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Lawrence University Psychologist Recognized for Contributions to Science Research

Peter Glick, professor of psychology at Lawrence University, has been elected a Fellow in the American Psychological Society for his contributions to the advancement of psychological science. He is the first psychologist at Lawrence ever accorded Fellow status by the APS.

Glick was one of only 19 psychologists nationally awarded fellowship status in the first of two rounds of elections this year. Fellow status recognizes APS members who have made “sustained, outstanding
contributions” to the science of psychology in the areas of research, teaching and/or application.

Founded in 1988, the APS is dedicated to the advancement of scientific psychology and its representation at the national level. It seeks to promote, protect and advance the interests of scientifically oriented psychology in research, application, teaching and the improvement of human welfare. Of the organization’s current 14,260 members, only 1,703 hold Fellow status.

In announcing Glick’s selection, the APS cited him for “enhancing the reputation” of the organization and helping the APS establish itself “as the major voice for scientific psychology.”

“It’s very gratifying to have the national organization for scientific psychology recognize my research,” said Glick. “It’s nice to know that such contributions are valued and appreciated.”

A social psychologist, Glick’s research interests focus on both the subtle and the overt ways in which prejudices and stereotypes foster social inequality. In research he co-authored, Glick introduced the
concept of “ambivalent sexism,” asserting that not just hostile, but subjectively benevolent views of women as pure, but fragile, reinforce gender inequality. Such “benevolent sexism,” Glick argues, rewards women for conforming to conventional gender roles and results in hostile attitudes toward women who fail to do so.

Glick and his research associate, Susan Fiske of Princeton University, developed the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, which has since been administered to more than 30,000 people in 30 countries. The research earned them the Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues in 1995.

“Peter’s election as APS Fellow puts him deservedly among a distinguished group of psychological scientists whose research greatly contributes to the growth of our knowledge,” said Fiske, former APS president from 2002-03. “His work has garnered an impressive array of adjectives from others in the field, including ‘innovative,’ ‘truly ground-breaking,’ ‘bold and clever’ and been hailed by as ‘important scholarly work’ and ‘sophisticated, both in its theoretical approach and its methods.'”

“Peter is one of those very rare scholars,” Fiske added, “whose insights can shape the direction of the field for decades.”

Glick serves on the editorial board of four professional journals, including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Psychology of Women Quarterly and regularly delivers lectures at major conferences and universities across the country as well as abroad. A member of the Lawrence faculty since 1985, Glick earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology at Oberlin College and his Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of Minnesota.

One Last Time: President Warch Delivers His Final Reunion Convocation

The following is a transcript of Lawrence President (1979-2004) Richard Warch’s final Reunion Convocation remarks, delivered in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel June 19, 2004.

I trust you will understand that I have anticipated this moment with mixed emotions for some time, and most especially in the last several weeks. In my recent letters to alumni, I’ve quipped that after Commencement, the final farewell event last Thursday, and Reunion Weekend, you could put a fork in me: I’ll be done.

That comment tripped rather easily off the word processor, but what began as an attempt to be lighthearted has taken on a greater and more poignant reality as the days have gone by. And so here we are — or at least here I am — for one last time. I’m pleased that this one last time is with Lawrence alumni and takes place in Memorial Chapel, one of the architectural icons of the campus. I’d like to take a moment to recognize with thanks the exceptional generosity of Dorothy Hoehn, who has provided Lawrence with the wherewithal to renovate the Chapel over the past decade and to thereby both retain its character and enhance its utility. We’re grateful.

President Warch, Reunion Convocation 2004

Though I’ll try to come up with a few clever quips before I’m done, I take seriously the fact that this is my final opportunity to speak with alumni as Lawrence president. Come to think of it, it’s my final opportunity to speak to anybody as Lawrence president, so settle down and buckle up.

Many of you have heard one or another version of my Valedictory remarks, which I have delivered 15 times over the past several months, coast to coast, north to south. For those of you who have not heard the speech, here’s the Cliff’s Notes version: Lawrence needs and deserves alumni endorsement and advocacy of its purposes and alumni support to further those purposes; liberal learning as professed at Lawrence in both college and conservatory is a powerful and life-changing, if often undervalued and misunderstood, brand of higher education, and it will thrive in the future to the extent that those who have experienced its virtues promote its persistence into that future. That’s the short version.

Here’s the shorter one: Give to The Lawrence Fund! Naturally, I have sought to be slightly more circumspect in conveying that message over the years and in recent months, but with 11 days to go, I say the hell with circumspection: Give to The Lawrence Fund! Or, as I put in a letter of acknowledgment to an alumnus I know pretty well: “Thanks for the gift. We can use the cash.”

Seriously, nothing would give me greater pleasure than seeing the alumni donor participation rate return — after a two-year absence — to the 50th percentile. Again borrowing from the Valedictory, I’ve been sharing with alumni a profound proposition, prompted by the fact that about 67 percent of you have made gifts to The Lawrence Fund at least once in the past three years. And here’s the insightful and innovative idea: if alumni made annual gifts annually — that is a difficult concept, so let me repeat it: if alumni made annual gifts annually — our donor participation rate would be truly enviable. We stood at 47 percent as of yesterday, so I assume a number of you in the Chapel this morning have the power to put us over the top or know those who can; I urge you to do your part and to spread the word.

But enough on that topic. I’ve only got 11 days to go, so won’t have many more opportunities to make the predictable presidential pitch and didn’t want to let this one pass by.

Presidential proclivities

One of the consequences of being a college president for 25 years is that one tends to exhaust the repertoire of quips and quotations; tends to repeat oneself; becomes, at best, known for certain turns of phrase and, at worst, for certain rhetorical devices, alliteration being the petard on which I’m most often hung. Over the past several months, various folks have had the proverbial picnic providing parodies of my proclivities (did I mention alliteration?).

First, there was the faux issue of the student newspaper, entitled The LaWarchian, written by a gang of 19 merry pranksters from classes of the early 1980s. They called it “affectionate abuse,” and while I am pleased to acknowledge the adjective, I can assure you that the noun is accurate. Abuse it was.

Then, Greg Volk had a run at me at the Founders Club dinner on May 6, in a speech entitled “Never Can Say Good-bye” or, as he put it, “Never Can Stop Saying Good-bye,” which he likes to consider a terrific testimonial tribute (did I mention alliteration?) but which contained more than a few friendly jabs.

Next, Brian Rosenberg, president of Macalester and former dean of the faculty at Lawrence, took his turn at giving me the business at the farewell event in Minneapolis last month, in which he said that it was a “great and good thing to speak of the values and virtues, not to mention the principles and purposes” that I’ve espoused over the years (did I mention alliteration?) and complimented me on being the “first college president to have his word processor retired by the editors of the Metaphors R Us website.”

