Miamian, Winter/Spring 2017

miamian The Magazine of Miami University

Winter/Spring 2017

IN THIS ISSUE:

Virtual Reality Record-making Seasons History Repeats Itself?

GREAT

IDEA!

Passion drives alums from ideas to innovations

Erin Moore Beckloff ’06, designer of “Love of Letters” and Miami assistant professor, teaches letterpress courses, where students use antique printing presses and wood and metal type to create posters and books the way they were made for centuries, by hand, one letter at a time.

Staff Editor Donna Boen ’83 MTSC ’96 Miamian@MiamiOH.edu

Vol. 35, No. 2

miamian

Senior Designers Donna Barnet Belinda Rutherford

Winter/Spring 2017

The Magazine of Miami University

Photographers Jeff Sabo Scott Kissell Web Developer Suzanne Clark

STORIES

Copy Editor Beth Weaver

18 2 For the Record Books

Student Assistant Jessica Gonsiewski ’18

Both football and volleyball rewrote NCAA history in their 2016 seasons, creating excitement on and off campus.

Design Consultant Lilly Pereira www.aldeia.design

20 Great Idea!

University Advancement 513-529-4029 Vice President for University Advancement Tom Herbert herbertw@MiamiOH.edu

Funding scholarships through notebooks (see page 20 ).

MiamiOH.edu/alumni Send address changes to: Alumni Records Office Advancement Services Miami University 926 Chestnut Lane Oxford, Ohio 45056 alumnirecords@MiamiOH.edu 513-529-5127 Fax: 513-529-1466 ON THE COVER Jackie Conway Wachter ’05 and husband Phillip turn a hobby into a 36-employee leather goods studio in less than 4 years, page 20.

Photo by Susan Price of Suzaran Photography.

26 The Virtual Reality of Life

Austin Mace ’15 sees life differently from most of us. He enjoys sharing his view of the world through VR and 360 video created by his growing company SubVRsive.

Alumni Relations 513-529-5957 Assistant Vice President for Alumni Relations Ray Mock ’82 MS ’83 mockrf@MiamiOH.edu Office of Development 513-529-1230 Senior Associate Vice President for University Advancement Brad Bundy Hon ’13 brad.bundy@MiamiOH.edu

Notebooks that pay for Kosovo women to attend college.

Handmade gifts that evolve into a thriving design business.

Flashlights that clip onto sneakers. Three alumnae tell how their simple ideas became major accomplishments.

IN EACH ISSUE

2 From the Hub

14 Media Matters

3 Back & Forth

16 My Story

6 Along Slant Walk

30 Love & Honor

10 Such a Life

32 Class Notes

12 Inquiry + Innovation

46 Farewells

Seize Your Opportunities.

Ghostwriting Arnold Palmer’s final memoir (see page 14).

To and from the editor.

Campus news highlights.

10%

A Tall Order.

Firearms and Fabric Focus of Young U.S. Opus Web paper features FSC® certifications and is Lacey Act compliant; 100% of the electricity used to manufacture Opus Web is generated with Green-e® certified renewable energy.

New works by alumni.

Musical Crossroads.

Staying Connected.

Notes, news, and weddings.

48 Days of Old

Gateway to the Past.

Miamian is published three times a year by the University Advancement Division of Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 45056. Copyright © 2017, Miami University. All rights are reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Miamian is produced by University Communications and Marketing, 108 Glos Center, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 45056, 513-529-7592; Fax: 513-529-1950; Miamian@MiamiOH.edu.

from the hub

Seize Your Opportunities

By President Greg Crawford

Back in the 20th century when I earned my PhD in chemical physics, I had no thought of becoming an entrepreneur. Now that I’ve helped launch two companies based on my discoveries, I have a different idea of what “entrepreneur” means, and how far it reaches beyond the business world.

When I started my first entrepreneurial venture, I was overconfident. I figured that I’d mastered quantum mechanics, so it should be easy, right? I was quickly humbled by the complexity of intellectual property, accounting, finance, team building, vision shaping, environmental market scans, and countless other details that required others’ expertise.

I now define entrepreneurship as “seeking potential, seizing opportunity, and syntheRelationship sizing solutions for societal impact” and know that relationship building is key to its building is key to success. By this definition, being president of entrepreneurial Miami University is an entrepreneurial role.

Chances are, you’re also an entrepreneur, success. or you bring entrepreneurial thinking to whatever you do.

The entrepreneurial mindset is as vital for success in the 21st century as the manufacturing mindset was in the 20th, where a lifelong career at one company was often based in a single hometown. Today, change occurs at a lightning pace, and entrepreneurial thinking enables us to respond to such rapidly changing circumstances by evaluating options, imagining possibilities, and taking risks.

This mindset calls for courage to leave comfort zones, dedication to goals, optimism that considers failure a steppingstone to success, and grit to devote long hours of hard work in pursuit of your passion.

Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial thinking are a cause and effect of rising diversity and equal opportunity. As a result, for example, the number of

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women-owned businesses is increasing faster than men-owned firms. This issue of Miamian includes profiles of three inspiring female entrepreneurs — Jackie Conway Wachter, Ashley VanBuskirk, and Renata Rottinger Storer — who reflect this national trend and the positive power of creative thinking.

As these women exemplify, entrepreneurship is by nature creative, resilient, forward-looking, and ideabased. A Miami education, with its foundation in the liberal arts, imbues our graduates with these qualities plus the critical thinking and interpersonal skills that complement any major or eventual career path.

Our students have rich opportunities to sharpen their entrepreneurial mindset; they can take an entrepreneurship class or make it a co-major, unite the breadth of liberal arts with the depth of knowledge in their discipline, and engage the diversity of people and perspectives on campus to You are invited to write to make lifetime connections.

President Greg Crawford at president@MiamiOH.edu.

We’re proud that more Follow him on Twitter than 95 percent of our sur@PresGreg. veyed and tracked graduates are employed or in graduate school within six months of earning their Miami degree. More importantly, their time here gave them an entrepreneurial mindset that is helping them change society, lead through service, and launch businesses that create jobs and connections that enrich the lives and careers of others.

Like Jackie, Ashley, and Renata, they are seeking potential and seizing opportunities that have a powerful impact on our world.

back & forth numbers on him in the Fall 2016 Miamian (“Kudos for Coach”).

—Jim Naveau ’73 Lima, Ohio

MUM’s early years “To Boldly Go” in the Fall 2016 Miamian [about Miami Middletown’s 50th anniversary] brought back memories of 1963–1964 when I taught there.

Back then, it was called Miami University “extension.”

I had just acquired an MA in zoology at Indiana University.

Returning to my alma mater, I taught Zoology 11-12 at the Oxford campus as well as Middletown, where we used a biology lab at the old Middletown High School.

My courses were from 6 to 10 every Monday night, lectures and labs combined. On top of my regular salary, I was paid an additional $1,200 for the year. Unfortunately, a professor in the zoology department who outranked me needed a new car so he got the Middletown extension assignment for 19641965. But it was fun while it lasted!

—Lee St. John ’61 Newark, Ohio Record Keeper Ara Parseghian’s career record at Notre Dame was 95–17–4, not the

Proud Papa I am writing to congratulate the Miamian staff on the cover story (“Resetting the Table”) in the most recent magazine. I am the proud father of Dr. Darcy Freedman ’98 who the story is about.

She does incredibly important work in Cleveland. Both her mother and I graduated from Miami and did our graduate work there. I was class of ’66 and return often for fraternity reunions and when Darcy was there to see her.

After graduation, I stayed in the area living in Middletown where Darcy and her two brothers were born. My sons are Col. Brett Freedman, MD, a spine surgeon at Mayo Clinic, and Ryan Freedman, area vice president for Olympus Medical. I am proud of all of them.

I often say my Miami years were the best of my life. It is my favorite place to visit and reminisce about how much fun I had while at Miami and beyond that in Middletown.

—Larry Freedman ’66 Woodbury, Minn.

R.I.P., Dr. Speh Saddened to read of Dr. Speh’s passing in April. I admired him greatly — second only to Dr. Maggard when it comes to my MU learning experience. Dr. Speh was wise and so in touch with his students.

In spring 1978, students in his Advanced Marketing class broke into competing groups to study hypothetical dilemmas and create marketing campaigns that would improve each situation. My group

of five guys was told to promote birth control in the Philippines.

We were befuddled when research revealed the Philippines was more than 7,500 islands with the indigenous population speaking over 100 different languages.

Our idea was to drop condoms from airplanes with pamphlets illustrating their purpose and need.

We all got “hooks” for our effort.

My second memory was from later that year — the Laws, Hall & Associates competition for our cooperating client, Wendy’s.

I was fortunate to be the leader of one of the three teams of marketing, communications, and graphic arts students. We developed a complete campaign including taping TV commercials in Wendy’s.

