The official magazine of the College of Arts and Sciences, Oklahoma State University 2012 Steering a new course Bret Danilowicz takes the wheel of A&S
Arts and Sciences Magazine is a publication of the Oklahoma State University College of Arts and Sciences. All communications should be mailed to OSU College of Arts and Sciences ATTN: Arts and Sciences Magazine 205 Life Sciences East Stillwater, OK 74078-3015. Oklahoma State University, in compliance with Title VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Executive Order 11246 as amended, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and other federal laws and regulations, does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, age, religion, disability, or status as a veteran in any of its policies, practices or procedures. This includes but is not limited to admissions, employment, financial aid, and educational services. Title IX of the Education Amendments and Oklahoma State University policy prohibit discrimination in the provision of services or benefits offered by the University based on gender. Any person (student, faculty or staff) who believes that discriminatory practices have been engaged in based upon gender may discuss their concerns and file informal or formal complaints of possible violations of Title IX with the OSU Title IX Coordinator, Mackenzie Wilfong, J.D., Director of Affirmative Action, 408 Whitehurst, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078, (405) 744-5371 or (405) 744-5576 (fax). This publication, issued by Oklahoma State University as authorized by the College of Arts & Sciences, was printed by University Printing Services at a cost of $9,000/9M. #4356 10/12 2 0 1 2 © Ok l ahoma S tat e Un i v e r s i t y 2012 v14 Editor Dorothy L. Pugh ’83 Art Director Paul V. Fleming ’90/’00 Photographers Phi l Shockley Gary Lawson ’83 Associate Editor Michael Baker c a s . o k s tat e . e d u cover Bret Dani lowicz is taking over the Col lege of Arts and Sciences as i ts 12th dean. Story, Page 2. Cover photography by Phi l Shockley. Writers Brianna Autry Matt El l iott Stacy Pettit ’09 Lorene A. Roberson ’84 Brittany Snapp Designers Mark Pennie Ross Maute College of Arts and Sciences Dean Bret Dani lowicz Senior Director for Development Jason J. Canigl ia Communications Coordinator Lorene A. Roberson ’84 s t a f f 24 Singing it Ad l ey Stump ( above ) hadn ’ t p l anned t o end up as a s i nge r, bu t f a t e ( i n t he f o rm o f a so r o r i t y s i s t e r and Va r s i t y Revue ) s t epped i n . 30 Gaming it Two a l ums have made a ca r ee r ou t o f wo r k i ng w i t h sponso r s f o r t he O l ymp i c Games — and t he London 2012 Games we r e no excep t i on . 37 Posting it Wo r k has begun on t he new home f o r OSU ’s a r t co l l ec t i on i n t he Pos t a l P l aza Ga l l e r y. p l a y b i l l Year indicates OSU College of Arts and Sciences graduates. Gary Lawson / University Marketing 26 Giving it C l aud i a Ba r t l e t t ’s f i r s t g i f t t o OSU was on l y $50 , bu t l i ke a g r and t r ee f r om a t i ny seed , he r and he r husband ’s dona t i ons have g r own mi gh t i l y.
Looking around the college, I see national recognition for our students and our faculty. Our students’ honors include such examples as Fulbright scholars Joshua Damron and Alejandra Gonzalez Herrera, Goldwater scholar Rosa Yorks and the OSU Symphony Orchestra’s role as a finalist for the American Prize. Our A&S faculty are no less honored: Our physics faculty participated in the discovery of the Higgs boson, our faculty are attracting more federal research grants, and individuals working in our Center for the Study of Disasters and Extreme Events are receiving national awards for their research and teaching in emergency management. his is the first time I have lived in Oklahoma, so I am quickly learning about its history, the Stillwater community and how to really pronounce “Miami.” It is also a perfect opportunity to take stock of the college from a fresh perspective. Our major goals should include: From the Dean’s Office Bret Danilowicz Dean, College of Arts and Sciences Phil Shockley / University Marketing Like these examples, many of our student successes are linked to our alumni support; alumni provided the scholarships that attracted these energetic students here, kept them here and gave them the materials and travel funds to advance their creative activities and research. Alumni support is so important at this time due to the intense competition our students are facing: More students are entering universities, and more are graduating to enter a struggling national economy that’s offering fewer jobs and less opportunity. The public has begun questioning the value of a college degree, and books are criticizing the attention that college students receive from faculty during the first two years of study. I was delighted to see our A&S faculty care deeply about getting students off on the right path as freshmen. Our college has created both the Mathematics Learning Success Center and a writing center that focus on ensuring that students learn from Day 1. Student learning is, and will remain, an OSU advantage. Those who have graduated from OSU can attest to that advantage. OSU’s alumni are among the most dedicated in the nation. You can see it during “America’s Greatest Homecoming Celebration,” when more than 70,000 alumni and family members return to Stillwater (this year, it is Oct. 20). You can also see it in the dedication of the graduates who are helping enhance the Boone Pickens School of Geology, giving it a rising national profile. These alumni connect the faculty and students into a diverse network of opportunities. Going even beyond the generosity of Mr. Pickens, they have secured four additional endowed research chairs and are pursuing another in geoscience education. Recently, alumni have also endowed several graduate student positions, attracting top-caliber students to the program. While this department is an excellent example of a fabulous alumni/faculty partnership, alumni in many other A&S departments are also coalescing to support their former programs. As you can see from these examples and from the pages of this magazine, our alumni are intertwined with our success as a college. So reach out and connect to your department’s faculty and students; working together, we can accomplish anything. Although I have been here just a short while, I have learned one very important tradition at OSU: always close with … … Go Pokes! T » » Educating our A&S students to levels above their peers from other universities. Our students deserve no less. » » Garnering a higher national reputation. That recognition helps us attract a diverse faculty who are passionate about teaching and research, which in turns attracts students with a passion for learning and engagement with faculty.