Presidential prerogatives

And those are just from alumni and colleagues. The faculty — ah, the faculty — have had their own opportunities, which they have seized with reckless relish and devilish delectation, most often at the Senior Class Dinner. No faculty speaker, it seems, can concoct a set of remarks for that occasion that does not use me as a prop; a few years ago I was a physical prop and just a month ago a Photo-Shopped prop on a take-off of The Matrix called The LUtrix.

On the day the Board of Trustees selected me as the 14th president, Ed West [’32] took me aside and told me that I would be responsible for everything. Art Remley overheard the remark and told me that, as president, his grandfather, “Doc Sammy” Plantz, often did the shopping for the dining rooms.

That sense of presidential oversight and involvement with everything has certainly obtained for me over the past quarter century, but at least I haven’t received a letter from a faculty member resembling the one Professor of English W. E. McPheeters sent to Sammy Plantz in 1921 (he’d written on the same topic a year earlier, evidently to no good effect):

Dear Doctor Plantz:
The ivy has grown over my office window to such an extent that when the leaves are out almost all the light is barred from the room. I would be very much obliged if you would have this cut away. It ought to be done now, I presume, before the leaves come out. A great deal of filth from the vines as well as from the birds that nest in them has accumulated just outside the window of my office. Will you please have the man who cuts the vines clear this away also, as it is not only unsightly but insanitary.

But, if the faculty have not harassed me about overgrown ivy and bird droppings, the students have had their moments, often about food service or other matters that strike them as a perverse example of the Lawrence Difference. Their complaints are familiar, as I had the same ones when I was in college. Our culinary question was this: “How can we have leftover lamb when we never had lamb?”

The students have had at me on other fronts as well. Over the years I have found myself interviewed in the Coffeehouse by an undergraduate who seemed to be auditioning to replace David Letterman, have been the subject of ”The Warch Hour” on Trivia Weekend, have gotten roped in to singing “O’er the Fox” for a musical show put on by a student I had taught in Freshman Studies, and have helped students raise money for worthy causes by having whipped cream pies thrown at my face, being placed in a dunk tank, and other moments of a like sort, none of which were intended to honor the dignity of the office, to say nothing of bolstering the self-esteem of the 14th holder of the office. I’ve had my face plastered on t-shirts and on reunion postcards, usually with some clever slogan appended. And I’m not even going to touch the April Fool’s edition of The Lawrentian. My principal claim to fame in that annual effort is that I share center stage with Bert Goldgar in providing grist for the undergraduate humor mill.

Among the indignities I’ve experienced over the years are those that deal with my name. Last spring, a student asked me why I spelled it that way, and I had to confess that my mother had come up with that version by reading Rudyard Kipling’s story about Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. At least she didn’t nickname me Tikki.

Nonetheless, I have received salutations addressed to Ric with a c, sometimes with a c and a k. There are those who have, in a failed effort to feign friendly familiarity (did I mention alliteration?), called me Dick; actually, my sons Stephen and David often called me Dick, but that was when they were upset with one of my parental rulings. My last name has been spelled like the month or like a swampy area, and while one obsequious writer saluted me as The Distinguished Richard Warch — though that letter was postmarked from overseas and written by someone who didn’t know any better — my favorites are letters addressed to me — inexplicably — as Shannon Warch and, at the top of the list, and two times, no less, as Richard Worst.

All of which is to say that, after 25 years, I have come to the conclusion that to be the Lawrence president is to be treated like a piñata by the various constituencies of the institution. And I am pleased to pass these particular and peculiar presidential prerogatives (did I mention alliteration?) on to Jill Beck with my best wishes.

The lady with the Manhattan

Of course, not everyone taking a whack at the piñata does so with the intention to be humorous; not all the abuse is affectionate. I’ve certainly had reason to confirm Abraham Lincoln’s claim that you can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time.

In the course of a quarter century, there is a high probability that you will make decisions or take actions that will irritate somebody, and over time, those somebodies can constitute a considerable crowd. But that comes with the territory, and while I have not become wholly inured to the expressions of such aggravation, I have tried to soldier on. The secret, as Casey Stengel put it, “is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided.”

There are, of course, some minor pleasures even here. As when one faculty member, with whom I had, shall we say, a difference of opinion, told me that he would outlast me at Lawrence and get his way eventually. I had the good grace not to remind him of that comment when he retired.

And then, of course, there are the alumni who, disagreeing with this or that policy or action, play the infamous “Not another dime” card. In these cases, the satisfaction comes from discovering, upon investigation of the donor rolls and records, that it turns out that most of them had not given the first dime, therefore mitigating the threat not to contribute another one.

Then there were the alumni who attended an event several years ago in the early stages of the dispute with the fraternities who passed out literature and treated the question-and-answer portion of the evening as a deposition of yours truly. I’m pleased to report that, a few months ago, following the settlement of that dispute, one of those alumni had the good grace and humor to stand at the question-and-answer portion of a farewell tour event to ask me if I would appreciate it if he didn’t ask a question, to which I replied in the affirmative.

I have many memories of alumni gatherings around the country, and memories especially of Reunion Weekends. The first time I took a tour to visit alumni was when I was serving as vice president for academic affairs and then-director of alumni relations Gil Swift [’59] took me to Chippewa Falls, Minneapolis, and Duluth. I had prepared a set of remarks, though when we got to Duluth for a mid-day luncheon gathering, only four women showed up, one of them from the Class of 1929.

We assembled at 11:30, and the member of the Class of 1929 promptly ordered a Manhattan. Hmmm, I thought, this could get interesting. In any case, with only four people there, I decided not to deliver my remarks but indicated I’d be pleased to respond to questions and have a conversation, at which point one of the women said, “I understand that there are coeducational residence halls at Lawrence, and will you please explain that?”

As I paused to contrive a response, the lady with the Manhattan piped up and said, “When I was at Lawrence, George Smith [I forget the name, but let’s say George Smith] got caught climbing through a window at Ormsby Hall [then housing women], and he and 11 sophomore women were kicked out of college.” She took a sip of her drink, and continued: “He went on to play football in Green Bay, and that’s why they’re called the Green Bay Peckers.”

Well, that defused any questions about coeducational residence halls and prompted me to think that Lawrence alumni were likely to be a lively and engaging group. I’ve not been disappointed. I’ve had wonderful visits with alumni since, but nothing to top that first encounter.

My first memory of Reunion Weekend dates from around the same time, when I was still the chief academic officer, and the alumni office assigned various members of the administration to serve as hosts for individual reunion classes. Margot and I were duly assigned and faithfully showed up and sat at a dinner table in Alexander Gymnasium with members of the class. At which point, the members of the class at the table promptly got up and moved elsewhere. It was not an auspicious beginning, though it has gotten better since, perhaps because we serve adult beverages and provide meals for some of the milestone reunion classes.

