Chapman Forward Magazine Vol. 5

CHAPMAN FORWARD

Volume 5

A publication of research and creative activity at Chapman University

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AN INVITATION TO THE UNIVERSE An artist and a Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist bridge the complexity of physics with the wonder of discovery in some of the weirdest corners of the cosmos.

CHAPMAN

FEATURES

FORWARD

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ART FROM THE INSIDE

Daniele C. Struppa, Ph.D. President

AN INVITATION TO THE UNIVERSE

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Martina Nieswandt, Ph.D. Vice President for Research and Graduate Education Rachel Morrison, Ph.D. Assistant Vice President of Communications and Brand Strategy

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THE WAYS OF WATER

Jeff Brouwer Assistant Vice President of Brand Identity and Visual Strategy

MORE THAN A CARD: ID DOCUMENTS OPEN DOORS

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EDITOR Dennis Arp

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PHOTOGRAPHY Adam Hemingway

SOWERS OF PEACE

ART DIRECTOR Julie Kennedy

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CONTRIBUTING DESIGNERS Cindy Harvard, Rosalinda Monroy, Vivian To, Jillian Warren ‘24

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CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Stace Dumoski, Joy Juedes

A MATTER OF DEGREES

PICTURES AND STORIES

PROJECT MANAGER Karan Sirna

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EDITORIAL OFFICE

STUDY: FDA COULD JUST SAY "NO" TO DRUGS

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One University Drive Orange, CA 92866-9911

TRAILBLAZERS

Main: ( 714) 997- 6607

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Chapman Forward is published annually by Chapman University. © 2023 Chapman University. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited.

We welcome your feedback on Chapman Forward.

Please send comments to magazine@chapman.edu.

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Chapman Forward magazine is printed on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship CouncilTM, which sets standards for responsible forest management.

ON THE COVER

The mission of Chapman University is to provide personalized education of distinction that leads to inquiring, ethical and productive lives as global citizens.

Chapman.edu

SUPER RADAR

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DATA AND DISCOVERIES

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BY THE NUMBERS

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NOTES FROM THE FIELD

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RESEARCH NEWS

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BOOKSHELF

Cover art by Lia Halloran. Reprinted from “The Warped Side of Our Universe: An Odyssey Through Black Holes, Wormholes, Time Travel, and Gravitational Waves” by Kip Thorne and Lia Halloran. Text Copyright © 2023 by Kip Thorne. Illustrations Copyright © 2023 by Lia Halloran. Used with permission of the publisher, Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

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ver a year has passed since I became vice president for research at Chapman University, and what an exhilarating journey it has been. As I’ve witnessed the Chapman faculty’s creative endeavors, germinal scholarship and groundbreaking research augmented by their commitment to Chapman’s mission of providing a personalized education of distinction as an R2 institution rooted in the teacher-scholar model, my initial sense of awe and wonder has only continued to grow.

Our new strategic plan, “Our Path to Greatness,” stands as a declaration of Chapman’s unyielding commitment to pushing the boundaries of research, scholarship and creative ventures. New graduate programs bursting onto the scene, such as the MS in electrical engineering and computer science and DS in mathematics, philosophy and physics, are just the beginning.

In this edition of Chapman Forward, you’ll read about breakthroughs from the frontiers of quantum physics, radar technology and the cutting edge of climate research using NASA thermal imaging and fieldwork deep in the Amazon. Chapman scientists discovered that canopy temperatures in the rainforest are reaching critical temperature thresholds that could critically impact carbon sequestration, water and biodiversity.

Advances in the biomedical field abound, from discovering groundbreaking drugs to championing medication safety and redefining pharmacy practices. Chapman’s research and programs improve care across the lifespan from bench research to bedside practice and out into the community.

Humanistic inquiry shines new light on how we understand our history — and our present.

Stephanie Takaragawa’s research and exhibition “Images and Imaginings of Internment” draws from her own family’s experience in Japanese American incarceration and tells the history anew through images and comics created within the camps themselves. And Shira Klein’s deep dive into intentional Holocaust misinformation on Wikipedia has resulted in news coverage of her research in 12 countries, showing the outsize role that digital humanities will play in a future of AI and the continued onslaught of disinformation.

At Chapman, we’re not just on a journey; we’re on the “Path to Greatness.” In this issue of Chapman Forward, you’ll learn about the research enumerated above and more, all of which is driven by an abiding dedication to solving real-world problems and addressing critical needs locally and globally.

Martina Nieswandt, Ph.D.

Vice President for Research and Graduate Education

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“The Amahuaca people have shown incredible determination and unity in their pursuit of language revitalization,” says Valenzuela. “It is an honor to work alongside them and witness their unwavering dedication to preserving their cultural heritage.”

Valenzuela says she was excited by the strong turnout and inspired by the sense of connection among tribal members meeting for the first time.

Preserving the language has been challenging because the Amahuaca people traditionally live in separate villages, some in voluntary isolation, and have limited communication with outsiders. Valenzuela and her team recently convened representatives from several villages to strategize ways to address challenges posed by language loss and develop a comprehensive two-year language revitalization plan. Many members of the tribes are now connected on the mobile messaging app WhatsApp and are sharing updates on the work. Other parts of the revitalization plan include bringing Amahuaca teachers into areas where the language is no longer spoken and creating a trilingual (Amahuaca-Spanish-English) dictionary (with an audio component) and bilingual storybook.

The Amahuaca people, an Indigenous group from the Amazon basin of Peru, are among those who face the imminent threat of losing their native language. In a community of fewer than 1,000 individuals, less than 400 speakers remain. Recognizing this critical need, Chapman University Professor Pilar Valenzuela and a team of linguists are now racing to study and document the Amahuaca language with support from a National Science Foundation grant.

Over the past 75 years, the number of unique languages has steadily declined. Today, more than 7,000 languages are spoken, but one in four is endangered. At current rates, about 90% of all languages will become extinct in the next 100 years.

SAVING ENDANGERED INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE IN PERU

DATA AND DISCOVERIES

DATA AN D D I S C OVE R I E S

FY ’23

FY ’19

FY ’22

FY ’19

FY ‘22

FY ‘19

FEDERAL RESEARCH EXPENDITURES

$11.1 M

$5.7 M

increase

93%

OVERALL RESEARCH EXPENDITURES

$16.7 M

$12.5 M

increase

34%

NEW EXTERNAL AWARDS RECEIVED

72

48

50%

increase

BY THE NUMBERS

FY ’23

FY ’19

FY ‘23

$133.2 M FUNDS REQUESTED

FY ‘21

$13.2 M

908%

increase

PROPOSALS SUBMITTED

241

212

increase

14%

TURN STYLE

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Total amount of foundation grant and donor support for the research and technical assistance programs of Chapman’s Thompson Policy Institute on Disability, making education more inclusive.

$

16M

One-quadrillionth of a second pulse duration of new high-powered laser at Fowler School of Engineering.

FEMTOSECOND

New FDA-approved drugs studied by pharmacy Professor Enrique SeoaneVazquez, 47 of which were refused authorization or not recommended for reimbursement by international agencies.

The cost was $115,281 per patient per year.

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Original paintings created to translate concepts from astrophysics in Lia Halloran and Kip Thorne’s book “The Warped Side of Our Universe.”

500

OTHER NUMBERS OF NOTE

Amount awarded by the National Institute on Aging to Hillard Kaplan, professor in the Economic Science Institute, to analyze the atypically small differences in brain atrophy with age and minimal Alzheimer-like findings in the Bolivian Tsimane and Moseten.

$

14.9M

Citations of hydrology and water resources expert Professor Tom Piechota’s published research.

4,000

Associate Professor Crystal Murphy will spend in Uganda as a 2023-24 U.S. Fulbright Scholar. She will complete a documentary that tracks the decades-long movement for democracy in Sudan.

10 MONTHS

35,000 X

Smaller than the traditional bound when measuring the distance between two objects using new long-wavelength radiation technology.

FY ‘23

FY ‘21

2023

2020

NUMBER OF CHAPMAN PUBLICATIONS

6,325

4,850

30%

increase

INVENTION DISCLOSURES

12

3

increase

300%

2022

2000

NUMBER OF CHAPMAN CITATIONS

14,136

100

increase

14,036%

EXPOSING THE HOLOCAUST LIES

ON THE DARK SIDE OF WIKIPEDIA

Exposing the Holocaust Lies

exposing-the-holocaust-lies-on-the-dark-side-of-wikipedia

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Exposing the Holocaust Lies on the Dark Side of Wikipedia Contents

Notes From The Field

NOTES FROM THE FIELD

BY SHIRA KLEIN

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CHAPMAN FORWARD FALL 2023

Article Talk

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n a chilly November evening in 2018, a student of mine named George went onto Wikipedia to submit an assignment. He was one of many to do so; in the last decade, I have overseen a total of 180 students who added a combined 65,000 words to Wikipedia articles. My students pick a topic they care about, find a reliable secondary source — a peer-reviewed source published with a reputable press — and hunt for an article on Wikipedia that they can improve with that source.

Read

View source

View history

Tools

Shira Klein

Associate Professor of History, Chapman University

Shira Klein focuses her research on Italian Jewry, Jewish migration and the Holocaust. Her 2018 book “Italy’s Jews From Emancipation to Fascism” was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award.

Wikipedia is the seventh-most viewed website in the world.

For many, it is the first and only stop for information; therefore it’s crucial to keep it safe from disinformation.

In George’s case, he wanted to write about Jewish life in postwar Poland. He and I picked out the book “Fear” by Jan Gross, who is widely considered one of the top authorities of our time on Polish Jewish history.

George and I expected his edits would go unopposed; instead, within hours, an editor called Xx236 posted an angry rebuttal, scoffing at the book’s reliability and hinting that postwar antisemitism was, in fact, the Jews’ fault. Taken aback at these fantastical accusations, I weighed in, and an entire debate ensued between several editors on whether Gross was reliable or neutral.

This incident served as a warning bell for me that something was awry on Wikipedia.

I later discovered that this little battle was the tip of the iceberg, and that there was a whole group of editors advancing a distorted narrative of Polish history in multiple articles.