2 Bret Danilowicz can count a number of great educators who influenced him while an undergraduate student. New A&S dean brings a world of passion for teaching and research to OSU An Education to Remember story by Lorene A. Ro erson continues “Right now in my l i fe I have a lot of energy and passion, and I br ing that wi th me to OSU. I am real ly looking forward to attacking this job wi th vigor.” Phil Shockley / University Marketing
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4 A botanist who brought in a variety of plants from every corner of the world gave Danilowicz the experience of hands-on learning. A physiology professor showed him how to dissect animal corpses, teaching the young Danilowicz to compare a cat with a lion cub as well as trace the evolution of skull bones from reptiles into birds. “She challenged us to a point where I still remember some of the comparisons in muscles and skeletons to this day,” he says. Danilowicz completed his undergraduate research project with a zoologist who loved marabunta — army ants. And that’s the teacher he remembers the most. “What I learned from him was intense compared to what I had learned in any other classroom setting at the time. “I carry a passion for undergraduate research with me to this day.” At 44, Danilowicz brings that passion to Oklahoma State University as its 12th dean of the College of Arts and Sciences since 1905. While Danilowicz may be one of the college’s youngest deans in history, he downplays that notation, saying, “My hair is gray early, so maybe I will fit in. Right now in my life I have a lot of energy and passion and I bring that with me to OSU. I am really looking forward to attacking this job with vigor.” Early encouragement Danilowicz grew up in Utica, N.Y., in a home that encouraged learning. His grandfather was a machinist who made parts for the first Apollo flights. His dad worked as a NASA theoretical nuclear physicist, designing engines for the future. After 12 years at NASA, Danilowicz’s dad wanted to teach in a populated university setting versus conducting research in an isolated laboratory. “Dad wanted to share what he was excited about so he got into a new field called computer science.” That was 1976. “It’s not so new now,” he acknowledges today. With all that exposure to higher education, Danilowicz understood early on that he would need a plan. At 10, he announced that marine biology was his calling. At 16, he prepared for graduate school. At 17, he skipped his senior year of high school to enroll at Utica College. In 1989, Danilowicz graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in biology and a minor in computer science from Utica College. In 1994, he earned a doctorate in zoology from Duke University. While completing his doctoral work in Hawaii, he met his future wife Katherine Shannon, a seventh-grade science teacher. “Bret was smart enough to study a little fish found only in Hawaii,” says Kay, as she’s better known. Jason Caniglia / OSU Foundation Bret Dani lowicz shows off his catch dur ing a f ishing tr ip. We are sett l ing into St i l lwater and f inding great opportuni t ies for the fami ly. At this point, we are enjoying infusing our wardrobes wi th OSU orange.”
5 continues The Duke University student gave her class a tour of the University of Hawaii Marine Lab where he did his research. “It was love at first sight,” she recalls. They married in 1993 and headed to Canada after Danilowicz completed his doctorate. At the University of Windsor in Ontario, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow for the biological sciences department and the Great Lakes Institute. Meanwhile, Kay earned a master’s degree in speech and language therapy. “Kay saw how much fun I had while earning my Ph.D., so she went back to school, too,” Danilowicz says. In 1996, their son Torin was born after they raced across the Canadian border so he would be delivered in Detroit. Although their son’s Celtic name was purely coincidental, it was a foreshadowing of events to come. In 1997, the family moved to Ireland for Danilowicz’s job as a lecturer — equivalent to an assistant professor in the U.S. — in zoology at University College Dublin. He rose through the ranks to associate dean in science at University College, which had more than 21,000 students and one of the largest research budgets in Ireland. His noted successes there include improving student retention, emphasizing mentoring programs for first-year students and focusing on students who were at extreme risk of failing. While Danilowicz worked tirelessly at the university, it wasn’t his sole focus. He and his family spent an equal amount of time in their community of Enfield, Ireland, a suburb of Dublin known for its traditional Celtic culture. When they met neighbors whose child had Down syndrome, the couple put together an ice cream social in their neighborhood to benefit Down Syndrome Ireland. “In Ireland, the support for Down syndrome was not as expansive as it is in the U.S.,” he says. “We wanted to make a difference.” Jason Caniglia / OSU Foundation Bret Dani lowicz (r ight) visi ts wi th Boone Pickens dur ing a June tr ip to Pickens’ Mesa Vista Ranch in the Texas Panhandle. Pickens invi ted the incoming dean to visi t wi th him and other key const i tuents to get feedback on the col lege before Dani lowicz started his new posi t ion. All the previous deans The 11 men who have previously led the Col lege of Arts and Sciences at OSU include: Dean Years at the top Robert H. Tucker 1905–1907 William W. Johnson 1910–1912 Lowery L. Lewis 1912–1922 Clarence H. McElroy 1922–1935 Schiller J. Scroggs 1935–1958 Robert B. Kamm 1958–1965 James R. Scales 1965–1967 George A. Greis 1968–1980 Smith L. Holt 1980–1998 John M. Dobson 1999–2003 Peter M.A. Sherwood 2004–2012