Over the past 25 years, I’ve welcomed over 20,000 alumni to this festive occasion and had the privilege and pleasure of conveying outstanding service and achievement awards to 158 of you, including the six this morning. I’ve enjoyed each of these celebratory weekends and appreciate the efforts all of you make to be here and to celebrate, appreciation that is shared, I might add, by the tavern owners along College Avenue, whose annual profits depend almost entirely on

Lawrence reunion weekends

I do want you to know that alumni — along with students, faculty, and friends — have also provided counsel to me over the past quarter century, leading me to realize that being a college president is the easiest job in the world: everyone knows how to do it and will cheerfully inform you of the fact.

Still and all, I look back on my Lawrence years and my interactions with alumni with gratitude and pleasure. I have heard your recollections of favorite professors and the ways in which your liberal education has served you long beyond graduation. I have derived reinforcement from you in appreciating the abiding value of Freshman Studies, and the transforming nature of a Lawrence experience.

Herding cats

I have embraced the traditions of the college; have promoted its special brand of liberal learning, in and beyond Freshman Studies; have acknowledged and sought to sustain and extend the contributions of a distinguished array of presidential predecessors; and have relished the opportunities to work with an assemblage of bright, interesting, engaged — if sometimes contentious — cohort of faculty members, the vast majority of whom I had the privilege of hiring and promoting.

Say what you will about the old adage that dealing with faculty is like herding cats, or that faculty are people who think otherwise, or that they are individuals, not to say independent contractors, who are not always amenable to “direction.” Indeed, faculty members sometimes respond to such direction like Bartleby the Scrivener: they “prefer not to.”

But, a feisty faculty is, frankly and for the most part, a first-rate faculty; that’s not, I’ll grant you, a causal relationship, but the traits are often paired. “Docile” is not a word I would apply to them, although on occasion “rebarbative” is (look it up!). But that too comes with the territory.

I know I’ll miss the company of such people and the stimulation they provide. They and those whom many of you remember from your Lawrence years carry the teaching and learning mission of college and conservatory forward with excellence, share the commitment to Lawrence and its purposes that you hold, and are a group I am proud to leave for Jill Beck.

The same may be said of students. To be sure, there are moments when their youthful behaviors whiten the hair, though at least those behaviors have not caused me to lose it (the hair, that is). At times one feels like the basketball coach who lamented “How would you like it if your job depended on a bunch of youngsters in shorts running up and down the court?”

But Lawrentians are a great group, and they achieve many moments of insight and accomplishment in their academic and creative pursuits. Observing the ways in which they grow and flourish in the college years is one of the great rewards of the job. I’ll miss them too.

Two years ago, when I was discussing my intention to retire with Harold Jordan [’72] and Jeff Riester [’70], then respectively chair and vice chair of the Board of Trustees, they told me not to feel dispirited if all that I might wish to see accomplished at and for Lawrence did not come to pass on my watch. That was good advice, though I am obviously pleased that the settlement with the fraternities has been accomplished and that the slate on that score is essentially clean for Jill Beck.

Leaving Lawrence

One often reads about departing college presidents who say that they’ve been in the job long enough, or that they have accomplished all they set out to do, or who leave for presumptively greener pastures. Clearly, whatever numerical figure one places on the notion of “long enough,” I’ve blown by it. And any college president who claims a completed set of accomplishments may have set his or her sights too low or may have served an institution without ambitions. However long one serves, there is always more to be done, challenges to be met, improvements to be made, initiatives to be imagined and undertaken. So while the tenure of a college president occurs in a fixed period, the job of a college president is ongoing. It is Jill Beck’s good fortune to have the chance to assume that ongoing job at Lawrence. And while other pastures may appear greener, the Lawrence pasture has been green enough for me.

Margot and Rik Warch, Reunion Convocation 2004

Leaving Lawrence is, of course, difficult and bittersweet. I will miss the place and its people and especially the good friends I have been privileged to make here. I have been deeply touched by the notes and letters of well wishes extended to me by many of you; by the expressions of affection and support I have received from our alumni and friends on the farewell tour — including the “affectionate abuse” provided by the 19 alumni who produced “The LaWarchian”; by the thoughtfulness of the emeriti faculty in honoring Margot and me at a lunch in April and establishing a book fund at Lawrence in our names; by the spirited farewell and gifts from members of the alumni board, who feted and serenaded me at their spring meeting; by the recognition and the gifts from India, Ghana, and Jamaica from the students in Lawrence International at their International Cabaret; by the magnificent result of the Thanks Rik! Campaign, to which many contributed so generously, that will establish an endowed fund to support Björklunden; by the parting recognition conveyed by Mortar Board with its Honorary Award conveyed at the Honors Banquet last month; by the LUCC recognition, the Hyde Park bench and the Lawrence letter jacket from the all-campus farewell on June 5; by the print of my favorite Winnie-the-Pooh quotation from the residence life staff, commemorating my proclivity for reading bedtime stories to students; by having the Lawrence rowing club’s new shell named for me and Margot and christening it a week and a half ago; by the plot of moon acreage given me by the women in Sampson House; and by the bench and a Winifred Boynton cartoon given to me by members of my administrative staff three days ago.

I am also pleased that David Heller [’80], a member of the first class I taught at Lawrence when he was a freshman, has returned to play the organ this morning. If you want to hear the Brombaugh Opus 33 in full voice and some smash-mouth music, I urge you to stay for the postlude.

I assure you that leaving Lawrence is a physical act, not an intellectual or emotional one. Lawrence will be much on my mind in the months and years ahead, and it will be the focus of and the inspiration for the writing I plan to do in that time. And as an added bonus, I know that Björklunden is only 20 miles away from our retirement home in Ellison Bay.

The years ahead

Finally, then, to John Reeve [’34], who chaired the Board of Trustees in 1979, and to Jeff Riester, Class of 1970, who chairs it today, and to others who served with them on the presidential search committee in 1979, I extend thanks for the opportunity.

And to all of you, let me leave you with this last word: There is a Celtic saying that goes “we are warmed by fires we did not build, we drink from wells we did not dig.” And so might it be said that we are educated at colleges we did not create. But we can stoke the fires, we can maintain the wells, and we can support the colleges, in the present instance this college. None of us created Lawrence, but all of us have benefited from it, and thus I hope will work to sustain and enhance the college for the benefit of those yet to come. For you are not only Lawrence’s alumni, but also its stewards.

