Daily Egyptian DAILYEGYPTIAN.COM
TUESDAY, MARCH 24, 2015
SINCE 1916
Sunny with a chance of puppies
VOL. 99 ISSUE 33
Debate team wins third national title in a row Jessica Brown | @BrownJessicaJ
program in 1986. Miller completed her associate’s in 1988, bachelor’s in 1991 and master’s in 1999, all from SIU. She said the dental hygiene program had an opening available in 1999, which she filled by becoming a clinical instructor. After joining the Army Reserves, she worked several jobs, accumulating seven W-2 tax forms in one year. “I was never unemployed from the time I left the military until now,” she said. “It speaks to my work ethic. Even though I’m still working to get to some places on time.” After spending a decade in a maledominated field—when women accounted for 9.8 percent of military personnel—she found a career path ruled by females. Miller said blonde, white females are the typical dental hygiene student and only two members of the 16-person faculty are male. She said going from working with mostly men to mostly women has been a big change. She laughingly said working with women is like herding cats because the passion females have affects their personalities. Charla Lautar, a professor of dental hygiene, said Miller’s work ethic has been great for the program. Lautar said Miller was a key figure in growing the Dental Sealant Grant Program, which provides dental exams to under-privileged kids in Carbondale and surrounding towns.
The SIU debate team made history during the weekend in Liberty, Mo. The team of Joshua Rivera and Zach Schneider placed first at the National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence at William Jewell College, marking the third straight year they have returned with a national title. Rivera was named top speaker of the tournament for the second time. Rivera, a senior from Chicago studying economics and political science, and Schneider, a senior from Great Mill, Md., studying computer science, have won other national tournaments as partners. The NPTE is an elite championship that only invites the top teams in the country, said Todd Graham, director of debate. The SIU debate team competed against 68 other teams in the tournament. But the team’s weekend was not without adversity. There was an additional national championship in which the team earned second place two days before their victory at NPTE. The debate, which was not invite-only, took place at Kansas City Kansas Community College. “It was disappointing to get that close and not be able to pull it off, but at the same time, it’s debate,” Schneider said. “Wins happen, and losses also happen.” Coming in second place helped fuel their drive for the following competition, Graham said. “That’s probably why we won the next tournament,” he said. “We looked at the next debate as a challenge. We did what we had to do to get right back on the horse.” Using the two days in between tournaments to improve, the team was determined to come out on top. “It was always kind of a goal in the beginning of the season, to set a record in the university that no one has done before,” Graham said. SIU became the first university to win three straight championships at the 21-year-old event. In debate, an excellent sense of preparation is key. “We spent our entire spring break in the office for about 12 hours each day doing research for the kind of topics that we knew were going to be relevant,” said Ben Reed, an assistant coach. For NPTE, Rivera and Schneider had to complete nearly 30 different research assignments for 15 topics. The topics often dealt with major foreign policy or policies the United States should implement domestically, Reed said.
Please see MILLER | 2
Please see DEBATE | 2
n athan h oefert | @n athan h oefert St. Francis Care volunteer Dawn Boyd pets one of nine dogs Monday outside the Student Center for National Puppy Day. The event was to give students an opportunity to meet the dogs, who were up for adoption. “We live in Aspen [Court] so we can’t have a dog,” said Shannon Hagen, a sophomore from Plainfield studying journalism. “So we are going to move and get one.”
Professor traded M16s for mouths austin Miller | @AMiller_DE Not many people are able to connect bullets to toothbrushes. Faith Miller spent a decade in the military before reaching her “flux capacitor” moment and becoming the director of the SIU dental program. After beginning classes at SIU in 1979 studying foreign languages, Miller flunked out, not seeing the program as a future career. She then took one semester at John A. Logan College before leaving college behind. “This was one of those things where you just really don’t know what to do,” Miller said. “You start looking through the school catalog trying to find the classes with the least amount of work and the least amount of math. Nothing was appealing.” From there, Miller decided to give the military a try, similar to her father, who served in the Korean War. During her military career from 1981 to 1992, women were not allowed in combat-related jobs. Anything with artillery and infantry was off limits. She did a research project looking at the roles of women in the military. Now the military is integrating women into many combat roles, opening more than 200,000 positions to women by 2016. The U.S. Army website states women accounted for 16.3 percent of the Army in 2014. “They don’t say female soldiers or male soldiers anymore, they’re all just soldiers,” she said. “Another
c arrington s pires | @cs pires de Faith Miller, an associate professor of dental hygiene at SIU, came to SIU in 1999 as a clinical instructor in the dental hygiene program after serving in the U. S. Army as a staff sergeant.
male soldier is not supposed to assist a female soldier with their gear. You ought to be able to handle your gear by yourself.” Her first time on plane was in 1981 while going to basic training in Fort Jackson, S.C. During a layover in Atlanta, she met former SIU athletic director and NFL Hall of Famer Gale Sayers. Miller may have thought this would be her last contact with the university but 10 years later, she would find her way back to Carbondale. After basic training, she went to Fort Gordon, Ga., for communications training, her military occupational specialty. In 1981, she was deployed to Wurzberg, Germany. The barracks were bare bones and still beaten up from World War I. “My first night there I think I cried,” Miller said.
@dailyegyptian
After eventually getting used to Germany, Miller left in 1982 and joined the Army Reserves two years later. She traveled to several detachment units, including Turkey and back to Colorado, before declining to reenlist in 1992, shortly after the end of Operation Desert Storm. While stationed in Colorado, Miller was required to undergo a dental exam. The hygienist showed her a piece of tooth debris and went through the guidelines of proper dental hygiene. She said that was her “flux capacitor” moment. Instead of granting time travel like in the film “Back to the Future,” this was when she found her career interest. She enrolled back at John A. Logan in a dental assisting program, where she found a mentor who pushed her to apply to SIU’s dental hygiene
Send us your spring photos using #SalukisInSpring for a chance to be featured in the paper.