6 Back in the States In 2004, the family of six (by then including Torin’s three younger siblings: Brynn, Teagan and Cullen) returned to the U.S., where Danilowicz would be an associate biology professor and associate dean for science and technology at Georgia Southern University. Danilowicz has long demonstrated an aptitude for learning. In 2004, he enhanced his education with a master’s degree in education focusing on leadership from Open University in the United Kingdom. While at Georgia Southern, he earned a master of business administration. Both would serve him well in his new position. In 2010, Forbes magazine ranked Georgia Southern University as the 10th best college in the nation for minority students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Diverse Issues in Higher Education also recently said the college is fourth in the nation in graduating black students in the physical sciences. Danilowicz also created the Center for Sustainability in 2007. “Largely due to the actions of this center, Georgia Southern has been nationally ranked in Princeton Review’s Guide to Green Colleges for the past two years,” he says. And he continued to indulge his passion for undergraduate research. More than 50 percent of the graduates from Danilowicz’s college had participated in research projects during their years at school. Meanwhile, the Danilowicz household remained involved in the community. The parents picked up running shoes and have not stopped since. “We became avid runners in Georgia, and we were part of a large running club,” he says. That included organizing a marathon with about 30 runners out of their home each year. “It was a lot of fun but we have left our running community behind. We look forward to building that level of friends here in Oklahoma.” Bret Dani lowicz speaks to the Geology Advisory Board at the Mesa Vista Ranch. “I want to make sure we focus on the undergraduate teaching mission. I also want to make sure we are recognizing facul ty in teaching as wel l as research. Great educators are so very important to the success of our students.” — Bret Dani lowicz
7 Role’s hint In 2007, Danilowicz played the role of Ike Skidmore in Oklahoma at the Emma Kelly Community Theatre in Statesboro, Ga. “We have had the opportunity to be in theater a lot,” he says. After he accepted the job at OSU, his friends teased him about the performance. “Maybe it was a foreshadowing of our move out here,” he says now. Oklahoma State’s rising enrollment and Arts and Sciences’ increasing interest in research opportunities were a couple of the factors that appealed to Danilowicz. He hopes to expand relationships and connections to allow these opportunities to be financially supported. Students are equally important to both Danilowicz and his wife, who is a lecturer in the OSU Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. “When I look at higher education nationally, there often is a disconnect about how a university works with its undergraduate students,” Danilowicz says. “As a reputation for a university increases in research, very often teaching is left behind. At OSU, we have a lot of fabulous faculty who care about our undergraduates. Jason Caniglia / OSU Foundation The Dani lowicz fami ly (from left): Brynn, Torin, Cul len, Kay, Teagan and Bret, wi th thei r dogs Siersha (black) and Sandy. I t was love at f i rst sight.” — Kay Dani lowicz “I want to make sure we focus on the undergraduate teaching mission. I also want to make sure we are recognizing all faculty equally and that these professors are fully supported because their expertise in teaching and helping students is so very important,” he adds. Meanwhile, Danilowicz continues to brag about his family’s new community. “When I started wearing my Oklahoma State T-shirt, I met people in Georgia and New York who attended OSU, and they told me about these wonderful experiences they had here. The alums speak really well of OSU. That was a good sign.” Editor’s note: SMSC senior Jonathan L. Lacaba, an intern in the office of media and alumni relations for the Col lege of Arts and Sciences, contributed to this story. courtesy / Bret Danilowicz
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9 Newly named Regents professors in the College of Arts and Sciences include Frank Blum (from left), Robert Sternberg, Perry Gethner and Estella Atekwana. The College of Arts and Sciences is welcoming four Oklahoma State University professors to the ranks of Regents professors for 2011. The title is the university’s highest promotion for a faculty member. On the following pages, we offer a glimpse of their knowledge and expertise — and a bit of their personalities as well. 4 named Regents professors in A&S continues stories by Matt Elliott portraits by Gary Lawson and Phil Schockley
10 Study of microorganisms gives Atekwana a big view of tiny matter Little things, enormous impact The widely accepted perception is that no organism affects its environment more than man. After all, it’s easy to point out how we affect our surroundings: dams, pollution, mining and industrial agriculture. OSU professor Estella Atekwana’s research shows that view may be a little selfserving. On planet Earth, it’s the little things that truly matter, says Atekwana, one of the College of Arts and Sciences’ four new Regents professors for 2011. Microorganisms are believed to have been the first life forms on the planet. The byproducts of their biological processes, scientists believe, helped create the atmosphere. And today, the little guys are working away in ways we can’t see. “Sometimes they can transform their environments in a matter of hours, or minutes, days or decades,” says Atekwana, a pioneer of the field concerning such research, biogeophysics. “They work in cooperation, too. We could learn a lot from them if we weren’t spending so much time fighting about our differences rather than learning how our differences complement each other and make us stronger.” Atekwana, originally from Cameroon, studies how microorganisms affect their environment, from the earth’s crust up into the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. She’s also a noted expert in plate tectonics, the study of how Earth’s plates shape the planet, creating continents, mountains, ocean basins, volcanic and earthquake belts. Estel la Atekwana bel ieves mankind could learn much by studying some of the planet’s smal lest l i fe forms.
