Lawrence University

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Environmental Sociologist Discusses “Sense of Place” in Lawrence University Environmental Studies Series Address

The importance of maintaining one’s “sense of place” and the need to create human connections to physical spaces will be the focus of the second installment of Lawrence University’s environmental studies lecture series on sustainable agriculture.

Gregory Peter, assistant professor of sociology at UW-Fox Valley, presents “Who Grew Your Supper? Sustainability, Sense of Place and the Legacy of the Land” Thursday, Feb. 3 at 4:45 p.m. in Science Hall, Room 102 on the Lawrence campus. The event is free and open to the public.

Peter will examine the generational connections farmers have traditionally maintained with the land and how those relationships are becoming increasingly jeopardized. In an age of growing industrial agriculture — a go-big-or-go-home environment — there are fewer farms, fewer farmers and consequently, an ever-diminishing sense of connection to the land. He will offer suggestions on how community members, in their role as every day consumers, can help promote and support sustainable agriculture.

Peter joined the UW-Fox Valley faculty in 2003 after spending three years teaching in the sociology department at James Madison University. He has written widely on issues of sustainable agriculture, including co-authoring the 2004 book “Farming for Us All: Postmodern Agriculture and the Cultivation of Sustainability.” He earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his Ph.D. in sociology at Iowa State University.

The lecture series is sponsored by the Spoerl Lectureship in Science in Society. Established in 1999 by Milwaukee-Downer College graduate Barbara Gray Spoerl, and her husband, Edward, the lectureship promotes interest and discussion on the role of science and technology in societies worldwide.

Nothing Trivial About This Birthday: Lawrence University’s Marathon of Minutia Turns 40!

Back when a first-class stamp set you back a nickel and the Beatles’ “We Can Work it Out” was tearing up the pop charts, Lawrence University student J.B. deRosset decided he would try to build a better mouse trap.

While no mice were ever caught with deRosset’s creation, he did manage to ensnare a generation of college students who, for the past 40 years, have turned matters of minutia into an annual 50-hour artform of outrageous questions and answers.

Welcome to the 40th edition of Lawrence University’s Great Midwest Trivia Contest, the nation’s longest-running salute to the obscure and inconsequential, where first-place prizes like toilet seats and bags of Ramen noodles are revered as badges of honor.

Broadcast on the Lawrence campus radio station, WLFM, 91.1 FM, the madness marathon begins Friday, Jan. 28 at the all-too-appropriately insignificant time of 10:00:37 and runs through midnight Sunday, Jan. 30. Fifty continuous hours of off-the-wall questions culled from the minds of a team of student “trivia masters,” all designed to challenge — and occasionally stump — even the best “Googlers.”

In honor of the contest’s 40th birthday, deRosset, who holds near cult-like status among Lawrence trivia diehards, is returning to the scene of the crime, flying to Appleton from his home in Miami, Fla., to spend the weekend as the contest’s guest of honor.

“J.B. is our Great Grand Master, our hero,” said Jonathon Roberts, a senior from Sturgeon Bay who is serving as this year’s trivia grand master. “If it weren’t for him we would just be sitting around staring blankly for 50 hours in a row this weekend. But because of him, we have an actual activity. For many of us, up until now he has just been an untouchable being of history. It will be an honor to finally meet the mythical legend.”

It was the dead of winter of 1966 when deRosset, then a senior at Lawrence, began plotting how to improve an idea he stumbled upon while visiting a woman-of interest who was attending Beloit College at the time.

“Some group at Beloit was putting on a trivia contest at their student union. My only recollection was that it was a lame, pathetic, pitiable attempt,” deRosset recalled of his original inspiration. “I knew it could be done a whole lot better. I came back to campus all enthused about how Lawrence could do a better job at a trivia contest.”

With the help of two friends who worked at the campus radio station at the time, deRosset started tinkering.

“The three of us created the synergy needed to create a weekend radio contest,” said deRosset, 61, who has since built a successful career doing legal and financial planning work for McDonald’s Corporation. “We spent a month or two drafting questions, each of us utilizing our particular specialty. Mine at the time was rock and roll. Somebody else watched too much TV, and another had comic books.”