What followed was a two-year research project, undertaken with my University of Ottawa colleague Jan Grabowski, an expert on Polish Jewish history. Our study, published in February 2023 in the peer-reviewed "Journal of Holocaust Research," exposed a persistent Holocaust disinformation campaign on English Wikipedia.

In 60 heavily footnoted pages, we examined two dozen Wikipedia articles on the Holocaust in Poland and more than 300 back pages (talk pages, noticeboards and arbitration cases — spaces where editors decide what the rest of the world will accept as fact).

To our dismay, we found dozens of examples of Holocaust distortion which, taken together, advanced a Polish nationalist narrative, whitewashed the role of Polish society in the Holocaust and bolstered harmful stereotypes about Jews.

People who read these pages learned about Jews’ supposed complicity in their own catastrophe, gangs of Jewish collaborators aiding the Gestapo and Jews supporting the communists to betray Poles. A handful of distortions have been corrected since our publication, but many remain.

Our study went viral: While most academic papers, particularly in the field of history, have few views, our article received thousands of hits in its first two weeks alone.

As of the time of this publication, we have more than 44,000 views, and the numbers go up daily. Newspapers in more than a dozen countries reported on our findings, including national outlets such as Der Spiegel in Germany.

The widespread interest in our findings reflects how much is at stake. It is not just the specific details we uncovered that matter — the disturbing distortion of the Holocaust — but the overall phenomenon of disinformation in this digital age. Wikipedia is the seventh-most viewed website in the world. For many, it is the first and only stop for information; therefore it’s crucial to keep it safe from disinformation.

Most people trust that Wikipedia’s editors will protect them from distortion and lies.

After all, there are thousands of active editors on English Wikipedia, as well as hundreds of administrators and a 12-member Arbitration Committee, often dubbed Wikipedia’s Supreme Court. Above these volunteers towers the Wikimedia Foundation, with its 700-strong staff. Together, these comprise an entire security system.

The work I did with Dr. Grabowski showed that this system isn’t nearly as strong as we’d like it to be, and that it will take effort to fortify it.

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ART FROM THE INSIDE

A NEW EXHIBITION EXPLORES LIFE I N S I D E T H E J A PA N E S E I N C A R C E R AT I O N CAMPS FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE PEOPLE WHO LIVED THERE.

History is always personal, but sometimes it can hit very close to home.

F E AT U R E

B Y S TA C E D U M O S K I

That was the case for Stephanie Takaragawa, Chapman University associate professor of cultural anthropology, when she was a college student and first learned about the imprisonment of Japanese Americans by the U.S. government during World War II. In 1942, 120,000 Japanese Americans, most of whom had been born in the United States, were evacuated from their communities and transported to relocation camps around the country due to unfounded concerns that they might pose a public threat in a time of war. Living conditions in the camps were grueling, with communal housing, little privacy and insufficient insulation against extreme temperatures. Entire families lost their homes, their livelihoods and their freedom.

“I learned about it and then I went home and I said to my parents, ‘I learned about the Japanese American internment and it makes me wonder where our family was during this time.’ And my parents were like, ‘Do not ever talk about this to your

More than three decades later, Takaragawa still regularly encounters students in her classes who have never heard about the incarceration or have only the barest notion that it occurred. Even though the 1988 Civil Liberties Act mandated instruction about the incarceration as part of school curricula, it is still a largely overlooked topic in primary and secondary education.

PUTTING HISTORY ON DISPLAY In 2022, Takaragawa was awarded a $124,906 grant from the California State Library’s California Civil Liberties Public Education Program to produce an exhibition that tells the story of incarceration using art created by the internees themselves. The exhibition, “Images and Imaginings of the Japanese American Internment: Comics and Illustrations of Camp,” can be visited in several locations on the Chapman University campus, and it includes an online resource that is designed to teach about the Japanese incarceration through photo galleries, interactive features and discussion questions.

The project evolved from a discussion in one of Takaragawa’s courses at Chapman.

As the class delved into biased depictions of Japanese Americans in WWII-era comic books — Superman, for example, once visited an incarceration camp to root out “anti-American” activities — Winston Andrews (MA ’21) asked about comics produced inside the camps. The question turned into a class project for Andrews, and that project turned into the exhibition of incarceration art currently on display on Chapman’s campus.

“SOMETIMES IT IS EASIER TO HAVE A CONVERSATION AROUND IMAGES THAN IT IS AROUND A TEXTBOOK.” STEPHANIE TAKARAGAWA Stephanie Takaragawa poses with a photo of her father taken inside an incarceration camp.

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grandparents. They’ll be very upset. Yes, the family was interned,’ and that was it,” she remembers.

A FIRSTHAND LOOK AT INCARCERATION The comics and other artwork featured in the exhibition offer a unique, firsthand glimpse into what life was really like behind the barbed wire of the incarceration camps.

“The comics that were in the different camp newspapers are ways in which people could enact some form of resistance,” Takaragawa says.

Chapman’s Escalette Permanent Art Collection, worked with Takaragawa and Andrews to develop the online curriculum and design the virtual exhibition. Early versions of the site were presented to focus groups consisting of teachers and students at nearby schools.

“I was genuinely surprised that they knew so little,” Osborn says. “I knew I had never learned about this in my own education at all, and I thought that had changed …

It’s just not a history that has made it into the curriculum in a meaningful way yet.”

“THE COMICS THAT WERE IN THE DIFFERENT CAMP NEWSPAPERS ARE WAYS IN WHICH PEOPLE COULD ENACT Takaragawa hopes that featuring SOME FORM OF RESISTANCE.” comics will make it easier for STEPHANIE TAKARAGAWA The comics were a way for people to communicate a feeling of community while simultaneously acknowledging the situation they were in, without being outwardly critical of the government and being potentially identified as disloyal.

Jan Osborn, associate professor of rhetoric and composition studies, and Jessica Bocinski, registrar of

students to connect with what can be a difficult subject.

Artwork and displays for the exhibition, including a brochure designed to resemble a comic book, were created by Chapman graphic design student Henry Littleworth ’23. He drew inspiration from the work of Dorothea Lange, whose photographs documented life in incarceration camps and can be seen throughout the exhibition. Littleworth says, “I wanted it to be realistic and accurate, and I felt like those photos held a certain amount of power. I wanted the comic book to also kind of hold a certain amount of power.”

“Sometimes it is easier to have a conversation around images than it is around a textbook,” she says.

The “Images of Internment” exhibition will be on display at Chapman University through December 2023.

To view the online version, visit chapman.edu/internmentexhibition.

SOME OF THE JAPANESE AMERICAN ARTISTS WHOSE WORK IS FEATURED IN THE EXHIBITION INCLUDE:

Miné Okubo helped to establish an art school in the Topaz camp and created illustrations for the Topaz Times. She made over 2,000 drawings depicting everyday life in the camp, and her 1946 book “Citizen 13660” was the first published account of the experience of an internee.

Bennie Nobori, who worked as a Hollywood animator prior to the incarceration, drew weekly comic strips called “Jankee Reporter” and “Zootsuo” for the camp newspapers at the Topaz Relocation Center in Utah and the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in California.

Jack Matsuoka, a teenager during the incarceration, published “Poston Camp II, Block 211,” which is based on sketches and comics he created for the camp newspaper, The Poston Chronicle.

Graphic novels continue to be a powerful means for Japanese Americans to examine the ongoing impact of incarceration, including titles such as “Displacement” by Kiku Hughes, “Stealing Home” by J. Torres and David Namisato, and “They Called Us Enemy” by George Takei, Justin Eisinger and Steven R. Scott.

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AN INVITATION TO THE UNIVERSE IN THEIR NEW B O OK, AN ARTIST AND A THEORETICAL PHYSICIST BRIDGE THE COMPLEXIT Y OF PHYSICS WITH THE

F E AT U R E

BY RACHEL MORRISON

WON DE R OF DI S C OV E RY I N S OM E OF T H E

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WEIRDEST CORNERS OF THE COSMOS.

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n 2015, gravitational waves were first detected by the Laser Interferometer GravitationalWave Observatory (LIGO), the world’s largest gravitational wave observatory, comprising two enormous laser interferometers in Washington and Louisiana.

This detection also determined the source of the gravitational waves: a collision between two massive black holes 1.3 billion light years away. This further confirmed a key prediction of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, made 100 years prior, and provided the first direct evidence that black holes merge, according to a LIGO statement from 2016.

CHAPMAN FORWARD FALL 2023

A N I N V I TAT I O N T O T H E U N I V E R S E F E AT U R E

LIGO was co-founded 40 years ago by Kip Thorne, the 2017 Nobel Prize-winning physicist and Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics Emeritus at Caltech. In 2010, Playboy magazine commissioned an article by Thorne. He suggested the topic of “The Warped Side of the Universe,” which would be based on objects and phenomena made from warped space-time, with art by Chapman Art Department Chair and

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CHAPMAN FORWARD FALL 2023

Associate Professor Lia Halloran. The article didn’t pan out as planned; as Thorne and Halloran describe it, “Lia’s depiction of [the female figure] was not up to the ‘Femlin standard’ that Hefner required for Playboy women.” However, the experience led to a longstanding collaboration between Halloran and Thorne, whose creative synergy has come to resemble a unique cosmic force itself.

Nobel Prize winner Kip Thorne (left) and Associate Professor and Chair of the Art Department Lia Halloran began collaborating 13 years ago.

"The Warped Side of Our Universe" includes poetic verse written by Kip Thorne and approximately 150 paintings by Lia Halloran.

Thirteen years later, that would-be article expanded to become the book “The Warped Side of Our Universe: An Odyssey Through Black Holes, Wormholes, Time Travel, and Gravitational Waves” (Norton/Liveright, 2023). Told through poetic verse written by Thorne and tightly integrated into original art by Halloran, “Warped Side” explores discoveries in the field of astrophysics from the past decade, including black holes, wormholes, bizarre flows of time and the birth of the universe.

For the project, Halloran created over 500 ink works on drafting film, approximately 150 of which ended up as final paintings in the book, which also features four double-sided gate folds that extend out to over two feet. The book's main character is a spacetime traveler named Felicia, who is modeled in body and spirit on Halloran’s eponymous wife.

This choice was intentional. The collaborators didn’t want to write a didactic book about physics; they wanted to provide an entry point to those complex ideas in a way that is accessible to anyone.

