Lawrence Today magazine, Fall 2009
Formative Faculty
Each year, the President’s Report celebrates the accomplishments of 10 members of Lawrence University’s faculty. Models of scholarly and artistic excellence inside the classroom and out, we congratulate these men and women, and the entire Lawrence University faculty, for their commitment to our mission — to the development of intellect and talent, the pursuit of knowledge and understanding, the cultivation of sound judgment and respect for the perspectives of others.
John Daniel was making a bit of musical history. The associate professor of music teamed up with the Syracuse University Wind Ensemble to perform as trumpet soloist for the first-ever recording of Karel Husa’s Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra. “It was a piece written for Adolph Herseth, who played principal trumpet with the Chicago Symphony for more than 50 years,” Daniel said. “They performed it for about one week of concerts, and then it just dropped off the face of the earth.” Daniel’s good friend John Laverty is director of bands at Syracuse. Laverty, a trumpet player himself, had taken on a project to record trumpet repertoire that had been neglected, and Husa’s concerto fit the bill.
The collaboration produced a stunning recording that was selected for the 2006 Grammy® Entry List in two categories — best solo with orchestra and best orchestral performance. While an official nomination from the Grammy Awards didn’t come, Daniel was thrilled to be part of the longer list. “It was a really big deal, because it was a very important piece of music. And to see your name in the same list as Yo-Yo Ma and people like that — it was amazing.”
Under Daniel’s quiet demeanor lies a performer who is passionate about his music and continually striving for perfection in himself and his students. “It can be overwhelming to students to be exposed to the level of commitment it takes, because a lot of times they haven’t seen that intensity until they come here. Now not all of them are going to respond, and that’s not what I’m after. But some sort of concept of what it means to pursue mastery is really what we’re teaching.”
And for Daniel, it is very much about practicing what you preach. For the past 17 years he has played with the Brass Band of Battle Creek, comprised of some of the world’s finest brass musicians. As a guest soloist and recitalist, he has performed around the world. On campus he performs with the Lawrence Faculty Jazz Group and the Lawrence Brass. “Because my colleagues play so well and they’re active performers, I can make world-class music without leaving town. That to me is very exciting and another reason why I love Lawrence so much.”
Carla Daughtry can’t get back to Cairo soon enough. The connections between the ancient city and the associate professor of anthropology have been life changing, and she’s eager to return to begin the next chapter.
During her junior year at Mount Holyoke College, Daughtry spent a year abroad in Cairo. While pursuing her doctorate, a Fulbright grant facilitated an opportunity to return and work on her mastery of the Arabic language. As part of her doctoral dissertation, she returned once again to do fieldwork on refugees escaping the civil war in Sudan, displaced in Cairo. And, she said with a smile, “Somewhere along the way I met my husband.”
Recently Daughtry submitted an application for another Fulbright grant to return to Cairo as a lecturer, either at the American University in Cairo or Cairo University. If accepted, she is planning to pursue a research project that combines her anthropology experience with her interests in ethnic studies and gender studies— two of the other areas in which she teaches at Lawrence. “As a cultural anthropologist, I’ve studied the Middle East and Africa and am interested in globalization and the impact of globalization on culture,” she said. “But I’m also interested in identity and how your gender identity and your ethnic identity intersect with culture and nationality.”
As she pines for her opportunity to re-immerse herself into Egyptian culture, Daughtry is also working to create local collaborative research opportunities here for some of her students. Ethnographic fieldwork responding to the needs of Hmong refugee families resettled in the Fox Cities, and comparative research on the Hmong-American and Sudanese-American immigrant experience are two future possibilities. “Students are always curious and motivated to learn not only about their own cultural identity,” she said, “but also that of their peers that come from more than 125 countries. That’s what keeps me motivated and interested in studying more about ethnicity worldwide.”