To all of you who claim Lawrence as alma mater and who share my great regard for its values and for the important work that it does, thanks for your devotion to this special place and the support you’ve extended to the college and to me for the past quarter century.

I urge you to do the same for Lawrence and for Jill Beck in the years ahead.

Eight Alumni Recognized for Career Achievement, Service at Lawrence University Reunion Celebration

For nearly 30 years, Jean Schumaker has been working on mechanisms for improving the learning effectiveness of students with learning disabilities as well as the instructional effectiveness of teachers.

The co-founder of the Center for Research on Learning at the University of Kansas, Schumaker is one of eight Lawrence University graduates who will be recognized Saturday June 19 for their accomplishments and service as part of the college’s annual Reunion Weekend celebration.

Lawrence will welcome nearly 1,000 alumni and guests from 42 states and four countries, including Australia and South Africa, back to campus for a variety of weekend-long activities. Three alumni will be recognized with distinguished achievement awards and five will he honored with service awards during the annual reunion convocation Saturday at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel.

Schumaker and David Hawkanson, executive director of Chicago’sSteppenwolf Theatre, will receive the Lucia R. Briggs Distinguished Achievement Award. Named in honor of the second president of Milwaukee-Downer College, the Briggs award recognizes alumni of more than 15 years for outstanding contributions to and achievements in a career field.

A 1968 graduate with a major in psychology, Schumaker co-founded UK’s Center for Research Learning in 1978 and serves at its associate director today. Also an associate professor in the UK’s department of special education, Schumaker is regarded as one of the nation’s leading researchers in the field of learning disabilities.

She has been principal investigator of research grants and contracts totaling nearly $60 million and has written more than 80 articles for professional journals, 29 book chapters and 45 books and instructional manuals for classroom teachers, including “Teaching Every Adolescent Every Day: Learning in Diverse High School Classrooms,” which she co-edited.

Schumaker also founded the International Training Network (ITN), whose 1,200 trainers teach educators throughout the world to use the scientifically based instructional practices developed by the CRL. In 1983, she established Edge Enterprises, an educational research and publishing organization that provides specialized instructional materials to educators.

She earned her Ph.D. in development and child psychology from the University of Kansas and was trained as a somatic experiencing practitioner in trauma therapy by the Ergos Institute. She is a member of the University of Kansas Women’s Hall of Fame and have been a recipient of the Outstanding Achievement Award of the Council for Exceptional Children’s Division for Learning Disabilities.

Hawkanson, who earned a bachelor’s degree in theatre and drama in 1969, has enjoyed a distinguished 30-year professional career managing regional theatres across the country. Prior to being named executive director of Steppenwolf Theatre in 2003, Hawkanson spent six years (1996-2001) as managing director of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, where he first began his career as a house manager in 1970. He also has held managerial positions with the American Conservatory Theater, served as managing director of the Arizona Theater Company and spent eight years as managing director at the Hartford Stage Company, which received a special Tony Award in 1989 for outstanding achievement in regional theatre while under his management.

Before joining Steppenwolf, Hawkanson maintained a management consulting practice with clients in Arizona, Connecticut, Oregon, Minnesota, New Mexico and Illinois. He has served as an artistic advisor to the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, been a program committee member for
the National Arts Stabilization Fund and worked as a panelist and advisor to both the Ford Foundation’s Working Capital Fund and the Minneapolis Foundation’s Working Capital Reserve Fund.

In addition, he is a former senior staff member at the National Endowment for the Arts and a former chairman and panelist for the theatre program of the NEA. He has served as an officer and board
member of the Alliance for Arts Advocates, Theater Trustees of America, the Theatre Communications Group, Minnesota Citizens for the Arts, New York Stage and Film and the American Arts Alliance.

Mary Louise Knutson, a 1988 graduate and piano performance major, will receive the Nathan M. Pusey Young Alumni Distinguished Achievement Award, which recognizes Lawrence alumni of 15 years or less for significant contributions to and achievements in a career field. The award honors the 10th and youngest president of Lawrence and an exemplary figure in higher education in the 20th century.

A jazz pianist and composer based in Minneapolis, Knutson has been called “one of the most exciting and innovative artists to happen to jazz piano in quite some time.” Her debut jazz trio CD, “Call Me When You Get There,” spent eight consecutive weeks in the top 50 in the United States and Canada following its 2001 release and earned Knutson “Top New Jazz Instrumentalist of the Year” honors. The CD’s title track composition was selected as the music for the art documentary “Wellington Lee: 60 Years of Artistic Photography” and soon will be heard at major art museums across the country. She has performed with jazz greats Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby McFerrin, Dianne Reeves, Slide Hampton, Richie Cole and Greg Abate, among others as well as Smoky Robinson, the Osmonds and Engelbert Humperdinck. She has toured internationally as lead keyboardist for Synergy (formerly known as Rupert’s Orchestra) and regularly plays clubs, festivals and concert halls around the country with her jazz trio or as a soloist.

Knutson has been honored numerous times as a composer, including two awards from Billboard magazine for her compositions “How Will I Know? and “Meridian.” In addition, her composition “Merle the Pearl” streams on the Internet as the theme music for “Jazz Release,” an interview program on JazzSteps.com.

A former instructor in jazz piano and improvisation at Carleton College, Knutson is a member of the International Association for Jazz Education and teaches a variety of masterclasses, including “Jazz Voicings and Scales: Freedom from the Written Page” for beginning jazz students and “What’s Up with Jazz?” for non-musicians.

William Mittlefehldt, a 1968 graduate, will receive the George B. Walter Service to Society Award. Named in honor of Walter, a 1936 graduate and former faculty member and dean of men at Lawrence, who believed strongly that every individual can and should make a positive difference in the world, the award recognizes alumni who best exemplify the ideals of a liberal education through socially useful service in their community, the nation or the world. Since 1974, Mittlefehldt has taught social studies, futuristics, environmental issues and — by example — community service at Anoka High School in Minnesota with imagination, energy and personal commitment.

Widely recognized as the author of innovative and effective curricula, Mittlefehldt’s economics curriculum “Minnesota, Where Are We Growing?” earned first-prize honors in the 1987 National Economics Award Program. In 1992, he was honored by the Amway Corporation and Time magazine as one of nine “Earth Teachers of the Year” for his curricular unit “Energy: How Weather Is Created,” which also earned Anoka High School a $10,000 grant from Amway. In 2002, Mittlefehldt was named a regional winner of the NASDAQ Distinguished Teaching Award and most recently, he was a first-place winner at the secondary-school level of the 3M-sponsored Innovative Economic Education Awards.

