Winter 2016 in PDF Format

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FOR UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN–MADISON ALUMNI AND FRIENDS WINTER 2016

Jump Around Todd Jinkins ’96 parachutes into the wild to prevent forest fires. Page 22 Vision This eerie, moonlit setting looks like it could be on another planet, but it’s right here on Earth. At the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica, UW–Madison operates the world’s biggest telescope, buried deep in the ice, and detects tiny particles that could help unravel how the universe was made. Photo by Emanuel Jacobi/NSF On Wisconsin 3 Meeting Spaces • Event Rooms • Guest Rooms Conference Packages • Great Dining Options

*Subject to restrictions. Please call for more information. 4 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 Contents Winter 2016, Volume 117, Number 4

Agriculture can be an act of resistance. See page 36. BRYCE RICHTER DEPARTMENTS

2 Vision 7 Communications 9 Observation

OnCampus

11 News 13 Bygone Campus Reacts to WWII 14 Calculation Critical Repairs 17 Conversation Michael Knetter 18 Exhibition The Hyperpiano 20 Contender Tionna Williams 21 Sports

FEATURES OnAlumni 22 An Unexpected Landing

Parachuting out of a plane with more than 100 JEFF MILLER 50 News pounds of gear on his back to prevent a forest fire is 51 Tradition Distinguished all in a day’s work for Todd Jinkins ’96. By Chelsea Lecture Series Schlecht ’13 52 Exhibition Pioneering Glass Artist 32 Grain of Truth 53 Conversation Brandon Arthur Koehler MS’28 garnered comparisons to Sher- Shields lock Holmes for his role in solving the Lindbergh-baby 54 Class Notes kidnapping case and putting forensic wood anatomy on 61 Diversions the map. By Adam Schrager 66 Destinati on Dotty Dumpling’s Dowry 36 A Taste of Freedom From urban gardening to Southern black farmers who

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION; ORIGINAL PHOTO BY ANDY MANIS organized against oppression, UW assistant professor Monica White’s research reveals a missing chapter in the civil rights narrative. By Meghan Lepisto ’03, MS’04 42 Potato, Interrupted Americans love potatoes, and science can make them healthier and hardier. So why hasn’t UW professor Jiming Jiang’s genetically engineered potato caught on? By Nicole Miller MS’06 Cover Mouthwatering nostalgia. See page 66. Todd Jinkins ’96 46 Then and Now is suited up in After 25 years of covering UW–Madison, a university full smokejumper photographer revisits the people and places he’s captured regalia. to show how they’ve changed. By Jeff Miller Photo by Jeff Miller.

On Wisconsin 5 WHEN NURSING AND ENGINEERING WORK TOGETHER, WE ARE BOUNDLESS.

WISC.EDU | #BOUNDLESSTOGETHER Communications PICTURE SHOW Much of the stunning photog- ET, Write Home admission. Without her help, I raphy featured in the pages of “One Text Away” (Fall 2016 On could not have negotiated that On Wisconsin is captured by Wisconsin) shows how much unwelcoming academic system. UW–Madison photographers communication between students She changed my life. Jeff Miller (see “Then and Now,” and parents has changed. As Betsy Kean PhD’74, MS’78 page 46) and Bryce Richter. See an undergrad in the early ’60s, San Jose, California more of their captivating work I got one communication per at onwisconsin.uwalumni.com/ week from home — a letter from vision. Mom. (We didn’t have a phone at home.) Although communication JEFF MILLER with parents is important, there was some advantage in knowing that you were totally responsible for every decision you made. DuWayne Herning MS’68 Wausau, Wisconsin

Long Overdue [“This Woman’s Work,” Fall Camp Randall Arch 2016] brought me back to my stu- The soldier depicted on the Camp Chairs on Lake Mendota dent days in the 1960s. Although Randall arch [Fall 2016 Destina- BRYCE RICHTER I knew Kathryn Clarenbach tion] is my wife’s great-grand- was connected in some way to father, John C. Martin. He was NOW (National Organization instrumental in working with for Women), the article clarified the state legislature to build the for me her actual role. She also arch and served as the model for directed a fellowship program for the veteran. Above is a photo of returning female graduate stu- Martin in his later years, with his dents. I was one of the fellows, daughter Mary Anne (my wife’s and she was a wonderful mentor. grandmother) on the right. She made it clear that we were David Capp ’72 Badger spirit at the Final Four not to settle for anything less Beverly Shores, Indiana than full professorships at a time JEFF MILLER when many women spent their Evicted Excerpt careers at lower ranks. I carried As a homeless Badger and her voice with me throughout my Wisconsin native who has been early career. Thank you for the working on issues of homeless- long-overdue recognition. ness, poverty, hunger, housing, Sylvia Rosenfield PhD’67 etc. for four years, I can’t tell you Arnold, Maryland how much I appreciate “Locked Out.” I look forward to helping In 1965, I moved to Madison with welcome Matthew Desmond to Fun with frigid temperatures my husband and two children. I campus this fall. decided to apply to the chemistry Brooke Evans x’18 BRYCE RICHTER PhD program at the UW, even though I had done no work in Memories of Ali science since my 1960 undergrad As a senior, I attended the chemistry degree. I sought help Muhammad Ali speech at from Clarenbach in the Con- the Stock Pavilion [Fall 2016 tinuing Education for Women Bygone]. I remember him saying program. The admissions adviser something to the effect that initially told me that I would have the light would shine through. to retake most of my undergrad At that moment, the clouds chemistry courses. Clarenbach parted, allowing the sun to shine Research in the field (or forest) coached me on how to demand through the dingy gray skylights. acceptance based on my aca- Without missing a beat, Ali demic record and identified who replied, “See, I told you so.” within the all-male department Darvin Kapitz ’69 would likely be supportive of my Westborough, Massachusetts

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uwcu.org | 800.533.6773 Observation COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURAL AND LIFE SCIENCES Winter 2016

CO-EDITORS Niki Denison, Wisconsin Alumni Association Jenny Price ’96, University Communications

PUBLISHER Wisconsin Alumni Association 650 N. Lake Street, Madison, WI 53706 Voice: 608-262-2551 Toll-free: 888-WIS-ALUM (947-2586) Email: [email protected] Web: onwisconsin.uwalumni.com Class Notes: uwalumni.com/go/alumninotes

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER John Allen, Wisconsin Alumni Association

ART DIRECTOR Nancy Rinehart, University Marketing

PRODUCTION EDITOR Eileen Fitzgerald ’79, University Marketing A potato is an unlikely hero. Or villain. While it’s At the Hancock a plucky little tuber, the potato is hardly a flashy Agricultural DESIGN, LAYOUT, AND PRODUCTION organism. Starchy and bland, it’s the partner to Research Station, Toni Good ’76, MA’89; Kent Hamele ’78; meat in the definition of standard fare. UW–Madison has Danielle Lawry; Preston Schmitt ’14, conducted potato University Marketing That’s part of what makes Nicole Miller’s article studies for more “Potato, Interrupted” (see page 42) so interesting than 60 years. PHOTOGRAPHERS — its hero (or, again, villain, depending on your Jeff Miller and Bryce Richter, University Communications point of view) is a spud. The article is also interesting in that it illustrates how UW– CLASS NOTES/DIVERSIONS EDITOR Madison — which has a storied history in the study and improvement Paula Apfelbach ’83, Wisconsin Alumni of food — is still challenging and changing what we know about what Association we eat. EDITORIAL INTERN You may know that the UW is where vitamin A was discovered. Riley Vetterkind x’17 Names such as Steenbock and Elvehjem and Babcock adorn campus buildings because of the roles those scientists played in learning about ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVES Madison Magazine: 608-270-3600 and improving our food supply. UW researchers helped develop the state’s dairy industry, as well as its connection with cranberries and ALUMNI ADDRESS CHANGES AND potatoes. (Ever heard of the Snowden potato? The late Stan Peloquin DEATH NOTICES MS’51, PhD’52 developed it here, and for many years, it was the most Toll-free: 888-947-2586 or 608-308-5420 Email: [email protected] popular source of potato chips in the world.) UW professor Jiming Jiang’s potato — the protagonist of our Quarterly production of On Wisconsin is story — is more problematic in the popular imagination. Although supported by financial gifts from alumni it’s immune to late blight, Jiang developed it using genetic engineering. and friends. To make a gift to UW–Madison, Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are controversial, and some please visit supportuw.org. people may wonder why the UW would be involved in creating foods Printed on recycled paper. that many Americans find dubious. Please recycle this magazine. Please read it first. But the purpose of a university is to expand knowledge. In order to evaluate GMO foods, we need to know the facts. UW–Madison excels at exploring what we eat so that we can make informed choices. So who wants a chip? You know you can’t eat just one …

John Allen Associate Publisher

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10 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 OnCampusNews from UW–Madison Time for a Change Chancellor calls for a renewed investment in the UW.

Five of the last six state budgets cut funding to the BACKGROUND IMAGE ISTOCK/PHOTO ILLUSTRATION University of Wisconsin System, so Chancellor Rebecca Blank has a simple message for alumni and legislators this time around: it’s time to reinvest in the UW. At a campus forum this fall, Blank told faculty, staff, and students that the cuts threaten the quality of the state’s flagship university. As some top faculty and staff depart, its reputation suffers. Wisconsin is one of just nine states that have reduced support for higher education over the last two years. Thirty-nine states increased funds to colleges and universities. And, Blank noted, the UW’s peers are investing in new programs and research centers. “My biggest challenge as chancellor is to first University Housing and the Wisconsin Union. The Billboards placed make sure this university can find a way to stabilize state share, which used to be the largest source of around the state its finances so we aren’t constantly facing budget UW funding, is now the smallest of those five, at just that tout the con- crises every two years of the sort we’ve seen this under 15 percent. Blank noted that state funds remain tributions of UW biennium,” Blank said. “But, second, I need to do vital to the UW’s teaching, research, and outreach alumni are part of an unprecedented better than that. I can’t just stop the cuts; we need missions because they leverage funds from the federal effort ahead of to get ahead. I have to find the funds that help us government and other sources. the next state reinvest in the university.” Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is expected to budget. Vincent Blank supports a board of regents request for deliver his budget proposal to the legislature early Lyles ’84, JD’87 $42.5 million in new funding to train students in Wis- next year. He has indicated that there could be new oversees the Boys consin’s most high-demand fields, such as computer funding for the UW System tied to certain perfor- & Girls Clubs of science, business, nursing, and engineering. The pro- mance measures, such as graduation rates and job Greater Milwau- posal also emphasizes career initiatives, funding for placement. kee’s more than 800 employees building maintenance and renovation (see Calcula- During the last year, Blank has traveled across the and nearly 600 tion, page 14), and operational flexibilities. state, meeting with legislators and business leaders volunteers. That investment would be welcome news to pro- and sharing the message that the UW is an economic fessors who have seen some colleagues take positions engine for Wisconsin. A new ad campaign using pri- at other colleges and universities. In a recent column vate funds employs a variety of media, including bill- in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, geography profes- boards, to reinforce that theme by highlighting the sor Jack Williams (see Mammoth Island, page 19) contributions of UW–Madison alumni in each of the explained why he explored a job at another university state’s 72 counties. — which offered better pay and more time to pursue From a social worker in Grant County to a cran- research — and why he decided to stay. berry grower in Wood County to a language teacher “UW–Madison and the state universities are one in Menominee County, the stories are designed to of the great achievements of our country,” he wrote. demonstrate the influence of UW alumni on their “In this accelerating world, our mission of world-class Wisconsin communities. research and education is ever more important. I’ve “We won’t just be making our case to legisla- stayed to serve this state, and I remain hopeful that tors,” Blank says. “We’ll go directly to the people of the state will return to supporting its great university.” the state in new and creative ways. We can’t take for UW–Madison receives funding through five main granted that everyone is aware of all of the ways in channels: federal revenue, state revenue, gifts from which this university and its alums are involved in donors and nonfederal grants, student tuition and communities across the state.” fees, and revenue from auxiliary operations, such as STAFF

On Wisconsin 11 OnCampus GEORGE CLERK/ISTOCK Diversity’s Complex History JEFF MILLER

POKÉMON WHO? Even if you didn’t spend the summer desperately seeking a Dratini, you’ve surely heard of Pokémon Go, the augmented-reality game that captured audiences when it was released in July. As reviews came in, there was overarching praise for the physical nature of the game — Vox.com called it the “greatest unintentional health fad When some schools barred the door, “He committed suicide in the 1890s. Not ever.” But before Pokémon Go, a UW–Madison welcomed black students a lot is known about him,” Long says. very similar augmented-reality from around the country who then went Three sisters — Ida ’40, Carlita ’42, game was developed on campus. on to successful careers in journalism, and Frances ’44 Murphy — came Researcher David Gagnon law, medicine, and a host of other fields. from Baltimore, starting in 1935. They ’04, MS’10 and his team at the “When I told my dad I was going earned journalism degrees and returned Wisconsin Institute for Discovery’s to Wisconsin, he said, ‘You could go home to help keep their father’s newspa- Field Day Lab created Kkomoman to Chapel Hill; black people don’t live per, the Baltimore Afro-American, afloat. in 2012. Their mission was to use in Wisconsin,’ ” recalls Harvey Long Now, with increased calls for greater smartphone technology to get kids PhDx’16, a doctoral student in library diversity and inclusion, Long wants the moving. “How do we leverage this and information studies from North university community to understand GPS-based technology that we’ve Carolina. “[But] black people have been black students’ long, complicated his- got,” Gagnon asks, “and create coming to the university for a long time.” tory at the UW and how race played a games that are intentionally de- Long — who recovered some of key role in their isolation from campus signed to get kids to run around?” this campus history by completing activities. In Kkomoman, a user has to be an archives-based examination of the “The state was receptive, but it the first to arrive at a location to period between 1875 and 1940 — says wasn’t perfect,” he says. “It’s like you get battle and catch the Kkomoman. In the earliest known black student at the an invitation to a party, but you might Pokémon Go, creatures show up in UW was William Noland 1875, who not have the right clothes, or you might various locations and are caught by was born in Binghamton, New York. not be asked to dance. The University of throwing virtual Pokéballs. After graduation, he attended the law Wisconsin was not paradise, but it was a Gagnon welcomes the com- school for two semesters before drop- step up for many of these students.” parison. “It’s super honoring,” he ping out and moving to Washington, DC. DAVID J. TENENBAUM MA’86 says. “It’s really exciting to start

thinking about ways that place SGRO,JEAN-YVES DEPARTMENT OF BIOCHEMISTRY and computers and information Not-So-Common Cold can start to intersect. Pokémon Go UW researchers, working with scientists at Purdue just gives us a shadow of that.” University, have identified the atomic structure of CHELSEA SCHLECHT ’13 rhinovirus C, a variant of the common cold that can lead to severe asthma attacks in children. Ann Palmenberg PhD’75, a UW professor of biochemistry, worked with Purdue’s Michael Ross- mann to lead the study, which may advance efforts to develop vaccines or antiviral drugs. Rhinovirus C was discovered just a decade ago, and health officials believe it’s responsible for more than half of hospital stays for children with asthma.

12 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 Bygone Campus Reacts to WWII UW ARCHIVES S07306

No exclamation point was fears. In a letter on the student A capacity crowd ules, and historical accounts of needed, but the editors of the newspaper’s front page, he assured of students, how World War I affected UW December 9, 1941, Daily Cardi- students that they would be ready faculty, and com- sports. nal used one anyway: “We Are at if needed for national service. munity members Though it was a time of shock War!” The lead story following Later, students sang carols and gathered inside and dread, a Cardinal editorial the Field House the December 7 attack on Pearl “Varsity” at a convocation inside on December 12, published two days after the Harbor noted that most on the a packed Field House, where Dyk- 1941. attack sounded a note of hope campus were wondering, “What stra gave a speech that expanded and reconciliation: “We may hate will happen to me?” Not long on that theme. “We are ready for the war lords of Japan for plung- after, many UW students and a great all-out effort,” he said. ing us into the blood bath we are staff left Madison to join the mil- “There is no question of sacrifice. facing, but at the same time, we itary. Some students would lose There is only the deep desire to be must remember that the people of their lives on distant battlefields, useful to our common country in Japan breathe the same air, have including star football player this period of crisis.” the same desires, suffer the same Dave Schreiner ’43, a Marine Daily Cardinal sports pages sorrows, and shed blood very killed on Okinawa. were filled with stories about the much like our own. We cannot UW–Madison Chancellor future of Badger athletes, the pos- hate our brethren.” Clarence Dykstra tried to calm sible disruption to team sched- MEG JONES ’84

On Wisconsin 13 Calculation Critical Repairs ILLUSTRATION: DANIELLE LAWRY; SOURCE: UW–MADISON FACILITIES PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT

era building is in poor condition A Long To-Do List and has exposed rebar. Elvey says After World War II, American uni- it gets bigger. “It keeps me awake it reminds him of the Tom Hanks versities experienced a building at night,” he said before leaving the movie The Money Pit, about an boom to handle the flood of incom- UW to work for Children’s Health unending home renovation proj- ing students. At UW–Madison, System of Texas. ect. more than 40 percent of campus The UW’s current deferred Over the summer, university buildings were constructed in the maintenance costs are estimated officials elected to transfer nearly 1950s, ’60s, or ’70s. at $1.2 billion and continue to $2 million from academic and But volume meant speedy con- grow. Unlike previous state bud- Chancellor research funds to cover repairs struction, producing structures gets, the most recent budget didn’t Rebecca Blank to the exterior and roof of the that haven’t stood the test of time provide $20 million a year in bor- says it is critical Humanities Building and 23 and now need attention. rowing to cover the costs of capital for the next other projects that were critical That’s what William Elvey projects that typically cost more budget to include to safety, including fire escapes. funding to had to worry about — a lot — than $50,000, such as replacing complete needed For the next two-year as UW–Madison’s associate vice roofs, and less expensive mainte- repairs and up- budget, UW System officials chancellor for Facilities Planning nance work, such as roof patching. keep on buildings have requested $100 million to and Management. He likens the “[The Humanities Building] across campus. restore the money campuses university’s backlog of deferred is the poster child for deferred JEFF MILLER received in the past for repair maintenance to what happens maintenance,” Elvey says. The and maintenance projects. when a snowball rolls down a hill: concrete exterior of the 1960s- JENNY PRICE ’96