In the future, she would like to see Lawrence expand its offerings in Middle East and North African studies and Arabic language studies. “For a small university, Lawrence is amazingly diverse, ethnically and culturally, in terms of nationality. Lawrentians are very curious about homebred diversity and multiculturalism here and in the global world, so that’s what feeds my interest, my students. They’re hungry for exposure to other cultures and other ways of being human.”
The world is his classroom.
For Gustavo Fares, professor of Spanish, a passport is always within easy reach. Last fall Fares was selected to be part of the University of Virginia’s Semester at Sea, a study abroad program that put Fares, his family, 700 students and 30 faculty on a ship for a four-month voyage around the world. “We sailed for 50 days and spent 50 days in ports,” Fares said.
Classes were held while the ship was moving. Fares taught three courses, two in comparative literature in English and a drawing class. Once the ship reached port, faculty members took turns arranging field trips that related to the courses they were teaching. Fares’ excursions brought students to the Kek Lok Si Temple in Malaysia, the Cape of Good Hope, Capetown and on a tented safari in South Africa, St. Thomas Mount in Chennai, India and the Sacred Arts Museum in Salvador, Brazil. The ship usually stayed in port for five to seven days. After students and faculty completed their required field trip they had the freedom to fly from the port to other places — getting back to the ship before the next leg of the voyage, or flying ahead and meeting it at its next destination.
A stop in China afforded Fares and his family the opportunity to fly from Hong Kong to Beijing and Xi’an before catching up with the ship in Shanghai. They explored extensively in Vietnam, Costa Rica and the Panama Canal. “It was amazing,” he said. “Some students flew to Buenos Aries, Santiago and the Amazon before coming back.”
“Having first-hand experience at all of these places is something that I can bring back to my students,” Fares said. “I can talk about issues in Brazil and Panama and compare them to India, China and Japan. I think students appreciate when you are current in different areas.”
Of his experience at sea, “It was a transformative experience on all kinds of levels — academic, intellectual, emotional, spiritual. And I hope to do it again.”
It was just the type of project that Beth Haines had been searching for. Haines, associate professor of psychology and chair of Lawrence’s gender studies program, had been interested in doing research that bridged both fields of study. Last fall Kim Vachon ’09, a student in Haines’ Developmental Psychology class, approached her about doing an independent study project with classmate Katie Fohrman ’09 on LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) families. Working together with Julie Konik, visiting assistant professor of psychology, the group transformed Vachon’s idea into a nationwide study on how various policies toward LGBT families affect parenting and the way these families cope. “It’s activist research intended to support and help families who are dealing with being in a stigmatized group,” Haines said. “It’s interesting psychologically and it’s important in terms of social policy. Sometimes when we have public debates about what is happening within these families we don’t realize the vicious impact these actions can have on children and the family as a whole.”
With funding from a Senior Experience grant through the Mellon Foundation, Haines was able to jumpstart the first phase of the research. So far more than 100 families from across the country have participated using a web-based questionnaire. “I think this research can have an impact on all of our lives,” Haines said. “There are still gender stereotypes out there, and gender intersects with so many other aspects of social identity like class and race. So I think it is very important work.” A second wave of research is underway that will run through January 2010, Haines said. Anyone interested in participating in the study is asked to visit www.lgbtparents.org.
For their work on the project, Vachon and Fohrman received Magna Cum Laude honors at Lawrence’s June 2009 commencement. “I’ve been fortunate to teach Lawrence’s senior capstone/Senior Experience for 16 of the 17 years I’ve been here, Haines said. “My approach to these projects has always been to encourage students to find something they are passionate about. It’s very rewarding to watch them explore their passions. This LGBT study was the result of a student idea. Yes, it’s something I’m very interested in, but my goal was to encourage, to challenge and to empower them to direct their own education and to feel good about their accomplishments.”
“I’m a book person,” said Eilene Hoft-March, professor of French and Milwaukee-Downer College and College Endowment Association Professor. “I have never been able to go anywhere without a book. To me, a book is a comfort, and many of the books that I’ve been given are also connections to people.”