Mittlefehldt has led student teams to testify before the United Nations, the U.S. House of Representatives Budget Committee and the Minnesota legislature and has directed numerous other student ventures into the realm of education through activism. He serves on the national advisory board for Rescue Mission Planet Earth, is an advisor to Vermont’s Center for a Sustainable Future and serves as a curriculum designer for the Water on the Web team at the University of Minnesota.

Kelly Carroll Rhodes, a 1989 graduate, and Gina Perri Jaeckl, a 1994 graduate, will each receive the Marshall B. Hulbert Young Alumni Service Award. Presented to alumni of 15 years or less who has provided significant service to the Lawrence, the award honors Marshall Hulbert, a 1926 graduate known as “Mr. Lawrence,” who contributed to thousands of Lawrentian lives and served the college and the conservatory in many significant capacities for 54 years.

Rhodes, Edina, Minn., has served as class secretary for her class for 11 of the 15 years since she graduated. She has served on all three reunion steering committees and has volunteered as a career contact and an admissions volunteer. In 2003, she completed a four-year term on the Lawrence University Alumni Association Board of Directors, during which she was a member of the student relations committee and later assumed leadership of the careers committee, which included serving on the board’s executive committee.

Jaeckl, Chicago, has been active with her 5th- and 10th-year reunion steering committees and also served on the gift committee for her 10th Reunion this year. She has worked as a volunteer for the admissions program and served for three years as a career contact. In addition, she has helped organize and host alumni events in the Chicago region and been active the Viking Gift Committee, soliciting support from young alumni for The Lawrence Fund.

Husband and wife Walter and Barbara Ives Isaac, Lakewood, Colo., will share the Gertrude B. Jupp outstanding Service Award. Named in honor of Gertrude Jupp, a 1918 graduate of Milwaukee-Downer College who was named M-D Alumna of the Year in 1964 for her long volunteer service to the college.

Both members of the class of 1964, the Isaacs have served as key alumni leaders, working on every reunion committee since they graduated. Barbara Isaac has served as a volunteer admissions worker in the Denver area for more than 20 years, coordinating countless admissions events and persuading many Denver high school students to enroll at Lawrence.

Walter Isaac served on the Lawrence University Alumni Association Board of Directors for six years, where he chaired the communications committee for two years and served on the executive committee for four. He served as president of the LUAA from 2001-03.

Lawrence University Psychologist Awarded Norwegian Marshall Fund Grant to Study Cross-Language Speech Perception

Lawrence University psychologist Terry Rew-Gottfried has been awarded a 10,000 kroner grant (approximately $1,500 U.S.) by the Norwegian Marshall Fund Committee to conduct research on cross-language differences in speech perception. The grant will help support his sabbatical research during April and May of 2005 in Trondheim, Norway.

Rew-Gottfried will pursue a two-part research project while in Norway. The first phase is an extension of earlier work he conducted in Denmark comparing Danish and English spectral and durational information in vowels. In collaboration with a Norwegian colleague, he will investigate differences in how Norwegian listeners, in comparison to Danes, perceive the vowel contrasts of their native and their second language.

The second part of his research will focus on determining whether the use of linguistic tones in Norwegian provides native speakers of that language with an advantage in learning the lexical tones of Mandarin Chinese. Mandarin Chinese uses phonemic tones that are primarily cued acoustically by contours of pitch. For example, the syllable ma means “mother,” “hemp,” “horse,” or “scold,” depending on whether the pitch is high-level, mid-rising, low-dipping or high-falling, respectively. Like Mandarin, Norwegian varies pitch contour in some words to indicate different meanings. While American English listeners have considerable difficulty in differentiating the phonemic tones of Mandarin, native Norwegian listeners may have less difficulty, given their native language’s use of linguistic tone to make phonemic distinctions.

Rew-Gottfried’s research is expected to address more broadly the question in psycholinguistics and second language learning of what factors help or hinder language learners in speaking and understanding a second language. Learners vary considerably, according to Rew-Gottfried, in their ability to achieve native-like competence in producing and perceiving speech sounds. The research has important implications for theories of speech processing across many different languages.

A member of the Lawrence psychology department since 1986, Rew-Gottfried has spent more than 20 years investigating the effect of second-language learning on listeners’ ability to identify and discriminate unfamiliar speech sounds, how acoustic characteristics of different languages differ with the context in which they are spoken as well as the relationship of musical ability and second-language learning.

He spent the fall 2001 academic term as a Fulbright Visiting Lecturer/Research Scholar at the English department of Aarhus University in Aarhus, Denmark, teaching the psychology of language and conducting collaborative research on the duration and rate effects on American English vowel identification by native Danish listeners.

Rew-Gottfried has also conducted research on memory, including eyewitness memory and the use of perceptual imagery in improving recall. He earned his Ph.D. in experimental psychology at the University of Minnesota.

Lawrence University Art Historian, Chemist Recognized for Teaching Excellence

Art historian Carol Lawton was cited with an unprecedented third teaching award and chemist Karen Nordell was recognized for her teaching prowess among junior faculty Sunday, June 13 at Lawrence University’s 155th commencement.

Lawton, professor of art history, received Lawrence’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, given annually to a faculty member for outstanding performance in the teaching process, including the quest to ensure students reach their full development as individuals, human beings and future leaders of society.

Nordell, assistant professor of chemistry, was presented the Young Teacher Award in recognition of demonstrated excellence in the classroom and the promise of continued growth.

The recipient of the college’s Young Teacher Award in 1982 and the Freshman Studies Teaching Award in 1998, Lawton is Lawrence’s only faculty member ever recognized with all three teaching honors.

A specialist in ancient Greek sculpture, Lawton joined the Lawrence art department in 1980. She has made numerous research trips to Greece to work with the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, where she is pursuing study on Greek and Roman votive reliefs excavated from the Athenian Agora, the center of civic activity of ancient Athens.

She is the author of the book, “Attic Document Reliefs of the Classical and Hellenistic Periods,” (Oxford University Press, 1995) and has received research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the J. Paul Getty Trust. She serves as curator of Lawrence’s Ottilia Buerger Collection of ancient and Byzantine coins.

In presenting the award, Lawrence President Richard Warch cited Lawton’s faculty colleagues, who describe her teaching as “solid,” “demanding,” “tough-minded” and “characterized by an unremitting emphasis on precision and consistently high standards.”

“Art history majors credit you with igniting their passion for the subject and non majors relish the ways in which your courses broaden their educational horizons,” Warch said. “Your love of stone and how beautiful it can become in the hands of a Greek sculptor led you to carve out a niche for yourself in ancient art history. Your research with Greek and Roman votive reliefs emphasize not only the beauty of the objects themselves, but what the objects tell us about the culture, religion and politics of their period.”

A native of Oakland, Md., Lawton earned her bachelor’s degree in art history from Vassar College and her Ph.D. in art history from Princeton University.

