes. In addition to hosting Pogorzelski, who also spoke speakers such as Pogorzelski, at several other campus ven- WAA is ramping up its online ues, based his prediction on career resources and network- declining birth rates and a major ing events to help job seek- baby boomer retirement wave. ers. New options include the Although many boomers have chance to network online with Steve Pogorzelski ’83, former president of Monster North America, been forced to delay retirement WAA’s LinkedIn group, and a fields questions during WAA’s Fall Day on Campus. due to the faltering economy, he new job posting board just for said, they will still need to retire Badgers called BuckyNet. The another tool to connect job using these powerful resources, eventually. Badger Career Network provides hunters and employers. To begin go to uwalumni.com/careers.

! High Priority Empty Den Syndrome A Mama Badger blogs about saying good-bye.

There comes a time in every Mama Badger’s life tially in mourning throughout September and even when Baby Badger must leave the den. After October,” she describes. “It didn’t seem to mat- eighteen years of bruised knees and brown-bag ter whether the child was the first, last, or only; they lunches, it’s time to let go and say good-bye. were all having such a hard time with the very real But for some parents, it isn’t so easy. Watching losses that they were experiencing.” a child make the transition from high school to Mama Badger not only uses the blog as a form college can be a nerve-racking journey. of catharsis for herself, but also as a way for parents It’s easier than ever to With hopes of making a smooth transition, to connect and understand that their feelings are update your profile in the one UW alumna and parent of a first-year UW stu- not rare. She also shares her blog through the UW’s online Alumni Directory, dent is sharing her personal story through a blog, Parent Program Web site, another great resource and it’s the best way to posted on the Wisconsin Alumni Association’s she touts for other parents. expand your Badger Web site since fall 2008. Throughout the 2008–09 “I could have written all of this down in a jour- network, enhance your academic year, “Mama Badger Blogger” has been nal, but I don’t think it would have been nearly the career, and keep in touch sharing her roller-coaster ride through a series of same,” she says. “This added element of sharing it with your college friends postings titled “Never Been There, Never Done with other parents who are experiencing and feel- and your alma mater. Don’t That: Diary of a First-Year Badger Mom.” ing the same things, I think, makes a difference be the last to know — get Although she isn’t revealing her name to somehow.” the scoop and stay con- avoid embarrassing her student, Mama Badger Mama Badger’s posts will continue through nected to all things UW. Go wanted to make her somewhat private struggle a June 2009, when another first-year Badger parent to uwalumni.com to update very public one. may take over. “Never Been There,” as well as other your e-mail address. “I noticed several years ago that other mothers blogs, can be found at uwalumni.com/blogs. who had sent their kids off to college were essen- Courtney Renick-Mayer ’08

58 ON WISCONSIN Paying It Forward WAA honors outstanding young alumni. FORWARD An awards publication of the Wisconsin Alumni Association under<40

® March 2009 | forwardunder40.com They range from a leading magazine publisher and The award recipients are featured in engineers at the forefront of innovation to dedicated Forward under 40, a publication distrib- Meet 12 Wisconsin international volunteers and grassroots leaders, and uted in March 2009 to eighty thousand graduates on the move. they’re all under age forty. UW-Madison alumni. The 2009 recip- In recognition of their remarkable work, twelve ients are Andrew Adams III JD’06, UW-Madison graduates have been honored with Jodi Brooks ’93, Abigail David ’96, 2009 Forward under 40 Awards. These outstand- MS’98, Ayman EL-Refaie MS’02, ing graduates, says Paula Bonner MS’78, WAA PhD’05, Clayt Freed ’97, Matthew president and CEO, “live the Wisconsin Idea” — Geck ’92, MD’96, Amanda the 105-year-old guiding philosophy behind UW Harrington ’07, Dennis Hong outreach efforts to aid people in Wisconsin and ’94, Kimberly Anderson Kelleher throughout the world. ’93, Genella Taylor Stubrud ’96,

“These young Badgers are among the world’s PhD’07, Zoe Timms ’97, and Neil SPECIAL DOUBLE ISSUE — turn over for best and brightest innovators and citizens,” she Willenson ’92. Badger Insider magazine! says. “They represent a wide variety of profes- If you did not receive a copy of sional callings, but they have one thing in com- Forward under 40 magazine, you may still read mon — they have quickly used what they learned at about the recipients at a Web site created by WAA. UW-Madison to make broad, positive contributions For profiles, photographs, and biographies detailing for people and communities here in Wisconsin and the award winners’ accomplishments, visit around the world.” forwardunder40.com.

All-Alumni Food Drive Nets Nearly Seven Tons Badger chapters compete for charity.

