WELCOME The center of th e Glacial Lake M issoula bays extending up several area was near Flathead Lake, with la river valleys as fa rge r as 50 miles.
When the glacia l dam br huge pieces of ro oke the floodwaters carried ck hundreds their original loca of miles from tion.
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nd Missoula.
e hillsides all arou
be seen on th l strandlines can
During a recent ice age about 20,000 years ago, the glacial ice sheet dammed the Clark Fork River and created Glacial Lake Missoula. When pressure behind the 2,500-foot wall of ice reached its high point, the dam failed, releasing the water. Racing at up to 50 miles per hour, the floodwaters tore a path through the Pacific Northwest that created the Channeled Scablands of Eastern Washington and the Columbia River Gorge. Today, evidence of Glacial Lake Missoula can be seen as horizontal shorelines on the hills surrounding Missoula.
Wednesday, Aug
ust 26, 2009 Young Scholars Intera ct With Luminaries At Institute’s “Adven tures of the Mind”
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Office of the President The University of Montana Missoula, Montana 59812-3324 Office: (406)243-2311 FAX: (406) 243-2797 As president of The University of Montana, it gives me great pleasure to welcome many of the Nation’s top high school students to campus for the 2011 Adventures of the Mind Mentoring Summit. You have come to a special place for your latest academic adventure. Located amid the Rocky Mountains at the confluence of five valleys, UM has inspired a host of great thinkers, creative minds and dreamers since its founding in 1893. Among the most prominent are Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress; Harold Urey, a chemist who discovered deuterium and helped develop the atom bomb; Mike Mansfield, the longestserving majority leader of the U.S. Senate; and Carroll O’Connor, who played Archie Bunker on TV’s “All in the Family.” Missoula also was home to author Norman Maclean, whose surroundings prompted him to write “A River Runs Through It.” We are especially appreciative to UM’s Phyllis J. Washington College of Education and Human Sciences for hosting the summit. The event wouldn’t be possible without the generous support of Phyllis and Dennis Washington, and we applaud how Phyllis, a 1964 UM education graduate, continues to make such positive impacts on campus. The federal lands and wilderness surrounding UM often are described as a natural laboratory, and they inspire scores of researchers and educators. Ours is the only place in the lower 48 where all the mammal species noted by Lewis and Clark more than two centuries ago still roam. We strive to integrate these special surroundings into the University’s curriculum. Academic success characterizes UM. We have produced 28 Rhodes Scholars and more than 40 Fulbright Scholars. As a major center for the arts and culture, the University nurtures a wide variety of artists, performers and writers. Our campus bursts with ideas generated by students from across the nation and around the world. So enjoy your time here in Montana. Explore campus, hike to the M, learn from your mentors, visit with faculty members, and otherwise enjoy the summit. We think you will begin to love this place as we do and perhaps consider starting your future here. But for now, adventure awaits! We hope this summit provides learning and memories that will inspire excellence along whatever academic path you choose to pursue.
Royce C. Engstrom President The University of Montana Opportunity • Impact • Responsibility • Vitality An Equal Opportunity University
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
101 International Drive Post Office Box 16630 Missoula, MT 59808 www.dpwfoundation.org
June 2011
Dear Adventurers and Mentors, Welcome to our Montana Big Sky! How exciting this 2011 gathering of Adventures of the Mind is, and how proud we are to help make it happen. You are about to interact with some very bright and accomplished people during this week’s activities. Don’t let that scare you. They are all real people who at one time were also real teenagers, confronting similar questions and decisions about life, education, and careers. Students, you are here to understand how these mentors got started, how they applied themselves, and how they eventually found their stride to accomplish what they did. It is your opportunity to open your mind and set your goals for your path through life. Open yourself to the friendly energy generated by bringing all of you together here in Montana. Be in the moment and don’t be shy – look, listen, ask, and learn. This is something you won’t get anywhere else. Adventures of the Mind Mentoring Summit may well be an Adventure that changes your life. Best Wishes,
Phyllis J. Washington Dennis R. Washington
MAKING AN INVESTMENT IN PEOPLE TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF THEIR LIVES.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Student Achievement Advisory Council Daniel Bennett Alan Blinder Sergey Brin Wendell Castle Martin Chalfie Jennifer Chayes Dale Chihuly Billy Collins Dalton Conley Stanley Crouch Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Jacques d’Amboise Ingrid Daubechies Rita Dove Annie Duke Esther Dyson George Dyson Freeman Dyson Roger Ferguson Howard Gardner Murray Gell-Mann Sheldon Glashow Larry Gonick Alison Gopnik Vartan Gregorian Carol Greider Zahi Hawass Leroy Hood Jack Horner Erich Jarvis Raymond Jeanloz Naomi Judd Mollie Katzen Brian Kernighan Chip Kidd Charles C. Krulak Kathy L’Amour Marcelle Leahy Patrick Leahy Leon Lederman Jennifer 8 Lee John Lilly Shahara Llewellyn David Ludwig John Maeda Lynn Margulis Walter Massey Mark Moffett Kary Mullis Randall Munroe Nathan Myhrvold Dean Ornish Larry Page Steven Pinker Lisa Randall Burton Richter Richard Roberts Ginny Ruffner Robert A. Schuller Gerard Schwarz John Shalikashvili Charles Simonyi D. Eric Smith Frank Sulloway Amy Tan Vendela Vida Luis von Ahn Herschel Walker Samuel Wang E. O. Wilson Founder & President Victoria Gray 2011 Host Chairmen Dennis & Phyllis Washington
Student Achievement & Advocacy Services PO Box 423 Cabin John, MD 20818 202.518.2324 info@adventuresofthemind.org
www.adventuresofthemind.org
June 23, 2011
Adventures Class of 2011, Alumni Mentors, Montana Mentors, and Special Guests, Welcome! We are thrilled that you have made the journey to discover and explore achievement. On behalf of our Host Sponsors, Dennis & Phyllis Washington, and the Student Achievement Advisory Council, I welcome you to Adventures of the Mind Achievement Mentoring Summit at The University of Montana. Each one of you has been carefully chosen as an Adventurer because you have demonstrated the ability, and potential, to blaze trails and think big. The purpose of this program is to help you nurture these talents by inspiring you to expand your horizons. The mentors who have volunteered to help guide you are some of today’s great trailblazers—people who in labs, studios, classrooms and boardrooms have used their skills, resolve and great imaginations to develop some of today’s most important ideas and innovations. Their goal is to inspire you, teach you, and show you how to reach your own great potential. The Big Sky is the limit! This weekend, you’ll get to meet many great thinkers and achievers, and they will get to meet YOU. It is a rare opportunity we call Access to Excellence. I urge all of you to explore the worlds of wonder that each of you represents, and to talk with as many Adventurers as you can, whether while riding the hay wagon at Grant Creek Ranch or simply sharing a meal. May you learn from and enjoy them all. There is a scientific basis for our belief that Adventures’ live and in-person exploration of achievement is so valuable. In spite of the wonders of Skype and Facebook, as a few of our mentors will explain, nothing has been found to replace human interaction as a mode of learning. In less than 30-seconds our brains can capture and process infinite VISUAL information, a feat technology is still a very long way from accomplishing. Personal achievement often is defined by external standards—earning advanced degrees, making a lot of money, winning a medal. I feel however that this important concept should be redefined. It should measure how well you have used your talents to define your own purpose and, with that understanding, built productive, meaningful, and satisfying lives. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank our Mentors, Student Sponsors, and Volunteers for their guidance and support throughout the year. A special note of appreciation goes to our Host Chairman Phyllis Washington who, even with her very busy year, has made time to share her alma mater and hometown with us! Phyllis’s contributions range—from editing our newsletter to actually designing the building where we will hold our breakout session. Her energy and enthusiasm are boundless, and after more than 20 years I enjoy teaming up with Phyllis ~ more than ever! Considering all the talent assembled here, I can only imagine the heights you will climb after having spent the time exploring new ideas and being inspired by your fellow achievers. I look forward to meeting each and every one of you. Most respectfully, Your humble wrangler P.S. I have a question for Ben Huh that is driving me haywire: Why are cats the internet’s mammal of choice?
Adventures of the Mind is a program of Student Achievement & Advocacy Services, a 501c(3) organization dedicated to helping students to maximize their potential by offering programs that provide support, guidance, mentoring, and advocacy for promising young people.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
“Adventures” - Achievement Mentoring Summit WHAT IS ADVENTURES?
EVERY TWO YEARS, we bring together some of America’s most promising high school students — the great thinkers and achievers of tomorrow — with some of the great thinkers and achievers of today. For four days, these exceptional young people explore their potential with 50 or so mentors who are both doers and dreamers: accomplished artists, astronauts, athletes, cancer-fighting scientists, dinosaur wranglers, entrepreneurs, inventors, journalists, Nobel laureates, novelists, playwrights, poets, poker players, programmers, public servants, Pulitzer prize winners, scholars, trailblazers, and world changers.
sicians and friends Juilliard Pre-College mu unwind after all) ers (Junior Adventur ance. an amazing perform
The Summits are based on the belief that getting to know great achievers and sharing their interests and experiences can serve as a road map for talented young people just starting out. The Junior Achievers inducted into the Adventures class of 2011 will learn firsthand not only that excellence is possible, but also that the path to it lies right before them.
HOW ARE STUDENTS SELECTED?
We search nationwide for the smartest students, digging deep by going beyond the traditional measures of achievement – grades and test scores – and asking teachers to nominate a teen whom they know to be exceptional, regardless of learning disabilities, socioeconomic factors, or other obstacles that may obscure their real potential. We also look for the runners-up in national competitions, ranging from the Presidential Scholars Program to Intel Science Talent Search to the National Poetry Slam, who are just as talented as the winners – they just don’t receive the same level of recognition.
WHO ARE THE ADULT ACHIEVERS STUDENTS MEET AT ADVENTURES?
Participants are a select group of accomplished individuals who are invited by the Achievement Advisory Council to mentor at each summit as: • Alumni mentors (speakers who are invited to return) •
Honored Speakers who share their life story from our stage
•
Student Sponsors
Attendance is limited so that we may maintain a ratio of one mentor for each three students.
horizon is open to me. “ The It is time to discover.”
– Rose Ann Cima, 2005 Google Scholar
Missoula, Montana
Top: Junior Adventurers with Operation Smile’s Bill & Kathy Magee, 2009 host Charles Simonyi, artist Dale Chihuly, Leslie Chihuly, WABC’s Melanie Lawson, and Intelius’s Naveen Jain. Bottom: RISD President John Maeda with Junior Adventurers.
June 23-26, 2011
History of Adventures THE STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT ADVISORY COUNCIL launched the Adventures of the Mind Achievement Mentoring Summit in 2003. After Montana 2011, we will have hosted 700 students from almost every state. More than 100 great achievers from around the world have participated, many of them more than once, donating their time to help guide and inspire these remarkable youth. Our 2003 Summit took place in Seattle and was cohosted by two remarkable pioneers: Dale Chihuly, the artist who transformed studio glass art into the medium of complex, large-scale glass sculptures and environmental art; and Nathan Myhrvold, founder of Intellectual Ventures, a private company devoted to the business of invention, who himself holds 18 patents and who also is a prize-winning nature photographer and a prize-winning chef (from BBQ to French cuisine). In 2005, our Summit met at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and the Googleplex in the heart of Silicon Valley. Nobel Prize winning physicist and former director of SLAC, Burton Richter, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and novelist Amy Tan were among the leaders who introduced the students to the world of discovery and innovation.
Morehouse College in Atlanta, the alma mater of Martin Luther King, Jr., was the site of our 2007 Summit. Another Morehouse alumnus, Morehouse President Walter Massey, who has made his mark as an educator, physicist, director of the National Science Foundation, and chairman of the board of Bank of America, was our host. In 2009, students got to walk in the footsteps of Albert Einstein when the summit met at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Our hosts, renowned physicist Freeman Dyson, who joined the Institute more than 50 years ago, Princeton mathematician and MacArthur Fellow Ingrid Daubechies, and Charles Simonyi, software pioneer and two-time space traveler, were among the 52 mentors. Others included 12 Nobel laureates, two poet laureates, and three astronauts. In 2011, we will discover achievement under the Big Sky thanks to the generosity of our hosts, Dennis and Phyllis Washington, who are bringing us to the University of Montana. The 2011 Adventures Summit will be the largest gathering of Nobel prize winners in Montana history.
THE CLASS OF ‘09 MENTORS: PETER AGRE Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Johns Hopkins University
ANNIE DUKE Professional Poker Player & Philanthropist
PHILLIP ANDERSON Nobel Laureate in Physics, Princeton University
ESTHER DYSON Entrepreneur, Philanthropist, Writer
CHRISTIAN BORGS Microsoft Research New England
ROGER W. FERGUSON, JR. President & CEO, TIAA-CREF
MARTIN CHALFIE Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Columbia University
RICHARD GARRIOTT Video Game Developer & First Second-Generation Space Traveler
JENNIFER TOUR CHAYES Microsoft Research New England
NAVEEN JAIN CEO & Co-founder of Intelius, Inc.
CHRISTO & JEANNE-CLAUDE Environmental Artists
NAOMI JUDD Activist, Musician, Writer
BILLY COLLINS U.S. Poet Laureate 2001-2003
BRIAN KERNIGHAN Computer Pioneer, Princeton University
DALTON CONLEY Dean for the Social Sciences, New York University JOHN CONWAY Professor of Mathematics, Princeton University CLAUDIA DREIFUS Science Correspondent, New York Times; Columbia University
Missoula, Montana
CHIP KIDD Graphic Designer & Writer JOANNA KLINK Poet, Harvard University VERLYN KLINKENBORG Author & Educator, New York Times Editorial Board
JENNIFER 8 LEE Journalist & Author LOUIS LERMAN Co-Founder, The Institute Group SEAVER LESLIE Artist ALAN LIGHTMAN Essayist, Novelist, Physicist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology JOHN MAEDA President, Rhode Island School of Design BILL & KATHY MAGEE Operation Smile Co-Founders JUAN MALDACENA Physicist, Institute for Advanced Study ERIC MASKIN Nobel Laureate in Economics, Institute for Advanced Study MARY MCFADDEN Design Archeologist RANDALL MUNROE Cartoonist & Futurist
JOHN NASH Nobel Prize in Economics, Princeton University GREGORY OLSEN Entrepreneur & Space Walker BRUCE REED Executive Director, National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility & Reform ALEXIA SCHULZ Astrophysicist, Institute for Advanced Study GERARD SCHWARZ Music Director, Seattle Symphony STEWART WALLACE Composer SAMUEL WANG Professor of Neuroscience, Princeton University ROBERT WILSON Nobel Prize in Physics EDWARD WITTEN Fields Medal Winner, Institute for Advanced Study
June 23-26, 2011
Thanks to our Student Sponsors
August 27, 2009
Dear Mr. Charles Simonyi, Thank you so much for sponsoring my trip to the Adventures of the Mind mentoring summit this summer. This experience has been one of the most inspiring weekends of my life, and I deeply appreciate the opportunity. At first, I was mostly excited to hear the speakers at the “Computers and Brains” lecture, because I am interested in neuroscience. After the first night, I was amazed, because I became intrigued by areas I had never even considered I really enjoyed. Dr. Dalton Conley’s speech, and I am currently reading his book, Also, Billy Collins is my new favorite person. Your space video was astonishing! I was at the edge of my seat by the end, when the luncheon turned up and the camera broke. I also greatly enjoyed meeting you and hearing you talk about your experiences in space. It was so exciting to see how quickly Africa passed by on your re-entry. This experience was even better than I imagined it to be. I found myself eating dinner and chatting with Dr. Martin Chaffre one day and eating lunch with Ginny Ruffner the next! Ms. Ruffner is a truly inspiring person, and I never would have heard her inspiring story without attending Adventures of the Mind. I made so many friends at Adventures of the Mind. I was excited to meet so many students with such an array of interests. I know I will be keeping in touch with my new friends for many years to come, and I can’t wait to see what we all accomplish! This trip was so motivating, and I truly am so grateful for the opportunity. Thank you so much, Mr. Simonyi.
Sincerely, Devda Balacuandrom
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Gratitude to those that make it happen... If Adventures could wear a badge it would say:
DISCOVER & EXPLORE ACHIEVEMENT The unique opportunity that is Adventures is made possible by the generous support of our Host Sponsors Dennis and Phyllis Washington, individual Student Sponsors, the Student Achievement Advisory Council, and our Corps of Volunteers who together we proudly refer to as TEAM ADVENTURES. Funding, identifying, inviting and actually rounding up the 250 or so achievers for 3 days under the Big Sky in Missoula is no easy feat and requires financial and intellectual contributions from The Team throughout the year. We are most grateful to all of you for your benevolence: HOST SPONSOR & CHAIRMAN: Dennis and Phyllis Washington President Engstrom,The Faculty, and Staff of The University of Montana BENEFACTORS: Kathy L’Amour, Shahara Ahmad Llewellyn, Victoria Gray, Nathan Myhrvold, Charles Simonyi STUDENT SPONSORS: Ray & Jean Auel, BNSF Foundation, Sandy & Larry Bosley, Joe Clark, Copper Lion Capital, Dick & Wendy Heckmann, Atul Jain, Naveen & Anu Jain, Louis Lerman, Gerry Ohrstrom, RANDOM HOUSE, INC., Saban Foundation, Walter & Sue Scott, Amy Tan & Lou DeMattei, Mark Tercek, Kimberlee & Dirk Visser, Herschel Walker, Wynn Resorts, Inc. Colette & Dan Bennett, Bonnie & Kenneth Feld, Preston Ingram, Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., Kris & Peter Norvig Becky Benaroya, Lauren Carpenter, Jill Schnitzer Edelson, Jennifer 8 Lee, Francine LeFrak, Deborah McWhinney, Gen. Colin Powell, Deborah Rose, Cynthia Stinger, Dick & Rita Taylor,
A Special thanks to the 2011 PLANNING COMMITTEE: ROBERTA EVANS Dean, Phyllis J. Washington School of Education, The University of Montana
JACK HORNER Regents Professor of Paleontology, Montana State University
VICTORIA GRAY Founder, Student Achievement & Advocacy Services
WILLIAM KITTREDGE Chronicler of the American West
BRAD GROSSMAN Grossman & Partners, Think-Tank / Do-Tank
BEAU L’AMOUR Film & Publishing
PRAGEETA SHARMA Professor, The University of Montana KIMBERLEE VISSER Board Member, Missoula Children’s Theater PHYLLIS WASHINGTON Educator & Philanthropist Antiquarian & Designer
every human mind feels pleasure “ I believe inthatdoing good to another.” —Thomas Jefferson Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Thank you to the Corps of Volunteers Adventures of the Mind is possible because of the dedication and long hours contributed by our staff and volunteers. THANKS is not enough to express our appreciation to the Corps of Volunteers who contribute their time year-round and around the clock during the Summit!
Alumni: Ellen Agler: VP @ Operation Smile ‘03 Zhenya Beresina: Researcher @ BBC, London ‘07 Rebecca Glashow: VP @ Discovery Network ‘03 Victoria Gray: Founder, Adventures of the Mind ‘03 Lynette Hall: Director of Student Recruitment ‘03 Rachel Horoschak: Librarian & Info Specialist ‘03 Kelly Hughes Milodragovich: Associate @ The Washington Foundation Brian Hunt: Writer & Search Guru @ Gravitate Design Studio Penny Kauth: Event Planner Extraordinaire @ The Washington Companies Susan Koehler: CMO @ Intelius, Inc Justin Kovac: Strategy Analyst @ Provide Commerce Beau L’Amour: Film & Publishing Kathy L’Amour: President, Louis L’Amour Enterprises Michael Li: Ph.D. Candidate, Princeton University Laurel Marlantes: Actor & Producer Sam Milodragovich: University of Montana Student Jeff Parrott, Ph.D: President, Sapyence Management Group Christina Ren: Princeton University Graduate Steven Rosenthal, M.D.: National Institute for Allergy & Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health Keith Wilkerson: Senior Program Manager @ A Better Chance John Wu: Stanford University Student
New Recruits to The Corps:
‘09 ‘07 ‘09 ‘09 ’07 (Adventures ’05 alum) ‘03 ‘03 ’05 (Adventures ’03 alum) ‘09 ‘09 ‘05 ‘09 ‘05 ‘09 09 (Adventures ’09 alum)
The Montana Corps:
Shane Brill: College Student (Adventures ’09 alum) Monica Cederberg: Graphic Design & Communications Anthony Carter: Associate @ A Better Chance David Johnson: University of Montana Graduate Student Tawney Hughes: Claremont McKenna College Student Samantha Kemp: Owner of Kemp Events (Adventures ’09 alum) Kimberly Kulla-Farmer: Agency Owner, Vivid Design LLC Marilou Jones: Founder of Montana Volleyball Academy Steve LaRance: Director of Corporate Image, Victoria Kasar: University of Southern California Graduate Washington Business Services (Adventures ’09 alum) Connie Tuttle: Agency Owner, Travel Matters Julia Phelps: Associate @ A Better Chance Dean Schaffer: PanAmerican Capital Partners UM Guides and Chaperones: Donna Schuller: Possibility Living Davone Tines: Master of Music Candidate, Juilliard Riley Austin Shannon Judge Libby Fletcher Marissa Kanners Hayley Botnen Nicole Hickey Drew Burfeind Crystal Hinderliter Zach Shell Alyssa Ziegler Chad Eichenlaub Tana Hopewell
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Photos from the 2009 Summit
2009 Host Charles Simonyi “passes the baton” to 2011 host Phyllis Washington.
Amy Tan and Bombo at Einstein’s house.
6 Nobel Laureates plus 3 prospective ones: John Nash, Kary Mullis, Ingrid Daubechies, Lisa Randall, Murray Gell-Mann, Sheldon Glashow, Robert Wilson, Juan Maldacena, Martin Chalfie
Missoula, Montana
Bill and Kathy Magee, Charles Simonyi, Dale Chihuly, Leslie Jackson Chihuly, Melanie Lawson, Naveen Jain
Welcome to IAS!
Lisa Randall, Billy Collins,Victoria Gray, Leslie Jackson Chihuly
June 23-26, 2011
2007 Summit
Princeton Professor Ingrid Daubechies attempts to go “where no mind has gone before.�
Celebrating Dr. and Mrs. Massey for hosting Adventures 2007.
Artists & The Creative Process: Wendell Castle Ginny Ruffner, Amy Myers,Therman Statom.
Phyllis Washington speaking to Adventurers.
Shahara Ahmad Llewellyn and her Llewellyn Scholars.
Junior Adventurers.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
2005 Summit
Kathy L’Amour and Jackie Parker.
5 Nobel Prize winners plus 2 runners-up.
Valerie Logan and Lee Hood.
Junior Adventurers playing midnight volleyball.
Murray Gell-Man, Junior Adventurers and Charles Simonyi.