14 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 OnCampus MARCCOPHOTO/ISTOCK

Have Botox, Will Travel? Doses of Botox and related bot- ulinal drugs are used to treat conditions including frown lines, disabling muscle spasms, and I Quit (Maybe)! migraine headaches. They are Electronic cigarettes can’t be sold or marketed as smoking cessation typically measured in trillionths aids, but many smokers see so-called vaping as a desirable way to quit. of a gram, and targets are care- The problem is, many of them get “stuck” using both this option and traditional cigarettes, says Doug Jorenby MS’86, PhD’91, director fully chosen to silence only the of clinical services for the UW’s Center for Tobacco Research and desired motor nerves. Intervention. These “dual users” are a key part of an ongoing study of e-cigarettes the center is conducting with a $3.7 million federal grant. UW neuroscience professor Over the next two years, UW researchers will observe a group of Edwin Chapman and his col- traditional smokers and a group of dual users, monitoring their health leagues have found clear evidence overall and measuring the effects vaping has on their lung function. The study will also see whether traditional smokers start vaping and if that the powerful toxin moves be- dual users quit smoking entirely or go back to smoking only traditional tween mouse neurons in a lab dish, cigarettes. The big three tobacco companies own 80 percent of the biggest- which means it may travel beyond selling brands of e-cigarettes, Jorenby notes. “From a public health its injection site in humans. The perspective, we’re really concerned about dual users,” he says. “They may be people who would otherwise quit smoking com- study raises questions, includ- pletely, if they used known evidence-based treatments.” ing whether only the local effects The center recently conducted another study that found that matter for medicine. If that’s the even though the vast majority of dual users enrolled began vaping because they wanted to stop smoking, their motivation to quit was case, tomorrow’s versions of this actually much lower than people who were solely smoking traditional ancient toxin molecule could be cigarettes. “The assumption is that vaping is a reduction in risk, because genetically engineered to alleviate people aren’t getting carbon monoxide every time they puff some vapor symptoms from wrinkles to severe into their lungs,” Jorenby says. “But with dual users, it may not make any difference.” muscle spasms without moving JENNY PRICE ’96 beyond the target neurons.

news feed

RateMyProfes- The Times Higher Edu- UW–Madison marked the cen- sors.com ranked cation World University tennial of teaching America’s first UW–Madison Rankings listed UW–Madi- Yiddish-language college course number-one in son 45th globally, and 23rd this fall. The class, Elementary the country, based among American institutes Yiddish, was taught by assistant on ratings from of higher learning. That’s professor Louis Bernard Wolfen- students. No other up three places from son 1901, MA1902. Today, the Big Ten university 2015. Look out, Heidelberg Jewish studies department offers was listed among University. Our eyes are on courses in Yiddish literature and

JEFF MILLER; UW ARCHIVES UW MILLER; JEFF the top 10. you next. culture and in Yiddish song.

On Wisconsin 15 OnCampus BRYCE RICHTER; SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION MONEY MATTERS

Nearly two-thirds of Americans couldn’t pass a basic financial literacy test, a recent national survey found. The results aren’t surprising to J. Michael Collins, an associate professor and faculty director of the UW’s Center for Finan- cial Security, who served as an adviser for the 2013 study. Improving financial literacy is like diet or exercise: the first steps are paying attention and making it a priority, he says, adding, “People too often ignore or avoid managing or CLIMATE CHAMELEON A UW research facility on the west side of campus has a big secret: it can even talking about be whatever you want it to be (within terrestrial reason). Built in the 1960s by the National Science Foundation, the Biotron can money — it’s such simulate every climate on Earth except Antarctica. Labs spread across three floors can deliver temperatures from –4 to 113 a taboo!” Collins degrees Fahrenheit and relative humidity from 100 percent down to nearly none. The building even features rooms tall enough says having savings for growing trees. That flexibility draws commercial clients who subject their products to extremes and benchmark their per- is critical — even formance. It also gives academic researchers the chance to design experiments that couldn’t happen in conventional lab space. if you have credit available — to keep a financial Journalists are no longer gatekeepers in the mishap from turning into a way they were. … Since the 1990s, it has become catastrophe. And consumers also easier for politicians to speak more directly to the must understand how fees for finan- voters, and it is easier for people to tailor their cial services affect their finances own media diet to their own preferences. and be thoughtful — Lucas Graves, assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, about the debt they in an interview with Vox.com about fact-checking and his forthcoming book, Deciding What’s decide to take on. True: The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in American Journalism. KÄRI KNUTSON

news feed

Astronomy professor Ellen Zweibel The UW’s Institute Hoping to explore the UW’s animating received the Maxwell Prize for Plas- for Research on mission, the UW–Madison sociology SARAH MORTON; JEFF MILLER ma Physics. In honoring Zweibel, the Poverty, now in its department created a new course prize committee cited her “seminal 50th year, has been (Sociology 496: “FORWARD? The research on the energetics, stability, awarded a five-year, Wisconsin Idea, Past and Present) that and dynamics of astrophysical plas- $9.5 million contract involves a weekly public lecture series. mas, including those related to stars to serve as the Faculty spoke about different aspects and galaxies, and for leadership in nation’s only feder- of the Wisconsin Idea and video of linking plasma and other astrophysi- ally funded poverty their lectures is archived online at cal phenomena.” research center. wiscidea.com.

16 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 Conversation Michael Knetter

Michael Knetter left his posi- Where do things stand with How are private institutions tion as dean of the Wisconsin the campaign? different from UW–Madison? School of Business in 2010 By midyear this year, nine Private universities rely on high to become president and months after the campaign was tuition and philanthropy. It’s CEO of the UW Foundation, publicly launched — but three been a good period for increas- the official gift-receiving years after we had started the ing tuition, because the value organization for UW–Madi- quiet phase of counting gifts of university degrees has gone son. In 2013, the foundation — we are over halfway to our up a lot. So if you don’t need to helped the university $3.2 billion goal. But while be burdened by concerns about launch All we’re thrilled to be over half- affordability, that’s a great Ways For- way there, we can’t take for revenue opportunity. And it’s ward, a com- granted that we will repeat been a great period for philan- prehensive the success of the trans- thropy because, ironically, of campaign formational gifts by the the increasing concentration of aimed at Morgridges and Nicholases, wealth. We are fortunate that raising or that the economy will Wisconsin alumni who have $3.2 remain robust through- attained great financial success billion by out the remainder of the have been very generous to UW– 2020. campaign. Madison. Alumni such as the Morgridges and Nicholases, who Alumni have a lot of built successful businesses, are concern over the UW’s now transforming the educa- relationship with the tional experience for the benefit legislature. How do of future generations. you see this evolving? It’s been a really Not everyone can give a major extraordinary period gift. What would you tell for the University those who ask what difference of Wisconsin in their $50 or $100 makes? terms of the degree When you go to Camp Randall, of tension that exists there are always some people right now between our who start the Wave, but it only elected officials and works if everybody participates. the university over both The Wisconsin way to appreci- resources and regulations, ate the gifts others have made and even the very essence of is to say, “Now I’m going to do our being, the definition of the my part, too.” All great univer- Wisconsin Idea. Many public sities have some big donors. universities are facing the same But our strength isn’t in having tension, particularly in regions a high proportion of wealthy that aren’t growing a lot. And alumni. We don’t. Not higher [Wisconsin is] not. That’s put than Harvard, Stanford, Dart- a lot of pressure on the state’s mouth, Princeton. But we have a finances and made it more lot more alumni than they have. difficult for the state to grow Our strength is in our numbers. its contribution toward higher education at the same rate as Interview conducted, edited, and private universities’ revenue condensed by John Allen streams have been able to grow. Photo by Jeff Miller

On Wisconsin 17 Exhibition The Hyperpiano JEFFMILLER (4)

In October, campus concertgoers heard something no Christopher an ordinary piano, but [also] to play rapid passages in music lover had ever heard before: the hyperpiano. Taylor shows which every tone one hears is actually a 10-note com- The invention of UW music professor Christo- off the internal posite chord. The ability to produce musical sounds pher Taylor, the hyperpiano features a custom-built, workings of the emanating from two opposite sides of the stage will hyperpiano. The two-keyboard console linked electronically to two sep- electronics inside also open up a range of appealing possibilities.” arate, normal pianos fitted with special player mech- the double- Taylor played one of his signature pieces: Bach’s anisms. That structure offers players a much broader keyboard console “Goldberg Variations,” the composition that helped range of possibilities than a standard piano does. connect to two make his reputation as a leading concert pianist. Taylor developed the instrument on campus, separate pianos. “Given that I will be extremely busy with final working at the Morgridge Institute in the Wisconsin refinements and debugging of the instrument’s inter- Institutes for Discovery. nal software, I won’t have time to learn anything “Thanks to the way in which the instrument’s musi- new,” he said before the concert. “But plans are afoot cal information gets relayed in digital form,” Taylor for new compositions and arrangements, by myself says, “it will be possible not only to span intervals with and also other composers.” a single hand far beyond the reach of a normal hand on JOHN ALLEN

18 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 OnCampus

AUNT_SPRAY/ISTOCK A New Angle The selfie stick’s got nothing on a camera capable of a slick optical trick: snapping pictures around corners. The technology pioneered by Andreas Velten, an imaging special- ist with the Morgridge Institute for Research, uses pulses of scattered light photons that bounce through a scene and are recaptured by finely tuned sensors connected to the camera. Researchers use the resulting information to digitally rebuild a 3-D environment that is either hidden or obstructed from view. The technology has generated excitement about potential applications in medical imaging, disaster relief, navigation, robotic surgery, and national security. The UW team is one of eight receiving grants from MAMMOTH ISLAND the U.S. Defense Department’s Ad- By ten thousand years ago, woolly mammoths had gone extinct from mainland vanced Research Projects Agency to Asia and North America. But a population of island-dwelling mammoths sur- probe different forms of non-line-of- vived on a remnant piece of land once part of the Bering Strait land bridge. sight imaging. UW geography professor Jack Williams and graduate student Yue Wang Velten and Mohit Gupta, a UW MS’13 contributed to a new study that provides clear evidence of the mam- assistant professor of computer sci- moth extinction on tiny St. Paul Island around 5,600 years ago. A lack of fresh- ences, are examining how far they can water and changing environmental conditions, including rising seas, drove push the quality and complexity of the demise. The researchers say the findings have implications for low-lying these pictures — a fundamental step islands, and the people and animals that live on them today. before devices can become reality. “I can’t think of any other case where freshwater availability was the driver BRIAN MATTMILLER ’86 of extinction,” says Williams, who is also director of the UW’s Center for Climat-

ic Research. “On small oceanic islands, freshwater can be a limited resource.” MORGRIDGE INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH Williams and collaborators from across the United States rode snowmo- biles to one of the few sources of freshwater on the island off the coast of Alas- ka, a crater lake surrounded on three sides by steep rock walls. The scientists drilled through the frozen lake surface and took samples of sediments beneath the lake floor, which provided snapshots of the environment through time. The UW researchers focused on the island’s vegetation and ruled out changes to their food sources as contributors to the mammoths’ extinction. However, sediment cores showed mammoths likely stripped the area around the lake of vegetation, potentially speeding up erosion and harming water quality. KELLY APRIL TYRRELL MS’11

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The La Follette School The Center for Healthy Geoscience professor of Public Affairs will Minds at UW–Madison and Shanan Peters has de- sponsor a research the Madison Police Depart- veloped a free app called competition to fund ment are launching a pilot Rockd, which taps into work that addresses study to focus on wheth- databases on geology and difficult public policy er mindfulness-based fossils and offers both and governance issues, practices can help improve amateur rock lovers and thanks to a $1.5 million officers’ abilities to manage professional geologists a gift from Herb Kohl [’56] their daily and occupational chance to contribute to

JEFF MILLER; EMILY NORTON/ISTOCK EMILY MILLER; JEFF Philanthropies. stressors. geologic knowledge.

On Wisconsin 19 Contender Tionna Williams

Tionna Williams x’19 finished Sophomore But the turning point came when of the week honors. her first season for the Badger Tionna Williams she found herself defending The team advanced to the women’s volleyball team 180 is a defensive her devotion to the game to her Sweet 16 of the NCAA tourna- force at the net degrees from where she started. coaches. ment and came into the 2016 for the Badger By the end of that season, volleyball team. “I wanted to prove to them season ranked fourth. And the six-foot-two-inch middle and my teammates that I’m all this October, the Badgers were blocker, now a sophomore, led in, and I’m here to stay, and this ranked number-one for the first the team in blocks and ranked is what I want to do,” she says. time in program history. fourth in the Big Ten with 1.31 Highly self-critical, Williams This fall, Williams picked up blocks per set. But the player just needed a little prompting. where she left off. She has con- who garnered high expectations She began exhibiting more continued winning Big Ten defen- as a top-ranked high school fidence on the court and attract- sive player of the week honors, prospect from Fort Wayne, ed the national spotlight. Her 13 including a nod for her eight Indiana, fought nerves at first. blocks and 14 kills in victories blocks in the Badgers’ road win Early on, Wisconsin coach Kelly over Illinois and Northwestern over number two Texas. Sheffield said Williams was on won her Big Ten defensive player “We all have unfinished the right track but “had a long business,” Williams says. “We ways to go.” are good enough, we can do this, Williams admits she didn’t [and] we worked harder than any anticipate the pressures of other team in the country. This is college athletics, and she was our year.” battling personal turmoil follow- RILEY VETTERKIND ’17 ing the death of a close friend. PHOTO BY BRYCE RICHTER

20 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 OnCampus Sports TROELS GRAUGAARD/ISTOCK ticker

UW postdoc Traci Snedden, from the School of Nursing, is investigating the long-term effects of concussions on student-athletes’ academic performance. Snedden hopes to enroll 200 Madison-area high school athletes in the longitudinal study.

Badger basketball point UW A guard Bronson Koenig THLETICS joined protesters of an oil pipeline under construc- ( tion near the Standing 4) Rock Indian reservation in North Dakota in September. Koenig, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, also put on a free, three-hour basketball clinic for Native American youths.

Barry Alvarez has signed a contract extension through January 31, 2021, to continue serving as Wisconsin’s athletic Give Them a Break director. Alvarez has been athletic director since 2004, and retired UW researchers study specialization from coaching the Badger football team among youth athletes. after the 2005 season. UW wrestlers Isaac Jordan More young people are focusing their efforts Stephanie Trigsted PhDx’17, associate and Connor on excelling at a single sport, instead of play- researcher Scott Hetzel MS’07, senior Medbery ing a variety throughout the seasons. But scientist Timothy McGuine MS’86, received while sports specialization is a hot topic, PhD’05, and associate professor Alison invites this there is a surprising dearth of research on Brooks. fall to the National Wrestling Coaches’ this issue. Since the original study was published, Association All-Star Classic, an annual In an effort to bring omes clarity, a the research team has been busy replicat- event that features 20 top collegiate research team of UW–Madison experts ing the initial findings with slightly younger wrestlers from around the country. It marked the fourth time in program collected data and produced a groundbreak- athletes, ages 12 to 14, and larger cohorts history that the UW has had multiple ing, one-year observational study published of high school student-athletes. Bell says invitees in one year and the first time earlier this year by the American Journal this work consistently shows that about 35 since 1980. of Sports Medicine. The researchers found percent of young athletes are highly special- that 36 percent of athletes were consid- ized — and that these athletes are two to Former Badger Joe Pavelski x’08 was GERRY ANGUS/ICON SPORTWIRE VIA AP IMAGES ered highly specialized, meaning that they three times more likely to have a knee or named captain of the ice hockey world trained in one sport for more than eight hip injury. cup’s Team USA. Pavelski, who plays for months in a year. They also determined that Asked if there is a consistent takeaway the NHL’s San Jose Sharks, was on the UW these athletes were more likely to report a from this work for parents, Bell says simply, hockey team history of knee and hip injuries. “Make sure your children are getting breaks from 2004 “Physicians are way ahead of the in competition.” to 2006. research in this area and, anecdotally, Bell hopes to build on these findings and they report that they are seeing more share future research results with young kids in their clinics who have injuries that athletes, parents, and coaches. “There are used to be found only in older athletes,” so many great aspects to sports participa- says assistant professor David Bell, the tion, and we don’t want this information to report’s lead author and director of the scare athletes or parents,” he says. “We just Wisconsin Injury in Sport Laboratory. The want them to be wise consumers and to par- report’s coauthors included kinesiology ticipate as safely as possible.” graduate students Eric Post PhDx’18 and TODD FINKELMEYER ’92

On Wisconsin 21 An Unexpected Landing

A former Badger rower traded boats on Lake Mendota for fires in the Wild West.