The first contest — only 26 hours long — hit the airwaves in May of ’66, coinciding with Lawrence’s annual “Encampment Weekend,” an academic retreat in which select students and faculty members headed off to discuss issues of great importance. deRosset engaged those students who were left behind in an intellectual battle of a different sort, asking them to call in answers to esoteric questions asked during the course of a radio broadcast. The team that answered the most questions correctly received a fitting prize for a contest of this ilk: an old refrigerator filled with 45 rpm records.

Forty years later, the Internet has altered the trivia contest landscape — computers and laptops with high-speed network connections have gradually replaced mountains of almanacs, encyclopedias and reference books as the “weapons of choice” — but the spirit of the contest retains much of its original verve.

“Trivia is the perfect relief from the winter blues,” said Roberts. “Everyone is exhausted from the cold this time of year so the idea is, with 50 hours of sleeplessness, we push you over the edge into a world of complete ridiculous exhaustion. That’s the land where real creativity and fun lies.”

“And people love the prizes,” Roberts added. “I mean, where else can you win seven pounds of human hair and a broken TV in exchange for 50 hours of your life?”

At the time, deRosset had no idea his idea would have such staying power. But with the perspective of 40 years, he’s not entirely surprised, either.

“We had such great camaraderie that it was simply a blast that winter of 1965-66 putting together the concept and working on the details,” said deRosset. “I have to believe the same is still true today, even if the academics sometimes get in the way. It is sort of like playing football for USC or the University of Miami, but without the large payoff or the disabling injuries.

“From the listeners’ viewpoint, I don’t believe college humor will ever get old,” deRosset added. “As cable TV pushes the major networks to lower their taste thresholds to newly discovered subterranean depths, maybe the Lawrence trivia contest will not be that different. But I love the team names. I love the irreverence. I love all the strange pieces played during the contest, especially the Monty Python stuff. Most of all I love the brief relief it gives in an increasingly troubled world.”

From “Frying Nemo” and “Apocalypse Cow” to “Smarter Than the Average Bush,” creative, often outrageous and sometimes borderline offensive team names add a playful dash of fun to the weekend.

Playing this year as The West Bank of Kaukauna Concealing Weapons of Mass Deduction, a team of several dozen smarty pants twentysomethings who gather annually from eight states, including California and New York, has dominated the competition in recent years. The Bank, which has won four consecutive trivia titles and six of the last eight, will be among the 60 some teams expected to vie for this year’s off campus title. Joining the 8-10 on-campus teams this year will be a special team made up primarily of recent Lawrence alumni.

Bigger. Stronger. Faster. That is how Roberts promises to make this year’s 40th trivia contest.

“The 40th edition of the contest is a milestone,” said Roberts, “and we’re going to mark the occasion with harder questions, more extreme action questions, more ridiculous skits and more celebrity guest spots. We have been building this up
for 40 years now and let me tell you, trivia, like life, begins at 40.”

To help celebrate trivia’s 40th birthday appropriately, Roberts has organized a special “pre-contest” party Friday, Jan. 28 from 7:30-9 p.m. in Riverview Lounge of the Lawrence Memorial Union for all the trivia teams to gather and meet each other prior to waging their battle of wits.

New Lawrence President Jill Beck will make her trivia debut by asking the contest’s opening question, which by tradition, is always the final “Super Garruda” question from the previous year. All those paying attention should be able to start this year’s contest with an easy 100 points because they will know by now what casts a shadow on Jesus in the DeBakey Room in the Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas. Last year, no team was able to correctly identify the cupped hands on a sculpture of Dr. Michael DeBakey as the source of the shadow.

For additional information on the contest or how to register, visit http://www.triviaxl.com.

In addition to being broadcast on WLFM, the entire contest also will also be webcast at www.lawrence.edu/sorg/wlfm.