Frank Sulloway and Darwin Bear.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
2003 Summit
Adventurers Irene Sun and Michael Li meet Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman at the Museum of Flight.
Jr. Adventurers chat with Charles Simonyi before he went to space twice.
Friday evening outing at the Chihuly Boathouse. Adventurers admire Venetian ceiling in Chihuly Boathouse.
Billy O’Neill & Nathan Myhrvold
Missoula, Montana
Nancy Jurs, Kathy L’Amour, Frank Sulloway, Phyllis Washington and Jr. Adventurers tour the Chihuly Hotshop.
June 23-26, 2011
Letters to Young People
Dear Young People..... Here are ten bits of advice from an old guy who has always done what he liked and got well paid for it. First, be lucky. Watch out for unexpected changes and be ready to jump at them whenever they come by. Second, be competent. Find out what you can do well, and work hard to do it better. Third, be active. Do not imagine that you need to learn everything before you can do anything. Fourth, be daring. Do not let fear of failure stop you from doing something great. Fifth, be cosmopolitan. Travel and learn foreign languages when you are young, and you will have friends all over the world when you are old. Sixth, be flexible. Always be ready to quit what you are doing and start a new career. Seventh, be generous. Give your enemies more credit than they deserve, and they will become your friends. Eighth, be lucid. In almost all professions, speaking and writing clearly is the way to become a leader. Ninth, be sharing. Working with a group to achieve a shared goal is usually more satisfying than working alone. Tenth, be loving. In the long run, family and friends are more important than work and career.
Freeman Dyson Scientist and Writer
Mr. Freeman Dyson is a British-born American theoretical physicist and mathematician, famous for his work in quantum field theory, solid-state physics, and nuclear engineering. He is a member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Dyson also did work in a variety of topics in mathematics, such as topology, analysis, number theory and random matrices. Professor Dyson’s friend, the neurologist and author Oliver Sacks, said: “A favorite word of Freeman’s about doing science and being creative is the word ‘subversive.’ He feels it’s rather important not only to be not orthodox, but to be subversive, and he’s done that all his life.”
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Letters to Young People, Cont’d Dear Young People...
Ernst Walter Mayr (July 5, 1904 – February 3, 2005) was one of the 20th century’s leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, historian of science, philosopher, and naturalist. Mayr is most noted for his development of the biological species concept and for illuminating the process of “speciation.” Although Charles Darwin successfully explained the origin of new species via natural selection, he was not as successful in articulating the process by which one species splits into two or more species. Mayr approached the problem with new and decisive empirical discoveries and with a new definition for the concept of species that revolutionized the field. Over the course of his lifetime, Ernst Mayr received every award possible for a scientist in his field. He published 10 books and more than 200 articles after he retired in 1975, more than most scientists publish in a lifetime. Mayr was still publishing when he died at the age of 100. 18 May 2011 Dear Young People, be happy. Eat lots of blueberries and
Darwin Bear
Darwin Bear spent his early years growing up in the Galápagos Islands. There, in October 1835, he met Charles Darwin and introduced the young naturalist to the evolutionary evidence that is so powerfully encapsulated in these islands. After being invited by Darwin to accompany him back to England on H.M.S. Beagle, Darwin Bear assisted the British naturalist with much of his subsequent scientific work, including the famous discussion about bears in the Origin of Species. More recently, Darwin Bear has made several expeditions back to the Galápagos Islands, where he is trying to eliminate an invasive species of raspberry by collecting all the berries and turning them into Darwinberry jam.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Letters to Young People, Cont’d
Dr. Robert Wilson is an American astronomer and Nobel laureate in physics who, with Arno Allan Penzias, discovered in 1964 the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), which served as important confirmation of the Big Bang theory. Dr. Wilson and Dr. Penzias also won the Henry Draper Medal in 1977. After their pioneering research on cosmic background radiation, Wilson and Penzias both enjoyed prolific and long-term careers at Bell Labs. In addition to the Nobel Prize, Dr. Wilson has received many awards for his work.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Letters to Young People, Cont’d
Carol Greider, Director, Department of Molecular Biology & Genetics Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine 601 Preclinical Teaching Building 725 North Wolfe Street Baltimore, MD 21205
Molecular Biology and Genetics
Dear Young People..... I believe three main attributes are essential to fostering creativity and rigor as a scientist: being truly curious, reading widely, and being self-critical. Biology is an empirical science that proceeds by trial and error (mostly error, I have found). To be able to get up every day and do experiments that will likely not work or give me an unhelpful result, I have to be working on something that I really care about. Then, when an experiment works, or when I have found out something new, the excitement is unbelievable. Reading high-quality papers in my field not only gives me the background I need to know, but also reminds me how good experiments are done. Reading critically and listening to scientific presentations often stimulates me to make new connections, both between unrelated fields and with my own thoughts and ideas. This synthetic creativity is deeply satisfying. Finally, after coming up with a new idea to test, I always try to be my own harshest critic. Testing a new hypothesis is fun, but testing a hypothesis means seeing if you can disprove it. We all have blind spots about the things we care the most about. Most really great hypotheses turn out not to be correct. If I have an interesting idea that I have presented to the scientific community, I want the privilege to be the one to disprove it, rather than having someone else disprove my favorite hypothesis. I try to think of the most critical experiments that would disprove my hypothesis and do them first. Then, when I have disproved my own published work, I also had to report it in the literature. Of course, creativity and rigor are not sufficient for success in science—one also needs a certain amount of cleverness, good hands, perseverance, and luck. But one does not necessarily have all of them to make a good scientist. Curiosity, wide reading, and self-criticism, on the other hand, I find are essential.
Carol Greider, Molecular Biologist
Dr. Carol Greider, Molecular Biologist & Geneticist, Nobel Laureate 2009, is a Daniel Nathans Professor and the Director of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the Johns Hopkins Institute of Basic Biomedical Sciences. She co-discovered the enzyme telomerase in 1984 while working under Elizabeth Blackburn at the University of California, Berkeley. She was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Medicine, along with Blackburn and Jack W. Szostak, for their discovery of how telomeres are protected from progressive shortening by the enzyme telomerase. (adapted from Wikpedia)
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Letters to Young People, Cont’d Dear Young People..... As you embark on your life journey, I urge you to prepare yourself for great adventure, precarious uncertainty, extraordinary success, and dismal failure. A bumpy road in life is both normal and healthy. Preparation for your journey is simple: believe in yourself, and be an honorable person; and no matter how many times you fall down, there will be other honorable people like yourself there to pick you up and dust you off so you can try again. A lot of people will have expectations of what you should make of yourself, and it is really important that you do your best to follow the path leading toward your dream career, for in the end, happiness is a far greater attainment than someone else’s idea of a good job. And one last thing, when you see a person who has fallen, be there for them. Best wishes,
JOHN “JACK” HORNER Regents Professor of Paleontology, Montana State University Curator of Paleontology, Museum of the Rockies Dr. John “Jack” Horner, MacArthur Fellow, is one of the world’s premier paleontologists. His career began in 1975 as a research assistant washing test tubes in the geology department at Princeton University, which led him to his current position as the curator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana. Dr. Horner discovered the first dinosaur eggs in the Western Hemisphere, the first evidence of dinosaur nesting, the first evidence of parental care among dinosaurs, and the first dinosaur embryos. He is also known as the technical advisor to Steven Spielberg for the Jurassic Park movies.
Dear Young People... If I knew you personally, the best advice I could give would probably run something like this: 1) Your success in life will most likely depend more on your greatest weakness than on your greatest strengths. Strive for a high minimum level rather than a high maximum level, over your whole range of activities. 2) Devote at least half of your professional life to communicating what you’ve learned; take every opportunity to practice and improve your ability to write about the things you discover. 3) Trust your judgement about what sorts of questions to tackle and what sorts of techniques to use. Don’t be swayed by trendy fashions. 4) If you find yourself bored, you still haven’t learned two of the most important skills of life, namely, how to make every experience interesting and how to ask interesting questions. 5) Instead of regarding science as a competition against other scientists, think of it as a competition against ignorance. 6) Don’t overestimate how much people have learned so far, or how powerful the known techniques are. We have just begun to scratch the surface of knowledge. On the other hand, pay attention to historical developments, and learn how great works of the past made their contributions. 7) Science is great but it isn’t everything. Other things – like love – are eve more important. Science is not incompatible with spirituality. A good journey is more beneficial than making a destination.
Donald Knuth Donald Knuth is a computer scientist and Professor Emeritus at Stanford University. Knuth has been called the “father” of the analysis of algorithms. In addition to fundamental contributions in several branches of theoretical computer science, Knuth is the creator of the TeX computer typesetting system, the related METAFONT font definition language and rendering system, and the Computer Modern family of typefaces.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Letters to Young People, Cont’d Giving advice is a kind of cheating... You’ve spent a dozen or so years being told your score – being graded and measured in all sorts of ways. It’s easy to make the mistake of thinking that those measurements define the shape of your life. They tell you that your grades decide how you do in college, which decides how good a job you get. Now, in some ways, this is true. If you don’t work hard in school, you’re denied a huge number of interesting opportunities, and it can be very hard to make up for that. But working hard on the assignments you’re handed isn’t enough. There’s no group of administrators who slots you into a job based on your GPA. I got my first job at NASA because I found a flyer for an internship in a hallway at my school, one which it turned out no one else had bothered to apply for. On a trip at the end of the internship, I heard that the engineer driving the van was a young-earth creationist, so I sat up front to try to argue (politely) with him. Later, we exchanged a few emails about it, and he asked if I wanted to do some work in his robotics lab. I don’t think, when he offered me the job, that he even knew what my major was, let alone my GPA, SATs, or anything like that. He just knew I was interested in the subject and had a little relevant experience. Now, I wouldn’t have qualified for that first internship if my grades had been terrible. But the grades didn’t give me the opportunity – it’s not your grade in an advanced class that matters, it’s the people it brings into your life, the questions it gives you, the skills you pick up, the experiment you play with, the book you read, and the other random things that happen while you’re trying to get through the work. Your measurements don’t give you the opportunities. They just provide a backdrop to your life. The foreground, the choices and friendships and chance meetings and projects, are what build a life, and they’re not something anyone will grade you on. Oh, and don’t worry if high school is rough. The coolest parts of the game are still ahead! Randall Munroe Randall Munroe is a programmer best known for creating the webcomic xkcd. After graduating from the Chesterfield County Mathematics and Science High School at Clover Hill, he graduated from Christopher Newport University in 2006 with a degree in Physics. Randall worked as an independent contractor for NASA at the Langley Research Center before and after his graduation. In January 2006 his NASA contract lapsed and he began to write xkcd full-time. Mr. Munroe now supports himself by the sale of xkcd-related merchandise. The webcomic quickly became very popular, garnering up to 70 million hits a month by October 2007.
Dear High School Students..... We live in exciting times with unprecedented opportunities to enjoy life and contribute to society. One key to a happy life is to find a job that makes you want to wake up on a Monday morning anxious to get to work because its fun. Don’t get a job just because the pay is good. Money is useful, but most smart people make more than they really need. Money doesn’t bring happiness, the best it can do is facilitate an easy life style, and perhaps give your more time to do what you really enjoy doing. Another lesson I learned early was that luck is important. From time to time we all get lucky breaks. Don’t waste them! When a piece of luck comes your way make the most of it. Concentrate hard on the next move so that you can avoid just wasting that lucky break. Another lesson that some people never fully appreciate is that we all contribute to the successful running of our society, from the intelligent to the lowliest of our fellow humans. Treat EVERYBODY well, regardless of their job or standing in life. Finally, strive to be the best you can. Don’t settle for second best because it is the easy option. Most of us only reach our peak when we are challenged and have to dig deep within our selves to answer the challenge. Don’t give up a the first hint of failure or because you are scared you won’t succeed. We all make mistakes for most of us that is the only way we learn. I wish you a happy and successful life. Rich Roberts 1993 Nobel Laureate, Physiology in Medicine Sir Richard Roberts is an English biochemist and molecular biologist. He was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Phillip Allen Sharp for the discovery of introns in eukaryotic DNA and the mechanism of gene-splicing. The main theme of his work in biology has centered on the belief that we must know the structure of the molecules we work with if we are to understand how they function. Dr. Roberts was knighted in the 2008 Birthday Honours.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
is home to the Sa
lish, Pend d’Oreille
and Kootenai tr
WHAT, WHEN, WHERE
Western Monta na
ibes.
Glacier National Park and Water National Park comprise the ton Lakes world’s first International Peace Park.
Explorers Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery first passed through Montana in 1805 on their exploration of the newly-acquired Louisiana Purchase. The expedition’s tasks included finding an all-water route across the country, mapping sites for forts and trading posts, establishing diplomatic relations with native tribes, and scientifically recording the plant and animal species they found along the way. Though the Northwest Passage proved mythical, the famous explorers accomplished many objectives within the land now known as Montana. The earliest authorized edition of the Lewis and Clark journals resides in the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library at The University of Montana.
Schedule of Events June 23-26, 2011 THURSDAY, JUNE 23
all day
ARRIVAL
Adventurers arrive via Plane, Train, & Automobile
all day CHECK-IN
Adult Check-In, DoubleTree – snacks Student Check-In, Knowles Hall – snacks
1:00 – 4:30 pm “M” Walk/Hike Glacial Lake Missoula Tours
View Missoula from Mt. Sentinel Volunteer Guides await you at the base (see map) Wear athletic shoes, hat and sunscreen
1:00 – 4:30 pm Tour Prescott House
A restored Victorian home built in1898 Volunteer Guides will meet you there (see map)
4:45 – 5:30 pm
Student Orientation
Montana Theater
5:30 – 7:00 pm
Opening Ceremonies
Montana Theater
7:00 – 7:30 pm
DEPARTURE
Depart from Montana Theater
7:30 – 10:30 pm Barbeque & Shindig
at the Washington Family’s Grant Creek Ranch, the historical home of Jeannette Rankin. Festive Western attire encouraged. Bring a jacket– it gets chilly after the sun goes down!
9:00 – 10:30 pm
DEPARTURE
Depart for DoubleTree & Dorm
Adult reception
Reception continues at Finn & Porter, DoubleTree
10:30 pm
11:00 to close
Wylie and the Wild West,Thursday June 23rd 9:00 pm “Wylie Gustafson is the coolest cowpoke around.” Singer, songwriter, rancher, horseman, and the original, world-famous Yahoo!® yodeler, – Wylie Gustafson leads the musical outfit known as The Wild West.
Summit Tips • • • • • • •
Please wear your badge at all times. If you lose your badge please visit our command post on the first floor of the Phyllis J. Washington School of Education. Double-check that cell phones and electronic devices are turned off throughout the Summit. Please be sure to take your seats promptly after meals and breaks. We have a full program and must remain on schedule. If you leave the theater during the program, you may be asked to wait in the lobby until the next scheduled break. All food should be restricted to the Montana Theater lobby, please do not return to your seat with anything other than bottled water. Snacks and beverages will be plentiful throughout the day. If you have questions or need assistance, please look for our volunteers wearing an Adventures orange shirt. Audience members and participants may be photographed or otherwise recorded for use by Student Achievement & Advocacy Services and The University of Montana. Two seats are reserved at every dining table for Mentors.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Schedule of Events, Cont’d FRIDAY, JUNE 24 7:00 – 8:45 am DEPARTURE Breakfast
7:00 – 8:45 am
9:00 – 10:45 am MORNING SYMPOSIUM A 10:45 – 11:15 am
Break / Java Time
11:15 – 12:45 pm MORNING SYMPOSIUM B Lunch / BREAKOUT SESSIONS
1:00 – 2:30 pm
Depart DoubleTree for campus via bus every 15 minutes or nice 0.4 mile walk along the river Food Zoo “Discover Your Brain” Montana Theater Montana Theater foyer “Capitalism & Conservation” Montana Theater Phyllis J.Washington College of Education & Human Sciences
2:45 – 4:00 pm AFTERNOON SYMPOSIUM A
“Nobel Aspirations” Montana Theater
4:15 – 5:15 pm AFTERNOON SYMPOSIUM B
“Science: The Ultimate Adventure” Montana Theater
5:30 – 7:00 pm
Dinner on the Oval
University of Montana Oval
7:00 – 7:30 pm
DEPARTURE
Depart for Missoula Children’s Theater
7:30 – 9:30 pm Montana Children’s Theater
Creativity & Expression: Planned or Spontaneous
9:30 – 10:00 pm
DEPARTURE
Depart for UM Campus
10:00 – 11:30 pm
Student Dance / Game room Adult Reception
Knowles Hall Prescott House
10:30 – 11:30 pm DEPARTURE Adult Reception
11:30 to close
Depart campus for DoubleTree via bus or nice 0.4 mile walk along the river Reception continues at Finn & Porter, DoubleTree
BREAKOUT SESSIONS, Friday, June 24, 1:00 - 2:30 pm
1
Thinking Like a Winner
2
The Art of Photography
3
The Environment in 50 Years – Will we make it?
4
So YOU Want to be a WRITER?
5
Math is not just for Nerds!
6
Building a Business
Breakout Sessions are small seminars for 30-50 Adventurers. This is a unique opportunity to have an in-depth conversation with the Mentors. Generally there are 3-4 Achievers leading a discussion on the topic. All sessions are available on a first-come, first-served basis. All sessions are held at the Phyllis J.Washington College of Education & Human Sciences. You will be guided a mere 100 yards from the Montana Theater to the atrium where you will pick up your delicious lunch to take to the classroom of your choice. Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Schedule of Events, Cont’d SATURDAY, JUNE 25 7:00 – 8:45 am DEPARTURE 7:00 – 8:45 am
Depart DoubleTree for campus via bus every 15 minutes or nice 0.4 mile walk along the river
Breakfast
Food Zoo
9:00 – 10:45 am Morning Symposium A 10:45 – 11:15 am
Break – Java Time
1 1:15 am – 12:45 pm Morning Symposium B 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm
Lunch / BREAKOUT SESSIONS
“The Frontiers of Technology”, Montana Theater Montana Theater foyer “You can make a difference!” Montana Theater Phyllis J.Washington College of Education & Human Sciences)
2:45 – 4:30 pm Afternoon Symposium
“Finding Your Niche in Life” Montana Theater
4:30 – 5:30 pm Break / Java Time
Free time to prepare for evening festivities. Adults depart for DoubleTree
5:30 – 6:00 pm DEPARTURE
Depart DoubleTree for campus via bus or nice 0.4 mile walk along the river
6:30 – 9:00 pm Hall of Champions Tour / Dinner & Celebration
On the 50-yard line, Washington-Grizzly Stadium Dress is festive/dressy, but not formal. No jeans.
9:30 – 11:30 pm
Student Dance / Game room Knowles Hall
9:30 – 11:30 pm Adult Reception
Phyllis J.Washington College of Education & Human Sciences – 3rd Floor Atrium
10:30 – 11:30 pm DEPARTURE
Depart campus for DoubleTree via bus or nice 0.4 mile walk along the river
Adult Reception
11:30 to close
Reception continues at Finn & Porter, DoubleTree
BREAKOUT SESSIONS, Saturday, June 25, 1:00 - 2:30 pm
1
The Future of Technology
2
The Future of Education
3
Fun with Physics!
4
The Creative Process
5
So YOU Want to be a WRITER?
6
21st Century Explorers
a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, “ It isn’tBut it is a calamity not to dream.”
Missoula, Montana
—Dr. Benjamin Mays, Mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. June 23-26, 2011
Schedule of Events, Cont’d SUNDAY, JUNE 26 8:00 – 10:00 am DEPARTURE
Depart DoubleTree for campus via bus every 15 minutes or nice 0.4 mile walk along the river
8:00 – 10:00 am
Food Zoo
Breakfast
all day DEPARTURE
A
Old Grant Creek Rd.
The University of Montana 32 Campus Dr., 243-0211
F
B
DoubleTree Inn 100 Madison (Across the foot bridge from U of M) 728-3100
RE
EK
Airway Blvd. Exit 99
TC
C
Missoula Children’s Theatre
GR
AN
200 N Adams St. (Corner of Adams and Broadway) 728-7529
D
Reserve St. Exit 101
Corner of Railroad and North Higgins
E
The Washington Companies Headquarters 101 International Dr. (Corner of International and Reserve) 523-1300
ona
l Dr.
90
E
F
Grant Creek Ranch 7700 Grant Creek Rd., 721-1210
G
Missoula International Airport 5225 Hwy 10 West, 728-4381
To Airport
AY DW
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RUSSELL
BR
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A OR
Orange St. Exit 104
Toole
D
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DW AY
Ra
ren
BR
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Bu
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University
A
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Campus
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East Missoula Exit 106
Beckwith Arthur
BR
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HIGGINS
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BR
S. 6th
S EN
Van Buren Exit 105
Foot Bridge
S. 5th
RUSSELL
G
The Washington Achievement Center
Madison
To Spokane, WA
Depart via Plane, Train, & Automobile Healthy bag lunches available
To Butte, MT
To Hamilton, MT South
Missoula, Montana
93
June 23-26, 2011
Missoula, Montana
Adventures Functions will be in these locations
June 23-26, 2011
Event Locations
About the Event Venues Nicknamed “The Garden City,” Missoula lies halfway between Glacier and Yellowstone national parks and has been mentioned in novels by authors ranging from Ernest Hemingway to Norman Maclean. The Missoula Valley was born from the wake of the 3,000 square mile Glacial Lake Missoula that covered the area during the last ice age. Archeologists have found evidence of settlements dating back to 3,500 B.C. and artifacts dating back nearly 12,000 years. Once home to Salish, Kootenai, Pend d’Oreille, Blackfeet, and Shoshone tribes, Missoula Valley’s eastern entrance was filled with so many human bones from the continuing conflict between local Native American tribes and passers-through that it became known as “Hell’s Gate”. The name stuck, as evidenced by Hellgate Canyon and Hellgate High School. Perhaps the most notable people to pass through the area were explorers Lewis and Clark who stopped at Traveler’s Rest, just south of Missoula, twice during their expedition in the early 1800s. Settlement of the Missoula area began shortly thereafter and the United States Army established Fort Missoula in 1877. In 1883, the Northern Pacific Railway reached Missoula, driving the growth of industry in Missoula. The end of the 19th century through the 20th century saw the creation of the University of Montana, the age of the Copper Kings, the rise and decline of the local logging industry, and the growth of Missoula as a retail and service center.
PHOTO: MARK GORSETH
For the 60,000+ residents and those who visit Missoula, there truly is something for everyone. During the winter, skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing, and ice fishing provide ample outdoor recreation opportunity, while summer months are filled with hiking, fly fishing, river rafting, and bicycling. During late spring, summer, and early fall, downtown Missoula hosts the colorful Farmers’ and People’s markets, which offer fresh produce and local crafts. The city also hosts the International Wildlife Film Festival, a minor league baseball team – the Missoula Osprey, the Missoula Art Museum, the World Affairs Council of Montana, and the Missoula Children’s Theatre. As stated in the book How to Get an Ivy League Education at a State University, Missoula is, “…a Rocky Mountain Berkeley… the kind of place many people hate to leave.”