The latest book added to Hoft-March’s library is a combination of her love of literature and a tribute, of sorts, to the bonds of friendship. “Aimer et Mourir: Love, Death, and Women’s Lives in Texts of French Expression” is a collection of essays Hoft-March edited and published with her colleague and dear friend Judith Holland Sarnecki, professor of French. “Editing is a great experience for connecting teaching to one’s own writing. You have the opportunity to help people shape their ideas, and you also get to watch when somebody really nails an argument or an interpretation.” In addition to their work as editors, Hoft-March and Sarnecki each contributed an essay and teamed up to write the book’s introduction and conclusion. “The project reflected many of our shared interests in research and in teaching. Except for the more mechanical tasks, we really had a lot of fun putting together the collection,” she said.
A member of the Lawrence faculty since 1988, Hoft-March teaches classes in French language and literature, gender studies, and Freshman Studies. She was the recipient of Lawrence’s Outstanding Young Teacher Award in 1991 and the Freshman Studies Teaching Award in 1997. In June 2009 she was named to the Milwaukee-Downer College and College Endowment Association Professorship. “I’m looking forward to meeting with the Milwaukee-Downer alumnae,” she said. “The professorship is one more reminder of their presence among our Lawrentians, and it also reminds me of how pertinent women’s issues, and particularly women’s writing, are to my own research.”
Hoft-March is also beginning her second year as a Posse II mentor. “The Posse experience,” she said, “has been terrific. I’ve gotten to see freshman year in ways that I don’t usually get to see, even through my advisees; it was a real eye opener.”
Her varied scholarship exemplifies her passion for learning. “You can never know enough. But if you read long enough, there are little accidents of association that can spark curiosity about a whole new domain of thought.”
And what better way to keep learning than by picking up a good book.
Just like every singer, instrumentalist or actor, Associate Professor of Music Karen Leigh-Post ’79 is in constant search of the “optimal performance state,” that sublime moment of time and space that embodies the essence of creative excellence.
In her quest to understand how singers find that elusive performer’s nirvana, last year Leigh-Post conducted the “Cognitive Kinesthetic Awareness and Singing Research Study,” an interdisciplinary project involving 30 Lawrence students drawn from across the conservatory’s voice studios. With assistance from Elizabeth Florek Becker ’04, Claire Burke ’09 and input from faculty colleagues Beth Haines and Terry Gottfried from the psychology department, Leigh-Post sought the connection between singing and movement, employing elements of the Alexander and Feldenkrais methods, as well as yoga and body mapping. Implementing CKA revealed the key to unleashing bodily/kinesthetic intelligence rests in the activation of the vestibular and auditory systems.
“Mapping not only our bodies, but also our biopsychological pathways,” Leigh-Post explained, “guides us to work in conjunction with, rather than at cross-purposes with, our conscious and subconscious systems and leads to practical methods for activation and maintenance of an optimal performance state.” The study earned Leigh-Post a presenter’s invitation to the 2010 national conference of the National Association of Teachers of Singing in Salt Lake City next July.
Movement and singing have been intertwined parts of Leigh-Post’s life since she was a child growing up in Minneapolis, performing with her church’s “cherub choir.” A former student of current voice professor Ken Bozeman and long-time pupil of Shirlee Emmons ’44, Leigh-Post joined the Lawrence conservatory voice department in 1996 as a triple-threat performer —singer/actor/dancer. Her extensive and critically praised performance career, which features nearly two dozen roles sung at venues across Europe and the United States, is liberally dotted with singer/dancers, including Jenny in “Three Penny Opera,” Anita in “West Side Story” and Bizet’s ultimate singer-dancer, Carmen.