Luck of the draw had our team going last. During a break, Dr. Speh said, “So you’re up next! What’d you think of the first two?” I told him, boldly, that they were nothin’ compared to ours. Surprised, he said, “I guess we’ll see.”

We won four out of five awards.

We had the best art director (Shelley Linver ’78) and telecom director (Susan Whitley ’78) — as well as teammates. The only award we didn’t win was best presentation technique, which was all me. D’oh!

I went to hear Dr. Speh speak at Observatory Park in Denver about 15 years ago and asked him if he remembered me and if he remembered our conversation that day.

He said he did. “I admired your confidence and was happy to see you were right.” I then asked him if he remembered our “Condoms for the Philippines” presentation, and he replied, “Yes. Not so good.”

Dr. Speh was only 71 years old when he succumbed to cancer. He

Send letters to: Donna Boen Miamian editor 108 Glos Center Miami University Oxford, Ohio 45056-2480 Miamian@MiamiOH.edu; or fax to 513-529-1950.

Include your name, class year, home address, and phone number.

Letters are edited for space and clarity.

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died too soon. While I knew him early in his career, his record shows he continued to be appreciated and revered. R.I.P., Dr. Speh.

—Don Ludwig ’78 Little Rock, Ark.

“You have $346.31 in library fines due. Please remit to the bursar office to receive your diploma.”

Happy Birthday, King Congratulations to Miami’s King Library for 50 years!

As a student, I worked at Miami’s library a couple of hours a week, giving me the opportunity to help fellow students with their research.

It was interesting perusing the stacks. I hauled out weighty tomes of Annals and Proceedings. The wealth of knowledge contained in those leather-bound volumes was amazing, but this all had to be read in the library; students were not allowed to borrow research items.

This was the ’50s — and way, way before the Internet. Miami’s library contained voluminous volumes on every conceivable subject, but it also had a little book, Anguish Language, written by a Miami French professor, Monsieur Howard L. Chase, that intrigued me. Published in 1956 by Prentice Hall, it was made famous by radio/ TV broadcaster Arthur Godfrey, who read parts of it on his program.

My library earnings barely covered the enticing, tantalizing Tuffy’s toasted rolls, so I never did get around to buying the book.

—Ellen Klepper Neumaier ’59 East Aurora, N.Y. As graduation approached and I was packing up from four Miami years, I, surprisingly, unearthed two full pillow sacks worth of library books and hauled them down to the library for return.

At my graduation ceremony, my

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father, a self-educated scholar who worked assiduously and saved to educate his four children, asked to see my diploma. Much to his and my chagrin, inside that austere leather cover where the diploma might have been was a typed note saying, “You have $346.31 in library fines due. Please remit to the bursar office to receive your diploma.”

I worked at Beasley’s Bakery on High Street that summer 8 p.m.– 4 a.m. flipping donuts and kneading dough. Periodically I would stop at the bursar’s office where they said they would be happy to exchange the diploma for the sum above, an amount I didn’t have.

Finally one day in July, I went once again and was told, to my astonishment, that I needed $76.54 to pay back fees and obtain my diploma. I didn’t need a degree from the prestigious Miami business school to know this was a bargain. I paid the freight, retired from the bakery business, and left Oxford with this and numerous other happy life memories. Bless and keep our libraries everywhere.

—David Dratch ’70 Chevy Chase, Md. Editor’s note: For more memories about King Library during its 50th birthday, go to MiamiAlum.org/ King50Reflections.

Miami Student Nostalgia Sue MacDonald (Summer 2016 Miamian) and I are kindred spirits!

Her wonderful description of days of yore at the Miami Student brought on a paroxysm of nostalgia. It well illustrated the comradery of Student staffers which leads to lifelong friendships. I could not help but compare the changes she

found from back “when” to ones from back “when-when.”

There was no formal journalism track. Just a once weekly (one credit hour) “rehash” of the two previous issues taught by Gil Wright, our faculty adviser from the English department. Although we looked at the Student as just an extracurricular activity, some got ink in their blood and went on to become successful journalists.

Our office (one big room and a cubby hole for the editor) was in a corner of Irvin Hall’s basement, while OxPress was located on High Street. You weren’t required to assist in putting the paper to bed, but the opportunity to be a printer’s devil was too exciting to resist.

Under the watchful eye of the shop foreman, Preston “Press” Mullins, we learned to handset type on a stick from a California case, make up pages in a chase, and proofread Linotype slugs upside down and backward.

Press introduced us to old printers’ union rules, dead horse, and type lice. Watching the vintage (c.

1888) flat bed, sheet-fed press spew out the result of our labors surely qualified as one of the wonders of High Street — if not the world!

Reporters did not have any organized or uniform way of collecting or preserving notes, nor did they take any photos, or even have cameras. There was a single staff photographer, generally a skilled hobbyist,who lugged around a 4x5 Speed Graphic. No roll film here, just sheet film the photographer had to hand process in our darkroom in the Irvin basement. And we had an official staff car — well, a red bike with a box on the back for copy. Someone stole it.

back & forth

Many of the staffers of my vintage kept in touch over the years.

Some of us had a reunion in 2007 — the Student ran a picture.

It was just as Sue described: after the greetings and a bit of catch up, we conversed as though we had seen each other last week. I fear our reunion possibilities are over. Too many silent typewriters. Thus, it pleases me greatly that there will be another reunion in 2019 and staffers of all decades are invited.

I graciously accept and make a solemn promise that I will be there in person — or in spirit.

—William A. “WAG” Greene ’52 Miami Student Managing Editor, 1951–1952 Frederick, Md., and Naples, Fla. Vetville story resonates Those were the days. The war was over. My years at sea were over.

Discharged on July 29, 1946. Was it possible to get registered at Miami

by August? Yes, luck was still with me and 499 other GIs who met at Withrow Court. Two-hundred-fifty double beds were set up on the basketball court. Mine was top bunk in the NE corner. I even had my feet on the cover of Life magazine.

I was one of the 30 freshmen in architecture. We had our own barracks for our second home. It was the only building open 24 hours a day. We had wonderful professors, Mr. Dunbar, the department head, Andy Werts, Kep Small, etc. Great men, all gone now.

After nearly 60 years of practicing, I retired, but now at nearly 92 I still love the work and spend many hours in my home office. Long live Miami University!

—Edmund H. Smith ’51 New Castle, Penn.

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

My Wonderful Dad “I have three wonderful kids.” My dad enjoyed saying that. Sounds

sweet, too — except I’m the youngest of four. He chuckled every time we let the unsuspecting in on his joke. A child of the Depression, Dad never attended college, but he wanted to, and he was determined his kids would. And we did. All four of us.

Dad began a tradition when the oldest of us went away to school. He wrote to us every week. Those were the days of pen and paper, envelopes and stamps. My freshman year at Symmes I’d watch for the mail truck and then run to the boxes off the lobby to see if there was anything for me. Every Tuesday, I’d receive a two-page letter from Mom telling me the family news of the week. She’d also include a note from Dad. Mom was practical. Dad? Not so much.

Days after I started at Miami, Mom wrote, “Are you lonesome? So am I, but I hope things are adjusting themselves. Especially the top bunk.”

Yes, it was my bad luck to get the top bunk. Dad didn’t see it that way.

He wrote, “It does present some problems if you are a sleep walker, a bed roller, or if you are used to leaving your book and glasses on the floor as you fall asleep. But just remember that you are higher in college than the majority of your classmates.”

He started letter No. 2 with, “Dear Upper Bertha.” Oh. Yes. He. Did. No matter how he started, he ended each with a P.S. that was a variation on the same theme. Money. As in him asking us. “I’m giving it some time before I begin to help you with your smarts. However, I do believe the smartest thing you can ever do is cross your old dad’s palm with a bag of cold cash.” “Don’t hold back sending money just because you think I don’t accept charity. Try me.” “Send money, Honey.”

After four years of silly stories and exaggerated prose, my dad sent me a letter from his heart weeks before my graduation. I imagine I was filled with angst as I faced the unknown. He wrote, “I have discovered we no longer have a little girl but a beautiful, mature, young lady who has been blessed by many God-given talents. Therefore we know as the Lord has developed you and fashioned you according to His will, He has a plan for your life. It will be sheer joy to Mom and me to watch His program unfold for you.” His P.S. was different too. “Of the many letters I have written to you, I count this one the most meaningful.”

In December, the day before Christmas, we took my 94-year-old father to the hospital with heart failure. Two days later, the morning of my birthday, he talked to me for the last time. The nurse asked him who I was. He looked at me a long time and finally said, “Beautiful Donna.”

I had one wonderful dad. —Donna Boen ’83 MTSC ’96

My proud mom and dad on the day I earned my master’s degree from Miami.