“The book exposes us to black holes in an intimate and sensual way, through the writing and the paintings and who even appears in the book,” says Halloran. “We aren’t trying to teach about black holes. We’re offering a way to have an intimate and engaging experience of the universe.”

ORBITING AN IDEA As an artist, Halloran is known for works that merge art and science. Her unique style often incorporates elements of photography, drawing and painting, inspired by celestial phenomena, and considers themes of exploration, human curiosity and our place in the vastness of space.

Halloran’s cognitive process and creative practice enable an interdisciplinary approach to her art.

“My studio functions like a laboratory,” she says.

“It starts with a question, and then we orbit around that question from multiple perspectives.”

Associate Professor of Art and Chair of the Art Department Lia Halloran in her studio.

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CHAPMAN FORWARD FALL 2023

Consider the concept of “Up.” In 2015 Halloran began learning to fly a Cessna 172. “As I was flying, I was thinking through the physics and the feeling of being unbounded by the Earth,” she recalls. This contemplation led to the creation of a piece titled “Double Horizon,” an immersive three-screen video installation, shot over two years during the course of more than 30 flights. Halloran describes the video as a “double portrait” — of the city of Los Angeles and as a self-portrait of the artist in the cockpit flying above the city. The art investigates how space can be experienced differently when there are shifts in perception, time and scale. An ArtCenter article published in advance of the 2020 exhibition at the college’s Peter and Merle Mullin Gallery notes that in “Double Horizon,” “Halloran traverses the landscape in ways most won’t and asks the viewer to reflect on the poetic nature of the body’s relationship to its environment. (“Double Horizon” had a four-month run at the San Francisco Exploratorium museum in 2022, as well as in several other solo exhibitions.)

Halloran brings ideas from her work as an artist into the classroom, and many of her Chapman students have become longtime studio assistants. Adam Ottke ’13 was among the students who took the course "The Intersection of Art and Science" over a decade ago, and he worked on image handling and color correction for the final version of “The Warped Side of Our Universe.” “I was always interested in interdisciplinary study, in science and math,” says Ottke, who also has his own photography studio.

“Lia showed us, in the real world, how science and art can coexist and inform one another.”

Jen Seo ’14 took the same course over a dozen years ago.

She has assisted in Lia’s studio on an early layout draft of “The Warped Side,” the series “Deep Sky Companion,” which is permanently installed at Caltech in Pasadena, and the early testing of large-scale cyanotype prints in the series “Your Body Is a Space That Sees.” “What’s great about Lia is that when she gets excited about an idea, she doesn’t just silo away. For most artists, it’s lonely work. But she will take the idea and bring people in, start conversations,” says Seo. “She brings her ideas to the class—they guide what she’s teaching. And that creates a community on campus, and it invites us into her world.”

Still image from Lia Halloran's video installation "Double Horizon."

This experience of learning to fly also led to a course called "Up," which Halloran co-taught with Claudine Jaenichen and Anna Leahy, both professors in Chapman’s Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences.

“The idea for the course was, because so many of us are fascinated by being ‘up,’ we can build a class from the perspective of physics, design, writing, art, history and future dreaming. We take the concept, circle around it, and engage all the disciplines,” Halloran says.

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Lia Halloran in her studio.

F E AT U R E

A N I N V I TAT I O N T O T H E U N I V E R S E

BODIES IN SPACE In 2014, Halloran created a travel course titled "The Origins of Art and Science," in which students spent three weeks during the Interterm session in Florence, Italy, to study the interconnection of the arts and science during the Renaissance. “Alchemy, the fountains of medical schools, collecting of objects from the natural world — this all plays into how we understand science now,” she says. In another course, "The Intersection of Art and Science," Thorne took the class to visit a prototype of LIGO at Caltech in Pasadena.

For Halloran, teaching is an extension of her studio practice.

She brings ideas from the studio into the classroom and invites students to participate in her thought processes and art.

Halloran credits Chapman’s unique environment for her ability to design and teach courses that follow an interdisciplinary mode of inquiry. “Chapman has enabled such autonomy and interdisciplinarity. President Daniele Struppa and Wilkinson College Dean Jennifer Keane have really fostered this,” she says.

“But the culture of interdisciplinarity also emanates from faculty across the college and the students themselves.”

An exhibition of artwork from the book will be up from Nov. 4 to Dec. 23 at the gallery Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.

You can see more of Halloran's work and a list of public speaking events to celebrate the launch of the book at www.liahalloran.com or on Instagram @liahalloranstudio.

Kip Thorne and Lia Halloran will be in conversation with Chapman President Daniele C. Struppa about the book at Chapman University in the Folino Theater on Feb. 19, 2024, at 7 p.m.

Original art from "The Warped Side of the Universe: An Odyssey Through Black Holes, Wormholes, Time Travel, and Gravitational Waves" by Kip Thorne and Lia Halloran.

Text Copyright © 2023 by Kip Thorne. Illustrations Copyright © 2023 by Lia Halloran.

Used with permission of the publisher, Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

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CHAPMAN FORWARD FALL 2023

“IN THE BOOK, WE AREN’T TRYING TO TEACH ABOUT BLACK HOLES. WE’RE OFFERING A WAY TO ENGAGE WITH AND HAVE AN INTIMATE AND ENGAGING EXPERIENCE OF THE UNIVERSE.” LIA HALLORAN

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THE WAYS OF WATER H Y D R O L O G I S T T O M P I E C H O TA L E A D S I N T E R D I S C I P L I NA RY R E S E A R C H T HAT I N F O R M S S T R AT E G I E S F O R M A NA G I N G T H E W E S T ’ S M O S T P R E C I O U S NAT U R A L R E S O U R C E .

F E AT U R E

BY DENNIS ARP

F

or more than 25 years, hydrology and water resources expert Tom Piechota has immersed himself in the study of water systems and issues in the American Southwest. These days, his research is even more acutely focused on the existential challenges of managing water in the West.

Supported in part by a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Piechota works with Chapman University faculty research colleagues and students across a variety of disciplines, including environmental science, remote sensing, computer science and engineering.

As he pursues answers to vital questions about the immediate and long-term impact of drought, floods, wildfires and coastal erosion, he draws on a wide range of experiences. Previously, he was coPI on a $20 million climate change impact study funded by the National Science Foundation, which also has given him a CAREER Award. His journal articles and other research work have been cited more than 4,000 times.

Among his current projects is a collaboration with Chapman plant biologist Hagop Atamian and Earth system scientist Joshua Fisher. The professors and their students hope to quantify the agricultural

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CHAPMAN FORWARD FALL 2023

water savings of growing chia instead of a thirstier forage crop like alfalfa. Preliminary data indicates a savings of up to 20%.

More broadly, Piechota is exploring new models that can help with resilience planning in the face of growing climate change impact. In one project, he and two of his students are working to develop a water budget calculator for California.

“We want to be able to answer questions like: Over the next 20 years, if urban demand increases by 1% and we no longer have access to Colorado River water, what does that mean for our state water portfolio?” he says.

A lot of his current work is about hazard mitigation, explains Piechota, who has taken on a number of leadership roles in his six years at Chapman, from vice president of research to, now, interim dean of the Fowler School of Engineering.

“Water is not just a science issue — it impacts policy, infrastructure and the economy,” he says.

“These issues affect everyone, and they’ll require multidimensional solutions if we’re going to develop sustainable and resilient water systems.”

Tom Piechota (left) at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Technical Service Center Hydraulics Laboratory.

Tom Piechota and Rami Bedri ‘24, a Chapman environmental science and policy student, at Hoover Dam and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation River Operations Office for the Lower Colorado River.

INSIGHTS SPRING FROM WATER ROAD TRIP To get a firsthand look at some of those systems and to prepare to teach a new course he launched last spring called “Water in the West,” Piechota embarked on an epic water road trip in summer 2022. From Hoover Dam to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation offices, the California Delta to the headwaters of the Colorado River, the journey offered insights that now inform his teaching and research.

“Not only was it a chance to revisit places where I’ve done research over the years, but I also met with important water resource managers, including a number of my former students who are now in positions of influence,” Piechota says.

As an engineer, he was excited to see how infrastructure gets deployed in places like Flaming Gorge Dam on the Green River in Utah, where strategic water releases help balance the capacity of downstream reservoirs. In Las Vegas and at Lake Shasta, he learned how water managers were coping with severe shortages due to prolonged drought.

Interestingly, by the time Piechota started teaching his class, Californians were dealing with destructive flooding due to a rainy season full of atmospheric rivers.

Piechota calls the rapid shift between extremes “weather whiplash.”

More research is needed in California, Italy, Australia and other places with a Mediterranean climate to help determine whether further swings are on the horizon, Piechota says.

He adds that he doesn’t “get too far into the science debate as to whether it’s part of natural cycles or anthropogenic effects.”

Still, the research record is clearly pointing to more volatility.

“People in the water sector are trying to adjust to that,” Piechota says. “There’s a lot of uncertainty in all the models, but one thing they do show is that there will be more extremes.”

“These issues affect everyone, and they’ll require multidimensional solutions if we’re going to develop sustainable and resilient water systems.” Tom Piechota

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MORE THAN A CARD:

ID DOCUMENTS OPEN DOORS FA C U LT Y M E M B E R D E V E L O P S S Y S T E M T O D E L I V E R I D C A R D S , WHICH HELPS PEOPLE VOTE, OPEN BANK ACCOUNT S AND GET LOANS.

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BY JOY JUEDES

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or people in countries with advanced economies, using an ID card to open a bank account, vote and get a loan or a job is often taken for granted. But in many parts of the world, citizens lack the foundational documents required for these commonplace activities. That's why Chapman University Assistant Professor Jonathan Hersh is working to bring IDs to more remote areas like western Africa.

Hersh, who teaches in Chapman’s Argyros College of Business and Economics, became interested in using economics and data analysis to solve global challenges while working on his dissertation at the World Bank a decade ago.

At the time, the capabilities of computer algorithms to analyze satellite images were advancing rapidly, and the World Bank was conducting on-the-ground surveys to monitor and alleviate global poverty.

The challenge was that those surveys were costly and didn’t cover a significant part of a country’s population, Hersh says. And countries with developing economies often lack comprehensive birth records for economic, logistical or cultural reasons.