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
PHOTO: MERLE LOMAN
PHOTO: TODD GOODRICH
MISSOULA, MONTANA
About the Event Venues, Cont’d In 1893, Missoula won the vote to become home to the state’s first university. Today, it offers more than 60 majors, over 50 fields of study for master’s degrees, and nearly a dozen doctoral programs. With a record of academic excellence that includes 7 Pulitzer Prize winning alumni, 11 Truman Scholars, 14 Goldwater Scholars, 31 Udall Scholars, and 28 Rhodes Scholars. From the World Trade Center on campus, to a world-renowned facility for ecological studies and freshwater research, to the state-of-the-art Phyllis J. Washington College of Education and Human Sciences, to the monitoring of global warming for NASA, The University of Montana Campus is filled with unique opportunities. Adding to the academic attraction of the University is the allure of the campus and surrounding area. The 220-acre campus is framed by Mount Sentinel, the Clark Fork River, and the city of Missoula, and is minutes from the Rattlesnake National Recreation Area and Wilderness trailhead. Main Hall, at the center of campus, houses a 47-bell carillon and stands opposite a bronze grizzly bear statue representing the school mascot. In recent years, The University of Montana has won acclaim by Rolling Stone magazine as the “most scenic campus in America” and by Outside magazine for ranking, “…among the top 10 colleges nationally for combining academic quality and outdoor recreation.” With excellent academic programs, active campus life, beautiful environment and friendly atmosphere, The University of Montana offers an educational opportunity unlike any other.
MISSOULA CHILDREN’S THEATRE (MCT) Founded in 1970, Missoula Children’s Theatre set forth with the goal of developing live theatre for kids. The concept quickly evolved into casting youngsters into local community productions affording them valuable exposure to theatre arts. Years later MCT teams in their famous little red trucks bring productions to communities across the country and the world. Their new facility opened in 1998 and serves as home to both Missoula Children’s Theatre and MCT Community Theatre.
Missoula, Montana
PHOTO: MAUREEN ROY
PHOTO: TODD GOODRICH
THE UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA
June 23-26, 2011
PRESCOTT HOUSE The Prescott House was once the homestead of Montana state legislator and county commissioner Charles R. Prescott. The childhood home of his wife, Julia Prescott, served as inspiration for this Queen Anne-style house, built in 1898. In 1955, the University of Montana purchased the property and granted lifetime tenancy to Charles Prescott, Jr. who resided there until his death in 1993. In 1995, Phyllis J. Washington over saw the renovation of the landmark for the University, completing the 11-room building with period furnishings. In 1999, the Prescott House won a Historic Preservation Award and it is currently a National Register Listed Property.
WASHINGTON-GRIZZLY STADIUM Washington-Grizzly Stadium is home to the Montana Grizzlies football team, two-time national champions and consistent leaders in the Division I Football Championship Subdivision. Named for Dennis Washington, who donated its construction in 1985, the facility now houses more than 25,000 people for events ranging from football games to concerts by major acts which have included Pearl Jam and the Rolling Stones.
PHYLLIS J. WASHINGTON SCHOOL OF EDUCATION Dedicated in 2009, this school was carefully designed to attract and train the most effective teachers in the United States. The 27,000 square foot addition to the original Education building is a platform for utilizing the latest technology, offering multimedia production studios, classrooms with Smart Boards and iPads, the largest Omniglobe at any U.S. university, and an actual operating preschool. Preparing the future of our nation’s education, the Center focuses on early childhood education, math and science instruction, and distance learning.
GRANT CREEK RANCH The verdant and beautiful area surrounding Grant Creek attracted settlers towards the end of the 19th century, including John and Olive Rankin, whose daughter, Jeannette Rankin, became the first woman elected to the United States House of Representatives. The Washington family acquired the property in 1985, which now operates as a working ranch. The ranch is habitat for a variety of wildlife from big game to cutthroat trout.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
View of the Miss
oula Valley from
Mt. Sentinel.
The eastern entrance to Missoula Valley was known to French fur trappers as “Porte d’Enfer”, translated to “Hell’s Gate”, as a result of the Photo c.1910. ambushes that left bones littering the Hell Gate Store, an1860 trading post. canyon area. In 1860, Christopher P. Higgins and Frank L. Worden built the Hell Gate Store as a trading post on this mountain travel corridor. A few years later, they built a sawmill and a flour mill upriver dubbed Missoula Mills. The mills formed an economic center for a growing town to be called Missoula, a derivation of the historical Salish name meaning “place of freezing/cold water”.
MENTORS: HONORED SPEAKERS, ALUMNI, VOLUNTEERS
’s first building. rsity of Montana 1896. ve ni U e Th as w ril 7, Main Hall was placed on Ap The cornerstone
Mentoring in Montana A mentor is defined as a wise and trusted counselor or teacher. Mentor was the name of a character in Greek mythology who was the trusted counselor to Odysseus’s son Telemachus. Mentoring can take place during a brief conversation or over a lifetime. We are honored to announce an amazing roster of achievers who will be mentoring our student scholars over the next few days. This list includes the Adventures Class of 2011, Alumni Mentors, and our Montana Mentors:
Class of 2011
Richard Anders Co-Founder Rubin/Anders Scientific, Inc Founder, Mass Medical Angels Rick Bass Writer & Environmental Activist Rebecca Bendick Geologist & Professor, UM Roger Bingham Co-Founder, The Science Network John Buck Sculptor & Print maker Matt Bundle Associate Professor, Dept. of Health & Human Performance – Director, Biomechanics Lab, UM Deborah Butterfield Sculptor Roz Chast Cartoonist & Writer Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Writer & Professor of Psychology Jeremy Denk Pianist Bonnie Dunbar Astronaut & Engineer Royce Engstrom President, The University of Montana Dick Heckmann Water Entrepreneur Ben Huh CEO, ICanHasCheezburger.com Walter Kirn Novelist & Screenwriter William Kittredge Chronicler of the American West Karl Marlantes Novelist & Rhodes Scholar Robert McCurdy Artist Deborah D. McWhinney Head, Citi Global Enterprise Payments Peter Norvig Director of Research, Google Stephen Roulac Founder, Roulac Group Brent Ruby Director, Montana Center for Work Physiology & Exercise Metabolism, UM Steve Running Nobel Peace Prize M. Sanjayan Lead Scientist at The Nature Conservancy Alex and Andrew Smith Filmmakers, Screenwriters, Professors Richard Taylor Nobel Prize in Physics Mark Tercek President & CEO, Nature Conservancy Anna Thomas Screenwriter & Cookbook Author Matt Trevithick Partner, Venrock Stephen Wolfram Founder & CEO, Wolfram Research
Missoula, Montana
Alumni Mentors
Jean Auel ‘03 Best-selling Author Dalton Conley ‘09 Dean for Social Sciences, NYU Jacques d’Amboise ’09 American Ballet Legend Rita Dove ‘03 United States Poet Laureate 1993-1995 Claudia Dreifus ‘09 “Science Times” New York Times Annie Duke ’09 Winner of 2004 World Series of Poker George Dyson ‘05 Historian of Technology Murray Gell-Mann ‘05 Nobel Prize in Physics Sheldon Glashow ‘03 Nobel Prize in Physics Larry Gonick ‘07 Cartoonist Victoria Gray ‘03 Founder, Adventures of the Mind Carol Greider ‘03 Nobel Prize in Medicine Brad Grossman ‘05 Creative Adviser and Producer Jack Horner ‘03 Paleontologist, MacArthur Fellow Naveen Jain ‘09 Co-founder Intelius Inc. Joanna Klink ‘09 Poet & Professor, Harvard Kathy L’Amour ‘03 Publishing Melanie Lawson ’09 Award-winning journalist, ABC Jennifer 8 Lee ‘09 Writer & Journalist
Louis Lerman ‘09 Co-founder, The Insitu Group, Inc John Lilly ‘09 Technology Guru, Greylock Partners Shahara Ahmad-Llewellyn ‘05 Writer & Philanthropist Bill and Kathy Magee ‘09 Operation Smile Co-Founders Mary McFadden ‘09 Fashion Archeologist Mark Moffett aka Dr. Bugs ‘03 Naturalist and Photographer Kary Mullis ‘03 Nobel Prize in Chemistry Gerry Ohrstrom ‘11 Research Investor & Philanthropist Lisa Randall ‘05 Author & Physics Professor, Harvard Richard Roberts ‘03 Nobel Prize in Medicine Ginny Ruffner ‘03 Artist Charles Simonyi ‘03 Software Pioneer Charlesinspace.com Frank Sulloway ‘03 Darwin Scholar, MacArthur Fellow Amy Tan ‘03 Novelist & Explorer Herschel Walker ‘05 Heisman Trophy Winner & Entrepreneur Sam Wang ‘09 Author & Neuroscientist, Princeton Dennis Washington ‘03 Montana-based industrialist and philanthropist Phyllis Washington ‘03 Education & Philanthropy Robert Wilson ‘09 Nobel Prize in Physics
Montana Mentors
Martin Horejsi Educational Technology David Allan Cates Associate Professor, Phyllis J. Washington College of Novelist & Professor of Journalism, UM Education and Human Sciences UM David Cody Stephen Kalm Professor of Music, UM Dean, College of Visual & Performing Arts, UM Christopher Comer Marc Mariani Dean, College of Arts & Sciences, UM NFL Wide Receiver for Tennessee Titans, UM Alum Ray Cross Nancy Marra Professor of Law, UM Director of Field Experiences, Robert Currie Phyllis J. Washington College of Education and Director, Montana Digital Academy Human Sciences, UM Roberta Evans L. Scott Mills Dean, Phyllis J. Washington College of Education Professor of Wildlife Biology, UM and Human Sciences, UM Robin Pflugrad Amanda Fortini Head Football coach, UM Writer, “New Yorker” Prageeta Sharma Mike Halligan Professor of English, UM Executive Director, Dennis and Phyllis Washington Sheila Stearns Foundation Montana Commissioner of Higher Education Susan Harper-Whalen Kimberlee Visser Associate Dean, Phyllis J. Washington College of Board of Directors, Missoula Children’s Theater Education and Human Sciences, UM Dirk Visser CEO, Allegiance Benefit Plan Management
June 23-26, 2011
Class of 2011 Richard Anders
Co-Founder Rubin/Anders Scientific, Inc – Founder, Mass Media Angels
Entrepreneurship – Science – Food Richard Anders, J.D., co-managing director of Rubin/Anders Scientific, is an entrepreneur with a background and interest in computers. A lawyer by training, he founded Jurisoft, which he sold to Lexis/Nexis, he published newspapers, and was a founding trustee of the Massachusetts Interactive Media Council.
Rick Bass
Writer & Environmental Activist
Mountains – Activism – Yoga Rick Bass was born in Fort Worth, Texas, the son of a geologist, and he studied petroleum geology at Utah State University. He grew up in Houston and started writing short stories on his lunch breaks while working as a petroleum geologist in Jackson, Mississippi. In 1987, he moved with his wife, the artist Elizabeth Hughes Bass, to the remote Yaak Valley near Troy, Montana, where he worked to protect his adopted home from roads and logging.
Rebecca Bendick
World Geologist,The University of Montana
Mountains – Exploration – Physics Rebecca Bendick, Ph.D., studies the deformation of the Earth’s lithosphere over a range of length scales from thousands to tens of kilometers. She is especially interested in understanding the mechanisms that produce the continental landscape, especially how landscape is related to the simple forces associated with tectonics and topography.
Roger Bingham
Co-Founder,The Science Network
Neuroscience – Writer – Minds Roger Bingham is a scientist, writer, and public television producer. He is co-founder and director of The Science Network and creator of the Beyond Belief conferences. His work has been said to “represent some of the best and most sensitive popular discussion of cuttingedge science available.”
John Buck Artist
Prints – Sculpture – Wood John Buck is a sculptor and print maker who works in wood, bronze, and glass. He has received many awards and commissions, and has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions.
Matt Bundle
Associate Professor, Department of Health and Human Performance, and Director of the Biomechanics Laboratory, UM
Running – Body – Mechanics Matt Bundle studies how much the human body can endure and use those results to ensure safety and performance in tough work environments. Matt Bundle is the director of The University of Montana’s Biomechanics Laboratory. His research endeavors focus on examining the link between the energetics and mechanics of both human and comparative locomotion.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Class of 2011, Cont’d Deborah Butterfield Sculptor
Horses – Sticks – Art Deborah Kay Butterfield is an American sculptor. She is best known for her sculptures of horses made from found objects, like metal, and especially pieces of wood.
Roz Chast
Cartoonist & Writer
Art – NYC – Parrots Roz Chast has loved to draw cartoons since she was a child growing up in Brooklyn. She attended Rhode Island School of Design, majoring in painting because it seemed more artistic. However, soon after graduating, she reverted to type and began drawing cartoons once again.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Writer & Professor of Psychology
“Flow” – Meaning – Engagement Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a Hungarian psychology professor, who emigrated to the United States at the age of 22. Now at Claremont Graduate University, he is noted for both his work in the study of happiness and creativity and for his notoriously difficult name, but is best known as the architect of the notion of flow.
Jeremy Denk Pianist
Solo – Keys – Masters American pianist Jeremy Denk has steadily built a reputation as one of today’s most compelling and persuasive artists with an unusually broad repertoire. During the 2010-11 season, Denk release his first solo recording, Jeremy Denk Plays Ives.
Bonnie Dunbar
Astronaut & Engineer, Museum of Flight
Space – Engineering – Blast-off Dr. Dunbar became a NASA astronaut in August 1981. A veteran of five space flights, Dr. Dunbar has logged more than 1,208 hours (50 days) in space. She served as a mission specialist on STS 61-A in 1985, STS-32 in 1990, and STS-71 in 1995, and was the Payload Commander on STS-50 in 1992 and STS-89 in 1998.
Royce Engstrom
President,The University of Montana
Canoes – Chemistry – Leadership The University of Montana’s 17th President, Dr. Royce C. Engstrom, came to Missoula in 2007 from the University of South Dakota, where he was a Professor of Chemistry, and Dean of the Graduate School. Throughout his career, President Engstrom has been an enthusiastic participant in undergraduate research.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Class of 2011, Cont’d Dick Heckmann Water Entrepreneur
Entrepreneurship – Water – Opportunity Serial entrepreneur, Richard J. Heckmann, is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Heckmann Corporation, a holding company of China Water and Drinks Inc. He is also the Chief Executive Officer of K2 Sports, and Chief Executive Officer and President of Siemens Water Technologies Corp.
Ben Huh
Media Entrepreneur – CEO, ICanHasCheesburger.com
Curious – Driven – Improving Ben Huh is the owner of the phenomenally popular blog, I Can Has Cheezburger, which, along with lolcats, features comical pictures of cats with captions, and other animal images. The website is one of the most popular internet sites displaying lolcats receiving as many as 1,500,000 hits per day. ICHC was instrumental in bringing animal-based image macros and lolspeak into mainstream usage.
Walter Kirn
Novelist & Screenwriter
Critic – Novelist – Airworld Walter Kirn is an American novelist, literary critic, and essayist. His latest book is the 2009 memoir Lost in the Meritocracy: The Under Education of an Overachiever.
William Kittredge Chronicler of the American West
Education – Never – Ends William Kittredge (born 1932) is an American writer from Oregon, United States. He became a major voice with his 1987 collection of essays, Owning It All, about the modern West. He followed with his famous book, Hole in the Sky: A Memoir. His book The Nature of Generosity holds forth on the value of what he terms extreme long loop altruism.
Karl Marlantes Novelist & Rhodes Scholar
Salmon – Football – Literature Karl Marlantes was raised in a small logging town in Oregon. He attended Yale University on a National Merit Scholarship and Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship. He made his living as an international consultant in strategy, mostly for energy companies, and is the author of the New York Times best seller, Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War.
Robert McCurdy Artist
13th Century – Chinese – Poetry Robert McCurdy is an American artist known mainly for his oil painting portraits. He is featured in the National Portrait Gallery and known internationally for his unique and masterful portrait painting style.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Class of 2011, Cont’d Deborah D. McWhinney Head, Citi Global Enterprise Payments
Passion – Perspective – Purpose Deborah McWhinney has been President of personal banking and wealth management and Head of global digital merchant acquiring at Citigroup, Inc. Ms. McWhinney served as Chief Personal Wealth Overseer of Citigroup, Inc. until February 14, 2011.
Peter Norvig
Director of Research, Google
Uncertainty – Diligence – Clarity Peter Norvig is an American computer scientist and is currently the Director of Research (formerly Director of Search Quality) at Google Inc. He is a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and the Association for Computing Machinery.
Stephen Roulac Founder, Roulac Group
Entrepreneurship – Visionary – Strategist Stephen Roulac is a nationally recognized expert on strategic management, capital markets, securitization, institutional investing, and property analysis/valuation. He organized, led, and had major impacts on developing national consulting practices of Kenneth Leventhal and Deloitte & Touche.
Brent Ruby Director, Montana Center for Work Physiology & Exercise Metabolism, UM
Create – Innovate – Challenge Brent Ruby is the Director of the Montana Center for Work Physiology and Exercise Metabolism at the University of Montana. Dr. Ruby walks the line between his work as a research scientist and his play as an ultra-endurance triathlete and runner. He strives to integrate his creative thoughts and love of physical activity into an aggressive research plan to better understand the upper limits of human performance.
Steve Running Nobel Peace Prize
Mountains – Bike – Wine Steven W. Running, Ph.D. in Forest Ecology, has been with the University of Montana, Missoula since 1979, where he is a University Regents Professor of Ecology. His primary research interest is the development of global and regional ecosystem bio-geochemical models. He is a Team Member for the NASA Earth Observing System, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectro-radiometer, and he is responsible for the EOS global terrestrial net primary production and evapotranspiration data sets.
M. Sanjayan
Lead Scientist,The Nature Conservancy
Nature – Exploration – Wildlife M. Sanjayan is the lead scientist for The Nature Conservancy, where he specializes in human well-being and conservation, Africa, wildlife ecology, and media outreach and public speaking on conservation issues. Sanjayan’s scientific work has been published in journals including Science, Nature, and Conservation Biology.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Class of 2011, Cont’d Alex Smith
Filmmaker, Screenwriter, Professor
Awareness – Empathy – Words Alex Smith is a filmmaker, screenwriter, educator and author of short fiction. He teaches Screenwriting and Directing at the University of Texas at Austin, and is the Creative Director of the University of Texas Film Institute, where he recently produced the feature film Dance With The One. Alex, along with his twin brother Andrew, co-wrote and co-directed the award-winning feature film, The Slaughter Rule. The brothers have written for F/X, Fox Searchlight, Columbia Pictures, HBO, Disney and ESPN Films.
Andrew Smith
Filmmaker, Screenwriter, Professor
Integrity – Simplicity – Cine-poem Andrew’s essays and poetry have been published in literary and national magazines, including Gulf Coast, Surface, GQ, and Ploughshares. He has taught at the University of Iowa, the Gotham Writers’ Workshop, and is an Assistant Professor in the Media Arts program at the University of Montana. Andrew, along with his twin brother Alex, co-wrote and co-directed the awardwinning feature film, The Slaughter Rule. The brothers have written for F/X, Fox Searchlight, Columbia Pictures, HBO, Disney and ESPN Films.
Richard Taylor Nobel Prize in Physics
Physics – Fishing – Alberta Richard Edward Taylor, CC, FRS, FRSC is a Canadian-American professor (Emeritus) at Stanford University. In 1990, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Jerome Friedman and Henry Kendall “for their pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model in particle physics.”
Anna Thomas Screenwriter & Cookbook Author
Film – Food – Stories Anna Thomas is an Academy Award nominated screenwriter, as well as a producer, director and author, with film credits including El Norte, Frida, and My Family, Mi Familia. Thomas is also the author of four best-selling cookbooks, including The Vegetarian Epicure and Love Soup, and her food writing has appeared in major publications.
Mark Tercek
President and CEO,The Nature Conservancy
Japan – Habitat – Paperboy Mark Tercek is president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy, a leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. The Conservancy uses a science-based, collaborative approach to solve complex global challenges.
Matt Trevithick
Partner, Venrock – Alternative Energy & Nanotechnology
Clean-energy – Entrepreneurship – Venture-capital Matt Trevithick joined Venrock in 2004 after a 4-year investigation of energy-related applications of nanotechnology. Matt previously co-founded and sold two software companies - LiquidMarket, a product search and comparison shopping service, acquired by NBC Internet in 1999 and Flash Communications, a developer of instant messaging technology.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Class of 2011, Cont’d Stephen Wolfram
Founder & CEO, Wolfram Research Creator, Wolfram Alpha
Science – Technology – Business Stephen Wolfram is a distinguished scientist, inventor, author, and business leader. He is the creator of Mathematica, the author of A New Kind of Science, the creator of Wolfram|Alpha, and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research.
Mentors Jean Auel ‘03 Best-Selling Author
Writer – Paleo-archeology – Grandmother Popular, best-selling author of such books as Clan of the Cave Bear, her first novel, which was published after she turned 40. Subsequent books have been international best sellers and she has received numerous awards.
Dalton Conley ‘09 Dean for Social Sciences, NYU
Socio – Economic – Status Dr. Dalton Clark Conley is an American sociologist. He is best known for his contributions to understanding how socioeconomic status is transmitted across generations.
Jaques D’Amboise ‘09
American Ballet Legend – Founder, National Dance Institute
Dance – Education – Passion Jacques d’Amboise is a well-known American ballet dancer and choreographer. Jacques was a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, where ballets were especially created for him by famous choreographer George Balanchine. Mr. d’Amboise has also choreographed ballets for the New York City Ballet.
Rita Dove ‘03
United States Poet Laureate 1993-1995
Poetry – Opera – Dance Rita Dove is a former U.S. Poet Laureate (1993-1995) and recipient of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Her most recent poetry collections are Sonata Mulattica (2009) and American Smooth (2004). She is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Mentors, Cont’d Claudia Dreifus ‘09
“Science Times”The New York Times”
Journalism – Nature – Teaching Ms. Claudia Dreifus writes for the Tuesday science section of the New York Times. She is known internationally for her interviews with scientists, policy makers, and international figures. She is an author and a professor at Columbia University.
Annie Duke ‘09
Winner of 2004 World Series of Poker
Probability – Chance – Africa Ms. Annie Duke is a professional poker player and author who won a bracelet in the 2004 World Series of Poker and was the winner of the 2004 World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions, where she earned the Winner-Take-All prize of $2,000,000.
George Dyson ‘05 Historian of Technology
Kayak – Technology – vonNeumann George Dyson is a scientific historian, the son of Freeman Dyson, brother of Esther Dyson. He is the author of Project Orion: The Atomic Spaceship and Darwin Among the Machines. He once lived in a treehouse in British Columbia at a height of 30 meters.