By Chelsea Schlecht ’13 Photos by Jeff Miller

22 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 On Wisconsin 23 “Roll call. Ro-o-o-o-ll call.” Previous spread: The loudspeaker crackles and reverberates Todd Jinkins through the loft. A steady stream of denim and flan- ’96 waits for nel flows into the ready room as twenty-some men the go-ahead to parachute out take seats on wooden benches. Roll call begins. of a Twin Otter Atkins? Yo. Hayes? Here. Zuares? Here. “Jinks?” plane as his team “Yah!” shouts a tall man with pigtail braids. He’s gears up for surveying the crowd from the back of the room, arms another season folded across his chest. You can barely see that, of firefighting. beneath the bill of his faded green baseball hat, his eyes are a deeper blue than the expansive sky that’s Right: Each day opening up over Boise today. begins with roll call, followed by Roll call gives way to today’s business. Mainly, an outline of the it’s lost items. There aren’t any extra radio antennas, upcoming day’s so if you didn’t keep track of yours after last season, business. The search through people’s gear. The keys to the brown smokejumpers’ 4x4 pickup truck and the key to the operations room suits hang un- are missing. Also, a distressed husband misplaced his zipped on speed wedding ring in the weight room. “He said, ‘If it’s put racks at the back back where it was, I won’t ask any questions,’ ” says of the ready the man at the front. Someone whistles a descending room, which allows the jumpers scale. Jinks starts to smile. to step directly “Zuares, go get that ring from the pawn shop!” a into them. voice from the front shouts. “Hey, that’s a hate crime,” snips someone in the middle row. Laughter rises until a nasal voice fires back, “Whatever, Trump!” The room erupts. Jinks tries to refocus: “I was looking for the keys to my old truck last night at home, and I can’t find ’em …” he starts, and the room quiets. Beanies and baseball hats snap around to the back of the room. “So if any of you guys were in my house …” his words bubble into a laugh. The men follow suit. The tall man with the pigtails is Todd “Jinks” Jinkins ’96, deputy chief of the Great Basin Smokejumpers. It’s refresher training week for the veterans, and today is the first active jump after winter break. Smokejumpers are the navy SEALs of firefighting. They rely on elite skills to launch the initial attack on a wildland fire. Fighting fires in the wild is highly specialized work, but smokejumping is more specialized still. They don’t battle raging, 50-meter-tall blazes; instead, the crew of eight, far from help, works on small fires before they grow into monsters like the one that consumed 3,000 acres of 400 smokejumpers total. The Boise and Fairbanks, Northern California in August. During the spring-to- Alaska, bases operate within the Bureau of Land fall fire season, the smokejumper base tracks light- Management (BLM) system. The other seven are run ning storms and clusters of less-threatening fires to by the U.S. Forest Service. determine areas that could be in danger. A crew is The morning meeting comes to a close. It’s been then dispatched to those sites — in the most remote months since the guys have actively jumped, so areas of the western wilderness. today’s goal is to knock the rust off. “Slow and safe That’s the smoke. Then there’s the jumper. “Some is the theme,” the final presenter says. “And, like people take the bus [to work],” Jinkins says. “We just always, have a landing you can walk away from.” happen to take a parachute.” The only way to get to the The men nod silently. “Ground crew’s launch time is work sites is by jumping from a Twin Otter airplane. oh-eight-thirty. Tentative suit-up for oh-nine-ten.” Though the career has been around for nearly Wooden benches scrape against cement, NPR eight decades, it’s unfamiliar to many. There are only quiets the chatter, and another day with the Great nine smokejumper bases in the nation and fewer than Basin Smokejumpers is under way.

24 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 GEAR A NEW KIND OF CREW The still, brisk air is shattered by the first flights There’s a trend of former UW rowers becoming taking off from Boise Airport. Across the commer- smokejumpers. Jinkins was inspired to head cial tarmac, the red, white, and blue Twin Otter waits for the first load of jumpers. The smoke- out west by former rower Kurt Borcherding ’90, jumper building is located within the larger National who had returned to campus to help coach the Interagency Fire Center campus. Just beyond the crew. Borcherding credits rower Lynn Tikalsky security gate, the parking lot is saturated with ’91 with opening the connection and helping pickup trucks and rusty Subarus. The walkway is lined with deer antlers. A suited-up mannequin him get started. And crew alums Eric Kafka ’93 stands in the entryway of the loft, outside of the and Matt Imes ’94 headed out to Boise with small office that Jinkins shares with base manager Jinkins in the nineties. “[Smokejumping] takes Jim Raudenbush. a mental toughness,” Borcherding says, “and I Jinkins meanders through the narrow hallway think a lot of the rowers have that.”

On Wisconsin 25 Once the crew that’s been turned into a mini-museum on the his- receives a fire tory and practice of the profession. He points to call, it has six the suit, explaining that just about everything a minutes to suit smokejumper needs is attached to it: a RAM-AIR up and taxi out in preparation parachute, a reserve chute, and a drogue chute to for takeoff to the slow his descent; a 150-foot rappel rope in the right site of the blaze. leg pocket; and a gear bag attached to the front that holds a hard hat, drinking water, some food, and a Below, the fire shelter. Once the smokejumpers hit the ground firefighters and receive their cargo, the gear bags transform into participate in a backpacks. warmup exercise The real work doesn’t begin until the jumpers intended to simulate jumping have parachuted to the landing spot from 3,000 feet, out of a plane. set up base camp, and hiked to the work site. An average shift lasts 16 to 18 hours. “We’ll get up at six, work all day, and usually try to be back to camp by 10,” Jinkins explains. “Get some sleep and do it all over again.” When the job is done, be it two days or two weeks, they haul everything to a helicopter landing spot or hike to the closest road — sometimes 20 miles away. Packed up, all of the gear weighs around 110 pounds. “It’s not light, so it’s not fun,” he says, “but it’s part of the job.” SUIT-UP Todd Jinkins is not a slacker. But, one period during his senior year at Iowa–Grant High School

26 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 in southern Wisconsin, he skipped class to see a The rookies train Marine Corps recruiter in the guidance counselor’s outside of Boise office. Maybe it was to learn about the marines, or in an area they perhaps it was because the recruiter was a buddy of call “the units,” developing skills his. “I went home that night and told my parents I was such as rapelling going to join the Marine Corps. They said, ‘No, you’re and climbing not!’ ” Jinkins, like his four siblings before him, was before progress- supposed to attend UW–Madison. But at that point, ing to training he wasn’t one for supposed-tos. Instead, he waited jumps. until he turned 18 and left for boot camp. That’s how he landed in the middle of the first Below: Because Gulf War. He remembers hitting the beach in the a reserve parachute is a last amphibious assault of Kuwait. He remembers taking resort, packing 5,000 POWs who had endured 45 days of bombings. one requires a He remembers watching the U.S. Air Force liber- Federal Aviation ate Kuwait City while the marines held down the Administration outskirts. But he’s quick to say that his experience license. “It’s al- doesn’t compare to that of current military men and most like a pilot’s women. “There wasn’t nearly as much fighting; there license, but for wasn’t nearly as much death,” he says. “I’m glad I had parachuting,” the experience, but I couldn’t do it over again.” Jinkins says. After four years in the marines, Jinkins put in four years at the UW. Adjusting to college life was hard, especially as a 22-year-old freshman, but not impossible. “I was so much older and had done so many more things than all of these other people,” he says. And after serving in the military, he was used to regimen. Luckily, he found a way to get it on campus. Dan Gehn ’89, then a freshman rowing coach, spotted six-foot-three Jinkins in line enrolling for fall classes. Jinkins had never rowed before, nor had he any ambi- tion to do so. He even forgot about the tryouts until Gehn called to remind him. Jinkins says that It was while rowing for the UW, at a time when Mickies Dairy the rowing team wore varsity hockey hand-me-downs Bar on Monroe with Crew scribbled in Magic Marker, that Jinkins Street was the learned about wildland firefighting. Kurt Borcherding favorite hangout ’90 had come back to help coach the freshman team spot for the crew after working in the Sawtooth National Forest on a after practice. hotshot crew — a type of wildland firefighting that “I take my wife involves busing to work sites rather than parachuting. to Mickies when “My job kind of piqued Todd’s interest,” Borcherding we go back [to SMOKEJUMPER DICTIONARY Madison],” he says. says. “It’s good Loft:the smokejumper building on the Na- After they both achieved smokejumper status, to see that some tional Interagency Fire Center campus; in the the two worked together in Boise until Borcherding of those places went to the Alaska Smokejumpers in 2008. “It takes don’t change.” winter, the smokejumpers turn the loft into a a special breed to make it through the BLM system,” sewing factory to handmake all of their gear Borcherding says. “You have to be a little bit crazy to bags, suits, and harnesses. want to hang out in the woods with a wildfire burning right next to you. You’re working 18 hours a day, and Hotshot crew: a handcrew of 20 firefighters you’re basically a glorified ditch-digger. If you can put trained in suppression tactics; they drive as up with that, there are so many perks to the job.” close to the sites as they can to begin work. LAUNCH Stick: a group of jumpers who are in the air “Seth, tuck me in!” One of the ground-crew guys has at the same time; a two-person stick means decided to nap in a corner of the orange canopy that that two jumpers are kicked out of the plane. marks the jumpers’ landing spot. Seth gingerly places Burbs: a group of Chevrolet Suburbans. a grapefruit-sized rock on top of him. “There you go, buddy.” Someone asks if anyone is going to wake him, Six-packs: Ford crew cab 4x4 pickup trucks.

On Wisconsin 27 but he insists nobody will land that close. “We like to have At promptly oh-eight-thirty, Zuares leads the “Dude, Adell’s gonna nail it. He’s gonna be right a little bit of caravan of three burbs and two six-packs to a field here,” one points to the rock. wind,” Jinkins in Mountain Home, Idaho, a small air force town 50 “I got Mel as my dark horse,” another quips. says. “When miles south of Boise. The rigs park off of a two-lane “Mel’s gonna be too far downwind!” shouts the there’s not a lot road. Cattle graze freely on the other side as a tum- of wind, you have canopy. Somebody has already bet on “Skinny Jinks” a lot of forward bleweed skids past a hollow animal skull. The guys to hit the target. The young guy taking bets asks David penetration with try to recall if anyone has landed on that side of the Zuares, the field-operations supervisor, if he wants the airfoil ... It’s road, at a spot some 50 yards away. If anyone has, in. Zuares walks away, his hands shivering as he more difficult.” they can’t remember. wipes his nose with a handkerchief. “This load that’s “This is the easy jump spot,” Zuares starts at coming, that’s all the old salts. They’re very good at normal volume but ends in a shout, “because it’s fre- what they do,” he says. So is he, with more than 200 quently windy here!” He makes no claims to be an fire jumps under his belt. “They’ll all be stacked up aeronautical engineer or physicist, but he explains, right here,” he nods toward the canopy. in depth, the difference between airspeed and

28 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 groundspeed. A windier day on the ground makes Of Jinkins’s for a softer landing. many hobbies, a The radio lying next to a prairie dog hole crackles: practical one is Jump spot, jump four–nine. rebuilding old cars and motor- Jump four–nine, this is jump spot, go ahead. cycles. The plane is on its way. The ground crew responds to report consistent winds out of the west at eight to ten miles per hour. The mission is simple: land on the canopy (no longer occupied). The execution requires teamwork among the eight jumpers, one spotter, and the pilot aboard the Twin Otter. A hum breaks through the sky as the plane comes into view. Pilot Diego Calderoni orbits the canopy several times on a low pass. If this were an actual fire jump, the spotter would be looking for fences, large rocks, and other ground hazards. On the third pass, the plane climbs to 1,500 feet. The spotter, dangling out where the door should be, kicks out two streamers. The 15-foot strands of red and yellow are weighted to show the jumpers exactly which way and how fast the winds are blowing. “I would suspect they’ll land about 400 Jinkins grew up yards [northwest] of the canopy,” Zuares guesses. in Montfort, Wis- He’s right. consin, popula- A second set of streamers falls out into the wind tion 709. His high line, aiming for the canopy. This gives the spotter an school combined five neighboring indication for where the exit point will be, Zuares towns, including explains. The plane ascends to 3,000 feet, and the Cobb — home- spotter has a few moments to mentally calculate the town of Badger new exit point at the new altitude. Once he’s done men’s basketball that, the first jumpers exit the plane. head coach Greg smokejumper and close friend. Gard. “His mom To Jinkins, knowledge is best when shared. The CHANGE COURSE was our high U.S. Forest Service has sent him to Oman and Mexico “Who’s the mayor of Madison?” Jinkins wants to school secretary,” to teach courses about incident command. He hopes know. He’s the kind of guy who wants to know a lot says Jinkins. to get to Mongolia and Africa next. Tobey has sug- of things. He wants to know what people across the gested that, when he walks away from smokejump- world thought about the 2016 presidential race. “It ing, they could join the Peace Corps together. But for is a little bit of a sad commentary on Americans. now, he’ll commute by parachute. “Smokejumping This is such a spectacle, in a bad way,” he muses. He has been a pretty amazing career. It’s fun to think thinks that recruiting female smokejumpers is akin to that I can be having breakfast in southern Nevada and increasing women’s enrollment in STEM majors, and dinner in Fairbanks,” he says. “The earth is a pretty will require more resources and backing. He wonders amazing place. That’s what keeps people coming back how Netflix’sMaking a Murderer relates to his own for the job.” jury experience. Jinkins laughs that his political and behavioral science degrees haven’t done much for his LANDING career, but he doesn’t think that’s what UW–Madison The winds on the ground have picked up. The crew is about. “It teaches you how to think. It teaches you radios the pilot, who’s already climbing to 3,000 feet. to apply reason to why you’re doing something,” he No response. says. “Use some cognitive thought and scientific back- The first refresher day went according to plan. ground to make a decision. That’s what you get out of As Zuares suspected, the first load of jumpers was a liberal arts degree.” stacked up around the canopy. Raudenbush landed In another life, Jinkins might have been an engi- right on target. Jinkins insisted that he would have, neer. He builds things. In the off-season, he sets up if “Bush” hadn’t been in the way. Today, things are a drafting table at his favorite downtown café, the not going according to plan. Flying M. There, he designed and built the three The guys had hoped to jump some rougher terrain houses that he and his wife, Tobey, have lived in. He outside of Emmett, Idaho, 45 minutes north of Boise, also puts cars and motorcycles together, the latter but the week’s rainfall put them back in Mountain of which he takes on a long ride each fall. He and Home. During initial radio contact, winds were at some smokejumper buddies ride the back roads five miles per hour. The ground crew is now bracing from Boise to Canada and back in memory of a fallen against relentless gusts.

On Wisconsin 29 Jump four–nine, this is jump spot calling blind. Awareness kind of been … skewered,” Jinkins says. Phil Lind, a Winds on the ground increased to 15–17. doesn’t stop once Prairie du Chien native, is one such kebab. In 2005, “Hope they get that,” the caller says to no one in the jumpers are a windless landing brought him in too fast, and he particular. Yesterday’s winds were perfect, but there’s on the ground. skidded into a tree branch. “It went almost all the After they land a quick cutoff between ideal and too high. The BLM and begin to pack way through him.” Jinkins explains with gestures, smokejumpers cover the intermountain desert area their chutes, “He pushed himself off, but a lot of his intestines of the Great Basin and Alaska, where high winds are they must stay started coming out.” He smiles. “Poor Phil.” common. That’s why they use the RAM-AIR para- conscious of the The plane still hasn’t responded to the blind call. chute; it can sustain higher winds than the standard jumpers who It’s clear as soon as the first stick (or group of jump- round chutes used by Forest Service jumpers. are still on their ers) hits the sky that they didn’t get the message. The “It can be a trick not to get dragged and injured,” way down, as closest guy lands about 50 yards from the target. Jinkins says. When it’s windy, the canopies stay well as the box of “What the hell are they doin’?” someone laughs. inflated and make it harder to cut away. He remem- paracargo (see “Jinks!” page 31). bers a jumper who used a round chute for a beach Jinkins’s blue and yellow chute passes the target landing on the windy Bering Sea. He broke both of his and continues in the wind line. He clears the rigs arms on impact, making it impossible to pull the cut- parked at the edge of the road and keeps going. aways to deflate the chute. “Luckily there was some Eventually, he lands closer to the grazing cattle than driftwood on the beach, and his canopy got caught up the rest of his company. He’s too far away to hear on [it] and stopped him before it dragged him into the the heckling as he starts to de-suit, pack up, and ocean,” Jinkins chuckles. He and the guys are used trek over to the rigs. Today’s post-jump evaluator, a to harrowing experiences. “I wouldn’t say it’s super young guy in a camo hat, meets Jinkins by the 4x4s. dangerous,” he shrugs. Last summer, a 60-foot-tall They both shrug and start laughing. “Skinny Jinks” tree fell over and landed square on Jinkins’s back. He wastes no time giving the other guys crap for miss- was sent on his sixth life-flight medevac with just a ing the target, too. He might not have landed where few broken ribs. he expected to, but like always, it was a landing he Smokejumpers have engineered their suits to could walk away from. • protect against injuries. The material is a Kevlar/ Nomex blend: resistant to fire and puncture. “We Chelsea Schlecht ’13 is a writer for On Wisconsin and is no have had situations in the past where people have longer certain she wants to try skydiving.

30 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 Due to the nature of the terrain, BLM smokejumpers use RAM- AIR chutes, which are more equipped to handle heavy winds.

The gear bag con- The reserve para- tains a jumper’s hard chute can only be hat, water, food, and packed up by a certi- other personal items. fied master rigger.

Jumpers use ski and snowboard helmets In total, the gear with a face mask weighs 110 pounds. attached.

The suit is a Kevlar/ Motocross-style chest Nomex blend, making protectors keep the it resistant to fire and jumpers’ vital organs puncture damage. safe from puncture.

Smokejumpers in Pack-up bags can be Alaska engineered new used to store other protection in the jump loose items upon pants by attaching landing. Jumpers hockey girdles. must take everything that comes with them when they leave.

Motocross gear such as shin guards and elbow guards protect jumpers from acci- dental rock landings.

The right leg pocket houses a 150-foot rappel rope, in case the jumper lands in a tree. Anything that’s not transported in jumpers’ suits goes in a paracargo box, a container attached to a parachute that is kicked out of the plane during a low-level pass — around 300 to 500 feet. Each box contains: two sleeping bags; two Pulaskis (a hand tool with both an axe and Once a job is wrapped up, the an adze for digging fire lines); and a two-day smokejumpers hike to the supply of food for two people. If the jumpers closest road — which may be are on the ground for longer than two days, 20 miles away. the plane returns to drop more cargo.

On Wisconsin 31 Grain of Truth A UW wood scientist became the star witness in a trial that captivated the nation.