Nordell, who joined the Lawrence chemistry department in 2000, is a specialist in materials chemistry, specifically nanoscale science, which focuses on the manipulation of matter at the smallest level, literally atom-by-atom.

In 2002, with the help of a grant from the Women’s Fund of the Community Foundation of the Fox Valley Region, Nordell co-founded the outreach program PRYSM — Partners Reaching Youth in Science and Math. The program matches women students at Lawrence who are majoring in one of the sciences or mathematics with eighth-grade girls from Appleton’s Roosevelt Middle School. The Lawrence students serve as mentors and role models to their younger counterparts, providing tutoring assistance, conducting experiences and leading occasional field trips of scientific interest.

Warch cited Nordell’s “infectious enthusiasm” and her “genuine interest in her students” in recognizing her.

“They {students} admire and appreciate the limitless energy and passion for teaching you bring to all you do, praise expressed not only by chemistry majors but by the scientifically challenged as well,” Warch said. “Through your work with Partners Reaching Youth in Science and Math, known to us as PRYSM, and Girls Exploring Math and Science,
referred to as GEMS, you, your students and your colleague Eugenie Hunsicker have provided important role models for young girls in their early encounters with these disciplines.”

A graduate of Appleton East High School, Nordell earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Northwestern University and her Ph.D. in chemistry at Iowa State University.

Lawrence University Honors Two State Teachers as “Outstanding Educators”

Victor Akemann, an advanced biology teacher at Stevens Point Area Senior High (SPASH) and Karen Johnson-Zak, who teaches French at Gibraltar High School, will be honored as the 41st and 42nd recipients of Lawrence University’s Outstanding Teaching in Wisconsin Award Sunday, June 13 during the college’s 155th commencement. Both will receive a certificate, a citation and a monetary award.

Established in 1985, the teaching award recognizes Wisconsin secondary school teachers for education excellence. Recipients are nominated by Lawrence seniors who attended high school in Wisconsin. They are selected on their abilities to communicate effectively, create a sense of excitement in the classroom, motivate their students to pursue academic excellence while showing a genuine concern for them in as well as outside the classroom.

A former marine mammal scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who studied Dall’s porpoise in the north Pacific Ocean near Seattle, Akemann has taught advanced biology at SPASH since 1990.

In 1994, he co-founded Wisconsin’s first charter school — the Education for Sustainable Development Charter School (ESDCS) — a school-within-a-school at SPASH focusing on the interplay between the environment, the economy and social equality. Since the fall of 2002, he also has served as ESDCS’s program director.

Senior Allison Dietsche praised Akemann’s unbridled enthusiasm for his subject matter and commitment to working with individual students in nominating him for the teaching award.

“You always knew he was genuinely excited,” Dietsche said in her nomination letter. “He was animated in the classroom when he taught an always had awesome class projects planned. He made himself available early in the morning or after school and always made time for his students.

“He refueled my love for biology. If Mr. Akemann wasn’t the inspirational teacher that he is, I would not be as successful as I am today,” Dietsche added.

A member of numerous professional organizations, including the National Center for Science Education and the National Science Teachers Association Akemann was recognized in 2002 as Wisconsin’s outstanding biology teacher of the year by UW-Stevens Point. In 2003, Akemann was one of eight teachers honored from a national list of 78 nominations by the University of Minnesota with its outstanding science teacher of the year award.

Before starting his teaching career, Akemann spent two years with the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute in Ashland as a producer of nationally-syndicated radio news programs on ecological issues.

Originally from Milwaukee, Akemann earned his bachelor’s degree in biology at Northland College and will complete his master’s degree in education at UW-Stevens Point this summer.

Johnson-Zak, a graduate of Gibraltar High School herself, began her 33-year teaching career at Farnsworth Junior High School in Sheboygan before returning to her alma mater, where she has served as a one-person French department since 1973.

Shortly after returning to Gibraltar, she began organizing “immersion” field trips to France, leading as many as 50 students on some excursions to Paris and other locales where students would spend a week or more living with French host families.

“Karen Johnson-Zak is the epitome of what I consider an excellent teacher to be,” wrote Lawrence senior and 1999 Gibraltar graduate Nate Jacobs in nominating his former teacher for the award. “Her abilities in effectively teaching French perfectly balance serious study and fun, making the often tedious process of learning complicated verb conjugations and pronunciation pass without extreme difficulty.

“Mrs. Johnson-Zak’s influence on my life cannot be measured,” Jacobs added. “Without her positive teaching style, I would never have appreciated, or ventured to partake in, many of the international experiences I have had.”

Born and raised in her current hometown of Sister Bay, Johnson-Zak earned a bachelor of science degree in education from UW-Oshkosh. She is a member of the National Association of Teachers of French and the Wisconsin Association of Foreign Language Teachers.

Retiring Band Director Robert Levy Recognized for 25 Years of Service at Lawrence University Commencement

The highlights from a career spanning a quarter of a century in the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music are too numerous for retiring Professor of Music Robert Levy to narrow down to just a precious few.

But the award-winning trumpet performer, conductor, teacher, composer and recording artist admits to at least one soft spot in his heart.

“I still get goose bumps when a brand new work arrives and I’m opening that package for the first time knowing that pretty shortly I’ll be exploring new musical ground,” said Levy, known to many as Lawrence’s “new music man” for his passion for original and innovative works.

Levy will be honored Sunday (6/13) with professor emeritus status and awarded an honorary master of arts degree, ad eundem, during Lawrence’s 155th commencement.

Since joining the Lawrence Conservatory of Music faculty in 1979 as director of bands — he originally led just the wind ensemble, but shortly thereafter added a symphonic band to the conservatory’s ensemble line-up — Levy has conducted more than 130 concerts and worked with more than 900 student musicians. He has premiered more than 100 works during his career, many written expressly for him. In 1986, Downbeat magazine honored his ensemble with its “best symphonic band performance” award.

“I appreciate all the efforts and hard work of the students with the music-making we shared in together,” said Levy. “That’s what I’ll miss the most.”

“When Bob isn’t thinking about his beloved baseball Giants — he even had a dog named ‘Willie’ — he’s composing, commissioning, conducting, performing, practicing, teaching, eating, sleeping and drinking music,” said Fred Sturm, director of jazz and improvisational music at Lawrence, who was in his second year as a conservatory faculty member when Levy joined the college.

“He’s a non-stop juggler with plates forever in the air, performing one program, rehearsing another to be played next month, booking a third that’s six months away and commissioning or composing yet another to be premiered next year. He’s an advocate for new music and the composers creating it, tirelessly carrying the same torch that his wind ensemble predecessor Fred Schroeder passed to him 25 years ago. He is a loyal and dedicated teacher who truly loves his students.”