When the pandemic hit, governments wanted to quickly deliver economic aid to vulnerable people. The World Bank asked Hersh if he could help identify vulnerable populations in Togo, a narrow country of more than 8 million located next to Ghana. He and a graduate student analyzed satellite images to pinpoint where these people were clustered and helped deliver economic transfers to them.

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A satellite image shows population concentrations in the West African nation of Togo, where Hersh worked with officials to plan the distribution of ID cards.

According to the World Bank, around 1 billion people worldwide don’t have a foundational ID. This makes it hard to get a loan, vote and get a pension. Some of the people Hersh worked with in Togo asked if he could help figure out how to get an ID to everyone in the country — work supported by the World Bank’s Identification for Development (ID4D) Initiative. Hersh had funding and a robust server that could handle the data processing, so he agreed to help.

“Implementing a unique ID system is one of the primary steps that we can take for a country as they’re trying to get on that first ladder rung of development,” Hersh says.

IDs are a “bit of a chicken-and-egg” situation in developing countries.

“We know everyone should have one — it helps individuals who want to get a loan for their business, get a job or vote.

Images showing how ID cards are made and distributed using a portable kit.

But how do we get to the point where most people possess an ID card, prompting banks and employers to request it?” he says.

Satellite image showing population concentrations in Nigeria, where Hersh is working with officials on distributing ID cards.

Creating IDs is easy — officials use portable kits to make them using a photo and fingerprints. It’s delivering one to everyone in often remote areas that’s challenging, Hersh says.

His student research team — including Joshua Anderson ’20 (MS ’22), Erin Lee ’22, Connor Lydon ’22 and former Chapman graduate student Kushal Reddy — used publicly accessible satellite data to develop alternative ways to track a country’s vulnerable population. From there, Hersh’s team uses the OpenStreetMap database to find the best places to set up ID registration, like markets, malls, government centers, health clinics and places of worship.

Knowing where vulnerable people are helps officials with limited resources to serve the greatest number of people and limit residents’ travel time. The same algorithm — known as the facility location problem — is used in business logistics and humanitarian work, Hersh says.

“We solved this using many of the same skills around math, algorithms and data analytics that we teach in our classroom,” he says.

He adds, “The fact that we’re addressing these challenges using completely open methods means that this problem can be solved anywhere in the world.”

To date, Hersh and his team have presented their ID distribution framework to officials in Togo, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria — Africa’s most populous country at over 200 million people.

“The fact that we’re addressing these challenges using completely open methods means that this problem can be solved anywhere in the world.”

JONATHAN HERSH

Togo’s minister of digital economy and transformation, Cina Lawson, expressed admiration for the presentation, and Nigerian officials incorporated it into their ID registration strategy, Hersh says.

“Our aspiration is that a substantial number of people will have access to bank accounts, the ability to work formally, and have the chance to exist in ways they’ve not previously experienced,” he says. “This is happening in collaboration with operational partners who can work on the ground.”

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Participants build connections during the inaugural Peace Leadership Forum in Ghana.

McIntyre Miller facilitates peace leadership group work at the inaugural Peace Leadership Forum.

ALL OVER THE GLOBE, CHANGEMAKERS ARE E M B R AC I N G W H I T N E Y M C I N T Y R E M I L L E R’ S PEACE LEADERSHIP MODEL, FEEDING A GLOBAL MOVEMENT FOR SYSTEMIC CHANGE.

“Visualize Peace,” the bumper sticker proclaims in a font designed to be read at 70 miles per hour. But what good is such a bromide without a blueprint for transforming the sentiment into action?

Enter Whitney McIntyre Miller, a leadership studies professor at Chapman University whose Integral Peace Leadership model is now steering communities toward systemic change in more than 40 countries.

Eight years after introducing her model, McIntyre Miller continues to enhance it through her research and teaching in the Attallah College of Educational Studies at Chapman — one of the few U.S. universities where programs in leadership studies and peace studies overlap. Along the way, McIntyre Miller has helped take the nascent field of peace leadership from visions and dreams to tangible steps for replacing entrenched systems.

“When I think of peace leadership, I think of intentional practices grounded in research-based work that challenges violence and aggression in whatever forms they take,” McIntyre Miller says.

“There’s a need not just to undo systems, but also to build new structures that promote peace, equity and justice.”

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She launched the model via a 2015 article co-authored with Zachary Gabriel Green. The authors frame peace leadership as “much more than what Einstein referred to as ‘the mere reduction of violence.’ It requires proactive, intentional practices to shift patterns of thinking, knowing and doing in the face of strongly held beliefs and cherished ways of being.”

BEYOND "LEADERSHIP AS PERSON" McIntyre Miller grounds her research in the work of numerous authors who elucidate the traits and examples of historic peace builders such as Gandhi, King, Lincoln, Mandela and Chile’s Michelle Bachelet. But as she developed her model, she knew it would need to go far beyond a focus on “leadership as person.”

SOWERS OF PEACE

Through research and experience, including fieldwork in places like Sierra Leone and Bosnia-Herzegovina, McIntyre Miller ultimately built her peace leadership model on an integral theory structure called All Quadrants, All Levels, All Lines (AQAL) developed by American philosopher Ken Wilber.

Innerwork (I)

EK CIK

EIK

Peace Leadership

CK

F E AT U R E

CEK

STRUCTURES THAT PROMOTE PEACE, EQUITY AND JUSTICE.” Whitney McIntyre Miller

Her model is designed to bring diverse theories and practices into a single framework for peace leadership impact.

In essence, the model can inspire something like a peacebuilding checklist:

Engage collectively to orient relationships and communities toward peace.

IK

Community (C)

SYSTEMS, BUT ALSO TO BUILD NEW

Do the inner work so you embody peace in your personal life.

Knowledge (K)

CI

“THERE’S A NEED NOT JUST TO UNDO

Environment (E) EI

CEI CE

Integral Peace Leadership Whitney McIntyre Miller

The peace leadership model emphasizes four goals that, when combined and fully integrated, amount to an embodied practice with the potential to radiate outward.

Study theories, behaviors and practices of peace builders to provide evidence of peace in action.

Apply strategies of group engagement to challenge societal structures.

But breakthroughs really become possible when all the elements come together over time to deepen experiences and create enduring connections.

“Each process in peace leadership is part of a nested and interwoven whole,” McIntyre Miller explains in the 2015 paper.

It didn’t take long for leaders and changemakers to embrace the professor’s integrated concepts, starting with Katy Lunardelli and Sylvia Murray of the Euphrates Institute.

“The model felt very true to the practices of our work,” says Lunardelli, executive director of the California-based

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nonprofit that equips, connects and uplifts emerging peace builders worldwide.

“It all clicked to have this research model that shows how inner work — embodying peace at the individual level — connects with outer work: interactions and relationships in the community,” Lunardelli adds.

TURNING A VISION INTO PEACE-BUILDING PRACTICE The Euphrates Institute adapted McIntyre Miller’s model as it developed its Peace Practice Alliance, a six-month collaborative experience that explores peace leadership theories and practices while cultivating resilient peacebuilding communities.

More than 100 graduates of the program are now applying what they learned in leading organizations around the world, from California to Cameroon, Liberia to India, Afghanistan to Ukraine.

In Nigeria, trained peace builders are working with young girls who were kidnapped and sexually assaulted during the Boko Haram insurgency. Practices and trainings help victims “find a measure of peace after suffering such a horrible trauma,” McIntyre Miller says. “They’re also doing sensitizing workshops for the community so people learn about what their neighbors have gone through, and so the community itself can experience healing.”

McIntyre Miller and many of those who are putting her insights into practice recently met in Ghana for a Peace Leadership Forum, which featured focus groups, workshops and countless stories of peace-building progress.

Participants present their group peace tree and map during the Peace Leadership Forum.

McIntyre Miller participates in a batik fabricmaking workshop in Cape Coast, Ghana.

McIntyre Miller leads a conversation around integral peace leadership during the Peace Leadership Forum.

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“We’re seeing what we envisioned, which is a global movement of peace practice that’s growing and evolving,” Murray says.

“Whitney’s theories are proving true in practice.”

Impact is being realized across a host of community and business sectors, including education, medicine and engineering. Nongovernmental organizations, churches and other community leaders are creating change in fields such as public health, conflict resolution, domestic violence, trauma healing, climate justice and even youth sports.

“I can’t tell you how humbling and amazing it is that this idea I put on a napkin in 2014 is now being used every day around the world,” McIntyre Miller says.

A BROADER PERSPECTIVE LEADS TO WIDER IMPACT

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SOWERS OF PEACE

In Saudi Arabia, Miznah Alomair (Ph.D. ’18) is applying peace practice principles in her leadership role with the Alnahda Society, where she and her 70-plus employees work to empower Saudi women and families to succeed socially and economically.

“The work I’ve been doing with Whitney and my research in peace leadership have changed me as an individual,” says Alomair, who helped create a peace leadership curriculum during her time as McIntyre Miller’s first doctoral student at Chapman.

“I’ve been able to take my sense of empathy to a new level,” Alomair adds. “It’s not that I’m more peaceful; it’s that I have a broader perspective — I look at the wider impact of actions and I’m able to think more systematically about everything. I see how all the lines connect.”

The lessons of peace leadership represent a cultural shift for Alomair’s organization, where the approach of previous leaders was more pragmatic and transactional rather than based in peace-building principles, she says. Progress is incremental as she helps prepare women to step into roles that used to be unavailable to them.

There’s optimism that succeeding generations will be especially open to change.

“I LOOK AT THE WIDER IMPACT OF ACTIONS AND I’M ABLE TO THINK MORE SYSTEMATICALLY ABOUT EVERYTHING.” Miznah Alomair (Ph.D. '18)

“As I connect with the youth, I continue to believe this is the right fit. There are great opportunities to impact societies at different levels and in more powerful ways,” Alomair says.

Cultural transition is also at the heart of the work being done by Nick Irwin (MA ’17, Ph.D. ’24), who includes peace leadership research in his Chapman doctoral dissertation.

He’s also a student of the Euphrates Peace Practice Alliance.

Irwin retired in June after 20 years in the Navy, and now he’s applying peace leadership lessons as he works with college students who are military veterans — many of whom struggle to adapt to campus life.

“In the military, things tend to be black and white — ­ us vs. them,” Irwin says.