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New Athletic Center Opens The new $25 million Athletic Performance Center at Yager’s north end zone features a team locker room, weight room, offices, auditorium, meeting rooms, and sports medicine and rehabilitation center.

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National Signing Day for the new class of players was extra special for Miami football this year as 500 students, alumni, faculty, staff, and trustees gathered in the David and Anita Dauch Indoor Sports Center (DISC) Feb. 1 for the grand opening of the Athletic Performance Center next door.

At the ribbon-cutting, Athletic Director David Sayler told the group, many of them donors to athletics’ $80 million Graduating Champions Campaign, that the two new centers in Yager’s north end zone put Miami in a position to win championships once again.

“There is tremendous excitement around the program right now with the finish to last season,” he said. “I’m so proud of that senior class and that

team for all they accomplished and taught us.

This building continues that momentum.”

Vicki and Randy Gunlock ’77 made the lead gift on the performance center.

Talking about Vicki’s and his decision to support football, Randy, a three-year letterwinner and a former team captain for Miami football, ended his remarks by addressing the team.

“You’ve got great players on this team. Now you have to go out and do it. You’ve got to pay attention to the small stuff, sweat the small stuff, as they say. Be good teammates. When you think you’ve had enough work, work some more. We’re going to bring championships to Miami and you guys are on the front line.”

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‘Here’s to Thee’

I’M GLAD YOU ASKED

Ray Mock ’82 MS ’83 to retire as alumni director July 31

Ray Mock shares Miami history before the Parade of Classes starts at Alumni Weekend.

The most poignant event for Ray Mock during his 31-year career in Miami’s alumni office wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t listened to his staff.

When the alumni board proposed the Miami Merger Moment, suggesting couples return to Oxford to simultaneously renew their wedding vows, his staff thought it a wonderful way to celebrate the university’s 200th birthday.

“I, alone, hated the idea,” admits Mock ’82 MS ’83. One of his strengths as assistant vice president and executive

director of the Miami University Alumni Association is that he’s willing to reconsider. As a result, that Saturday of Alumni Weekend 1,087 couples gathered at Upham Arch to set a world record.

“It was a really, really powerful moment that was this cool event celebrating their marriage vows, but also, in a much bigger way, celebrating this idea of the Miami family.”

Mock joined the alumni office in 1986 as director of the Miami University Student Foundation and Senior Challenge.

As news spreads of his July 31 retirement, he’s been caught off guard by the reaction. For graduates the past 17 years, he’s the only alumni director they know.

“My brain can’t go there because that’s John Dolibois ’42. John Dolibois is the Miami alumni director.”

Sitting in his second floor office in Murstein, with its view of Peffer Park, he’s considering what comes next. He will stay in Oxford as his wife, Jill, continues her nursing career and their youngest, Christopher ’18, attends Miami, just like siblings Sean ’11 and Laura ’12 before him.

“I’ve had this tug at my heart, this feeling that I need to do something impactful on the social scale. It’s been a great experience for 31 years, and it’s bittersweet to leave, but it really does feel like the right time for me.”

“It’s not just that we have poor, middle class, and rich, but we have a society where it’s very hard to go from poor to rich.”

—J.D. Vance, a native of Middletown, Ohio, and author of the 2016 best-seller Hillbilly Elegy, speaking at Miami in November and again in March as the Casper Lecturer.

Knowing how hard it is sometimes to be creative at our desks, we asked several students:

Where’s your favorite study spot on campus?

My room. It’s nice to be able to blast music while I do homework.

Alisha Boykin ’18, Canfield, Ohio, strategic communication/theatre major

When the weather is nice, I like to go outside, pick a quad, and enjoy the view.

Anna Hill ’18, Cincinnati, Ohio, special education major

Armstrong is the best.

I like sitting in front of the fireplace.

Jacob Schwartz ’20, Anaheim, Calif., business economics major

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NOTEWORTHY

As of the final Feb. 1 deadline, 30,009 students had applied for admission, marking the highest number ever received in Miami’s history. Academic quality is also at an all-time high; average ACT

JPMueller99

score is 27.7 and average GPA is 3.74. The increase represents a growth in diversity as well with 4,877 applications from domestic students of color.

Miami and the city of Oxford are partnering to try to persuade Amtrak to stop in Oxford. Each has pledged $350,000 if a train stop is established at Chestnut Fields, Miami’s parking lot and facilities at the site of the former Talawanda High School on Chestnut Street. Minimum construction estimates start at $1 million to $1.3 million for a 300-foot train platform, an open-air canopy or shelter, and access sidewalks.

Amtrak’s Cardinal Line, which runs from New York to Chicago, comes through Oxford in the early morning hours several times a week.

Michael Dantley, dean of the College of Education, Health and Society, received a 2016 Master Professor Award from the University Council for Educational Administration. This award recognizes those who are outstanding teachers, innovators in the classroom, and top mentors for their students and have filled leadership roles in their academic field, provided excellent public service, and obtained a significant record of scholarship.

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RISING RANKS

Miami’s position on Kiplinger’s 2017 list of 100 best values nationwide of in-state public universities.

#8

Miami’s Institute for Entrepreneurship ranking among U.S. public institutions

by Princeton Review and Entrepreneur.

How to be Effective The best part of Mark Lacker’s role on the Farmer School of Business’ entrepreneurship faculty team may be talking with students during his office hours.

“OK, sometimes we talk about late assignments, but for the most part we talk about life, career paths, choices, and who we can connect with.”

No doubt his one-on-one time with students is a major reason why the Class of 2012 nominated Lacker ’79 as the

2016 Effective Educator Mark Lacker ’79 advises entrepreneurship major Ying Liang ’17 on how to enhance her resume.

Miami University Alumni Association 2016 Effective Educator.

The John W. Altman Clinical Professor of Entrepreneurship and Clinical Faculty stays in touch with more than 150 former students every year.

“One of the greatest joys in teaching is in establishing lasting relationships with our students,” he said. “We are blessed at Miami with a culture that encourages student-teacher interaction.”

In their nominations, alumni recalled Lacker’s joy in teaching and mentoring.

One former student wrote, “He is like no other professor, mentor, or friend I’ve ever had before because of his level of passion for what he teaches and passion for seeing others succeed.”

Prior to joining Miami’s faculty in 2004, Lacker, who earned a master’s from Xavier University, worked in marketing and events in Cincinnati.

The Effective Educator Award honors faculty and staff of “uncommon quality” who instruct, impact, and inspire. As its 34th recipient, Lacker was the commencement speaker in December. (Read his speech at MiamiAlum.org/Miamian.)

He will also be honored during May’s MUAA Awards Dinner.

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It’s all in how you look at it: If you study the new artwork in Shideler Hall, you might spot photos of mining operations, aerial images of Ohio’s farmland, and even a truck or two. “Flux” hangs near the central staircase in recently renovated Shideler, which houses geology and environmental earth science, geography, and the Institute for the Environment and Sustainability. Every vantage point provides a fresh perspective of the 28' x 12' ceramic piece. To create “Flux,” artists Amy Baur and Brian Boldon projected images onto 640 porcelain equilateral triangular tiles, pieced together to form 160 rhombuses across 13 rows that fold together into a lattice.

A Better Nose for Research Miami scientist Lei Kerr is developing

an “artificial nose” in hopes of replacing animal-based research with more effective and humane alternatives.

The professor of chemical, paper, and biomedical engineering has received a $50,000 Beagle Freedom Prize from the Beagle Freedom Project (BFP) in support of her research.

Kerr intends for the measuring device to study nanomaterials deposition in the brain through inhalation. Nanomaterials — particles less than 100 nanometers

in diameter — can have toxic effects not seen with larger particles. Some can move from the nose to the blood and brain and other distant sites.

Animals, including rats and beagles, are often used in crude inhalation studies, despite the fact that data from these species cannot be reliably extrapolated to humans, according to the BFP. The artificial nose might also be used in medical fields, Kerr suggested, such as with intranasal drug delivery for brain disease treatment.

MAY COMMENCEMENT Daryl Baldwin, director of the Myaamia Center at Miami and a leader in Native American language and cultural revitalization, will be the featured speaker at Miami’s spring commencement 1:30 p.m. Saturday, May 13, at Yager Stadium.

Also an adjunct assistant professor in educational leadership, he was awarded a “genius grant” last September as one of the 2016 MacArthur Fellows. He was among only 23 people selected from a variety of fields by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

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such a life

A TALL ORDER Krystle Tay’s internship at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden last summer fueled her desire to advocate for, protect, and save animals. A zoology and environmental science co-major, she graduated from Miami in December and is pursuing an internship at the San Diego Zoo. She wants to broaden her experience in animal conservation before returning to her home in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Seen here giving Kimba a treat, Tay said, “I want to be that bridge connecting animals and people.”