Most recently, she sang Respighi’s “Il Tramonto” in a Wisconsin Public Radio performance for the network’s “Live from the Chazen” program with the Lawrence Chamber Players and Ravel’s “Shéhérazade” with the Lawrence Symphony Orchestra in January. Leigh-Post, who sang her first operatic role — Cherubino in “Marriage of Figaro” — as a Lawrence junior, added “legacy parent” to her resume this fall when her daughter, Kaleigh ’13, matriculated.
If you’ve been to Lawrence’s fall Matriculation Convocation or attended Commencement, you’ve had the pleasure of listening to poetry delivered by Professor of Music Howard Niblock. Niblock has had an integral role in these two important campus events since the mid-1990s. The annual duty is something he enjoys and takes very seriously when selecting his material. “In the beginning of the year, you want people to focus on what the business at hand is. At the end of the year you want to give a send off to the people that are leaving. I tend to do things that are new that I just discovered, rather than poems that are old favorites. I read a lot and when something strikes me that might be appropriate, I’ll put in a bookmark or file it away.”
The avid reader said he finds great rewards in teaching Freshman Studies. “I was a philosophy and English major in college,” he said, “and my interests range over a wide spectrum. It’s been a nice fit.” Aesthetics of Music is another of his favorite courses to teach and has become a secondary research interest with articles published in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism and in the New Grove Dictionary of Music in the United States.
Last fall the oboist completed his first solo CD titled “Sharing.” Three years in the making, Niblock said the CD is a collection of more obscure pieces that an audience is not likely to have heard before. “When I first started at Lawrence, when I played a recital, I would more than likely program at least some standard repertoire pieces. At this stage in my life I’ve played all those and I think the newer and more out of the way things are more interesting, so that’s what it is.” Included on the disc is an oboe duet he originally wrote four years ago for two of his students. Joining him for the recording session of “Trill Ride” was Anna Schmidt ’06 one of the students for whom he originally wrote the work. Last month Niblock found out that Brotons & Mercadal, a Spanish music publisher would be publishing “Trill Ride.” “It definitely feels like a sense of accomplishment,” he said. “But now I’m focusing on the next thing, trying to figure out what the next program will be. It’s kind of a blank canvas at the moment.”
Archimedes had his “Eureka!” moment two millennia ago. Associate Professor of Physics Matthew Stoneking experienced his in 2007. A scientist specializing in the study of nonneutral plasmas — collections of charged particles —Stoneking became the first physicist to trap electron plasma using a toroidal magnetic field for longer than a second. He did so using an apparatus which he, along with his students and Lawrence Fellow Joan Marler, constructed in his Youngchild Hall laboratory. Considered a breakthrough in the field, Stoneking’s success is expected to open doors for more complex experiments, including some involving anti-matter.
Since joining the physics department in 1997, Stoneking has received more than $600,000 in research grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy and Research Corporation. His recent findings led to an invited talk at an American Physical Society meeting last November as well as the publication, with coauthor Marler, of the article “Confinement time exceeding one second for a toroidal electron plasma” in Physical Review Letters, the country’s most prestigious physics journal.
In conjunction with his physics department colleagues, Stoneking also has been involved in an experiment of a pedagogic nature: teaching physics students to become innovators. With the support of a $150,000 NSF grant, the endeavor is designed to help address a perceived national need for the United States to encourage innovation as a way of sustaining its global competitiveness.
As part of the methodology, nine research students this summer were introduced to a basic understanding of what innovation is and encouraged to work much more independently to see if they demonstrated innovative problem solving. In addition, courses in optics and plasma physics are being revamped from theory courses into laboratory-intensive courses to incorporate techniques aimed at fostering innovation. “Many of the attributes innovators possess — creativity, perseverance, risk-taking — are also characteristics of successful scientists,”Stoneking explained.
Since 2007, Stoneking has served as mentor for the first group of 10 Posse students meeting with them collectively on a weekly basis and individually every other week. “That’s been a significant experience for me,” Stoneking said. “I’d like to think I’ve had a positive impact on their lives. It is exciting to see how they bring a bit of New York City’s energy and diversity to Lawrence.”
