T H E M A G A Z I N E O F T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F O R E G O N HANDS ON The ExperiencE isSue Oregon SPRING 2017 Q U A R T E R LY RESET THE CODE | LASSO THE LIZARD | TIE THE FLY LEARN WHILE YOU LEAD THE OREGON EXECUTIVE MBA IN PORTLAND Classes just twice a month. GMAT not required (ask us why: oemba@uoregon.edu). SUBMIT YOUR RESUME FOR A CONFIDENTIAL EVALUATION: oemba.uoregon.edu EO/AA/ADA INSTITUTION COMMITTED TO CULTURAL DIVERSITY THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF OREGON 3 4 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 2017 SUMMER SESSION UNIVERSITY OF OREGON JUNE 26–SEPTEMBER 15, 2017 Schedule available online March 3 Registration begins May 8 2017 Summer Schedule First four-week session: June 26–July 21 Eight-week session: June 26–August 18 Second four-week session: July 24–August 18 Third four-week session: August 21–September 15 uosummer.uoregon.edu facebook.com/uosummer 541-346-3475 DON’T LET THE SUN SET ON YOUR SUMMER JUNE 26–SEPTEMBER 15, 2017 EO/AA/ADA institution committed to cultural diversity. © 2017 University of Oregon Don’t let summer pass you by— work smart and play hard! GRAB YOUR GLASSES AND GET READY FOR SUMMER! • Benefit from the same quality classes and beautiful campus, and enjoy more rays of sun. • Already have that 12-month lease on your apartment…why not use it this summer? • Use the summer to stay on track to graduate in four years with a full spectrum of in-demand classes available. • Enjoy time with friends and enjoy your college experience. 2017 SUMMER SESSION UNIVERSITY OF OREGON JUNE 26–SEPTEMBER 15, 2017 Schedule available online March 3 Registration begins May 8 2017 Summer Schedule First four-week session: June 26–July 21 Eight-week session: June 26–August 18 Second four-week session: July 24–August 18 Third four-week session: August 21–September 15 uosummer.uoregon.edu facebook.com/uosummer 541-346-3475 DON’T LET THE SUN SET ON YOUR SUMMER JUNE 26–SEPTEMBER 15, 2017 EO/AA/ADA institution committed to cultural diversity. © 2017 University of Oregon Don’t let summer pass you by— work smart and play hard! GRAB YOUR GLASSES AND GET READY FOR SUMMER! • Benefit from the same quality classes and beautiful campus, and enjoy more rays of sun. • Already have that 12-month lease on your apartment…why not use it this summer? • Use the summer to stay on track to graduate in four years with a full spectrum of in-demand classes available. • Enjoy time with friends and enjoy your college experience. 6 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 dialogue FROM THE PUBLISHER Real Facts, Real Life “The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts,” wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes, “but learning how to make facts live.” And that’s the starting point for this edition of Oregon Quarterly, where we take a look at some of the opportunities that the UO has provided for faculty members and students to enrich their lives and those of others by asking questions, going out into the field, and putting what they’ve learned into practice. Peer into the labs of Richard Taylor and his colleagues, both faculty members and doctoral students, as they grow carbon “forests”—a technology inspired by nature—to develop a possible answer to retinal diseases. Visit John Boosler’s “heavy metal” machine shop, where students and staff have access to the kind of industrial tools that can turn crazy ideas into working prototypes. Share in the adventures of some brave advertising students who built on what they learned in their classes to “Reset the Code” in a campaign to encourage students to speak out against all forms of intolerance. Marvel at Ming Canaday, an irrepressible, fearless, unstoppable Duck who embraced the challenges of her life when she could have easily let them defeat her. Like one of his herpetology students, travel out into the desert with Tom Titus to feel the shimmering heat and the rough sand under your belly as you patiently try to ensnare a lizard—in the name of science, of course. Read our excerpt from Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, this year’s Common Reading selection, and you’ll share an experience with more than 4,000 first-year UO stu- dents and community members. In his bestseller, Coates dives deep into the core of racism and American history and reports what he finds in the form of a profound and intimate letter to his adolescent son. Certainly, textbook lessons and classroom experiences are essential. But maybe more import- ant is how, like Coates, we take the raw material of facts, history, and events and make it personal and meaningful to our own lives. When I meet alumni and they reminisce about their days at Oregon, I hear stories of adventure, travel, athletics, activities, inspiring teachers, revelatory moments, and best-friends-forever. This is the “value added” part of our time at Oregon—the turning points we’ll always remember, the badges we carry all our lives that become a part of our identity. When you look back at your time at the UO, what did you learn about making “facts” live? What university experience most influenced your life? How did you “throw your O”? Write us at quarterly@uoregon.edu with the subject “experience.” We’ll print a list in our next issue. Until then, I hope you put your hands all over this copy of OQ, and enjoy the experiences shared herein. George Evano Publisher THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OREGON SPRING 2017 • VOLUME 96 NUMBER 3 The University of Oregon is an equal-opportunity, affirmative-action institution committed to cultural diversity and compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. This publication will be made available in accessible formats upon request. PUBLISHER George Evano gevano@uoregon.edu | 541-346-2379 ART DIRECTOR JoDee Stringham jodees@uoregon.edu | 541-346-1593 PUBLISHING ADMINISTRATOR Shelly Cooper scooper@uoregon.edu | 541-346-5045 CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Alice Tallmadge STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERS Charlie Litchfield, Dustin Whitaker PROOFREADERS Sharleen Nelson, Scott Skelton INTERNS Melissa Epifano, Gina Mills WEBSITE OregonQuarterly.com MAILING ADDRESS 5228 University of Oregon Eugene, Oregon 97403-5228 E-MAIL quarterly@uoregon.edu PHONE 541-346-5045 ADVERTISING SALES Ross Johnson, Oregon Media ross@oregon-media.com | 541-948-5200 OREGON QUARTERLY is published by the UO in March, June, September, and January and distributed free to members of the alumni association. Printed in the USA on recycled paper. © 2017 University of Oregon. All rights reserved. Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the UO administration. CHANGE OF ADDRESS Alumni Records, 1204 University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403-1204 541-302-0336, alumrec@uoregon.edu ADMINISTRATION President Michael H. Schill, Senior Vice President and Provost Scott Coltrane, Vice President for University Advancement Michael Andreasen, Vice President for University Communications Kyle Henley, Vice President for Enrollment Management Roger Thompson, Vice President and General Counsel Kevin Reed, Vice President for Finance and Administration Jamie Moffitt, Vice President for Institutional Equity and Inclusion Yvette Marie Alex-Assensoh, Vice President for Research and Innovation David Conover, Interim Vice President for Student Life Kevin Marbury, Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Rob Mullens, Associate Vice President for Advancement and Executive Director of the UO Alumni Association Kelly Menachemson UO INFORMATION 541-346-1000 Who cares about that ‘A’ you earned in Math 457? Your grad school does. Your employer. Maybe even your mortgage lender. And your alma mater cares, too. That’s why the University of Oregon’s Office of the Registrar has made the transcript request process quick, easy, affordable, and green. Students and graduates since 1986 can request secure electronic transcripts at duckweb.uoregon.edu. The Office of the Registrar is part of the Division of Student Serves and Enrollment Management, which guides Ducks through the processes of admissions, registration, matriculation, financial aid, campus life, academic support, wellness, and much more. And we’re still here to help even after you graduate. Learn more at ssem.uoregon.edu. You do. 8 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 dialogue CONTENTS 36 DEPARTMENTS DIALOGUE 6 6 Publisher’s Note 10 Letters 12 From the President INTRO 15 16 Campus News 20 Regenerating Vision 24 Heavy Metal 26 Art Heals 30 Profile: Andiel Brown 31 Bookmarks 32 The Best . . . Way Forward 34 Excerpt: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates OLD OREGON 45 47 Unstoppable Duck 51 To the Rivers, With Love 54 Class Notable: Matt Thomas of Townshend’s Tea 54 Class Notes 66 Duck Tale: The Difference a Dollar Made FEATURES HITTING THE RESET ON RESPECT When race-related events shook the UO campus, Allen Hall Advertising students decided they could not just stand by. BY HANNAH LEWMAN LIZARD TALES Why would an otherwise sane professor brave the desert heat to lasso a sagebrush lizard? BY TOM TITUS TOP: RHIANNA GELHART; BOTTOM: CHARLIE LITCHFIELD ON THE COVER A desert horned lizard perches upon the finger of a student in Tom Titus’ biology class, Amphibians and Reptiles of Oregon. Photo by Nicholas DePatie. 24 36 40 The Oregon Community Foundation provides tax-deductible options to help create a brighter horizon for Oregon’s future. oregoncf.org dialogue 10 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 LETTERS Music and Compassion I read with interest your Winter 2016 article “Rebooting Beethoven,” describing how University of Oregon composer and profes- sor Robert Kyr helped several Oregon teens. My adult son, Joe, graduated several years ago from the University of Oregon School of Music and Dance with a degree in music composition. Professor Kyr was a great help to him. Years later, my son had an accident and suffered a TBI (traumatic brain injury) while living in New York. On two separate occasions, Robert Kyr took time from his schedule to visit my son in Queens, New York. My son at the time was having difficulty communicating clearly. I was present during those two visits. I observed how compassionate Robert was and how he and my son talked for an hour each time. Robert really understood Joe, listened patiently to him, and asked questions that Joe answered. It was the clearest Joe had communicated with others. I was amazed. I will always treasure those wonderful visits. Joe is doing much better and lives in White Plains, New York. After Joe’s accident, several of his classmates from the School of Music and Dance visited him in New York, and still write now, eight years after the accident. Thanks to all. William Powers Lake Oswego, Oregon Alaby on Call To echo the request of Jane Harrison, Winter 2016, I also miss info from Alaby Blivet. Perhaps Alaby has a gift to put events into perspective, especially after the past national election. Rich Attebury BS ’64, MA ’70 Moscow, Idaho Picturing Inclusivity My children and I were flipping through the Winter 2016 edition and counted three pictures of non-White people. Three. Even all the ads were of White people. How can we have inclusive communities if we don’t even picture inclusiveness? Marieka Farrenkopf, BA ’93, EdM, LCSW Portland, Oregon How Do You Throw Your O? This issue of OQ is all about experience. When you look back at your time at the UO, who (or what) made learning come alive for you? What university experience most influenced your life? Email us with the subject line “experience,” and give us the rundown. We’ll print your responses in the letters section of the June 21 issue. Submit your letters at OregonQuarterly.com, by email to quarterly@uoregon.edu, or by mail to Editor, Oregon Quarterly, 5228 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-5228. Published letters may be edited for brevity, clarity, and style. RBC Wealth Management, a division of RBC Capital Markets, LLC, Member NYSE/FINRA/SIPC. © 2017 All rights reserved. 17-PO-699 (02/17) RBC Wealth Management is committed to enriching the communities where our employees and clients work and live. A commitment to the community is so highly valued at RBC Wealth Management that it is not only a core value, but also a business objective. We strive to build a successful business and do the right thing in the eyes of its employees, clients and communities. Making a difference in the community Portland 805 SW Broadway, Suite 1800 Portland, OR 97205 (800) 547-4006 Eugene 975 Oak Street, Suite 450 Eugene, OR 97401 (866) 320-1572 Bend 1133 NW Wall Street, Bldg. 2 Bend, OR 97701 (800) 678-5026 Corvallis 2851 NW 9th Street, Suite B Corvallis, OR 97330 (877) 488-3246 17-PO-699_Portland Magazine Spring Ad.indd 3 2/7/17 11:46 AMRBC Wealth nag me t, a division of RBC Capital Markets, LLC, Member NYSE/FINRA/SIPC. © 2017 All rights reserved. 17-PO-699 (02/17) RBC Wealth Management is committed to enriching the communities where our employees and clients work a d liv . A commitment to the community is so highly valued at RBC Wealth Management that it is not only a core value, but also a business objective. We strive to build a successful business and do the right thing in the eyes of its employees, clients and communities. Making a difference in the community Portland 805 SW Broadway, Suite 1800 Portland, OR 97205 (800) 547-4006 Eugene 975 Oak Street, Suite 450 Eugene, OR 97401 (866) 320-1572 Bend 1133 NW Wall Street, Bldg. 2 Bend, OR 97701 (800) 678-5026 Corvallis 2851 NW 9th Street, Suite B Corvallis, OR 97330 (877) 488-3246 17-PO-699_Portland Magazine Spring Ad.indd 3 2/7/17 11:46 AM 1 2 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 dialogue FROM THE PRESIDENT A nyone who has expe-rienced a rainy (and this year, snow y a nd ic y) O regon winter knows that the sight of the sun breaking through the clouds and buds on the dogwood trees sends the University of Oregon campus into a perennial flutter of excitement. Our students head to the Memo- rial Quad for picnics and Frisbee. Faculty and staff members eat lunch outside the Fishbowl at the EMU, and the campus comes alive with even more runners and bicyclists (if that is possible!). This is an essential part of the UO experience—the anticipation of a new season. This year, we are contemplating far more than just warm weather. In July, the UO will welcome our new provost and senior vice president Jayanth R. Banavar, a distinguished physicist who comes to us from the University of Maryland, where he has served as the dean of the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. As our chief academic off icer, Banavar will be responsible for working with me, our deans, and the faculty to ensure that we maintain the highest possible quality of scholarly activity and educational programs. I am beyond excited for his arrival. In this edition of OQ you’ll read about phys- icist Richard Taylor and the amazing, fasci- nating quest for “Regenerating Vision.” The great strides by Taylor and his colleagues are only possible through the collaboration of fac- ulty members and graduate students work- ing across disciplines. It’s exactly that kind of teamwork that has attracted several new world-class researchers to the UO. Among them is Professor David McCormick, a brain scientist from Yale University who will head our Institute of Neuroscience. David will be one of only two Presidential Chairs at our uni- versity. He will codirect a study on the role the brain plays in biology, psychology, and phys- iology. One of the questions he will examine is how the brain works when musicians and athletes operate “in the zone.” Later this year a new residence hall on the east side of campus will open its doors, hous- ing four new academic residential communi- ties. This is one of many ways we are working to support our first-year students, their expe- rience as Ducks, and their on-time graduation. The university is also fundraising for a new cultural center focused on Black and African American experiences, an opportunity to enhance diversity and inclusion at the UO. A similar effort brought renowned author Ta-Nehisi Coates to campus for the Ruhl Lecture in February, captivating thousands with his insights about race in America. In this issue, you can read an excerpt of his pow- erful book Between the World and Me. In that way, you’ll connect with 4,000 first-year stu- dents who participated in the UO’s Common Reading Program. And I‘m so proud of the journalism students who, in the wake of racial incidents on campus last fall, took it upon themselves to rally the campus community to “Reset the Code” of respect. Their story is also told in these pages. Of course, I would be remiss if I did not mention the significant funding challenges the UO, and all public universities in Oregon, face due to the state’s continued fiscal prob- lems. As of this writing, Oregon’s public university presidents and student body presi- dents are hoping to partner with legislators to increase the state’s investment in higher edu- cation. This is essential not only for helping to keep tuition affordable, but also to support the ever-growing need for a college-educated workforce and the many economic and social benefits that come from the knowledge and innovations created by research universities. Finally, we are eagerly anticipating a fall groundbreaking of the first building of the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact. This ambi- tious $1 billion initiative to fast-track scien- tific discoveries into innovations that improve the quality of life has hit several milestones in its initial planning stages, including the appointment of a leadership team, the hiring of an architect and construction firm, and the creation of an advisory board to help the UO make the most of this transformational effort. I anticipate a glorious spring. As always, I thank you, our friends, fans, supporters, and alumni, for your support and interest in the University of Oregon. Go, Ducks! Michael H. Schill President and Professor of Law Spring in Our Steps PHOTOGRAPH BY CHARLIE LITCHFIELD Your legacy is our expertise. For more than 40 years, the estate planning attorneys of Cable Huston have been helping clients in Oregon and Washington prepare for their future. By intently listening to our clients, carefully reviewing relevant details regarding their estates, discussing a broad range of alternatives with them, and then meticulously drafting documents, we deliver and protect estate plans that meet our clients’ personal objectives, while minimizing exposure to taxes. Estate Planning Group Katherine O. VanZanten Jonathan J. Cavanagh Jan K. Kitchel Anita H. Grinich Robert T. Huston 503.224.3092 1001 SW 5th Ave., Suite 2000 Portland, Oregon cablehuston.com Wills | Trusts | Tax Planning | Retirement Beneficiary Planning | Life Insurance Planning | Gift Planning for Individuals and Charities | Powers of Attorney | Advance Directives LLP CM Y CM MY CY CMY K ia500c_ia5_or_qrtly_0217v2f.pdf 1 2/28/17 11:50 AM THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF OREGON 15PHOTOGRAPH BY TRASK BEDORTHA intro20 Regenerating Vision26 Art Heals32 The Best . . . Way Forward34 Ta-Nehisi Coates Souvenir Settings Product design students in UO instructor pro tem Tom Bonamici’s class Feast for Fifty learned how to sculpt dishes from clay, form goblets from molten glass, and create uten- sils from wood. Then they held a party to show off their wares. The 15 students spent fall term creating all the accoutre- ments—except food and wine—for a gala dinner, after which the guests— who paid $110 a pop—were invited to take everything they used with them, including their chairs. intro 16 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 CAMPUS NEWS Tykeson Hall to Sharpen Focus on Careers W ith its focus on new ways to prepare students for life after