11 Atekwana says she was honored to receive a Regents professorship, and she lauds OSU for supporting the department where she and her husband, Eliot Atekwana, have been since 2006. While OSU is often concerned with energy issues, Estella Atekwana focuses on biogeophysics. Her first discoveries, that microbes can affect geophysical properties, took place when she was an assistant professor at Western Michigan University. In 1996, she was part of a team that visited a contaminated U.S. Air Force base, Wurtsmith, in Oscoda, Mich., after the site made the federal government’s Superfund list for cleanup. Team members were studying groundwater contaminated with oil and found the water was better at conducting electricity than it should be. They were able to link those changes in its properties to organisms that were breaking down the oil and producing organic acids and carbon dioxide as byproducts. “These acids enhance the weathering and dissolution of rocks, releasing ions that go into solution and make the contaminated environment more conductive,” she says. “We used this information to explain our geophysics results suggesting that microorganisms can significantly impact the physical properties of their environment, and biogeophysics was born.” Today, her work takes her all over the world, most recently from the shores of a little island in Louisiana to an isolated valley in Botswana where two continental plates are in the early stages of pulling apart. She always takes her students on such trips and believes firmly in the role she plays in their development as much as she believes in the importance of her research. Most recently, she has been the lead principal investigator on a $4.6 million multi-institution grant from the National Science Foundation to study the Okavango Rift system in Botswana, which has trapped the Okavango River, forming the largest wetland complex in the world. Normally, massive volcanoes such as Kilamanjaro are a byproduct of developing rifts and dot the East African Rift Valley next door. But that’s not taking place in the Okavango Rift Valley, Atekwana notes, so she’s trying to figure out why. She and her students travel to the region on the edge of the Kalahari Desert where they take core samples and examine magnetic and gravity field data to find magma circulation beneath the ground. They live in tents, often working in areas frequented by lions, zebras, giraffes, hippos and other large wild animals. She spent last summer taking gravity measurements across the rift system to determine how the earth’s gravity fields are changed by the rifting, indicating changes in the thickness of the crust and other geologic features that will give them clues on how the rift works and how it began and developed. In Louisiana, Atekwana is measuring naturally occurring Gulf of Mexico bacteria’s ability to break down oil in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010. The spill was the world’s largest and sparked a cleanup that continued for months as well as ongoing research into its effectiveness. That’s where Atekwana’s work comes in. She and her team placed electrical sensors next to an island near the spill site in the fall after the spill. Most of her readings showed much of the hydrocarbons left by the spill were gone, and shifts in the bacteria community had occurred. Those tilted the tables toward a dominant organism, which she suspects is breaking down the chemicals. More work remains to be done, however. “The truth is there are lots of spills in the gulf,” she says. “The island where our instruments are has been hit by multiple spills over the years.” Atekwana attended Howard University for her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. She has a doctoral degree from Nova Scotia’s Dalhousie University. She has taught at Western Michigan and the Missouri University of Science and Technology. She frequently pairs in her research with her husband, Eliot Atekwana, a geochemist at OSU and expert in areas including how environments dispose of contaminants and environmental change in ancient times. Estella Atekwana
Frank Blum credi ts the dr ive to understand for his work in chemistry: “I want to know how things work — how the physical things work.” Frank Blum 12Blum looks at the big picture when studying the smallest of materials Erasing limits Some professors prefer to guide students’ work carefully and hover over everything they do. Not so with newly minted Regents Professor Frank Blum: He prefers to give his students more of a free rein. “The benefit is they will often take approaches you wouldn’t have taken, that you wouldn’t have advised, but that can be really creative,” Blum says. “With that approach, I’m no longer limited by my own personal limitations. We’re only limited by the limitations we have collectively.” Blum is one of four new Regents professors in the College of Arts and Sciences for 2011. As the Harrison I. Bartlett chair of chemistry and department head, he delves into the laws of physics and how they apply to molecular systems, especially in polymers, which have components from natural and synthetic compounds. He advises seven doctoral students at OSU, including Bal Khatiwada, a Nepalese chemist who’s working with Blum on her project looking at how Plexiglas interacts with nanometer-sized particles of silica, the common component of glass.