Lawrence University Names Hiram College Development Chief Associate Vice President

William Johnson, vice president and chief development officer at Hiram College in Ohio, has been named associate vice president for development and alumni relations at Lawrence University. He begins his new duties at Lawrence March 1.

Johnson brings more than 20 years of fund-raising and management experience to Lawrence, where he will be responsible for managing the college’s major and planned giving programs, corporate and foundation relations, annual giving, donor relations, information and systems support as well as alumni relations.

“Willie Johnson is not only a seasoned and accomplished advancement professional, but he also has a firm understanding of and commitment to liberal education,” said Greg Volk, Lawrence executive vice president. “I am confident that his enthusiasm and leadership skills will be of great value to Lawrence in bolstering an already strong and multifaceted development and alumni relations program.”

As Hiram’s vice president and chief development officer, a position he has held since March 1, 2003, Johnson oversees all of Hiram’s development operations, including the direction of a $53.5 million capital campaign currently in progress.

Prior to Hiram, Johnson spent nine years as the associate vice president for major gifts at Carthage College in Kenosha where he was responsible for the cultivation and solicitation of gifts of $5,000 and more.

During his career, Johnson also has served as the director of corporate relations at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and spent three years as the director of development and public relations for the Iowa Special Olympics. He became his fund-raising career in 1982 as the assistant director of development at Wartburg College.

A native of Des Moines, Iowa, Johnson earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration and social work at Wartburg and his master’s degree in business administration from Duke University.

Johnson and his wife, Sandy, have two children, a son Evan, 14, and a daughter, Chelsea, 13.

“Black Mountain Poet” Robert Creeley Gives Reading at Lawrence University

Robert Creeley, whose unique style featuring concise and emotionally powerful verse has inspired generations of poets, shares his work in a reading at Lawrence University.

Creeley will give a reading of some of his poems Thursday, Jan, 27 at 7:30 p.m. in Harper Hall in the Lawrence Music-Drama Center. A reception and book signing will follow. The event is free and open to the public.

Raised on a farm in West Acton, Mass., Creeley, 78, has produced an impressive body of work, including nearly 60 published volumes of his poems, a novel and numerous short stories and essays. His first published poem, “Le Fou,” appeared in 1952, but it was 1962’s “For Love: Poems 1950-1960,” a collection of verse in which he explored human relationships and common day events, themes that would become his hallmark, that earned him widespread acclaim.

Among his most recent works is a collection of poems entitled “If I Were Writing This,” (2003) “Just in Time” (2001) and “Life and Death” (2000), in which he examines his own mortality.

Early in his career, Creeley was best known for his association with the “Black Mountain Poets”” The talented group of writers — Robert Duncan, Charles Olson, Ed Dorn and Denise Levertov among them — all had some connection with the experimental North Carolina institution Black Mountain College, which attracted some of the most innovative writers and artists of the 1950s. It was during this period Creeley developed the tenet “form is never more than an extension of content” that would remain central to much of his work throughout his career.

“Creeley is the kind of poet that everyone in the highly-factionalized world of poets and poetry magazines appreciates,” said Faith Barrett, assistant professor of English at Lawrence, who is coordinating Creeley’s visit. “His work appeals to both experimental and mainstream writers and is widely read in university classes. It is a real coup for us to get a poet of his stature to come and share his work.”

Creeley attended Harvard University, but his education was interrupted by World War II. He left school to serve as an ambulance driver in Burma for the American Field Service. After the war, he returned to Harvard, but dropped out during the last semester of his senior year. He eventually earned his bachelor’s degree at Black Mountain College, where he also later taught and served as editor of the literary journal “The Black Mountain Review.”

Creeley’s work has earned him numerous prestigious awards, including two Guggenheim fellowships, both the Poetry Society of America’s Robert Frost Medal and the Shelley Memorial Award and Poetry magazine’s Levinson Prize. In 1987 he was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and served as New York State Poet from 1989-91.

After teaching stints at the University of New Mexico, the University of British Columbia and San Francisco State University, Creeley joined the English department at the State University of New York – Buffalo in 1967, where he taught until 2003. He currently serves as a distinguished professor in English for the graduate program in creative writing at Brown University.