Murray Gell-Mann ‘05 Nobel Prize in Physics
Birds – Quarks – Patterns Dr. Murray Gell-Mann is Professor and Co-Chairman of the Science Board of the Santa Fe Institute, and author of the popular science book, The Quark and the Jaguar. In 1969, Dr. Gell-Mann received the Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. As a recipient of myriad honorary degrees and a member of many leading science organizations, Gell-Mann is an international representative and advocate for the sciences.
Sheldon Glashow ‘03 Nobel Prize in Physics
Puzzles – Physics – Family Dr. Sheldon Glashow is the Metcalf Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Boston University. He was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979 with Abdus Salam and Steve Weinberg for their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles.
Larry Gonick ‘07 Cartoonist
Science – History – Comics Larry Gonick is a cartoonist best known for The Cartoon History of the Universe, a history of the world in comic book form, which he has been publishing in installments since 1977. The diversity of his interests, and the success with which his books have met, have together earned Gonick the distinction of being the most well-known and respected of cartoonists who have applied their craft to unraveling the mysteries of science.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Mentors, Cont’d Victoria Gray ‘03 Founder, Student Achievement & Advocacy Services
Financial literacy – Horses – WWF Victoria Gray is the founder of Student Achievement & Advocacy Services, an organization dedicated to helping exceptionally promising young people meet their full potential. She also created the Achievement Advocate Certificate for Financial Literacy “AACFL”, providing online personal financial and management skills for grades 5 and up.
Carol Greider ‘03 Nobel Prize in Medicine
Chromosomes – Photography – Adventure Carol Greider is a molecular biologist at Johns Hopkins University. She discovered the enzyme telomerase in 1984, when she was a graduate student of Elizabeth Blackburn at the University of California, Berkeley. Greider pioneered research on the structure of telomeres, the ends of the chromosomes. She was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with Blackburn and Jack W. Szostak of Boston, Massachusetts, for their discovery that telomeres are protected from progressive shortening by the enzyme telomerase.
Brad Grossman ‘05 Creative Adviser and Producer
Curiosity – Creativity – Culture Brad Grossman is a cultural and creative advisor and producer who works with leaders in all fields. He’s the founder of Grossman & Partners and of the Zeitguide‚ a cultural report he customizes for clients.
Jack Horner ‘03
Paleontologist, MacArthur Fellow
Dinosaurs – Explore – Learn Dr. John “Jack” Horner is one of the world’s premier paleontologists. In 1975, he was hired as a research assistant in the Museum of Natural History at Princeton University, where he worked until 1982. From 1982 until the present he has worked at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana, where he is Curator of Paleontology. Dr. Horner was the technical advisor to Steven Spielberg for the movies Jurassic Park and its sequel, The Lost World.
Naveen Jain ‘09 Co-Founder, Intelius Inc.
Entrepreneur – Philanthropist – Exponential Technology Mr. Naveen Jain is a business executive and an entrepreneur, founder of InfoSpace and Intelius. As a child and young man, Mr. Jain witnessed firsthand the dire effects of poverty and illiteracy in Northern India, especially upon women and children. Mr. Jain vowed that one day he would put himself in a position to help his fellow Indians, as well as anyone who is held back by lack of education, sexism, and grinding poverty.
Joanna Klink ‘09 Poet & Professor, Harvard
Poems – Bicycles – Being-outside Professor Joanna Klink is the author of They Are Sleeping and Circadian. Her poems have appeared in Chicago Review, Boston Review, The Kenyon Review, and other journals. A recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, she has been a permanent member of the poetry faculty at the University of Montana since the fall of 2001. Ms. Klink’s poem Thoughts on Fog was a feature on Poetry Daily.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Mentors, Cont’d Kathy L’Amour ‘03 Publishing
Books – Kids – Animals Kathy L’Amour is the administrator of a minor publishing empire, the works of her late husband, famed author Louis L’Amour. Born in southern California, the daughter of a land developer and a silent movie star, she grew up in the environment of Hollywood and on ranches. After marrying Louis L’Amour, she acted as her husband’s business manager and agent, and has since managed his intellectual property through five decades. Kathy L’Amour has used her position in publishing to distribute over one million free books to our military stationed all over the world.
Melanie Lawson ‘09 Award-Winning Journalist, ABC
Joy – Service – Explore Melanie Lawson has received many accolades for her work in journalism, including an Emmy for her coverage of President Clinton’s visit to South Africa, the only local reporter in the nation to make that trip. Melanie has interviewed a wide range of notables, including three U.S. Presidents, Henry Kissinger, the Dalai Lama, poet Maya Angelou, Grammy Award winners Destiny’s Child, former heavyweight champion boxer George Foreman, director Spike Lee and legendary journalist Barbara Walters.
Jennifer 8 Lee ‘09 Writer & Journalist
Spunky – Creative – Journalist Jennifer 8. Lee is an American journalist. Ms. Lee was not given a middle name at birth and later chose her own middle name. She chose 8 as a teenager because of the prevalence of her first name. She has worked with The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Newsday and The New York Times while working on her applied mathematics and economics degree and writing for The Harvard Crimson. She currently writes for the Metro section of The New York Times.
Louis Lerman ‘09 Co-founder,The Insitu Group, Inc
Flotilla – Technology – Nuclear physics Louis Lerman Ph.D. has wide experience in science, technology, and business, and is a member on the Insitu board of directors. He started his career as a researcher in astrophysics, geophysics, and nuclear physics. While at Stanford, as a Hertz Fellow in the Applied Physical Sciences, Louis led the development of a flotilla concept for low-earth orbiting unmanned space systems.
John Lilly ‘09
Technology Guru, Greylock Partners
Nerd – Curious – Reader Prior to Greylock, John was CEO of Mozilla, the organization behind Firefox. He is currently a Consulting Assistant Professor at Stanford’s d.school, and an adviser to the Stanford Technology Ventures Program as well as SSE Labs, an incubator at the University.
Shahara Ahmad-Llewellyn ‘05 Writer & Philanthropist
Perseverance – Patience – Purpose Shahara Ahmad-Llewellyn is the former owner and Vice Chairman of the Philadelphia CocaCola Bottling Company, the largest Coke bottler in the U.S. She is a founding member of Jazz at Lincoln Center, where she serves as Vice Chair, and The New 42 Street Corporation where she is also Vice Chair. She is a member of the Student Achievement Advisory Council, which matches Adventures of the Mind mentors with high-potential student Adventurers.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Mentors, Cont’d Bill Magee ‘09
Operation Smile Co-Founder
Dream – Believe – Achieve Dr. Bill Magee is a leading plastic and craniofacial surgeon who devotes half of his professional life as a volunteer to Operation Smile, the organization that he and his wife Kathy began in 1982. Dr. Magee joins Operation Smile’s volunteer reams on numerous overseas missions each year to perform reconstructive surgery.
Kathy Magee ‘09 Operation Smile Co-Founder
Exemplary – Compassionate – Driven Kathy Magee, a former nurse and clinical social worker, serves as President of Operation Smile on a full-time, volunteer basis and is a lifetime member of the Board of Directors.
Mary McFadden ‘09 Fashion Archeologist
Fashion – Designer – Archeologist Ms. Mary Josephine McFadden is an American fashion designer and writer. Her career has included Director of Public Relations, Dior New York, merchandising editor, Vogue - South Africa, Vogue - Paris, and special projects editor, American Vogue, New York. She has received many honors including the President’s Fellows Award of the Rhode Island School of Design and has served as President of the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Ms. McFadden’s collections have been shown on runways in New York, Paris, Rome, Milan, and Tokyo.
Mark Moffet aka Dr. Bugs ‘03 Naturalist and Photographer
Loves – Lady – Bugs Dr. Mark Moffett is a modern-day explorer, who regularly goes where few people have been before. He’s a Harvard-trained ecologist and award-winning photographer, and has penned more than 24 articles for National Geographic Magazine, which has featured nearly 500 of his images. He is responsible for more covers for National Geographic than any other photographer.
Kary Mullis ‘03 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Bacteria – Physics – Climate-Fear Dr. Kary Mullis is a biochemist. He shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Michael Smith, receiving the prize for his development of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), which allows the amplification of specific DNA sequences. The improvements provided by Dr. Mullis have made PCR a central technique in biochemistry and molecular biology.
Gerry Ohrstrom ‘11 Research Investor & Philanthropist
Serendipity – Counter-intuitive – Pencils Gerry Ohrstrom is a director of various companies and nonprofit organizations, including the Reason Foundation, the Property and Environment Research Center, the International Policy Network, and the American Council on Science and Health. Gerry is a member of the President’s Council at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and of the New York Academy of Science and has been a board member of Africa Fighting Malaria since 2007.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Mentors, Cont’d Lisa Randall ‘05
Author & Physics Professor, Harvard
Climbing – String – Theory Dr. Lisa Randall is an American theoretical physicist and a leading expert on particle physics and cosmology. She works on several of the competing models of string theory in the quest to explain the fabric of the universe, and was the first tenured woman in the Princeton University physics department and the first tenured female theoretical physicist at MIT and Harvard University.
Richard Roberts ‘03 Nobel Prize in Medicine
Introns – Molecular – Biology Dr. Richard Roberts is an English biochemist and molecular biologist. He was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Phillip Allen Sharp for the discovery of introns in eukaryotic DNA and the mechanism of gene-splicing. The main theme of his work in biology has centered on the belief that we must know the structure of the molecules we work with if we are to understand how they function. Dr. Roberts was knighted in the 2008 Birthday Honours.
Ginny Ruffner ‘03 Artist
Art – Garden – Imagining Ginny Ruffner is a renowned glass artist who also explores and blends many mediums including painting, sculpture and glassblowing. She is former President of the Glass Art Society and taught at the Pilchuck Glass School (co-founded by Dale Chihuly). She is recipient of the Urban Glass Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She is best known for her innovative and colorful lamp-worked sculptures. Her art has been featured in many museums and galleries, and she has been commissioned to create public art.
Charles Simonyi ‘03 Software Pioneer
2x Space Traveler Mr. Charles Simonyi is a computer software executive who, as head of Microsoft’s application software group, oversaw the creation of Microsoft’s flagship office applications. In 2007, he became the fifth space tourist and the second Hungarian in space. Mr. Simonyi returned to space in 2009.
Frank Sulloway ‘03 Darwin Scholar, MacArthur Fellow
Siblings – Darwin – Freud Dr. Frank J. Sulloway is a Visiting Scholar in the Institute of Personality and Social Research at the University of California, Berkeley. He has a Ph.D. in the history of science from Harvard University and is a former MacArthur Fellow (1984-1989). Dr. Sulloway has written about the nature of scientific creativity and he has published extensively on the life and theories of Charles Darwin.
Amy Tan ‘03 Novelist & Explorer
Coincidence – Luck – Fate Ms. Amy Tan started off as a business writer before trying her hand at fiction. Her first book The Joy Luck Club won The National Book Award and the L.A. Times Book Award in 1989. Her other novels include The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, and Saving Fish from Drowning, all New York Times best sellers and recipients of various awards. She is also the author of a memoir, The Opposite of Fate, two children’s books, The Moon Lady and Sagwa, and numerous articles for magazines.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Mentors, Cont’d Herschel Walker ‘05
Heisman Trophy Winner & Entrepreneur
Sports – Chicken – Endurance Herschel Junior Walker is an mixed martial artist and a former American football player. He played college football for the University of Georgia Bulldogs and earned the 1982 Heisman Trophy. He began his professional career with the New Jersey Generals of the United States Football League (USFL) before entering the National Football League (NFL). In the NFL he played for the Dallas Cowboys, Minnesota Vikings, Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1999.
Sam Wang ‘09
Author & Neuroscientist, Princeton
Brain – Surprise – Consilience Dr. Samuel S. H. Wang is an associate professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton University. He graduated with honors in physics from the California Institute of Technology and holds a doctorate in neuroscience from Stanford University School of Medicine. His career includes research at Duke University Medical Center and at Bell Labs Lucent Technologies, and science and education policy work for the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources. Dr. Wang’s current research focuses on the cerebellum, a brain region that coordinates sensation, movement, and higher cognition.
Dennis Washington ‘03
Montana-based industrialist and philanthropist
Machines – Ideas – People Dennis R. Washington built a remarkable career as an industrialist and entrepreneur, rising from humble beginnings to being listed among the Forbes 400. Dennis owns or has an interest in the Washington Companies, including Montana Rail Link, Envirocon, Modern Machinery, Southern Rail of BC and the Seaspan Marine Corporation An avid philanthropist, Dennis is a founding member of the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation and has created several significant scholarships and fellowships.
Phyllis Washington ‘03 Education and Philanthropy
Colorful – Creative – Curious Phyllis J. Peterson Washington is expert in the field of interior decorating and owns Phyllis Washington Antiques in Palm Desert, California. Phyllis graduated from the University of Montana with a degree in Education, and began teaching primary grades in Missoula. An ardent advocate for education, she holds an honorary Doctorate of Education from the University of Montana and The Phyllis J. Washington College of Education and Human Sciences is named in her honor. Phyllis also serves as chairperson of the Dennis & Phyllis Washington Foundation, founded in 1988. The Washingtons have two sons, Kevin and Kyle, who will be attending the Montana Adventures of the Mind Summit.
Robert Wilson ‘09 Nobel Prize in Physics
Astrophysics – Environment – Instrumentation Dr. Robert Wilson is an American astronomer, Nobel laureate in physics, who with Arno Allan Penzias discovered in 1964 the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), which served as important confirmation of the Big Bang theory. Dr. Wilson and Dr. Penzias also won the Henry Draper Medal in 1977. After their pioneering research on cosmic background radiation, Wilson and Penzias both enjoyed prolific and long-term careers at Bell Labs. In addition to the Nobel Prize, Dr. Wilson has received many awards for his work.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Montana Mentors David Allan Cates
Novelist & Professor of Journalism, UM
Air – Light – Stories David Cates is a novelist and teacher, and the director of an organization that does health work in impoverished areas of Honduras.
David Cody Professor of Music, UM
Opera – Choral – Scarface Dr. David Cody is active as a tenor soloist in opera and in concert, as a conductor and musical director, and as a stage director. He has sung many leading and supporting roles with such companies as The Opera Theater of St. Louis. At The University of Montana, Dr. Cody teaches voice, co-directs the UM Opera Theater, and directs the UM Women’s Chorus.
Christopher Comer
Dean, College of Arts & Sciences, UM
Neuroscience – Sensorimotor – Imagination Christopher Comer is a professor of biology & Neuroscience and the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Montana. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago and has been at Cornell University and the University of Illinois at Chicago before coming to Missoula. His research is on sensorimotor integration and the evolution of brain circuits, and he teaches and writes on brain, mind, and the artistic imagination.
Ray Cross
Professor of Law, UM
Tribal Member – Lawyer – Advocate Professor Cross teaches Indian Law, American Cultural and Religious Freedoms, and Public Land and Natural Resources Law. He works extensively with Indian tribes and federal agencies on issues of Indian education, tribal self-determination, and cultural and natural resources preservation. He served as attorney for his tribal people, the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. Professor Cross is a 1973 graduate of Yale Law School.
Robert Currie
Director, Montana Digital Academy
Virtual – Education – Online Robert Currie is the Executive Director of the Montana Digital Academy (MTDA) at The University of Montana. MTDA served over 4500 online student enrollments in its first year of operation, 2010-11. Prior to starting MTDA he was the Executive Director of the Michigan Virtual School and held numerous positions in K-12 education. He is active in the U.S. online school movement currently serving on the advisory board of the Monterey Institute for Technology in Education and as a presenter at the Virtual School Symposium.
Roberta Evans Dean, Phyllis J. Washington College of Education and Human Sciences, UM
Principals – Mountains – Grizzlies Roberta (Bobbie) Evans is Dean and Professor of Educational Leadership in the Phyllis J. Washington College of Education and Human Sciences at The University of Montana. After having been a K-12 educator, she earned a doctorate at the University of Nevada, Reno, in educational administration, specializing in education law and personnel evaluation.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Montana Mentors, Cont’d Amanda Fortini Writer, “New Yorker”
Ranches – Words – Curiosity Amanda Fortini is a writer living in Los Angeles. She has written for The New Yorker, The New Republic, New York Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, and Slate, among other publications. Her essays have been published in several anthologies including Best American Political Writing 2008, The Best of Slate: A 10th Anniversary Anthology, and An Uncertain Inheritance: Writers on Caring for Family. She is a summa cum laude graduate of Harvard University.
Mike Halligan
Executive Director, Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation
Perseverance – Ethics – Outdoors Mike Halligan was born and raised in Montana. A Vietnam combat veteran, he has a Bachelors of Arts, A Masters in Public Administration and a law degree from the University of Montana. He worked 22 years in the Montana Senate. Currently, he serves as Director of Government and Public Relations and Executive Director of the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation at the Washington Companies.
Susan Harper-Whalen
Associate Dean, School of Education, UM
Possibility – Family – Montana A shared passion for both teaching and learning has guided Susan’s professional journeys as an elementary education teacher, student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education investigating effective teacher change processes, clinical specialist in a university-based preschool program, professional grant writer with research focused on the inclusion of children with disabilities in early childhood settings, and currently as the Associate Dean of the Phyllis J. Washington College of Education and Human Sciences
Martin Horejsi
Educational Technology Associate Professor, School of Education, UM
Technology – Wilderness – Metorites If you combine a restless science teacher who loves the outdoors with a writer and photographer who collects meteorites and holds an unabashed fondness for the cutting edge, and dreams of flying through space while racing his mountain bike as he designs curriculum for NASA missions, you get a Professor of Instructional Technology at the University of Montana. And that’s me.
Stephen Kalm
Dean, College of Visual & Performing Arts, UM
Opera – Literature – Artistic Stephen Kalm has sung with many of America’s leading regional opera companies such as the Houston Grand Opera. Dr. Kalm has a B.M. in vocal performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, an M.A. in performance and literature from Queens College and a D.M.A from City University of New York. He is currently Dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts at The University of Montana.
Marc Mariani
NFL Wide Receiver for Tennessee Titans, UM Alum
Titans – Football – Go wide In 2006 Mariani played in all 14 games for Montana. He set a school record with 2,265 all-purpose yards, which is the fifth most in Big Sky Conference history. Mariani finished his college career as one of the most successful receivers in the college’s history with records in career receiving yards, receiving touchdowns and career all-purpose yards. Mariani was drafted by the Tennessee Titans in the 7th round of the 2010 NFL Draft and later signed a 4-year deal with the team.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Montana Mentors, Cont’d Nancy Marra
Director of Field Experiences, School of Education, UM
Travel – Read – Hike Nancy Marra grew up in Butte, Montana, and received her Masters of Education at The University of Montana. She has been in education for many years, teaching at the elementary level, serving as an Environmental Education Specialist for grades k-12, and as a Gifted Education specialist for grades k-8.
L. Scott Mills
Professor of Wildlife Biology, UM
Ecology – Ethics – Conservation Dr. L. Scott Mills research has led to key advances in applying ecological science to wildlife conservation. His research ranges from marmots in Olympic National Park to fruit bats in the Philippines. He has published over 85 scientific articles and has given hundreds of professional presentations, including testimony to the U.S. Congress on the role of ethics in conservation science.
Robin Pflugrad Head Football coach, UM
Head – Football – Coach Pflugrad (pronounced: flew-grad) is UM’s 34th head football coach. Pflugrad is a veteran coach, instrumental in the development of numerous quarterbacks and wide receivers who have received All-American recognition, along with several all-conference honorees, academic all-conference athletes, and academic All-Americans.
Prageeta Sharma Poet
Poems – Peonies – Play Prageeta Sharma is an associate professor of English and director of the MFA program at the University of Montana and author of three poetry collections, Bliss to Fill (2000), The Opening Question (2004), which won the 2004 Fence Modern Poets Series prize, and Infamous Landscapes (2007). She is also the recipient of the 2010 Howard Foundation Grant.
Sheila Stearns
Montana Commissioner of Higher Education
Reading – Writing – Family Dr. Sheila Stearns is Commissioner of Higher Education, the chief executive officer for the Montana University System with 11 universities and colleges. She has served as president of colleges in Nebraska and Montana, and started her career as a middle-school English teacher.
Kimberlee and Dirk Visser Board of Directors, Missoula Children’s Theater CEO, Allegiance Benefit Plan Management
Art – Community – Creative Kimberlee Visser is a fifth generation Montanan. She believes the country’s most valuable resource is our youth and their great minds. Kimberlee is most happy when she is being creative. Dirk Visser has founded and grown several businesses in the employee benefits, insurance and financial services industry over the past 30 years. Dirk enjoys vintage sports cars, wooden boats, skiing, and playing guitar.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Corps of Volunteers Ellen Agler ‘03
Missoula, Montana
Brian Hunt ‘07
Vice-president, Operation Smile
Writer and Search Guru, Gravitate Design Studio
Zhena Beresina ‘07
Penny Kauth ‘09
Researcher, BBC London
Event Planner Extraordinaire, The Washington Companies
Rebecca Glashow ‘03
Susan Koehler ‘09
Vice-President, Discovery Networks
CMO, Intelius, Inc.
Victoria Gray ‘03
Justin Kovac
Founding Cat Wrangler, Adventures of the Mind
Strategy Analyst, Provide Commerce
Lynette Hall ‘03
Beau L’Amour ‘07
Director of Student Recruitment, Adventures of the Mind
Film and Publishing
Rachel Horoschak ‘03
Kathy L’Amour ‘03
Library and Information Specialist, Adventures of the Mind
President, Louis L’Amour Enterprises
June 23-26, 2011
Corps of Volunteers, Cont’d Michael Li ‘05
Keith Wilkerson ‘09
Ph.D. Candidate, Princeton University
Senior Program Manger, A Better Chance, Inc.
Laurel Marlantes ’09
John Wu ‘09
Actor and Producer
Student, Stanford University
Kelly HughesMilodragovich ‘09 Associate, The Phyllis and Dennis Washington Foundation
Sam Milodragovich ‘09 Student, UM
AND..... New Recruits to the Corps Shane Brill ‘09 Anthony Carter Tawney Hughes ’09 Marilou Jones Victoria Kasar ’09 Julia Phelps Dean Schaffer Donna Schuller Davone Tines
Jeff Parrott ‘05 President, Sapyence Management Group
Steve Rosenthal, M.D. ‘05 Malaria Vaccine Institute, National Institutes of Health
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Errata.... Robert Currie
Director, Montana Digital Academy
Sports – Outdoors – Grandchildren Robert Currie is the Executive Director of the Montana Digital Academy (MTDA) at The University of Montana. MTDA served over 4500 online student enrollments in its first year of operation, 2010-11. Prior to starting MTDA he was the Executive Director of the Michigan Virtual School and held numerous positions in K-12 education. He is active in the U.S. online school movement currently serving on the advisory board of the Monterey Institute for Technology in Education and as a presenter at the Virtual School Symposium.