13 “I always search for things I don’t know, and even if I do that, I can’t figure out things sometimes,” Khatiwada says. “I can always ask him, and he’s always there. He’s extremely helpful. The other students view him as more of a parent than a professor.” Remolding a department Blum came to OSU in 2010 to take over a chemistry department rebuilding after several retirements. By 2013, the department will have hired six new professors. He says he is humbled by the chance to help remold the chemistry department that has so many caring alumni. That and Stillwater’s friendliness adds to the campus he has come to love. “Stillwater is a little bit of a small town,” he says. “The university has a family atmosphere complete with loyalty, support and even the occasional bickering. But by and large, faculty members, students and staff at this university really care deeply about it.” Blum taught at Drexel University and the University of MissouriRolla before coming to OSU in 2010. He has a doctorate from the University of Minnesota and bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physical chemistry from Eastern Illinois University. Always fascinated by how things work, Blum first took to chemistry during his organic chemistry classes as an undergrad at Eastern Illinois University. He considers that drive to understand as the true mark of a scientist. “That’s what sustains me,” he says. “It’s been my approach to science. I want to know how things work — how the physical things work. How do atoms and molecules behave in order to make macroscopic things? There’s a big divide between how an atom behaves and how a macroscopic system behaves. It’s a big jump from something that’s on the Ångstrom or nanometer scale to how does a boat hull bend, or how strong is a composite golfclub shaft.” Once he finished his doctorate in 1981, he was offered several great corporate opportunities, but the freedom of academic life called him. His interest in polymers focused on how absorbed polymers behave and how polymer nanocomposites can conduct electricity. He also looks at how those materials work when they’re absorbed into another material called a solid substrate, such as glass. For example, in fiberglass, small fibers of glass are mixed in with epoxy, which is a plastic. The glass fiber is hard and brittle, but the plastic layer is softer and more ductile. The melded material is harder to stretch and bend, providing a gradual change from the properties of both the glass fibers and the polymer and creating something light, strong and useful such as a motorcycle helmet. Characterizing how those materials work with each other is extremely difficult, and Blum is an expert at understanding that at the molecular level using techniques such as nuclear magnetic resonance, something similar to an MRI for a molecule. Once researchers understand that, they can make better composites. For example, they could devise a coating for the glass fibers to make an entirely different material or combine several materials for another fashion. That knowledge is useful in today’s age of booming consumer electronics. As products shrink, the functionality of the materials used in them usually increases. “The thinner polymer layers gets, the more their properties change,” he says. “In some cases, we’re talking about layers that are millions of times thinner than a human hair. Those properties tend to be different than bulk properties.” Khatiwada’s project is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation. Blum also has a project with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory trying to find better materials for chemical sensors using ultraviolet light and liquid drops. proud mentor About his seven doctoral students, Blum notes how proud he is “they’re becoming functional and prolific in their own right. They’re now starting to be independent, being able to draft papers based on the research they’ve done. They’ve been able to try to foresee problems and opportunities in a way that a mature scientist would with, in many cases, just a little guidance from me. And that’s really the exciting part of my job.” In addition to his posts at Drexel and Missouri-Rolla, he has also taught at Sweden’s Lund University and IBM in San Jose, Calif., during his 31-year career. Blum has received numerous awards, including three awards from the Alcoa and Exxon Education foundations, and a distinguished alumni award from Eastern Illinois University. Blum is a fellow of the American Chemical Society and its division of polymer chemistry. He is a past secretary and chair of the society’s polymer chemistry division and a former chair of the ACS committees on nominations, elections and divisional activities.
Perry Gethner 14 One of the College of Arts and Sciences’ new Regents professors, recruited a decade ago by the University of Oxford’s Voltaire Foundation to participate in its reissuing of all the French master’s works in new critical editions, recently published his edition of Voltaire’s last completed tragedy. “Obviously, that’s an exciting element to my career,” says noted French scholar Perry Gethner, whose edition of Irene was published in 2010. Gethner, a French language and literature instructor, received his Regents professorship, OSU’s highest promotion for a faculty member, in November 2011. “I’ve been increasingly recruited by people all over the world doing the complete works of so-and-so, and they need me to be part of the team.” Gethner, an OSU professor since 1984, is an expert in French drama and opera from the so-called early modern period, generally considered to be the 16th through 18th centuries. In addition to Voltaire, he has published critical editions and translations of other French authors, some more obscure than others, such as Jean Rotrou, Pierre du Ryer and Jean Mairet. Gethner, OSU’s foreign language department head, remembers being enchanted by languages ever since he was a kid growing up on the northwest side of Chicago, where his father ran a local drugstore. “I always enjoyed languages, and my teachers encouraged me,” says Gethner, who would go on to attend Yale University, where he obtained his doctorate in French literature in 1977. He nurtured a love of the art form as well as an appreciation for placing the works in their proper historic contexts, such as the French Wars of Religion during the 16th century. This contributed to the choice of biblical plays for the Gethner has turned his enchantment into expertise that’s in global demand Une affaire française “I always enjoyed languages, and my teachers encouraged me.”