During a Lawrence teaching career spanning 30 years, Professor of Biology Brad Rence has scoured prairies for pistol beetles and searched coral reefs for redlip blennies, creating extensive data sets on both environments.
Lawrence’s resident insect physiologist, Rence, whose personal passion is crickets, was recruited by the Wisconsin Department of Resources 15 years ago to assist with a five year state study. Since then, he has continued to annually comb as many as 13 sites —both restored and remnant prairies — throughout northeast Wisconsin for insects. While most such studies typically look at the flora to gauge a prairie’s health, Rence’s research has focused on comparing insect fauna within the various prairies to determine their viability.
With the help of student researchers, Rence has collected upwards of 4,000 insects each summer, identifying them down to the family level. This past summer, he donated to the Brillion Nature Center an extensive collection of recently mounted insects collected from the Behnke Prairie 15 miles east of Appleton.
Since the late 1970s, Caribbean coral reefs have received similar scrutiny from Rence, who has used the college’s biannual marine biology trip to the Cayman Islands to compile a diversity data set of animal and plant information. “That’s a great program,” said Rence. “Many of our students who participated in that program have gone on to become marine biologists.”
During his tenure, Rence has been instrumental in introducing new courses to fill voids in the curriculum, such as exercise physiology, human nutrition and human physiology. These are often requirements for nursing and physical therapy programs, which an increasing number of students are pursuing after graduating.
But of all of his contributions to the Lawrence landscape, Rence’s commitment to individualized instruction may be his most important. Typical of his involvement, this past academic year he taught five tutorials and directed three independent study projects, including one on the biology of prions and their impact on human diseases.
“I love teaching tutorials,” said Rence, who will leave at the end of the 2009-10 academic year and retire to Portland, Ore., leaving the biology department he joined in 1979. “They are such an exciting exercise in mutual discovery. I enjoy following the student’s need and interest. Lawrence should be proud as heck of what we do when it comes to individualized instruction.”
Because there are no exact answers, Assistant Professor of History Jake Frederick says history can seem like a wishy-washy discipline. But it is that same lack of absolutes that requires history majors to be better students. “It’s up to them to find the best evidence and then make the case for why they are right,” says Frederick, who joined the Lawrence history department in 2006.
Seeking to prove that history “comes from everywhere, not just the Internet,” Frederick’s history lessons include having students research the contractor names stamped in the sidewalks of downtown Appleton and field trips to the Peshtigo Fire Museum as tools to help them better understand the historical environment in which they live.
Describing his style as “better teaching through intimidation, informal but demanding” Frederick nearly became an environmental historian before discovering his passion for colonial Mexico, a period he calls “the most dramatic biological and human encounter in the history of the world.”
His scholarship includes Native resistance, the experience of Afro-Mexicans in the 18th-century Latin America, and municipal infrastructure in colonial Mexican cities. The recipient of a 2008 Library Scholars grant from the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University, Frederick presented at the “Revolutions in Latin America” seminar at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee earlier this year, while his most recent article, “Without Impediment: Crossing Ethnic Boundaries in Colonial Mexico,” is expected to be published in 2010. In January, he witnessed history firsthand, attending the inauguration of President Obama from a perch near the Washington Monument.
As the son of a college English professor (novelist K.C. Frederick), it might have been safe to assume Frederick’s path to a similar college classroom career would be a relatively straight one. But not only was it a circuitous journey from suburban Boston to the Lawrence campus, it was a smoky one as well. Before finding his calling as a Latin America historian, Frederick spent time driving ambulances, giving kayaking lessons, making cake frosting tubes at a factory and rappelling from helicopters into forest fires as a fire fighter, an occupation he seriously considered as his career. In the end, though, the continuation of the teaching legacy was seamless: his father retired on a Friday, and Frederick taught his first college class the following Monday.