college, the Tykeson College and Careers Building will be a dramatic addition to the student experience—and the heart of campus. The ambitious project took a major step recently when plans were unveiled for the 65,000-square-foot building, situated between Johnson and Chapman Halls. When complete, the building will offer a first-of-its-kind solution to a national problem: how to help students take full advantage of academ- ics to prepare for future careers. The designs combine classic and modern elements that point to past achievements and future aspirations. “The building must exist in both worlds, respectful of those who have come before and also charting a path for the 21st cen- tury,” said Isaac Campbell, who, with his architecture partner Michelle LaFoe, has been commissioned to design the struc- ture. Their firm is Office 52 Architecture in Portland. Tykeson Hall will be designed from the ground up to inte- grate academic advising with the campus Career Center, surrounding students with resources, services, and mentors that further their success post-graduation. In addition, it will create a long-needed headquarters for the College of Arts and Sciences, the UO’s largest college. The eastern end of the structure will be a three-story brick building that merges architecturally with Johnson Hall and other nearby buildings and will house traditional classrooms. The western portion of the building will comprise four stories of open, free-flowing spaces and advising “theme pods” that invite students to explore ideas and collaborate on projects. A lower-level commons will flow out onto a patio area, which opens into a landscaped courtyard. Willie and Don Tykeson, BA ’51, kicked off the fundraising effort for the building with a $10 million lead gift, which paved the way for a $17 million match from the State of Oregon. Donors have contributed an additional $4 million, including $3 million from the College of Arts and Sciences Board of Advisors, who helped shape the direction and purpose of the project. In all, the UO has raised 80 percent of the total fundraising goal. Groundbreaking is scheduled for late 2017. NEW PROVOST AND CIO NAMED Jayanth R. Banavar, a distinguished physi- cist and dean at the University of Maryland, will join the University of Oregon this July as provost and senior vice president. Banavar is currently dean of the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences at Maryland. UO presi- dent Michael Schill said Banavar “was far and away our first choice out of a talented pool of nationally prominent academic leaders.” UO graduate Jessie Minton has been chosen to be the UO’s new chief information officer and head of Information Services. Minton comes to the UO from Oregon Health and Science University, where she held the position of director of performance improve- ment and business operations. Her job expanded to director of business operations and technical support services. “As a native Oregonian and a Duck, I see this as a tremen- dous opportunity to make a difference in the IT space with an organization I cherish,” Minton said. “I’m abso- lutely thrilled to be able to give back at this im- portant moment for the university’s information services team.” Jayanth R.Banavar COMMONS AREA THE COURTYARD CHAPMAN HALL MODERN WEST SIDE HISTORIC EAST SIDE Lundquist Digs Double UO Footprint in PDX A custom ceiling showing a twin-kling, backlit map of the world. A bronze statue of the UO Duck strik-ing a pose modeled after Auguste Rodin’s sculpture “The Thinker.” A lecture hall with floor-to-ceiling white boards. All are features of the Charles H. Lundquist College of Business’s new Portland location at 109 NW Naito Parkway, which opened to stu- dents this last January and nearly doubles the university’s footprint in Portland. The first and second floors serve students in the col- lege’s Oregon Executive MBA and UO Sports Product Management (SPM) Programs. The building, which is across the street from the UO’s White Stag Block build- ing, includes breakout rooms designed for team projects, brainstorming sessions, and executive coaching. A product review room is equipped with videoconferencing technol- ogy that enables students to fine-tune business presen- tations. SPM students will use the room’s slatted display system to present the athletic gear they develop. Major donors to the project included the late Ronald Weir Peterson, BS ’49, and Patricia Peterson; Ron, BS ’80 and Chris, BS ’80, Sauer; and Mark, ’75, MBA ’76, and Ann Edlen and Gerding Edlen. M IC H A E L M C D E R M O T T ( 2 ) THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF OREGON 17 Brain Man on Campus A Yale University scientist is bringing his pioneer- ing brain research to the University of Oregon. David A. McCormick will head the UO’s Institute of Neuroscience and serve as codirector of the Neurons to Minds Cluster of Excellence, along- side UO psychology professor Ulrich Mayr. He will be one of only two Presidential Chairs at the university, joining UO chemistry professor Geri Richmond. “It was attractive to me to be able to join a team that is already doing a lot of the same kind of research that I do,” says McCormick, who will start July 1. “This field tries to understand how the parts in the brain work, how they inter- act, and how the neural system solves a problem as a whole.” UO biologist Cris Niell, who will collaborate with McCormick, says McCormick’s research makes him an “excellent match to the unique strengths of neuroscience here at UO and pretty much the epitome of what we are aiming to expand with the Neurons to Minds Cluster.” McCormick, who has a doctorate in neuroscience from Stanford University, said he appreciates the collaborative nature of the UO research environment and the potential to move brain research into real-world applications through the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact. “In the next 10 years, we are going to need ‘team science’ to answer big questions about how the brain works,” says McCormick. “This is a hot and popular area. It ties well into the national BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative funded by the National Institutes of Health. I see a lot of potential toward achieving that at the UO.” McCormick is a fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. He will bring three major federal grants to the UO, including a multiyear Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award from the federal National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. He designed several of Nike’s line of Air Jordans, Air Max, and Huaraches. Now Tinker Hatfield, Nike’s vice president of de- sign and special proj- ects, is bringing his futuristic vision to the streets, designing a new UO license plate that incorporates the well-loved Duck and Hatfield’s philosophy that higher education should be more than amassing knowledge. “We go to school to learn how to think, how to learn import- ant information, but also there’s a subtle undercurrent of, ‘Okay, go ahead and be disruptive and change the world a little bit.’” See uoalumni.com/plate. Sports Product Management students Nopasorn “Prim” Incharoensakdi and Ashley Peltz take a selfie in the lobby. With its writeable green glass panel, the PDX building’s inter- action space invites collaboration—and socializing. M IC H A E L M C D E R M O T T ( 2 ) 18 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 intro CAMPUS NEWS Campaign Update G raduate School dean Scott Pratt is ecstatic. UO alumni Steven Raymund just con- tr ibuted $5 mil l ion, the bulk of which will fund PhD fellowships—the first time the UO has had such funding. “I’m extremely excited,” says Pratt, who points out that Raymund Fellows will be free to concentrate solely on research because the award covers a stipend, health insurance, fees, and tuition. “Doctoral students come here to create new knowledge, and their research can be the first move toward chang- ing a field,” Pratt says. “Raymund Fellows will have the freedom to focus on their own work from the begin- ning in order to get their research into the world more quickly.” Raymund, a 1978 economics graduate, also designated por- tions of his gift for a presidential discretion- ary fund and assistance for the UO human rights workshop. It was one of several recent gifts that boosted the total of the UO’s cur- rent campaign to more than $1.6 billion. HEDCO DIRECTOR A $2 million gift from Julie and Keith Thomson will endow a new HEDCO clinic director at the College of Education, who will oversee the clin- ic’s range of social services for Oregon families. Having an established director at the facility will also accelerate teaching and research, cre- ate new experiential opportunities for students, and help reduce the time it takes to transform research into practice. BLACK CULTURAL CENTER Nancy and Dave Petrone have initiated fund- raising for the Black Cultural Center, which will serve as a scholarship, cultural, and social hub. Their $250,000 gift will fund design and planning for the $3 million new building, with groundbreaking and final construction dates to be determined. To donate, see giving.uoregon. edu/diversity. Microbes and Diabetes University of Oregon doctoral student Jennifer Hampton Hill wasn’t thinking about diabetes when she began examining whether microbes could affect the development of the pancreas in zebrafish back in the winter of 2013. She was doing what UO research-ers do well, asking a novel, yet basic, question about science. Together with her advisor and coauthor, UO biologist Karen Guillemin, Hampton Hill identified a bacterial protein that induces pancreatic beta cell proliferation during zebrafish development. Beta cells in the pancreas are the only cells that produce the hormone insulin, which regulates sugar metabolism in the body. The research, which was published in December 2016, could some- day lead to new treatments for the nearly 1.5 million Americans with Type 1 diabetes who lack the ability to produce insulin. “The research really suggests that animals very much rely on the cues and signals of the micro- bial communities that inhabit their bodies and that they (bacteria) are important for very intricate parts of development,” says Hampton Hill. To view a multimedia story about the unexpected discovery and the collaboration between Guillemin and Hampton Hill, see “Pursuing a Hunch,” around.uoregon.edu/BefA. Steven Raymund She Persisted “I can tell you that my educational journey as a student was everything for me in prepa-ration for what I’m doing today, in terms of stick-to-it-iveness, focus, and drive. I remember falling on my rear end up in the North Pole—I was exhausted, I was trying to motivate the dogs to go and they were exhausted, and I was all alone with this team of dogs and a 1,500-pound sled, and I slipped and fell. I was so tired I couldn’t even cry, and I said out loud—because nobody can hear you in the Arctic—I said, ‘If I can get through college, I can do this.’” Because of her dyslexia, Ann Bancroft, BS ’81, struggled at the UO, but she persevered and earned her degree. That persistence—a skill she credits the UO with teaching her—came in handy after graduation when she became the first woman to cross the ice to the North Pole, and later led the first all-female expedition to the South Pole. During Women’s History Month in March, you can read all about the National Women’s Hall of Fame member at uoregon.edu. C H A R L IE L IT C H F IE L D 20 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 intro PHOTOGRAPHS BY RICK MONTGOMERY AND RICHARD TAYLOR PHYSICS M ost people say the worst sense to lose would be vision. However, one in four of us will face vision loss due to age-related macular degeneration by the time we hit 80. But there is hope. An all-star team of UO experts representing five sci- entific fields is developing a novel implant that may one day restore sight lost to retinal diseases well enough to read, drive, and see color. This would truly be a breakthrough, because the implants available at present only restore the ability to per- ceive light in patchy gray monochrome. It all began with physicist Richard Taylor wondering how to talk to a neuron. If you could convince neurons that they are interacting with other neurons rather than an artificial device, he reasoned, you could create a chip powerful enough to restore sight in people with diseased retinas. The idea emerged from his fascination with fractals, which are geo- metric patterns that mirror themselves at all levels of magni- fication. Nature favors fractals for everything from coral reefs and mighty oaks to the Milky Way. Even neurons. “Right now commercial electronics is based on Euclidean geometry, with wiring that follows along straight lines,” says Taylor, an expert in nanoelectronics and director of the UO’s Materials Science Institute. “This makes perfect sense in computers and cameras, but the body’s wiring doesn’t work that way. Our neurons, which act as the body’s wiring, are fractal. They have branches at many sizes, just like trees.” Retinal implants are essentially electronic chips that restore sight by capturing light and converting it into an elec- trical signal, which is then passed down the neurons to the brain. The quest to realize Taylor’s vision of a fractal implant involves conquering a series of fundamental research chal- lenges that the UO team is (or would be) the first to overcome. Their approach addresses crucial differences between how the human visual system and the camera “see.” For an implant recipient, this would make the difference between navigating an open doorway and being able to read facial expressions. What’s more, today’s implants require special glasses and power sources. In contrast, fractal reti- nal implants would disappear into the eye itself and generate their own power from daylight. Best of all, they could restore the ability to see color. In addition to Taylor, the retinal implant team is led by Assistant Professors Benjamín Alemán, BS ’04, (physics) and Cris Niell (biology) and Professors Miriam Deutsch (optics) and Darren Johnson (chemistry). “A fundamental problem that we’re addressing is finding a way to talk to neurons that the body won’t reject,” says Alemán, an expert in carbon nanotubes whose doctorate, from the University of California at Berkeley, is in experi- mental quantum and nanoscale physics. From the outset, the team proposed using carbon nano- tubes—crystalline metallic wires made up of pure car- bon, with a diameter close to the width of a single strand Regenerating Vision Inspired by the fractal patterns of nature, a UO team is developing technology that may restore vision in people with retinal diseases. The goal: restoring color vision at 20/80 Left: Richard Taylor’s dog, Griff, seen with normal 20/20 vision. Center: Griff seen at 20/80, the clarity anticipated from fractal-based retinal implants. Right: Also Griff, at 20/1260, the limit of retinal implants using today’s camera chip technology. For comparison, legal blindness is 20/200. Facing page: Richard Taylor, professor of physics, psychology, and art, in the kind of surroundings that spark his ideas for new technologies. BY MELODY WARD LESLIE PHOTOGRAPH BY JIM BARLOW THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF OREGON 21 COMFY, STYLISH & PACKED with PERKS * Studio with kitchen * Free breakfast * Free Wi-Fi * Free parking Call 541-342-3000 and mention this ad when booking and save 10% off our Flexible Rate Join Literary Arts for our 30th annual celebration of remarkable literature created right here in Oregon. Oregon Book Awards Ceremony Monday, April 24 at 7:30 p.m. Gerding Theater at the Armory Tickets start at $10 | BrownPaperTickets.com. Celebrate the state’s most accomplished writers in the genres of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, young readers, and drama. More information at literary-arts.org This event is sponsored in part by: of DNA—as the electrode interconnect with neurons because of their exceptional mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties. “The inter- connects we are developing need to be metallic, to conduct electrical sig- nals to the retinal neurons. They also need to be strong, to withstand the onslaught of forces encountered during an eye surgery and cell culturing. Most importantly, the cells must thrive on them,” Alemán says. “Carbon nanotube electrodes are the special sauce because they create a robust, intimate electrical connection while also supporting healthy growth of the neurons.” Kara Zappitelli, one of four doctoral students involved in fabricating fractal electrodes and culturing neurons to grow on them, describes the process. “We make the chips by depositing a metal catalyst layer on sil- icon in the desired pattern,” she says. “Then we place them in a furnace and flow in carbon feedstock gases that cause a forest of carbon nano- tubes to grow in the patterned regions. The top of our forest has a texture neurons seem to love.” Student researchers incubate neurons with the electrodes. Within a week, the cells are growing on the nanotube forest as if attached by Velcro. “Our students have worked incredibly hard together to perfect the harvesting and culturing of neu- rons,” Alemán says. “They learned the technique from our collabora- tor Maria Thereza Perez of Lund University in Sweden. It would have been impossible without her.” To produce the fractal retinal implant, the team must now hurdle at least three more major challenges. The first? “Showing that we can ‘talk’ to neu- rons growing on the chips, by pulsing the neurons with voltages applied to the nanotubes and measuring the neuron signaling,” Alemán says. Next, they must interface their retinal electrodes with existing technologies that convert light to electricity, which happens naturally in healthy eyes and is the key to “seeing.” Finally, they’ll shrink the implant down to the optimal size for Niell to place in the eyes of blind mice. If they can see, and more funding becomes available, the project could advance to human subjects. The stage was set for the implant project in 2015, when Taylor pat- ented technology that covers any generic interface for connecting any For an implant recipient, this would make the difference between navigating an open doorway and being able to read facial expressions. 