Peace leadership practices help with self-regulating responses, “so we can manage our stress and respond rationally,” he adds. “Connecting the personal to the interpersonal is all part of building positive peace strategies.”

As a mentee of McIntyre Miller, he has seen the best of peace leadership in action, he says.

“Whitney embodies peace leadership,” Irwin enthuses. “After defending my dissertation proposal, I told her I wanted to take summer school to maximize my veteran's benefits, and she advocated to make that happen. As we say in the Navy, she rogered up, which isn’t a surprise because she’s continuously supportive and is always looking for ways to collaborate.”

REFINING THE MODEL THROUGH ONGOING RESEARCH These days, McIntyre Miller continues to explore opportunities to refine and apply her Integral Peace Leadership model. She and colleagues published four papers on peace leadership in 2022, including one, co-authored by Alomair, for the journal Peace Psychology titled “Understanding Integral Peace Leadership in Practice: Lessons and Learnings From Women PeaceMaker Narratives.”

Another paper, written with researcher Anna Abdou, shares stories of peace leadership growth, training and development

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in K-12 educational settings. In addition to their research, the authors are working with teachers and administrators to share peace leadership practices and develop curricular materials.

Financial support for this project comes from Attallah College’s Solutions Grants, which support faculty research that addresses a specific local need, as well as from the American Psychological Association’s Peace Psychology Division. In addition, grants from the Miner Anderson Family Foundation support the school training project along with a new Peace Leadership Collaborative, which will bring together a broad range of peace leaders to network and share resources.

Also on the horizon for McIntyre Miller is a book of peace leadership narratives, building on her work during the Ghana conference.

As the seedlings of peace leadership planted by her model continue to propagate, McIntyre Miller also works to root the lessons in her own life.

She loves that the story-gathering and other research she does take her to frontline peace-building communities in Ghana and beyond. But she knows that the work begins in her home and classroom.

“Really, it’s a fairly idealistic, optimistic model, and we acknowledge that it’s hard to do this work — hard to do all the pieces, and especially hard to do all of them well,” she says.

“So I try to use this at an interpersonal level all the way up to how we might implement the Paris Climate Accords so they aren’t just signatures on a document. I want to find a place for it in all of my decision-making — how I spend time in this space to give to the work and to the world.”

“The plan is that each of these stories will illustrate the Integral Peace Leadership model — how it actually works in practice and what it looks like for people,” she says.

A banner hangs from a building in Cape Coast, Ghana.

Participants engage in peace leadership dialogue during the Peace Leadership Forum.

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TROPICAL FORESTS ARE WITHIN CRITICAL TEMPERATURE THRESHOLDS

FEATURE

BY RACHEL MORRISON

A M AT TER OF D EGRE ES

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T WO CHAPMAN UNIVERSIT Y SCIENTIST S ARE ON A T E A M O F M O R E T HA N A D O Z E N W H O G AT H E R E D A N D C O N F I R M E D C R I S I S - L E V E L D ATA .

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or 150 years, scientists have known that when leaves reach a certain temperature, their photosynthetic machinery breaks down, meaning that they can no longer combine light, carbon dioxide and water to make the sugars that sustain them. The question now is: How close are tropical forest canopies to reaching these limits?

On the heels of the warmest months on record for planet Earth, a new study finds that the world’s tropical forest canopies may be closer to critical hightemperature thresholds than previously thought, but that moderately ambitious climate-change mitigation can avoid these dangerous thresholds. The NASAfunded study, “Tropical forests are approaching critical temperature thresholds,” was published in the journal Nature in August.

Chapman scientists and colleagues have estimated that the world’s tropical forests can withstand an increase in air temperature of nearly 4 degrees Celsius due to climate change before a potential tipping point in photosynthetic function. A small percentage of tropical leaves are already reaching or exceeding temperatures at which they can no longer function. The scientists studied data from across the world’s tropical forests, including those in the Caribbean, Central America, South America, Africa, Australia and Southeast Asia.

One of the most impressive aspects of the study is the methods used to determine canopy leaf temperatures, which ranged from leaf-warming experiments in the canopy to NASA thermal imaging.

“IT IS REMARKABLE THAT WE CAN OBSERVE THE TEMPERATURE OF THE WORLD’S TROPICAL FORESTS FROM AN INSTRUMENT ON THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION ORBITING 400 KM ABOVE EARTH’S SURFACE AND TRAVELING NEARLY 29,000 KM PER HOUR.” GREGORY GOLDSMITH

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“It is remarkable that we can observe the temperature of the world’s tropical forests from an instrument on the International Space Station orbiting 400 km above Earth’s surface and traveling nearly 29,000 km per hour,” says Gregory Goldsmith, associate professor of biological sciences in Chapman’s Schmid College of Science and Technology. “It is equally remarkable to imagine the painstaking efforts to measure the temperatures of individual leaves in the canopy by hand. We need both the ground- and satellite-based observations to understand the temperatures of tropical forest canopies.”

If those peak temperatures persist and climate change continues, entire canopies could begin to die. These findings have serious implications because tropical forests are home to most of the world’s biodiversity and are key regulators of our climate.

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A M AT T E R O F D E G R E E S

The Amazon is already experiencing slightly higher temperatures than the Congo basin, and it is at greater risk. “While tropical forests have experienced warming in the past, the current increases in temperature are unprecedented,” Goldsmith says.

The world’s tropical forest canopies may be closer to critical high-temperature thresholds than previously thought, but moderately ambitious climate-change mitigation can avoid these dangerous thresholds, according to research by Schmid College scientists Gregory Goldsmith and Joshua Fisher.

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Chapman Associate Professor of Biological Sciences Gregory Goldsmith follows a narrow path in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve in Costa Rica. He and his fellow researchers have used both ground- and satellite-based observations to understand the temperatures of tropical forest canopies.

TROPICAL RAINFORESTS ARE APPROACHING CRITICAL TEMPERATURE THRESHOLDS Leaves in tropical forest canopies already exceed their upper temperature limit about 0.01% of the time.

Increasing temperatures due to global climate change can cause leaves to surpass their upper temperature limit.

KEY FINDINGS • When enough leaves in the canopy die, the tree dies. A small percentage of leaves are already exceeding these temperatures.

• Tropical forests are projected to withstand a 3.9- degree increase in air temperature before reaching a tipping point.

• The study shows there is still time to prevent the worst effects of climate change on tropical forests.

The study used a suite of observational, experimental and modeling approaches to study tropical canopy temperatures.

NASA Instruments

Tower Instruments

Leaf Temperature Sensors

Models

Study by Christopher E. Doughty, Jenna Keany, Benjamin C. Wiebe, Camilo Rey-Sanchez, Kelsey R. Carter, Kali B. Middleby, Alexander W. Cheesman, Michael L. Goulden, Humberto R. Da Rocha, Scott D. Miller, Yadvinder Malhi, Sophie Fauset, Emanuel Gloor, Martin Slot, Imma M. Oliveras Menor, Kristine Y. Crous, Gregory R. Goldsmith and Joshua B. Fisher in Nature.

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Goldsmith started studying tropical forests as an undergraduate, spending time in Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico and Singapore. As a graduate student, he developed Canopy in the Clouds, a multimedia website designed to provide students with an immersive virtual visit to a tropical forest.

Goldsmith and Joshua Fisher, associate professor of environmental science and policy also in the Schmid College of Science and Technology at Chapman, were among the international team of 18 scientists, led by Christopher Doughty from Northern Arizona University.

scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) five years ago before joining Chapman University’s faculty. “That’s where we turn to satellite remote sensing. We were able to measure the temperature of the trees directly at incredibly high resolution, all the way from space, using thermal infrared sensing.”

“Historically, we have either studied individual trees to gather data at small scales or used satellite instruments to gather data at large scales. What was missing was a way to collect data at small scales across the tropics,” says Fisher, who helped launch the ECOSTRESS satellite while working as a NASA

Yet, “the results do not indicate that reaching a tipping point for tropical forests is fait accompli,” says Goldsmith. “We still hold in our power the ability to conserve these places that are so critically important for carbon sequestration, water and biodiversity.”

“WHILE TROPICAL FORESTS HAVE EXPERIENCED WARMING IN THE PAST, THE CURRENT INCREASES IN TEMPERATURE ARE UNPRECEDENTED.” GREGORY GOLDSMITH

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Tropical montane cloud forests like this one in Monteverde, Costa Rica, are predicted to be particularly vulnerable to global climate change.

PICTURES AND STORIES A I D E D B Y PA R T I C I PA N T P H O T O G R A P H Y, Q UAY L A N A L L E N G E T S YO U N G B L A C K M E N TA L K I N G A B O U T T H E I R ST RU G G L E S A N D SU C C E S SE S , I L L U M I N AT I N G PAT H WAY S T O

n the early 2000s, Nike Air Jordans were so coveted by teenage boys that they developed clever tactics to get new versions the moment the shoes went on sale.

Education researcher Quaylan Allen had no idea that the brand’s crazy popularity was also motivating teen entrepreneurs to buy and resell the shoes at a profit. No idea, that is, until he started building his own strategy to capture Black male students’ everyday stories of trial and success.

For close to two decades, Allen has been getting young Black men to open up about their lives, interests and adaptive experiences inside the education system.

Applying a sociology research technique called participant photography, he prompts insightful stories that ultimately help teachers and administrators reach students who might otherwise get written off as unreachable.

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BY DENNIS ARP

C U LT U R A L LY R E L E VA N T P R A C T I C E S .

“The goal is to identify culturally relevant or responsive practices,” says Allen, associate professor in Chapman’s Attallah College of Educational Studies. “The boys and young men I study benefit from the chance to express themselves in different ways, including with photography. It all leads to higher engagement.”

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In the early 2000s, the popularity of Nike Air Jordans motivated teen entrepreneurship.

Meet Dontay and Mark (not their real names), two of Allen’s research subjects whose stories came to light thanks to their sharing of photos. One image Mark captured shows seven pairs of athletic shoes on the floor of his closet.

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PICTURES AND STORIES

The young men told Allen about their affinity for the Air Jordan brand — Mark from the perspective of a consumer, and Dontay as a seller. During one interview with Allen, Dontay detailed his experience at a local mall when a new line of Air Jordans was released.