15 subject of his dissertation (he also had an interest in the Bible, being a former pre-seminary student). “The whole development of my career since then has been essentially finding things that I was good at, or that I was interested in,” Gethner says. “And this included a number of other areas in dramatic history. I’ve done a lot of work on hybrid plays, musical comedies and opera libretto since.” a French Baroque? He also wrote works questioning whether there was a Baroque period of French literature, giving a lecture on the topic on campus at Oklahoma State. The debate was a controversial one that shook up ideas among French scholars about what was happening between 1580 and 1640. Works they had dismissed as worthless now are being rehabilitated as part of the Baroque period similar to other European countries at the time, he says. Not much attention has been paid to French playwrights of that period. Gethner has set out in part to correct that by translating some of their works, an effort that began with his translation of dramatist Antoine de Montchrestien, an author known for his religiously neutral work in a time when many plays were religious diatribes against either Protestantism or Catholicism. That time period is intriguing, he says, because the English were producing William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, Gethner says, while the French had no similar writers. The greatest of their playwrights — Moliere, Jean Racine, etc. — came later, especially during the second half of the 17th century. Meanwhile, English writers at the time were reading French plays, Gethner says, but none of the French writers were reading the English. Widespread French love of English writers didn’t begin, he says, until Voltaire in the second half of the 18th century. French writers were reading Spanish and Italian at the time, but almost none of them could read English, he says. “I find these sorts of things intriguing,” he says. “Who’s influencing whom, and what forms does that influence take? Because the French writers in Shakespeare’s day were nowhere near as great as Shakespeare, they’re usually dismissed, but I certainly thought some of them should be made available through translations.” Translating is tough enough when working with modern forms of a language. But when it’s in an older version of the language, the text could have archaic words unknown to but a few academics, or words whose meaning may have changed considerably over the years. There’s a lot of onus on the translator to get them correct, especially when scholars and students could be utilizing those editions for decades to come. “You also have to deal with trying to figure out what the correct text is,” Gethner says. “Some editions could be so mutilated and so bad you can’t read them. Sometimes there’s more than one edition, too, and in some cases there are only the author’s manuscripts. For one project, I had to look at Voltaire’s own handwriting and make some valiant attempts at trying to read it. I was dealing with very beautifully written manuscripts done by his secretary. Voltaire would put stuff in the margins and often scratch it out. That was the part that was hard to decipher.” Although he teaches regular undergraduate classes, he doesn’t get to direct the research of graduate students at Oklahoma State because his department doesn’t have a graduate program. Nor does he get much chance to present his own research in class. “You don’t get to teach it,” he says. “Research and teaching are almost completely unrelated in language programs.” Most students who take French do so because they want to learn the language. OSU’s classes in French literature and drama just scratch the surface. Gethner enjoys teaching, however, and is known among his students for being approachable, knowledgeable and easy to work with. Conferences and the academic community help keep him enthused about his work, he says. Phi Beta Kappa success Also, he chaired the committee that applied for permission to establish a chapter of the national academic honor society, Phi Beta Kappa, at OSU. Part of an effort stretching back several decades, he and other faculty members traveled to Florida in August to be voted on by the national assembly, and they were successful. “Getting that approval to start a Phi Beta Kappa chapter at OSU is really exciting,” Gethner says. Outside of work, Gethner performs classical piano recitals in the Stillwater area and accompanies singers. He is also a singer who was once in the chorus of an opera company. He taught for six years at the University of Chicago before coming to OSU. He has also edited collections of works by early female French playwrights, and he has written articles on musical comedies as well as drama and literary theory.
Robert Sternberg 16Sternberg explains psychology as ‘the interaction of who you are with the environment.’ A drive for mentoring “I find students don’t much remember what they learned in classes,” Sternberg says. “They remember a few professors, students or staff members who changed their lives.” The chance to provide that mentorship to students is what drives him today. It’s why he believes in Oklahoma State and its land-grant university mission. It’s part of why he earned the university’s highest promotion for faculty members, a Regents professorship in 2011. Busy man Sternberg received the Regents post three years after he was hired as provost. He took that job over from Marlene Strathe, who had been the provost for seven years. The provost is the senior member of the OSU president’s cabinet and administers all of the university’s academic programs. His job includes planning policies, budgets, student and faculty development — the “whole enchilada.” In addition to his administrative work, Sternberg teaches an undergraduate course in leadership, which he notes received an overall student rating of 3.92 out of 4.00 last spring, and is teaching a graduate course this fall in one of his specialties, human intelligence. Before he came to OSU, he was the dean of arts and sciences at Tufts University. For more than 30 years, he taught at his alma mater, Yale University, where he was the IBM professor of psychology and education and a professor of management. He is also the author or editor of more than 150 books and a prolific writer for the academic and lay presses. OSU rolled out a new admissions process last July that he designed in collaboration with Kyle Wray, OSU’s vice president for enrollment management and marketing, and other personnel from the university’s admissions office. Called Panorama, it incorporates prospective students’ leadership qualities into their evaluations, expanding them beyond the typical essays sent in with applications. He also published a book on intellectual giftedness in 2011, the same year he and his wife had triplets, Samuel, Brittany and Melody (the latter two are identical twins). It’s hard to imagine when he sleeps. “I don’t have a lot of spare time these days,” he admits. “I think it’s important for administrators to teach. It’s especially important if you’re in academic affairs to stay in touch with what’s going on with the students. And I think it’s important to publish because it’s awkward to evaluate the research of others if you’re not doing any yourself.” No one realizes the irony more than Robert Sternberg does. OSU’s chief academic officer and one of four new Regents professors in the College of Arts and Sciences for 2011 doesn’t remember much of what he learned in class at Yale. And yet, thanks to hard work and caring professors, Sternberg made himself into one of the world’s leading experts in how people think, love and hate. Sternberg aims to make OSU memorable for students.