22 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 COURTESY OF THE ALEMÁN AND TAYLOR LABORATORIES. intro PHYSICS No other Northwest media will deliver you this print audience. Not one. OregonQuarterly.com Oregon QUARTERLY The Magazine of the University of Oregon Our magazine advertising works. Hard. For information, Please contact Ross Johnson at Oregon Media for pricing information. Ross Johnson: ross@oregon-media.com 541-948-5200 www.oregon-media.com HOW DUCKS REINVENTED SNEAKERS T H E M A G A Z I N E O F T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F O R E G O N SUMMER 2016 QUAR T E R LY Oregon SUSTAINABLE CITIES | TRIBES AND CLIMATE CHANGE | AFTER A SHOOTING Morning Edition In-depth reporting on today's news with analysis, context, background and commentary to inform, challenge and amuse. Weekdays 4-9am or On Demand electronics to a nerve. He shares the patent with Simon Brown, his research collaborator at New Zealand’s University of Canterbury, and their respective institutions. Soon after, Taylor bested more than 950 competing ideas to win an InnoCentive Prize. Next came two invitations to the White House and $1.8 million to cover startup costs from the W. M. Keck Foundation and the UO. Taylor says this work builds on the UO’s 60-year tradition encour- aging scientists in different fields to join forces. It also provides a glimpse of things to come from the UO’s new Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact, whose mission is to make new treatments and technologies available as quickly as possible by applying a practical focus to insights gained from fundamen- tal research. Although the team’s current focus is human vision, Taylor says fractal technology is generic. If it repairs vision, it may also restore or enhance any number of things, from hearing to touch to targeting particular regions of the brain. “Long-term, a project like this is so exciting that you’ve got to be careful not to overexcite people,” he says, “but I really do think the sky’s the limit for this idea of inter- facing artificial devices with living systems like the human body.” Taylor, a trained painter and photographer famous for many discoveries involving fractal pat- terns, says it was probably inevi- table that he’d end up looking at vision. But he emphasizes that he could never attempt this project alone. “I’m always amazed at how if you keep your eyes open, you cre- ate your own luck,” he says, “and you get attracted to people who can help you.” Melody Ward Leslie, BA ’79, is a UO staff writer. Neurons (dark blue) adhering to fractal interconnects. LENS OF THE MARKET In addition to doing scientific research, three of the reti- nal implant team’s doctoral students are doing intensive market studies to help shape the implant’s development. They’re learning to think like entrepreneurs through Lens of the Market, a program devel- oped by a company called Ecos Venture Collaborators (ecosVC). Bill Watterson, who will de- fend his dissertation this spring, appreciates the program’s focus on solving real problems. “When you talk about commer- cialization, people immediately think it’s about money,” he says. “But for us, it’s looking at what people need and developing technology that helps them.” A better retinal implant would serve a growing market. Retinitis pigmentosa is an inher- ited disease that slowly casts one person in 4,000 into total blindness. Macular degenera- tion already affects 11 million people in the United States. Worldwide, an estimated 196 million will be living with it three years from now. By 2040, the projection rises to 288 million. Graduate students are doing most of the hands-on science for the retinal implant. Watterson is joined by Andrew Blaikie, David Miller, Saba Moslehi, Conor Rowland, Kris Schobert, Julian Smith, and Kara Zappitelli. A 275-acre community in a rural setting, Mennonite Village provides living spaces for all levels of retirement just a short drive from Corvallis, Salem, or Eugene. With an award-winning health care and beautifully landscaped grounds, Mennonite Village is an inclusive community of amazing people. 541.928.7232 www.mennonitevillage.org 5353 Columbus St SE, Albany, OR 97322 Independent Living Homes in the Village (including NEW CONSTRUCTION) Independent Living Apartments at Ashwood Courts I & II Assisted Living Apartments at Quail Run Adult Foster Memory Care Home at Mary's Place Memory Care at Lydia's House Long Term Nursing Care at Mennonite Home Inpatient and Outpatient Rehabilitation Services at Mennonite Home In-Home Care to Residents of Linn, Benton, and Southern Marion Counties Picture yourself living at Mennonite Village... Village Mennonite 24 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 intro MAKIN' STUFF Heavy Metal New machine shop helps students turn ideas into prototypes. At the UO’s Technical Sciences Administration machine shop, prod- uct design major Heather Higgins zeroes the coordi- nate system on a three-axis mill before she trims a block of aluminum. PHOTOGRAPH BY CHARLIE LITCHFIELD J ohn Boosinger remembers the day in 1999 when he first set foot in the UO’s machine shop near Lawrence Hall. As an architecture student, he had often peered through the shop windows, fascinated by the lathes, mills, and drills. That day, he was riding by on his unicycle. One of the machinists ran out and called after him. He needed some help, and happened to be working on a unicycle. Boosinger was happy to lend a hand—a gesture that led to a part-time job, an entry-level position, and eventually his current role as director of the UO’s Technical Sciences Administration (TSA), the team that runs the shop and works on high-precision projects for the UO’s science labs. Today, Boosinger hopes to welcome more first-timers into the shop, thanks to a new maker space (a community center with tools for making things) and classroom he opened this fall. The plan, he says, is to create a welcoming workshop where students, faculty, and staff members can learn the basics of metal fabrication, get their hands dirty, and make things. Members of his staff will consult with clients on their projects and, when necessary, tackle the more technical aspects of turning ideas on paper into functional objects. “If any student has ever had a vision, invention, or kick- starter project—something that is in their mind right now and they want to find out if it can become a reality and hold it in their hands—I feel like our shop is a good resource to start,” says Boosinger. “You can walk in the door and I’m ready to help make that vision become a reality. I have met very few students who didn’t get excited about that moment, realizing that this block of material can be cut in half. It can be worked. Hands-on education is so much quicker and more effective than trying to look through a book on how things are built.” The UO is at the forefront of a national maker space move- ment, especially when it comes to a collaborative, interdis- ciplinary approach where each shop isn’t dedicated to just one department, says Boosinger. His design and innova- tion shop is one of six maker spaces on campus. Offering an array of high- and low-tech tools, the spaces give students powerful new ways to design prototypes, try out ideas, and make things that enhance their university experience, regardless of their majors or educational goals. BY ED DORSCH THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF OREGON 25 The DeArmond MakerSpace in the new Allan Price Science Commons and Research Library, for instance, has a laser cutter, 3-D printer, drill press, and sewing machine. The EMU’s craft center offers tools for wood- working, pottery, glass-working, and more. Boosinger’s shop specializes in high-end metal fabrication—just what the UO needs right now, he says. Interdisciplinary, entrepreneurial programs such as product design mean more students making prototypes of their creative ideas. Demand will increase in coming years as the $1 billion Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact takes shape. The Knight Campus is designed to speed up the cycle of generating impact from discoveries. Boosinger’s team brings years of practical experience, solving prob- lems and developing projects that function in rigorous laboratory condi- tions. Though his team has focused on the UO’s science labs in the past, its portfolio has expanded beyond the sciences in recent years. “It’s never the same,” he says. “Science is always changing. The proj- ects are always changing. Any day, every day, a student or professor will walk in with a new problem. I’m nowhere near done learning, which is a great joy.” The thousands of projects developed in the shop include a 500-gallon tsunami simulator, alloy sample chambers that repli- cate the 2,000-degree temperature and 50,000 pounds-per-square- inch pressure of a volcano’s mol- ten core, and an atom-trapping tunable diode laser. For the Department of Product Design, Boosinger’s team created aluminum molds for a 500-ton steam press. They helped a faculty artist bring her 5,000-LED light installa- tion to life and developed an innovative camera mount for the School of Journalism and Communication. Faculty members in the Charles H. Lundquist College of Business commissioned smartphone replicas for a marketing research project. Boosinger’s shop is the only place on campus that can fabricate metal— with precision down to .0001 inches. His staff offers expertise in math- ematics, physics, electrical engineering, 3-D computer modeling, and machinery. They have tools you won’t find anywhere else on campus, like a specialized contraption called a five-axis CNC mill. “A small 3-D printer will create an excellent model of that robotic guide dog you’re creating for your product design class. But this is where you come when you’re ready to make a working prototype. You need a fully functional robot. It could be done here. That’s kind of an extreme exam- ple. But we could actually make it.” The Design and Innovation Shop (also called the Scientific Instrument Fabrication and Engineering Shop) is located in 101 Cascade Annex, and is available to all UO students and faculty and staff members at an hourly rate of $15. The shop also offers prototype and design and manufacturing services at an hourly rate of $50 for on campus work and $100 for off campus business. Consultations are free. Ed Dorsch, BA '94, MA '98, is a UO staff writer. The UO is at the forefront of a national maker space movement. 503-231-9464 www.prattandlarson-or.com 1201 SE 3 rd Ave Portland, OR 97214 Classic and Contemporary Tile & Stone 26 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 intro PHOTOGRAPHS BY JACK LIU COMMUNITY In a small conference room located at the Samaritan Pastega Regional Cancer Center in Corvallis, 16 people—patients dealing with varying stages of cancer and their caregivers—gathered for an art workshop. Each patient entered the room with trepi-dation. Under their breath, some protested they weren’t artists. Others muttered, “I can’t draw.” But soon, under the guid-ance of Lisa Abia-Smith, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (JSMA) director of educational outreach, the grumblings ceased as she gently instructed the group to ask questions of themselves—Who was I before my ill- ness? Who am I now? Who will I be in the future?—and had them explore their answers by painting or drawing what- ever came into their heads. Voices quieted as hands became busy assembling collages. The patients at the cancer center are among 3,500 people being helped by Art Heals, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art’s health-care initiative. The ini- tiative offers arts-based activities to help people cope with illness and recovery and to teach the value of personal expression and reflection. At the Samaritan Pastega Center, Abia-Smith was assisted by art therapist Sara McDonough, who guided patients and caregivers through an artistic exploration of their identities and experiences, encouraging them to reflect on words and symbols as metaphors for new growth in their lives. “During times of uncertainty and transition, we often rush into the future, making goals, plans, and resolu- tions,” Abia-Smith explains. “This workshop allows par- ticipants time to explore their feelings and learn that the process of creating is just as important, if not more so, than the product.” Participants find the process valuable. “One patient said that doing the self-portrait helped her understand that her cancer doesn’t define her. In fact, it is a very small part of who she is,” says Holly Almond, a nurse practitioner with Art Heals A Jordan Schnitzer Museum initiative provides an artistic outlet for people dealing with grief and illness. BY DEBBIE WILLIAMSON-SMITHLisa Abia-Smith instructs OHSU medical students in Visual Thinking Strategies, another component of the Art Heals program. portlandartmuseum.org QUEST FOR BEAUTY The Architecture, Landscapes, And Collections of John Yeon May 13 – September 3, 2017 The University of Oregon’s John Yeon Center for Architecture and the Landscape was founded in 1995 by Richard Louis Brown to preserve works by the architect and conservationist John Yeon (1910–94) and to further the ideals of Yeon’s civic activism. yeoncenter.uoregon.edu CENTER for ARCHITECTURE and the LANDSCAPE Portland Visitors Information Center, 1948, Photo: Roger Sturdevant Collection, Oakland Museum of California. THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF OREGON 27portlandartmuseum.org QUEST FOR BEAUTY The Architecture, Landscapes, And Collections of John Yeon May 13 – September 3, 2017 The University of Oregon’s John Yeon Center for Architecture and the Landscape was founded in 1995 by Richard Louis Brown to preserve works by the architect and conservationist John Yeon (1910–94) and to further the ideals of Yeon’s civic activism. yeoncenter.uoregon.edu CENTER for ARCHITECTURE and the LANDSCAPE Portland Visitors Information Center, 1948, Photo: Roger Sturdevant Collection, Oakland Museum of California. 28 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 intro COMMUNITY the Corvallis cancer center. “Another patient was grateful for the oppor- tunity for one of the sessions to travel to the JSMA. She loved seeing the works on display and working in the studio, and she was proud to have her work on display at the exhibition.” Art Heals participants include oncology patients, parents of infants in the neonatal intensive care unit at Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend, young adults coping with trauma, and children who have recently lost a parent or guardian to illness. “Each program begins with a needs assessment with the health-care partner,” Abia-Smith says. “Then we align the art expression activities with the needs and abilities of the participants.” For members of Courageous Kids, a grief-support program for youth and their families, the program uses writing and visual prompts. The instructor guides children and teens through age-appropriate activities, including art, drama, discussion, and writing. Before they create art, the youth are asked four questions: Where were you when you found out about the person you lost? What happened? What was it like? How are you now? “Grandma’s color was purple. Her death was very sudden. Like a storm, everyone got caught in it,” wrote 17-year-old Joslyn in an artist statement that accompanied her painting. Museum educators also work with mothers whose infants are hospitalized at the neonatal intensive care unit at RiverBend. The workshops they lead include lessons on watercolor techniques and illustration that focus on the connection between mother and infant. Participants construct mandalas as a symbol of their womb and the interconnectedness of life. “The JSMA education staff is fortunate to witness the beauty and emo- tion that transpires in each workshop,” Abia-Smith says. “The work cre- ated illustrates the power art can play in healing and recovery.” Another program provides experiences in the arts for children with disabilities. The VSA (Vision, Strength, and Artistic Expression) ArtAccess workshops, supported by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, encourage participants to come to the JSMA with their family and friends for free sessions, which are held throughout the year. Each explores different mediums and tactile experiences to help stu- dents practice motor skills and self-expression. Activities are adaptable to allow the students their own interpretations of the art projects. The Kennedy Center also supported the JSMA’s creation of a series of how-to videos demonstrating art lessons for children with developmental disabilities, physical disabilities, and autism. The fastest-growing program in the museum’s education department, Art Heals recently expanded to include the Visual Thinking Strategies pilot program with six cohorts of medical students from Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU). Abia-Smith is a principal investigator in the project along with Patricia Dewey Lambert, associate professor Grandma's color was purple. Her death was very sudden. Like a storm, everyone got caught in it. Starting June 2 nonstop EUG to PHX THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF OREGON 29 Customized investment portfolios for multigenerational families, nonprofits and businesses Taking a Disciplined Approach to Investing fergusonwellman.com $3 million minimum westbearinginvest .com $750,000 minimum U of O mag _Layout 1 2/28/17 3:33 PM Page 1 in the UO Arts and Administration Program, director of the UO Center for Community Arts and Cultural Policy, and director of the Oregon Arts in Health Care Research Consortium. The lessons begin with the students writing down observations both of a patient’s diagnos- tic imagery and of a work of art from the JSMA collection, Artur Von Ferraris’ unfinished painting The Last Audience of the Hapsburgs. Abia-Smith then trains them in visual thinking strategies by exploring and interpreting art in the museum’s galleries and in the Northwest Surgical Specialists building in Springfield. The medical students will then observe the medical imagery again. Abia-Smith is hopeful the research will show that visual thinking strategies improve medical students’ and residents’ visual acuity and their ability to communicate their visual observations. “This ultimately will translate into better patient care,” she says. Debbie Williamson-Smith is the communications manager at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. Art Heals is aligned with the teaching mission of the University of Oregon Arts in Health Care Research Consortium within the Arts and Administration Program in the School of Architecture and Allied Arts. Its partner organizations include: • Courageous Kids • Samaritan Pastega Regional Cancer Center • Holly Residential Art for Adults with Brain and Spinal Injuries • Oregon Supported Living Program • Neonatal intensive care unit at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend • University of Oregon Arts in Health Care Research Consortium • University of Oregon Collegiate Recovery Center • University of Oregon Counseling and Testing Center • VSA ArtAccess (art courses for children with disabilities) Lisa Abia-Smith will be speaking about Art Heals and VTS at two upcoming events: the Arts in Society conference June 14–20, 2017, in Paris and the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries annual conference June 22–25 in Eugene. She presented at the University of California at San Francisco for the Arts in Health California Conference on March 18, 2017. She is also the author of a chapter, “Training the Mind to See: Art Museums as a Training Ground for Medical Students,” in Managing Arts Programs in Health Care (Routledge Press, October 2015). The accessible art videos can be viewed at jsma.uoregon.edu/AccessibleArts. 