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inquiry + innovation

Firearms and Fabric Focus of Young U.S. Miami historian tells story of early leaders grappling with problems not unlike today’s

By Heather Beattey Johnston

As a historian of early American political economy, Lindsay Schakenbach Regele was into Alexander Hamilton before Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway smash Hamilton made America’s first secretary of the treasury cool.

And like Miranda, the assistant professor of history at Miami sees parallels between the challenges America faced in its earliest days and those it faces today.

“We’ve always debated how much role the government does and should have in commerce,” Schakenbach Regele says.

How much should we promote our own manufacturing? How much should we rely upon manufacturing from other places? What is our role in the world in an economic sense? Are we producers? Are we purchasers? Are we both?

As part of the research for her book, Lindsay Schakenbach Regele completed a fellowship at the Library Company of Philadelphia.

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New nation faces old problems In establishing an American government, Hamilton, along with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and the other early leaders, had to answer all of these questions to enact the first federal policies.

That’s the subject of a book Schakenbach Regele is working on. Specifically, the book — tentatively titled Manufacturing Advantage: War, the State, and the Origins of American Industry, 1776-1848 — examines the development of America’s arms and textile industries through the lens of the geopolitical concerns of the period.

“Once the United States made the bold step to declare itself independent of Britain, it suddenly ran smack into the Old World problems of how to create a state, and how to supply that state, and how to enable that state to wage war against others,” she says.

As part of the research for her book, Schakenbach Regele completed a fellowship at the Library Company of Philadelphia (LCP) during spring semester 2016. Established by Benjamin Franklin in 1731 and located in America’s first capital, LCP holds an extensive collection of rare books, manuscripts, and other material important to scholars.

It’s also geographically close to other holdings of important documents from the period, including those at the University of Pennsylvania’s McNeil Center for Early American Studies, the Historical

inquiry + innovation

Lindsay Schakenbach Regele’s dissertation, on which her forthcoming book is based, was a finalist for the Krooss Prize for Best Dissertation in Business History.

The concern was so great that even Thomas Jefferson, a vigorous proponent of an agrarian economy who opposed state-directed manufacturing of the type advocated by Alexander Hamilton, allowed an exception for government policies encouraging the production of firearms.

When it came to immigration, early federal policy was greatly influenced by a deep desire to catch up to the Europeans.

Schakenbach Regele describes America immediately post-Revolution as a “technological backwater” in desperate need of skilled artisans and people familiar with certain manufacturing techniques. Some of the founders saw a solution in policies that encouraged immigration, she says.

Society of Pennsylvania, and the Hagley Museum, all of which she visited during her tenure at LCP. Immigration seen as solution Far from being settled, many of the issues the founders grappled with have popped up again and again throughout U.S. history. By way of example, Schakenbach Regele points to two of today’s hot-button issues: national security and immigration.

“We don’t think about ‘national security’ in 1780, but that was a very real thing,” she says.

“Even once the war was won against Britain, the government was obsessed by conflicts with Native Americans and domestic insurrections, never mind potential threats from European nations.”

Pistols and cloth put U.S. on map Whatever other consequences there were, early commerce policies successfully raised the profile of American manufacturing, achieving a major goal held by Hamilton, among other leaders. Schakenbach Regele offers the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition in London as evidence.

“It was this big showcase of manufacturers from different countries,” she says, “and all of a sudden, the United States is starting to be admired for the pistols it has on display and is winning prizes for its fancy, machine-produced cloth.”

These days, Americans are more concerned with threats from religious extremists than from European nations, and the debates about immigration policy tend to be more focused on limiting immigration, rather than encouraging it. Still, Schakenbach Regele says there are lessons to be learned from history.

“I’m not saying that the past necessarily repeats itself. But there is context and nuance in the past that can help us make decisions moving forward.”

By “distilling information from all these different sources and trying to make a coherent, cohesive narrative out of little fragments and competing opinions,” Schakenbach Regele says, historians help illuminate the path forward.

“We don’t think about ‘national security’ in 1780, but that was a very real thing.”

—Lindsay Schakenbach Regele

Heather Beattey Johnston is associate director of research communications in Miami’s Office for the Advancement of Research & Scholarship.

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media matters

Well Played Dave Shedloski ’84 works with Arnold Palmer on his final memoir “He was this giant of his sport and such a popular figure in general, and yet extremely normal — to the point of being abnormal compared to other celebrities and athletes,” says Dave Shedloski ’84, a ghostwriter for widely beloved pro golfer Arnold Palmer. “He was so grounded, which was obviously his upbringing from his father.”

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Although his fans called him The King, golfing great Arnold Palmer hated that nickname, according to Dave Shedloski ’84, who assisted Palmer with his final memoir, A Life Well Played. My Stories.

Shedloski, who talked with the world-famous sportsman for 30 hours throughout the course of a year, said Palmer was embarrassed by his lofty nickname.

The Pennsylvania mountain boy who grew up during the Great Depression preferred to be thought of as an ambassador of the game that he loved so much and played so well. He amassed 92 championships in professional competition nationally and internationally, 62 of those on the U.S. PGA Tour.

“He was not a country club kid,” Shedloski said. “His father was a greenskeeper at a country club, but Arnold didn’t belong to that country club until he bought it.”

A longtime freelance writer based in Columbus who worked with Palmer a number of times, Shedloski

found him generous with his time, patient, and occasionally sarcastic, which might surprise some.

The last time they saw each other was a month before the seven-time major champion died of cardiac complications. The best-selling book was released two weeks later on Oct. 11, 2016.

Among the seven books Shedloski has written or co-written is Memories and Mementos, a collaboration with another golfing legend, Jack Nicklaus. Shedloski and a friend are currently working with Nicklaus on a book that will describe in detail how the six-time Masters champion played the Augusta National.

Palmer often teased Shedloski about being a “Jack guy.”

“Something Arnold told me that I didn’t write about in the book is that he was always a good listener, and he said it was because he thought he was stupid. In reality he was very smart and wanted to know everything he should know about a subject before speaking on it.”

media matters

Angry Waters Douglas Ewan Cameron ’63 W & B Publishers Teenagers Chris “Muddy” Waters and Amish friend Joshua Beiler are caught in the middle. One group wants them to return to Ohio.

The other wants them in trouble with the sheriff so Joshua won’t testify against killers. Complicating matters is the automated release of wild animals from a private zoo.

The Downeaster: Deadly Voyage Paul Thomas Fuhrman ’64 Fireship Press Based on a true historical log of a challenging ’round the Horn adventure in 1872, this novel features authentic depictions of maritime history while developing a love story between a thoughtful yet godless captain and a highspirited feminist Irish nurse.

Going Back to Move Forward John Sponcia ’70 CreateSpace In this fictional tale, author John Sponcia is thrust back to his childhood, arriving in his 1960 neighborhood of Brooklyn at age 64. He is an outsider desperately seeking to reconcile his compelling need to return to an era where he has been unwittingly transported.

We Did What?!

Timothy Jay ’72, editor Greenwood This guide profiles behaviors considered shocking throughout American history, revealing changing social mores and cultural perceptions of appropriate conduct since the Colonial period. What factors dictate decorum and why does it change?

The American Dream, Revisited Gary Sirak ’73 Morgan James Publishing Offering stories from people who overcame adversities to achieve their American Dream, Gary Sirak wants to turn skeptics into believers by way of everyday examples and to instill inspiration and hope that the Dream is still alive.

102 Odd Thoughts to Keep Ordinary Away James Koch ’77 CreateSpace What will archaeologists in the future think of us? Where is heaven? What can I learn from children and cats? Whether playing with words, relating “aha!” moments, or posing metaphors, James Koch shares his odd, entertaining thoughts to inspire you to see beyond the ordinary.

Food Wars: A Noodle of Hope Michelle Eshbaugh-Soha ’94 Crunchy Pillow Ventures Puke Skywalker is a young mutt with a yearning to smell the world.

When he intercepts a message from a furry princess, the Doberman-Yorkie bites off more than he can swallow and ends up at war against the evil Alpha Empire.

Exteriors and Interiors Caleb Husmann MA ’09 (under pen name C. McGee) Roundfire Books In C. McGee’s novel, self-interest leads people to lie, cheat, mock their inferiors, steal from the terminally ill, and hit strangers with clown shoes. In the process, it explores the limits of egotism, the brutality of reflection, and the ramifications of shortsightedness.

Return on Investment: a Novel Magdalena Waz MA ’14 Fiction Attic Press Recent college grad Laurie hires out as a human breast pump, underestimating the devotion she will inspire in new moms.

When her day job sours, she draws a housekeeper, a male bachelorette party babysitter, and a data entry clerk into the business of manufactured intimacy.