By Adam Schrager COURTESY NEW JERSEY STATE POLICE MUSEUM

32 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 promoted to run its new wood technology division. rthur Koehler MS’28 first learned of the kidnap- It’s not hyperbole to say he literally wrote the book Aping of aviator Charles Lindbergh x’24’s toddler on wood: Koehler’s The Properties and Uses of Wood son while reading the newspaper at the kitchen was published in 1924, selling copies worldwide in a table in his west Madison home in March 1932. He number of languages. He was the foremost U.S. expert looked at his own son, George, just 48 days older than on identifying wood species when he earned his UW Charles Jr., and shuddered. graduate degree. At commencement, he shared the What happened next put Koehler at the center of Camp Randall stage with Charles Lindbergh — argu- what journalist H. L. Mencken called the “greatest ably the most famous dropout in school history — story since the Resurrection.” who was there to receive an honorary degree. Koehler, a UW–Madison lecturer and chief wood Lindbergh first arrived on campus in 1920 aboard technologist at the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory, his Excelsior motorcycle, late for registration and his envisioned a “daring challenge” when he learned of first mathematics class. He excelled as a member of the ransom note, chisel, and homemade ladder left the school’s rifle and pistol shooting teams and at behind at Lindbergh’s New Jersey estate. He wrote driving his motorcycle at top speed down the steepest Lindbergh a letter, explaining that he might be able hills he could find in Madison. Chemistry, calculus, to trace the source of the ladder’s components and and English — not so much. find the perpetrator. He left Madison on February 2, 1922, on the verge Decades before the O. J. Simpson trial, the kid- of flunking out, to pursue a career in aviation. That led napping and subsequent death of the Lindbergh baby to the army’s flight-training school, a route delivering gripped the attention of the American public. Koehler, the mail, and the desire to accomplish something so who did not naturally seek the limelight, eventually dangerous that many others had died in its pursuit. helped solve the case and served as the final prose- In May 1927, Lindbergh became the first pilot to cution witness. ever fly solo across the Atlantic. As he boarded the “I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but I have specialized Spirit of St. Louis in New York for the two-day flight, in the study of wood,” Koehler told the Saturday a reporter asked him if the five sandwiches he was Evening Post. “Just as a doctor who devotes himself Newspapers carrying would be enough for the 33-hour journey. He to stomachs or tonsils … so I, a forester, have done dubbed Arthur said wryly, “If I get to Paris, I won’t need any more. with wood.” Koehler “Sherlock And if I don’t get to Paris, I won’t need any more, Holmes” for his fo- either.” he U.S. Forest Products Laboratory was estab- rensic work trac- When he succeeded, bedlam ensued worldwide. Tlished near campus in 1909 after the UW outbid ing the homemade In the two weeks before he returned home, Lindbergh a number of East Coast schools for the federal con- wooden ladder received 3.5 million letters, 100,000 telegrams, and tract. The university agreed to spend $50,000 to (shown disas- 14,000 parcels. He launched a barnstorming tour house, heat, power, and light what would become sembled below) supporting commercial aviation, flying to 92 cities to the suspect in the world’s preeminent research facility dedicated the kidnapping of in 49 states, and giving 147 speeches. He turned down to the study of wood. aviator Charles $5 million worth of movie roles, product endorse- It was at this wood mecca that Koehler arrived in Lindbergh’s ments, and public appearances. January 1914, returning to the state where he grew toddler son. “It’s very difficult, if not impossible, for people

up and where his father, Louis, tended bees and ber- COURTESY USDA FOREST SERVICE, FOREST PRODUCTS LABORATORY, MADISON ries on a farm in Mishicot, just north of Manitowoc. Koehler’s childhood was filled with walks in the woods and countless hours in his father’s carpentry shop, where saws and hammers weren’t allowed on Sundays out of respect for some of the family’s reli- gious neighbors. Koehler enjoyed quiet time in nature more than conversations. He completed undergraduate work at Lawrence University and the University of Michigan and joined the Forest Service in Washington, DC, before coming to Madison to work as a xylotomist. Xylotomists often, as The Washington Post reported in 1910, needed to correct a public that frequently confused their job with those who played the xylophone. Koehler’s charge was to identify and describe wood species sent by clients ranging from U.S. Navy ship- builders to the Chicago Cubs, who needed help when a lucky bat had broken. His career blossomed at the lab, and he was

On Wisconsin 33 today to fully understand the phenomenon of Police turned to the FBI for help analyzing the ladder. Lindbergh,” says Mark Falzini, archivist at the New The FBI turned to the Forest Service, and, months Arthur Koehler Jersey State Police Museum, which contains hun- matched the after his letter to Lindbergh went unanswered, the dreds of thousands of Lindbergh-related documents. 16th rail of the Forest Service called on Koehler. “He was both a hero and a celebrity. Everybody on ladder used in the planet knew who he was, and the vast majority the kidnapping lmost a year to the day after the little boy was of them worshipped the ground he walked on.” with a sawed-off Akidnapped, Koehler arrived on a train in Trenton, His first child, Charles Lindbergh Jr. — dubbed floorboard found New Jersey, for his first look at the wooden witness. “Little Charlie” or “The Eaglet” by newspapers — in the attic of “If it had been the steps to a gallows, it could not have was born in 1930 and immediately became a seven- the suspect’s repelled or fascinated me more,” he later said. apartment. and-a-half-pound luminary. Any new photograph or It was a telescopic ladder, a hybrid between a change in diet was front-page news. Roughly two and Koehler’s tes- stepladder hinged in the middle and a full-extension a half months shy of his second birthday, the world timony helped ladder, meaning it was either extendable or com- felt a collective gut punch when its most famous tod- convict carpenter pressible. For Koehler’s purposes, the most telling dler was kidnapped. Bruno Richard detail was that it was homemade. “It was a personal attack on each and every one Hauptmann, who Every rung and every rail was numbered, mea- of us,” Falzini says. “It seemed as though everyone was executed on sured, calipered for width, identified by species, and felt violated and extremely vulnerable. After all, if it April 3, 1936, for scrutinized for every mark, man- or machine-made. could happen to Lindbergh, it could happen to me.” the murder To determine the age of the wood, Koehler employed of Charles Payment of a $50,000 ransom was followed by Lindbergh Jr. cutting-edge tree-ring science — known as dendro- the devastating discovery of the boy’s body. After chronology — that had yet to be popularized or exhausting every investigative lead from the ransom taught in the nation’s schools. note and chisel, Lindbergh and the New Jersey State Today, we’ve become so used to seeing fictional forensic scientists solve crimes in the final 15 minutes of a television episode that it’s difficult to do FORENSIC BOTANY Koehler’s subsequent 18-month investigation justice. Arthur Koehler’s legacy at the UW continues with the He tracked the minute markings (to the thousandths of an inch) on the North Carolina pinewood used to students enrolled in Botany 575: Forensic Botany. make the rails in the ladder’s bottom section to a Whether it’s examining a piece of a plane that lumber mill in South Carolina. He continued follow- crashed outside of Chicago, a sample from a Ghanaian ing the trail to a New York retail lumber yard, only forest, or one of the 20,000 wood species at Madison’s to hit a dead end when investigators learned that the business no longer allowed customers to pay with Forest Products Laboratory, adjunct assistant profes- credit due to the Depression. sor Alex Wiedenhoeft gives students the opportunity When Bruno Richard Hauptmann was arrested to apply the concepts learned in his course. in the fall of 1934 after buying gas with one of the bills used to pay the ransom, Koehler once again And Wiedenhoeft, a research botanist and team joined the investigation. His expertise in evaluating leader for the Center for Wood Anatomy Research, the most recognizable piece of evidence in the single wants his students to understand that esoteric most scrutinized trial up to that time would be vital details can mean “the difference between someone’s to the prosecution. Using skills sharpened at the Forest Products freedom and incarceration. Laboratory and shared with UW students for nearly “My slightly more realistic, starry-eyed wish is two decades, Koehler conclusively linked Hauptmann for each student to see a connection between their to the crime scene. He testified that a sawed-off floor- botanical studies and the real world,” he says. In keep- board from Hauptmann’s attic and the wood used in the 16th rail, the upper left-hand section of the ladder, ing with that idea, the class changes as new casework “were at one time, one piece,” which meant part of the and science come across Wiedenhoeft’s desk. ladder had come from inside the accused kidnapper’s When he considers the idea of Koehler’s reaction own home. to what and how he’s teaching, he laughs. The legendary journalist Damon Runyon wrote, “The tale of scientific wood and tool detection told “I have a perception that scientists of his era had a today by a bald-headed, middle-aged man from the tacit belief in the absolute veracity of their science — woods of Wisconsin … puts the greatest fictional such a position would be strongly incompatible with exploits of Sherlock Holmes in the shade.” how I try to teach this topic,” he says. “I could see the Hauptmann’s own lawyer told reporters afterward that he’d “never heard more damaging testimony or possibility for some good-natured academic conflict seen a more enthralling demonstration than that pre- there, which would be good fun.” sented in the courtroom today by Arthur Koehler.”

34 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 Koehler’s testimony made headlines around the of the modern forensic approach, says Skip Palenik, country. To an early 20th-century world used to who runs Microtrace, LLC, and has consulted on handwriting, fingerprint, and ballistic experts, foren- cases ranging from the Unabomber to the Green River sic wood anatomy was now a scientific equal. His abil- serial killer. ity to communicate the science to the courtroom and “Koehler’s effort in this case exemplifies the the public at large “is a huge part of what makes the type of scientific work product that forensic science difference between broad awareness and acceptance should be providing to the legal system,” Palenik says. of a body of work and that work lingering in rela- “Many individuals in the criminal justice system tive obscurity,” says Alex Wiedenhoeft ’97, MS’01, would rather try to solve a case by consulting a psy- PhD’08, a UW adjunct assistant professor of botany chic, a profiler, or taking a swab for DNA rather than who describes himself as the academic descendant submit microscopic trace evidence for analysis by of Koehler at the Forest Products Laboratory. someone who actually knows how to analyze and “Koehler had the right chemistry for the time,” draw rigorously based scientific facts from it.” he says. At the UW, Koehler geared his class mostly toward those interested in architecture, carpentry, engineer- ven with technological advances and no short- ing, and manufacturing. He prepared a slide show Eage of conspiracy theories surrounding the chronicling his Lindbergh case investigation and inev- Hauptmann case, Koehler’s basic science remains Police — shown itably shared the message he voiced nationwide on the unquestioned by experts today. below recon- radio just days after Hauptmann’s guilty verdict. “His work and his findings could not be challenged structing details “In all of the years of my work, I have been con- at the time,” says Luke Haag, a criminal forensic of the child’s sumed with the absolute reliability of the testimony of scientist in Arizona who used to run the Phoenix disappearance trees,” he said. “They carry in themselves the record Crime Laboratory, “and would only be praised and from Lindbergh’s of their history. They show with absolute fidelity the supported today by anyone trained and experienced New Jersey es- progress of the years, storms, drought, floods, inju- in the relevant specialties.” tate — exhausted ries, and any human touch. However, besides elevating forensic botany and leads from a “A tree never lies.” ransom note and • wood identification to an accepted scientific practice, a chisel found at Koehler’s legacy also highlights the flaws many sci- the crime scene Adam Schrager is a journalist at WISC-TV in Madison and the entists see in criminal justice today. His work in the before consulting author of The Sixteenth Rail: The Evidence, the Scientist, and Lindbergh kidnapping case is almost the antithesis Koehler. the Lindbergh Kidnapping. AP PHOTO

On Wisconsin 35 A Taste of Freedom A UW professor unearths a missing chapter in the history of civil rights: black farmers who used agriculture as a path to resistance. Meghan Lepisto ’03, MS’04 PHOTOS BY BRYCE RICHTER

36 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 heir salvation would be pickles. That was the decision of a group of farmers in Sumter County, Alabama, who were struggling financially. But when they tried Tto purchase cucumber seeds from a local merchant, the seller refused. The growers eventually obtained seeds, but at harvest, the area’s two pickle companies refused to buy produce from them: they were African Americans. “The local companies did not want them as competition,” explains assistant professor Monica White, “because they had previously been able to exploit them for their labor as sharecroppers.” White became UW–Madison’s first professor of environmental justice in 2012, a joint appoint- ment with the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. She uncovered this story while studying how Southern black farmers organized against oppression in the late 1960s and early ’70s. Her work is bringing focus to a missing and essential piece of the civil rights narrative: the role of agriculture. Employment for tenant farmers and sharecroppers — who rented land and homes in exchange for a portion of their harvest — dropped sharply during this period due to increased mechanization, a federal conservation initiative that paid landowners to take farmland out of production, and a decline in the cotton industry. At the same time, despite passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, voter registration and education efforts by African Americans drew retaliation from white politicians, landowners, law enforcement, and business owners. Those who attempted to vote were fired from their jobs and evicted from their farmland and homes. Some were cut off from resources they needed to survive. Starvation became a political weapon. The Fight to Grow Food In 1967, when the Office of Economic Opportunity (a federal agency administering antipoverty efforts) established a medical center in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, food deprivation and malnutrition were the most commonly diagnosed conditions. The center’s pharmacy stocked as much food as it did medicine, because sharecroppers could only purchase food and farm equipment from merchants sanctioned by their employers. “The local merchants stopped selling seeds, fertilizer, milk. … They stopped providing those resources that people needed in order to survive,” White says. “People were forced to try to find some other way.” As millions of African Americans moved north in

On Wisconsin 37 the late 1960s in search of better lives and opportuni- Previous spread: provided not only nutrition, but also space for rec- ties — part of the Great Migration — others remained On a recent trip reation, public art, cooking demonstrations, health on Southern soil, found strength in numbers, and to Mississippi, screenings, intergenerational relationships, and envi- formed agricultural cooperatives. UW assistant ronmental tourism. For these holdouts, the land became a way to professor Moni- But as this movement for food security gained ca White visited resist repressive conditions by fighting for the right Ben Burkett, momentum and media coverage, White saw some- to grow food. The cooperatives focused on commu- cofounder of thing absent from the conversation: the black and nity development and offered services ranging from a 40-year-old brown faces of people growing food in the city. She food, housing, and employment to education, child- cooperative for wanted to hear the stories of people who looked like care, and health care, helping black farmers and rural African Ameri- her dad, grandma, or sister. communities survive economically. can farmers. She set out to unearth these narratives, gathering By pooling resources and buying power, these and sharing the deep-rooted, personal reasons black farmers used the cooperatives to participate in the Detroiters decided to grow their own food. “Some food system as producers. Bulk farm-supply pur- people grow tomatoes because there’s nothing like chasing and loan programs helped to break their a homegrown tomato; other people grow tomatoes dependence on hostile local suppliers. And market because they feel like that’s a taste of freedom,” White programs that consolidated produce and eliminated says. middlemen allowed growers to negotiate better prices One day, as White listened to local food activists for their goods. Sharing resources — from tillers to discuss organizing a community food cooperative, she tractors to fence-making supplies — also helped realized there must have been other times in the past farmers reduce costs. when African Americans had embraced agriculture For the Sumter County growers who struggled and community-based food systems for self-suffi- to buy seeds and sell their cucumbers at rates that ciency and empowerment — and resistance. weren’t exploitative, joining the Southwest Alabama Farmers’ Cooperative Association paved the way for Agency through Agriculture selling their crops to the area’s two pickle companies For four years, White has traveled the South, scour- at a fair price. ing libraries and archives for historical documents Thousands of families across 10 Alabama counties and speeches, and querying farmers and civil rights belonged to the cooperative, but its success created activists about their experiences with the black coop- enemies. Representatives of the pickle companies, erative movement. along with state elected officials, chartered a plane “It’s important as researchers that we try to to Washington, DC, to demand that the Office of immerse ourselves in the story,” says White. “If Economic Opportunity stop funding the cooperative. you’re going to do archival research, you have to feel Their argument: paying black farmers fairly was caus- what it was like and walk in the footsteps.” ing too much competition. The government denied Her work builds on research and relationships their plea. developed with Southern farmers by Jess Gilbert, a UW professor emeritus of community and envi- Rust Belt Remedies ronmental sociology who has documented African For White, this path into the past began in today’s American land loss. urban gardens. Before she moved to Madison, she From large organizations such as the Colored lived in Detroit, where she began studying the cre- Farmers Alliance in the late 1880s, which represented ative approaches communities of color and grassroots 1.2 million members across every Southern state, to organizations have adopted in response to similar local co-ops, such as the North Bolivar County Farm issues of hunger and food inaccessibility. Cooperative, a regional movement in Mississippi to “Today a lot of folks in Detroit, Milwaukee, lift unemployed farmers from poverty, these coop- Chicago, and all points in between are identifying eratives helped farmers share skills, strategies, and ways to increase access to healthy food, but also to supplies; purchase land and maintain ownership; shift use food as a mechanism of community building and from cash crops to food crops; and gain economic transformation,” she says. autonomy. Many agricultural collectives continue As U.S. auto production lagged in the early 2000s today, providing resources and technical assis- and jobs vanished from the Motor City, White watched tance and advocating for public policies that benefit her hometown become financially devastated. With member farmers and rural communities. 40 percent of Detroit’s population living below the “Thinking about what food does for a person’s or a poverty line and many lacking access to fresh food, community’s ability to make decisions for themselves residents were left to rebuild and reimagine not only is profound to me,” White says. “As much as we talk their livelihoods, but also their communities. about agriculture as a strategy of oppression — and Urban agriculture surged. Abandoned lots became there are lots of examples historically where agri- lush sites of food production and sprouted healthy culture has been oppressive — there are also these alternatives to convenience-store fare. Urban farms stories of agriculture as liberatory.”