17 Early days Sternberg was born in Newark, N.J., and grew up in the suburb of Maplewood. His father had dropped out of high school during the Depression and owned a button store to support his family. His mother had immigrated to the United States from Austria in 1938. Sternberg performed poorly on IQ tests when he was young, and his teachers didn’t expect much out of him as a result. That changed when his fourth-grade teacher saw his potential and challenged him. His grades improved, but his frustrations with how the education system measures intelligence continued. With an amused expression on his face today, he describes the field as sometimes dominated by people who always performed very well on those tests. “So, those tests were kind of a self-congratulatory sort of thing,” Sternberg adds with a wry smile. Over time, he blossomed into someone who couldn’t help but question the status quo. As a seventh-grader, he came up with his own intelligence test after finding a popular intelligence test in his school library, the StanfordBinet scales, an early such exam credited with establishing the field of intelligence testing. The exam he came up with would later become the Sternberg Test of Mental Abilities. But it was the Stanford-Binet that he gave to some of his fellow students as part of a science project he devised — all before his 15th birthday. In one case, he hoped to get a girlfriend by giving her the test — and learned that doing so wasn’t a way to appeal to females. He is quick to note he has never given his beloved wife, Karin, an intelligence test. Mentors’ help At Yale, Sternberg met the man who became his mentor, Endel Tulving. Tulving is one of science’s leading thinkers in the field of memory and a noted contrarian who nurtured Sternberg’s drive to question authority. It was just the help Sternberg needed to enter psychology after receiving a C in the introductory psychology course. “It’s the interaction of who you are with the environment. Someone else might have studied under him, and it wouldn’t have taken. But for me, it really took.” He graduated summa cum laude and went to graduate school at Stanford University, where he studied under another mentor, Gordon Bower. Ever since, Sternberg, a former president of the American Psychological Association and current president of the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences as well as treasurer of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, has been on the “academic fringes,” studying unpopular things or the things he finds the most challenging to understand. Among his contributions to psychology are several influential theories in thinking, ethical reasoning, love, hate, leadership, thinking styles and creativity, as well as his theory of successful intelligence, which states that intelligent behavior comes from analytical, creative, practical and wisdom-based abilities. He was listed by the American Psychological Association’s Monitor as one of the 100 most influential psychologists of the 20th century. At OSU, he has emphasized that being smart in school does not necessarily mean that someone will be smart in life, and vice versa. Academic and practical intelligence are only weakly correlated. What is most important in life is wisdom and ethical behavior — making the world a better place by making a positive, meaningful and enduring difference to it. Personal style The new Regents professor brings his enthusiasm into his classroom, with a teaching style he calls very personal. He brings material from his job as provost to his leadership class, letting students in on the bigger decisions he made that week and asking what they would have done. He also brings in speakers who discuss their experiences as leaders and how they developed from Oklahoma State undergraduates into important leaders in society. One message Sternberg is quick to drive home is the importance of failure. Often times, someone who has a great deal of success in life has had equally momentous failures. At the OSU graduate commencement last May, he was the keynote speaker and he spoke frankly about many of his failures. It’s a message he drives home to his students in any way he can. A major key to success is resilience in the face of multiple failures. “You have to learn how to take failures and rise above them,” he says. “When you’re young, you don’t see it that way. When you’re young, you sort of plot out a course that you think will help you always succeed; you’re going to be the guy with the lucky charm. I think that’s just really the important thing in life. I feel like I’ve had some bad breaks. And I have had some great breaks. I have wonderful, beautiful children. A fantastic wife. A terrific job. I live in a great house on beautiful land. I live in a wonderful community. But it hasn’t always been that way. You just keep working until you get to where you want to go.” Sternberg lives just outside of Stillwater with his wife, Karin, who has an MBA as well as a doctorate in psychology from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. In addition to their triplets, he has two grown children from a previous marriage — one the CEO of a dot-com business who recently sold it to Google and went to work there, and the other, a doctoral student in sociology at Harvard University. Sternberg enjoys hiking with his family, exercising, reading and collecting coins and watches.