NOTED Sanctuary for the Soul

Janice Payt Lacy ’79 This New Age CD offers calming solo piano, piano with cello, and ensemble compositions written and performed by Janice.

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my story

This 14" x 21" ad is in the “Musical Crossroads” exhibit, part of a collection the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture acquired from the Globe Poster Printing Co, which produced most of James Brown’s posters.

MY STORY is a place for you to share reminiscences and observations about everyday happenings.

Submit your essay for consideration to: Donna Boen, Miamian editor, “My Story,” 108 Glos Center, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 45056 or Miamian@ MiamiOH.edu. Please limit yourself to 900 words and include your name, class year, address, and home phone number.

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my story

Editor’s note: Tammy Kernodle, professor of musicology at Miami University, wrote the following essay right before the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture opened Sept. 24 in Washington, D.C.

Musical Crossroads

By Tammy Kernodle

When President Obama dedicates the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture this weekend, we will witness history in the making.

When a museum chronicling the experiences of Africans in America was first conceptualized in 1915, few could have dreamed that an African American man would be elected as president. For me, the opening of this museum is very personal as it represents my life coming full circle.

My love for all things history developed during grade school trips to the Smithsonian. Washington, D.C., was only a few hours from my hometown of Danville, Va., but those bus rides felt like I was traveling across the world.

While my friends ran all around the National Mall, I went through all the museums. The Museum of American History was my favorite. I could not get enough of all of the artifacts, the history, and Horatio Greenough’s controversial sculpture, “Washington Enthroned.”

So when I received a letter in 2012 inviting me to serve as a scholarly consultant to the inaugural music exhibit for the National Museum of African American History and Culture, I could not believe it. That summer I began working with a team headed by Dwandalyn Reece, the museum’s curator of music and performing arts. The goal was to construct the exhibit called “Musical Crossroads.”

The experience in a word was surreal and at times challenging. The challenges were primarily related to the difficulty in determining the content of the exhibit. How do you tell the story of the vast and

layered history of black music-making in America from 1619 to present in a limited amount of space?

After all, when you consider all of the facets of African American music, that historical narrative could fill the entire foot space of the museum.

For me, it meant looking at this historical narrative differently. Unlike journal articles and books, the limited space of a museum and the general audience it serves requires that one work from a different methodological approach. One has to be able to present the sometimes complex and insular language of music and its various subcultures in a fashion that the general public will understand.

You also have to determine how the visual, historical, and auditory narrative is going to develop as the visitor walks through the space.

Several questions arose in the process: Does one structure the exhibit according to musical style or genre classifications or do we create an experience that’s centered around key historical events? Do we focus on canonical figures like Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Duke Ellington, or Billie Holiday or include lesser known musicians and industry figures that were active in particular regional scenes?

Reece’s vision was that we explore all of these; that the exhibit be as inclusive and diverse as possible. My role was simply to work within her vision to ensure historical accuracy and breadth.

I have no doubt visitors to the museum will be amazed by the collection of artifacts, sounds, and images that encompass the “Musical Crossroads,” as it reveals all of the diversity that has defined black music-making in America.

How do you tell the story of black musicmaking in America in a limited amount of space?

Tammy Kernodle is a professor of musicology and affiliate faculty of American studies, black world studies, and women, gender, and sexuality studies at Miami University. She also serves as media editor of Jazz Perspectives, an international peerreviewed journal devoted to jazz scholarship. She is associate editor of the three-volume Encyclopedia of African American Music.

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MIAMI TEAMS MAKE HISTORY

FOR THE >> GRIDIRON

TURNAROUND With a nail-biting 21–20 come-frombehind win against Ball State, the 2016 Miami football team rewrote NCAA history, becoming the first in college football to end its season at 6–6 after a 0–6 start.

Its Nov. 22, 2016, Tuesday night season-finale victory under the lights at Yager also earned the team a share of the Mid-American Conference East Division title and a ticket to the St. Petersburg Bowl against Mississippi State.

G O R E D H AW K S !

RECORD BOOKS

>> NET DOMINATION At the same time the football team was gaining yards and attention, the volleyball team was generating its own buzz.

Its record-setting 20-match win streak started when it took down Missouri in five hard-fought sets Sept. 3. Momentum and excitement built all that month and next.

By Oct. 27, it had tied a 36-year school record with its 18th consecutive win.

Two days later the team moved into first place in the MAC with a perfect 12–0.

Before a lively crowd, it beat Northern Illinois and established the longest active win streak in all of NCAA Division I. It hit the 20-match mark with a 3-0 victory in Athens against Ohio University Nov. 12. Although that was the end of its streak, the team went on to win the MAC regular season championship and play in the NCAA tournament.

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FLORA STATIONERY Passion. That’s a trait the following three women share. Each of their ideas was born out of a desire to offer others something that would change their lives for the better. For these entrepreneurs, it’s not about the money.

GREAT

IDEA!

BY DONNA BOEN ’83 MTSC ’96

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BLOSSOMS While still in college, twin sisters find a new way to fund scholarships for young women of Kosovo

The summer after her sophomore year, Ashley VanBuskirk ’14 traveled to Kosovo for a rigorous eight-week journalism internship. Wandering around the nation’s capital of Pristina, she pushed herself to find stories in a city where the language and culture were so different from her own.

Although the 20-year-old had eagerly signed up for Miami’s study abroad experience with KosovaLive, she underestimated its challenges.

Then she met Ema, who redefined her understanding of the word “challenge.”

A woman not much older than Ashley, Ema was an on-again, off-again college student. Not by choice.

Three days before returning home to Ohio, VanBuskirk climbed aboard a rickety bus and traveled to Ema’s village, a slow 60 minutes from Pristina. There she met Ema’s mother and three siblings and saw how they lived.

Ema lost her father in Kosovo’s civil war in the late 1990s. His death meant pain and poverty. With no male head of their family, they were unable to collect their inheritance and were forced to live on welfare.

This stirred Ema’s passion to earn a law degree and help fight the injustice her family and others faced. She would go to school for a semester while working full time and then skip a semester so she could earn enough money to return.

At that rate, she estimated it would take her 12 years to finish.

When summer ended, VanBuskirk returned to her own college studies, but she didn’t forget.

“I couldn’t stop thinking of Ema and her story and wanted to help her.

I searched high and low for scholarships and didn’t find anything.”

No one appreciates the significance of scholarships more than VanBuskirk.

Her internship was fully funded by five.

Ashley brainstormed with her twin sister, Victoria, who was studying at Grove City College in Pennsylvania.

The journalism and international studies double major at Miami and the communications major at Grove City crafted a plan. They would create and sell notebooks to fund scholarships for Kosovo women wanting to attend the University of Pristina.

Unfamiliar with business plans and marketing strategies, Ashley enrolled in Brett Smith’s social entrepreneurship class. She wasn’t at all confident in their startup concept, but she decided to present it to Smith ’91.

“In my mind, I was going to walk into his office, tell him my idea, and he was going to say, ‘Yeah, you should just forget about it.’ Instead, he was like, ‘Let’s try it out. You present it to the class and see where it will take you.’ ” Terrified, she made the presentation, and four classmates raised their hands asking to join the team.

Needing to test their idea, they collected $500 through Miami’s Women’s Center and local fundraisers to pay for notebooks designed by art students in Kosovo. The pilot program sold out in two days. Flora Stationery was born.

In the three years since, Flora Stationery has supported close to 50 women with nearly 100 scholarships, paying full tuition, books, schools fees, and even bus fare.

The high number of scholarships in such a short amount of time is possible

Flora Stationery has supported close to 50 women with nearly 100 scholarships, paying full tuition, books, schools fees, and even bus fare.

Ashley VanBuskirk ’14 and her sister decided on floral notebooks as a sustainable way to support scholarships for women in Kosovo.

because of the low cost of education in the southeastern European nation.

Ashley estimates that $150 U.S. covers one semester.

They are also offering English classes for those who are interested.

In another endeavor that the VanBuskirks hope will increase jobs opportunities in the economically

depressed country, they have partnered with three other organizations to launch the Balkan region’s first tuitionfree full-stack coding academy for women. The six-month program currently enrolls 10.

Although the twin sisters are pleased at how it’s progressed, running Flora Stationery hasn’t been all roses.

“In the beginning it was hours of receiving boxes of journals, sitting on my apartment floor, and packaging every single journal,” Ashley says. They even included a hand-written note to each customer.

With all their proceeds going into scholarships and back into the nonprofit organization, both sisters had to look elsewhere for income. Two weeks after graduating, Ashley moved to Texas to work for a Miami alum’s consulting firm, filling Flora orders during evenings and weekends.

Life has changed since those first days.