UW-Madison alumni across the “Bucky’s All-Alumni Food DAVID ASAHINA United States collected nearly Drive was a win-win program seven tons of food and dona- for UW alumni and their com- tions last football season as munities,” says Paula Bonner part of Bucky’s All-Alumni Food MS’78. “Alumni got together to Drive, sponsored by volunteer watch some great Badger foot- leaders of the Wisconsin Alumni ball. And in turn, they made a dif- Association (WAA). ference for their area food banks. The national food drive took It’s amazing what we can do place during Wisconsin’s Big Ten when we harness that UW spirit.” football season at alumni chapter Other participating chap- game-watch parties. WAA chap- ters included the Motor City ters competed for weekly and Badgers (Detroit); San Diego; end-of-season prizes, with the Portland, Oregon; Indianapolis; St. Louis chapter claiming first Orange County, California; Mile prize overall with 3,735 pounds High Badgers (Denver); Los of food collected. In return, the Angeles; Connecticut; Boston; St. Louis chapter received a Philadelphia; Milwaukee; and Orange County, California, chapter alumni gather during the $500 donation to its local chap- Rochester, Minnesota. Wisconsin vs. Cal Poly football game on November 22, 2008; the ter scholarship fund. Ben Wischnewski ’05 chapter collected 512 pounds of food.

SPRING 2009 59 Sifting &Winnowing DAVID MCLIMANS Teachers Who Changed My Life By Patrick Keeffe ’70

The note I received sophomore year from the dean of the College of Letters and Science read, “You must choose a major.” I knew that, but I simply enjoyed learning political science, art, history, and languages. Then, a journalism major I was dating sug- gested, on the slim evidence that I wrote good letters, that I try a writing course. I signed up for reporting and the literary aspects of journalism. A short time later, I had an epiphany. The men who taught those courses changed my life. On the first day of my reporting class, a tall man wear- ing a trench coat and smoking a cigarette wrote his name on the blackboard: Owen Coyle. A Capital Times reporter, he had learned his trade on the streets of Chicago and looked like he could take care of a San Francisco immigrant community, I heard Ragsdale in my head. himself in a tight spot. The first thing Coyle said was, “I love this busi- He reminded me to notice the small details that would illuminate the ness. You meet everybody from kings to bums.” I was electrified. larger story, to record smells and colors, and to note bits of dialogue Wilmott Ragsdale taught literary journalism. Like Coyle, he was that could seem like poetry. I heard that voice many times. a sort of romantic character. With his bush jacket and mustache, he As a young newspaperman working on San Francisco Bay Area looked like a British explorer and exuded sophistication. He said that papers, I covered everything from school boards and earthquakes to journalism is most often written against the merciless clock, but that serial gay murders. One day, after the paper ran my police story about some reporters, with a cultured eye and a deft way with language, arrests during a night of youth-gang violence and gunshots, I had produce work that approaches literature. He read passages aloud, newsroom visitors — some of the guys in the story. They had tattoos, so we could savor the magic. attitudes, and scars. Angry, they said my story got it wrong. We talked One afternoon, during a reading from World War II, Ragsdale in a glass-walled city room office. paused. He talked wistfully about D-Day, which he had covered for I was guided by the spirit of Coyle, who whispered: “Wade in, Time magazine. That fact seemed exotic enough. But then he added talk to some nasty people, keep your wits about you, remember every that, while on a troop ship steaming for Normandy, he had met another detail. Write tightly and well.” It was the most intense thirty minutes of correspondent, Ernest Hemingway. My jaw dropped. This guy could my young life, but I survived, wrote an update, and emerged stronger. teach me a lot. Coyle eventually left journalism, becoming a mayoral press sec- A few weeks into the semester, on the way to Coyle’s class, I came retary and a governor’s speechwriter. We have kept in touch, but upon an anti-war demonstration against the Dow Chemical Company, Ragsdale, sadly, passed away this January. which was recruiting on campus. Dow made napalm, which was used “If they ever find out we’d do this for free, we’ll all be in trouble,” to defoliate Asian jungles. I paused briefly. Unexpectedly, I saw Coyle Coyle once said. Over the years, I thanked Coyle and Ragsdale, and I asked if class had been canceled. “Class is right here today,” he master teachers and writers who were placed in my path at exactly said. (He had left a note on the classroom door.) “Cover this and do the right moment, and made all the difference to a young man looking a story for Friday.” I was excited. Here was real news. For an aspiring for a profession. I had always hoped to find work that would not seem reporter, could it get any better than that? like work. These men helped me do that. Since I walked down Bascom Hill for the last time in 1970, I have made my living as a writer. Whether I was working as a reporter in Patrick Keeffe, a native of Madison, is a writer and journalist who has California, for national magazines in Manhattan, or in nonprofit commu- written for numerous publications, including The New York Times, nications in New York, Ragsdale and Coyle have continued to whisper Metropolitan Home, and Wisconsin Trails. He lives with his family in in my ear. What they taught me — not just by shaping my writing, but Huntington, New York. by their values, accomplishments, and hard-won knowledge — made me a journalist. Their powerful lessons stayed with me for decades. Ragsdale’s comments on my written work gave me confidence. If you’re a UW-Madison alumna or alumnus and you’d like the editors to con- I was also inspired that he had traveled the world, covered wars and sider an essay of this length for publication in On Wisconsin, please send it to presidents, and spoke a few languages. Years later, while reporting on [email protected].