38 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 White fills in that missing narrative with her White has 1967, she launched Freedom Farms Cooperative in forthcoming book, Freedom Farmers: Agricultural traveled the Sunflower County, Mississippi — a bold experiment Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement, which South for four to link land, food, and freedom. shares the historical contributions of these coopera- years to conduct Offering low-cost access to fertile soil and clean, tives and of African American agriculturalists across her research, safe housing, Freedom Farms provided an antipoverty finding historical more than four centuries. links between strategy for displaced, unemployed farmworkers — agricultural co- an opportunity to stay in the South and live off the A Pig and a Garden operatives used land. Among the most inspiring visionaries White uncov- by black farmers One of Hamer’s first efforts was to establish a ered in her historical review was civil rights activist there and urban “pig bank” — a 1960s equivalent of a microlending Fannie Lou Hamer. gardening in her operation. Beginning with a herd of 50 pigs, the bank Born in 1917 as the 20th child of sharecroppers, native Detroit. distributed pregnant sows to Freedom Farms fami- Hamer worked on a Mississippi plantation from the lies. When a pig delivered her litter, two piglets were age of six. During a surgery in her early adulthood, returned to the bank. And thus the cycle continued. she was sterilized without her consent. After leading Gardens, catfish ponds, and cattle herds, all a group of African Americans to register to vote in collectively maintained, also nourished a healthy 1962, she was fired and evicted. community. And cash crops such as cotton, wheat, “When they kicked me off the plantation, they set and soybeans helped pay the mortgage on the land. me free,” Hamer said later. “Now I can work for my Hamer’s frequent refrain was, “As long as I have a pig people.” and a garden, no one can tell me what to do.” Hamer was known primarily for her efforts to More than an agricultural venture, Freedom advance African American representation and access Farms also provided jobs, social services, low-income to electoral politics. But she was also concerned housing, educational programs, occupational retrain- about the struggle of evicted farm workers and food ing, a business incubator, a commercial kitchen, access being used as an instrument of oppression. In and sewing cooperatives. At its height, the venture

On Wisconsin 39 During the 1970s, Hamer delivered two speeches “Growing food is word. They wanted you to put your land up to get on the UW campus about the challenges facing hard work, and activists out of jail, and black farmers were the ones African Americans, the first in Memorial Union’s we don’t often who did that,” White says. “Freedom Summer could Great Hall in 1971, where she proclaimed, “Nobody appreciate the not have been successful had there not been folks at the University of Wisconsin, and no other place in people who pro- there to welcome them, organize, and help.” vide our food,” this country, is free until I’m free in the South.” says White, As underserved, food-insecure communities In the end, a lack of resources led to Freedom above with today struggle with some of the same inequities Farms’ demise, and operations ceased in 1975. But farmers Daniel surrounding poverty and hunger that 1960s farm- what the organization accomplished in a racially Teague (middle) workers faced, White believes Freedom Farms and hostile environment shows the power of community and Jesse Flem- other agricultural cooperatives provide an import- resilience and collective agency, White says. ing (right) on ant historical model for postindustrial American The self-sufficient nature of Freedom Farms and Fleming’s cattle cities. “If we think about a place like Detroit, the other cooperatives, combined with members’ land farm near Sallis, automobile industry changed, jobs left, resources Mississippi. ownership, freed them from the exploitative eco- left, services left, and people asked, ‘So now what nomic relationship between landowner and farm- do we do?’ ” worker. It also provided a foundation for political As the contemporary urban-agriculture move- power. Members participated in political-education ment brings food security and resilience to a growing campaigns, informing residents of their right to vote. number of communities, White sees the same drive They became more involved in local and regional pol- for self-determination and empowerment through itics, encouraged farmworkers to run for office, and the land that gave rise to Southern black agricultural pushed back against oppressive practices. cooperatives. Black farmers and landowners “put their lives on “We see in these cooperatives a way to the line” for activists in the South, White says. They engage agriculture as a cornerstone for building provided social networks for organizers to tap into, community that was important then, and it’s import- along with housing, feeding, and freeing Freedom ant now,” she says. • Summer volunteers who traveled to Mississippi to assist with voter registration and education. Meghan Lepisto ’03, MS’04 is communications manager for “Once folks got arrested, they didn’t want your UW–Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.

40 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 A MILE IN THEIR SHOES “The scholarship that I produce is from the perspective of those who live it,” says UW assistant professor Monica White. On a recent trip to Petal, Mississippi, she watched and listened as Ben Burkett tidied up the process- ing plant used by members of the Indian Springs Farmers’ Association, a cooperative he helped found 40 years ago and still leads today. A fourth-generation farmer, Burkett grows nearly two dozen varieties of vegetables on 300 acres of land that has been in his family since the 1800s. While Burkett examines crates of peas, beans, and other produce to be sold at a farmers’ market the next morning (a 100-mile drive that he’ll begin at 4 a.m.), White asks about varieties she doesn’t recognize, about the soil and the season, and about market prices. She hops into Burkett’s silver pickup truck — the bumper lined with stickers declaring, “Support family farms,” “Eat organic,” and “Things go better with kale” — to head to a patch of okra (below left) that needs picking. She is a sponge, soaking it all up. An ethnographer by trade, White studies and shares the stories of people, their lives, and the landscape. Her goal: to honor farmers by sharing their work and their words. “I feel like I’m holding up a mirror and saying, look at how incredible you are,” White says. Later that day, near Sallis, White watches her step as she walks the cattle pastures of farmer Jesse Fleming. With Black Angus, Black Baldy (top left), and brown Limousin cows curiously observing just a few feet away, White peppers Fleming with queries. How many cattle does he have? (Sixty.) Is that big cow pregnant? (Yes.) Are there any pests of concern? (Horn flies are a persistent bother.) Leaving the field at the end of her excursions is always a challenge — not only because she is moved by the resolve of those she meets, but because she feels closer to her own family’s history. She recalls the Alice Walker line, “In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own,” to describe how studying modern urban agriculture connected her to the long history of African American farmers and, along the way, helped her find new links to her own family’s story. Fleeing poor race relations in the 1960s, her late grandmother moved White’s father and family from Mobile, Alabama, to Detroit. Between White’s childhood home in the city and a cabin in northern Michigan that provided a rural respite, growing food and sharing it with the community was always important to her father, as was a love for the land and what it could produce. Returning to her late father’s Southern roots reminds her of his influence on her career. “Everything I am is because of my dad,” she says. “In addition to this being a story that’s cultural, it’s also personal.”

On Wisconsin 41 Potato, Interrupted There’s more to genetically modified foods than what you hear in political debate. Just ask Jiming Jiang and his hardy — if unloved — potato. MARKANDREWPHOTOGRAPHY/ISTOCK

By Nicole Miller MS’06

could prevent thousands of tons of chemicals from mericans love their potatoes. We enjoy being applied to the earth each year. them baked and mashed, and as chips and As it turns out, a hardier potato does exist. Back fries, to the tune of 140 pounds per person in the mid-2000s, Jiang and colleagues developed a per year. Potatoes anchor our holiday series of potatoes that could survive late blight with- Ameals, our summer picnics, and our fast food indul- out sprays. But the improved plants never made it gences. They are savory perfection. to the commercial market — they were made using In most ways, at least. genetic engineering (GE), and at that point, no GE The potato has an Achilles’ heel. Most of our com- vegetables had yet been approved. And public opinion mercial varieties need help standing up to pests and wasn’t favorable. It still isn’t. pathogens, including late blight, the fungal disease “You’re powerless, and you accept it,” says Jiang. that caused Ireland’s potato famine in the mid-1800s. “Every variety in this country, almost every one of Genetically engineered foods have been part them is susceptible [to late blight],” explains Jiming of the American diet for 20 years now, and there Jiang, a UW–Madison professor of horticulture. This is strong scientific consensus that they are safe to eat. includes Atlantic, Red Norland, Yukon Gold, and This was confirmed in a recent report on GE crops Russet Burbank of McDonald’s french fry fame. produced by the National Academies of Sciences, To protect their crops from late blight, U.S. farm- Engineering, and Medicine, which took into considers spray around $77 million worth of fungicides each eration nearly 900 scientific publications and other year. Even so, the disease takes a toll, causing some evidence and testimony on the topic. $210 million worth of crop losses annually. What if “We found that there have been no cases of there was a better way? Globally, hardier potatoes GEs causing problems for human health,” says

42 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 UW–Madison biochemistry professor Richard Amasino, who served on the committee that wrote the report. And yet, according to a 2015 Pew Research Center CRISPR survey, only 37 percent of the general public feels it’s Not all GE crops are the same. There are safe to eat GE foods, or genetically modified organ- transgenic crops — those that have one or isms (GMOs), as they’re often called. Yet eat them we more “foreign” genes from a different plant do. or nonplant species added to their genomes. There are currently 10 GE crops grown commer- And then there are cisgenic crops, which cially on 170 million acres of American farmland. The contain added genes that come from within main ones are GE cotton, which we wear, and GE that crop or a very similar species. corn and soybeans, which we eat — in great quan- 170 CRISPR (which stands for clustered regu- tities. They show up in cornmeal, cornstarch, corn million larly interspaced short palindromic repeats) acres of geneti- syrup, dextrose, soybean oil, and many other ingre- cally engineered is a technology that creates gene-edited dients in the processed foods we consume. And then crops are grown in crops, in which scientists can make surgi- there’s the meat we eat — the animals are largely fed the United States. cally precise changes to the native genes of on GE grains. an organism’s genome. “For many of us, we’re eating transgenic food The technology uses RNA to guide a daily, probably with every meal,” says Irwin Goldman protein to a particular spot in the genome. PhD’91, professor and chair of the UW–Madison Depending on the protein, researchers can horticulture department. “Unless you are extremely nick the DNA at that spot to either disable careful with ingredients, it is very difficult to avoid.” the gene or cause a one- or two-nucleotide Concerns about GEs go beyond food safety, includ- change to alter the gene. In these cases, the ing a general unease about possible long-term health change is made without adding any DNA. or ecological impacts. There are also environmental Scientists can also use a different protein issues, such as gene drift and the expansion of mono- and a DNA template to “rewrite” a particular culture cropping systems, the corporate ownership of stretch of the genome. In the end, the RNA seeds, and the expansion and consolidation of farms. guides and proteins are broken down and People’s opinions aren’t based on science alone, but 9 recycled by the cell. incorporate political, economic, philosophical, social, spuds “Before CRISPR, we didn’t have a way to Jiming Jiang has and ethical factors. change a gene in its natural site. It’s a great been involved in And, notes Goldman, there’s just something spe- developing nine precision tool to have in the genetic engi- cial about food: some people feel a deep cultural or non-GE varieties neering toolbox,” says UW–Madison bio- spiritual connection to their food, and genetic engi- of potato at the chemistry professor Richard Amasino, who neering crosses a line for them. UW: Millennium uses CRISPR and other genetic engineering “As a scientist, I look at it and I think [some GE Russet, Mega- techniques, among other approaches, to crops] are extremely innovative, providing creative Chip, Villetta explore questions about plant flowering. solutions to complex problems. … I have no problem Rose, White Pearl, If you alter a plant’s genome without with them at all,” says Goldman. “But at the same Freedom Russet, adding any DNA, does it count as genetic Red Companion, time, I’m sensitive to those arguments that people Red Pearl, Tundra, engineering? The way current federal rules make about what they want to eat and what they and W1386. are written, the answer appears to be no. don’t.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture, for instance, has been treating CRISPR-edited Potato farmers had some tough years in the crops that don’t have any added DNA the early 1990s, with climatic conditions just right for same way it treats conventionally bred crops. late blight: a wet spring followed by a cool summer. This was a factor in the federal govern- And then 1994 hit. ment’s decision to overhaul the Coordinated That year, the late blight pathogen, or Phytophthora Framework for Regulation of Biotechnology, infestans, mutated, becoming even more virulent. The the rules that govern genetically engineered existing fungicides didn’t work against the new strain, crops, which were published in 1986. no matter how much of them farmers applied. Potato Amasino, who serves on a national fields across the northeast United States were dec- committee that will assess and advise on imated, including the potato test plots at the UW’s the regulation issue, is intrigued by the idea Hancock Agricultural Research Station. that all new crops — no matter how they are “The potato industry was caught by surprise made — should be looked at individually and because they never had such an issue. They were assessed holistically. worried that it was going to wipe out the whole “How a crop was created is important,” industry,” says Jiang, who was hired in 1995 to help he says, “but that’s just one part of looking at develop a solution. a product as a whole.”

On Wisconsin 43 Jiang teamed up with John Helgeson PhD’64, who “The potato has a very high level of resistance. was a UW professor of plant pathology at the time, You still see some little symptom here or there, but to explore the one silver lining to the devastation at it’s going to keep greening and you really don’t have Hancock station: a wild potato plant from Mexico had to spray,” says Jiang. survived in the test plot, suggesting that somewhere Jiang and Helgeson published their findings in its genome it possessed a resistance gene to the in 2003 and later inserted the RB gene into other late blight pathogen. popular commercial potato varieties using agrobac- Jiang and Helgeson immediately started trying terium-mediated transformation, the most popular to “cross” the resistant plant with popular commer- genetic engineering technique of the time. cial varieties, pollinating one with the other. But Gene The technique capitalizes on a type of bacteria the Mexican plant proved to be a little bit too wild. drift, that infects the roots of plants and inserts its own “You cannot make it cross. It’s not possible,” explains or gene flow, is DNA into the plant’s genome. Scientists figured Jiang. the unintended out how to piggyback on this functionality to insert At the same time, the two researchers started transfer of a gene desired genes into a plant’s genome at random loca- looking for the gene responsible for the resistance. from one species tions. Then, as the plants grow, the researchers look They finally found it in 2003, named it RB, and used to another. for healthy ones that also express the new gene. genetic engineering to put it into a cultivated potato. Scientists started developing GE technology for plants in the 1980s, and the first commercial genetically engineered crop — the Flavr Savr tomato — showed up in grocery stores in 1994. The product didn’t last long, as consumers found the tomatoes Hidden Benefits didn’t have much flavor to savor. Over the next couple According to UW–Madison life sciences com- of years, the first varieties of genetically engineered munication professor Dominique Brossard, corn and soybeans were released. who studies public opinion of controversial These crops — and others — tend to feature one science, perceptions of genetically engineered or both of two traits that are popular with farmers. foods are due in part to the various media Genetically engineered crops with the Roundup-Ready messages consumers see about them — many trait, a herbicide resistance gene, allow farmers to of which are negative. spray fields of corn, soybeans, and cotton with the weed “There’s a percentage of the public that is killer glyphosate, a.k.a. Roundup, to keep weeds down against GE foods not because they see a lot of without harming the crops. The Bt trait, however, helps risk, but because they don’t see any benefits,” to reduce the need for spraying. When crops have that explains Brossard, who served on a national trait, which produces an insecticide, pests die when committee that assessed GE crops. “The they start eating the plant — no sprays needed. problem with GE foods is their benefits have “The seed companies make transgenic versions of never been made salient.” their best varieties, and so farmers are buying them. This past summer, President Barack Farmers really like the technology,” notes Goldman. Obama signed a bill into law creating a federal By the time Jiang and Helgeson’s late blight–resis- labeling standard for foods containing genet- tant GE potatoes were ready, however, the crisis had ically engineered ingredients. The specific passed. First, the weather changed, and then the labeling rules, which still need to be written chemical industry caught up with new, more power- by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, will ful fungicides. Farmers also had more sophisticated govern how these ingredients are identified disease management systems in place. All of this on food products. The idea is to make it easier enabled them to stick to their tried-and-true variet- for consumers to know what they’re buying. ies — spraying their crops, as needed. It’s unclear how labeling will affect “The situation was not desperate enough. That’s consumer behavior. Will most Americans what I believe,” says Jiang. “If things had kept getting continue to purchase genetically engineered worse, I think the growers would have considered foods, as they do today? Will they embrace embracing [the GE potato].” the new varieties that are in the development Jiang and Helgeson also managed — using some pipeline, many of which are designed to help laboratory techniques — to fuse the cells of the wild address society’s grand challenges? In the potato with those of conventional varieties, and then coming years, there will be innovative GE used traditional plant breeding from that point on. It crops available that help address sustainabil- took 10 years, but they managed to produce a number ity, water shortages and drought, farming of conventionally bred, late blight–resistant potato challenges associated with climate change, varieties as well. food waste, food insecurity, malnutrition, But industry wasn’t interested. For Jiang, it was poverty, and other intractable problems. a second blow, though he took some comfort in the

44 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 The first GE “We certainly have the capability to drastically soybeans were alter genomes. At this point, we’re only limited by introduced to the our understanding of plant biology, how things work U.S. market in inside plants,” says Amasino. 1994. More than Genetic engineering can even save crops from 80 percent of soy cropland uses GE extinction. Before the GE Rainbow papaya, for varieties. instance, Hawaii’s papaya industry was on track to be wiped out by papaya ringspot virus, a viral disease GE corn was spread by aphids. A similar problem is unfolding in introduced in Florida right now, where citrus greening disease is 1996. destroying the state’s orange groves. GE appears to be the only recourse. But there are also challenges A genetically en- associated with genetically engineered crops. The gineered variety of cotton called Roundup-Ready trait may be contributing to the phe- Bt cotton has nomenon of Roundup-resistant “super weeds.” Gene

FRANCOIS-EDMOND, MAKSYM NARODENKO, POPOVAPHOTO/ISTOCK NARODENKO, MAKSYM FRANCOIS-EDMOND, been in commer- drift has been documented, so farmers need to take cial use since precautions to avoid contaminating nearby fields of 1995. It produces conventional and organic crops. its own insecti- In this evolving environment, groups are moving cide (Bt toxin) to forward with GE crop development. The small seed reduce the need company Simplot, for one, believes that the time has for spraying. come for the GE potato. Simplot, headquartered in Boise, Idaho, has developed GE potatoes that utilize the gene that Jiang and Helgeson discovered. These potatoes — known as second-generation Innate potatoes — could help farmers reduce fungicide applications to control late blight by 25 to 45 percent annually, according to academics consulted by the company. Based on these estimates, Simplot calculates that if all Russet Burbank potatoes in the U.S. contained this gene, farmers could cut the equivalent of one fungicide application over 495,000 acres. fact that he and Helgeson weren’t the only potato In a separate project, scientists at the International breeders to have tried and failed. Potato Center, a nonprofit research organization, are Russet Burbank, the nation’s most popular vari- developing genetically engineered versions of popular ety, has been in production since the early 1900s. It local potato varieties that contain the UW–developed accounts for almost half of the potatoes grown in the gene for Uganda and other African nations. The goal country. Its many positive characteristics — includ- is to help the bottom line of smallholder farmers in ing its shape and size, good flavor profile, and long the area, who spend the equivalent of 10 to 25 percent storage life — make it McDonald’s top tuber. Plant of their crop revenue on sprays. breeders just can’t seem to beat it. Jiang hopes that these late blight–resistant pota- “The potato in many ways is like a wine grape. You toes — along with other GE crops — will find a way have a variety, a cabernet or whatever, it’s like 400 or to succeed. 500 years old. [Vintners] don’t want to change that,” “We’ve all been doing the same thing for 125 years. explains Jiang. “The potato … is like this. Burbank, it’s a You’ve exhausted your options; you’ve crossed every- terrible variety [in some ways]. It’s susceptible to every thing with everything,” he says. “If we want to work on disease. However, McDonald’s wants [Burbank].” nutritional value, flavor, tuber quality — those are very tricky, complicated traits. For these, we’re going to need We can expect a deluge of new genetically to rely on more precisely manipulating specific genes, engineered products in the coming years with rather than just going and blindly doing crosses.” the growth of new techniques, particularly the cheap, Ultimately, consumers will decide the fate of Jiang’s easy gene-editing approach called CRISPR. (See side- potatoes and all other genetically engineered crops. bar on page 43.) The potential seems nearly limit- “We’re in a capitalist system,” notes Amasino. less, and many plants will have traits that consumers “The public is going to have to want it.” • value: more healthful vegetables with more phytonu- trients; crops that don’t turn brown as fast after they Nicole Miller MS’06 received her degree in life sciences com- have been cut, reducing waste; crops that fix their munication. She serves as news manager for the UW’s College own nitrogen, so they don’t require much fertilizer. of Agricultural and Life Sciences.