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19 Professor Jeanette Morehouse Mendez remembers watching the 1984 presidential election returns come in when she was all of 8 years old. This summer, she became the youngest person and first female to head the political science department, having been at OSU since 2005. She teaches courses in American political behavior, with an expertise in elections, campaigns and the media. Her work has been published in such journals as Journal of Politics, Social Science Quarterly, Political Psychology, Politics and Gender, Journal of Women, Politics and Policy, PS: Political Science and Politics, Journal of Media Psychology, and Journal of Political Science. We’re chatting with her about the 2012 presidential election and OSU’s impact on its students, the state and the nation. Election-year lessons New chief of OSU’s political science department offers her take on the 2012 vote. story by Lorene A. Rober on photography by Gary Lawson This fall, you will teach a class on the current presidential election. Describe the class and the makeup of the class. When I was thinking of courses I would like to teach, I thought that a class focusing on the current election would draw interest from a variety of students — and it did. I last taught this in 2008 and had a full course of 35 students. The best part was that the students were interested in elections and government and that is why they took this course, as opposed to a required course. And most interestingly, the class was well split in terms of partisanship and ideology. And that meant … some lively discussions! In the course, what questions do students ask during election years? The No. 1 question is which candidate I will vote for! Of course, I never have revealed this in any course and tell them they can keep guessing. I feel my role is to present the information and create an environment for discussion and interaction, and not use this as a platform to advance my own beliefs. But students really want to know about my preferences, so they also continually ask me to express my opinions on all of the content. The students are smart and engaged and ask great questions about the effects of the election. And because many of the students will be first-time voters, they ask a lot about the past election and about current politics to place this election in a broader context. continues
20 How does OSU prepare the next generation of leaders in our state and nation to be creative, as well as ethical, critical thinkers? How does OSU prepare its students to be critical thinkers in the democratic process? OSU does a wonderful job in preparing our future leaders — just look at our alums across the state and the nation in leadership positions. We are doing something right. I think the courses we offer in political science allow students to be creative, based on the content, the assignments and how our faculty members approach the courses. Further, we all, in political science, want our students to be ethical critical thinkers, and we do all we can to foster this in the classroom. In particular, many of our courses include content on democracy and the democratic process, and students show a great capacity to think about why the United States is a democracy and what benefits there are to this. Further, our comparative politics and international relations courses, to name a couple, explore democracy in a global perspective. I think our students are given all of the tools to succeed and become effective members of society, members who will be engaged in the process and knowledgeable. There is a difference between going to vote and going to vote and being informed about the issues and candidates. In political science, we strive to make sure our students become informed citizens. OSU typically has a low level of involvement overall (at least since the 1960s) of the student body in politics in comparison to other campuses. Can you comment on why that might be? Agree? Or disagree? I do agree with this overall; however, the students I encounter the most are political science majors, and these students are involved in politics. I keep hearing within There is a di fference between going to vote and going to vote and being informed about the issues and candidates.” Oklahoma that there is no reason to vote because we are a red state and that will not change. So if you are a Republican, there is no need to vote because others will vote Republican for you. And if you are a Democrat, your vote will not count. I try to counter this in my classes, because this isn’t quite true. At face value, yes, Oklahoma is a red state. But so many elections occur in a four-year span, and many local elections are decided by a few votes. Still, I think students buy into this logic, and this rhetoric gives them a disincentive to be involved. I also think students don’t feel connected to the process, the politicians and the candidates. The issues that students list as most important (for example, student loans, access to education and unemployment) are not the big-ticket items that get discussed by the media and the candidates. So unless students can relate to the candidates and politicians, they will not take the time to be involved because they do not see a connection personally. Students are an important part of the voting bloc. However, research dating back to the 1940s has consistently shown that young citizens vote at lower rates than older citizens. Describe the young voter situation in Oklahoma. The youth vote has not been large in modern-day elections, though much attention was focused on this in 2008 and Obama was successful and generating a large youth vote. In Oklahoma in 2008, close to 51 percent of people age 18-24 registered to vote and close to 39 percent of those age 18 to 24 did actually vote. This is low compared with other age groups in Oklahoma. For example, 68 percent of those age 65-74 voted in the election. Further, the number of youth voting in Oklahoma is much less than other states, where other states see 50 percent or more of those age 18-24 voting. Again, part of this comes back to the candidates and the parties making themselves accessible to young voters. But the fact that the youth vote is so much lower in Oklahoma comparatively is discouraging. It gives the impression that the candidates and the parties are purposefully ignoring this group, and that can have longer range implications. Voting is habitual and the earlier one begins to vote in their life cycle, the more likely they are to continue to vote. In the fall, thousands of students on college campuses throughout the nation will attempt to register to vote and be turned away. The reasons are many: You have an out-of-state driver’s license. Your college ID is not valid here. You pay out-of-state tuition, so even though you do have a state driver’s license, you still cannot vote. Some state lawmakers are doing everything they can to prevent students from voting in the 2012 presidential election. What are your thoughts on this? What’s the situation in Oklahoma? This is a hot topic right now as many states are implementing identification requirement that have the potential to exclude valid voters. This type of debate is not new, but it is very political. There are reasons to believe that the Republican Party would be advantaged by these types of laws, and for those reasons, this is not democratic. Voter fraud is not a large issue in the United States so the risk of alienating potential voters is not high enough in my opinion. Oklahoma passed the Voter Identity Law in the 2010 election, and this requires everyone to show proof of identity before they are able to vote. What this means is that a person needs an Oklahoma-issued identification card (driver’s license or identification card), a federally issued identification card or a tribal nation identification card. For college students, OSU identification cards are not valid because they do not have expiration dates on them. But students can
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