Roberta Evans Dean, Phyllis J. Washington College of Education and Human Sciences, UM
Principals – Mountains – Grizzlies Evans is Dean and Professor of Educational Leadership in the Phyllis J. Washington College of Education and Human Sciences at The University of Montana. After having been a K-12 educator, she earned a doctorate at the University of Nevada, Reno, in educational administration, specializing in education law and personnel evaluation.
Susan Harper-Whalen Associate Dean, Phyllis J. Washington College of Education and Human Sciences, UM
Possibility – Family – Montana A shared passion for both teaching and learning has guided Susan’s professional journeys as an elementary education teacher, student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education investigating effective teacher change processes, clinical specialist in a university-based preschool program, professional grant writer with research focused on the inclusion of children with disabilities in early childhood settings, and currently as the Associate Dean of the Phyllis J. Washington College of Education and Human Sciences
Martin Horejsi
Educational Technology Associate Professor, Phyllis J. Washington College of Education and Human Sciences, UM
Technology – Wilderness – Meteorites If you combine a restless science teacher who loves the outdoors with a writer and photographer who collects meteorites and holds an unabashed fondness for the cutting edge, and dreams of flying through space while racing his mountain bike as he designs curriculum for NASA missions, you get a Professor of Instructional Technology at the University of Montana. And that’s me.
The School of Education at The University of Montana was proudly renamed in 2010. Please note that in this program, School of Education refers to the Phyllis J. Washington College of Education and Human Sciences. Matt Bundle Matt Bundle is the assistant professor in the Department of Health and Human Performance, part of UM’s Phyllis J. Washington College of Education and Human Sciences. He comes to UM from the University of Wyoming, where he was an assistant professor in the College of Health Sciences and director of the university’s Biomechanics Laboratory. A team of scientists made headlines in 2008 when their findings helped overturn an International Association of Athletics Federations ban on 400-meter sprinter and Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius, a double-amputee from South Africa who runs on carbon-fiber lower-limb prostheses. Pistorius continues to compete against some of the best able-bodied athletes in the world. Bundle and his colleague Peter Weyand have argued that their testing identified new advantages for Pistorius and that if his artificial limbs performed as biological limbs do, his time would be 10 seconds slower over a 400-meter race. Bundle and Weyand have continued to make headlines with their studies on the extremes of human gait and speed. Bundle received a bachelor’s degree from Harvard College in 1996 and a doctorate from UM in 2005. His main research interests include biomechanics, neuromuscular physiology and motor control. He has been an invited speaker at international scientific conferences, offered coaching and clinical seminars for the USA Track and Field Association and the American Academy of Orthotics and Prosthetics, published articles in top scientific journals and secured a patent for a method of assessing the metabolic basis of physical fitness.
Brent Ruby Brent Ruby is the director of UM’s new Montana Center for Work Physiology and Exercise Metabolism, Ruby and center research staff John Cuddy, Walter Hailes, and Tyler Tucker strive to create a better understanding of applied human physiology, working in both laboratory and field settings. Center researchers study how much the human body can endure, using their results to ensure safety and high performance in tough work environments such as special military operations, wildland firefighting and ultra-endurance races. Ruby, who also is a research professor in UM’s Department of Health and Human Performance in the College of Education and Human Sciences, uses the new state-of-the-art facility to push the limits of energy expenditure research much like the endurance athletes he studies push their bodies in competition. Ruby received his a bachelor’s degree from Seattle Pacific University in 1989 and his masters and doctorate from The University of New Mexico in 1994. Ruby is a triathlete himself, and has competed in among others, the Ironman World Championship – a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2-mile run in Kona, HI.
Missoula at ni
ght as seen fr om Waterwor
ks Hill.
g celebrations.
The “M” is a supe rb from which to vie vantage point w the campus.
Visible above the town on the slope of Mount Sentinel is a large white letter “M” that has become a landmark for The University of Montana and the city of Missoula itself. It was first constructed in c. 1957. 1908 by university students. Originally made of The Freshman class painting the “M”, whitewashed rocks, it only measured 25 feet by 25 feet. For years, freshmen made the hike up to maintain it until 1968, when a 125 by 100 foot concrete “M” was built. Now, every year during Homecoming Week, UM students adorn the famous letter with lights to welcome former students back to the University. The hike up the zig-zag trail is a popular exercise and affords a great view of the valley.
STUDENT SCHOLARS
ring Homecomin
alight du The University is
Scholars Speak Out “This experience has truly changed my life and the way I look at my interests and surroundings. I’ve come to realize that symbolic notions, while seemingly great, might mean nothing when placed side by side with true passion and a desire to succeed or reach a goal.”
John Wu, ’09 Simonyi Scholar, Princeton, NJ, Stanford University Class of ‘14 “After meeting all these extremely successful people I am really encouraged and have actually started to believe in that the sky is not the limit.”
Riana Shah, ’09 Llewellyn Scholar, New York, NY, Swarthmore College Class of ‘14
“Adventures of the Mind is one of those experiences that will stick with you for a lifetime. The friends and memories I made, the insights I gained, and the opportunity to pursue knowledge in such a unique environment are all things that only this program can provide. I wish every high school student could participate in this summit, but I feel very lucky to be an official Adventurer.”
Kevin Grover, ‘09 Washington Scholar, Missoula, MT, St. John’s University Class of ‘13 “A few recurring messages stuck: First off, it is fine, in fact normal, to not know what I want to do with my life. Secondly, in order to reach success, failure is practically inevitable, but it is those who persevere through their hardships that succeed. Finally, in order to be truly successful, I should pursue whatever interests me and makes me happy, not what others tell me I should do. I know that I will remember these pieces of wisdom forever.”
Lauren Edelson, ‘09 L’Amour Scholar, Portland, OR, Stanford University Class of ‘14 “Adventures was enlightening! I learned how we are all geniuses in our own way. I learned how much we have in common as influential young people from all over the country. It also was an amazing friendnetworking experience.”
Azeem Hill, ‘09 Llewellyn Scholar, Philadelphia, PA, The New School: Eugene Lang College Class of ‘15 “Adventures is a truly amazing experience. The full range of amazing accomplishments represented is both humbling and inspiring. I first attended Adventures as a high school student and I’ve been back ever since as a volunteer because I believe so strongly in this program.”
Michael Li, ‘03 Mhyrvold Scholar, Portland, OR Princeton University Class of ‘07 Cambridge University Class of ‘09 Marshall Scholar, Hertz Fellow, Ph.D Candidate at Princeton University
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
2011 Adventurers from Coast to Coast Alaska
Montana
Maine
Washington
Vermont
Minnesota Oregon
Massachusetts
Idaho
Connecticut Michigan Nebraska
Pennsylvania
New Jersey Delaware
Iowa Ohio
Nevada
Maryland
Illinois Utah
California
District of Columbia
Kansas
Colorado
Virginia Missouri
Kentucky N. Carolina S. Carolina
Arizona Georgia Texas Louisiana
Mississippi Florida
Careers Paths that our Student Scholars are Exploring:
Arts
Building
Business
Education
“Adventurer”
Professional
Public Service
Science
Thank you to cartoonist, Larry Gonick. Larry Gonick – the world’s most overeducated cartoonist, creates comics that explain history, science, and other big subjects. Why such heavy stuff? “Because I’ve made it my mission to bring people the information they need to make wise decisions about the future of the human community. I’m only trying to save the world here.”
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Student Adventurers Naiem Ahmed Llewellyn Scholar Bronx Center for Science and Math Bronx, NY
Dedicated Math Basketball
Hayley Barnett Llewellyn Scholar Bard High School New York, NY
Theatricality Lincoln Softball
Alyssa Bashor Washington Scholar Big Sky High School Missoula, MT
Scuba Diving Debates Shakespeare
Lowry Bass Visser Scholar Hellgate High School Missoula, MT
Traveling Whales Music
Rasika Bhalerao Jain Scholar Forest RIdge School Redmond, WA
Lerman Scholar Ridgefield High School/ Juilliard Pre College Ridgefield, CT
Music Passion Creation
Anscia Brown Ferguson Scholar SEED Public Charter School Washington, DC
Creative Unique Business
Brianna Burgess First Interstate Scholar Shepherd High Shepherd, MT
Science Motivation Open-minded
Amma Calhoun Ferguson Scholar Bullis School Washington, DC
Outgoing Abstract Thinker
Hyisheem Calier LeFrak Scholar Rice High School New York, NY
Mathematics Gymnastics Rock-climbing
Hardwork Integrity Empowerment
Talia Bornstein
Samuel Carroll
Visser Scholar LaGuardia HS of Music, Art & Performing Arts New York, NY
Performing Travel Food
Missoula, Montana
Madeleine Bouissou
Washington Scholar Conrad High School Conrad, MT
Track Football Music
June 23-26, 2011
Student Adventurers, Cont’d Paul Casison
Madison Cole
Marathon My Father Lechon
Seize The Day
Dac Cederberg
Mayra Contreras
Literature Music Psychology
Books Music Basketball
Briana Chang
Ben Cook
Saban Scholar Claremont High School Pomona, CA
Washington Scholar Sentinel High School Missoula, MT
Llewellyn Scholar Cambridge School of Weston Brooklyn, NY
Poetry Culture Dance
Angela Chen Ohrstrom Scholar The Hotchkiss School Vestel, NY
Music Service Learning
Kevin Chen
Heckmann Scholar Princeton Day School/ Juilliard Pre-College Princeton, NJ
Music Science Optimistic
Marie-Charlotte Clark Tan Scholar The Calhoun School New York, NY
Writing Art Expression
Missoula, Montana
Washington Scholar Sentinel High School Missoula, MT
Heckmann Scholar Wilson High School Los Angeles, CA
Myhrvold Scholar Branson School San Anselmo, CA
ACLU SAR Mountains
Marlee Cox
BNSF Foundation Scholar Mehlville High School St. Louis, MO
Fearless Writer Nerdfighter
Carson Craig Ohrstrom Scholar Wakefield School Haymarket, VA
Perservering Courage Studious
Miguel Cruz Feld Scholar George T. Baker Aviation School Hialeah, FL
Intelligent Comprehensive Fast
June 23-26, 2011
Student Adventurers, Cont’d Gabriel Delabra
Maude Duke
Massey Scholar Lyons Township HS Countryside, IL
Walker Scholar Bridges Academy Los Angeles, CA
History Bismarck Politics
I Like Food
Louie DeMetre
Tornyeli Dzivenu
L’Amour Scholar La Reina High School Westlake Village, CA
Tercek Scholar Western Reserve Academy Piscataway, NJ
Music Theatre Communications
Football Biology Drums
Jessie Devine Washington Scholar Stevensville HS Stevensville, MT
Brilliant Creative Explosive
Katina Dinh Llewellyn Scholar Agnes Irwin School Philadelphia, PA
Anime/Manga Art Music
Julius Dixon Ohrstrom Scholar Hotchkiss School Lakeville, CT
Look Listen Learn
Seth Drew
Gell-Mann Scholar Sidwell Friends School Washington, DC
Interest Communicative Creative
Missoula, Montana
Aaron Effron
Microsoft Research Scholar Brookline High School Brookline, NY
Physics Music Soccer
Justin Eisenberg Walker Scholar North Springs Charter HS Roswell, GA
Law Science Math
Kelton Enich Washington Scholar Big Sky High School Missoula, MT
Writing Running Travel
Amy Enrione Ferguson Scholar Hunter College HS Brooklyn, NY
Economics Foodie Walking
June 23-26, 2011
Student Adventurers, Cont’d Drew Estep
Paola Garcia
Visser Scholar Hellgate High School Missoula, Montana
Heckmann Scholar The Marin School San Francisco, CA
Politics Computers Strategy
Travel Art Music
Elisabeth Fisher
Alexander Gaye-Techera
Ferguson Scholar Sidwell Friends School Washington, DC
Science Creativity Travel
Patricia Flores-Perez Jain Scholar Bishop Blanchet HS Seattle, WA
Chemistry Curious Committed
Brandon Ford Llewellyn Scholar W. Philadelphia High School Philadelphia, PA
Look Listen Learn
Eden Ford Washington Scholar Three Forks HS Three Forks, MT
Math Sports Family
Peter Frisch Llewellyn Scholar Friends Seminary Brooklyn, NY
Humor Music Math
Missoula, Montana
Clark Scholar George T. Baker Aviation School Miami, FL
Mechanical Revolutionary Creative
Michelle Geng Lilly Scholar Glenda Dawson HS Pearland,TX
Motivated Goofy Creative
Jaime Gilden Washington Scholar Libby High School Libby, MT
Biology Athletics Engineering
Laureli Gilman Feld Scholar Edgewater High School Winter Park, FL
Facetious Intelligent Amiable
Jazmin Gonzalez-Rivero Microsoft Research Fellow Winchester HS Winchester, MA
Robotics Video-games Anime
June 23-26, 2011
Student Adventurers, Cont’d Briana Guillory
Washington Scholar Bozeman High School Bozeman, MT
Look Listen Learn
Biology Travel Dance
Karisma Gupta
Fabiola Hernandez
Myhrvold Scholar Lakeside School Sammamish, WA
Bosley Scholar Saint Margaret’s Episcopal San Juan Capistrano, CA
Biology Engineering Medicine
Create Imperfect Art
Jerusalem Hadush
Hopi Hernandez
Jain Scholar University Prep Seattle, WA
Saban Scholar Crossroads School for the Arts and Sciences Los Angeles, CA
Sports Motivated Languages
Explore Imagine Active
Ryan Halligan
Courtney Honken
Visser Scholar Sentinel High School Missoula, MT
Look Listen Learn
Sarah Hankin
Washington Scholar Frenchtown High School Frenchtown, MT
Montana Volunteering Math
Madeline Horner
Lee Scholar Emma Willard School Kinderhook, NY
Myrvold Scholar
Newspaper Music Geometry
Look Listen Learn
Jessica Harris Simonyi Scholar Davis High School Farmington, UT
Family Faith Physics
Missoula, Montana
Cecilia Heck
Wynn Scholar Andre Agassi College Academy North Las Vegas, NV
Ankit Jain TEOCO Scholar James Madison HS Vienna, VA
Journalism Washington MUN
June 23-26, 2011
Student Adventurers, Cont’d Mayank Jain
Michael Juel
TEOCO Scholar Thomas Jefferson HS for Science & Technology Vienna, VA
Washington Scholar Scobey High School Scobey, MT
Entrepreneurship Technology Science
Priyanka Jain Dunbar Scholar University Prep Bellevue, WA
Give Back Tennis Biology
Amzi Jeffs First Interstate Scholar Hellgate High School Missoula, MT
Missoula, Montana
Music Physics Literature
Emma Kantor Wynn Scholar Edgemont Junior/Senior HS Scarsdale, NY
Dance Art Shakespeare
Jisoo Kim Carpenter Scholar Bergen County Academies/Juilliard Pre-College Palisades Park, NJ
Programming Parkour Gaming
Violin Journalism Films
Ben Joers
Hannah Kim
Sanjayan Scholar University Prep Bellevue, WA
Norvig Scholar Palo Alto High School Palo Alto, CA
Architecture Sports Business
Love Hope God
Rebecca John
Stephanie Kim
Edelson Scholar Trinity School New York, NY
Heckmann Scholar South High School Bakersfield, CA
Music Languages History
Criminology Sports Music
Khara John
Nicholas King-Monroe
Llewellyn Scholar Lawrenceville School Jackson, NJ
Estep Scholar Hellgate High School Missoula, MT
Entertaining Athletic Strong-willed
Computers Books Gaming
June 23-26, 2011
Student Adventurers, Cont’d Maisie Kirn L’Amour Scholar Livingston, MT
Acting Music Writing
Ivy Klein
Missoula, Montana
Bonnie Lei Lerman Scholar Walnut High School Walnut, CA
Conservation Scientist Wordsmith Global Explorer
Dalton Lentz
L’Amour Scholar Wildwood School Los Angeles, CA
Ingram Scholar Franklin High School Franklin,TN
Language Literature Inspiration
Chemistry Music JROTC
Kai Klitgaard
Irene Li
L’Amour Scholar Claremont High School Upland, CA
Tercek Scholar Western Reserve Academy Chicago, IL
Sociable Curious Quick
Perseverence Physics Inventive
Jonathan Krohn
Jenny Liu
Walker Scholar North Gwinnett HS Duluth, GA
Lerman Scholar Amity Regional HS Orange, CT
Philosophy Modal Theory Metaphysics
Social Robotics Diversity Music
Caleb Kumar
Gwen Lockman
Myhrvold Scholar Breck School Blaine, MN
Washington Scholar Sentinel High School Missoula, MT
Mathematics Medicine Music
Ambitious Involved Pragmatic
Colin Landells
William Longerbeam
Washington Scholar Loyola Sacred Heart Missoula, MT
McWhinney Scholar Frank Sinatra School of the Arts Flushing, NY
Music Thinking Creative Writing
Fun Friendship Theatre
June 23-26, 2011
Student Adventurers, Cont’d Victoria Louison Scott Scholar New Explorations into Science Technology and Math Brooklyn, NY
Creative writing Frida Miyazaki
Stacy Loveland Walker Scholar Williamsport Area HS Williamsport, PA
Norvig Scholar Newton North HS Newton, MA
Respect Connection Public Service
Laura Marsh Washington Scholar Capital High School Helena, MT
Dance History Musical Theater
Violin Winter Outdoors
Autumn Majeske
Jacob Maughan
Autumn Majeske Moffett Central HS Bay City, MI
Washington Scholar Lincoln High School Lincoln, MT
Positive Travel Music
Mind Artist Compassion Truth/Knowledge
Ronit Malka
Taylor Mazzarella
TEOCO Scholar Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology Broad Run, VA
Inquisitive Conscientious Driven
Samantha Maltais Anders Scholar St. George’s School Edgartown, MA
Stinger Scholar Ridgefield Park Junior-Senior HS Ridgefield Park, NJ
Geometry Music Acting
Emily McCue Washington Scholar Loyola Sacred Heart High School Missoula, MT
Arts Ethics Culture
Writing Music Creating
Ashwin Malynur
Bowen McCurdy
Auel Scholar Beaverton High School Beaverton, OR
Neuroscience Sports Outdoors
Missoula, Montana
Alexander Marks-Katz
Tan Scholar F.H. LaGuardia High School New York, NY
Look Listen Learn
June 23-26, 2011
Student Adventurers Cont’d Maya McDonnell
Jain Scholar Garfield High School Seattle, WA
Language Music Nature
Bubbles Sunshine Reader
Tyler McKinney
Cody Muchmore
Llewellyn Scholar Bishop Ford Central Catholic HS Astoria, NY
Jain Scholar East High School Cheyenne, WY
Creative Charitable Charismatic
Math Physics Fencing
Hibba Meraay
Santhosh Narayan
Llewellyn Scholar Miss Porter’s School Middletown, CT
Li Scholar Munster High School Munster, IN
Int’l relations Diplomacy Global Economics
Passionate Interdisciplinary Curious
Alice Miao L’Amour Scholar Brandywine High School Wilmington, DE
Look Listen Learn
Joseph Min Clark Scholar Lakeside School Seattle, WA
Frisbee Spunk Music
Nicholas Mooney SAAS Scholar Bainbridge High School Bainbridge Island, WA
Running Python Make
Missoula, Montana
Jaida Morgan
Visser Scholar Redwood High School Kentfield, CA
Trevor Newman Ohrstrom Scholar Wakefield School Warrenton, VA
Are We Human?
MyMy Nguyen DeMattei Scholar Piedmont Hills High School San Jose, CA
Physiology Spastic Lights
Jonathon O’Leary Heckmann Scholar Davenport Central HS Davenport, IA
Tennis Dance Gladwell
June 23-26, 2011
Student Adventurers, Cont’d Sam Palca Rosenthal Scholar School Without Walls Senior HS Washington, DC
Horner Scholar Trinity Upper School New York, NY
Eccentricity Ligament Substrate-level Phosphoralation
Math Precision Rifle Latin
Cynthia Pardo
Kai-Ming Pu
Tercek Scholar Western Reserve Academy Chicago, IL
Leahy Scholar Brattleboro Union High School Brattleboro, VT
Art Field Hockey Volunteering
Violin Biophysics Cooking
Henry Pease
Sophie Queler
Myhrvold Scholar Cincinnati Country Day School Cincinnati, OH
LEGOs Rowing LASERs
Allison Pierpont Washington Scholar Noble High School Lebanon, ME
Curiosity Travel Genetics
Kate Pitney L’Amour Scholar Chaminade College Preparatory Monte Nido, CA
Sulloway Scholar Emma Willard School Oakland, CA
Look Listen Learn
Alydaar Rangwala Lerman Scholar The Albany Academies Loudonville, NY
Dream Change Inspire
Alina Ranjbaran Scott Scholar Garden City HS/ Juilliard Pre College Garden City, NY
Loud Happy Laughter
Music Science Reading
Lucas Potter
Kirsten Redmon
TEOCO Scholar James Madison HS Vienna, VA
Dedicated Intense Creativity
Missoula, Montana
Paulena Prager
BNSF Foundation Scholar Sam Houston High School San Antonio,TX
Determined Silly Friendly
June 23-26, 2011
Student Adventurers Cont’d Scott Remer
Washington Scholar Baker High School Baker, MT
Spelling Reading Mandarin
Literature Writing Drama
Richard Ren
Travis Rozich
Lerman Scholar Troy High School Troy, MI
BNSF Foundation Scholar Tempe Preparatory Academy Phoenix, AZ
Physics Orwell Poetry
Architecture Athletics Animals
Enrique Reyes
Andrew Russell
Bennett Scholar Sam Houston HS San Antonio,TX
Missoula, Montana
Marriah Rost
Duke Scholar Beachwood HS Beachwood, OH
TEOCO Scholar Appomattox High School Appomattox, VA
WWE Music Geosciences
Introspection Expansion Manifestation
Alex Rogers
Fadwa Saber
Scott Scholar Creighton Preparatory School Omaha, NE
Ohrstrom Scholar Al-Noor High School Woodside, NY
Look Listen Learn
Chemistry Research Assistant Photography
Simone Rogers
Jonathan Sanchez
Bleiberg Scholar Los Alamitos HS Long Beach, CA
Clark Scholar Aviation High School Queens, NY
Art History Drama Hiking
Hardworking Helpful Determined
Sarah Rose
Chungdhak Sherpa
SAAS Scholar Sandy Spring Friends School Beltsville, MD
Rose Scholar Sandy Springs Friends School Silver Spring, MD
Media Nature Quakers
Compassionate Hardworking Studious
June 23-26, 2011
Student Adventurers, Cont’d Alex Shimizu
Washington Scholar Ronan High School Ronan, MT
Dancer Adventurous Persistent
Cars Music Computers
Skylar Sims Walker Scholar The Ben Franklin Academy College Park, GA
aRT MuSic Finance
Megan Smith Simonyi Scholar Mississippi School for Mathematics/Science Corinth, MS
Reading Journalism Anthropology
Allison Snyder Visser Scholar Professional Children’s School New York, NY
Performer Opinionated Friendly
Ty’Ronn Spriggs Ferguson Scholar SEED Public Charter School Washington, DC
Talent Faith Leadership
Robert Stephens Tercek Scholar Western Reserve Academy Fayetteville, GA
Football Math Humor
Missoula, Montana
Levi Talsma
Llewellyn Scholar Professional Performing Arts HS Bronx, NY
Max Taylor Simonyi Scholar Taft High School Lake Balboa, CA
Writing Music Film
Eamon Thomasson Washington Scholar Frenchtown High School Frenchtown, MT
Poetry History Existentialism
Jake Thompson Washington Scholar Alberton High Alberton, MT
Sports Music Relationships
Rachel Tillman Washington Scholar Big Sky High School Missoula, MT
Language Communication Travel
Hannah Totte Simonyi Scholar Palo Alto High School Palo Alto, CA
Journalism Music Soccer
June 23-26, 2011
Student Adventurers, Cont’d Evelysse Vargas Llewellyn Scholar Chapin School Bronx, NY
L’Amour Scholar Fort Knox High School Fort Knox, KY
Student Athlete Fun
Environmental Science Swimming Soccer
Roshny Vijayakar
Andre Wells
Myhrvold Scholar Breck School Golden Valley, MN
Science Art Environment
Blake Visser Walker Scholar Missoula, MT
Look Listen Learn
Yushi Wang Auel Scholar Sunset High School Portland, OR
Mathematician Violinist Puzzler
Danielle Washington BNSF Foundation Scholar Loomis Chaffee School Chicago, IL
Saban Scholar Downtown Magnets HS Gardena, CA
Growth Joy Pain
Scott Willis L’Amour Scholar Fort Knox High School Fort Knox, KY
Scrubs Math Sports
Alexander Wolfram Myhrvold Scholar Champaign, IL
Business Real Estate Finance
Stella Wong Sulloway Scholar Hunter College High School New York, NY
Trust Beauty Harmony
Music F Scott Fitzgerald Museums
Tina Wei
John Wright
Bosley Scholar Blue Valley North HS Overland Park, KS
Conversation Justice Peace
Missoula, Montana
Austin Welch
Benaroya Scholar Foss High School Tacoma, WA
Funny Happy Healthy
June 23-26, 2011
Student Adventurers, Cont’d Susan Wu Wang Scholar John L. Miller Great Neck North HS Great Neck, NY
Danait Yemane Jain Scholar University Prep Seattle, WA
Twin Anthophobia Female
Outgoing Sports Determined
Jackie Wu
Ariel Zlatkovski
Lerman Scholar Phillips Academy Great Neck, NY
Music Dessert Running
L’Amour scholar Eagle River HS Eagle River, AK
Politics Service Frisbee
Angelina Xing SAAS Scholar Hackley School Briarcliff Manor, NY
Music Debate Photography
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Grizzly football
is a big part of
University of Mon
tana culture.
Monte is the hila
.
The old Dornblaser stadium, c. unknown
The Montana Grizzlies (the “Griz”) represent The University of Montana in intercollegiate athletics. Student athletes in all sports enjoy devoted spectator support in yet another area of University excellence. The athletic program combines high academic standards and top-notch trainers and facilities, attracting athletes from every state.
The first athletic field, Dornblaser Stadium, opened in 1912 at the base of Mount Sentinel. The site gave way to construction of the Mansfield Library in 1968 and Dornblaser Field was created off campus. That “temporary” facility held 12,500 spectators in steel and wood bleachers. Football moved back to campus in 1986 when a new stadium was constructed with a gift from Dennis Washington. Washington-Grizzly Stadium holds over 25,000 cheering fans.
LIBRARY: EXCERPTS & BIOS
riously entertaini of the Grizzlies. ng mascot
The Journey that Changed America z Camp River, Debois IL z When they launched their wooden boats up the Missouri and into the wilderness, Lewis and Clark were charting the future of America. Two hundred years later, at a time when the U.S. again faces great unknowns, their daring journey continues to offer lessons about how America can find its way in the world
By WALTER KIRN Posted Sunday, June 30, 2002; 8:31 a.m. EST There are so many lessons and morals to be drawn from the expedition of Lewis and Clark that each generation tends to pick a new one according to its temperament and needs. Here is one that seems suitable for us as of July 2002: If we as Americans could see the future, we might never set to work creating it. When they dipped their oars into the Missouri River and started rowing west through Indian country almost 200 years ago, the captains were looking for something they would never find — because it wasn’t there. The Northwest Passage, the fabled missing link in a continuous navigable waterway between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans, existed only in the explorers’ minds, but its image was enough to move them forward, and that was enough to alter history. Their adventure, like most great ones before and since, was born of equal parts hope and ignorance, sustained by fortune and determination, and consummated by an accomplishment that was unimaginable at the outset but, looking back, appears inevitable. Columbus, remember, was trying to reach India. What Lewis and Clark and their party finally found — although they didn’t know it at the time — was not a path between the oceans but a story whose power to challenge and absorb would bridge the more profound gap between their day and ours, between that age of new possibilities glimpsed and this one of unforeseen upheavals survived. By the time President Jefferson sent the captains up that muddy river and out of sight, the young nation already had a Constitution, but it lacked an epic. It had a government but no real identity. Lewis and Clark helped invent one. It still lives, despite interstate highways, despite the Web, despite vanishing forests, despite terrorism — despite everything. Great narratives never grow obsolete. There are much better maps of the West than those that the Corps of Discovery created, but there are still no better stories. And few that are so perennially relevant, as demonstrated by the effort to prepare for the expedition’s bicentennial, beginning this January. In the 11 states whose land and waterways the explorers touched, plans have been under way for several years to re-create, commemorate and just plain profit from the first and greatest American off-road trip. From the Falls of the Ohio, where a festival will celebrate the place at which Clark climbed aboard Lewis’ keelboat, all the way west to tiny Fort Clatsop, Ore., where visitors will chat with Lewis and Clark impersonators, the roadside plaques are already being engraved, the campsites cleared and the motel rooms
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painted. Whether one’s interest in following Lewis and Clark centers on geography, natural history, Native Americans or the simple pleasure of eating a cheeseburger on the same spot where the corps was attacked by an angry grizzly, someone somewhere is hoping to be of service with a pamphlet, an exhibit, a parade, a rental canoe or a cold lemonade. “If the expedition was just about a grand trip across the West, as great as that would be, it wouldn’t capture my attention or the attention of so many Americans,” says Gary Moulton, history professor at the University of Nebraska and editor of the 13-volume set The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition. What captivates scholars like Moulton, not to mention countless amateur history buffs, is the way the story grows and changes, adapting itself to evolving American moods. “A hundred years ago,” says Dr. Mark Spence, associate professor of history at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, “Lewis and Clark were viewed as symbols of industrial expansion, overseas imperial trade and so on. Fifty years ago, they were really viewed as cold warriors in the forest; they epitomized the virtues of the company man. Today they are multicultural diplomats and proto-ecologists.” Lewis and Clark saw themselves as Army officers. Their instructions from their Commander in Chief were clear, and the spirit behind them was practical, not poetic: claim the West and its wealth for the U.S. With Spain to the south and Britain to the north and everything in the middle up for grabs, the first American space race had begun. The expansion of knowledge was one objective — the mission was furnished with scientific instruments — but the expansion of power was its chief goal. “Jefferson is a good man of the Enlightenment,” says James Ronda, professor of western American history at the University of Tulsa. “Knowledge is valued to the extent that it is useful. The yardstick here is always utility. He’ll measure a river by its navigability. He measures land by its fertility.” The people who lived on these lands were measured too. Would the Indians help or hinder the march of progress? That was always the first question in the captains’ minds as they rounded a bend in the river and saw smoke, or glimpsed a horseman watching from a bluff. The noble cross-cultural moments came later. Before Clark helped a teenage Sacagawea give birth inside a wintry fort, and before she repaid him a thousand times over by arranging with her Shoshone kinsmen for the expedition’s passage over the Rockies, Lewis drew his sword against the Teton Sioux as they strung their bows. The whole grand endeavor might have ended right there, in the present Pierre, S.D. Had the Indians known what was coming in the years ahead, they might have wished it had. But they couldn’t see the future either. The Indians had an illusion of their own, even more magnificently mistaken than the captains’ vision of the Northwest Passage: peace everlasting with this strange new race. The corps carried shiny medallions to foster this dream. The coins showed President Jefferson on one side and a symbolic handclasp on the reverse. Mutual curiosity helped too. York, Clark’s black slave, was a hit with the Indians, hamming it up to break the ice. In time, relations grew friendly, even intimate. The men of the corps
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The Journey that Changed America, Cont’d were soldiers, not saints, and their commanders were realistic men, not cartoon superheroes. Lewis carried a stockpile of medicine, including potions to treat venereal diseases. He found more than a few occasions to administer the stuff to his men. It is said that all stories have two sides. In the best stories, the two sides are inseparable. Pull them apart, and it makes the whole thing meaningless. “[The expedition] has that mixed quality of great news for one people and bad news for another group of people,” says Patricia Limerick, who chairs the board of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado in Boulder. “It is not the greatest news,” she says, “to have a party of agents of empire come through.” In the long run, Limerick is right, of course, but the Lewis and Clark expedition was really a series of short runs placed end to end until it stretched all the way to the Pacific. At a time when Americans have every reason to fear what’s waiting for them down the trail, from enemy armies to our capacity for misunderstanding and miscalculation, it’s important to remember that what’s to come is first a matter of what one does today, here, on this spot. All those footsteps will add up. Even with the addition of Sacagawea, who had lived in the regions the expedition had yet to cross, the corps was not always sure where it was going, but its members were keenly aware of where they stood at every important moment along the way. Lewis and Clark looked around, not just ahead — at prairie dogs in their burrows, at herds of buffalo massing in grassy valleys, at lights in the sky and seedlings in the soil. And they took the time to write down in their journals everything they saw. If not for the piecemeal epic the captains scratched out while crouching on hillsides and squatting on riverbanks, we might not remember Lewis and Clark at all. “There are a lot of very terse diarists in the world who say, ‘Proceeded up river and camped,’” says Limerick. “We’re very lucky to be their heirs because of their fluidity of words.” Their words didn’t grab the nation’s attention immediately. The first edition of the journals didn’t appear until eight years after the expedition ended, in 1814. Hundreds of books later, it’s hard to imagine the absence of Lewis and Clark from the pageant of popular American history. Without them, there would still be stirring tales of exploration but none that turn on the exquisite irony of an adolescent Indian girl giving crucial advice to two male Army officers. There would still be images of frontier adversity but none so stunning as that of Lewis expecting to see a path to the Pacific but discovering endless ranks of mountains instead. There would still be historical markers on western highways but none that lead thousands of miles to the sea and allow the pilgrim at every stop to crossreference the vista spread out before him with the written impressions of those who blazed the trail. “It’s the emblematic American journey,” says Ronda. “In U.S. history there is always a tension between home and the road. We talk a good talk about the joys of home, but the truth is we are obsessed with the road.” Like every road, this one goes both ways. The country that Lewis and Clark returned through was not the same country they had just crossed. Its rivers had been named, its plants and animals sketched and classified, its native people apprised of their new status as subjects of a distant government whose
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claim to the place consisted of a document — the Louisiana Purchase — that none of its actual inhabitants had signed. The tribes reacted differently to their changed positions in the new order. The Nez Perce, who had considered killing Lewis and Clark when they first spotted them limping out of the mountains in what is now Idaho, welcomed them like lost brothers on their return trip, offering idealistic pledges of permanent friendship with the U.S., whose citizens would later repay the gesture by forcing the tribe from its hunting and grazing grounds and corralling its weakened remnants on reservations. The Blackfeet had a touchier response, perhaps because their unrivaled dominance on the northern plains was threatened by the Americans’ plans to begin trading with the neighboring tribes. One morning, while camping in what is now Montana, Lewis awoke to a struggle between an underling and an Indian who was trying to steal a rifle. Moments later, one Blackfoot brave lay fatally stabbed, and another was bleeding from the gut, cut down by a bullet from Lewis’ gun. Aside from the captains’ early floggings of disobedient underlings, this was the party’s only violent act. More remarkable, perhaps, is how much violence the explorers avoided, despite their varied ethnic and racial backgrounds and the ceaseless frustrations of the trip. It’s an inspiring thought — the melting pot on the march — but like most simple images of the famous journey, it doesn’t tell the full story, or even half of it. For every uplifting aspect of the tale, there’s a difficult, melancholy sidelight, which may well be the secret of its abiding power. After 8,000 miles and 28 months of travel from their start near St. Louis, the corps returned to a hero’s welcome as joyful as it was short-lived. Jefferson, according to historians, soon grew disappointed in the enterprise. It had failed to substantiate his western dreams of a well-watered garden convenient to the Pacific where generations of self-sufficient farmers would live in democratic bliss, free from old, corrosive political controversies such as slavery. As for peace with the Indians, and among the Indians, well, those medals certainly were handsome. And then there was Lewis, of course, the chronic depressive who may have reached his spiritual high point somewhere back along the wild Missouri. In 1809, while on his way to Washington to defend his expense report to a bureaucrat in the War Department, he lay down in a Tennessee inn and shot himself. Some people are better at leaving than at returning. But who knew? Not Lewis, not Jefferson, not the Indians. In July 2002 we don’t know either. Particularly since the events of last September, we sense that there’s something enormous and strange ahead of us — in the darkness, over the mountains, through the trees — but we have no idea what it is or how far off. To find it, face it and live to write the story, we’ll have to be resourceful, lucky, patient, flexible and observant, much as Lewis and Clark were. We’ll have to row into the current of our ignorance, one stroke at a time. With reporting by Deirdre vanDyk/New York Reprinted with permission
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September 2002 | Volume 60 | Number 1
Do Students Care About Learning? A Conversation with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi By Marge Scherer Learning to enjoy the intrinsic rewards of hard work is essential to successful human development, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Becoming Adult: How Teenagers Prepare for the World of Work, tells us. Here he talks with Educational Leadership about how to help students seek out the challenging and engaging activities that will propel them on their way toward becoming productive adults. In your study, you identified students who stood out from the crowd because they, more than their peers, could find enjoyment in both work and play. You also found students who were disengaged and passive about most of the activities they participated in. What was the context of your longitudinal study? With the help from a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, we identified 1,000 children who were in 6th, 8th, 10th, and 12th grades in 12 school districts from Orlando, Florida, to Long Beach, California, and everywhere in between. Nine years later, we are still following some of the participants as young adults, although a much smaller group of them. We selected students randomly. We were not looking for children who enjoyed school or did not enjoy school. We just tried to get as much of a cross-section as possible. We developed questionnaires and interviewed these students, but we obtained most of our data through giving each student a programmable pager for a week. This pager would go off eight times a day, early morning to 11 p.m., at random moments. Whenever the pager signaled, the students would take out a little booklet and write where they were, what they were doing, what they were thinking about, their level of concentration, how happy they were, and how creative they felt when doing different activities. They reported about 30 times during the week, so we received about 30,000 reports. And that allowed us to begin to see these children’s experiences, the feelings and thoughts they had during the day, both at school and out of school. For instance, every time the pager went off, they had to say whether what they were doing was more like play, more like work, or like neither work nor play. Was life more like work or play for these teenagers? About 30 percent of the time they stated that it was like work; 30 percent of the time, they said that what they were doing was like play; 30 percent neither; and they reported that for 10 percent of their time, what they were doing was like both work and play. In your follow-up studies, you concluded that students who often say that what they are doing is like both work and play are more likely to go on to college or make a successful transition to work. Those students who say that whatever they do is more like work seem to do well in high school. Although they say that what they are doing is work and they don’t enjoy it at the moment, they record on the response sheet that the activity is important to their future. So they understand that, “Okay. This is work. It’s not pleasant. But it will profit me in the future.” Those kids who say that what they do is mostly play enjoy their activities, but they don’t think of them as being important for the future. But the best situation is when a person sees a life activity as both work and play. Unfortunately, only about 10 percent of the time do students report this experience. Some kids never report that they have this experience. The worst thing is to frequently feel that what you do is neither enjoyable right now nor good preparation for the future. You say affluent students are more likely to say they are enjoying their activities than poorer students. Did you see any differences in attitudes among other groups of students? Males much more than females say that what they do is play. Caucasian students play more than Asians, Hispanics, or African Americans. The survey has a lot of markers in terms of ethnicity, class, and gender. We found that those who see what they do as play get into better colleges after they leave high school. College selection procedures favor kids who do well academically but who also are engaged in original or interesting extracurricular activities. It’s when they are participating in extracurricular activities that students most often say that they are both working and playing. What is it about extracurricular activities that makes them engaging to students? Students say that they are doing something that is important to them. The activity is voluntary to a large extent. Kids can choose to do things that match their own interests and skills. So they are doing something fun. But at the same time they are doing work to adult specifications. If you work on the high school newspaper, you have to observe the deadlines and you produce something that is real. Our youngest son, for instance, was uninterested in school until he began to hang out with the theater group and started
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Do Students Care About Learning? Cont’d building sets, doing the lighting and sound effects, painting the scenery, doing carpentry, and so forth. Once he did that, he became more able to focus on everything. And now he’s teaching at MIT. His academic classes did not offer him an opportunity to meet serious adult standards, but the extracurricular activity did. Explain what you mean by the flow experience, the title of your earlier book. Flow describes the spontaneous, effortless experience you achieve when you have a close match between a high level of challenge and the skills you need to meet the challenge. Flow happens when a person is completely involved in the task, is concentrating very deeply, and knows moment by moment what the next steps should be. If you’re playing music, you know what note will come next, and you know how to play that note. You have a goal and you are getting feedback. The experience is almost addictive and very rewarding. Small children are in flow most of the time as they learn to walk and talk and other new things. They choose what to do and they match their skills with challenges. Unfortunately, they begin to lose this feeling once they go to school because they can’t choose their goals and they can’t choose the level at which they operate. They become increasingly passive. We find that in Europe and the United States, about 15 percent of adults really can’t remember any experience that seems like flow. A similar proportion, about 15 percent, claim that they have the flow experience several times a day. We’ve published many articles on multiple intelligences and learning styles. Do you think people of a certain kind of intelligence are more likely to have the flow experience? It depends on whether there are opportunities for your particular skill or intelligence. If you are musically inclined, for instance, and there is no opportunity to play music at your school and no other place to get the experience of playing, then you are at a disadvantage. In some cultures, there will be opportunities for one kind of intelligence more than for another. The learning disability that may be an obstacle to experiencing flow is the inability to concentrate. Concentration is one of the hallmarks of the flow experience. If you have, for instance, an attention deficit, it may be difficult to get focused enough. Have you found that any curriculum subjects lend themselves to more engagement than others? Yes. There have been quite a few dissertations on this topic. Typically, students rate history the worst subject for engagement, whereas they rate anything having to do with computers high. And vocational subjects seem to be better than academic subjects for encouraging engagement. Students get flow from group work, from individual tasks, and from quizzes much more often than they do from listening to the teacher or from watching audiovisuals. We’re in a testing culture now, with much emphasis on standards and high-stakes assessments. Is this new priority deflating students’ love of learning, or is it beneficial because it offers challenges? To the extent that the results of the tests are taken seriously, testing worries me. If a test is fair and not above the heads of most of the kids, then students can take the test as a game and a challenge. Flow is easiest to experience when you are challenged, have clear goals, and get clear feedback. Now, if you’re listening to a teacher, all of those things are missing. There’s nothing to keep your attention focused. Whereas in a test, you have to pay attention. There is a challenge. The goals are clear. You can lose yourself in the activity. Unless it’s way too difficult or way too easy, you can enjoy taking a test. But that doesn’t mean that one should take any test very seriously because test results don’t correlate much with anything. Not with higher achievement or success in life? Not that I know of. I would be interested in seeing the evidence that scores on tests correlate with happiness or success in life. What recommendations do you have for teachers who want to structure instructional activities to achieve more flow or more engagement for students? The more they can show the relevance of what they’re doing to the life of the student, the better. That’s the first and most obvious requirement. You also have to make clear the goal of every lesson. The student must know what he or she is supposed to achieve at the end. And teachers need a way to find out how well the students are learning. Computer-assisted teaching can be quite useful because there you can see your progress and you can change and correct your work as you move along. The fact that students feel positive about group activities suggests the need for more group work. There’s too little group activity in high school except in science labs where two or three kids have to solve a problem or learn something together. There are many things that adults could do to make learning more engaging to students. On the other hand, sometimes it seems to me that the best thing would be to forbid children to go to school until they can demonstrate that they have a real interest in something. Of course, such a system would be fair only if we had preschools for all children, where they could be exposed to a stimulating environment in a playful setting. Education should be available to everyone, obviously. But education should not be an obligation, but rather a privilege that you earn by showing that you’re curious about some part of the world. You get your education through that curiosity. The role of the teacher would then be to find the material that would allow the student to explore his or her curiosity. Because no matter what you’re curious about, if you are really curious, you will have to learn everything else. Whether the topic is bugs or stars or singing, there are connections. There is mathematics behind the music and chemistry behind the animals. Once the students are hooked on their interest, the teacher should be the gatekeeper to the enormous richness of information in the world. The role of the teacher is not to convey the same content to a captive audience, which becomes almost immediately aversive to most children.