60 ON WISCONSIN Fueling the drive toward green gasoline

Imagine moving from a fossil fuel economy to a clean, carbon neutral energy economy. This shift is in high gear thanks to WARF helping launch Virent Energy Systems, Inc. in 2002. Virent, founded upon University of Wisconsin-Madison discoveries, recently was selected as the only biofuel company among North America’s 100 top tech start-ups. Now Virent is working with Shell on joint research and development efforts to convert sugars from biomass directly into ‘green’ gasoline and gasoline blend components for use in today’s engines.

Virent’s success reflects WARF’s commitment to advancing world-class research at UW-Madison through funding, patenting, licensing and protecting inventions of university faculty, staff and students. Since 1925, WARF has been driven to help companies like Virent make their innovative dreams come true.

WARF. Helping invent a better world. www.warf.org

SPRING 2009 61 2009 Today’s Support Leads to Tomorrow’s Success Each year the UW Athletic Department faces the challenge of supporting nearly 800 student-athletes in 23 varsity sports. The ongoing generosity of over 15,000 friends and fans is vital to funding the scholar- ships and facilities needed for tomorrow’s success.

Invest In excellence Contribute to Wisconsin Athletics Contact the Badger Fund at 608.262.1000 or visit uwbadgers.com.

62 ON WISCONSIN FIRST-YEAR STUDENT HOUSING IS ABUNDANT AT UW-MADISON!

The choice of where your first-year student will live is yours to make. Why not check out ALL of your options during this exciting time!

Choosing a Campus Connect community means that your student will be immersed in campus life through our time-tested, enriching, and academically focused Residence Life Program. And, they’ll be living in a comfortable setting that has all of the privacy, space, and style they’ve grown accustomed to.

Explore the exciting new options at UW-Madison! Get started at www.sba-CampusConnect.com.

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SPRING 2009 63 Remember when“hitting the books”meant actual books?

Today, students can access an entire library with the stroke of a computer key. How students learn is continually changing, but the challenges of maintaining a top university and serving its students are a certainty. A planned or deferred gift guarantees that the University of Wisconsin-Madison will benefit from your generosity. You may designate a gift for scholarships and fellowships, programs in your school or college or projects that reflect your interests and goals. We’re happy to discuss your gift with no obligation. We also can work with you to create effective charitable giving plans. Your legacy is the University’s future.

Visit our Web site or contact us for information on how to plan for your future as well as the future of your University.

Office of Planned Giving 608-263-4545 [email protected]

www.uwfoundation.wisc.edu JEFF MILLER UW-MADISON UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS 1848 University Ave. l P.O. Box 8860 l Madison, WI 53708-8860

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64 ON WISCONSIN ! High Priority Excellence in Education from a It’s easier than ever to update your Leader You Know! profile in the online Alumni Directory, and the best way to expand your Why choose this program? Badger network, enhance your • Earn a Master of Science degree in 2 years career and keep in touch with your with a cohort of K-12 Educators college friends and your alma mater. • Convenience—100% of the Fall and Spring coursework is ONLINE + 2 weeks So don’t be the last to know — get each summer on the UW campus the scoop and stay connected to • Aligned with State & National all things UW. Teacher Standards • Advance your career Update your e-mail address at • Maximize your teaching potential uwalumni.com.

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SPRING 2009 65 flashback

Pat Answers In a starkly partisan view of a future that’s now long past, a St. retaliated using, in the words of engineer J. D. Woodburn ’47, Patrick’s Day parade float promises penury for attorneys and, for “well-aged henfruit” — rotten eggs hurled at the parading engineers. engineers, easy street — complete with fat cigars, moneybags, and However, Woodburn noted, “The aim of the lawyers was no better than evidently what passed for a sexy secretary in the olden days. The their judgment,” and they left their sulfurous stains on bystanders as float illustrates the fierce rivalry between the students of the UW’s well as their targets. Law School and its College of Engineering during the first half of the The rivalry escalated to a near riot in 1938, with vandalism marring twentieth century. the law and engineering buildings. The university then decided to put The mischief began in March 1912, when engineers claimed an end to the antics. Though the 1939 parade was relatively peaceful, St. Patrick as their patron and held a parade in his honor. By 1920, the march was suppressed in 1940, replaced with Engineering Expo. the parade included floats mocking other academic disciplines, with Sixty-nine years later, the Expo continues, and the 2009 event will take a special focus on “shysters” — law students. The shysters soon place from April 16 to 18. decided they needed no ribbing from mere “plumbers.” In 1925, they John Allen

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