30 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 intro PROFILE BrownAndiel PUSHING BOUNDARIES Whether it’s proving that a skin- ny kid can became the leading punt returner in the Pac-10, win- ning weightlifting competitions, or shaping his gospel choir into a global powerhouse, University of Oregon choir instructor Andiel Brown, BS ’08, loves a challenge. Under his direction, the UO Gospel Singers have won two national choir competitions, and in 2013 they made world history by becoming the first gospel act ever to perform publicly in the People’s Republic of China. To further solidify the Gospel Singers as a group that pushes boundaries, Brown plans to take the choir to Cuba at the end of this year. “When President Obama lifted the embargo from Cuba, that was my thinking,” he says. “We’re going to go there and be political ambassadors through music.” A dynamic director, Brown, with his signature long dreadlocks swaying to the gospel rhythm, emphasizes expression physically as well as vocally. And although the choir sings mostly tradi- tional songs, Brown produces a contemporary sound by blending musical genres such as rap and pop, and incorporating a variety of instruments, including assort- ed drums—steel, congas, and bongos—as well as Swiss hanging drums, a glockenspiel, and old- world instruments such as the guzheng, a traditional Chinese instrument similar to a harp. Relying heavily on dominant vo- cals, gospel music is not for the timid. According to Brown, his beginning classes are about 90 percent international students— many from China, a culture where quietness is considered a virtue. “I love seeing the development from shy and timid to bold and courageous and confident over the course of 10 weeks.” INSTRUCTOR OF GOSPEL CHOIRS AND ENSEMBLES, SCHOOL OF MUSIC AND DANCE BY SHARLEEN NELSON PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTINA CASSIDY THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF OREGON 31 Brown 10 TAKES: PACIFIC NORTHWEST WRITERS: PERSPECTIVES ON WRITING (GLADEYE PRESS, 2015) BY JENNIFER ROLAND, BS ’98 Jennifer Roland interviews a variety of authors who have one thing in common—they have all chosen to make the Pacific Northwest their home. Covering a diversity of disci- plines and genres—from comics, fantasy and detective nov- els to long-form poetry and illustrated children’s series—10 writers provide unique insight into their craft, provide helpful writing advice and tips for success, and share their passion for living and writing in the Pacific Northwest. BOOKMARKS From practical parenting and “daycations” for families, to writing tips from Northwest authors and step-by-step instructions for raising backyard chickens, recent books from our alumni continue to capture our attention. Find more titles at Oregonquarterly.com/bookmarks. BREAKING THE TRANCE: A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR PARENTING THE SCREEN-DEPENDENT CHILD (CENTRAL RECOVERY PRESS, 2016) BY CYNTHIA JOHNSON, BFA ’72, AND GEORGE LYNN We are in an age where the consumption of media and electronics is at an all-time high. While this can be bene- ficial, it is cutting into valuable family time. Johnson and Lynn’s book offers parents a concrete way to scale back on their children’s screen time and create opportunities to build more family connections. THE BACKYARD FIELD GUIDE TO CHICKENS (VOYAGEUR PRESS, 2016) BY CHRISTINE HEINRICHS, BS ’76 This book offers more than step-by-step instructions for raising backyard chickens. Christine Heinrichs provides detailed information on everything from the history, behavior, and characteristics of chickens to the useful- ness, temperament, and care of each breed. According to Heinrichs, starting a backyard chicken farm becomes an easy feat with the help of this handy field guide. EXPLORING THE STAGE Brown is active in local community theater, showcasing his versatility in roles rang- ing from Seaweed J. Stubbs in Hairspray to Mordecai in The Book of Esther: A Rock Gospel Ballet. His very first acting gig came along during his sophomore year in high school, when he was selected for a PBS documentary on Lewis and Clark to play the role of York, the explorers' guide on the Oregon Trail. SYMPHONY IN THE KEY OF B A long-held goal of his has been to write a symphony, but Brown also wants to infuse it with his love of storytelling and dance. After his gospel choir collaborated with a local ballet company in The Book of Esther, he began creating the setting, scenes, and music for a ballet of his own. A NATURAL LIFT A former walk-on star for the Ducks football team, Brown recently took home his first trophy in the National Physique Committee bodybuilding organization’s 2016 Battle for the Eagle Championship. He supports natural bodybuilding, which eschews supplements or steroid use. SUPPORTING YOUTH As a child growing up in Los Angeles, Brown witnessed gang involvement in his own family. Today he is a motivational speaker at local high schools and mentors a number of young men. His long-term goal is to start a national nonprofit orga- nization for underrepresented youth. “Kids want to know that someone cares,” he says, “and the way you show someone you care is by giving your time.” BEND OREGON DAYCATIONS: DAY TRIPS FOR CURIOUS FAMILIES (CREATESPACE INDEPENDENT PUBLISHING PLATFORM, 2016) BY KIM COOPER FINDLING, BA ’93 Kim Cooper has narrowed down the most memorable, breathtaking day trips that surround Bend, Oregon. Whether you fancy exploring the cobalt blue waters of Crater Lake or feeding salmon and snacking on ice cream, this book gives an in-depth narrative of each place and all the details for a well-planned trip. HEAL THE WORLD A prolific songwriter, Brown has written dozens of songs that embody his aspira- tions to uplift, heal, or inform. Inspired by Michael Jackson—posters of Jackson adorn the walls of his office—his approach is to find something that everybody can connect with, whether it’s through the message or the music. 32 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 intro PHOTOGRAPH BY ADAM EBERHARDT CAMPUS THE BEST . . . Way Forward T he syllabus was a piece of art. Pictures of elementary school teachers wearing shirts that read “Black Lives Matter.” Quotes from the ever-inspiring writer, feminist, and activist Audre Lorde and from the wonderful wordsmith James Baldwin. Assignments that included readings from author Ta-Nehisi Coates and poet Claudia Rankine. Suggested texts that included reading of Beyoncé’s lyrics to Lemonade and Donald Glover’s dialogue from Atlanta. This was not a traditional education studies class. This was a class that accurately reflected the world around it. This was an education studies course that took a deep dive into the pervasive racism both in America and in our education system. This course is one of a number of equal opportunity (EO) courses offered for educational foundations majors at the College of Education. Taken throughout senior year, they offer future teachers a look at deeply rooted societal issues—such as patriarchy, immigration, and homopho- bia—that also affect the classroom. As a senior in the educational foundations program, I have taken two of these classes. They have shown me the importance, and power, of being aware and critical of my surrounding world. Everything I have learned, discussed, and read in these EO courses matters. In my time at the UO, no other classes have better prepared me to be a contributing citizen of the world, to make lasting change and to, ultimately, be a better human. During fall term, I took an EO course focused on racism that was BY ZACH SILVA taught by the seemingly omniscient instructor Asilia Franklin-Phipps. To take a course focused on racism after a tumultuous summer of racial incidents and during an incredibly vitri- olic political campaign was harrowing. Each day, the news brought horrible realities to light that emphasized the importance of this class. I was able to see a system of oppression and incarceration as not just history but front-page news. It made what we were learning matter. We were not merely studying issues of the past, but issues of today and of all the foreseeable tomorrows. This winter, I am taking a class on patriarchy. We are looking into the deeply rooted, inner workings of the white-male-dominated and -controlled society that we live in. Having this course coincide with the inauguration of Donald Trump as president is another painful reminder of how much this course matters. To go from reading about the disturbing ways in which men have tried to own women’s bodies throughout history, to see the current administra- tion pushing for health-care legislation that would take away a woman’s right to make choices about her own body, is disheartening. Whether I go on to be a teacher or journalist, or take some other career path, these courses will serve as a guiding light. These equal opportunity courses are what college is all about: understanding the world, challeng- ing the world, and attempting to make it a better place. Zach Silva is a senior at UO, majoring in journalism and educational foundations. There is nothing he likes more than a good Granny Smith apple. THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF OREGON 33 Hallmark Oceanfront Resorts o er guests stunning Oregon Coast beauty combined with inspired accommodations and outstanding service. Plan your next vacation to one of our two signature properties located in Newport and Cannon Beach. Cannon Beach • Newport hallmarkinns.com • 877.541.8492 BRING BACK That Spring in Your Step the art of organization custom closets | home offi ces | garages | murphy beds entertainment centers and more... ©2017 Closet Factory. All rights reserved. CCB#20881 | WA CLOSECF853R3 503-692-2877 Mon - Fri 8am to 5pm Sat 10am to 4pm www.closetfactory.com custom closets murphy bedshome offi ces laundry roomsgarages 101 E Broadway, Suite 480 Eugene, OR 97401 541-762-0300 www.sapientpwm.com Serving as trusted advisers to UO Alumni and families for nearly 50 years. 34 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 intro PHOTOGRAPH BY JACK LIU EXCERPT he Struggle is in your name, Samori—you were named for Samori Touré, who struggled against French colonizers for the right to his own black body. He died in captivity, but the profits of that struggle and others like it are ours, even when the object of our struggle, as is so often true, escapes our grasp. I learned this living among a people whom I would never have chosen, because the privileges of being black are not always self-evident. We are, as Derrick Bell once wrote, the “faces at the bottom of the well.” But there really is wisdom down here, and that wisdom accounts for much of the good in my life. And my life down here accounts for you. There was also wisdom in those streets. I think now of the old rule that held that should a boy be set upon in someone else’s chancy hood, his friends must stand with him, and they must all take their beating together. I now know that within this edict lay the key to all living. None of us were promised to end the fight on our feet, fists raised to the sky. We could not control our enemies’ number, strength, nor weaponry. Sometimes you just caught a bad one. But whether you fought or ran, you did it together, because that is the part that was in our control. What we must never do is willingly hand over our own bodies or the bod- ies of our friends. That was the wisdom: We knew we did not lay down the direction of the street, but despite that, we could—and must—fashion the way of our walk. And that is the deeper meaning of your name—that the struggle, in and of itself, has meaning. That wisdom is not unique to our people, but I think it has special meaning to those of us born out of mass rape, whose ancestors were carried off and divided up into policies and stocks. I have raised you to respect every human being as sin- gular, and you must extend that same respect into the past. Slavery is not an indefinable mass of flesh. It is a particular, specific enslaved woman, whose mind is active as your own, whose range of feeling is as vast as your own; who prefers the way the light falls in one particular spot in the woods, who Excerpted from Between the World and Me, the University of Oregon Common Reading selection for 2016–17. More than 4,000 copies of the book were distributed to first-year students, who were joined by the wider campus and Eugene community for a year of conversation and teaching around study of the book. The event was capped by Coates’ Ruhl Lecture before a capacity crowd at Matthew Knight Arena on February 3. For more information, visit commonreading.uoregon.edu. BY TA-NEHISI COATES Between the World and Me THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF OREGON 35 At the University of Oregon INDULGE YOUR MIND EO/AA/ADA institution committed to cultural diversity. ©2017 University of Oregon. • Lectures, discussions, and study groups for adults who know learning has no age limit. • No tests, no grades—just learning for the joy of it! Join OLLI-UO in Eugene-Springfield or Central Oregon LEARN MORE 800-824-2714 • 541-346-0697 • http://osher.uoregon.edu 6 VARIETIES BGood Bars are an excellent choice when you hike, bike, ski or to just finish your day! BGOOD ARTISAN CHOCOLATE ENERGY BAR HANDMADE JUST FOR YOU IN JOSEPH, OREGON BGood Bars are Artisan-made & hand dipped in Fair Trade dark chocolate in small batches to bring you the best quality healthy snack. – GLUTEN FREE – NO PRESERVATIVES – LOW GLYCEMIC – – LOW SODIUM – MOSTLY ORGANIC – BGood Bars LLC | PO Box 714 | Joseph, OR | 97846 info@bgoodbars.com www.bgoodbars.com enjoys fishing where the water eddies in a nearby stream, who loves her mother in her own complicated way, thinks her sister talks too loud, has a favorite cousin, a favorite season, who excels at dressmaking and knows, inside herself, that she is as intelligent and capable as anyone. “Slavery” is this same woman born in a world that loudly proclaims its love of freedom and inscribes this love in its essential texts, a world in which these same professors hold this woman a slave, hold her mother a slave, her father a slave, her daughter a slave, and when this woman peers back into the generations all she sees is the enslaved. She can hope for more. She can imagine some future for her grandchildren. But when she dies, the world— which is really the only world she can ever know—ends. For this woman, enslavement is not a parable. It is damnation. It is the never-ending night. And the length of that night is most of our history. Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free. Never forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains—whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains. You must struggle to truly remember this past in all its nuance, error, and humanity. You must resist the common urge toward the comforting narrative of divine law, toward fairy tales that imply some irrepressible justice. The enslaved were not bricks in your road, and their lives were not chapters in your redemptive history. They were people turned to fuel for the American machine. Enslavement was not destined to end, and it is wrong to claim our present circumstance—no matter how improved—as the redemp- tion for the lives of people who never asked for the posthumous, untouchable glory of dying for their children. Our triumphs can never compensate for this. Perhaps our triumphs are not even the point. Perhaps struggle is all we have because the god of history is an atheist, and nothing about his world is meant to be. So you must wake up every morning knowing that no promise is unbreakable, least of all the promise of waking up at all. This is not despair. These are the preferences of the universe itself: verbs over nouns, actions over states, struggle over hope. The birth of a better world is not ultimately up to you, though I know, each day, there are grown men and women who tell you otherwise. The world needs saving precisely because of the actions of these same men and women. I am not a cynic. I love you, and I love the world, and I love it more with every new inch I discover. But you are a black boy, and you must be responsible for your body in a way that other boys cannot know. Indeed, you must be responsible for the worst actions of other black bodies, which, somehow, will always be assigned to you. And you must be responsible for the bodies of the powerful—the policeman who cracks you with a night- stick will quickly find his excuse in your furtive movements. And this is not reducible to just you—the women around you must be responsible for their bodies in a way that you never will know. You have to make your peace with the chaos, but you cannot lie. You cannot forget how much they took from us and how they transfigured our very bodies into sugar, tobacco, cotton, and gold. Ta-Nehisi Coates is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle. Coates has received the National Magazine Award, the Hillman prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism, and the George Polk Award for his cover story in The Atlantic, “The Case for Reparations.” Excerpt from Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, copyright © 2015 by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Used by permission of Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. 36 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 RESPECT he night of the civil war basketball game in early January of this year, I put my phone on silent, scared of the vulnerability of putting months of work in the public eye. I steeled myself against the temptation to check my texts and Twitter notifi- cations. I focused on dicing bell peppers, distracting myself by hosting a dinner party so I wouldn’t have to think about the impending feedback. I knew the project was finally out of our hands. It was up to the world to decide how it felt about Reset the Code. As one of 18 students who created Reset the Code, I was nervous about how this short-timeline, high-stakes project would be received. The initiative was created to respond to rising tensions and a disrespect for difference, and to encourage students to speak out against intolerance. Given the personal nature of the work, I worried about my team members. How would they feel if they were criticized for work borne from such an emotional process? When dinner was done, I turned my phone on. My iMessage was flooded with photos of our logo on screens at Matthew Knight Arena, links to Pac-12 coverage of the campaign, photos of sportscaster Bill Walton holding up a tie-dye shirt with our logo, and supportive messages from strangers online. I was overwhelmed. * * *Our team was motivated to create Reset the Code after several hateful events roiled the University of Oregon during fall term. In October, UO law professor Nancy Shurtz wore blackface at an off-campus Halloween party with students. The community drew sides, with hundreds signing a peti- tion defending Shurtz’s free speech rights, 23 of her colleagues calling for her resignation, and the university launch- ing a full investigation. The controversy shook our community, spawning outrage, fear, and classroom debates that left some students more afraid of their peers’ willingness to justify rac- ism than of the incident itself. Immediately following the election, anxieties spiked again. The morning of November 9, my normally composed media theory class sat in a circle and cried as some people recounted the words that had been screamed at them the night before. Some were told to “go back to where you came from,” and others were called “faggot.” These words hit everyone, even those who had staunchly defended the free speech of Shurtz a week before. Soon after, a UO student captured a video of three middle school students in blackface outside a Black Student Union meeting. It went viral, leading to the apprehension of the suspects. Reset the Code team member Raquel Ortega said, “I didn’t feel the safest. Those coming weeks brought out the worst and best of people on campus.” The Black Student Union organized a rally on November 11 that drew an enor- mous crowd and spoke to the overwhelming emotions and desire—held by so many on campus—to create change. In the wake of these events, School of Journalism and Communication faculty advisor Tom McDonnell gathered students from Allen Hall Advertising, a student-run ad agency. We were accustomed to doing work for local clients, but this time, McDonnell explained, we would be launching a different kind of campaign. He turned the floor over to Brandon Montes-Nguyen, who argued that as communi- cators, we had a chance to use our skills for the good of the BY HANNAH LEWMAN | PHOTOGRAPHS BY RHIANNA GELHART HITTING THE RESET ON THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF OREGON 37 RESPECT To arouse interest, the team gradually revealed elements of the campaign, including a “reset” button (facing page), a website and online pledge, and a 20-foot banner that was signed by thousands. 