“The cops were getting irritated because the crowd kept getting closer and wider, closer and wider,” Dontay relates in a passage that was included in one of Allen's research papers. “And so at like 5:30 in the morning, they’re like, ‘We’re not opening up the line until you guys get into single file.’ Nobody moved. All of a sudden, VOOSH! The whole crowd just rushes inside the mall — just takes the mall by storm.”

CONVINCING PARTICIPANTS THAT THEIR VOICES MATTER Throughout his research career, Allen has conducted hundreds of interviews with working-class and middle-class Black male students as well as with their friends, parents, teachers and others. Included in his research writings are the fruits of his recurring work with 10 Black male students with whom Allen built rapport via participant photos and interviews throughout their high school years and into their college experiences.

His research technique is elemental, but it requires nuance and commitment, Allen says.

“The method is not empowering in and of itself, but finds its power in the negotiation between the moral commitment of the researcher and the agency of the participant,” he explains in a journal article focused on the ethics and benefits of participant photography.

“I had to convince my participants that their voices mattered by demonstrating my knowledge of the problems Black men face, showing deep interest in their well-being and what they had to say, and conveying the social and political implications of not including the Black male voice into the public discourse.”

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Allen’s findings fill more than a dozen published papers that now form the basis of a book he is writing for Routledge.

The book’s working title is “(In)visible Men on Campus: Black College Men Navigating the Campus Racial Climate at Historically White Universities.”

The title is a play on how Black students tend to be both invisible and hyper-visible in college settings.

“Black men are invisible because they’re typically less than 2% of students on a college campus, which is why overall there’s a lack of support services designed for them,” Allen says. “When I talk with Black students, I hear things like, ‘I need to know where I can get a haircut,’ or, ‘I need access to Black mental health therapists who understand the kind of experiences I’m going through.’”

But then those same students can also become extra visible precisely because there are so few of them, Allen adds.

“They are minoritized, and thus they become targets for microaggressions,” he says. “People assume they are athletes or that they only got where they are because of affirmative action.”

ELEVATING BLACK STUDENTS’ STORIES OF TRIAL AND RESILIENCE Allen’s research draws on his own experiences as a less-thanmotivated student who ultimately excelled academically and professionally thanks in part to culturally aware mentors. Now he is eager for his research, as well as his recent experience as director of first-generation programs at Chapman, to help others in academic leadership find their way to such mentorship.

Too often in K-12 settings and in higher education, stereotypes infuse practices and curricula while also tamping down both expectations and aspirations, Allen says.

“A lot of research on communities of color tends to be deficitoriented — here’s what Black students don’t do or can’t do,” he notes. “If you focus on deficits, you’re going to produce deficits.”

Allen champions an asset-based approach grounded in antideficit narratives.

“We’re looking at an ecology of factors that might contribute to success,” he says.

“The factors include individual resilience and Black students’ own agency, but also community factors like support from the immediate family and members of the community as well as social factors like public policy. We look at it all. How do we draw upon experiences of success to articulate new pathways?”

For Allen, participant photography offers a key avenue to insight.

“The method gives students the chance to produce images that reflect things important to them,” Allen explains.

Context comes via interview questions like, “How does this photo relate to your life? What happened before this was shot? What happened after?”

A participant's photo of a Black Lives Matter flag and a Pan-African flag raised on campus.

Thanks to Mark’s photo and Dontay’s storytelling, Allen learned about the practice of buying multiple pairs of hugely popular athletic shoes, then sitting on them for a couple of months while the inventory dries up. Ultimately Dontay and his brothers sell the shoes online for more than they paid.

“Clearly, they’re engaging in the free-market system in America,” Allen says. “Teachers can benefit from these stories about everyday experiences and then connect relevant examples of success to what they’re teaching in the classroom.”

Allen has endured his own trials and errors on the road to refining his research techniques. For his first attempt at participant photography, he gave the students disposable cameras.

Examples of a participant's photos of liquor stores in his neighborhood.

“None of them took pictures because it’s not cool to be seen with a disposable camera,” Allen recalls.

He switched to high-quality digital cameras, and the pictures started sparking stories.

“It speaks to the importance of considering cultural practices and cultural relevance,” Allen says. “We’re working with teenage boys, right? Coolness is a thing.”

A participant's photo of holding hands with his partner.

“Teachers can benefit from these stories about everyday experiences and then connect relevant examples of success to what they’re teaching in the classroom.”

Quaylan Allen

Images from video of a participant celebrating using a selfie filter.

BY DENNIS ARP F E AT U R E

A P R O G R A M I N T H E S C H O O L O F C O M M U N I C AT I O N , B O R N I N S A R A L A B E L L E ' S C L A S S R O O M , L I F T S U P F I R S T- G E N E R AT I O N S T U D E N T S A N D I N S P I R E S O N G O I N G R E S E A R C H , F O R T I F Y I N G A C U LT U R E O F P R I D E A N D P E R S I S T E N C E .

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ven today, 17 years after Sara LaBelle first set foot on a college campus, her memories of feeling like she didn’t belong are as easy to summon as breath.

“There was a lot of self-doubt,” recalls LaBelle, now an associate professor in the School of Communication at Chapman University. “When you’re a first-generation college student, it seems like everyone else knows what they’re doing and you’re alone — not understanding the terminology or the process of college.”

These days, the chance to demystify that process inspires LaBelle’s research and mentorship at Chapman, where she leads an effort to more effectively communicate with and empower the 18% of CU undergraduate students who are the first in their family to attend college.

LaBelle is collaborating on her research project with faculty colleagues and students who are determined to champion a first-gen culture of “resilience, pride, belongingness and intent to persist to graduation,” as it says in their project summary.

“We’re trying to experimentally test messages that support [first-generation student] culture,” LaBelle says. “We have a really robust first-gen program at Chapman, and the latest class includes the highest percentage of first-gen students [22%] we’ve ever had. So the challenge for all of us becomes, how can we continue to change the narrative for this growing number of first-generation students?”

STUDENT-RUN PROGRAM PROMOTES A SENSE OF BELONGING

School of Communication graduate Carmen Chavez ‘22 shows off her first-generation Trailblazer stole.

“This group of 35 students really met the challenge of creating a new program — a mission statement, program goals, a name, a logo,” LaBelle says. “It’s one of the best classes I’ve ever taught. The students saw that they could have a tangible impact on the school.”

The idea for turning the class into a research project sprang from the way LaBelle saw students an “I Am a Trailblazer” poster: “I am strong, resilient, admirable, courageous, inspirational.”

That research-driven narrative first started to take shape a year ago, when a class project in LaBelle’s School of Communication course “Advanced Message Design” grew to become a first-gen support program specifically for communication students. By the end of the fall 2021 semester, the Trailblazer program was up and running, with tangible benefits to celebrate, including a point-ofpride purple stole that the first class of Trailblazers wore to the end-of-year School of Comm award ceremony.

Students in Sara LaBelle’s class created the Trailblazer program, including the mission statement, program goals and logo.

“WHEN YOU’RE A FIRST-GENERATION COLLEGE STUDENT, IT SEEMS LIKE EVERYONE ELSE KNOWS WHAT THEY’RE DOING AND YOU’RE ALONE.” SARA LABELLE

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“At the beginning of the semester I had students do some research on the first-generation student experience, and as things progressed it got more and more exciting. I found students wanting to be first-gen,” she said.

Instead of distancing themselves from their first-gen status — perhaps even being embarrassed by it — students embraced it.

“We would hold Trailblazer meetings, and students would say, ‘Hey, I’m not totally first-gen, but can I come?’

That inspired me to write this research project — to specify what messages will create this sense of pride for first-generation students, because that’s so important,” LaBelle says.

"IT’S REWARDING TO PROVIDE A PLATFORM FOR STUDENTS TO FIND THEMSELVES" As the inaugural president of the School of Communication Trailblazer program, Kyle Tanimura ’23 (MA ’24) sees firsthand how the program is connecting with first-gen students. A recent networking workshop he hosted was so well attended that the conversations spilled out of the classroom meeting space and into the lobby of Doti Hall.

F E AT U R E

TRAILBLAZERS

COLLABORATION ACROSS DISCIPLINES ELEVATES RESEARCH A $10,000 Chapman faculty grant helped launch the research project, to which LaBelle recruited faculty colleagues Megan Vendemia (School of Comm), Claudine Jaenichen (information design expert in the Department of Art), Stephany Cuevas and Quaylan Allen (both in the Attallah College of Educational Studies with expertise in building programs to support underrepresented communities).

“I basically put together an Avengers team for creating first-generation messages,” LaBelle says.

First-gen student Erick Cunanan ’23 (MA ’24) has contributed to the research project from its start, eventually becoming LaBelle’s research assistant. He says it was meaningful to collaborate with other students in a peer-driven project, and it was invaluable to participate in workshops with LaBelle and the other faculty mentors.

“I know the struggles, and I really want to uplift firstgeneration voices on campus,” says Cunanan, a double major in psychology and strategic and corporate communication who is also earning an accelerated master’s in health and strategic communication. “I feel like it’s my duty and passion to help the community at Chapman.”

36

CHAPMAN FORWARD FALL 2023

Trailblazer President Kyle Tanimura ‘23 (MA ‘24) hosts a popular first-gen networking workshop.

Other similarly popular Trailblazer events include a career-focused panel discussion involving first-gen School of Comm alumni, as well as information sessions on internships and study-abroad opportunities for students.

Tanimura is also president of Chapman Kapamilya, a Filipino student club that has helped him connect with his cultural heritage and represent it with pride.

“I want the Trailblazer program to do that for firstgeneration students,” says Tanimura, a double major in political science and strategic and corporate communication who is also minoring in dance. “Even though I’m not of first-gen experience, it’s rewarding to provide a platform for students to find themselves.”

First-gen School of Comm students and alumni gather after a career-focused panel discussion.

“It’s not malicious or inaccurate messaging — first-gen students do tend to struggle at universities,” she adds.

“But what does it look like when we shift the narrative and start calling them trailblazers? What about when we start emphasizing that first-generation students bring something unique to their classes — that they have strengths and resilience and perspective that continuing generations don’t? What if we create something that’s a cool club to be a part of?”