As a trumpet soloist, chamber musician, clinician or guest conductor, Levy has performed throughout the United States, including Carnegie Hall five times, as well as at concerts in Australia, Canada, China, Haiti, Jamaica and Portugal. He’s released 30 recordings on 10 labels, including 1994’s “Blackberry Winter: Songs by Alex Wilder.”

Wilder was one of Levy’s favorite composers and he considered him a personal friend and mentor. In addition to conducting several concerts of Wilder’s music, Levy is completing work on a documentary about Wilder, who died in 1980, featuring colleagues who knew and worked with him.

A native of New York City, Levy began his teaching and conducting career at Henderson State College in Arkansas. He spent eight years as director of wind ensemble and trumpet instructor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland before joining the Lawrence faculty. He earned his bachelor’s degree in music from Ithaca College and holds a master’s degree in music education from North Texas State University. In addition, he has completed all the course work toward a doctor of musical arts degree at the University of Iowa.

Journalism Excellence, Philanthropic Generosity, Literary Scholarship and Human Rights Activism Recognized at Lawrence University’s 155th Commencement

For the 25th — and final — time, Lawrence University President Richard Warch will lead the procession of seniors and honored guests to the stage where he’ll award honorary doctorates, confer bachelor’s degrees and congratulate students for completing their undergraduate education Sunday, June 13 during the college’s 155th commencement. Graduation ceremonies begin at 10:30 a.m. on the Main Hall green.

Warch will retire as Lawrence’s second-longest serving president at the end of the month. He is currently the longest-standing president of any college or university in Wisconsin and believed to be one of only 20 current presidents in the country who have served their present institutions for 20 years or more.

An expected 303 seniors, Lawrence’s largest graduating class since 1977, will receive bachelor of arts and/or music degrees. In addition, Lawrence will award honorary doctorate degrees to John Carroll, editor of the Los Angeles Times, Jonathan Fanton, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Stanley Fish, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois-Chicago and Samantha Power, lecturer in public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Also, Professor of Music Robert Levy, who is retiring after 25 years as director of bands at Lawrence, will receive professor emeritus status and awarded an honorary master of arts degree, ad eundem.

A baccalaureate service, featuring Daniel Taylor, Hiram A. Jones Professor of Classics delivering the address “Making Connections,” will be held Saturday, June 12 at 11 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel.

All four honorary doctorate degree recipients, along with President Warch, Lawrence Board of Trustees Chair Jeffrey Riester and student representative Andrea Hendrickson, a senior from Tillamook, Ore., will address the graduates during commencement. Both the baccalaureate service and commencement ceremony are free and open to the public.

Carroll, whose distinguished journalism career spans more than 40 years and includes seven Pulitzer Prizes, will receive an honorary doctor of laws degree. Named editor of the Los Angeles Times in 2001, he helped the paper earn five Pulitzers earlier this year, the second most ever won by a newspaper in a single year. The New York Times was awarded seven Pulitzer’s in 2002 for its coverage of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

After beginning his career as a reporter for the Providence Journal in Rhode Island, Carroll was drafted into the Army and served in Alaska, writing for the base’s newspaper. He joined the Baltimore Sun as a reporter in the late 1960s, covering the Vietnam War and the Nixon administration. He became the subject of a front page story in The New York Times after having his press credentials suspended for writing a story detailing U.S. plans to abandon Khe Sanh. Without his knowledge, the Army had imposed an embargo on news coverage of Khe Sanh. Following protests from media colleagues and a Congressional investigation, the Army restored Carroll’s credentials.

He spent seven years as a city editor and metropolitan editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer before being named editor of the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky. Carroll returned to the Baltimore Sun as its editor in 1991, guiding it to Pulitzer Prizes in 1997 and ‘98 before taking editorial leadership of the Los Angeles Times.

Fanton, who will receive a honorary doctor of laws degree, has served as president of the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation since September 1, 1999. With assets of nearly $4.3 billion, MacArthur is one of the nation’s 15 largest foundations and annually awards grants domestically and internationally of more than $180 million in support of public education, community development, system reform in mental health and juvenile justice, human rights, biodiversity preservation, reproductive health and international peace and security. It also supports public radio and television and the making of independent documentaries as well as support for exceptionally creative individuals through its famed “genius grant” Fellows program.

Before joining the MacArthur Foundation, Fanton served as president of New York City’s New School University (formerly known as New School for Social Research) from 1982-99. As president, he led the integration and enhancement of the seven divisions of the university, the expansion of the Greenwich Village campus and development campaigns that increased the university’s endowment from $8 million to more than $80 million.

During his presidency, the New School merged with the Mannes College of Music, established a drama school in partnership with the Actor’s Studio, merged with the World Policy Institute, added a jazz and contemporary music program, a teacher education program, a creative writing program and an architecture department at Parsons School of Design.

Fanton began his career teaching American history at his alma mater, Yale University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. He served as a special assistant to Yale President Kingman Brewster from 1970-73 and as associate provost from 1976-78. He then moved to the University of Chicago, where he spent the next four years as vice president for planning and also taught American history.

A board member of Human Rights Watch, the largest U.S.-based human rights organization and the Chicago Historical Society, Fanton is the author of “The University and Civil Society, Volumes I and II” and co-edited the books “John Brown: Great Lives Observed” and “The Manhattan Project: A Documentary Introduction to the Atomic Age.”

Fish will receive a doctor of humane letters. Considered one of America’s most distinguished scholars of English literature, law and literary theory, particularly the subjectivity of textual interpretation, he has served as a dean and distinguished professor of English, criminal justice and political science at UIC since 1999.

During an academic career spanning more than 40 years, Fish has held numerous major positions, including the Kenan Professor of English at Johns Hopkins University (1974-85) and the Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of English and Law at Duke University (1985-98). A USA Today article described Fish as “an erudite scholar who capably makes difficult subjects understandable… a brilliant original critic of the culture at large.”

Fish as written nearly a dozen books, among them “John Skelton’s Poetry,” “Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost,” the second edition of which received the Hanford Book Award in 1998, “Self-Consuming Artifacts,” which was nominated for a the National Book Award in 1972 and “There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing, Too,” which earned the 1994 PEN/Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award. In the past 30 years, more than 200 articles, books, dissertations and review articles have been devoted to his work.

Fish is a frequent guest on shows ranging from the “MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour” to CNN’s “Firing Line” to “Hardball with Chris Matthews.” In 2003, the Chicago Tribune named him its “Chicagoan of the Year” for culture.

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Fish earned his Ph.D. from Yale University and began his teaching career in the English department at the University of California-Berkeley.