38 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 community. We had no idea how to tackle such large issues, but he urged us to try. “What prompted me to do something was that I was genuinely scared,” Montes Nguyen says. “I couldn’t sleep and I felt like I needed to make a difference somehow.” Our team began brainstorming ideas. Not a single one of our early meetings was shorter than three hours. In working together, our proj- ect found its heart. The diversity of identities and experiences on our team led to intense brain- storming. People had experienced marginalization in distinct ways, which made for an array of perspectives on important issues. We talked about hate and power. We talked about history. We talked about what it meant to be Black, gay, first generation, and scared about the sentiment on campus. We decided to focus our campaign on those who keep silent—the person who finds blackface heinous yet doesn’t say anything when their friend describes some- one as “ghetto,” or the person who is outraged to hear about harassment toward a same-sex couple but sits in silence when someone calls a movie “gay.” They don’t realize how their complacency and silence creates an environment where a hateful few feel emboldened to act unacceptably. Sonali Sampat, a member of the Reset team, com- mented that as a woman of color on campus, it is “important that students who belong to marginalized groups feel valued and cared about by the community.” It came back to the Golden Rule: Treat others as you would like to be treated, and hold others accountable to do the same. Our creative team started conceptualizing fresh ways to communicate this message. After hours of spouting syn- onyms, we had it: Reset the Code. The phrase tied together the idea of wiping a slate clean and starting afresh—in this case, returning to an age-old code of conduct shared by cul- tures around the world. To accompany this moniker, we crafted our own code: “I pledge to abide by mutual respect and reject complacency in the presence of fear and hate.” The designers camped out for hours in Allen Hall and developed an icon that centers around “95,” the first two digits in a Duck ID “code.” These numbers symbolize a united UO community that allows for a vast number of unique experiences. Circling the numbers is a reset arrow, a reminder that every person, no matter who they are or what numbers make up their Duck ID, has the power to reset the code. Next, our team had to figure out how to introduce our campaign. Thousands of messages compete for attention every day, so our reveal would need to provoke curiosity and incite buzz. So the symbol couldn’t be ignored, Raquel Ortega suggested we “take away something people would miss: the view from the center of campus.” Using edge-to-edge black cov- erings, we’d block the view from the windows of the EMU Fishbowl. And on the panels would be this message: “A view unremarkable, until it’s gone. The right to be you, inalienable, until it’s not. Reset the Code.” We also wanted to build understanding of issues affecting our com- munity. Tylynn Burns came up with “Reset Read,” a video drawn from statements she’d been subjected to as a woman of color. In it, her best friend reads the racist comments back to Tylynn, who reminds her friend that people would be less likely to make these remarks if others discouraged them. To accompany this, team animators created videos showing how to be an “upstander”—someone who speaks up—instead of a bystander. Finally, the team built outlets for participation. In the “Reset Room,” people could anonymously record their own stories of injustice, mistakes, and intervention. Through the Reset website and social media channels, they could take the pledge online; on campus, they could join the cause by signing a 20-foot banner. In December, our team members prepared for final exams. But as a group, we focused on a bigger test: getting support for our initiative. We nervously practiced and polished our pitch, working around exam schedules to send team members to various UO offices. Everywhere our team spoke, we gained invaluable allies, picking up 18 partners, including the Division of Equity and Inclusion, the Division of Student Life, and University Communications. The week following Reset the Code’s roll out, our message spread online to 40 different countries, gained 150,000 Facebook impressions, and earned 70,000 video views. More than 2,000 people took our online pledge with as many or more signing the banner. The Duck Store agreed to sell Reset the Code T-shirts and donate proceeds to the UO Diversity Excellence Scholarship. We kept up the momentum, producing videos, running social accounts, and talking to reporters. Our campaign was not without detractors, though. Writing in the Emerald, columnist Billy Manggala wrote, “Reset the Code was vaguely telling students to stand up to social injustice, but the campaigns’ discreet strategies didn’t make that completely visible at first.” After the university’s January 25 decision not to rename Deady Hall, some criticized the campaign for failing to make the changes they wanted. Student Emma Burke tweeted: “Reset the Code a pathetic, transparent attempt at distracting student body from real, institu- tional injustice w/faux activism.” Other responses have been supportive. Yue Shen, international student advocate for the Associated Students of the University of Oregon, wrote, “The soli- darity with and appreciation of diversity of UO commu- nities could not have been better expressed.” Self-described Title IX athlete and first-generation American Micki Bessler wrote: “I pledge to make my work- place and town more welcoming to diversity every day.” That’s why we undertook this challenge. The purpose of Reset the Code is to go beyond words, to help people feel respected and worthy, and to remind others that each one of us has the capacity to be a catalyst for profound change. Hannah Lewman is a third-year student from Portland majoring in advertising and Spanish. Rhianna Gelhart is a senior in the UO’s School of Journalism and Communication. TYLYNN BURNS CAME UP WITH “RESET READ,” A VIDEO DRAWN FROM STATEMENTS SHE’D BEEN SUBJECTED TO AS A WOMAN OF COLOR. C H R IS T R O T C H IE , E M E R A L D M E D IA G R O U P Clockwise from top left: Brandon Montes-Nguyen of the Allen Hall Advertising team; student demonstrators the night of the presidential election; Natashia Greene speaking at the Black Community Rally at the EMU amphitheater on November 11; Haytham Abu Adel of the Muslim Student Association, who signed the Reset pledge, speaking on campus at the February 9 Rally in Solidarity with Muslims; students at the January 21 men’s basketball game against Stanford. A A R O N N E L S O N , E M E R A L D M E D IA G R O U P 40 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 Lizard Tales UR CARAVAN exits Highway 31 onto a two- track road that crawls into the sagebrush of Summer Lake Basin. I pull over in a prodigious dust cloud to caution the two trailing vans. “I need plenty of space—I brake for crossing reptiles.” After several shuddering miles, we park at a sandy junction with another nameless track. A leviathan ridge bouldered with dark basalt rises before us, div- ing southward into the gray desert sea. Two-dozen students from my University of Oregon biology class, Amphibians and Reptiles of Oregon, pile out with pillowcases and their lizard nooses—fishing rods or dowels or bamboo sticks with a small loop of braided line knotted to the end. Gathering in a ragged circle, we talk about the various reptiles occupying rocky outcrops and the desert floor. The students squirm with eagerness, or trepidation, or both, and then spread out and dial in their inner predator—committed vegans and avid hunters alike will enthusiastically stalk a basking lizard. Our site is a quarter-mile from Paisley Caves, a seasonal camp for humans beginning at least 14,500 years ago. People hunted Pleistocene horses and camels, and later modern mule deer, pronghorn, rabbits, and sage grouse. My aspiring herpetologists self-organize into twos and threes to pursue smaller quarry. After two decades of teaching, I’m still struck by this spontaneous eruption of a hidden tribal consciousness. Grabbing my own gear, I head for a tongue of boulders extruded from the foot of the ridge. This is one of the snakiest places I know, and I’m not disappointed. An intense buzz erupts 10 feet away. Many years ago I was afraid of snakes, but now I move quickly toward the sound. A coiled BY TOM TITUS ILLUSTRATION BY KEVIN WHIPPLE THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF OREGON 41 42 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 PHOTOGRAPHS, LEFT TO RIGHT: MACKIE WOOD (2), KAYLYNNE MARQUEZ, NICHOLAS DEPATIE Great Basin rattlesnake is cautioning me from beneath a four-foot sage- brush. In the broken light, the snake is partially concealed by its sandy back with dark patches. Using a walking stick retrofitted with a right-an- gle piece of steel, I extract the reluctant snake, gently but firmly hold the business end to the ground, and maneuver it into my bag. Despite the harassment, the snake doesn’t strike. They almost never do. Two hours evaporate like heat shimmer. At the vans, knotted pillow- cases await, strewn in the shade beneath a vehicle. The students circle around me, the bags come out, and I deliver an impromptu lecture on each captive species. From the desert floor came long-nosed leopard liz- ards with prominent dark spots and emery paper skin, the females sport- ing salmon-colored tails. They gape and display jet-black throats. I let one chomp my index finger, and suddenly several folks are begging to be bitten. Squat, round desert horned lizards have formidable but harmless spikes protruding backward from their heads. Their backs blend perfectly with brick and beige pebbles littering the desert floor. The rocks on the ridge are home to western fence lizards with prickly dark backs and blue bellies and throats that capture the furiously bright sky. Students crowd in, reaching, holding, snapping pictures, scribbling furiously in field journals. Their pressing need to see and touch and know is my addiction. The rattlesnake is last. I ask everyone to give it a little “room to breathe,” and they happily comply. Coaxing the rattlesnake from the bag, I grasp it directly behind the skull, resting the heavy, three-foot body on the ground. This is serious show and tell. The snake’s heat-sensitive facial pits, fangs, venom, and tongue-flicking make up an integrated system for preying on small mammals. I explain that rattlesnakes have been here far longer than humans. They are our elders and deserve respect. After an hour of interactive teaching, it’s time for the release. Everyone scatters to return the animals to where they were captured. A blanket of heat spreads over me. Suddenly I’m exhausted. But the rattlesnake is my responsibility, so I sip some tepid coffee, and then carry the serpent back to the rocks. From the open bag the snake lumbers away, disappearing into the boulders. * * *When our yearly field trips to Paisley Caves began two decades ago, I had no idea they would someday overlap with archeology. Ten years later, my class was camped at Summer Lake Hot Springs with students from the UO Archeology Field School, who were there for the modern excavation of Paisley Caves. At 7:00 a.m. their director, Senior Research Associate Dennis Jenkins, strolled among the tents belting out a vocal version of reveille. I liked him immediately. Several years after that, Dennis and I met again while my class lunched in the brittle sun at the park in nearby Paisley. Dennis offered me the chance to look at some mummified lizards excavated from the caves. We didn’t manage to reconnect. Years passed before I finally contacted Dennis about the lizard mum- mies. At his lab at East Fifteenth Avenue and Moss Street, I pulled a chair up to his desk and he updated me on the Paisley Caves project. Meticulous excavation and extensive radiocarbon dating had overturned previous hypotheses regarding early tool manufacture and human occu- pations of western North America. Then came the shocker—one of the lizard specimens had been radiocarbon dated to about 12,200 years before the present! This late-Pleistocene date was no mistake; it was con- sistent with all other radiocarbon dates within the same stratum. We moved to another room housing large plastic bins containing the Paisley Caves material. Dennis checked a handwritten catalog, rummaged through a bin, and retrieved a plastic bag containing two dust-dry, four- inch carcasses. Under magnification they were dragon-like, with sharp teeth, keeled scales, and dark patches of pigment on the belly. The preser- vation was extraordinary; the animals might have died last summer rather than during the Pleistocene. Their size, scales, and pigmentation identified them as sagebrush lizards, a species still found just east of Paisley Caves. Dennis asked me what was I up to beyond teaching. I told him that my research centered on various fish genome-sequencing projects in Left: The author (in white shirt) conducts class for Amphibians and Reptiles of Oregon students at Paisley Caves. Above: A female long-nosed leopard lizard in breeding coloration. THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF OREGON 43 John Postlethwait’s laboratory in the UO Institute of Neuroscience. Our conversation wandered into the chal- lenges of sequencing ancient DNA. When an organism dies, long strands of DNA gradually degrade into shorter fragments. DNA from a 12,200-year-old sagebrush liz- ard would be extremely fragmented, and not much would remain. But current sequencing technology is remarkable, and our Genomics and Cell Characterization Core Facility was keeping pace. A new DNA sequencer, purchased with a gift from Mary and Tim Boyle, could register several billion short sequences in one run. Sequencing frag- mented ancient DNA would be a natural application for this technology. Dennis and I understood that DNA from the Pleistocene lizards would exist in a cocktail of sequences from other organisms, especially fungi and other microbes. Sorting this mess could best be done by matching DNA from the lizard mummies to a modern sagebrush lizard genome. I knew DNA sequencing. I knew sagebrush lizards. Dennis leaned across folded hands, blue eyes glinting. “You want a piece of one of these lizards to see what you can do?” My world wobbled a bit. “You bet I do.” The Sagebrush Lizard Genome Project was hatched. * * *The summer following my office conversation with Dennis, I returned to Summer Lake Basin to spend four weeks of writing at Playa, a nonprofit creative arts institute located directly across the valley from Paisley Caves. My Playa residency also included a bit of biology. The Sagebrush Lizard Genome Project required a critical first step: the sequencer must get DNA from the sequencee. Sagebrush lizard DNA is sequestered inside the nuclei of cells orga- nized into a living projectile that is four-inches long and gray with light lengthwise stripes. Even on hot afternoons, sagebrush lizards keep their body temperature within a narrow range centering around 93 degrees Fahrenheit by staying in the shade and moving only when startled. Thus, heat and sagebrush lizard hunting do not mix well. But I like a challenge. On a hot afternoon, I pull my little pickup off Road 6184 east of Paisley Caves and shut off the engine. A prehuman silence settles in. Trees become a quaint memory. I see only sagebrush and blooms of yellow rabbitbrush, spreading in every direction, becom- ing an olive canvas stretched across a broad valley bounded by rim rock. This is the realm of coyotes, pronghorn, and rattlesnakes. Folks with agoraphobia should not come here. I grab my lizard noose, which began life 50 years ago as a child’s fish- ing rod. Lizard noosing requires a slow sneak, then reaching with the rod to carefully slip a loop of braided line over the motionless reptile’s head, finally lifting the scrambling animal into a waiting hand. Lizards don’t appreciate this, but I’ve never injured one with a noose. A sagebrush lizard must be met in its favorite place, and sandy soil interspersed with shrubs is ideal. When I sink into soft dirt perforated by kangaroo rat burrows, I’m in the right spot. I begin to meander. But my wandering path through the sagebrush is directed hunting, even if I’m not here with lethal intent. After 10 minutes, that telltale gray dart pierces the space above the soil, holding motionless beneath dead stems and shadows of a large sagebrush. Twigs above the lizard’s head block the noose, but the reptile twitches forward into a space large enough for me to maneuver the loop around its neck. There is tightening, lifting, frantic scrambling—and the lizard shakes free and vanishes. My genome project remains at large. Sometime later, another lizard squirts into a shadow, stops, and does tiny pushups. A female follows, and I realize this male is strutting his stuff. “Knock it off,” I command. It’s September, and if she were to lay a clutch of leathery eggs now, they would never hatch ahead of cold weather. The female wisely vanishes. When I slide the noose around Left: A hands-on herpetology lecture with the author caught holding the bag. Below: A Great Basin rattlesnake peeks out from its pillowcase. 44 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 the male, he runs through it and is gone. But maybe I’ve saved the amo- rous couple from a futile attempt at procreation. My stomach tells me it’s lunchtime, so I amble back toward the pickup. A crow-size burrowing owl flaps from a sagebrush, hurtling erratically away just above the shrubs. Burrowing owls are daytime hunters, and I suspect they eat sagebrush lizards. Without malice, I blame the owl for the dearth of lizards rather than the geneticist hunting them in the heat. Returning to the pickup, I rattle farther down Road 6184, out of the owl’s territory, while devouring a warm turkey and cheese sandwich. Briefly, I’m distracted by the possibility of food poisoning. I park at the crater of an empty waterhole surrounded by cracked hard- pan and resume hunting. Soon the ground rises, the soil loosens, and I spot that speedy reptilian wisp. The sagebrush lizard stops in the shade. They always stop. But I can’t get the noose closed, and the lizard disappears. They always disappear. My swearing ripples outward into deaf barren- ness. I’m tired of busting my butt for nothing but a salty forehead and bet- ter arm tan. Lizards have pea-sized brains. I’m large-brained and armed with my trusty lizard noose. I miss my class, those 25 pairs of young eyes and hands attached to youthful enthusiasm. But my solitude is intentional, designed in part to air my mind in the bright enormity of space. I own my frustration and reconnoiter. The braided line is too heavy for small lizards. Returning to the pickup, I fashion another noose from some Reach® dental floss. Right now, Reach® seems like better brand- ing for lizard noosing than for dental hygiene. A thin cloud veil slides across the sun. The soil surface cools. The next lizard flushes into the open and stops. I reach with the Reach®, slide the slick noose over the lizard’s neck, and bring the scrabbling reptile into my hand. The flanks are tinged with yellow—a female. My genome project requires a small dona- tion of an inch of tail. Okay, so it’s extortion. I won’t fall back on the philosophically desti- tute phrase, “it’s for the good of science.” It’s for the good of curiosity, that strange state of mind that drove Darwin to sail on the Beagle. Besides, over the millennia predators have grabbed lizards by the tail so often that nat- ural selection has favored features for easily Left: Home to the sagebrush lizards of Road 6184. Right: Mummified 12,200-year- old sagebrush lizard from Paisley Caves. PHOTOGRAPHS, LEFT TO RIGHT: TOM TITUS, THOMAS DESVIGNES parting with this appendage. Tail vertebrae of sagebrush lizards have frac- ture planes, allowing disconnection with little blood loss and eventual regen- eration of the lost bit. To me, the biological and ethical costs seem low relative to payoffs in education and our human need to discover. Quickly, I detach an inch of the lizard’s tail and pop it into a vial containing 95 percent ethanol. After a photograph, she is returned to her sagebrush. I salute with an outstretched hand, thanking her for her trouble. * * *Several days later, I return to Road 6184 hoping to add a few more lizard tails to the collection. I’m a teachable lizard