A NARRATIVE SHIFT FROM DEFICITS TO STRENGTHS

The coolest part of the programming and research effort may be that it’s just beginning, so new insights are likely to keep feeding Trailblazer's forward momentum, says LaBelle.

As Trailblazer also builds bridges to Promising Futures and other university-wide first-generation programs at Chapman, the insights that come from Trailblazer research and experience will continue to bolster an overall culture of achievement, LaBelle says.

In Trailblazer and beyond, it’s clear that the nuances of first-gen messaging matter.

“Traditionally, a lot of the messages have been deficitoriented,” says LaBelle, who is also assistant dean of academic programs and faculty development in the School of Communication.

“AS A FIRST-GENERATION STUDENT MYSELF, TO FEEL LIKE I’M MAKING AN IMPACT AND GIVING BACK IS IMMENSELY REWARDING.” SARA LABELLE

“For me, the big takeaway from phase one [of the research] is how much better we are together,” she explains. “It’s astounding to sit down with Megan, Claudine, Stephany and Quaylan in a setting where we share ideas and learn from each other. Then, as a first-generation student myself, to feel like I’m making an impact and giving back is also immensely rewarding.”

37

STUDY: FDA COULD JUST SAY NO TO DRUGS CHAPMAN PHARMACY PROFESSOR H I G H L I G H T S T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S ’ F L AW E D — A N D E X P E N S I V E — D R U G - A P P R O VA L P R O C E S S .

W

hen shopping for a car, a buyer doesn’t spend over $100,000 on a vehicle that hasn’t been rigorously tested.

“But with pharmaceuticals, the FDA allows these companies to enter the

BY JOY JUEDES

Yet, the Food and Drug Administration would have buyers spend exorbitant amounts on many untested new drugs, according to a Chapman University professor.

“What is the fuel consumption?

‘We didn’t test that.’ Then tell me it brakes well. ‘We only tested 10 cars — sometimes it brakes, sometimes it doesn’t brake,’” says Enrique SeoaneVazquez, a professor at Chapman’s School of Pharmacy.

The United States is known for high drug prices, and many Americans turn abroad for affordable medications.

But many newer FDA-approved medications may not have been greenlighted overseas, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine

by Seoane-Vazquez, former School of Pharmacy fellow Catherine Pham and two co-authors from Kaiser Permanente.

F E AT U R E

Of 206 new drug approvals from 2017 to 2020 in the United States, 47 — a fifth of the total studied — were not recommended for use or reimbursement in other countries because of issues like “uncertain clinical benefit” or “unacceptably high price.”

The median cost in the U.S. for these drugs was $115,281 per person per year, according to the study.

“Sometimes it brakes, sometimes it doesn’t brake.”

38

market without evidence that the drugs actually work,” he says.

CHAPMAN FORWARD FALL 2023

Drugs in the JAMA study ranged from the antibiotic ozenoxacin — sold as Ozanex to treat impetigo at a mere $312 for five days — to cerliponase alfa, which targets a rare pediatric neurological disease with a price tag of about $755,900 per year.

The former wasn’t recommended for reimbursement in Canada, deemed “unlikely to justify the price premium proposed.” Cerliponase alfa wasn’t recommended for reimbursement in Australia due to “uncertainty regarding

survival benefit and an unacceptably high proposed price,” Seoane-Vazquez and his co-authors write.

“Drug expenditures in the U.S. are higher than in any other country and are projected to continue increasing, so U.S. health systems may benefit from evaluating international regulatory and reimbursement decision-making of new drugs,” according to the study.

The researchers analyzed recommendations issued by agencies in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom for new drugs approved by the FDA from 2017 to 2020.

Twenty of the 206 new drugs – which were examined by active ingredient — were for cancer treatment, and 36 were approved by the FDA through the 1983 Orphan Drug Act. Many were fast-tracked for approval. Thirty drugs on the market that have been approved by the FDA for over two years remain unauthorized by the agencies abroad.

Seoane-Vazquez and his co-authors believe this is the first such study.

They conclude that reviewing refusals by international regulators “can support safe and cost-effective clinical decision-making by U.S. health systems and payers.”

Seoane-Vazquez, who is also part of Chapman’s Economic Science Institute, says that new drugs should be analyzed for adding value or for improvement in patients’ outcomes.

“We need to bring together the value, the safety and efficacy, and then combine those with the cost to ensure that the drugs are available and affordable for patients,” he says.

“The benefits are unclear.”

Instead of reference pricing — which places a limit on an insurer’s or employer’s contribution to a health care service — the U.S. could move toward a value-based reimbursement system similar to health systems abroad, the authors recommend.

“With annual U.S. prescription drug spending expected to increase, reimbursement criteria such as comparative clinical benefit and cost-effectiveness may be considered to address issues of health-care affordability and access,” SeoaneVazquez and his co-authors write.

Many health care providers he works with won’t recommend a drug whose value hasn’t been proven through enough clinical trials, he says.

“I work with oncologists, and one of my colleagues tells me what he tells the patient: ‘You can have this new therapy that will probably extend your life a

few more days, but you will be in the hospital in intensive care. Or you can just decide to have palliative care, be at home and have a better quality of life.’”

These are tough decisions, and often the person making them doesn’t have enough information about a new drug — because it was fast-tracked to the market. This can create false expectations, he says.

“Sometimes we are desperate. We want to have an alternative,” he says.

He tells his pharmacy students that just because a drug is FDA approved doesn’t mean it’s appropriate for a patient. Like buying a car, why pay a premium?

“We need information about the safety and efficacy of a new drug. If we know that it works, we can decide to pay more for improved patients’ health,” he says.

39

5 QUESTIONS

INSIDE A MODERN PARADOX:

WHY HASN’T PRODUCTIVITY KEPT UP WITH TECHNOLOGY?

S

eth Benzell’s recent work on economic productivity caught the eye of the United Kingdom’s top financial minister.

Benzell and two co-authors published a research brief through MIT, “Understanding and Addressing the Modern Productivity Paradox.” In April 2023, Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt, who was launching a plan to revitalize the long-stagnant U.K. economy, met with them online to discuss it.

RESEARCH NEWS

BY JOY JUEDES

“His plan has a lot of the elements that we talk about in this paper,” says Benzell, an assistant professor in Chapman’s Argyros College of Business and Economics.

The paradox is that productivity hasn’t kept pace with technology. The paper highlights four theories and details how policymakers can spur growth.

Policy changes could include “increased investment in [research and development], increased immigration of highskilled labor, boosts to our education system, and removal of bottlenecks to entrepreneurship and business innovation,” Benzell and his co-authors write.

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR SETH BENZELL ANSWERED QUESTIONS ABOUT WHAT PRODUCTIVITY IS AND WHY IT MATTERS.

1 WHAT IS PRODUCTIVITY, AND WHY IS

IT IMPORTANT?

Productivity is the amount of output, or GDP, that you get for a certain amount of inputs. So you get labor productivity by dividing all of the output in the economy by the amount of hours worked.

If you look across the world, what seems to matter for quality of life is having an economy with a high GDP per person. So if you’re in a country that has had stagnant output per person, such as a particular Anglophile nation that recently left the European Union, it might be really important for you to try to think of new ways to try to get your productivity up again.

2 HOW DID YOU DECIDE TO WRITE THIS PAPER? My colleagues and I are very excited about how new technologies are changing the economy — for example, the role of automation in changing the nature of work that people do and the types of jobs that will be available. These are issues that I’ve been working on for a long time, both from the management science side and on the macroeconomic side.

However, these exciting new technologies haven’t been showing up in the GDP statistics that people typically use to measure economic growth. We wanted to communicate to the public and policymakers why that might be happening, and what the research says about how it could be improved.

3 WHAT ARE THE IMPORTANT RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

IN AI?

Until the last decade or so, AI systems have been held back by what’s known as “Polanyi’s Paradox.” This is the idea that humans intuitively know how to do things, like ride a bike or recognize a face, that we can’t explain how we perform in the step-by-step manner that computer programs have traditionally required. Innovations in both reinforcement, supervised and unsupervised machine learning have made it so machines can “learn” many things that we previously couldn’t explain to them how to do.

People have been working on unsupervised machine learning for a long time, but it hasn’t really emerged in the public consciousness until recently, as the substrate that all of these chatbots like ChatGPT are built on.

40

CHAPMAN FORWARD FALL 2023

Unsupervised machine learning applies to a much, much broader universe of tasks. Why has AI recently entered the mainstream? It’s due to these systems getting better and better — in part simply because of being run on larger supercomputers, and also because of “fine-tuning,” which is using supervised and reinforcement learning on top of the unsupervised model, to help ChatGPT learn what kinds of answers humans find useful.

4 WHAT IMPACT WERE YOU HOPING THE BRIEF

WOULD HAVE?

There seems to be a really reasonable question for someone in the public to ask: “If everything’s so great, why has my wage not gone up?”

We wanted to explain to the general public as well as policymakers potential explanations for this productivity paradox. And we give what we think are the four most likely explanations. One explanation that I think plays an important role is that some innovations have taken the form of free digital goods, which create value that doesn’t show up in GDP. In ongoing research at Chapman, I have been using our behavioral lab to study how students get value from connections on Instagram.

5 ARE U.S. ECONOMISTS AND POLICYMAKERS ALSO

INTERESTED IN YOUR WORK?

One way that the government can play a positive role, we say, is in developing public infrastructure, because so much of what the government’s role can be is in enabling entrepreneurship and enabling people to come through with innovations.

What does 21st-century infrastructure look like? It looks like broadband, creation of public data sets, fundamental R&D, clean energy, charging stations for electric cars.

After this paper came out, I did a roundtable with the Orange County Chamber of Commerce, where we were talking about the positive impact on the economy that 5G could have in the region. People at the chamber seemed really on board.

The dream is to have a local impact and a global impact.

And then we talk about what we can do better as a society to translate these new technologies into broad and sustainable economic growth for everyone.

There seems to be a really reasonable question for someone in the public to ask: “If everything’s so great, why has my wage not gone up?”

SETH BENZELL

41

SUPER RADAR BREAKTHROUGH RADAR RESEARCH OVERCOMES A N E A R L Y C E N T U R Y- O L D T R A D E O F F B E T W E E N WAV E L E N G T H A N D D I S TA N C E R E S O LU T I O N .