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Do Students Care About Learning? Cont’d I’m interested in how you became interested in the idea of flow. Was it an experience of your own that led you to find out more about it? Essentially, I was interested in psychology. At the time, you couldn’t get a degree in psychology by studying happiness or wellbeing, but creativity was something you could study. So I studied creativity in artists. And I was struck by how these artists would get completely lost in what they were doing for long periods of time. And yet, once they finished the canvas, they never looked at it again. Most of them weren’t trying to sell their art. The finished painting was an excuse for them to paint. The process of painting was the reward that motivated them. So I started wondering, Does this happen in other aspects of life? It turned out that people play music for the same reason. They play music to go on the journey, not to reach the destination. In sports, it is the same. I thought that the experience that made the activity so rewarding would be different in music or chess or rock climbing. Instead, what was so surprising was how similarly everyone described how they felt, even though what they were doing was so different. And for yourself, what are the activities that give you the experience of flow? When I was in high school, I played chess competitively. I used to paint. I did serious rock climbing. Later, I wrote fiction for The New Yorker. All of these are wonderful flow activities. Now I get creative enjoyment mostly from work and from hiking here in Montana with the family. What family characteristics are most conducive to inspiring a love of learning? Modeling is the best strategy. If the kid grows up seeing that his parents and other adults have no interest in anything except making money, it’s unlikely that he or she will learn that it’s fun to study or learn new things. It boils down to the essentials: support and challenge. By challenge I mean high expectations, high standards, allowing the child a lot of independence, exposing students to new opportunities whenever possible. Support means simply that the child feels that the family as a whole is interested in every member’s welfare. If the mother comes home tired, the kids will notice it and try to help her and so forth. When their families give them both support and challenge, children are more likely to choose harder subjects in high school, get better grades, end up in better colleges, and have higher self-esteem in college or after college. If they receive support only, the kids tend to be happy and feel better about themselves, but they’re not necessarily ambitious. They don’t try to advance in school. They don’t take harder classes. If the family offers a lot of challenges but does not provide support, then the kids tend to do well in school, but they’re not very happy. And if they have neither support nor challenge from the family, then it’s bad all around. Support and challenge impart different strengths. Challenge gives children vision and direction, focus and perseverance. Support gives the serenity that allows them freedom from worry and fear. Teenagers often have a great deal of anxiety that gets in their way when they tackle a challenge. What’s the antidote to anxiety? Well, there are several. One is tutoring or help in the subjects that provide the most anxiety; another is building up students’ strengths. It’s often the case that once the students find something that they are really good at, then the anxiety disappears in the other situations. The parents should monitor what the child is interested in and give opportunities to excel at those subjects. Going back to our youngest son, we weren’t the ones who helped him. Once he found that he was as good as or better than others at something, it gave him the feeling that he could do other things, too. We have an idea in education that we have to work on our weaknesses. To a certain extent, that makes sense. But it makes even more sense to work on the strengths. Because once someone has developed strengths, then everything else becomes easier. Second, if you feel miserable studying mathematics and you spend all your time learning mathematics, chances are you will never be very good at it anyway. If the child is good at photography, allow him or her to explore and develop those strengths. So you wouldn’t be a fan of the core curriculum that requires all students to master certain culturally important content? No, I think that’s kind of silly. Look at our presidents. President Bush was a low C student all his life, and so was Clinton until he got to be a Rhodes scholar. It’s kind of hypocritical to expect that all children should be good across the board when most adults aren’t successful at everything. The important thing is to stimulate the curiosity, reinforce the curiosity, and build on the strengths of the child. And then you have a vibrant, lively community instead of people who have been stuffed with information that they don’t care about. Of all the students you interviewed, do any stand out as special examples? Hundreds. One could write a shelf of novels on the lives of these kids. There was a boy from Kansas City who, at age 12, was really in bad shape. He hated school. He had nothing that he liked. His self-esteem was low. He was in trouble with the school. We thought he would end up having serious trouble. Then, in his senior year, when we looked at his booklet, we noticed that he had completely changed. He was happy. He felt strong self-esteem. He’d write that he was especially happy when he was looking for a valve or pipes at the hardware store or when he was carrying some rocks to his truck. When he was doing these things, he felt really positive. And we couldn’t understand what he was talking about. In the interviews, we asked him, What is this about looking for a valve or carrying rocks? He told us that he had a business building koi ponds. At some time in his junior year, he saw one of these Japanese fishponds in somebody’s garden, and he became
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Do Students Care About Learning? Cont’d so fascinated that he built one in his own yard and one for his neighbor. And then he started building ponds commercially. At age 18, he bought a panel truck for his koi pond business. And he felt tremendous. He had to learn everything from plumbing to biology: how the fish live and what to feed them. He learned chemistry. He learned mathematics to understand water pressure and volume. Senior year he did great in school. He ended up going to a community college and taking technical courses. That is what can happen when a kid makes a connection between something inside and an opportunity outside. To me, that’s how education should be. To educate means to lead out. And we don’t lead kids out. We kind of stop them. To educate is to expose kids to many possibilities until they find a connection between what’s really important to them and the world out there. And then we must nurture and cultivate that connection. Did the act of writing the journals help the students in your study become more active in their pursuit of learning? Definitely. Some psychologists use journal writing as therapy. Once you really have an idea of what you’re doing, you have a chance to take charge of your behavior. Often kids are put in a dependent state in school; they are not supposed to take any initiative except in what the teachers want them to do. Television puts them in another kind of dependent state. Many come to tacitly believe that they have no say over their own development as human beings. Writing things down and reflecting on them is one of those things that makes a person ask, Why am I doing these things when I feel so bad when I do them? Why don’t I do more of those things that make me happy? Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is the D.J. and C.S. Davidson Professor of Psychology at the Drucker School of Management, Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. He is the author or coauthor of 15 books, among them Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper & Row, 1990) and, with Barbara Schneider, Becoming Adult: How Teenagers Prepare for the World of Work (BasicBooks, 2000). Marge Scherer is Editor in Chief of Educational Leadership; el@ascd.org. Copyright © 2002 by Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Reprinted with permission
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EXCLUSIVE SNEAK PEEK PRE-PUBLICA TION!
How the Mind Grows from Conception to College
WELCOME TO YOUR CHILD’S BRAIN SANDRA AAMODT, PH.D. and SAM WANG, PH.D. NEW YORK • BERLIN • LONDON • SYDNEY
Chapter 9 ADOLESCENCE: IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT SEX AGES: TWELVE YEARS TO TWENTY YEARS You might dread your child’s adolescence, fearing a tumultuous period dominated by hormones and erratic behavior. But the truth is far more complex and includes many other changes, which are overwhelmingly for the good. Although key steps in sexual maturation do occur during this time, a host of changes unrelated to sex also take place before and after puberty. More than anything else, the adolescent brain is highly dynamic. During adolescence, which begins with the onset of puberty, usually between ages eleven and thirteen, and continues until twenty and sometimes beyond, children make major moves toward living on their own. They explore new interests, organize their own behavior, and pursue serious relationships outside the family. They revel in (or feel awkward about) their bodies’ new capabilities. Most people recall their teen years as a time of near limitless possibility, of idealism, and of innumerable options. Friends of ours often find their early teenage daughter up late studying Spanish verbs, working on an intricate and beautiful drawing, looking up song lyrics, doing a conditioning regimen for her circus aerials, or simply reading or thinking. Whew. Adolescence is also a time of risk. Just as developmental events before and after birth can lead to disorders such as autism, other problems are likely to become apparent during adolescence. Depression, bipolar disorder, drug addiction, and schizophrenia become increasingly prevalent at this time. In addition, adolescents are prone to take risks because their sensation-seeking impulses become strong when self-regulation is not yet fully mature. To superficial appearances, the brain appears to be nearly finished as children enter adolescence. By late childhood, the brain has reached 95 percent of its adult volume. Individual components are within 10 percent of adult size (some larger, others smaller). Behind this apparent maturity, though, some large changes are stirring. The adolescent brain undergoes considerable reorganization as synapses are pruned away, continuing the process that began in childhood. The brain contains its maximum number of synapses (the connections between neurons) before puberty, in people as well as other primates (see chapter 5). Studies of brain glucose consumption in children, as well as detailed counts of synapses, show that by early adolescence, the human neocortex has reached adult synapse numbers and uses about one fourth less energy than it did in early childhood. Even so, synapse elimination is far from complete. Indeed, measurements from rhesus monkeys show that their brains lose as many as thirty thousand synapses per second during adolescence. In our larger brains, the number is probably higher. Before getting into what your adolescent’s brain is up to, let’s get technical for a bit. To explain how and why your child’s behavior is changing, we need to give you some details at the level of cells and connections that will provide essential context. As you might expect, the changes in synapse number are accompanied by visible changes in the gray matter of the neocortex, where neurons, dendrites, and synapses are found. The general pattern is for gray matter to reach a peak thickness and then decline by 5–10 percent. In this way, the brain’s circuits are shaped and refined before adulthood—while the brain’s owner is acquiring new abilities to contribute more actively to the process. These maturational changes happen at different times in different parts of the brain. Overall, the gray matter, containing all the neurons and synapses as well as a great deal of wiring, reaches peak volume by age nine to eleven. During this time, the white matter is still growing. In the neocortex, the first areas to reach peak thickness are the most extremely frontal and occipital (farthest back) regions. The areas in between are then filled in, starting from the back and moving forward. The temporal cortex reaches maximum thickness around age fourteen, followed by most of the frontal cortex. Finally, the white matter, made of myelinated axons that carry long-distance information, bulks up, especially connections between frontal and temporal cortex. One sign that adolescent brains are becoming more efficient is that activity is better coordinated between distant brain areas. This improvement is seen in signals varying together (coherency) and traveling over distances more quickly. White matter
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WELCOME TO YOUR CHILD’S BRAIN, Cont’d is only 85 percent of adult size and continues to grow even into the forties. As white matter grows, axonal fibers are likely to be widening, and fatter axons transmit signals at higher speeds. Because white-matter axons mediate communication between distant brain regions, this change is likely to have strong functional implications—though at present we don’t know what they are. The tempo of developmental change varies from child to child. In a study of children whose brains were imaged repeatedly as they passed through late childhood and adolescence, children of higher intelligence had gray matter thickness that rose to peak more steeply—and declined more quickly as well. This result suggests the possibility that a key to intelligence is not brain size but capacity for change, though these differences are too variable for evaluating individuals. Indeed, increases and decreases in gray matter thickness also appear in childhood-onset schizophrenia and ADHD, so these structural changes may reflect a variety of underlying processes in different children. What do all these brain changes mean for your adolescent’s thought—or lack thereof, as the case may be? The relatively late maturation of the frontal cortex has received a lot of media attention recently as a way of explaining adolescent impulsivity. Even one car insurance advertisement points out that this brain region is not done growing. This area participates in executive function tasks, such as self-control, planning, and resisting temptation (see chapter 13). It becomes more active with age, an exception to the general trend of decreasing activity. In anterior and superior regions of the frontal cortex, activity rises from ages twelve to thirty. In combination with the earlier maturation of subcortical areas participating in emotion and reward, adolescence is a time when the balance between impulse and restraint may be quite different from either childhood or adulthood. Adolescents seek novel experiences more often and weigh positive and negative outcomes differently from adults. Such judgments can be probed using the Iowa Gambling Task, a game in which people can pick cards from several decks to win play money. Without the player’s knowledge, some decks are stacked, leading to more losses overall, but large occasional gains. In a version of the game in which participants can play or pass, adolescents learn to prefer winning decks but are less prone to avoid losing decks. Only in their late teens do players show full To superficial appearances, the adolescent brain appears to be nearly finished. In fact, it is undergoing considerable reorganization, avoidance of bad outcomes. In this game, then, adolescents make decisions that recognize the possibility of a lucky win but give little weight to losing. This laboratory finding is reminiscent of the real-life observation that teenagers tend to underestimate the consequences of their actions. This tendency, noted since ancient Roman times, is seen in areas as diverse as unprotected sex, experimenting with drugs, and impulsive speech. Even though adolescents are physically healthy, this risk taking makes the mortality rate of this life phase high. Sam is fortunate to have survived his own youth, during which he habitually returned very late at night from social outings—the reward. Once he got into a bad car crash—a risk of staying up to the point of drowsiness unforeseen by his adolescent brain, which was focused on the short term. These forms of impulsivity come at a time when white-matter connections between the frontal cortex and other parts of the brain that handle reward and emotion are not yet complete. Teenaged laboratory subjects are more likely to take a risk in games where there is a possible reward (money or the display of a happy face). When placed in an fMRI scanner, the teenagers showed more activity than adults do in the ventral striatum, a region that can signal anticipation of a reward. Another late-maturing participant in impulse control, the orbitofrontal cortex, appears to orchestrate the connection between emotion and good judgment. In general, decisions are often informed by the brain’s evaluation of whether an outcome is desirable or undesirable. Such a decision carries some emotional weight—even when it’s as simple as picking an outfit to wear. People with damage to their orbitofrontal cortex are unable to sensibly manage their lives, making bad investments and unsuitable life choices. One patient (known by his initials EVR) had a benign tumor pushing on his orbitofrontal cortex. He lost his job, left his wife, married a prostitute, and divorced again in a matter of months. Removal of the tumor reduced these unadaptive behaviors. Adolescent changes in mood, aggressiveness, and social behavior are driven by other aspects of brain development. These changes may be linked to increases in size and activity of the amygdala, a part of the forebrain that processes strong emotions, both positive and negative. Even puberty itself is ultimately driven by the brain, because the hypothalamus, a grape-sized structure that sits under the brain just in front of the brainstem, secretes gonadotropin-releasing hormone as the first step in a chain reaction that ultimately leads to the release of estrogens and testosterone to drive sexual maturation. Together, these hormones powerAdolescence: MYTH: ADOLESCENTS HAVE A LONGER DAY-NIGHT CYCLE The eight-year-old who got up early every morning has turned into a sluggish teenager. Although his body is in front of you, his brain is at least one time zone to the west. Everyone else is getting up, but he still wants to sleep—a kind of Adolescent Savings Time. What is going on? Our brain’s circadian rhythm sets the times that we want to wake and sleep (see chapter 7). Individuals vary, so that larks have peaks and troughs earlier in the day than night owls. Adolescence is accompanied by a shift toward evening wakefulness— and not just in people. At puberty, a shift of one to four hours has also been seen in monkeys and a variety of rodents. One popular view is that adolescents have a longer day-night cycle. This impression is false; if you take away normal light-dark signals or suddenly shift the signals, a teenager’s internal clock will react the same way as everyone else’s. But a real difference in adolescent circadian rhythms is a decrease in melatonin levels, as well as a shift in the time when melatonin rises and falls. Melatonin helps trigger the onset of sleep. When puberty hits, nocturnal melatonin levels decline sharply, continuing a general decreasing trend that started back in infancy. So it’s possible that adolescents are simply experiencing smaller and later sleep
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signals than they did in previous years, leading to a delayed bedtime. With puberty also comes new social pressures. Even though they need only a little less sleep than children, adolescents are expected (or want) to adopt adult-like wake and sleep times. Their schools convene earlier in the morning. At the end of the day, there is homework, after-school activities, and spending time with friends. Intellectually and socially, their world is exploding. Even after bedtime, communications such as text messaging provide a continuing source of stimulation—and sleeplessness. The net result is the need to catch up on lost sleep. In one study, researchers surveyed sleep habits in Swiss, German, and Austrian girls for up to nine years after their first menstrual period. The girls slept almost two hours longer per day on weekends than on weekdays, compared to less than an hour of catch-up in younger children and adults. Sleep debt has serious consequences, including reduced mental performance, depressed mood, impaired health, and weight gain. Fully reorganize the brain. Many of the brain changes we have described may be organized and shaped by hormone signaling. Although sex and stress hormones rise during late childhood and adolescence, in most cases researchers have found little evidence for a direct effect of hormones on typical adolescent behavior. Hormones are a key component for organizing the neural circuitry, but by itself testosterone is not very predictive of risk taking. The combination of a poor parent-child relationship with high testosterone has somewhat more predictive power. In adolescence, a good relationship forged in your child’s early years can pay off. This principle extends to siblings too: better relationships with brothers and sisters improve adjustment during adolescence. A degree of impulsivity and aggression is probably unavoidable in life, but in some cultures, adolescent urges play a positive role. For example, among immigrants in big-city Chinatowns, aggression by male adolescents toward potentially violent intruders can protect the community from harm. Among the Mbuti, a hunter-gatherer group in the Congo, adolescents act on behalf of the group to punish deviations in adult behavior with mockery and even vandalism. One hallmark of adolescent behavior in people and other mammals is an increase in what behavioral scientists call approach, the seeking of new social contacts and situations. Combined with other changes, this tendency can lead to the making of new friends—and also, sometimes, rebellion against older family members. Some conflict is typical, though extreme emotional turmoil in relaOne name for this adolescent tendency, social jetlag, suggests that they might be able to use some tricks of long-distance travelers. Here are a few: 1. Opening the blinds in the morning will activate the melanopsin pathway in your retinas. At this time of the circadian clock, exposure to light creates a tendency to get up a little earlier the next day. 2. Evening light leads to a later bedtime the next day. Combine that with a natural tendency to stay up, and it’s a recipe for continued night-owl behavior. So even if sleep isn’t coming easily, turn down the lights. And turn off that cell phone! 3. Exercise leads to secretion of melatonin by the pineal gland. An evening soccer game or run might be just the thing to start a brain on the road to sleep. Relationships with parents is experienced by only about one in ten adolescents. This happens in other species as well. For instance, adolescent rats sometimes attack their parents. Another typically teenage behavior, the tendency to seek novelty, is likely to be driven by the brain’s reward systems. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter involved in initiating action and movement and in signaling rewarding events. In brain scanning data, the orbitofrontal cortex and other regions that receive dopamine-secreting inputs are still maturing during the teen years. The serotonergicsystem—involved in sensation, movement, and mood—is also changing in the adolescent years. Awkwardness and moodiness might be linked to this change. Another change in the brains of adolescents is a proliferation of receptors for the signaling chemical oxytocin. (Oxytocin is a neuro peptide—that is, a peptide used as a neurotransmitter.) Neuroscientists found that oxytocin mediates a wide variety of bonding behaviors. In people, oxytocin is secreted during feelings of romantic and parental love. Both mothers and fathers of an infant or a small child have more oxytocin; the higher their oxytocin, the more they touch, play with, and otherwise socially engage with their child—and each other. Indeed, these signals sometimes get crossed, so that a new mother having a loving thought toward her partner might feel her milk drop. Romeo and Juliet would also have felt a newly strengthened oxytocin signal. Adolescence is a time when the interplay between brain and environment takes on new complexity. Early adolescent brain changes increase a child’s appetite for stimulation and social contact, while self-regulatory systems continue to mature through late adolescence. In modern society, adolescence is viewed in terms of the delay between sexual maturation and true independence. Indeed, sexual, physical, and intellectual maturation are spread out over a decade or more, providing many opportunities for growth and change. What an adolescent does with this biologically defined period of transition depends on his or her culture—and the choices that come along the way. Around the world, how and when people enter society during this process varies, ranging from child workers to continuing students with children of their own. In all cases the brain has found ways to adapt to local circumstances—a testament to its flexibility. Reprinted with permission
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Denk and Ives, Partners in Pianism By STUART ISACOFF We Americans prize independence, innovation and in-your-face moxie. No one better exemplifies these qualities than Charles Ives, a rugged New Englander who, in the early years of the 20th century, practically invented the modern life-insurance industry; wrote sassy essays about politics, morality and art; and composed music of stunning originality. When, in 1920, he published his great piano work, the “Concord Sonata,” and sent it to reviewers with a note that said “Complimentary: copies are not to be sold,” the venerable magazine Musical America commented, “At last a composer who realizes the unsalable quality of his music.” It was indeed a hard sell. This work sounds like no one else’s—filled with the composer’s trademark collage technique (quoting everything from hymns and patriotic songs to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony); unexpected, thoroughly unique harmonic collisions; and equal doses of biting sarcasm and heart-on-your-sleeve sentimentality. As pianist Jeremy Denk puts it in the liner notes for his new CD, “Jeremy Denk Plays Ives,” released last week, this music is “brilliant, inventive, tender, edgy, wild, original, witty, haunting . . . so many adjectives.” Reviewers have had similar difficulty in finding adjectives adequate to Mr. Denk’s artistry: “intelligence,” “lyricism,” “attention to detail,” “chops” and “breadth of color” are just some of the words they have used. The new recording includes both of Ives’s sonatas (the “Concord,” with its four movements dedicated to New England literary figures— Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau and the Alcotts—is No. 2). The pianist, who performs Tuesday night at Alice Tully Hall with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in a program of folk-influenced works from Europe, has a wide repertoire. Why did he decide to record Ives? “For me, it’s his tenderness, the affection, the sense of memory he has,” Mr. Denk said recently over a cup of coffee. “He reaches back to his childhood and recreates moments of magic, capturing an essence of music making that is more important than what happens in a formal concert. There is,” he reveals, “a strong Ives-Proust connection for me—it has to do with the time period, and the intense rethinking of what the listening experience is supposed to be.” Listening to music by Ives is like wandering through a memory box filled with old photos, sing-along songbooks, political pamphlets, yellowed poems, the bass drum of a big brass band, remnants of an old watering hole, and perhaps a pair of boxing gloves. “So much music of the time was conservative,” Mr. Denk explains. “Think of William Grant Still or Amy Beach. They were mostly writing ‘in the style of. . . .’ That is, they were busy redecorating the same rooms. Beethoven didn’t do that—he tore things apart. Ives created his persona out of Beethoven and Emerson—men who were intensely self-reliant. He takes things that are commonplace—as Beethoven did—and infuses them with a new vision. “The first movement of the First Sonata, for example, uses a sentimental tune, ‘Where Is My Wandering Boy Tonight?’ – which gets tangled up in the hymn ‘Lebanon.’ The result can seem funny, but by the end of the movement you realize that there is a great melancholy and nostalgia there. He experiments all the time, and, just as in experiments in a lab, things sometimes explode. But Ives seems to value even the misfires. And ultimately, we do too.” One wonders if the music presents special pianistic challenges. “He was a pianist, too,” Mr. Denk reminds us. “So when he takes honky-tonk style, for example, he pushes its virtuosity to the highest degree. You end up playing syncopated figures against yourself, and have to be able to keep two ideas in your head at once—that’s something that is especially Ivesian. And this music is especially dependent on voicing [bringing certain lines to the forefront], because things are multilayered:You must be sure you know what the important melody is, what the appropriate color should be, how to make the beautiful parts truly beautiful.” Most significantly, the pianist says, there are always deep philosophical roots hidden in the score. “There is a moment in Thoreau that is enchanting. A descending five-note figure that had been lingering in our subconscious throughout the piece— actually they are the first notes to appear in the left hand in Emerson—suddenly crystallizes into the Stephen Foster song ‘Down in the Cornfield.’ Below it, a three-note ‘nature’ theme rings out as a recurring bass pattern. The joining of these melodies brings to mind a line from “Walden”: ‘I grew in those seasons like corn in the night. . . .’ Ives loved such instances of retrospective