Creeley’s appearance is supported by the Mia T. Paul Poetry Fund. Established in 1998, the endowed fund brings distinguished poets to campus for public readings and to work with students on writing poetry and verse.

Lawrence University Saxophonist Qualifies for National Music Competition

Lawrence University saxophonist Jesse Dochnahl earned a trip to the national finals of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) Young Artist competition with a winning performance Saturday, Jan. 15 in the collegiate woodwind division of the five-state East Central regional competition.

A senior music education and performance major from Ennis, Mont., Dochnahl was one of five state champions competing in the regional audition held at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He qualified for the regional competition after winning the state title last November.

Dochnahl, 21, who studies in the saxophone studio of professor of music Steven Jordheim, will join six other regional winners in Seattle, Wash., on April 4 for the national competition, where music division winners receive a $3,000 first-place prize and second-place finishers are awarded $1,500.

“Jesse’s success in the MTNA competition is an important achievement, both for Jesse and for Lawrence,” said Jordheim. “The East Central Region includes many strong university and conservatory programs in music performance and since students from graduate and artist diploma programs participate in this competition, the level of performance is very high.  Jesse’s strong showing in the competition is an affirmation of his fine talent and dedication to developing his skills to the highest level.”

The MTNA Young Artist competition is open to students 19-26 years of age. Participants in both the regional and national competition are required to play 40 minutes of music featuring contrasting pieces from two different time periods.

Playing alto saxophone, Dochnahl performed four works : Karlheinz Stockhausen’s “In Friendship”; “Flute Sonata in A minor” by C.P.E. Bach; “Scaramouche” by Darius Milhaud; and “The Nature of this Whirling Wheel,” a 1997 composition by former Lawrence music professor Rodney Rogers.

Sustainable Agriculture Focus of Lawrence University Environmental Studies Lecture Series

Fred Kirschenmann, director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, opens a four-part Lawrence University environmental studies lecture series that will examine issues related to sustainable agriculture.

Kirschenmann presents “Challenges and Opportunities Facing Agriculture in the 21st Century” Thursday, Jan. 20 at 4:45 p.m. in Science Hall, Room 102 on the Lawrence campus. The event is free and open to the public.

In the address, Kirschenmann will discuss the impending end of the current “neocaloric” state of agriculture and its heavy dependence on fossil fuels and other natural resources, suggest possibilities as to what agriculture will look like in the future and explore how these inevitable changes are likely to affect the way we relate to the world around us.

Appointed director of ISU’s Leopold Center in 2000, Kirschenmann is a national leader of the organic/sustainable agriculture movement and president of Kirschenmann Family Farms, a 3,500-acre certified organic farm in Windsor, North Dakota. He recently completed a five-year term on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Standards Board and has chaired the administrative council for the USDA’s North Central Region’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program.

Other talks in the series will include Gregory Peter, assistant professor of sociology at UW-Fox Valley discussing cultural connections to physical places and the future of farm land use (Feb.3); Jerry DeWitt, a University of Iowa extension coordinator addressing organic farming in the Midwest (Feb. 17); and Amy Kremen, a graduate student in the College of Argriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Maryland, speaking on federal legislation related to organic farming and food labeling (Feb. 24).

The lecture series is sponsored by the Spoerl Lectureship in Science in Society. Established in 1999 by Milwaukee-Downer College graduate Barbara Gray Spoerl, and her husband, Edward, the lectureship promotes interest and discussion on the role of science and technology in societies worldwide.

Lawrence University Psychologist Joins State Association Board of Directors

Gerald Metalsky, associate professor of psychology at Lawrence University, has been elected to the Board of Directors of the Wisconsin Psychological Association. Serving a three-year term that will run through December, 2007, Metalsky is the first Lawrence psychologist ever named to the WPA’s 13-member board.

Founded in 1950, the WPA is the official state affiliate of the American Psychological Association and supports psychology as a profession which promotes human welfare through the ethical application of psychological principles in research, teaching and practice. Its 500-person membership includes professionals from throughout the state, including licensed clinicians, administrators, teachers and researchers.