hunter: I return in the morning, when it’s cooler. Thirteen feral horses disappear over a low ridge, Eurasian relatives of those whose Pleistocene flesh was butchered on a rock inside Paisley Caves. Another sagebrush lizard scoots and stops, seemingly wait- ing to be captured. I comply, and the end of her tail becomes a backup copy for the genome project. But after two more hours of crisscrossing the sandy steppe, no more lizards flash across my path. A diminutive breeze stirs the expanding heat, pushing the sun southwest across limitless blue. The hunter within tells me the sagebrush lizards of Road 6184 have given enough. At the pickup, I change into running shoes, shorts, and mesh shirt, don a small hydration backpack, and begin jogging along a rough vehicle track rising toward the skyline that swallowed the horses. Near the top the road peters out, but I dodge onward through openings in the scrub. The sun becomes a furrowed brow of heat behind me, the dark bicep of Diablo Mountain bulges to my left. The soil is soft, the going slow. I don’t care. My improvised path bisects another road that wanders into a shallow basin, ending at a pond of thick brown water. The surrounding mud is inscribed with thirsty stories of horses and pronghorn. Emptiness engulfs me, and I stop to stuff my shorts and shirt into the pack. Wearing only shoes and hat, I jog onward following small gullies carved in sand. My sweat evap- orates quickly in the dry heat, forming cool patches in unfamiliar places. Looking up, I spot the horses watching from a low ridge. They understand. Like me, they know this country in the marrow and mineral of their bones, but are descended from transplants with no direct ancestry here. My own reptilian rhythm deepens. Layers of space loosen, swallowing the soft rasp of my breathing. My mind wanders into the deep maw of time, and I descend from the bleeding edge of genome sequencing through 20 tribes of students and 50,000 generations of human consciousness permeating this immensity. When I resurface, there is only my sweating body, still panting, still plodding across the withered earth. Tom Titus is a senior research associate in the UO Institute of Neuroscience, a herpetologist, and author of Blackberries in July: A Forager’s Field Guide to Inner Peace. The tail of the sagebrush lizard of Road 6184 awaits DNA sequencing in the Genomics and Cell Characterization Core Facility. THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF OREGON 4 5 47 Paying it Forward 51 Love Honored 54 Class Notes 66 The Guest of Sigma Chi O L D Professor Edwin Coleman, 1938–2017 He played bass with jazz greats Ella Fitzgerald, Cal Tjader, Vince Guaraldi, and Poncho Sanchez. At the UO, he taught literature, folk- lore, and African American literature, bringing words to life with rhythm, cadence, and sto- rytelling. His social activism for the cause of diver- sity and tolerance was unflagging. As a mentor and respected elder, he modeled wisdom, integrity, and fair-mindedness to hundreds of UO students and to the greater Eugene com- munity. Edwin Leon Coleman II, you will be missed, but your beat will go on. Oregon PHOTOGRAPH FROM 1977 OREGANA Ken Renner | Principal Broker Central Oregon ken.renner@cascadesir.com 541.280.5352 Carmen Cook | Broker Central Oregon carmen.cook@cascadesir.com 541.480.6491 U of O CLASS of 1998 BS IN FINANCE BS IN ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES EACH OFFICE IS INDEPENDENTLY OWNED AND OPERATED. WE ARE OREGON WE ARE SW WASHINGTON WE ARE THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST Lake Oswego Portland Vancouver Bend Sisters Sunriver Cannon Beach Gearhart Manzanita CascadeSothebysRealty.com Meadow Ayres Davis | Broker Oregon Coast meadow.davis@cascadesir.com 503.812.9543 U of O CLASS of 1995 BA IN SPANISH, CLARK HONORS COLLEGE NEVER FORGET YOUR ROOTS Finding or selling a home is one of life’s most important decisions. Choose a broker that sees the world the same way you do. Roger Wayland | Principal Broker Central Oregon roger.wayland@cascadesir.com 541.408.0819 Joe Reitzug | Principal Broker Portland Metro joe.reitzug@cascadesir.com 503.380.0246 U of O CLASS of 1993 U of O CLASS of 1991 BS IN FINANCE RHETORIC & COMMUNICATIONS Tina Jacobsen | Broker Portland Metro tina.jacobsen@cascadesir.com 503.680.8140 U of O CLASS of 1989 BA IN GERMAN & POLITICAL SCIENCE U of O CLASS of 1990 THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF OREGON 47 Old OregonALUMNI PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF MING CANADAY Ming Canaday, BA ’1 3 , was only three or four years old when her biological parents abandoned her on the streets of Chenzhou, China. Afflicted with polio and scoliosis, unable to walk, and barely able to fend for herself, she was utterly alone in a city of 4.5 million. After a day or two of homelessness, a stranger picked Canaday up and took her to the Chenzhou Welfare Center, a day she still remembers clearly. “I was splashing in the water in this little tub, and they were trying to wash me because I was so dirty,” says Canaday. “I was in this yellow-and-white-striped outfit, and crying uncontrol- lably and being very defiant. Somebody handed me this bowl of rice and I tossed it on the ground. I was very angry and upset.” Canaday spent the next eight years of her life in the orphanage, where death was as much a fact of life as roast- ing oranges on an old wood stove during the holidays or watching fireworks and eating dumplings at New Year. “You’d see people dying every few months, and they were put into little black garbage bags and you’d see them be dragged away,” Canaday says. “That’s unhealthy for a child to see that all the time, that kind of brutality and finite- ness to life.” The orphans with disabilities did not go to school, so Canaday spent her days helping with chores or, as she says, “sitting around in dreary boredom.” The children fought with each other, ignored by the caretakers unless the The Unstoppable Duck Ming Canaday has turned obstacles into opportunities and is now paying it forward. BY DAMIAN FOLEY Ming Canaday competed in the 2010 Oregon Relays as part of the UO’s Adaptive Ducks wheelchair racing team. She finished seventh in both the 100 meters (pictured) and the 1500 meters. 4 8 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 Old Oregon ALUMNI misbehaving affected them; on one occasion, Canaday was hit with a chair after stealing meat from a cupboard. “It was not a home where you’d feel relaxed, knowing no matter what you did, somebody loved you,” she says. “You had to be good, be dis- ciplined, do your chores, and stay vigilant all the time. You could never put your guard down; you had to be aware that nobody’s really watching out for you, and you had to watch out for yourself.” Ming’s life turned around when David Slansky, director of international programs at Hillsboro-based adoption agency Journeys of the Heart, visited the Chenzhou Welfare Center. He wrote an article about what he saw there, and Pamela and Clifton Canaday, a couple living 6,400 miles away in Sheridan, Oregon, read the story and decided to adopt Ming, who believes she was 11 at the time. But even though she left behind a life where the threat of violence was ever-present, living in bucolic Sheridan, on the banks of the mean- dering Yamhill River, was not easy. “Nobody spoke Chinese, and the vast major- ity of people were white—it was like looking at aliens,” Canaday says. “It was so different and so foreign, and I felt like my whole body was rejecting it.” And because of her her scoliosis and polio, Canaday was breaking down physically as well as emotionally. Doctors determined she needed an operation on her spine to ensure she lived to adulthood, so her parents arranged for the sur- gery and stayed with her in the hospital while she recovered. Slowly, she began to adjust to her new life, and soon enrolled in school for the first time, as a fifth-grader. When the time eventually came to apply to go to college there were only a few universities she considered. The University of Oregon’s Chinese Flagship Program offered Canaday—who taught herself to read and write Mandarin in high school—a partial scholarship, and in 2009, she enrolled at Oregon. In four years she earned three degrees— Chinese, Asian studies, and international studies—and added a graduate certificate in disability studies from the City University of New York. Canaday took approximately 20 credits each semester, and added three study- abroad trips to China for good measure. “Studying was my priority, and everything else came second,” she says. “I had a very good experience. Lots of homework, lots of reading, lots of classes, lots of stressing out—but that’s just me. Most people at the UO seemed much more chill than me.” Fun in college may have come second to aca- demics, but Canaday still managed to find time for extracurricular activities. Community service? She worked on roof- ing and house-painting projects in California through Rotaract (Rotary Club for the younger set) and Habitat for Humanity. Athletics? As a member of the Adaptive Ducks wheelchair racing team, she finished seventh in the 100-meter and 1500-meter races at the Pac-10 wheelchair championships during the 2010 Oregon Relays. Student organizations? Canaday’s curiosity led her to join the Black Student Union to learn more about a culture she was unfamiliar with. “I absolutely loved joining the Black Student Union and getting involved,” she says. “With Oregon being a very ‘white’ state, I enjoyed being immersed and meeting Black people. It was a very different experience. Everyone was very nice—they put cornrows on me and I par- ticipated in a lot of events.” After graduating from the UO, Canaday enrolled at the prestigious London School of Economics and Political Science to get a master of science degree in the history of international relations. She traveled to South Africa to study emerging powers in Africa and conduct inter- views for her dissertation on the changing atti- tudes toward Chinese migrants in South Africa. During the scant free time she had while earning three bachelor’s degrees and a mas- ter’s degree, Canaday volunteered to help others. She worked as a linguist, interned in Human Rights Watch’s disability rights divi- sion, designed a curriculum for a vocational school in China to teach English language and American culture to students with disabilities, and translated foster care evaluations for the Amity Foundation, an organization that pro- motes education, social services, and develop- ment in China. Canaday recently moved to Washington, DC, where, like many recent graduates, she is looking for a job. She’d like to work in the Department of State or the Foreign Service, Fun in college may have come second to academics, but Canaday still managed to find time for extracurricular activities. Ming Canaday (in white dress with red) in the Chenzhou Welfare Center. Chunchun, whom Canaday calls her “little sister,” is in the wheelchair to her left. Below, she works on a con- struction project with Tara Sullivan for Rotaract and Habitat for Humanity. THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF OREGON 4 9 Get Your Duck On! The UO Alumni Association is sponsoring these regional events this spring For detailed information, visit: uoalumni.com/events e-mail: alumni@uoregon.edu call: 800-245-ALUM March 22 WOMEN’S ONLINE NETWORKING ROUND ROBIN Online March 29 NETWORKING BIZ LUNCH: CUPERTINO Cupertino, California April 4 DUCKS IN TECH: SAN JOSE San Jose, California April 20 BAY AREA DUCKS TAKE OVER PAC-12 STUDIOS San Francisco, California April 22 2017 DENVER COLORADO DUCKS WINE PARTY Denver, Colorado April 25 CONNECT THE DUCKS Sacramento, California May 6 PDX DUCKS WINE TASTING AND SCHOLARSHIP FUNDRAISER Portland, Oregon selco.org • 800-445-4483 • Branches throughout Eugene and Springfield Banking | Mortgages | Insurance | Investments | Business Lending Membership requirements apply. See SELCO for details. NMLS#402847 My #GoodLifeGoal: a financial home I can trust REVISED 17SEL006A SELCO “Brand” ad updated safety area: 4” x 10.375, bleed: 4.625” x 11.125”, 4-color Oregon Quarterly U of O Alumni magazine Insertion Order 52433 Runs February, 2017 DVA Advertising 541.389.2411 dan@dvaadv.com In today’s world of banking, where everyone seems to be looking out for themselves, it’s empowering to know that SELCO is looking out for me. Their services are all designed with my best interests in mind. I love it when my fi nancial universe actually revolves around me. while also serving as an advocate for the disabled. In the meantime, she is helping her close friend Chunchun, whom Canaday calls her “little sister” and who still lives at the Chenzhou Welfare Center. Canaday and Chunchun each have scoliosis and polio, but while Canaday was able to have the spinal surgery she needed, Chunchun was not as fortunate. Her curved spine was crushing her internal organs, and she urgently needed a life-saving operation. Canaday found an organi- zation that covered the cost of the procedure, but Chunchun still faces a 30-hour train ride to receive follow-up treatment. While recovering from the surgery, Chunchun has been unable to work, and paying for the train journey and accommodation at the physical rehabilitation facility has been difficult. Canaday has set up a GoFundMe page to help her friend. “I wouldn’t be able to live with that if she died under those treatable circumstances,” Canaday says. Given how her life began, Canaday considers herself lucky and she is determined to pay it forward. “I feel very fortunate that I’m in a position of privilege,” Canaday says. “Not because I’m special, but because of mere luck. A lot of things are beyond our control; no matter how hard you work, different factors hap- pen and you’re put into a position of extreme discomfort and brutality, or wealth and privilege. Not that I’m wealthy, but I feel I am very privileged, and I do have a voice. So I feel like I need to utilize that in the best way possible and not waste it.” Damian Foley is a staff writer for University Communications. 2017 Save the Date! Thursday May 18, 2017 Portland, OR For more information, call 541.346.2113 or visit giving.uoregon.edu/pioneeraward The University of Oregon Pioneer Award recognizes individuals who have been willing to lead rather than follow and take risks rather than see opportunities pass. Inaugurated in 1979, the Pioneer Award has been presented to individuals who lead their communities and states in business, philanthropy, communication, politics, and the arts. A few select individuals in our society embody the vision to recognize a new path ahead and the pioneering spirit, courage, and perseverance to follow that path. The dedication of these individuals is contagious, as it must be. It is not enough to simply have vision; others must be convinced if society is to move forward. Proceeds benefit the Presidential Scholarship Endowment at the University of Oregon, enabling the state’s brightest students to excel in their pursuit of higher education. Gerry Cameron Gerry worked his way up U.S. Bancorp’s corporate ladder, serving as chairman and CEO before retiring in 1998. He later served as chairman of The Regence Group from January 2004 to June 2005. Gerry is a past chair and trustee of the UO Foundation Board, served on the UO Portland Regional Council, and was a member of the UO Campaign Leadership Committee, Campaign Oregon. Gerry and his wife Marilyn have been generous supporters of Presidential and Dean’s Scholarships, a cause Gerry is passionate about because scholarships changed his own life. They have also named a financial learning center in the Lundquist College of Business, and have endowed the Gerry and Marilyn Cameron Chair of Finance. Gerry has been involved in numerous community and civic organizations, including several prominent positions on banking boards. Tim ‘71 & Mary Boyle Tim Boyle has served as president and chief executive officer of Columbia Sportswear Company since 1989 and oversees operations of the active outdoor company from its Portland, Oregon headquarters. Tim served on the UO Portland Council, is a former UO Foundation trustee, former Journalism Advancement Council member, and was vice chair of Campaign Oregon: Transforming Lives. He received LCB’s Visionaries Award – Trendsetter of the Year in 2001, was inducted into the School of Journalism’s Hall of Achievement in 2005, and received the UO’s Business Hall of Fame Award in 2008. Mary Boyle graduated from St. Mary’s Academy in Portland. She served on the School of Architecture and Allied Arts Dean’s Advancement Council and has been deeply involved with Portland Center Stage, and the University of Portland. Tim and Mary have contributed more than $17 million to the University of Oregon, supporting programs in the Lundquist College of Business, School of Journalism and Communication, School of Architecture and Allied Arts, Intercollegiate Athletics, Student Life, School of Law, Presidential Scholarships, and most recently a $10 million commitment to Life Sciences. TIM ʻ71 & MARY BOYLE Journalism GERRY CAMERON Pre-Business Administration THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF OREGON 51 Old OregonALUMNI PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF GLEN LOVE W hen members of the McKenzie Flyfishers met last fall in Eugene to b estow t he f i rst Glen L ove Lifet ime Contribution Award to Glen Love himself, many of those in attendance knew the recipient sim- ply as that tall fellow in the plaid shirt and tor- toise-shell glasses with the bemused expression and the wicked off-side cast, who could not tie a decent fly to save himself. But who could write one helluva letter to the editor. Even those who knew Love was a retired University of Oregon English professor may have been surprised to hear fellow English teacher and fly-fisher Bob Bumstead, BA ’63, MA ’78, recite his friend’s professional bona fides: Former UO director of composition and coauthor (with his wife, plant ecol- ogist Rhoda Love) of what was, in its day, one of the country’s leading college composition textbooks. Teacher of popular courses in American and western American and even north- western American literature. Author of numerous works of literary criticism and editor of several literary anthologies. “The single most influential intellectual spirit behind the take- off phase of the ecocritical movement,” according to Harvard professor emeritus Lawrence Buell—a movement that, as Bumstead explained to his fellow anglers that evening, “aims to transform the study of literature by exploring the influence of the natural world on the human psyche.” The accolades were all a bit much for the 84-year-old professor emeritus. “There are fishermen there who are so helpful and so great at casting and tying flies,” he later said, “and here I am, kind of a bookworm.” Well, that last part is certainly true. But it’s only part of the story of a man whose activism has had a lasting impact on Oregonians’ quality of life, and whose academic pursuits helped set a new course for the study of literature in virtually every university in the coun- try and beyond. Love still remembers the first time he saw a fly-fisherman in action. It was in the 1940s at Green Lake in Seattle, where Love grew up. Spinning reels hadn’t yet been invented, so Love—a hook-and-worm angler, like everyone he knew—was stretching out his line and attaching a sinker to give him enough torque to pitch his bait far enough to give him a chance of catching something for dinner. Then, out of the fringe of trees above the lake, another fisherman emerged. Love watched as the man strode down to the lake’s edge, made a few artful casts with a long, quivering rod, and caught a fish. And then released it. Love had never seen anything like it: that effortless-looking To the Rivers, With Love BY BONNIE HENDERSON Fly fisherman, English professor, and environmental activist Glen Love in a favorite spot. 52 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 Old Oregon PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN BAUGUESS ALUMNI cast, much less fishing, not for food, but for fish- ing’s own sake. Fly-fishing slowly became an organizing prin- ciple in his life. He fished in the Cascades when, at age 19, he spent a summer working at Mount Rainier National Park (where he met Rhoda, who would become not only his wife but a favorite biol- ogy teacher at Lane Community College and his partner in environmental activism). He fished around Seattle while pursuing his bachelor’s degree and, ultimately, his doctoral degree in liter- ature at the University of Washington. He fished when and where he could around San Diego State University, site of his first university teaching job. When in 1965 he moved to Eugene to join the UO Department of English faculty, a group of citizens were deeply engaged in a battle with the Eugene Water and Electric Board over a proposal to build a nuclear power plant along- side the North Fork of the Middle Fork of the Willamette River near Westfir. It didn’t take long for the Loves to conclude that such a plant would indeed be a bad deal for both humans and fish, and they jumped in with both feet. According to a recent article in Northwest Fly Fishing magazine, Glen Love “probably holds the record for writing more letters of support of environmental causes than any other human, ever.” “It’s just my thing,” Love explains, looking back. “It’s the part of it I thought I could do, because I’m good at it.” That battle went on for several years, and those who opposed the plant were ultimately successful. But the Springfield Utility Board then proposed a new scheme for the North Fork: a series of five hydropower dams. It would have been the end of the wild fishery on the river. Love and Bumstead, who by then cochaired McKenzie Flyfishers’ con- servation committee, led the club’s vocal opposi- tion. They were supported by UO Book Store manager Jim Williams and composer Mason Williams, who arranged a concert—“Of Time and Rivers Flowing”—and took it on the road in support of a free-flowing North Fork. They and others managed to not only kill that proposal, but to ultimately help get key portions of the North Fork protected as part of the National Wild and Scenic River System, permanently putting it off limits to power interests. “The North Fork’s source is Waldo Lake, one of the purest lakes in the world,” Love says, attempting to explain the river’s particu- lar charm. “And it pummels down through an impassible little canyon to a beautiful valley. We named all the pools, and we named all the runs. There was Super Pool, and the Rockslide. The North Fork just became a kind of first choice, even though the fish on it aren’t as big as they are on the Middle Fork and in some of the moun- tain lakes. It was beautiful, and clear, and green, and delightful, and just 30 or 40 minutes from home. And the idea that anybody could take that away—the thought of it was just crushing, and we all felt we had to do something about it.” Meanwhile, Love’s activism—coupled with a worldwide awakening to environmental con- cerns—had led him and other academics to forge a new interdisciplinary approach to literary crit- icism, examining works of literature in the con- text of how they are informed by, and how they inform, our understanding of nature. “Like all cultural practices, English teaching and research goes on within a biosphere, the part of the earth and its atmosphere in which life exists,” he writes in his most recent book, Practical Ecocriticism: Literature, Biology, and the Environment. “As the circumstances of the natural world intrude ever more pressingly into our teaching and writing, the need to consider the interconnections, the implicit dialogue between the text and the environmen- tal surroundings, becomes more and more insis- tent.” Ecocriticism was slow to be accepted by the Modern Language Association of America, the principal professional association for language and literature scholars, Love recalls. “They didn’t even allow it as a session at the MLA conference. Now ecocriticism is one of the most widely taught ideas in English departments, not only across the country but around the world.” For Love, all of this—ecocriticism, a fasci- nation with regional literature, environmental activism—is really just one thing: a reverence for place. “The most vital sense we have is in our relationship to place,” he recently reflected. “I think place is at the core of our being.” “It is the nature of all human beings to create meaning and pattern from whatever environ- ment they are placed in,” he writes in his intro- duction to The World Begins Here: An Anthology of Oregon Short Fiction. “Ecological conscious- ness seems to be an inevitable consequence of place consciousness.” It doesn’t hurt, Love adds, to live in a special place. He is fond of quoting a passage from Robert Traver’s Trout Madness: “I fish . . . because I love the environs where trout are found, which are invariably beautiful.” Months after receiving the eponymous fly-fishing award, Love is still a bit abashed and not certain that he’s entirely deserving. “You could have knocked me over with a feather when I got that award,” he insisted. “I imagine next time they’ll make sure they get someone who’s a damn good fly-tier and -caster.” Journalist Bonnie Henderson, BA ’79, MA ’85, was a student of Glen Love and is the author of four books, including The Next Tsunami: Living on a Restless Coast. Love’s activism in two conserva- tion fights for the Willamette River led to the emer- gence of literary ecocriticism as a scholarly form. It is the nature of all human beings to create meaning and pattern from whatever environment they are placed in. 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Submit a note online at OregonQuarterly.com or mail it to Editor, Oregon Quarterly, 5228 University of Oregon, Eugene OR 97403-5228. 1950s JOHN KELLER, BS ’56, and JERRY ROSS, class of 1957, were teammates on the 1954 UO baseball team that went to the College World Series. The pair became teammates again on their competitive soft- ball team in 2015 and 2016, and won back-to-back gold medals in the 80-and-over division at the Huntsman World Senior Games. 1960s J. MICHAEL RICHMOND, BS ’62, served as a Palm Beach County election deputy last November at a polling location in Jupiter, Florida, where he wel- comed nearly 800 voters. He worked from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. and appreci- ated the smooth process and enthusiastic people. JIM JONES, BA ’64, has retired as chief justice of the Idaho Supreme Court. He served 12 years on the court, the last year and a half as chief. He has just released a book—A Little Dam Problem!—describing his role in a struggle over control of Idaho’s Snake River. The 1966 class of Alpha Omicron Pi sorority sisters celebrated 50 years of friendship last summer at Black Butte Ranch. In attendance were NINA CORKINS CLINTON, BA ’66; SHARON DENSMORE POPP, BS ’66; BARBARA EARL, BS ’66; GAIL JOHNSON JERN, BS ’66; JUDY PEARSON GRAHN, BS ’66; PATRICIA POWERS DICKS, BS ’66, and SHELBY RISSER HOSFORD, BA ’66. TED TAYLOR, BS ’67, retired recently as editor of the Eugene Weekly after nearly 18 years. Previously, he was editor of Ashland Daily Tidings for 10 years, and edited several other publications during his award-winning 35-year career in print journalism. 1970s Former UO football play- ers ALAN PITCAITHLEY, BS ’70, TIM STOKES, BS ’73, and DENNIS DIXON, BS ’07, have all led successful football careers and were inducted into the City of San Leandro Sports Foundation Hall of Fame on October 14. The University of San Diego School of Law hosted a retirement ceremony for Professor JOHN “JACK” MINAN, JD ’72, for his 40 years of teaching, scholarship, and public service. He pub- lished 11 books and con- tributions, and more than 45 law review articles. He also received a letter of commendation from President George W. Bush for his work on wetlands recovery projects. GEORGE A. DENNIS, MEd ’74, taught in the English department at Lower Columbia College in Washington. He was hired to develop curriculum and teach students who weren’t prepared for English 101. His career has been chal- lenging and rewarding, and he’s thankful for his UO education. ALAN BAIRD CARPENTER, BS ’76, is working as an airline captain for United Airlines. He was a part of the Chi Psi fraternity. He also owns Alaska Flying Adventures, and provides floatplane ratings and INDICATES UOAA MEMBER Reading Tea Leaves Duck entrepreneur hits it big with beverages. L ike a lot of great businesses, Portland-based Townshend’s Tea Company started with a simple, unmet need. As a UO student, Matt Thomas, BA ’02, didn’t care for coffee, but he liked the shops where it was served. He wondered why most campus hangouts served myriad fresh, delicious coffee drinks, but tea—his drink of choice— was limited to a cup of hot water and some prepackaged tea bags. For a 400-level business course, the business and Spanish major parlayed his personal tastes into a plan with a simple concept: a coffee- house-style cafe, but with great tea. Not long after graduating in 2002, Thomas opened his first Portland teahouse. Today, Townshend’s Tea Company has eight retail locations, including one in downtown Eugene and, most recently, the Erb Memorial Union. It’s also the third-largest producer of kombucha in the country, distributing the fermented tea beverage to 36 states and Canada. Generous supporters of the UO Libraries, Thomas and his wife, Bethany Shetterly Thomas, BS ’02, are both members of the Library Advancement Council. FL ASHBACK 1927 An offer of the First National Picture Corporation to make screen stars out of ten college men throughout the coun- try has been made here through Ned Holmes, who is visiting the largest universities of the west and north and who will be on the campus later in the term. During his stay here Holmes will take screen tests of Oregon aspirants. THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF OREGON 5 5 Old OregonALUMNI sightseeing tours of the greater Anchorage area. MIKE OSBORNE, MS ’77, professor of the history of science at Oregon State University, has been elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His latest book is The Emergence of Tropical Medicine in France (University of Chicago Press, 2014). MIKE GAYNES, BS ’78, finally became an Oregonian again 38 years after graduation. He sort-of-semiretired from 20 years of an award- winning career and lives in Brookings, where he does remote public relations consulting for medical companies (and has been known to take conference calls on the beach). MARVIN FJORDBECK, BA ’79, JD ’83, has been appointed senior assis- tant attorney general of Oregon, continuing his career as an attorney in the tax and finance section of the Oregon Department of Justice. Previously, he was the senior assistant metro attorney for the Metro Regional Government in Portland. 1980s Science writer and former OQ editor TOM HAGER, MS ’81, gave keynote addresses at the Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy (ARPA-E) Energy Summit, the nation’s top meeting for transformational energy solutions. In April he will receive the American Chemical Society’s highest writing honor, the James T. Grady–James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public. GABRIEL BOEHMER, BA ’83, was named senior vice president by Wells Fargo & Co. A 20-year company veteran, he manages external communications for government and institutional banking, middle-market banking, and treasury management. He was a managing editor at the Oregon Daily Emerald in 1981–82. JOHN SKRABO, BS ’83, has been selected to serve as the national sales manager for F+W Media’s Outdoors magazine. He previously served as the associate editor for Petersen’s Bowhunting, and as the editor of California Angler magazine. SAM GAPPMAYER, MA ’84, the president and CEO of Illinois’ Peoria Riverfront Museum, joined the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, a Wisconsin-based non- profit organization, as its new director in October 2016. He has had leader- ship positions at multiple arts organizations for nearly 30 years. Wendel, Rosen, Black & Dean partner WENDY MANLEY, BS ’85, MS ’87, has joined the Environmental Law Section Executive Committee of the Alameda County Bar Association. California Life Sciences Association added BILL FAIREY, BS ’87, president of Actelion Pharmaceuticals US Inc., to its board of directors. DUCKS AFIELD TODD JAMES, BS ’00, finds solitude in Lagunas Altiplanicas, Atacama Desert, Chile We love to track Duck migrations! Send us your favorite photos of yourself, classmates, family, and friends showing your Duck pride around the world. Attach a high resolution JPEG file to an email and send to quarterly@uoregon.edu, or submit them online at OregonQuarterly.com. continued on page 56 5 6 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 Old Oregon CLASS NOTES Fairey has launched three FDA-approved products, and had led the company’s marketing, medical, sales, and regulatory activities in the US. SONJA BOGART, BS ’89, has joined the Umatilla Electric Cooperative as the chief operating officer. She has 20 years of experience working with electric utilities. She has served as the utility’s vice presi- dent of customer service, sales, and marketing since 2002. 1990s STEPHANIE INMAN, BArch ’93, works as a public artist in Boise, Idaho, and has several art installations at Valley Regional Transit’s Main Street Station. One is a monochromatic collage of broken “transportation toys,” and another instal- lation includes four floor medallions made of tile cut from her digital designs. Marion County commis- sioner JANET CARLSON, PhD ’97, was nominated by Governor Kate Brown for a spot on the Oregon State Hospital Advisory Board. Previously, she was a member of the state House of Representatives for two years. RANDY NELSON, BS ’96, MBA ’98, left his job in distribution logistics to launch a new hard cider cart—Ciderlicious—in Eugene. He sells a variety of ciders, beers, and mead, and opened his business last Halloween. BERENIECE JONES- CENTENO, MMus ’98, has been named the artistic director of the Liberty Theater in Astoria, where she will organize concerts, film festivals, and other events. She comes from a broad background of arts administration, professional singing, and teaching. Documentarian CHRISTOPHER LAMARCA, BS ’98, has produced and released his second film, The Pearl, which was screened at the 43rd Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival. He’s written for GQ , Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, and produced a documentary called Boone. SARA TERHEGGEN, BS ’99, corporate partner at Morrison Foerster, has been named to the Association for Corporate Growth in Silicon Valley’s board of directors. She was named as one of the Silicon Valley Business Journal’s 2016 “Women of Influence” and one of its “40 under 40.” 2000s Resonant Inc.’s board appointed JEFF KILLIAN, MBA ’01, as chief financial officer for the company. He started his new posi- tion on October 24. Jeff comes with 30 years of experience and previously served as the CFO of Cascade Microtech. JAMIE HAMPTON, BS ’04, had an epiphany while running the PR account for Honda. She left her job to run an eight-person agency— Mixte Communications— in San Diego. The PR agency helps communities and allows the voices of small businesses to be heard. Renowned veterinarian and part of the founding FLASHBACK 1987 Meant to be a temporary solution to campus crowding, Emerald Hall, a former military barracks and University administration building, has been scheduled to be demolished to make way for the new $45 million Science Complex (Willamette Hall). Emerald Hall housed the registrar’s office until Oregon Hall opened in 1974. It was then used for studios, student groups offices, and other needs. THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF OREGON 5 7 DUCKS AFIELD PATTI MERTZ, BS ’80, MEGAN DICKEY, BA ’11, ANDREW MERTZ, BS ‘11, and KEVIN MERTZ, class of 2017, vacation in Playa Del Carman, Mexico, over the 2016 holidays and pre-celebrate the September 2017 wedding of Megan and Andrew. continued on page 58 management team of Banfield Pet Hospital, KERRI MARSHALL, MBA ’05, is joining the founding team at Babelbark as chief veterinary officer and member of their board of directors. BabelBark is a software company and mobile app for dog owners. RANI SAMPSON, JD ‘05, attended judicial college after being appointed by the Superior Court judges of Chelan County, Washington, to serve as a part-time court commis- sioner. She will have the authority to handle any judicial matter except jury trials. “Thank you for believing in UO students.” Katie Lor Class of 2018 PathwayOregon Scholar Planning, Public Policy, and Management Will Power Is the UO in your Will? giftplan.uoregon.edu Scholarships allow Katie Lor to pursue her dream of a career in public health. Find out how you can help future UO students with a gift in your estate plan. Contact us 541-346-1687 800-289-2354 giftplan@uoregon.edu 5 8 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 CLASS NOTESOld Oregon MYANNA DELLINGER, JD ’08, associate professor of law at the University of South Dakota and founder of the podcast Global Energy and Environmental Law, received a Fulbright Scholarship to conduct research and lecture in Germany. She will lecture on American climate change policy. 2010s DAVID THOMPSON, MBA ’13, was named chief operating officer of Portland Business Alliance. He joined in 2013 and previously served as the alliance’s vice presi- dent for membership and small business. LAURIE TRAUTMAN, PhD ’14, former associate director of the Border Policy Research Institute (BPRI) at Western Washington University, has been named the institute’s director. The BPRI researches and informs policymakers on matters surrounding the Canada-US border. WILL GENT, JD ’16, was hired by Tonkon Torp as an associate in its litigation department. He graduated Order of the Coif, and previously worked as a judicial extern for Judge Michael J. McShane and as a law clerk in the civil litigation section of the Oregon Department of Justice’s trial division. IN MEMORIAM WILLIAM A. HILLIARD, died on January 16 at age 89. He was a distinguished journalist and the first Black reporter at the Oregonian. In 1986, the UO presented him with its Distinguished Service Award. He received the presidential award from the National Association of Black Journalists in 1993, and in 1998, he was voted into the Oregon Newspaper Hall of Fame. JOSEPH CHARLES “JOE” ALLEN, died November 17. He attended the UO until March 1943, when he entered the Army Air Corps as a waist gun- ner on a B-17 aircraft. He was a member of the 351st Bombardment Squadron, 100th Bombardment Group. Joe frequently took his family on camping and fishing trips. He also enjoyed photography, as well as history and reading. MARY ELIZABETH (DAVIS) DOUGLAS, BA ’45, MA ’47, died on November 10. As acclaimed UO archaeol- ogist Luther Cressman’s graduate assistant, she went on many “digs” throughout eastern Oregon. She joined the faculty of Portland Community College and taught anthropology for many years until her retirement. DONALD GEORGE SMITH SR., BS ’47, MS ’50, died September 24 at the age of 93. He was an officer and navigator during World War II and flew 22 combat missions over Japan. He also served as a cultural exchange officer for US embassies in sev- eral countries including Pakistan and Japan. He was an avid outdoorsman and loved spending time with family. NORMA OFFICER, BS ’48, died on January 4. She held jobs at both the Lake Oswego Chamber of Commerce and Lewis and continued on page 60 FL ASHBACK 1967 The UO’s new $2.3 million, 40,000-seat Autzen Stadium will be ready in time for the first football game in September says Eugene’s Gale Roberts Company, which in January was awarded the contract for construc- tion of the main structure. THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF OREGON 5 9 FL ASHBACK 1977 The College of Liberal Arts, the oldest and largest college at the UO, has a new name. The name was changed to the College of Arts and Sciences to help people out- side the university gain a better understanding of its role. About one of every three UO students is enrolled as a major in the College of Arts and Sciences, which offers courses in anthropol- ogy, biology, chemistry, Chinese and Japanese, classics, computer science, economics, English, geography, geology, German and Russian, history, linguistics, mathematics, philosophy, physics, political science, psychology, religious studies, Romance languages, sociology, and speech. DUCKS AFIELD WAYNE H. STOLL, BS ’76, finishing his 12th Alcatraz Sharkfest San Francisco Bay Swim. The event begins just off the southern tip of Alcatraz Island, where participants undertake the 1.5-mile swim back to San Francisco. Wayne takes to it like a DUCK takes to water. Few places have escaped commercialization like Diamond and the surrounding area. Located at the base of Steens Mountain and adjacent to Malheur Wildlife Refuge, Harney County’s oldest hotel (established 1898) is rich with history of settlers, Indians, sheepherders and cattle barons. Family-style dinner by reservation Children welcome Breakfast included with your room Hotel Diamond is a special place. We make retreats, receptions, meetings and reunions memorable, and give new meaning to the term “base camp”. HOTEL DIAMOND 49130 Main Street Diamond, Oregon 97722 (541) 493-1898 / HistoricHotelDiamond.com One thing that makes The SpringS aT greer gardenS unique is the wellness center. Featuring a pool, Jacuzzi, massage therapy rooms, and spaces for group classes or strength training, you can enjoy a water aerobics class, a private session with our fitness coach, or go swimming with your grandkids. There’s something for everyone at The Springs at greer gardens. Eugene’s newest retirement community opens this Spring Independent LIvIng • AssIsted LIvIng • MeMory CAre Visit our sales office at 4730 Village Plaza Loop #135 1282 goodpasture Island road • eugene • thespringsLiving.com 541-246-2828 SGG_OREGON QUARTERLY_REV2.indd 1 2/2/17 9:05 AM 6 0 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 CLASS NOTESOld Oregon continued on page 62 WHERE YOU CAN... RELAX, ENJOY, ESCAPE Discover the Oregon Coast. Discover the Overleaf Lodge. 800-338-0507 • OVERLEAFLODGE.COM YACHATS, OREGON COME EXPERIENCE OUR NEW WINE CELLAR AND TASTINGS! Clark College. She was also active in Camp Fire Girls, Lake Grove United Presbyterian Church, and the Art Literacy Program in Lake Oswego. PHYLLIS FEIRING PULFER, class of ’49, died September 29. She was an enthusiastic social justice activist and worked with many different groups. She was the executive director of Blue Mountain Action Council. At BMAC, she instituted programs to help winterize homes, devel- oped training for disadvan- taged youth, and started the daycare center at the migrant labor camp. She also served on the board for Planned Parenthood. Her compassion and dedication will be missed. RICHARD EARL GALLAGHER, BS ’50, died January 10 at age 93. He served in the US Navy during World War II, and worked at the US Postal Service in Salem for 30 years. He loved traveling with his 366’ers RV Club during his retirement. JESSIE BELT, BS ’51, died at age 87 on October 31. She taught fourth grade in Portland for a year, and worked with her husband Richard in his medical office. She was a member of the Philanthropic Educational Organization, Daughters of the American Revolution, Garden Club, Westbrook Country Club, and Mansfield General Hospital Auxiliary. CONSTANCE JACKSON “CONNIE” FAIR, BA ’51, died November 11. She met her husband, Kenneth, at the UO when they worked together on the Emerald. She worked as a special librarian and retired from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as a reference librarian. She was a devoted Duck, loved being around the ocean and lakes, and enjoyed gardening and finding adventure in the great outdoors. HARRIET LEE WALRATH REECE, BS ’52, died at age 86 on October 31. She worked at the Clearwater Tribune and retired as a managing editor in 1988. She was an active member of multiple groups includ- ing the Idaho State Library Board, State Mental Health Advisory Council, Idaho Hospital Association, and the Orofino Chamber of Commerce. BEVERLY JEAN BEALL, BS ’54, died on November 5. She was a member of Alpha Phi and met her hus- band, JERRY BEALL, BA ’55, while attending the UO. She worked for the David Douglas School District for 20 years. In 2010, Beverly and Jerry made a donation to the University of Oregon establishing the Beall Family Undergraduate Suite at the Charles H. Lundquist College of Business. ROBERT SIMPSON, BS ’54, died on March 19, 2016, at age 83. At the UO, he was a class officer his junior year and a member of the Delta Upsilon fra- ternity. He served in the US Army for two years in Europe and then became a partner in the law firm Adams, McLoughlin & Simpson in 1965, and later joined Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt as an associate and eventually a partner. VIRGINIA “GINNIE” JOHNSON, died on October 2 at age 94. She attended the UO where she belonged to Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. She served in the Merchant FLASHBACK 1937 University students and faculty carried on various programs of education against war during April. Peace-week forums under the leadership of faculty members discussed phases of international relations. Students joined other schools throughout the nation in a “protest” or “strike” against war. Members of various peace organizations bore placards denouncing war and militarism. Tuesday, Ju ne 20 • Sun river, Orego n John Gray A mphitheate r @ SHARC Concert presented by the Sunriver Owners Association Doors open 5pm THE TAJ MAHAL & KEB’ MO’ BAND TICKETS @ ben dticket.com THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF OREGON 61 DUCKS AFIELD In late July 2016, MICK DAVIS, PhD ’12, and MIKE TAORMINA, BS ’06, MS ’09, PhD ’14, went on a climbing expedition to cen- tral Brooks Range in Gates of the Arctic National Park, Alaska. Partially supported by a grant from the American Alpine Club, the duo spent two weeks summiting granite spires of the remote and wild Arrigetch Peaks, in the perpetual daylight of the summer in the arctic. This photo is from the top of East Maiden Peak, one of the central summits in this rarely visited granite playground. 6 2 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 CLASS NOTESOld Oregon Marines as a driver during World War II, and was a volunteer for many chari- table organizations during her life. O. C. YOCOM died on November 3 at age 94. He studied business and engi- neering and was a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity at the UO. He served as a lieutenant (junior grade) in the US Navy with the 11 amphibious forces at the Normandy invasion during World War II. He had two children with his wife, June. PETER G. TVEIT died on November 13 at age 97. He served in World War II and following his service attended the University of Oregon where he met and married his wife, Ruth Kinne, BS ’49. He taught at Waldo Middle School and retired in 1983. Peter loved to travel around the world and was able to visit every continent. DAVID ORAL DIERCOFF, BS ’60, died November 1 at age 78. He served as a captain in the US Air Force as a navigator on a B-52 bomber aircraft. Dave had a successful career in commercial real estate in Texas. He mentored many accomplished realtors in the Dallas-Fort Worth market and taught real estate courses at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. JOHN MICHAEL “MIKE” MCCAULEY, BA ’60, died on November 10. He worked as an economist for the State of Oregon, the Office of the Secretary of State, the Department of Employment, the Hyster Corporation, and Bonneville Power Administration. He enjoyed taking walks, lis- tening to music, recording cassette tapes, and writing poetry. RUSSELL SCHUH, BA ’63, died November 8 at age 75. He was a yearly partic- ipant in the Los Angeles Marathon, and a respected linguistics professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. He wrote continued on page 64 DUCKS AFIELD KRISTEN PARROTT ABE, BA ’93, and son Alexander Abe, at Edinburgh Castle, Scotland enjoying some very Oregon-like weather in August 2016. “Stuart made sure all the pieces to financing our home happened right on time.” -- Rick & Tonya M. Packouz Jewelers Since 1993, Stuart has been one of the area’s most experienced and trusted mortgage advisors. He shops dozens of lenders for the best rates & terms and makes sure you close on time. *Float down option may require additional fees and restrictions. Please contact your PrimeLending loan officer for more details. All loans subject to credit approval. Rates and fees subject to change. Mortgage financing provided by PrimeLending, a PlainsCapital Company. Equal Housing Lender. © 2017 PrimeLending, a PlainsCapital Company. PrimeLending (NMLS: 13649) is a wholly owned subsidiary of a state-chartered bank and is licensed by: OR Division of Finance and Corporate Securities- mortgage lending lic. no ML-5260 Stuart Sandor Senior Loan Officer NMLS 365634 503.603.3333 stuart.sandor@primelending.com 5800 Meadows Road, Suite 160 Lake Oswego, OR 97035 Maybe It’s The Convenient Hours, The Flexible Loan Options or The Low Rates... Find Out Why More & More Homeowners Trust Stuart with Their Home Loan. *Ask About Our RATE FLOAT DOWN Option www.preferred-lending.com opb.org News. Worthy. Daily. ORQuarterly_slogans.indd 6 2/14/17 3:08 PM 6 4 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 CLASS NOTESOld Oregon FLASHBACK 2007 For two weeks, a seemingly endless expanse of red and white flags stretched across campus fluttering in the breeze, a memorial to the war dead in Iraq. The flags stood out starkly against the UOs green grass and red bricks. At the time of this installa- tion, primarily sponsored by the UO Survival Center, 77 Oregonian soldiers had died in the conflict. Approximately 150 veterans of the war are now enrolled at the UO. A Grammar of Miya and A Dictionary of Ngizim to help readers understand Chadic languages. GEORGE THOMAS AMERSON, MS ’66, DEd ’70, died on November 15. He was a World War II veteran of the US Navy. He had a wide range of hobbies including singing with the Riverblenders Barbershop Quartet, serv- ing as an amateur radio operator, and gardening. DALE A. MCWILLIAM, BS ’67, MS ’70, died at his home in West Linn. He served as a Navy corpsman in the Philippines, and was a member of the Oregon Army National Guard’s 41st Infantry Brigade. He was a loyal Ducks fan. JON ERICKSON, BA ’71, MCRP ’78, died October 16. He was a sitting mem- ber of the Highland Park Borough Council, a mem- ber of the Kean Federation of Teachers, and a commu- nity advocate and activist. He also worked as an associate professor at Kean University in New Jersey, and held multiple teaching and research positions in Oregon, Texas, New Jersey, and New York. BERNICE ELLEN FISHER, ’BEd 71, MS ’95, died on November 5 at the age of 77. She enjoyed sewing, knitting, crochet- ing, and needle art, and owned Bern’s Needle Art in Cottage Grove. She also worked as a teacher at Yoncalla and Drain grade schools, and was a mem- ber of the Dorena Grange and the Cottage Grove Genealogical Society. ROBERT BURDMAN, MA ’72, PhD ’74, died May 31, 2016 in Prescott, Arizona, at age 77. RICHARD MITCHELL, PhD ’72, died on September 21. During his career, he was a teacher, a principal, the director of the Northwest Area for United Cerebral Palsy, and a supervisor of the Portland Tri-County Area School Districts for dis- abled children. PAMELA LOUISE GREENE, BA ’77, MA ’78, died on October 7. She worked on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, and later moved to Salt Lake City, where she worked as a speech pathologist for the Davis School District until she retired in 2015. She had many hobbies that brought her joy, including sewing, 4-H, waterskiing, backpacking, and working in the LDS church. CRAIG GIBSON, MBA ’78, died on November 14. He was an F-4 fighter pilot as well as a UPS 757-767 cargo pilot. Craig was also a graduate from the USAF Fighter Weapons School and Squadron Officer School. He enjoyed skiing, golfing, and spending time with his nieces. SALLY DONOVAN, MS ’87, died November 19. She was a cultural resource specialist and photographer, and was the recipient of the 2016 Oregon Heritage Excellence Award and the 2016 George McMath Historic Preservation Award. She volunteered at a nonprofit cat rescue and was married to her hus- band, Bruce, for 22 years. GREGORY “GREG” K. HEBEL, MArch ’90, died on November 13. He was a master craftsman at wood- working and worked as an architect for the State of Indiana. He was a car-rac- ing enthusiast and loved to cook. He also enjoyed watching the Pacers and the Colts. GARY R. WILSON died on November 7 at the age of 61. He attended the UO as a member of Sigma Chi fraternity and the cheer squad. He worked for many years in sales and market- ing in Portland, Oregon, and Phoenix, Arizona. He was also an enthusiastic weightlifter and enjoyed many different outdoor activities, including snow- and waterskiing. MARY MARGARET “PENNY” WALLIS BENNINGTON, MBA ’95, died October 17 at age 70. After working in the medical field for many years, Penny and Gene, her husband of 41 years, started a vacation rental manage- ment company in Sunriver, Oregon. Her sense of humor and compassion will be missed by many. TOSHIHIKO MURATA, PhD ’01, died October 12. He served as associate vice president of institutional effectiveness at Blue Mountain Community College and, later, research analyst and adult basic education accountability coordinator for the Oregon Department of Community Colleges and Workforce Development. In 1983, he published a book docu- menting his 7,000-kilo- meter World Peace March journey from Venice Beach, California, to New York. He also had a wide range of hobbies including art, poetry, and horticulture. IN MEMORIAM Kenneth Snelson Kenneth Snelson, a UO student in the 1940s, died December 22 at age 89. Born in Pendleton, Snelson studied drawing, design, and engineering at the UO. His early sculptures drew the atten- tion and support of Buckminster Fuller, who coined the term “tensegrity” to describe his and Snelson’s work, which combined tension and structural integrity. Snelson produced more than 40 large-scale sculptures in 20 states and in Japan, Germany, and the Netherlands. Snelson held five US patents and had more than 25 one-man shows in galleries around the world. A free e-book of his work is available at kennethsnelson.net. THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF OREGON 6 5 DUCKS AFIELD PETE STIVEN, BS ’69, his wife Marty, and two other friends recently completed a three day, 38-mile hike on the Fisherman’s Trail, part of Portugal’s “Rota Vicentina” long-distance trail system that stretches along the Atlantic coastline. Pete made sure that the local Portuguese knew that the “O” stood for the University of Oregon, not Odeceixe, a village along the trail. Old Oregon ILLUSTRATION BY JODEE STRINGHAM; PORTRAITS: 1952 OREGANA6 6 OREGON QUARTERLY | SPRING 2017 DUCK TALE EuGEne BelgiUm In 1951, while living in Belgium, my birthplace, I was accepted into the US-sponsored Fulbright Scholar Program and was assigned to study at the University of Oregon in a town called Eugene. But “Where is that?” I asked myself. I found a two-page map of the United States, spread it open, and started with the East Coast. There was no Oregon there! Nothing south of Chicago either! East of the Rockies: still no Oregon! Finally, north of California, there was Oregon, a state the size of a large stamp but with no Eugene on its map. In Europe, university towns were renowned and always appeared on maps. It was only when I received my train tickets marked with the destina- tion “Eugene, Oregon” that I could believe in the town’s existence. I arrived at the university with nothing arranged in advance regarding tuition, academic objectives, or room and board. I had only $100 with me because, in Belgium, US currency was still being rationed. Fortunately, several welcoming Ducks helped me get settled. The UO waived my tui- tion because the university was short of students after the GIs who flooded colleges for free after World War II had, by then, ended their studies and left. I was able to enroll in the MBA program I wanted. For room and board, I would be the guest of the Sigma Chi fraternity, which had voted to adopt a European student and pay for his room and board by increasing its 40 members’ monthly charge from $40 to $41. This generous initiative had been inspired by the 1948 Marshall Plan, which was created to help Western Europe recover after the war. What a year! The UO MBA program was exciting, the teachers were much more interesting and inspiring than in Belgium, and the Student Union was a revelation as I got to dance to the swing tunes played by Louis Armstrong and other visiting big bands. I made great friends at Sigma The Difference a Dollar Made BY JEAN BODDEWYN, MBA ’52 Chi, where I learned to sing its “Sweetheart” song. Best of all, I met my wife, Luella Adams, BA ’55, at a Newman Club dance for Catholic students. Back then, a girl who wanted to dance with an already dancing boy passed a broom to his female partner, who had to give up her partner to the girl with the broom. That’s what Luella did, and the rest is history—a marriage and a family. I received my MBA in June 1952 and worked at the nearby Weyerhaeuser woodmill—my very first job. In September 1952, I returned to Belgium where I got a job in a Brussels department store. However, my fiancée and I decided to live in the country we had come to love. We returned to the States in 1955, got married, and eventually had three children. I found a job at Jantzen in Portland and began teaching on a part-time basis at Portland State in 1956. Liking it, I quit my job to teach full-time at the University of Portland, which financed part of my PhD studies at the University of Washington, where I majored in business and society. My degree and early publications earned me a teaching position at New York University, and we moved to the Big Apple in 1964. Later on, I taught at Baruch College, the Business School of the City University of New York. I specialized in international business—which allowed me much foreign travel and to become president of the Academy of International Business. I retired in 2006 after 50 years of teaching. All of this happened thanks to the University of Oregon and its mysterious location in Eugene. I revisited Eugene in the 1980s and discovered that the Sigma Chi house had burned down. Still, to this day, I marvel at what a differ- ence the $1 room-and-board charge increase and other UO benefits made for my life. I discovered a welcoming and generous people, a vibrant democracy, a place for opportunities unavailable in Belgium, and “a real slice of America” in Eugene. How could I have asked for anything more? Thank you all! ONE COMPANY TWO ICONIC BRANDS Having served metropolitan Portland, Oregon, and Southwest Washington State since 1950, Don Rasmussen Company is pleased to announce our new association with Jaguar. As Jaguar Portland and Land Rover Portland, we look forward to providing you and future generations with state-of-the-art automobiles, SUVs and world class service. We hope to see you soon! LAND ROVER PORTLAND 503.230.7700 JAGUAR PORTLAND 503.224.3232 A DON RASMUSSEN COMPANY jlrportland.com OREGON QUARTERLY 5228 University of Oregon Eugene OR 97403-5228 CHANGE SERVICE REQUESTED © 2017 KIN G ESTATE W IN ERY - Please D rink Responsibly