Thanks to a full-tuition scholarship, Victoria is in Budapest earning a master’s in international relations at Central Flora Stationery has European University. been featured in Woman’sDay as well Named a finalist for as Forbes. To see its Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Class products and hear of 2016, Ashley is now an more stories from its scholarship recipients independent contractor of Kosovo, go to and is partnering with May FloraStationery.com.

Designs in Austin to streamline the production process.

The partnership allows Flora to offer consumers more of what they’ve requested in customized journals.

Admittedly she’s thought of shutting down Flora Stationery during the more taxing times. Invariably, that’s when a scholarship recipient will send an email update and reenergize Ashley.

“The understanding that you are helping other individuals, specifically women, reach different heights of success they would not be able to reach otherwise inspires me.”

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Simple gifts evolve into a thriving handbag business

The first time Jackie and Phillip ordered a large shipment of leather for their budding design business, a semi pulled up outside their Cleveland studio with a box bigger than a refrigerator. Much bigger.

“We’re like, well, how do we get that upstairs?” Jackie recalls. “And the guy who’s delivering it says, ‘I don’t know. I haven’t delivered anything like this before.’ ”

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Photos by Hilary Bovay (this page, left); Susan Price of Suzaran Photography (opposite, left) and Courtney Ryan (opposite, right)

HANDMADE & HEARTFELT

Jackie Conway Wachter ’05 and her husband, Phillip, have learned so much since they sold their first handmade leather purse. Their “accidental business,” as they call it, started humbly. While still dating, they exchanged all homemade Christmas gifts. An artist, he made her mittens from an old jacket and a cutting board; she, a fashion designer, sewed coordinating wool pouches for his sketchbook, pencils, and laptop.

He loved her bags and thought they would look great in leather, so the two went to a local shoe repair shop for supplies and started experimenting in their apartment’s spare bedroom. Soon they were making necklaces, wallets, and other small leather items for fun. Friends and family liked them so much, they asked to buy them.

One friend’s mom even commissioned them to design a present for her daughterin-law. They produced a fringy, Bohemian bag they named The Nicole. Although cute, the style wasn’t for everyone. Jackie wanted to create a more classic, timeless look. The result? The Bellfield Tote.

Named after the street the couple lived on after they were married, it’s still their best-seller at 5,000 orders and counting.

By 2014, they launched a website.

Their fun hobby continued while they worked their 9-to-5 jobs. Jackie, who majored in health studies at Miami, was both a teacher and a stylist, having earned two more degrees, one in fashion design and the other a master’s in early childhood education.

Less than two months later, Country Living magazine asked to feature their bags. “Next thing we know we have oodles and oodles of orders pouring in over the course of a week, hundreds of orders,” Jackie says.

With each bag taking nine hours to put together, they were overwhelmed and facing a six-month backorder. That’s when they hired their first employees, people who have become close friends and believe in their mission — which is to produce high-quality, American-made

GREAT

“

It has not been a cakewalk by any stretch of the imagination.

We’ve had pitfalls and we’ve done things that cost us thousands and thousands of dollars.

We have a bit of a theory around here that we don’t embrace failure or even believe in it.” products while providing creative jobs and supporting their community.

“It’s very organic, how it all happened,” Jackie says. “Now we look around and say, wow, how did we get here?”

“Here” is FOUNT, their company that fashions luxury leather bags and accessories.

In a little over three years, it’s grown from a 300-square-foot room to a 5,000-square-foot studio in an old warehouse that looks out on Lake Erie.

They and their staff of 36 enjoy the fabulous fifth-floor view when they find a moment to look up from designing, cutting, and sewing.

They expanded their staff from nine and created a large inventory last summer in anticipation of participating in Cleveland Hustles, a CNBC TV show in which NBA star LeBron James gives aspiring local entrepreneurs a chance to realize their dreams.

One of the show’s requirements was that FOUNT open a storefront in six weeks.

“We’re like, OK, we can do that, no problem,” says Jackie, a charming soul with seemingly endless energy. “Turns

“Now that we are business owners, I feel like I was born for this.

Every day my day just flies by.”

out we had no walls until one week before the storefront opened.”

Also turns out the grand opening was their son’s first birthday. Never daunted by a challenge, Jackie moved Scout’s party to the store where hundreds of family, friends, and guests in ball gowns and tuxes sang “Happy Birthday” to the toddler.

Worried about overhead, Jackie and Phillip never intended to open a brick and mortar store. Now that the first has performed beyond their “wildest dreams,” their goal is to open one a year. Their store in Columbus’ Short North opened March 18. Next year is potentially Atlanta; then Cincinnati; Washington, D.C., or Chicago; LA; and New York. Beyond their handcrafted leather bags and accessories, FOUNT stores feature other madein-the-USA merchandise from artists around the country.

Jackie hopes this means less traveling to trade shows every weekend and more time with their son.

“It has not been a cakewalk by any stretch of the imagination. We’ve had pitfalls and we’ve done things that cost us thousands and thousands of dollars.

We have a bit of a theory around here that we don’t embrace failure or even believe in it.”

Optimism is one of her signature traits, along with wearing a hat when she goes out (“It finishes my outfit.”), and carrying a FOUNT purse. Everyone assumes she has one of every kind in every color, but she owns only three because they’re so hard to keep in stock, and she says that’s really all she needs. Two of them are versions of The Bellfield Tote. The third is

IDEA!

The Banjo Bag. Saks Fifth Avenue has contacted FOUNT means an them about that one. abundant source of desirable quality. When Selling at $1,400, The Jackie and Phillip heard Banjo is their high-end that word in an old hymn bag and among their most performed by Sufjan Stevens, they thought it popular. Actor Gwyneth beautiful. “A lot of people Paltrow carries one, as say one of the hardest does LeBron James’ wife. things about starting a business is coming up Chicago Cubs player Ben with a name that fits your Zobrist came into their brand,” Jackie says. “The store and bought one for word FOUNT describes exactly what we’re his wife the day before striving to do, create highthe Cubs won the World quality goods in a quality Series. Only two women work environment. It just felt like it fit our on FOUNT’s team know brand very, very well.” how to craft the circular, For more details, go to made-to-order bag. It’s Fountleather.com. been in several magazines, and British Vogue wants to feature it this spring.

So what ever happened to that first refrigerator-size shipment of leather?

“We borrowed a manual forklift to get it upstairs,” Jackie says. “Our latest order was 12 of those boxes, so we’ve gotten better at it. We’ve also gotten better at requesting that the deliveryman bring it upstairs for us.”

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Running couple comes up with a bright innovation

Thank goodness Renata Storer’s husband fell into a pothole while on an early-morning run. Otherwise, the Storers probably wouldn’t have invented headlights for sneakers.

Truth be told, Doug stumbled on uneven pavement, which he knew was there, since this was one of his usual routes. He just couldn’t see it in the dark.

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Photos by Anna Yanev Photography (left) and courtesy of Renata Storer (right)

LIGHTING THE WAY

“He came in the door and he was limping,” says Renata Rottinger Storer ’84. “I could see that something was wrong, but he was kind of excited.”

When he told her he needed headlights for his sneakers, she laughed a little. OK, a lot, but then she suggested he buy some.

Good idea, except they couldn’t find any for sale.

Soon Renata and Doug were duct taping tiny flashlights to their sneakers and running around their Orlando neighborhood. They wanted to see if lights that low to the ground would do the job.

Despite poor results, they still thought their idea had merit, so they started experimenting with other kinds of lights and clips, including the clip off their garage door opener. They kept at it and finally created a prototype that wouldn’t fall off their shoes.

Both already worked full time for architecture firms, Renata as an interior designer and Doug as a developer. The clip-on light concept took over their evenings, weekends, and kitchen.

Initially, financing for their company came from family and friends. They always had just enough money to take the next step. And there were a lot of expensive steps — the patent process, mechanical design, electrical design, and so on. Off to a fast start after conceiving their idea in January 2013, they obtained a business license only two months later.

They assumed they’d be on the market by the end of that year. It actually took almost 2 ½ years.

“We knew absolutely nothing going into this,” says Renata, who majored in housing and interior design at Miami.

“It was much more work than we had anticipated. So that learning curve, it was a big one.”

A key breakthrough happened when they discovered what fit the right foot didn’t fit the left. Once they adapted their design to a winged arc, they found room for a red tail light as well.

Another pivotal moment came in 2015 when they sought $35,000 through a kickstarter campaign. They took the gamble

“We get up in the morning and we’re energized and excited about what we’re going to do that day, and every day is a little bit different than the day before.”

Soon Renata and Doug were duct taping tiny flashlights to their sneakers and running around their Orlando neighborhood. They wanted to see if lights that low to the ground would do the job. and succeeded, collecting over $43,000, which kept them on track for having a finished Night Runner 270 in their hands and on their shoes by that fall.

Turns out 2016 was an even bigger year.