On Wisconsin 45 Then and Now A photographer marks a quarter-century of capturing UW–Madison.

WORDS AND PHOTOS BY JEFF MILLER Visually documenting what happens on a university campus with the breadth and depth of the UW is an ever-evolving mission. Photographs are a unique medium, providing a sense of place and time; capturing people, styles, and mile- stones; and preserving a historical record. I’ve had the privilege of capturing moments in the university’s ongoing story (and not always in ideal weather) for the past 25 years. These are just a few of the images that I made during my first year on campus, paired with scenes from campus today. APRIL 1991 / APRIL 2016 UW–Madison is a big, complex institution Rocking Campus that can be a struggle for the meek. It’s also full of opportunities — many of which I’ve I’m dating myself here, but do you remember the heyday embraced, occasionally stumbled through, and of music videos and glam rock bands in the late ‘80s and sometimes failed to conquer. But I’ve always ‘90’s? They provided the soundtrack for many of that era’s college students. grown in ability and character as a result. In April 1991, people on the Memorial Union Terrace got a firsthand look when MTV visited to film segments The complete “Then and Now” series can be of its program Hot Seat with rock bands Nelson and Cinderella. You can spot students screaming in the back- viewed at news.wisc.edu/then-and-now. ground as the bands perform. Fast forward 25 years, and Hayley Jordanna of the Chicago punk band Glamour Hotline offered up her unique vibe during a recent performance in The Sett at Union South. The show, organized by the Wisconsin Union Directorate’s music committee, was part of FemFest, an evening of music featuring five feminist bands from the Midwest.

46 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 FEBRUARY 1991 / FEBRUARY 2016 Prompting Change

The UW has a long-standing tradition of people challenging the status quo and vigorously campaigning to bring about political or social change. In early 1991, I photographed more than 200 students and community members rallying as part of a nationwide protest against U.S. involvement in the Persian Gulf War. The group disrupted traffic on Johnson Street and University Avenue as it marched from Library Mall to Bascom Hall to present a petition requesting a day of supplemen- tary education about the war. Then-chancellor Donna Shalala set aside February 8, 1991, as that educational day, but noted that classes would go on as scheduled. On February 5, 2016, more than 50 people aligned with the Black Lives Matter movement interrupted a board of regents meeting on campus to call for increased diversity efforts in the UW System. After repeating its demands, the group peacefully left the meeting. I’m optimistic that our campus community will continue the tradition of speaking out.

On Wisconsin 47 JULY 1991 / JULY 2016 One City Block

This area of campus in particular — an entire city block bounded by University Avenue and North Park, North Brooks, and West Johnson streets — really stands out for me as one that has under- gone enormous change. In July 1991, I photographed work crews demolishing a Walgreens store and the university’s Law Clinical Programs building to make way for construction of Grainger Hall. The $34 million building — completed in 1993 and named for David Grainger ’50, president of The Grainger Foundation and chair of the board of W. W. Grainger, Inc. — allowed the UW’s business school to house all of its faculty and programs in one facility for the first time since the early 1970s. The Grainger Foundation contributed more than $8 million toward the project — the single largest gift in the university’s history at the time. In summer 2008, an addition to Grainger Hall — funded in part by a $20 million gift from the foundation — added 131,416 square feet of space and a new main entrance.

48 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 NOVEMBER 1990 / NOVEMBER 2015 Big Things Start Small

When I first met Robert Hamers ’80, he was 32 and one of the newest members of the UW’s chemistry faculty. I was 26 and documenting his research in the newly evolving area of scanning tunneling microscopy and nanotechnology. Fall 1990 was the first semester on campus for both of us. Hamers explained that a scanning tunneling microscope gave researchers an otherworldly look into really tiny stuff, offering the potential to understand how one might modify electronic and chemical properties of things at this minute level. Twenty-five years later, Hamers spends less hands-on time in the lab. As a Wisconsin Distinguished Professor and Steenbock Professor of Physical Sciences, he’s busy teaching, guid- ing graduate students, and running projects in multiple research labs. He also directs the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology, a multi-institutional research center based at the UW that focuses on the molecular mechanisms by which nanoparticles interact with biological systems. “I’m having a fun time coordi- nating and collaborating with all these smart people,” Hamers says. I couldn’t agree more.

Jeff Miller is senior photographer for Uni- versity Communications at UW–Madison.

On Wisconsin 49 OnAlumniAlumni News at Home and Abroad

John Daniels Jr. MS’72 2016 John Daniels Jr. is chair emeritus at the national law firm Quarles & Brady. As chair, he grew the law firm signifi- Distinguished cantly during the worst downturn since the Great Depres- sion. A nationally recognized expert in real estate and Alumni Awards business law, he has been involved in some of the nation’s most complex real estate redevelopment projects. He is the Three alumni who former national president of the American College of Real really wow us Estate Lawyers and has represented major corporations For 80 years, the Wisconsin Alumni such as General Electric, Kraft Foods, and Xerox. Association has honored excep- After earning his MS in education, Daniels received his tional alumni with Distinguished JD from Harvard University. Over the years, he has been Alumni Awards. Early recipients a major force for civic good in Milwaukee. He has worked as lead lawyer on many include actor Fredric March ’20 of signature downtown projects. He also helped organize an annual golf tournament, the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde fame and Fellowship Open, that raises money to support children in need, and he has worked Helen C. White PhD’24, the beloved with his brother, a Milwaukee clergyman, on a number of community housing and English professor whose name now education projects. graces College Library. More recently, alumni such as Earth Day Judith Greenfield Faulkner MS’67 founder Gaylord Nelson LLB’42, Judith Faulkner is the founder and CEO of Epic Systems, scientist Carl Djerassi PhD’45, and which she launched in 1979 in an apartment-house base- fashion icon Iris Apfel ’43 have ment. Epic has since grown to become a leading provider joined their ranks. We imagine of integrated health care software, with clients that include they’d be as proud as we are to the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, Cedars-Sinai, Kaiser welcome this year’s honorees into Permanente, CVS Health, and Walgreens. More than half the fold. of the U.S. population has medical information in an Epic For more on the award winners, system. Faulkner has kept the company privately held and see uwalumni.com/awards. The has built a sustainable corporate campus in Verona, Wis- deadline for 2017 Distinguished consin, with 9,900 employees. Alumni Award nominations is In 2013, Forbes magazine called her the “most powerful December 16. woman in health care.” Faulkner has pledged to donate 99 percent of her assets to philanthropy. UW–Madison awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2010, and she is a John Daniels Jr. was the first African member of the National Academy of Medicine’s Leadership Roundtable. She also served American lawyer in the United States to on the Health Information Technology Policy Committee, a federal advisory group that start as an associate in a major law firm helps to shape IT-related health care policy, and its Privacy & Security subcommittee. and become chair. Doris Feldman Weisberg ’58 Judith Faulkner, who earned her MS in Doris Feldman Weisberg was part of the team that launched computer sciences, serves on the depart- the Food Network, where she produced numerous shows ment’s board of visitors, and the company she founded, Epic Systems, has endowed and was the managing editor of food news. She has also three computer sciences faculty positions. produced cooking shows for Lifetime Television. Prior to that, she was on the faculty of City College of the City Uni- Doris Weisberg serves on the Memorial versity of New York, where she taught for 26 years. She Union Building Association and is helping was director of the Speech and Hearing Center and retired to position the Wisconsin Union to use in 1992 as chair of the speech department. locally grown products in its food-service Weisberg earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology operations. and went on to receive her MS and PhD from Columbia University. She serves on the political science department’s board of visitors, and she is also on the board of the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association and is a member of its Women’s Philanthropy Council. She and her husband have created a planned gift to establish the Doris Feldman Weisberg and Robert Weisberg Center for Progressive Political Thought. They also established the Doris and Robert Weisberg Current Issues Symposium Fund at the Memorial Union to bring relevant and timely speakers to campus.

WINTER 2016 50 On Wisconsin Tradition Distinguished Lecture Series JEFF MILLER

UW–Madison’s long-standing WHAT’S YOUR welcomed these speakers with former South African State Pres- tradition of fearless sifting and FAVORITE UW open arms. When the late con- ident F. W. de Klerk, and Roman winnowing is rekindled each TRADITION? servative activist Phyllis Schlafly Catholic nun Helen Prejean, a year through the Distinguished Tell On Wisconsin visited campus in 1993 to speak leading advocate for abolition of Lecture Series, which since 1987 at onwisconsin@ about the “liberal media” and the death penalty. uwalumni.com, has hosted intellectual jousts and and we’ll find out feminist movement, about 80 Most recently, transgender provocations. More than 200 if it’s just a fond students protested her views on actress and activist Laverne speakers have appeared over the memory or if it’s abortion and family rights. Cox (pictured above), who plays last three decades. still part of cam- Speakers visit campus with Sophia on Netflix’s Orange Is The roster includes the late pus life today. messages both inspirational and the New Black, called out North Kurt Vonnegut, who was 80 timely. They’ve included astro- Carolina’s so-called bathroom years old when he spoke on physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, bill and declared that “trans is campus in 2003. The Slaughter- who in 2009 lamented how beautiful” to a crowd of more house-Five author managed to “scientific illiteracy” has bred a than 1,300 in May 2016. elicit both chuckles and contem- fear of the unknown. During a Valentine’s Day plation from the crowd at the “Here we are in a country visit in 1990, the late poet Maya Wisconsin Union Theater, even professing to be advanced tech- Angelou urged audience mem- through a coughing fit. With nologically, but there are people bers to embrace courage, to unruly hair and a craggy face, among us afraid of the number dispel ignorance, and to take Vonnegut bounced across topics 13,” he told the crowd. advantage of the opportunities from his career to his desired Other speakers have included created by their forebears. “This epitaph, “The only proof he the late conservative political is your life — yours alone,” needed for the existence of God commentator Robert Novak, Angelou said. “So, in this time, was music.” the late Holocaust survivor make use of it.” But students have not always and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, RILEY VETTERKIND X’17

On Wisconsin 51 Exhibition Pioneering Glass Artist

Audrey Solomon Handler MA’67, MFA’70 is in fine company: when she earned the Wisconsin Visual Art Lifetime Achievement Award, she joined honorees Frank Lloyd Wright

WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL WISCONSIN STATE x1890 and Georgia O’Keeffe. Handler was an integral part of the studio glass movement, JOHN HART/ JOHN an artistic revolution that began in the 1960s with UW–Madison professor Harvey Littleton. He and his students experimented and learned together, renting old glass-blowing films from the Corning Museum of Glass and trying to emulate the techniques. “It was so exciting,” Handler recalls. “Every day was something new.” In 1971, Handler and other classmates, including the late Marvin Lipofsky MFA’64, MA’64, formed the Glass Art Audrey Handler Society. She is one of only a few was one of the women who were in the move- early students of famed UW ment at the beginning, and one of professor Harvey even fewer from that era who are

AUDREY (2) HANDLER AUDREY Littleton, who still working. “Glass blowing is pioneered the very hard on your body, and studio glass I’ve been doing it since 1965,” movement. She she says. is known for her Handler’s work embodies the glass fruits and studio glass movement’s mission vegetables, such as the bell pepper of artistic individuality. When at left, as well she creates glass bowls and plat- as platters and ters, she introduces a spider-web vases (below). pattern in the background. It’s a technique that is often achieved by accident, but she does it intentionally. “You want to make something distinctive, that’s your own,” she says. She’s also known for her Pear in a Chair series, which combines wood and blown glass with silver and gold cast figures — a collaboration with her husband, John Martner. More recently, she has produced paintings that feature glass paint fired on tile, creating surreal landscapes. Handler works year-round in her Verona, Wisconsin, studio — a converted 19th-century cheese factory that is one of the nation’s longest-running glass-blowing studios. CHELSEA SCHLECHT ’13

52 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 Conversation Brandon Shields MBAx’17

With a goal of diversifying cor- some 22-year-old kid who just students who are going into porate America, 18 universities, graduated from college. When the education pipeline. They’re including the UW, are working you’re in the military, you’ve already working in our daycare together to connect 400 MBA just got to go for it. You have centers, so why not provide students of color with corporate to accomplish your mission. them an opportunity to earn partners each year. Brandon Taking a chance on starting a some extra cash when they’re Shields MBAx’17, a captain in company or new job is not not at work or class? They the marine reserves who is as scary when you compare would upload their sched- raising his two-year-old son as it to things you’ve experi- ules, and then a parent a single parent, is earning his enced in the past. would go on and see who MBA through the Consortium is available and hire a for Graduate Study in Manage- Tell me about your sitter. I’d scale this ment at the Wisconsin School app for finding qual- model out wher- of Business. He’s secured a ity child care. ever there is a full-time job at DuPont after If there [were] university. graduation, and is developing someway I could get an app to make child care more sitters like the ones Interview conduct- accessible for parents. I currently have ed, edited, and — but instan- condensed by Riley What led you into the taneously and Vetterkind x’17 business world? credentialed — that Photo by Bryce Richter When I was in Afghanistan, I would be great. [I want would get care packages — cer- to] harness the network tain products like a can of Prin- effect of being a part gles or ChapStick — and they of UW–Madison. would instantly bring me back There’s a to Philadelphia with my sib- huge talent lings. When you’re in combat, pool of there are just certain products that can really transport you. It was that connection that led me to brand management at UW.

Why is the consortium program so important? When I was in the marines as an officer, there were very few African Americans in my position. It’s the same in the business world: there are not that many black executives. A program like the consortium helps develop that pipeline. When [my son] is going to the Wisconsin School of Business [someday], I want him to have a minority CEO to look toward and aspire to be.

What do you bring to the business world as a veteran? Being a veteran from a young age, I was charged with leading people older and younger than me. You don’t find that with

On Wisconsin 53 OnAlumni Class Notes

40s–50s America’s longest-running film announced the cancellation of “Originally I was in the Class of journal, the Independent; and the live, weekly, Madison-based ’45, but WWII made that 1948,” rare-book collecting and selling. CLASS NOTES comedy/quiz program in March, SUBMISSIONS writes Robert O’Donnell ’48 Joyce Carol Oates MA’61 uwalumni.com/ citing a decline in the number of Fort Myers, Florida. As a was one of 33 new members go/alumninotes of stations carrying it. Feldman VP for Reynolds Aluminum, he elected to the American Philo- and his devotees bounced back headed the division that intro- sophical Society in April. She is Class Notes, with a Kickstarter campaign Wisconsin Alumni duced the aluminum can and acclaimed by critics and beloved Association, to relaunch Whad’Ya Know? the Stay-On-Tab to the beer and by generations of readers as 650 N. Lake as a podcast and livestream on soft-drink market. By the time a novelist, playwright, poet, Street, Madison, YouTube, and a grateful audi- he retired, the company was short-story author, critic, and WI 53706-1476 ence applauded this comeback operating 14 plants worldwide. longtime professor at Princeton in September at Madison’s High O’Donnell is pleased that one of University who has unflinch- Noon Saloon. Whad’Ya Know? his four children and one of his ingly explored a vast range of was a 1997 Museum of Televi- 11 grandkids are Badger alumni. contemporary issues. She also BOOK NEWS sion and Radio inductee and Alan (Adolph) Grunewald holds a Pulitzer Prize, National Please share became a board game in 2003. MS’51, MBA’52, PhD’55 of Book Award, and National book news by The teaching and research East Lansing, Michigan, packed Humanities Medal. submitting of chartered structural engineer a lot of living into his few words Joan (Rosen) Saslow ’66, the form at Paramasivam Jayachandran to us. The World War II veteran MA’68’s coauthored, multi- uwalumni.com/ MS’71, PhD’75 have focused and former U.S. Army Air Corps level communication course go/bookshelf. on tall buildings, structural We then post member is now a Michigan State Top Notch: English for Today’s these submis- design agents, and finite element professor emeritus who had a World — one of the world’s most sions to the structural analysis, and he’s now “great career, traveled the world widely used American English Wisconsin- a professor emeritus at Worces- over,” and taught in Berlin, textbook series and among alumni section of ter [Massachusetts] Polytechnic Potsdam, Moscow, and Brazil. several that she’s produced — the book website Institute. He’s also been a senior The Des Moines [Iowa] Met- has garnered a 2016 Textbook Goodreads at project engineer, an MIT visiting ro Arts Alliance recognizes art Excellence Award from the goodreads.com/ professor, and a visiting scien- excellence and community con- Textbook and Academic Authors wisalumni. tist at the National Institute of A handful of the tributions with its Artist AWE Association. “I am indebted to books posted Standards and Technology and (Arts Within Everything) Award, the University of Wisconsin for there also appear National Grid. Jayachandran, and it honored Janet Hart my success as an author and an in this print of San Francisco, says that “the Heinicke MA’56 with its 2016 educator,” she says. magazine. excellent education I received in prize. The professor emerita Who’s one of Irish America Wisconsin made it all possible.” and former chair of the Simpson magazine’s inaugural Top 50 At the University of North College art department in near- Power Women? She’s Susan Carolina–Asheville’s May com- by Indianola has encouraged Ann Davis ’68, chair of Susan mencement, John Cram ’72 of artists to achieve their potential, Davis International, a global Asheville accepted an honorary worked diligently for women’s communications firm head- doctor of fine arts. He’s opened empowerment, and exhibited her quartered in Washington, DC. DEATH NOTICES two galleries and two clothing AND NAME, own artwork worldwide. She spearheaded the Global ADDRESS, stores, revitalized the city’s Fine Irish Forum’s recommenda- TELEPHONE, Arts Theatre, and served as a 60s tions to develop Ireland as a AND EMAIL quiet “ecohero” and a political In June, Kurt Brokaw ’60, hub for smart-aging technolo- UPDATES and community-renaissance MS’61 told the Daily Cardinal gies, chaired the U.S.-Ireland alumnichanges@ leader. Cram also earned the Alumni Association’s Hot Type Business Summit, and serves uwalumni.com state’s highest civilian honor, and Line Tape, “I was lucky as the board vice chair of the Alumni Changes, the North Carolina Award finding one of the first J-schools Irish Smart Aging Exchange and Wisconsin Alumni in fine arts, in 2013. Thank friendly to advertising,” and he board chair of the Vital Voices Association, you, Liz Huesemann ’78 of wrote the UW’s first master’s Global Partnership NGO and 650 N. Lake Asheville, for sharing this. thesis on TV commercials. Razia’s Ray of Hope Foundation. Street, Madison, Felicitations to Mark Brokaw spent 30 years as a WI 53706-1476 McElreath MA’72, PhD’75, “Mad Man” in three New York 70s 608-308-5420 who’s been inducted into the Hall ad agencies and as RCA Re- Michael Feldman ’70’s or toll free of Fame of Rowan University’s cords’ creative director. In 2000, departure from the radio air- 888-WIS-ALUM Department of Public Relations. he refocused on teaching at New waves broke a lot of hearts in (947-2586) The professor emeritus at Mary- York City’s The New School and June when he broadcast his final land’s Towson University is the the 92nd Street Y; film review- Whad’Ya Know? after 31 years. author of Managing Systematic ing as the senior film critic for Wisconsin Public Radio had and Ethical Public Relations

54 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 Recognition Dorri McWhorter ’95 ALISSA PAGELS Campaigns. McElreath has also served on the PR industry’s Universal Accreditation Board, was instrumental in establishing the International Association of Business Communicators’ code of ethics, and spent two decades working to establish Russia’s first university-based PR program. He (and his adorable cats) are retired in Washington, DC. You’ve heard of professional golf’s green jacket, but Jack Kaltenberg ’73 is the inaugural recipient of the Wisconsin Agricultural and Life Sciences Alumni Association’s (WAL- UBER ADVOCATE FOR WOMEN SAA) Daluge Red Jacket Award, As the CEO of YWCA Metropolitan Chicago, Dorri McGhee McWhorter which will henceforth go annu- ’95 is garnering headlines for reimagining the 140-year-old nonprofit’s ally to someone who has helped business model with new ideas and technology. The group’s mission is to WALSAA to grow. It honors empower women and eliminate racism, and providing jobs is one way to Madisonians Peggy Schneider achieve that. Daluge ’70 and Rick Daluge McWhorter has initiated a partnership with Uber, which connects ’71, MS’75, PhD’82, who, now people who need rides with freelance drivers via smartphones. Hiring retired, was WALSAA’s long- women is vital to Uber’s expansion goals, and it wants to add a million time executive director, the UW female drivers around the world by 2020. Chicago is a key market, where College of Agricultural & Life three times as many women as expected signed on to become Sciences’ placement director drivers after the collaboration began. and assistant dean, and the McWhorter sees Uber as an economic opportunity for women who director of its Farm and Indus- need flexible work schedules. “I feel such a sense of urgency,” she says. try Short Course. Kaltenberg, “I see possibilities everywhere. We can create solutions and value for of De Forest, Wisconsin, was an everyone, and because we can, we should.” early WALSAA president and Born in Chicago and raised in Racine, Wisconsin, McWhorter was a co-owns Partners in Production. partner at the accounting firm Crowe Horwath before joining the YWCA. The United States Sports Among other innovations, she created the online marketplace Academy’s Distinguished YShop.org, which supports the YWCA by promoting partner companies Service Award recognizes those that donate a portion of their sales to the organization. The site, which who have made outstanding offers everything from couture diaper bags to gourmet brownies to instruction, research, or service consulting services, has had 9,000 unique visitors in just over one year, contributions to the sports helping the organization to reach a new audience. profession, and the 2016 honor McWhorter also started Myrtle’s Club, which provides business belongs to Gretchen Kelsey classes, group purchasing, and other services for childcare providers. Brown ’74. She cofounded The club supports the people who offer critical support to the workforce, the Madison-based Athletic she says, adding, “Without them, how would parents work? We need them Business magazine, which hosts to stay open. We want to make sure these child care providers have the the annual Athletic Business support to run efficient businesses.” Conference; and she’s the CEO Although McWhorter was an accounting major at the UW, she took of Athletic Business Media, many courses outside the business school, including geology, English which also publishes AQUA and literature, anthropology, and African American studies. Hardwood Floors magazines. “All those courses I took were playing into my social-justice side,” she Pedro Pablo Kuczynski — says. “[Scientists are] working on a spaceship to get to Mars, but we have a former World Bank economist not yet solved some fundamental human-rights and social-justice who has served as Peru’s prime issues here on Earth. It just fuels me to work fast and get it done.” minister and finance minister — SHEON WILSON emerged as the narrow winner of that nation’s presidential election in June. His spouse, Nancy Lange ’76, MBA’80, is now Peru’s First Lady! Her

On Wisconsin 55 Recognition Ab Nicholas ’52, MBA’55

FAREWELL career in international invest- TO A GOOD ments has taken her nearly FRIEND everywhere on the planet and PAUL NEWBY II NEWBY PAUL Albert “Ab” Nicholas has allowed her to truly live her undergrad double major in ’52, MBA’55, a former international relations and, now, UW System Board political science. of Regents member Chicago’s Bexley Seabury and one of the univer- Episcopal seminary has wel- sity’s most dedicated comed back (David) Scott supporters, passed Stoner ’77: after earning his away in August, but master of divinity degree from he left his fingerprints Seabury-Western, he’s now an on the University of affiliate professor of practical Wisconsin–Madison in theology. He’s also the founding myriad ways. Together president and executive director with his wife, Nancy of the Samaritan Foundation for Johnson Nicholas ’55, Church and Family Wellness; he worked to open the the creator of Living Compass, a wellness ministry; and a pastoral UW’s doors to genera- counselor and family therapist. tions of new students, Julianne Stern Green- and they gave one of berg ’79 has been inducted the largest gifts in the as a fellow of the American university’s history to College of Radiology — one of support scholarships its highest honors. She’s also and fellowships. the director of breast imaging at A standout guard on the Badger basketball team, Nicholas decided Washington Radiology Associ- to forgo a career in the NBA and instead served in the army and then ates in Fairfax, Virginia. launched the Nicholas Company, a high-performing investment fund. The State Bar of Wisconsin’s He gave large sums to charity, particularly to UW–Madison, supporting president-elect is attorney Paul the schools and colleges that taught him, Nancy, and many members of Swanson JD’79, a partner their family. with Steinhilber, Swanson, “The University of Wisconsin holds a special place for Nancy and Mares, Marone & McDermott in Oshkosh; and Steinhilber, me,” said Ab in 2015. “It’s where we met and where our three children and Swanson, Resop & Sipsma in six of our grandchildren have gone to university. I learned the lessons in Madison. He’s also completing the classroom and on the court that have fueled my career. And we his term as state-bar treasurer made lasting friendships and continue to enjoy an amazing alumni and has served as the president experience.” of the National Association of That connection helped to inspire a lifetime of giving back to the Bankruptcy Trustees. university. Between 1982 and 2014, the Nicholases donated nearly $50 million to student services, the Department of Athletics, the Wiscon- 80s sin School of Business, and the School of Human Ecology, establishing Easel on Down the Road is Nancy Nicholas Hall as the home of human-ecology studies on campus. Anne Corlett ’82’s “quest to In June 2015, the Nicholases offered a $50 million matching gift to paint a landscape in every U.S. inspire UW alumni and friends to donate in support of undergraduate state: 29,604 miles of driving, and athletic scholarships and graduate fellowships at UW–Madison. 164 days away from home, 50 states, three years of planning, Nicholas served as president of the UW’s National W Club, which painting, and travel.” Along the supports intercollegiate athletics, and he was inducted into the UW way, she says, “I would learn to Athletics Hall of Fame in 2009. He was named a Wisconsin Distinguished trust myself — my judgment, my Business Alumnus in 1985 and earned the Wisconsin Alumni Associa- intellect, my good heart.” The tion’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 1993. resulting 50 works appeared in “He was among the most generous and thoughtful people I’ve had a summer exhibit at the Sau- the pleasure of meeting,” UW–Madison chancellor Rebecca Blank says. gatuck [Michigan] Center for the “The Nicholas family has a history that goes back five generations at the Arts in her home community, UW. Ab’s legacy will be part of this campus for decades to come.” and she’s produced a book about STAFF her journey as well.

56 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 OnAlumni Class Notes

Antonio Romanucci ’82 of North Carolina–Wilmington WISCONSIN When Scotland’s University has made a first-of-its-kind phil- and Southern Illinois Universi- ALUMNI of St. Andrews — founded in anthropic gift of $100,000 to the ty–Carbondale, and he earned ASSOCIATION 1413! — lauded its top educators Pro Bono Program and Clinic at a 2015 Distinguished Alumni (WAA) in April, MEMBERSHIP Jeffrey Murer ’88 Chicago’s John Marshall Law Achievement Award from UW– We appreciate garnered the new Contribution School, of which he is also an Madison’s School of Education. our loyal WAA to Excellence in Education alumnus. A founding partner Who decides which TV members! Non- honor, created to recognize and principal at the law firm of programs air and when? At members, we’d powerfully influential teaching. Romanucci & Blandin in Chica- public television station UNC- also appreciate He’s a lecturer on collective go, he focuses on catastrophic TV in Research Triangle Park, it if you’d review violence in the university’s personal injury and wrongful North Carolina, he’s Bryan the cool reasons School of International Rela- death cases — a passion sparked Sodemann x’86, who learned to become a tions and a member of the RSE member at when his high school best friend the ropes at Madison’s WHA-TV. uwalumni.com/ (Royal Society of Edinburgh) suffered a fatal brain injury (Just sayin’.) He’s been UNC- membership/ Young Academy of Scotland. while playing football. TV’s lead program scheduler benefits. If you’re Says Murer, “I know that my Dane County [Wisconsin] since 1999, now filling its four so inclined, you passion for working closely Circuit Court Branch 3 has channels with 24/7 shows, and can then join this with my students came from my a new judge in Valerie in May was named Programmer special Badger experiences at Madison.” Bailey-Rihn ’84, JD’91, a of the Year by the Public Televi- community at Hearty congratulations partner in the Madison office of sion Programmer’s Association. uwalumni.com/ and best wishes to Susan membership. the law firm of Quarles & Brady. A former UW Marching Band Traverso MA’89, PhD’95 as She will serve for six years. snare drummer, he also plays she leaves her nine-year service Madison native Peter in two bands. Thanks to Jan as provost and senior vice presi- Rodgers ’84 is coming home Thorpe White ’53 of Cary, dent of Elizabethtown [Pennsyl- to become the Madison Sympho- North Carolina, for this update. vania] College to take the reins ny Orchestra’s new director of Kathy Koller ’87 of Brook- of Thiel College in Greenville, marketing after 25 years in Cal- lyn, New York, is expanding on WELCOME, ALL! Pennsylvania, as its president. ifornia. There, he was the Marin her years of Buddhist medita- The Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra’s director tion practice through Radiance: Alumni Asso- ciation (WAA) 90s of marketing, the founder and a new television show that airs encourages diver- Frederick Domann Jr. creative director of the Montara in New York City and online sity, inclusivity, PhD’91 had a stellar spring: Creative marketing firm, and the at RadianceTalkShow.com. It nondiscrimina- he became the Society for Redox director of marketing and com- introduces spiritual practices tion, and par- Biology and Medicine’s presi- munications for the Center for from diverse traditions includ- ticipation by all dent-elect and earned a Distin- Volunteer and Nonprofit Lead- ing Buddhism, Christianity, alumni, students, guished Scientist Award from ership. Rodgers replaces Teri Hinduism, Islam, and shaman- and friends of the Society for Experimental (Teresa) Venker MA’82, who ism, and Koller hopes it will UW–Madison in Biology and Medicine. He’s a retired in July, as the orchestra inspire viewers to explore fur- its activities. professor of radiation oncology begins its 91st season. ther. She also offers mindfulness and pathology/surgery at the Scott Sigman ’84 is meditation workshops. University of Iowa in Iowa City; putting his London School of (Chun-Chih) James Liao he directs its Molecular and Cel- Economics and Political Science PhD’87 — the former Par- lular Biology Graduate Program; master’s degree in econom- sons Foundation professor and “One after- and he codirects both its Radi- ics — with a specialization in department chair in chemical noon with ation and Antioxidant Enzyme sea use — to work serving on and biomolecular engineering [UW pro- Core Service and Free Radical the Maritime Transportation at UCLA — has been named Cancer Biology Program. System National Advisory Com- president of Taiwan’s highest fessor] Ed Newly listed on the National mittee, which advises the U.S. academic institution, Academia Lightfoot Registry of Certified Microbi- secretary of transportation. The Sinica in Taipei. While visit- changed ologists — which covers the Elmhurst, Illinois, resident also ing Madison in April, he said my life.” fields of biological safety, food, works with the Illinois Soybean that “one afternoon with Ed pharmaceuticals, and medical Association for Transportation Lightfoot changed my life” (Chun-Chih) devices — is Randal Wolff James Liao and Export Infrastructure. because UW professor Light- PhD’87 PhD’94, a research safety Kutztown [Pennsylvania] foot convinced Liao to “apply officer with the Department of University has named Kenneth control theory to the biology of Veterans Affairs in Madison. Teitelbaum PhD’85 as its metabolism.” Liao has also been To earn the credential, he met new College of Education dean. elected to the National Academy rigorous educational and experi- He was previously a dean and of Engineering and the National ential requirements and passed professor at both the University Academy of Sciences. a comprehensive exam.

On Wisconsin 57 OnAlumni Class Notes

Let’s hear it for Matt nationwide pool of more than ’08 has also joined Potestivo & Boatright-Simon ’95 — 1,500 — to participate in the Associates as an associate attor- an award-winning writer, actor, WHO AM I, weeklong 2016 Mickelson ney in its Chicago office. and director of stage, film, TV, ANYWAY? ExxonMobil Teachers Acade- LIM College — a New York and commercial works — and Do you ever my this summer. PGA star Phil City institution that focuses Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter (Half) wonder what to Mickelson and his wife, Amy, on business and fashion — has Brother! He wrote, produced, di- call yourself as founded the math and science promoted Laurel Lueders ’98, rected, and stars in this “brash, a UW–Madison professional-development pro- from arts and sciences graduate? If you MS’02 witty, and hilarious” play that do, you’re far gram together with the National lecturer to chair of its visual debuted this summer at the from alone. See Science Teacher Association, merchandising department. world’s biggest arts celebration: which of these Math Solutions, and ExxonMo- She also led LIM’s The Arts in the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, fits you best: one bil. Velasco teaches third grade Florence [Italy] program this Scotland. Boatright-Simon also female grad is an in Rapid City, South Dakota. summer and completed an arts rowed for the national-champi- alumna; one male Rebecca Kurziak residency in Berlin. Previously on Wisconsin crew and speaks grad is an alum- Arayan ’97 is the new on the Art Institute of New York Mandarin. nus. Members executive director of the faculty, Lueders is a designer and of an all-female Robert Simpkins MA’95, graduate group Georgia Radio Reading Service, artist whose work has been col- PhD’11 is a newly tenured pro- are alumnae. an Atlanta-based, nonprofit lected and exhibited worldwide. fessor of anthropology at Por- And, although it’s closed-circuit radio station. Kate Barrette Kazlo terville [California] College who often mistakenly More than 200 volunteers de- ’99 began her career with the also coordinates the campus’s used in a singular liver cover-to-cover readings of home-furnishings brand Shabby event series and Cultural and context, alumni is books and periodicals and much Chic, living in Los Angeles and Historical Awareness Program plural and refers more on a 24/7 basis through traveling to New York to man- and advises the Anthro Club. to members of an 200-some shows each month. age its retail division. Returning all-male graduate The service seeks to “improve to her Badger State roots, she Christopher Hanson group or a mixed ’96 is a U.S. Navy Reserve group of male the quality of life for every opened The Home Market — public-affairs officer who’s and female grads. Georgian who is blind, visually a retail purveyor of furniture, “stepped away” from his civilian (Thus, an individ- impaired, or has difficulty with home accents, bedding, and light- post as the president/CEO of ual cannot be the printed word.” ing for a “casual, elegant style” the Veterans Assistance Foun- an alumni.) Michelle Sapp Nettles — in Milwaukee in 2006 and in dation in Tomah, Wisconsin, JD’97 is the chief people and Madison this spring. Kazlo also to deploy for up to a year in diversity officer for the Molson works with clients nationwide Kabul, Afghanistan. There, he’s Coors Brewing Company follow- on custom design projects. The the director of public affairs for ing its acquisition of SABMiller’s Home Market’s manager, Taren Combined Security Transition stake in MillerCoors, for which Mansfield ’14, sent this news. Command–Afghanistan for the she had been the chief people Resolute Support mission. officer. In her newly created, 00s Hanson marked his 25-year Denver-based post, Nettles will At New Jersey’s Baltusrol Golf navy anniversary in July. oversee the company’s employ- Club in July, Ryan Helminen In May, San Francisco ees globally. She and her hus- ’00 — a golf pro at Ridge- civil-rights attorney Mike Laux X-PLANATION band, Cory Nettles JD’96 — way Country Club in Neenah, An x preceding ’96, JD’02 settled a 2010 case a degree year of counsel in Quarles & Brady’s Wisconsin — made his third involving a police officer who indicates that Milwaukee office, the founder consecutive PGA Championship killed a colleague’s father in the person did and managing partner of Gen- appearance as one of 20 PGA Little Rock, Arkansas. Repre- not complete, eration Growth Capital, and club professionals to qualify. senting the deceased’s sons in or has not yet chair of the Greater Milwaukee This honor is a balancing act, their wrongful-death lawsuit, completed, Foundation board — are active however: unlike tour players, Laux notes that the settlement that degree at on Milwaukee-area boards. PGA teaching pros must ensure of $1.4 million — plus an apol- UW–Madison. Here’s what’s up with some that their club responsibilities ogy from the city of Little Rock Badger attorneys from the are handled while they’re away and a memorial bench — “set ’90s and beyond. New part- from their home clubs in compe- a monetary record in the state ners include Luis Arroyo III tition play. for civil-rights [settlements].” MS’98, JD’98 and Michelle Brendan Sweeney ’01 The Washington Post and many Wagner Ebben ’06, both proudly announces the opening other national and local media at Michael Best & Friedrich of Sweeney Law in Fort Lauder- covered the story. in its Milwaukee office; and dale, Florida, which focuses on Brenda Velasco ’96 was Gretchen Harris Sperry ’99 business, construction, consum- one of 154 educators chosen — at Hinshaw & Culbertson in its er, and real-estate legal matters on her first application from a Chicago office.Jillian Murphy plus Title III-ADA litigation.