“The Wisconsin Psychological Association represents a very talented group of psychologists and we are always eager to put their specialized expertise to work,” said Sarah Bowen, executive director of the WPA. “Dr. Metalsky’s election to the Board of Directors means that the WPA will be able to draw upon his wealth of experience in both clinical and academic arenas.

“We are especially excited, however, by his strong commitment to teaching the next generation of professionals, since a focus on the future brings vitality to the organization and to the profession of psychology itself,” Bowen added.

“I’m thrilled to have this opportunity to help shape the direction of the practice and study of psychology in Wisconsin,” said Metalsky. “There are several very significant issues facing our profession, including prescription privileges for psychologists, so this is an exciting time to be joining the board of the state association. This honor is particularly gratifying since it is an affirmation from my fellow psychologists in Wisconsin.”

Metalsky joined the Lawrence faculty in 1992 after spending five years in the psychology department at the University of Texas. He has more than 20 years experience as an academic researcher and practicing clinical psychologist, specializing in adult and adolescent depression, stress, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, cognitive-behavioral therapy and general psychotherapy, especially short-term solution-focused therapies.

In addition to his teaching and research responsibilities at Lawrence, Metalsky directs the Anxiety, Stress and Depression Center, a private counseling service in Appleton, enabling him to bring clinical experiences to the classroom and provide opportunities for “real life” situations for his students.

He is a former associate editor and consulting editor of the “Journal of Abnormal Psychology,” the flagship publication of the American Psychological Association for research on psychopathology, and also serves as reviewer for nine other professional journals, including “Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.”

Metalsky earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of California-Berkeley and his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Lawrence University Violinist Wins State Chamber Orchestra Competition

Lawrence University violinist Burcu Goker earned first-place honors in the recent Concord Chamber Orchestra competition. The 19th annual competition, held Dec. 18 in Glendale, featured 16 string, woodwind, brass and percussion players. Musicians 25 years of age or younger who are residents of Wisconsin or attend a Wisconsin high school, college or university are eligible to compete.

A sophomore from Istanbul, Turkey, Goker received $500 for her winning audition and will perform Aram Khachaturian’s “Violin Concerto” in concert with the Concord Chamber Orchestra Wednesday, March 9 and Saturday, March 12.

Goker, who took up the violin at the age of eight and spent seven years studying the instrument in Paris, is a student in the studio of Lawrence Assistant Professor of Music Stephane Tran Ngoc. She is the third student of Tran Ngoc’s to win the CCO competition in the past four years, joining Julien Poncet, who won the competition in 2002 and Charlotte Maclet, the 2001 winner. In addition, Leslie Boulin-Raulet, who also studied under Tran Ngoc, was the CCO’s competition’s runner up in 2003.

The Concord Chamber Orchestra, featuring volunteer adult players from various professions and age groups, was founded in 1975 and performs under the direction of conductor Jamin Hoffman.

Ineffectiveness of Livings Wills Focus of Lawrence University Biomedical Ethics Lecture

A University of Michigan medical school and Ann Arbor VA research investigator argues that a staple of the American medical culture – the living will – does not nor cannot work in the second installment of Lawrence University’s four-part 2004-05 Edward F. Mielke Lecture Series in Biomedical Ethics.

Angela Fagerlin presents “Pulling the Plug on Living Wills: How Living Wills have Failed to Live up to Their Mandate,” Wednesday, Jan. 12 at 7 p.m. in Lawrence’s Wriston Art Center auditorium. The address, which will examine the shortcomings of living wills as well as the use of durable power of attorney as an alternative to living wills, is free and open to the public.

Living wills were originally created as a means of enabling an individual to maintain a certain level of control at the end of their life by detailing the types of treatment a person would like to receive or measures they would like taken should they become incapacitated and unable to make their own decisions. It is a document widely recommended by experts, recognized by law in nearly every state and one that hospitals are federally mandated to inform their patients about.