I

F E AT U R E

BY RACHEL MORRISON

t’s a familiar scene: A patient’s toothache prompts the dentist to order an X-ray, which is preceded by the perfunctory draping of a lead blanket around the patient’s body. This is done because X-rays are harmful: They can ionize atoms in the body and damage the molecular structures.

What if there were another way to image the patient’s teeth or bones without the deleterious effects of X-ray radiation?

This may one day be possible because of basic research into new interference radar functions developed by a team of researchers from Chapman and other institutions. In the case of the sore tooth, the researchers’ long-wavelength radiation could theoretically take a picture with no tissue-damaging ionization — only minuscule heating of the body from absorption. According to the authors, it would be no more dangerous than using a cellphone.

The research resolves a 90-year-old problem that requires scientists and engineers to sacrifice detail and resolution for observation distance — underwater, underground and in the air. The previous bound limited the distance estimated between objects to approximately a quarter of the wavelength of radio waves; this technology improves the distance resolution between objects using radar waves.

Indeed, the researchers from the Institute for Quantum Studies at Chapman University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Rochester, the Perimeter Institute and the University of Waterloo have demonstrated range resolution more than 100 times better than the long-believed limit.

“We believe this work will open a host of new applications — in military, construction, archaeology,

42

CHAPMAN FORWARD FALL 2023

John Howell (left) and Andrew Jordan (right)

THE ELECTROMAGNETIC SPECTRUM

Non-ionizing

Ionizing

Radio

Microwave

Infrared

Visible Light

Ultraviolet

X-Ray

Gamma Ray

radio and cell phones

radar and microwave ovens

remote controls

photography

causes tan and sunburn

medical x-rays

nuclear power and medical radio therapy

Longer wavelength, lower resolution, safe to humans

mineralogy and many other domains of radar applications — as well as improve existing technologies,” says John Howell, lead author of the article published in Physical Review Letters. “The possibility of efficient humanitarian demining or performing high-resolution, non-invasive medical sensing is very motivating.”

PROOF OF PRINCIPLE The experiment was carried out in the Howell Research Group lab using guided wave equipment. The object was simply two reflections off a short piece of cable, and the task was to determine the length of the cable using the reflected signal. The researchers were able to measure the shortest detectable length of cable to 100 times smaller than the inverse bandwidth (the traditional limit), and they were further able to measure the distance between the two objects to approximately 35,000 times smaller than the traditional bound.

The researchers plan to apply this technique to ground-penetrating radar for applications like landmine detection. To get the needed resolution to distinguish a landmine from, say, a rock, previously the wavelength of the radar waves needed to be much smaller than the size of the landmine, which is much closer to the microwave part of the spectrum.

“However, as we know from our experience with microwave ovens, water absorbs this radiation very efficiently.

This absorption effect leads to a rapid

Shorter wavelength, higher resolution, more harmful to humans

falloff of the intensity of the radiation as it enters the ground, so not enough signal returns,” says Andrew Jordan, director for the Institute of Quantum Studies at Chapman.

The tailored waveforms that we designed have the important property of being self-referencing, so properties of the target can be distinguished from loss of signal.”

For example, a 2,000 MHz radio wave, corresponding to a wavelength of about half a foot, can only penetrate half a foot into wet clay or two feet into dry sand.

On the other hand, 25 MHz radio waves can probe objects as deeply as 30 meters underground but with a resolution of several meters. Using their techniques, the researchers can measure resolution of less than 1 mm with 25 MHz radio waves.

Howell adds, “We are now working to demonstrate that it is possible to not only measure the distance between two objects, but also between many objects or perform detailed characterization of surfaces.”

SPECIALLY CRAFTED WAVEFORMS The breakthrough idea relies on the superposition of specially crafted waveforms. When a radio wave reflects from two different surfaces, the reflected radio waves combine to form a new radio wave. The research team uses purposedesigned pulses to generate a new kind of superposed pulse. The composite wave has unique sub-wavelength features that can be used to predict the distance between the objects.

“In radio engineering, interference is a dirty word and thought of as a deleterious effect. Here, we turn this attitude on its head and use waveinterference effects to break the longstanding bound on radar ranging by orders of magnitude,” Jordan says.

“In remote radar sensing, only a small amount of the electromagnetic radiation is returned to the detector.

The researchers have submitted a provisional patent application through Chapman University. “This first proofof-principle experiment opens a new area of research with many possible applications that can be disruptive to the multibillion-dollar radar industry. There are many new avenues to pursue both in theory and experiment,” says Jordan.

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BROWSE THE CHAPMAN BOOKSHELF

The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968

Luke Nichter, Ph.D., professor of history | Yale University Press

Nichter recounts the contentious 1968 presidential race between Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Republican Richard Nixon and former Alabama governor George Wallace.

NEW RELEASES REFLECT THE BREADTH AND DEPTH O F C H A P M A N FA C U LT Y M E M B E R S ’ S C H O L A R S H I P.

Intimacy and the Anxieties of Cinematic Flesh: Between Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis

Patrick Fuery, Ph.D., professor of English | Bloomsbury Academic

The Rhetorical Mediator: Understanding Agency in Indigenous Translation and Interpretation Through Indigenous Approaches to UX

BOOKSHELF

Nora K. Rivera (editor), Ph.D., assistant professor of English | Utah State University Press

This user experience (UX) research study examines Indigenous interpretation and translation through an interdisciplinary lens, linking Indigenous and decolonial theories, technical and professional communication, and translation and interpreting studies.

With a 100-year storm threatening the Southern California coast, Jane Larkin is approached by a strange woman who wants to invest in Jane’s Old Orange co-op. Meanwhile Jane’s husband Jerry discovers an ancient excavation beneath the Larkin home.

Out of Hiding: Extremist White Supremacy and How It Can Be Stopped

Pete Simi, Ph.D., professor of sociology, with two co-authors | Routledge

Simi and his co-authors explain how white supremacy endures, the forms it takes, its relationship to systemic racism and what to do about it.

CHAPMAN FORWARD FALL 2023

Reparation Gate

Brian Glaser, Ph.D., associate professor of English | Shanti Arts Publishing

Glaser pays tribute to his father’s life and work in this collection of poems, encompassing memory, elegy, a series on fatherhood, and meditations on a shared concern for social justice.

Pennies From Heaven

James Blaylock, MA, professor emeritus of English | PS Publishing

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Fuery explores how to engage Sigmund Freud and Edmund Husserl in an original approach to film.

The Image of the Puppet in Italian Theater, Literature and Film Federico Pacchioni, Ph.D., professor of Italian | Palgrave Macmillan

Pacchioni identifies and interprets the aesthetic and cultural significance of traditions of puppet theater in Italian culture and beyond.

Playhouse

Richard Bausch, MA, professor of English | Knopf

Bausch’s 13th novel tells the story of a group of people in a theater company in Memphis, Tennessee, trying to mount a production of King Lear.

Have Mercy on Us

Lisa Cupolo, MFA, lecturer in English | Regal House Publishing

Cupolo writes a collection of stories set in far-flung places, each giving a window into human life.

Mirabai: The Making of a Saint Nancy M. Martin, Ph.D., professor of religious studies | Oxford University Press

Martin tells the story of Mirabai, a 16th-century Indian poet-saint, from the earliest manuscript references to her through colonial and nationalist developments to scholarly and popular portrayals in the decades leading up to Indian independence.

Pearl: Nature’s Perfect Gem

Fiona Lindsay Shen, Ph.D., professor of art | Reaktion Books

Shen gives an illustrated account of pearls through millennia, from fossils to contemporary jewelry.

Communicating Interculturally: Theories, Themes, and Practice for Societal Wellbeing

Mark C. Hopson, Ph.D., professor of communication, with three co-authors | Kendall/Hunt Publishing

The authors introduce theories of intercultural communication, give examples of communication at work and define terms relevant to the exploration of communication and culture.

Babe Egan and the Hollywood Redheads: Women Musicians in the Jazz Age

Campus Free Speech: A Reference Handbook

Pool profiles vaudeville superstar Babe Egan and her band the Hollywood Redheads, who performed for tens of millions of theatergoers in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

Han and Price examine the history, development and present state of free-speech issues on college campuses, including a range of political perspectives and viewpoints.

Jeannie Gayle Pool, Ph.D., lecturer in music | Jaygayle Music Books

Lori Cox Han, Ph.D., professor of political science, and Jerry Price, Ph.D., vice president for student affairs and dean of students | ABC-CLIO

Oxford Handbook of Parasocial Experiences Acting Is Your Business: How to Take Charge of Your Creative Career

Wendy S. Kurtzman, lecturer in theater | Methuen Drama

Kurtzman details how to find acting work and proactively build a career by providing the tools to connect with agents, managers, writers, directors and casting directors.

The Complete Filmmaker's Guide to Film Festivals, Second Edition

Rona Edwards, lecturer in film, with Monika Skerbelis | Michael Wiese Productions

The authors give a step-bystep “how to” guide to film festivals, offering filmmakers a bird’s-eye view of what it takes to have a successful festival experience.

Rebecca Tukachinsky Forster (editor), Ph.D., assistant professor of communication; one chapter co-authored by Tukachinsky Forster and Maddie Guzaitis (MS ’22) and Ph.D. candidate Sarah Downey ’20 (MS ’22) | Oxford University Press

The handbook examines how audiences psychologically relate to people they see in the media in various contexts, including entertainment, politics and marketing.

Generation A: Perspectives on Special Populations and International Research on Autism in the Workplace Amy Hurley-Hanson, Ph.D., professor of management, with Cristina M. Giannantonio (eds.) | Emerald

The book explores ways that researchers can help facilitate finding and maintaining employment for people with autism.

45

One University Drive Orange, California 92866 Chapman.edu

10

60

TOP

No.

%

Universities in the nation for research activity

Best Business Schools National Ranking, U.S. News & World Report

93

105 %

Nobel Laureate in Economics, Vernon L. Smith Phi Beta Kappa honor society members inducted since chapter established in 2019

Increase in federal research expenditures 2019-2022

1

ST

4

No.

Top Film Schools in the U.S., The Hollywood Reporter

National Medal of Science Winner, Yakir Aharonov

Chapman.edu

Rhodes Scholar, Vidal Arroyo ’19, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology