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B. CLARK PHOTO
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Going bonkers over bugs by Jake Weber
Five Albion students represented the College at an international Model U.N. conference in Budapest, Hungary March 31-April 5. They were selected for the Harvard Universitysponsored conference based on their performance at similar conferences held in the U.S. The participants included: (front row, left to right) Melissa Peterson, Sarah Coburn and Jason Watts; (back row) Christopher Moore, Alexander Zbiciak and faculty adviser Kim Tunnicliff.
Albion selected for international Model U.N. by Bob Clark High placement at Model United Nations conferences across the country earned the Albion College Model U.N. team a chance to compete in a five-day conference in Budapest, Hungary March 31-April 5. The Model U.N. engages students in a simulation of a governmental assembly, for the purpose of conflict resolution in a peaceful manner. The collegians represent United Nations members in deliberations on real crises and concerns in global politics. The respective teams are judged both on their knowledge of foreign policy for the country they represent and also for their ability to communicate effectively within the assembly. The trip was organized by senior Sarah Coburn, who was asked by Harvard University to put together a five-member team from Albion to represent Israel at the five-day conference. First-year students Christopher Moore and Melissa Peterson and sophomores Jason Watts and Alexander Zbiciak round out the squad. “[Model U.N.] has given me a broader sense of what’s out there,” says Coburn. “I had no real knowledge of the international community before I got into the club, and it sort of opened up a whole new world for me personally.” Harvard University hosts three Model U.N. conferences a year, one for high school students, and one national conference and one international conference for college students. The Budapest conference will be cosponsored by Harvard and Budapest University of Economic Sciences. Foreign travel and a chance to compete against college students from around the world are not the only benefits that will come from the conference, says the club’s adviser. “I think the Harvard Model U.N. is going to be good for the organization and the
College as a whole,” says Kim Tunnicliff, director of the Gerald R. Ford Institute for Public Service at Albion College. “It is an opportunity to contribute to the internationalization of the campus . . . and this is arguably the most prestigious Model U.N. conference in the world.” Tunnicliff believes the Model U.N. opens the door for more Albion College students to break into international public service and non-governing international organizations. “There are enormous opportunities out there,” says Tunnicliff. “It is very much a growing field and probably one that does not get as much attention when one thinks about government, public or civil service.”
Kresge challenge boosts campaign A $750,000 challenge grant from The Kresge Foundation in Troy, announced as Io Triumphe was going to press, will help the Albion Campaign for the Generations go “over the top.” Receipt of the challenge gift is contingent on reaching the $68-million campaign goal. An additional $5.4-million is needed in gifts and commitments by the end of the campaign Dec. 31, 1997. All campaign gifts from now through December will count toward the Kresge challenge; however, the College aims to raise most of the remaining balance during the next six months. The challenge will give added impetus to three campaign goals in particular that must be reached by June 30: (1) taking the 1996-97 Annual Fund to $1.8-million; (2) achieving 40 percent in alumni giving participation; and (3) reaching a Briton Round Table membership of 544 members. The Kresge grant will be used for renovation of the Music Department’s rehearsal areas, classrooms, practice rooms and offices in Goodrich Chapel. A portion is also designated for improvements in sports facilities as a part of the Briton Athletic Drive.
T R I U M P H E
Touching a live cockroach might not be everyone’s idea of a good time, but area elementary students responded enthusiastically to that and several other insect encounters in an Albion College-sponsored program called “Bug Out!” Under a grant from Michigan Campus Compact, Gwen Pearson, assistant professor of biology, designed the program to give children an introduction to entomology and scientific observation. Pearson, along with six Albion College undergraduates, presented “Bug Out!” to more than 200 local elementary students in eight classrooms during the fall semester. “We sang a bug song, made bug hats, and everyone got to touch a live Madagascar hissing cockroach,” she reports. “We had fun with bugs.” The culmination of “Bug Out!” was a bug-tasting party, a smorgasbord of food made of, shaped like, and named for insects. Pearson explains that fun activities are a vital part of “Bug Out!” along with its more academically-oriented projects on insect anatomy, function and behavior. “It’s important that kids think bugs are important and not to be feared. Without bugs, the world would just stop, so we might as well learn to appreciate them.” Even the bug-tasting party had an educational underpinning. “Insects are
a nutritious and plentiful source of food for humans,” says Pearson. “The Western aversion to eating insects has created some of the famine conditions in the third world, where people are taught not to eat insects, but aren’t given an alternative food source.” Beyond entomology, Pearson says “Bug Out!” addresses other important aspects about science. Even young students, Pearson says, have “stereotypic images of a mad scientist in his laboratory, dwarfed by test tubes and surrounded by ‘keep out!’ signs.” These stereotypes discourage children from studying science, explains Pearson. She believes “Bug Out!” helps children “to see people like themselves pursuing a career that the children might have considered beyond their reach.” Pearson has also recently found herself to be the world’s foremost expert on a phenomenon which she has named “homeopathic tattooing.” For a cultural entomology study, Pearson attended a conference on tattooing and asked people why they had chosen insect tattoos. Pearson discovered one reason for insect tattoos was an attempt to scare off live insects of the same type. A paper on her findings was published in American Entomologist magazine. The article was excerpted by a Canadian magazine, Family Practice, which led in turn to an interview on the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s “As It Happens” news program.
Symposium honors Ike Isaac, ’48 D. WHITE PHOTO
Albion College’s Elkin R. Isaac Lectureship has been expanded and is now associated with the annual Student Research Symposium, scheduled this year for April 15-16, 1997. The symposium also will bear Isaac’s name. A 1948 Albion graduate, Isaac taught at the College from 1952 to 1975 and coached basketball, track and cross country. His former students created an endowed lectureship in April 1991 to honor Isaac’s lifelong interests in education and research. Beginning this year, the fund will be used to bring to campus a noted scholar who will speak during the Student Research Symposium and to support other expenses associated with the program. The 1997 Isaac Lecturer is Wilbur Hurst, ’61, a research physicist for the National Bureau of Standards, Temperature and Pressure Division, in Gaithersburg, MD. Hurst, who specializes in atomic and molecular physics, will speak on supercritical water, and he will also visit with classes. He earned his Ph.D. in physics from Pennsylvania State University in 1968. The Albion chapter of Sigma Xi, a scientific research honorary, is also sponsoring a talk by Joseph Francisco, professor of chemistry at Purdue University. During the symposium, nearly 20 students will discuss their research through platform presentations and poster sessions. Among those presenters is senior Natalie Dubois, who happens to be Isaac’s granddaughter. She will give an overview of her research on bird behavior conducted with Albion biologist
Senior Natalie Dubois will discuss her research on territorial and nesting behaviors of Bewick’s wrens and eastern bluebirds during the Isaac Student Research Symposium in April. The annual symposium was recently named in honor of Elkin R. Isaac, ’48. Dubois, coincidentally, is Isaac’s granddaughter. She plans to pursue a doctorate in zoology. Dale Kennedy. Other topics this year include economic models of AIDS, the adsorption of oxygen on the surface of porous silicon, Ireland in World War II and Pickard China as representative of turn-of-the-century decorative arts.
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