After a decent opening quarter, they left their day jobs and leapt full time into their company, Doug as CEO and Renata as president of Nighthawk Running.

Then they applied for Shark Tank, an ABC reality show in which entrepreneurs enter the Tank to persuade the Sharks, self-made tycoons, to fund their dreams.

The Sharks, in turn, fight each other for a piece of whichever company they think will succeed and give them a good return on their investment.

Competing with 50,000 other companies for a spot, the Storers figured their chances were slim. They figured wrong. Ecstatic when they found out last September that they were airing two weeks later, they ordered a large quantity of Night Runner. It arrived in 200 boxes, boxes that filled their garage, their living room, their dining room, and part of their kitchen.

“We had a tremendous bump after Shark Tank. I would say we increased about tenfold.”

As for the Sharks, Renata never expected the all-out bidding war. Four of the five fought for a piece of their company. The Storers accepted Robert Herjavec’s offer at $250,000 for 10 percent, with an additional $100,000 loan.

“It was really a great experience being in the tank. They were very good to us,” she says.

To date, they’ve sold 30,000 units, are in all 50 states, about 41 countries, and 55 stores, mostly small, independent, running retailers. They also get out in front

GREAT

IDEA!

of potential customers as much as possible, parDetails about Night ticipating in trade shows Runner 270, from and large race expos. At nightrunner270.com such places, people often • Ultra-lightweight tell them they wish they, LED units (1.5 oz. ) too, could come up with • Secure, multi-position a similarly good idea. shoelace clips that won’t fall off Renata thinks they have it all wrong.

• Water-resistant, high-impact casing “It has to come from • Long-lasting battery a passion or something life up to 6 hours that you feel needs to be • Sleek, unobtrusive done to make a change “wing” design in the world, to make a • Rear-facing red tail change in someone’s life. lights to grab motorists’ It can’t come from the attention idea of making money or • Li-ion rechargeable getting a job.” battery with micro-USB charging port The Storers married • 150 total lumens for not long after they bright night running started down this path •30+ feet of hands-free and honeymooned illumination at a running retail •270 degrees of visibility convention. guaranteed “Because we’ve worked on this together from the beginning, I think it’s been great for our marriage,” she says. “It’s really made us closer. It’s been challenging, but not to our relationship.”

And when they need a break, they race outside — their Night Runner 270s securely clipped to their shoelaces.

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MIAMIANS FOCUS ON THE BIG 3-D PICTURE

BY MARGO KISSE LL

The Virtual Reality’ of Life Winter/Spring 2017

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Three days before the end of the semester, he tested the camera in the December chill. He set up the custombuilt device in the yard of his rented house on West High Street, bundled together the 50 yards of cable from each camera, and ran the cable through a window to his computer. Then, he waited.

“I just remember having a really satisfactory aha moment once I was able to see the images coming out of the camera all stitched together producing 360 video,” recalled Mace, who grabbed his two roommates to tell them he finally got “this crazy thing that had taken over our living room working, so it’s been worth it.” And how.

AIMS PETRI DISH

Austin Mace ’15 couldn’t find an affordable 360-degree video camera. So he built one.

Taking on this project for his senior thesis, the interactive media studies major crafted the six-sided camera frame using a 3-D printer in Miami’s B.E.S.T. (Business, Engineering, Science, and Technology) Library downstairs from his Armstrong Interactive Media Studies (AIMS) program in Laws Hall.

He spent the fall semester tweaking the plastic prototype, going through at least 10 iterations. Finally, he came up with a version that would hold the cellphone cameras plus gadgetry using inexpensive, credit card-size computers.

But, would it work?

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Mace constructed a high-quality 360-degree video camera rig at a time when most 360 cameras weren’t commercially available and didn’t offer the quality of his for capturing immersive video for head mounted displays.

The summer after graduating from Miami, he produced for REDI Cincinnati (which had financed his senior thesis endeavor) a virtual tour of the gentrified Over-the-Rhine neighborhood and other selected sites throughout the city. His tour helped promote Cincinnati to business officials visiting during the Major League Baseball All-Star Game.

“We’ve come a long way since then, but it was definitely a good first step,” said Mace, who moved to Austin, Texas, to co-found SubVRsive, a company that creates virtual reality (VR) and immersive experiences for clients. He is chief creative officer.

“He launched his company in a field that didn’t exist when he was a freshman,” said Eric Hodgson MA ’05 PhD ’08, director of Miami’s Smale Interactive Visualization Center and visiting assistant professor in AIMS. As virtual reality goes mainstream — with more media and other businesses using it and families buying the VR headsets — AIMS Director Glenn Platt said it is both exciting and challenging to keep up.

Austin Mace ’15 (above) has retired the camera he made at Miami (right), but he’s still building custom solutions.

Miami faculty are determined to stay on top of where digital technology is causing the greatest change (they call this “disrupting the world”) and help students figure out how to get there, said Platt, C. Michael Armstrong Chair of Interactive Media and professor of marketing at Miami.

The AIMS program strives to be a petri dish, Platt said, that encourages students to grow by experimenting creatively and taking risks. Mace credits that setting and the freedom he and other students enjoy for preparing them well.

“I think we came out of it with being fearless of failure because of that environment.”

HEADS-DOWN FOCUS

Mace turned down “a gazillion job offers from some of the best VR companies in the country” to launch the startup, Platt said. He used seed funding from Austin entrepreneur and angel investor Kenny Tomlin (father of Mace’s classmate Hannah ’15) to co-found SubVRsive with friend Ryan Thomas. Kenny Tomlin is chairman.

Once the business was up and running, Mace reached out to Ken Todd ’91, vice president of video strategy and emerging platform marketing at Showtime Networks. The two had stayed in touch after Mace heard Todd speak to students during a campus visit.

Todd was impressed, saying Mace demonstrated technical expertise and showed his broad knowledge.

“Austin started pitching me business before he graduated,” said Todd, president of the Miami University Alumni Association board of directors last year.

Todd was looking for a Showtime project to incorporate 360 video and found it: the Dec. 5, 2015, Jacobs vs. Quillin WBA Middleweight World Championship boxing match.

Filmed by Mace and Thomas using three cameras including two perched on ring posts, it allowed Showtime to become the first to offer a complete boxing match shot in 360.

The experience gave viewers at home a sense of being inside the arena.

The project was noteworthy for another reason: It earned Showtime and

STILL IN ITS INFANCY, WHAT’S POSSIBLE WITH VIRTUAL REALITY IS THE “GREAT UNKNOWN.” SubVRsive a Sports Emmy nomination in the category of Outstanding Digital Innovation.

Mace, Thomas, and Todd attended the award ceremony in New York City last May. And although FoxSports.com won the category, Mace said being recognized at that level was a surreal experience.

“I think it’s something where the impact of that will probably hit us later down the road professionally because, so far, we’ve just been so heads-down continuing to focus on building the business,” he said.

GREAT UNKNOWN

His company is growing rapidly. It ended 2016 with eight full-time employees. That number was expected to double in the first two months of 2017.

SubVRsive’s client list also is growing.

It has worked with MTV and an ad agency promoting Procter & Gamble’s Downy Unstopables in-wash scent boosters. For the Showtime documentary series The Circus: Inside the Greatest Political Show on Earth, which followed the 2016 presidential campaign, Mace and crew filmed immersive video at both Clinton and Trump rallies to give viewers the feeling of being there.

Everyone is trying to figure out what is possible with virtual reality.

“It’s still in the very early days and everybody is testing and learning right now,” said Todd, noting that good quality VR is essential to prevent viewers from feeling ill.

Added Mace: “A spectrum is starting to emerge beyond traditional media channels of what’s possible, and it’s very much at this point the great unknown.”

At Miami, AIMS is preparing students for that ever-changing three-dimensional landscape. Thanks to generous donations through the years from Mike and Anne

Gossett Armstrong, both 1961 graduates, and John Smale ’49, the program has evolved into a well-respected research and innovation center devoted to visualization and virtual reality.

Its latest recognition came at the 2016 International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare in San Diego when Hodgson and two collaborators at Wright State University were awarded first place for their exhibit “Decontamination Training Delivered Using Virtual Reality.”

The simulation immerses nursing students in a virtual examining room. Putting on an Oculus Rift Head Mounted Display, nursing students learn how to decontaminate a patient who has been exposed to radiation without endangering themselves.

Hodgson and his AIMS students also created a VR simulation for the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center newborn intensive care unit (NICU) to train employees for evacuating those vulnerable patients without actually doing so.

The NICU project gave Lauren McKenzie, a senior IMS major and creative writing minor, an opportunity to demonstrate her skills as a 3-D artist. She learned about lowpoly modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, and even some animation.