58 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 Contribution Nigel Cook

Chris Henjum ’04 of Minneapolis has cofounded Esqyr: “the first and only public-benefit corporation focused on affordable test prep,” he says, “with a social mission to prevent or reduce student debt.” Esqyr uses materials from credential-granting and licens- ing organizations to offer online study tools and donates 20 percent of its profits to reduce student debt. Esqyr launched with bar-exam tools and plans to expand soon. Henjum also has a “day job as an attorney working at the Minnesota legislature and long nights as a recent father.” Megan Lotts MFA’04, MA’07 of New Brunswick, New Jersey, earned the moniker “the Lego librarian” after she installed a Lego play station in the Rutgers University art HAPPIER COWS, HEALTHIER PEOPLE library, where she’s a pioneer- A growing population is placing greater demands than ever on the ing librarian. Lotts then took a world’s food supply. But along with that increased need is a desire to hundred pounds of Legos and know both where our food comes from and the conditions under which her mission to redefine libraries’ it is produced. Ideally, consumers want to be assured that food is made educational role — as “maker- as safely — and that animals are treated as humanely — as possible. spaces” where the community Thanks to work being done by UW–Madison faculty, the Dairyland can collaborate, invent, think Initiative is helping farmers to raise healthier cows and making critically, and tackle problems Wisconsin dairies more efficient and productive. — to host workshops at 20 aca- Nigel Cook of the School of Veterinary Medicine spearheaded the demic libraries in several states. program based on years of field experience and research on dairy- Milwaukeean Jake cattle production, behavior, and biology. Using a web-based tool, he Kocorowski ’06 writes and unites farmers, consultants, lenders, and builders, providing insights edits for Bucky’s 5th Quarter, into animal behavior and output. The goal is to help dairy owners create the SB Nation website dedicated conditions that will optimize their herds’ comfort and well-being, and to the Badgers; and he cohosts sustainably improve milk production. the Kielbasa Kings Sports Major companies in the dairy industry have taken note of the Extravaganza podcast. He’s also Dairyland Initiative’s success in Wisconsin, lending their support to written Walk-On This Way: expand access to its online resources. The initiative has grown substan- The On-Going Legacy of the tially, helping farmers nationally and internationally to plan new facilities Wisconsin Walk-On Tradition and systems that help to reduce injury and disease, improve animal with former Badger walk-on welfare, and increase milk production and profitability. tight end Joel Nellis ’06 of Farmers in every nation are struggling to solve problems of animal Delafield, Wisconsin. The book health and welfare, drought, high temperatures, and other issues chronicles the contributions of that put the United States and the world at risk for food scarcity. The football players who arrived at Dairyland Initiative and other agricultural practices that have their roots the UW without scholarships, in Wisconsin are playing a vital role in continuing to feed people at home such as Chris Maragos; Mark and across the globe. Tauscher ’99, MS’03; Jimmy Projects such as this benefit from private gifts. For more information Leonhard ’06; and Jared about supporting UW–Madison’s tradition of groundbreaking research, Abbrederis ’13. visit allwaysforward.org. Daniel Leitch PhD’06, a UW–Platteville associate professor of special education, left in August for a six-month stay in Germany. He’s helping

On Wisconsin 59 OnAlumni Class Notes students at the UW–Platteville campaign staff member in collect, analyze, and be guided sister school Darmstadt Univer- Wisconsin. Trovato, of Wauke- by data on students’ reading per- sity to understand international sha, interned for Wisconsin “We should formance. She was also in the perspectives surrounding the governor Scott Walker when be fearless inaugural cohort of Leadership Syrian refugee crisis and is as- Walker was in the state assem- and coura- for Educational Equity’s New sisting refugees directly through bly, and he’s also served as a American Leadership Program. the nonprofit Helping Hands. state assembly policy adviser, geous as Former Badger basketball Bryce Littlejohn MA’07, on the Waukesha County profession- player Ashley Thomas ’12 PhD’12 is hunting for the Republican Party executive als.” planned to play in the pros, but sterile neutrino! As an assis- board, and on the Republican Amanda Riek she found her calling instead as tant professor of physics at the Assembly Campaign Committee. ’08, JD’11 the new executive director of Illinois Institute of Technology Milwaukee’s Hope Street Min- in Chicago, he’s part of PROS- 10s istry. The nondenominational PECT — the Precision Oscilla- Badger hockey fans know Blake Christian organization houses tion and Spectrum Experiment Geoffrion ’10 as the program’s people who are recovering from — in which researchers will first Hobey Baker Award winner addiction, mental illness, and construct a detector that can be in 2010, but they may not know urban trauma, and its staff and placed near a nuclear reactor’s that he hosts the annual Blake volunteers provide counseling, core to try to catch a hint of the Geoffrion Hockey Classic exhi- prayer groups, tutoring, well- elusive, subatomic particles that bition match to benefit the UW ness resources, and job training. may answer fundamental ques- Health Burn Center. The June “I would Thomas is also overseeing a tions about the nature of matter. 2016 event, held at the campus’s learn to retrofit to a nearby building that UW–Madison is collaborating LaBahn Arena, raised more will become a community center. on PROSPECT, and the U.S. than $50,000. It involved cur- trust myself Tim Berto MS’16 is one of Department of Energy recently rent and former players — espe- — my 34 early-career high school math awarded the project $3 million. cially those from the 2006 team judgment, and science teachers who have The Wisconsin Law Journal during the 10th-anniversary year my intellect, been chosen as Knowles Science has honored Amanda Riek of its national championship vic- Teaching Foundation teaching ’08, JD’11 as one of its 2016 tory, the sixth and most recent my good fellows. This honor includes Women in the Law. She’s a pub- NCAA title in UW history. heart.” five-year access to summer lic defender in the Sauk County For his body of work on Anne Corlett stipends, professional-develop- Public Defender’s Office and a LGBT refugees in Kenya, the ’82 ment funds, grants for materials, board of visitors member for the New York Foundation for the mentoring, and peer support. UW–Madison Department of Arts has awarded visual jour- Berto worked at UW–Madison Psychology, which she credits — nalist Jake Naughton ’10 of in a chemistry lab and as an along with her mentor, Professor Brooklyn, New York, a highly undergrad chemistry instructor Janet Hyde — with “instilling competitive Artists’ Fellow- and is now in his first year of in me that women can do any- ship in Photography and an teaching chemistry at Middleton thing they set their mind to and unrestricted cash grant. He’s a [Wisconsin] High School. that we should be fearless and frequent contributor to the New Michael Braun ’16 has courageous as professionals.” York Times and other national gone to New York City with his Meteorologist Dmitry media and a founding member freshly minted degree to roll out Smirnov MS’09, PhD’11 of the creative cooperative Black the start-up he’s founded, Avant is contributing his weather- Box who “loves … making story- Debut. He describes it as “an modeling expertise to the telling that transcends bound- DEATH NOTICES online marketplace for digital National Emergency Manage- aries and demands that people Brief death and physical art and media notices for ment Association’s Extreme … deeply engage with the crazy Wisconsin Alumni that seeks to empower emerg- Weather Adaptation work group. world in which we live.” Association (WAA) ing creators and eliminate the It’s developing better practices Xiaohoa Michelle Ching members and barrier to entry in owning and for emergency-management ’12 of San Leandro, California, friends appear in appreciating … art.” We’re excit- professionals who must prepare was a Teach For America (TFA) Badger Insider, ed to see what happens next as for and mitigate increasingly educator who has now earned WAA’s thrice-a- Braun adds works from creators severe and frequent natural a 2016 Social Innovation Award year magazine for worldwide to avantdebut.com. disasters. Smirnov works for in TFA’s competition for seed its members. You may also submit professional services firm funding and professional Class Notes/Diversions editor Paula full-length Dewberry in its Denver office. coaching to spark bold educa- obituaries for Wagner Apfelbach ’83 checked out of In June, Vince Trovato tional innovations. Ching is the online posting at popular culture around 1990, which ’09 became presidential candi- founder and CEO of Literator, uwalumni.com/ partly explains her poor performance date Donald Trump’s first paid an app that allows teachers to go/alumninotes. on the Flaming-Os trivia team.

60 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 Diversions

Book lovers, please visit goodreads.com/wisalumni — UW–Madison’s section of the book website Goodreads — for so much more about books by Badger alumni and faculty.

Bob Boone ’63’s book, If I Can, You Can: humorous, tender Transformation Made short-story collections Easy, leads readers Forest High and Back to generate their own to Forest High are, says satisfying futures. one reviewer, “simply told, hard-edged tales In the comprehensive from the lives of educa- Gender, Race, and Eth- tors and their students. nicity in the Workplace: These rich, multifacet- Emerging Issues and ed stories ring true with Enduring Challenges, details gleaned over 30-plus experts offer the course of a full life.” new management and The Glencoe, Illinois, mentoring approaches. BETTER AGING THROUGH ART author began teaching Margaret Foegen Changing our perceptions of aging is at the heart in 1964 and has written Karsten MBA’81, of The Penelope Project: An Arts-Based Odyssey to numerous texts and a UW–Platteville Change Elder Care, and it’s in the heart of coeditor creative-writing books. professor of human Anne Basting MA’90. She’s earned a 2016 MacAr- resource management, thur “genius” grant for her work In Religion and the edited the work. as an author, playwright, founder Struggle for European and president of TimeSlips Cre- Union: Confessional Coffee has become ative Storytelling, UW–Milwaukee Culture and the Limits an art form, and coffee theater professor, and founder of Integration, Brent houses are its galler- and coordinator of Creative Trust Nelsen MA’84, ies. Coffee Culture: Hot Milwaukee. Each MacArthur PhD’89 and James Coffee + Cool Spaces is fellow receives a no-strings- Guth ’66 use data to Robert Schneider attached grant of $625,000. chronicle the Refor- ’81, MS’85’s richly The book follows theater professionals, univer- mation-rooted cultural photographed ode to sity students, volunteers, and experts in educa- divide that has shaped 33 uncommonly beau- tion, long-term care, and arts practice who joined European attitudes tiful shops nationwide residents, family members, and staff at Wauwatosa, about integration and that brew great java Wisconsin’s Luther Manor continuum-of-care facil- identity — and that and foster interaction. ity. There they embarked on a challenging but trans- now threatens the EU’s The Minnetonka, Min- formative two-year journey to examine Homer’s The security and prosperity. nesota, author visited Odyssey from the perspective of Penelope, who wait- The coauthors, both each one to capture its ed for 20 years for her husband, Odysseus, to return political science profes- integrity and soul. from the Trojan War. The participants then combined sors at Furman Univer- theater, movement, poetry, music, and visual arts sity in Greenville, South Social media are now to stage Basting’s play Finding Penelope through- Carolina, offer the EU a essential in the market- out Luther Manor. In engaging all, the production pragmatic way forward. ing mixes of businesses, transcended the conventional limits of age, physical member-based associ- ability, cognitive status, and a regulated setting. “True success and ations, and nonprofits The Penelope Project boldly seeks to make late happiness belong to — but which platforms life and waiting — as Penelope waited — a time those who master the should they use? Brian of learning and creativity. This book is its practical, art of creating their Lee ’02 of Fitchburg, step-by-step guide and a lively, candid, inspiring, lives rather than getting Wisconsin, offers his and poignant project assessment that shows the better at changing take in Using Social essential roles that inclusion and the arts play in their circumstances,” Media for Business: our well-being as we age. says David Zelman 19 Ways to Use Popular A 371 Productions documentary film called MA’72, PhD’76, the Social Media Platforms Penelope follows Finding Penelope from planning founder and CEO of to Achieve Your Busi- to performance. Basting discussed it on Wisconsin the Dallas-based Tran- ness Objectives, Second Public Television’s Director’s Cut in June 2014. sitions Institute. His Edition.

On Wisconsin 61 You’ve made choices and Your life, your plan. you’ve reaped the rewards.

Being in charge of your own legacy is part of who you are. If there’s a plan, you’re going to be the one to make it. To discuss your goals, and ways to give back to the UW, contact the Office of Gift Planning at the University of Wisconsin Foundation. Scott McKinney at 608-308-5450. [email protected] supportuw.org/gift-planning

Come for the support. Stay for the success!

Nestled in the heart of the As part of the world-class University Innovation & UW-Madison campus, @1403 Research Park, @1403 offers isn’t your average building. It’s co-working, networking, and a community of talented, mentoring opportunities to help Entrepreneurship innovative folks who are turn big ideas into businesses. actively engaged in Madison’s Learn more: URPat1403.com Intersect @1403 entrepreneurial movement. (608) 441-8000

62 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 VARSITY

THE BUSTLE OF BADGERS ON BASCOM HILL. THE SUNBURST CHAIRS AND OUTBURSTS OF LAUGHTER AMONG FRIENDS ON THE TERRACE. #UWFALL LOVING UW–MADISON IN THE FALL. OnUWFALL.COM Wisconsin 63 COME BACK TO FIND YOUR “RE. ” Yi-Fu is a Vilas professor emeritus at UW-Madison. He did his homework and chose the only continuing care retirement community in downtown Madison. Now he can walk to work, enjoy the vibrancy of city living, and bask in the knowledge that his future SMARTEST is secure. Want to know more? MOVE Call 608-283-2046

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64 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 TODAY, CONSTRUCTION. TOMORROW, INSPIRATION.

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GOODSPEED FAMILY PIER WISCONSIN ALUMNI ASSOCIATION Destination Dotty Dumpling’s Dowry ANDYMANIS (4)

The Melting Pot — topped with cheddar, Swiss, and provolone cheeses; smoked bacon; and Dotty’s signature garlic sauce — is the most popular of the restaurant’s 15 original hamburgers. In 1969, Dotty Dumpling’s Dowry The memorabilia collection Twenty-three basketballs from began as an eclectic jewelry store keeps growing at Dotty’s current the Field House are mounted on in Des Moines. The establishment spot on North Frances, but owner an oak beam above Dotty’s dining didn’t begin serving hamburgers Rachael Stanley-Zerwer’s favor- room, representing Badger basket- until founder Jeff Stanley moved ite remains a metal sculpture of a ball wins by the undefeated 1913– operations to Madison in 1974 and motorcycle and its driver that her 14 squad and the 1940–41 national opened up on Monroe Street. father acquired for the Iowa shop. championship team.

66 On Wisconsin WINTER 2016 Helping Others — Now and Forever

Buck Parker came home from Vietnam and created a paradise on an old farm in central Wisconsin.

He hosts fellow veterans who find peace fishing in his ponds.

When melanoma spread through his body and his UW Carbone Cancer Center doctor suggested a clinical trial, Buck said yes. He wanted to help others even if it was too late for him. It wasn’t. The experimental drug melted his tumors. He’s more than five years cancer free.

And that new immunotherapy drug is now FDA approved and saving others’ lives. Hear Buck’s story and learn more about clinical trials at uwhealth.org/cancertrials

CC-46233-16

CC-46233 Buck Parker On Wisco.indd 1 9/7/16 9:43 AM UW Foundation Address Correction Department 1848 University Avenue Madison, WI 53726-4090

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From the moment you first set foot on Bascom Hill, you followed in the footsteps of Badgers dedicated to making a difference. Now it’s your time to lead. Make a gift to the University of Wisconsin’s Annual Campaign today. The Annual Campaign is that moment in time every year when alumni and friends give back to help the UW maintain its excellence in education. Be part of our story at Be a difference maker. allwaysforward.org