Power, a human-rights activist, lawyer, scholar and award-winning author, will receive an honorary doctor of humane letters degree. Her recent book, “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” which examines U.S. responses to genocide in the 20th century, was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction, the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award for general non-fiction and the Council on Foreign Relations’ Arthur Ross Prize for the best book in U.S. foreign policy.

She also co-edited the 2000 book, “Realizing Human Rights: Moving from Inspiration to Impact,” a collection of essays by leading activists, policy makers and critics who reflect upon 50 years of attempts to improve respect for human rights.

In 1998, she founded Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, which trains future leaders for careers in public service with a focus on the most dangerous human rights challenges, including genocide, mass atrocity, state failure and the ethics and politics of military intervention. She served as the Carr Center’s executive director until 2002.

A native of Ireland who moved to the United States when she was nine, Power covered the war in the former Yugoslavia from 1993-96 as a reporter for U.S. News & World Report, the Boston Globe and the London-based news magazine The Economist. A graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School, she is currently working on a book on the causes and consequences of historical amnesia in American foreign policy.

LU’s Gina Bloom Named Solmsen Fellow, Awarded Huntington Fellowship to Complete Book

Lawrence University’s Gina Bloom has been awarded a pair of fellowships worth $44,000 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., in support of her research on 16th- and 17th-century conceptions of the human voice and representations of boyhood.

Bloom, assistant professor of English, was one of three recipients of a prestigious $40,000 Solmsen Fellowship and will spend the 2004-05 academic year as a scholar-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research in the Humanities. She was selected from a pool of 21 international applicants for the fellowship, which recognizes scholars who are working on literary and historical studies of the European Classical, Medieval and Renaissance periods.

“Professor Bloom’s fellowship appointment is a coup,” said David Sorkin, director of the Institute for Research in the Humanities and professor of history at UW Madison. “There were applications for this year’s Solmsen Fellowship from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and France. The applicants are all sort of a ‘who’s who’ of younger scholars working in the European tradition from antiquity to 1700.”

In addition to Bloom, this year’s other two Solmsen Fellowships were awarded to professors at the University of Arizona and Great Britain’s Cambridge University.

Bloom will spend her Solmsen residency conducting research for her book, “Playing Boys: Youth and Masculinity on the Early Modern Stage.” In the book, Bloom examines representations of boyhood in 16th-and 17th-century dramas. She focuses especially on boys at play — setting pranks, throwing dice, catching bugs, among others — and the way play was thought to prepare boys for adult manhood.

A $4,000 fellowship from the Huntington Library, home to a collection of rare books with an extensive concentration in the Renaissance, will support writing and research efforts this summer for Bloom to complete her first book, “Choreographing Voice: Agency and the Staging of Gender in Early Modern England.”

“Choreographing Voice” examines how early modern writers, especially dramatists like Shakespeare, understood the workings of the human voice — how it was produced by speakers and heard by listeners. Focusing on the ways writers represent the voice in stage plays, medical texts, song books and religious sermons, Bloom challenges perspectives on “voice” in modern feminist thought, offering an alternative view of the relationship between gender, speaking and power.

“The resources provided by these fellowships will help me make a significant contribution to scholarship on the early modern period,” said Bloom. “At the Huntington, I’ll have the privilege to examine texts that cannot be read anywhere else in the world. The Solmsen offers me the luxury of an extended period of time to research and write as well as the opportunity to work through ideas with some of the best scholars in the field.”

A specialist in English Renaissance literature, especially drama, and gender studies, Bloom joined the Lawrence English department faculty in 2001. She earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Michigan.

Reinterpreting the Past: Lawrence University’s Courtney Doucette Heading to Russia as Fulbright Scholar

Courtney Doucette got bit by the history bug as a fourth grader and has never been able to shake the infection. Twelve years later, the Lawrence University senior is still more interested in nurturing her long-term curiosity than she is in finding a cure.

To that end, Doucette soon will embark on a 10-month study of Russian history at the European University in St. Petersburg, Russia, courtesy of a $23,000 grant from the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. Doucette was recently selected as a 2004-05 Fulbright Scholar from among more than 5,000 applicants. This is the second straight year and the third time in the past four years that a Lawrence student has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship.

Beginning in late August, Doucette will undertake research at European University on the impact of political regimes on the way we understand the past. She also will work outside of academia to explore the way ordinary citizens regard history after the “official” view of the past is significantly changed.

“Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russians have had to question what really happened in their country while the Communist regime was in power,” said Doucette, a history and Russian double major from Racine. “There is now strong evidence suggesting events of the Soviet era played out differently than the Party claimed. The new political regime’s power is partly based on its ability to disprove the Communist Party’s view of history, so there is a need to radically reinterpret and rewrite history in Russia.”

During a semi-nomadic childhood — Doucette’s family moved 13 times while she was growing up and she lived with a Japanese family for a year in Okinawa as a participant in the Rotary Youth Exchange Program — she constantly tried to make sense of her ever-changing world the way a historian would.

“I learned to ask questions about the history of my surroundings,” said Doucette, a founding member and former president of Lawrence’s Russian and East European Club.

While in Russia, Doucette intends to explore the impact the Soviet regime had on the content of Russian history books and the ways the post-Soviet regime has rewritten these texts. In addition, and outside the formality of the European University, Doucette will examine ways personal experiences and oral histories challenge the officially sanctioned interpretations of the past.

In addressing the second question, Doucette plans to observe what today’s youngest generation of Russians are learning about their history through observation sessions at primary and secondary schools. She also plans to become involved with Memorial, a non-profit organization in St. Petersburg that chronicles the experiences of victims of Stalinism.

“Part of my interest in Russian history and culture stems from my interest in the process of writing history,” said Doucette, who previously spent time in Russia while on an off-campus study program in Krasnodar in 2001. “Contemporary Russia provides an ideal context for me to investigate this process. As a Fulbright Scholar, I’ll be able to improve my Russian skills, gain valuable experience with Russian archival sources and form connections with professional Russian scholars.

“Living in Russia is going to provide great opportunities to explore fundamental questions about how academics and non-academics make sense of the past,” Doucette added.

Following her year abroad, Doucette plans to return to the States to pursue graduate studies in Russian history with the hope of eventually teaching Russian history at the collegiate level.

“My future goals are clearly a product of my past and of the way my past has shaped my method of making sense of the world,” said Doucette.

The Fulbright Program was created by Congress in 1946 to foster mutual understanding among nations through educational and cultural exchanges. Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright, who sponsored the legislation, saw it as a step toward building an alternative to armed conflict.

Since its inception, the Fulbright Program has become the U.S. government’s premier scholarship program. It has supported more than 260,000 American students, artists and other professionals opportunities for study, research and international competence in more than 150 countries.