But in a recently published research paper, Fagerlin and her colleague Carl Schneider claim living wills consistently fail the basic criteria necessary for them to be effective, thus giving them little relevance in actual end-of-life decisions. According to Fagerlin, among the problems with living wills is the inability of most individuals to state their wishes accurately and understandably and having the document available when treatment decisions need to be made. The effectiveness of living wills, she argues, is further compromised by advances in medical technology and changes in an individual’s personal situation. The paper she co-authored was based on a review of hundreds of living wills and end-of-life decisions.

An internal medicine researcher in the University of Michigan medical school’s Program for Improving Health Care Decisions and the Ann Arbor Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center, Fagerlin earned her Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Kent State University. In addition to advanced directives and end-of-life decisions, she has written articles on topics ranging from racial differences in the treatment of prostate cancer to the use of decision aids to facilitate patient involvement in their medical care.

Lawrence University Students Look to “FLY” High in Quest to Build State’s Best Model Rocket

The sky is not the limit, but rather the goal for a team of four Lawrence University students who will attempt to reach the lower troposphere with their own hand-built rocket.

Nathaniel Douglas, Aditya Goil, Duncan Ryan and Rupesh Silwal will represent Lawrence next April in a student-designed rocket competition sponsored by the Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium. The contest will culminate with a rocket launch at the Bong Recreational Area in Kenosha County.

The foursome will compete as FLY, an acronym for Fellowship of Lawrence Yjigyasus. Yjigyasus is a Hindi word that means scholar or seeker of knowledge. FLY will be one of 11 teams representing seven Wisconsin colleges or universities participating in the first-time competition to determine the best model rocket builders.

Supported by funding from NASA, the WSGC will provide each team with $1,000 seed money, two motors, a tri-axial accelerometer and an altimeter. From that, each team will be required to fabricate a two-stage rocket that safely deploys its second stage and lands safely under an operating chute.

Achieving the highest altitude without exceeding a ceiling of 12,000 feet is one of four categories on which each team’s rocket will be evaluated. While flight height will account for nearly half (45%) of the evaluation, points also will be awarded for design analysis, oral presentation and assessment of data results. Professional engineers will score the competition, which comes with a first-place prize of $5,000. A second-place prize of $2,500 also will be awarded.

FLY was the serendipitous off-spring of a well-timed glance during a late-night study session in the physics department lounge. While collaborating on some homework, Goil and Silwal happened to spot a bulletin board flyer announcing an opportunity to launch rockets.

“That flyer sparked a conversation about the experiences we have had with rockets — lighting firecrackers and some mini-rocket modeling — and different movies and science shows we’ve seen about rockets,” explained Goil, a junior physics major from Mumbai, India. “The more we talked, it became clear we both had an interest in rocketry.”

The next day, Goil and Silwal approached Professor of Physics John Brandenberger with their interests and he agreed to serve as the team’s faculty mentor on the project. Fellow physics majors Douglas and Ryan were invited to join the team and suddenly FLY was born.

“Even though I have never built any sort of rocket before, I’m very excited about this competition,” said Silwal, a junior from Kathmandu, Nepal. “We’re confident that we can do a good job, but will it be good enough to win the competition? There should be a lot of strong teams and I’m sure that we will be up against a tough group of rocketeers.

“For me, this is really going to be as much about the experience as it is the competition,” Silwal added. “However it turns out, at the end of the day the experience of going through all this will be the one that I surely will remember as one of the best experiences of my undergraduate days.”

Along with Lawrence’s FLY, there will be will be four teams from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, two teams from the Milwaukee School of Engineering, and single entries from UW-Madison, UW-Oshkosh, Marquette University and Wisconsin Lutheran College vying for the rocket competition title.

The 26-member Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium was founded in 1991 as part of NASA’s National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program. Created in 1988 by an act of Congress, the NASA program works to address the national need for a highly skilled, technology-savvy workforce. The WSCG fosters the recruitment and support of students in science, mathematics and technology by funding research, student scholarships and outreach projects in a wide variety of fields related to aerospace.