“I created the majority of the art assets that are in the simulation, everything from nurses, babies, and equipment to architecture,” McKenzie said. “I tried to make everything as realistic as possible so that when the nurses went through the simulation, everything looked and felt the same as the actual hospital.”

After she graduates in May, McKenzie hopes to become an environmental artist, focusing on creating environments in games.

“It’s really the NICU project that opened that door to me,” she said. “I’ve done and learned quite a bit since then, but it really was my launching point.”

And, like Austin Mace, she is excited about finding where digital technology is shaking up the world so she can be there.

Margo Kissell is a news and feature writer in Miami’s university news and communications office.

f To see Austin’s 360 video, go to tinyurl.com/360-vr-video

ESPORTS

The Hot New Spectator Pastime Another leading-edge project in Miami’s Armstrong Interactive Media Studies (AIMS) program involves esports. That’s short for electronic sports in the form of organized video game competitions with multiple players.

It’s a rapidly growing field that generates Super Bowl-level excitement primarily among the younger population, known to pack arenas to watch professional video gamers compete. The New York Times reported in December that esports revenue is expected to top $1 billion worldwide by 2018, according to market research firm SuperData.

Stelanie Tsirlis ’16 spent fall semester team-teaching a new esports class at Miami that she pitched as her senior capstone project.

“The class gives those students who are thinking about diving into the industry headfirst an opportunity to learn the landscape as well as the history so they don’t go in blind,” said Tsirlis, who graduated in December with a double major in marketing and interactive media services. She has accepted a job as an esports coordinator for game developer Blizzard Entertainment, where she interned last summer.

While at Miami, she served as president of the campus esports club and last year co-founded AllMid, a limited liability company, to shine a spotlight on Midwest gaming and host collegiate tournaments.

She also team-taught a special topics course in interactive media with Phill Alexander, the Heanon Wilkins Faculty Fellow in AIMS .

In addition, the two oversaw the launch of Miami’s varsity esports program last fall, drawing 22 students for four teams. Believed to be the first of its kind at a top tier U.S. university, it gives students an opportunity to focus their talents and passion competing on a team of their choice.

“It is a great way to interface with the industry in places where students might work later,” Alexander said.

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love & honor THE AMAZING RACE MUSF’s 10/10 and 20/20 bike racing event, held during Lil’ Sibs Weekend for many years, was the second largest of its kind in the country, second only to Indiana University’s Little 500, according to the 1990 Recensio. Rounding a corner on Cook Field (right), the Miami Flyers rode to first place in the women’s race. Wrinkled Meat won the men’s competition.

Staying Connected MUSF bridges past, present, and future

“She didn’t get in as a freshman.”

Kym Schroeder Kossanyi ’90 sometimes heard the whispers her senior year when peers in the Miami University Student Foundation (MUSF) quietly discussed their chair’s years of service — or lack thereof — with the organization.

Typically, 300 or so students applied every fall to join the university group, with only a select few chosen after an intensive series of interviews. Kossanyi didn’t survive the cut her first year.

She tried again the next, made it, and spent her sophomore, junior, and senior years with MUSF. “That’s one of my favorite stories,” Kossanyi said.

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Why? Because her persistence brought her back to apply for MUSF, and, because of her MUSF experience, Kossanyi keeps coming back to Miami.

She treasures the time she spent with MUSF, which raises money for scholarships through such campus programs as the Family Weekend auction and brunch.

Its members also recruit prospective students and work with alumni.

During that time, Kossanyi learned the importance of diligence when she and other MUSF staffers made sure all written communication left their office errorfree. She learned attention to detail when MUSF-led tours showed prospective students a day at Miami.

Photo by T. Elliott, 1990 Recensio

By Josh Chapin ’02

love & honor

And she learned how to work toward a common goal, like the annual 20/20 bike race fundraiser. It didn’t matter if someone was leading a committee or moving bales of hay, all played a significant role.

“It was a ton of work, but it was also a ton of fun.”

As she rose through the ranks from junior recruitment co-chair on the steering committee to MUSF’s top spot, she learned something else — a lifelong love for Miami.

“It opened up a world of opportunity to meet interesting people who have been very successful and share a passion and love for Miami,” said Kossanyi, the senior innovation manager at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati.

“It’s important to make sure it’s not just four years.

There are so many opportunities to keep the university community connected,” she said. “Some of my most rewarding friendships have actually happened years after I ‘left’ Miami, but it’s with fellow Miamians I’ve come to know.”

Learning the 3 T’s David Budig ’84 is another former MUSFer inspired to remain involved with Miami after graduation.

Both Kossanyi and Budig have served as president of the Miami University Alumni Association, and Budig, a current member of the board of trustees, chaired the board in 2015 and 2016.

During his tenure with MUSF, he worked with prospective, current, and past students. He also helped with the campus tours, the 20/20 bike race, and Alumni Weekend.

MUSF has been a staple on Miami’s campus since its start in 1972.

“MUSF taught me leadership organizational skills, business leadership skills, and structure skills. It helped tremendously in terms of moving forward in my professional career,” said Budig, president of Parsec Inc., an intermodal transportation company headquartered in Cincinnati.

“I had several job offers simply because of how well MUSF was known by people coming onto campus recruiting,” he said. “Some of those leadership skills I learned from MUSF were instrumental in allowing me to have a job right out of college.”

Helping with telethon calls and alumni relation events gave him a unique perspective. Budig saw firsthand that giving back to Miami wasn’t just about donations. Time and talent were equally important.

“That is a critical, critical part of what MUSF taught me,” he said. “There is nothing wrong with giving back, and giving back doesn’t always mean treasure.”

Lifelong memories Current MUSF member Tessa Wadsworth was encouraged to join as a freshman by her brother, Marc ’14, then a senior and the group’s executive chair at the time.

A chemistry major who graduates in May, Tessa followed her big brother’s lead and served as executive chair last semester. Wanting to focus on member involvement, she built a strong executive board.

She previously was co-vice president of membership and enjoyed recruiting new members and planning retention programs.

Current MUSF programs include #MUThankU, which raises awareness of private donors; and the Chicago bus trips, which provide transportation to the Windy City during most major university breaks.

Proceeds go to incoming-student scholarships.

“Overall, we strive to fulfill needs on campus while accomplishing our motto: helping students past, present, and future,” Wadsworth said.

Budig was reminded of his own MUSF past recently.

One of his favorite stories from his time as MUSF chair was a presentation to the trustees. College football legend Ara Parseghian ’49, a cornerstone of Miami’s famed “Cradle of Coaches,” was on the board at the time.

A few days after the presentation, Parseghian sent Budig a letter wishing him success and reminding him of the importance of staying involved with Miami.

Thirty-two years later it was Budig’s turn. He was operating in his role as chair of the board of trustees, and Parseghian was receiving the President’s Medal during Greg Crawford’s inauguration as Miami’s 22nd president. Budig shared his vivid recollection of Parseghian’s letter with the famed coach.

“Talk about lifelong memories that MUSF provided,” Budig said. “That was one of them.”

Profits generated from events sponsored by the Miami University Student Foundation are folded back into the MUSF Scholarship Endowment, its interest financing eight $2,500 scholarships each year. Since its start in 1972, MUSF has awarded over $600,000 in scholarships.

Josh Chapin ’02 is assistant director of editorial services in Miami’s university advancement division.

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days of old

In this 1910 home game, Miami wins 19–0 with Wittenberg “being unable to stop the onslaught of the crimson.”

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If you ever attended a football game at Miami Field, you might have passed through this turnstile or one of its three associates. Millions did from the time the field’s west entrance was built in 1919–1920 until the stadium’s final game in November 1982.

The west ticket gate was actually part of a major renovation of the field, which opened in 1896, but only after the university cleared and drained four leased acres of the Botanical Gardens.

First called Athletic Field, then the Athletic Grounds, Alumni Field, and finally Miami Field, it was at the northwest corner of High and Patterson — where Pearson Hall and the psychology building stand today.

As for that major spruce-up, the Feb. 10, 1915, Miami University Bulletin reported: “Some radical improvements are being made on the athletic park. When these are completed, Miami will have one of the best athletic fields in the state. Already the new baseball diamond has cost about $250, while the work so far on the football field and the track amounts to over $800.”

By 1929, attendees had a choice of two entrances to pass through to watch football and other athletic contests, commencements, and such major events as the Sesquicentennial Pageant and presidential candidate John Kennedy’s convocation speech, both in 1959.

Although this turnstile is in Special Collections and University Archives, the classes of 1959 and 1960 raised money to move the gates to Yager Stadium in 1983.

Inset photo from Miami University Libraries, Frank Snyder Collection

Gateway to the Past

days of old

Pink buds and red bricks, a beautiful spring setting for studying.

Fall 2013

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MIAMIANS FOCUS ON THE BIG 3-D PICTURE