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Denk and Ives, Partners in Pianism. cont’d unification—moments of epiphany. “Similarly, in Emerson, he scatters seeds of thoughts at the beginning of the movement—he throws everything at you in the first page—then spends 16 minutes separating the ideas into little episodes. In the end we see them marching away, one by one. He was going after Emerson’s idea of finding meaning by implication or metaphor.” Mr. Denk’s career includes a musical partnership with violinist Joshua Bell, and numerous solo and concerto appearances. Has focusing on Ives affected his performance of other repertoire? “Actually, it is the other way around. I think my playing of Liszt, Beethoven and Debussy has fed into my understanding of what Ives was after,” Mr. Denk replies. “In Ives you always have to be able to turn on a dime from one type of sound to another—because his music lives on the edge of anarchy.” Nevertheless, as Jeremy Denk has ably demonstrated, a great interpreter can keep the threat of entropy at bay. Mr. Isacoff is on the faculty of the Purchase College Conservatory of Music (SUNY), and author of the book “Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization” (Knopf/Vintage). Reprinted with permission
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Annals of Innovation In the Air
Who says big ideas are rare? by Malcolm Gladwell May 12, 2008
The history of science is full of ideas that several people had at the same time. Nathan Myhrvold met Jack Horner on the set of the “Jurassic Park” sequel in 1996. Horner is an eminent paleontologist, and was a consultant on the movie. Myhrvold was there because he really likes dinosaurs. Between takes, the two men got to talking, and Horner asked Myhrvold if he was interested in funding dinosaur expeditions. Myhrvold is of Nordic extraction, and he looks every bit the bearded, fair-haired Viking—not so much the tall, ferocious kind who raped and pillaged as the impish, roly-poly kind who stayed home by the fjords trying to turn lead into gold. He is gregarious, enthusiastic, and nerdy on an epic scale. He graduated from high school at fourteen. He started Microsoft’s research division, leaving, in 1999, with hundreds of millions. He is obsessed with aperiodic tile patterns. (Imagine a floor tiled in a pattern that never repeats.) When Myhrvold built his own house, on the shores of Lake Washington, outside Seattle—a vast, silvery hypermodernist structure described by his wife as the place in the sci-fi movie where the aliens live—he embedded some sixty
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aperiodic patterns in the walls, floors, and ceilings. His front garden is planted entirely with vegetation from the Mesozoic era. (“If the “Jurassic Park” thing happens,” he says, “this is where the dinosaurs will come to eat.”) One of the scholarly achievements he is proudest of is a paper he co-wrote proving that it was theoretically possible for sauropods—his favorite kind of dinosaur—to have snapped their tails back and forth faster than the speed of sound. How could he say no to the great Jack Horner? “What you do on a dinosaur expedition is you hike and look at the ground,” Myhrvold explains. “You find bones sticking out of the dirt and, once you see something, you dig.” In Montana, which is prime dinosaur country, people had been hiking around and looking for bones for at least a hundred years. But Horner wanted to keep trying. So he and Myhrvold put together a number of teams, totalling as many as fifty people. They crossed the Fort Peck reservoir in boats, and began to explore the Montana badlands in earnest. They went out for weeks at a time, several times a year. They flew equipment in on helicopters. They mapped the full dinosaur ecology—bringing in specialists from other disciplines. And they found dinosaur bones by the truckload. Once, a team member came across a bone sticking out from the bottom of a recently eroded cliff. It took Horner’s field crew three summers to dig it out, and when they broke the bone open a black, gooey substance trickled out—a discovery that led Myhrvold and his friend Lowell Wood on a twenty-minute digression at dinner one night about how, given enough goo and a sufficient number of chicken embryos, they could “make another one.” There was also Myhrvold’s own find: a line of vertebrae, as big as apples, just lying on the ground in front of him. “It was seven years ago. It was a bunch of bones from a fairly rare dinosaur called a thescelosaurus. I said, “Oh, my God!” I was walking with Jack and my son. Then Jack said, “ Look, there’s a bone in the side of the hill.” And we look at it, and it’s a piece of a jawbone with a tooth the size of a banana. It was a T. rex skull. There was nothing else it could possibly be.” People weren’t finding dinosaur bones, and they assumed that it was because they were rare. But—and almost everything that Myhrvold has been up to during the past half decade follows from this fact—it was our fault. We didn’t look hard enough. Myhrvold gave the skeleton to the Smithsonian. It’s called the N. rex. “Our expeditions have found more T. rex than anyone else in the world,” Myhrvold said. “From 1909 to 1999, the world found eighteen T. rex specimens. From 1999 until now, we’ve found nine more.” Myhrvold has the kind of laugh that scatters pigeons. “We have dominant T. rex market share.” In 1874, Alexander Graham Bell spent the summer with his parents in Brantford, Ontario. He was twenty-seven years old, and employed as a speech therapist in Boston. But his real interest was solving the puzzle of what he then called the “harmonic telegraph.” In Boston, he had tinkered obsessively with tuning forks and electromagnetic coils, often staying up all night when he was in the grip of an idea. When he went to Brantford, he brought with him an actual human ear, taken from a cadaver and preserved, to which he attached a pen, so that he could record the vibration of the ear’s bones when he spoke into it. One day, Bell went for a walk on a bluff overlooking the Grand River, near his parents’ house. In a recent biography of Bell, “Reluctant Genius,” Charlotte Gray writes: A large tree had blown down here, creating a natural and completely private belvedere, which [he] had dubbed his “dreaming place.” Slouched on a wicker chair, his hands in his pockets, he stared unseeing at the swiftly flowing river below him. Far from the bustle of Boston and the pressure of competition from other eager inventors, he mulled over everything he had discovered about sound. In that moment, Bell knew the answer to the puzzle of the harmonic telegraph. Electric currents could convey sound along a wire if they undulated in accordance with the sound waves. Back in Boston, he hired a research assistant, Thomas Watson. He turned his attic into a laboratory, and redoubled his efforts. Then, on March 10, 1876, he set up one end of his crude prototype in his bedroom, and had Watson take the other end to the room next door. Bell, always prone to clumsiness, spilled acid on his clothes. “Mr. Watson, come here,” he cried out. Watson came running—but only because he had heard Bell on the receiver, plain as day. The telephone was born. In 1999, when Nathan Myhrvold left Microsoft and struck out on his own, he set himself an unusual goal. He wanted to see whether the kind of insight that leads to invention could be engineered. He formed a company called Intellectual Ventures. He raised hundreds of millions of dollars. He hired the smartest people he knew. It was not a venture-capital firm. Venture capitalists fund insights—that is, they let the magical process that generates new ideas take its course, and then they jump in. Myhrvold wanted to make insights—to come up with ideas, patent them, and then license them to interested companies. He thought that if he brought lots of very clever people together he could reconstruct that moment by the Grand River. One rainy day last November, Myhrvold held an “invention session,” as he calls such meetings, on the technology of selfassembly. What if it was possible to break a complex piece of machinery into a thousand pieces and then, at some predetermined moment, have the machine put itself back together again? That had to be useful. But for what? The meeting, like many of Myhrvold’s sessions, was held in a conference room in the Intellectual Ventures laboratory, a big warehouse in an industrial park across Lake Washington from Seattle: plasma TV screens on the walls, a long table furnished with bottles of Diet Pepsi and big bowls of cashews. Chairing the meeting was Casey Tegreene, an electrical engineer with a law degree, who is the chief patent counsel for I.V. He stood at one end of the table. Myhrvold was at the opposite end. Next to him was Edward Jung, whom Myhrvold met at Microsoft. Jung is lean and sleek, with closely cropped fine black hair. Once, he spent twenty-two days walking across Texas with nothing but a bedroll, a flashlight, and a rifle, from Big Bend, in the west, to Houston, where he was going to deliver a paper at a biology conference. On the other side of the table from Jung was Lowell Wood, an imposing man with graying red hair and an enormous head. Three or four pens were crammed into his shirt pocket. The screen saver on his laptop was a picture of
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Stonehenge. “You know how musicians will say, “My teacher was So-and-So, and his teacher was So-and-So,” right back to Beethoven?” Myhrvold says. “So Lowell was the great protégé of Edward Teller. He was at Lawrence Livermore. He was the technical director of Star Wars.” Myhrvold and Wood have known each other since Myhrvold was a teen-ager and Wood interviewed him for a graduate fellowship called the Hertz. “If you want to know what Nathan was like at that age,” Wood said, “look at that ball of fire now and scale that up by eight or ten decibels.” Wood bent the rules for Myhrvold; the Hertz was supposed to be for research in real-world problems. Myhrvold’s field at that point, quantum cosmology, involved the application of quantum mechanics to the period just after the big bang, which means, as Myhrvold likes to say, that he had no interest in the universe a microsecond after its creation. The chairman of the chemistry department at Stanford, Richard Zare, had flown in for the day, as had Eric Leuthardt, a young neurosurgeon from Washington University, in St. Louis, who is a regular at I.V. sessions. At the back was a sombre, bearded man named Rod Hyde, who had been Wood’s protégé at Lawrence Livermore. Tegreene began. “There really aren’t any rules,” he told everyone. “We may start out talking about refined plastics and end up talking about shoes, and that’s O.K.” He started in on the “prep.” In the previous weeks, he and his staff had reviewed the relevant scientific literature and recent patent filings in order to come up with a short briefing on what was and wasn’t known about self-assembly. A short BBC documentary was shown, on the early work of the scientist Lionel Penrose. Richard Zare passed around a set of what looked like ceramic dice. Leuthardt drew elaborate diagrams of the spine on the blackboard. Self-assembly was very useful in eye-of-theneedle problems—in cases where you had to get something very large through a very small hole—and Leuthardt wondered if it might be helpful in minimally invasive surgery. The conversation went in fits and starts. “I’m asking a simple question and getting a long-winded answer,” Jung said at one point, quietly. Wood played the role of devil’s advocate. During a break, Myhrvold announced that he had just bought a CAT scanner, on an Internet auction site. “I put in a minimum bid of twenty-nine hundred dollars,” he said. There was much murmuring and nodding around the room. Myhrvold’s friends, like Myhrvold, seemed to be of the opinion that there is no downside to having a CAT scanner, especially if you can get it for twenty-nine hundred dollars. Before long, self-assembly was put aside and the talk swung to how to improve X-rays, and then to the puzzling phenomenon of soldiers in Iraq who survive a bomb blast only to die a few days later of a stroke. Wood thought it was a shock wave, penetrating the soldiers’ helmets and surging through their brains, tearing blood vessels away from tissue. “Lowell is the living example of something better than the Internet,” Jung said after the meeting was over. “On the Internet, you can search for whatever you want, but you have to know the right terms. With Lowell, you just give him a concept, and this stuff pops out.” Leuthardt, the neurosurgeon, thought that Wood’s argument was unconvincing. The two went back and forth, arguing about how you could make a helmet that would better protect soldiers. “We should be careful how much mental energy we spend on this,” Leuthardt said, after a few minutes. Wood started talking about the particular properties of bullets with tungsten cores. “Shouldn’t someone tell the Pentagon?” a voice said, only half jokingly, from the back of the room. How useful is it to have a group of really smart people brainstorm for a day? When Myhrvold started out, his expectations were modest. Although he wanted insights like Alexander Graham Bell’s, Bell was clearly one in a million, a genius who went on to have ideas in an extraordinary number of areas—sound recording, flight, lasers, tetrahedral construction, and hydrofoil boats, to name a few. The telephone was his obsession. He approached it from a unique perspective, that of a speech therapist. He had put in years of preparation before that moment by the Grand River, and it was impossible to know what unconscious associations triggered his great insight. Invention has its own algorithm: genius, obsession, serendipity, and epiphany in some unknowable combination. How can you put that in a bottle? But then, in August of 2003, I.V. held its first invention session, and it was a revelation. “Afterward, Nathan kept saying, “There are so many inventions,” Wood recalled. “He thought if we came up with a half-dozen good ideas it would be great, and we came up with somewhere between fifty and a hundred. I said to him, “But you had eight people in that room who are seasoned inventors. Weren’t you expecting a multiplier effect?” And he said, “Yeah, but it was more than multiplicity.” Not even Nathan had any idea of what it was going to be like.” The original expectation was that I.V. would file a hundred patents a year. Currently, it’s filing five hundred a year. It has a backlog of three thousand ideas. Wood said that he once attended a two-day invention session presided over by Jung, and after the first day the group went out to dinner. “So Edward took his people out, plus me,” Wood said. “And the eight of us sat down at a table and the attorney said, “Do you mind if I record the evening?” And we all said no, of course not. We sat there. It was a long dinner. I thought we were lightly chewing the rag. But the next day the attorney comes up with eight single-spaced pages flagging thirty-six different inventions from dinner. Dinner.” And the kinds of ideas the group came up with weren’t trivial. Intellectual Ventures just had a patent issued on automatic, battery-powered glasses, with a tiny video camera that reads the image off the retina and adjusts the fluid-filled lenses accordingly, up to ten times a second. It just licensed off a cluster of its patents, for eighty million dollars. It has invented new kinds of techniques for making microchips and improving jet engines; it has proposed a way to custom-tailor the mesh “sleeve” that
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neurosurgeons can use to repair aneurysms. Bill Gates, whose company, Microsoft, is one of the major investors in Intellectual Ventures, says, “I can give you fifty examples of ideas they’ve had where, if you take just one of them, you’d have a startup company right there.” Gates has participated in a number of invention sessions, and, with other members of the Gates Foundation, meets every few months with Myhrvold to brainstorm about things like malaria or H.I.V. “Nathan sent over a hundred scientific papers beforehand,” Gates said of the last such meeting. “The amount of reading was huge. But it was fantastic. There’s this idea they have where you can track moving things by counting wing beats. So you could build a mosquito fence and clear an entire area. They had some ideas about superthermoses, so you wouldn’t need refrigerators for certain things. They also came up with this idea to stop hurricanes. Basically, the waves in the ocean have energy, and you use that to lower the temperature differential. I’m not saying it necessarily is going to work. But it’s just an example of something where you go, Wow.” One of the sessions that Gates participated in was on the possibility of resuscitating nuclear energy. “Teller had this idea way back when that you could make a very safe, passive nuclear reactor,” Myhrvold explained. “No moving parts. Proliferationresistant. Dead simple. Every serious nuclear accident involves operator error, so you want to eliminate the operator altogether. Lowell and Rod and others wrote a paper on it once. So we did several sessions on it.” The plant, as they conceived it, would produce something like one to three gigawatts of power, which is enough to serve a medium-sized city. The reactor core would be no more than several metres wide and about ten metres long. It would be enclosed in a sealed, armored box. The box would work for thirty years, without need for refuelling. Wood’s idea was that the box would run on thorium, which is a very common, mildly radioactive metal. (The world has roughly a hundred-thousand-year supply, he figures.) Myhrvold’s idea was that it should run on spent fuel from existing power plants. “Waste has negative cost,” Myhrvold said. “This is how we make this idea politically and regulatorily attractive. Lowell and I had a monthlong no-holdsbarred nuclear-physics battle. He didn’t believe waste would work. It turns out it does.” Myhrvold grinned. “He concedes it now.” It was a long-shot idea, easily fifteen years from reality, if it became a reality at all. It was just a tantalizing idea at this point, but who wasn’t interested in seeing where it would lead? “We have thirty guys working on it,” he went on. “I have more people doing cutting-edge nuclear work than General Electric. We’re looking for someone to partner with us, because this is a huge undertaking. We took out an ad in Nuclear News, which is the big trade journal. It looks like something from The Onion: “Intellectual Ventures interested in nuclear-core designer and fission specialist.” And, no, the F.B.I. hasn’t come knocking.” He lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “Lowell is known to them.” It was the dinosaur-bone story all over again. You sent a proper search team into territory where people had been looking for a hundred years, and, lo and behold, there’s a T. rex tooth the size of a banana. Ideas weren’t precious. They were everywhere, which suggested that maybe the extraordinary process that we thought was necessary for invention—genius, obsession, serendipity, epiphany—wasn’t necessary at all. In June of 1876, a few months after he shouted out, “Mr. Watson, come here,” Alexander Graham Bell took his device to the World’s Fair in Philadelphia. There, before an audience that included the emperor of Brazil, he gave his most famous public performance. The emperor accompanied Bell’s assistant, Willie Hubbard, to an upper gallery, where the receiver had been placed, leaving Bell with his transmitter. Below them, and out of sight, Bell began to talk. “A storm of emotions crossed the Brazilian emperor’s face—uncertainty, amazement, elation,” Charlotte Gray writes. “Lifting his head from the receiver . . . he gave Willie a huge grin and said, “This thing speaks!” ” Gray continues: Soon a steady stream of portly, middle-aged men were clambering into the gallery, stripping off their jackets, and bending their ears to the receiver. “For an hour or more,” Willie remembered, “all took turns in talking and listening, testing the line in every possible way, evidently looking for some trickery, or thinking that the sound was carried through the air. . . . It seemed to be nearly all too wonderful for belief.” Bell was not the only one to give a presentation on the telephone at the Philadelphia Exhibition, however. Someone else spoke first. His name was Elisha Gray. Gray never had an epiphany overlooking the Grand River. Few have claimed that Gray was a genius. He does not seem to have been obsessive, or to have routinely stayed up all night while in the grip of an idea—although we don’t really know, because, unlike Bell, he has never been the subject of a full-length biography. Gray was simply a very adept inventor. He was the author of a number of discoveries relating to the telegraph industry, including a self-adjusting relay that solved the problem of circuits sticking open or shut, and a telegraph printer—a precursor of what was later called the Teletype machine. He worked closely with Western Union. He had a very capable partner named Enos Barton, with whom he formed a company that later became the Western Electric Company and its offshoot Graybar (of Graybar Building fame). And Gray was working on the telephone at the same time that Bell was. In fact, the two filed notice with the Patent Office in Washington, D.C., on the same day—February 14, 1876. Bell went on to make telephones with the company that later became A. T. & T. Gray went on to make telephones in partnership with Western Union and Thomas Edison, and—until Gray’s team was forced to settle a lawsuit with Bell’s company—the general consensus was that Gray and Edison’s telephone was better than Bell’s telephone. In order to get one of the greatest inventions of the modern age, in other words, we thought we needed the solitary genius. But if Alexander Graham Bell had fallen into the Grand River and drowned that day back in Brantford, the world would still have had the telephone, the only difference being that the telephone company would have been nicknamed Ma Gray, not Ma Bell. This phenomenon of simultaneous discovery—what science historians call “multiples”—turns out to be extremely common.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Who says big ideas are rare? Cont’d
One of the first comprehensive lists of multiples was put together by William Ogburn and Dorothy Thomas, in 1922, and they found a hundred and forty-eight major scientific discoveries that fit the multiple pattern. Newton and Leibniz both discovered calculus. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace both discovered evolution. Three mathematicians “invented” decimal fractions. Oxygen was discovered by Joseph Priestley, in Wiltshire, in 1774, and by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, in Uppsala, a year earlier. Color photography was invented at the same time by Charles Cros and by Louis Ducos du Hauron, in France. Logarithms were invented by John Napier and Henry Briggs in Britain, and by Joost Bürgi in Switzerland. “There were four independent discoveries of sunspots, all in 1611; namely, by Galileo in Italy, Scheiner in Germany, Fabricius in Holland and Harriott in England,” Ogburn and Thomas note, and they continue: The law of the conservation of energy, so significant in science and philosophy, was formulated four times independently in 1847, by Joule, Thomson, Colding and Helmholz. They had been anticipated by Robert Mayer in 1842. There seem to have been at least six different inventors of the thermometer and no less than nine claimants of the invention of the telescope. Typewriting machines were invented simultaneously in England and in America by several individuals in these countries. The steamboat is claimed as the “exclusive” discovery of Fulton, Jouffroy, Rumsey, Stevens and Symmington. For Ogburn and Thomas, the sheer number of multiples could mean only one thing: scientific discoveries must, in some sense, be inevitable. They must be in the air, products of the intellectual climate of a specific time and place. It should not surprise us, then, that calculus was invented by two people at the same moment in history. Pascal and Descartes had already laid the foundations. The Englishman John Wallis had pushed the state of knowledge still further. Newton’s teacher was Isaac Barrow, who had studied in Italy, and knew the critical work of Torricelli and Cavalieri. Leibniz knew Pascal’s and Descartes’s work from his time in Paris. He was close to a German named Henry Oldenburg, who, now living in London, had taken it upon himself to catalogue the latest findings of the English mathematicians. Leibniz and Newton may never have actually sat down together and shared their work in detail. But they occupied a common intellectual milieu. “All the basic work was done—someone just needed to take the next step and put it together,” Jason Bardi writes in “The Calculus Wars,” a history of the idea’s development. “If Newton and Leibniz had not discovered it, someone else would have.” Calculus was in the air. Of course, that is not the way Newton saw it. He had done his calculus work in the mid-sixteen-sixties, but never published it. And after Leibniz came out with his calculus, in the sixteen-eighties, people in Newton’s circle accused Leibniz of stealing his work, setting off one of the great scientific scandals of the seventeenth century. That is the inevitable human response. We’re reluctant to believe that great discoveries are in the air. We want to believe that great discoveries are in our heads—and to each party in the multiple the presence of the other party is invariably cause for suspicion. Thus the biographer Robert Bruce, in “Bell: Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude,” casts a skeptical eye on Elisha Gray. Was it entirely coincidence, he asks, that the two filed on exactly the same day? “If Gray had prevailed in the end,” he goes on, Bell and his partners, along with fanciers of the underdog, would have suspected chicanery. After all, Gray did not put his concept on paper nor even mention it to anyone until he had spent nearly a month in Washington making frequent visits to the Patent Office, and until Bell’s notarized specifications had for several days been the admiration of at least some of “the people in the Patent Office.” . . . It is easier to believe that a conception already forming in Gray’s mind was precipitated by rumors of what Bell was about to patent, than to believe that chance alone brought Gray to inspiration and action at that precise moment. In “The Telephone Gambit,” Seth Shulman makes the opposite case. Just before Bell had his famous conversation with Watson, Shulman points out, he visited the Patent Office in Washington. And the transmitter design that Bell immediately sketched in his notebook upon his return to Boston was identical to the sketch of the transmitter that Gray had submitted to the Patent Office. This could not be coincidence, Shulman concludes, and thereupon constructs an ingenious (and, it should be said, highly entertaining) revisionist account of Bell’s invention, complete with allegations of corruption and romantic turmoil. Bell’s telephone, he writes, is “one of the most consequential thefts in history.” But surely Gray and Bell occupied their scientific moment in the same way that Leibniz and Newton did. They arrived at electric speech by more or less the same pathway. They were trying to find a way to send more than one message at a time along a telegraph wire—which was then one of the central technological problems of the day. They had read the same essential sources—particularly the work of Philipp Reis, the German physicist who had come startlingly close to building a working telephone back in the early eighteen-sixties. The arguments of Bruce and Shulman suppose that great ideas are precious. It is too much for them to imagine that a discovery as remarkable as the telephone could arise in two places at once. But five people came up with the steamboat, and nine people came up with the telescope, and, if Gray had fallen into the Grand River along with Bell, some Joe Smith somewhere would likely have come up with the telephone instead and Ma Smith would have run the show. Good ideas are out there for anyone with the wit and the will to find them, which is how a group of people can sit down to dinner, put their minds to it, and end up with eight single-spaced pages of ideas. Last March, Myhrvold decided to do an invention session with Eric Leuthardt and several other physicians in St. Louis. Rod Hyde came, along with a scientist from M.I.T. named Ed Boyden. Wood was there as well. “Lowell came in looking like the Cheshire Cat,” Myhrvold recalled. “He said, “ I have a question for everyone. You have a tumor, and the tumor becomes metastatic, and it sheds metastatic cancer cells. How long do those circulate in the bloodstream before they land?” And we all said, “ We don’t know. Ten times?” “No,” he said. “As many as a million times.” Isn’t that amazing? If you had no time, you’d be screwed. But it turns out that these cells are in your blood for as long as a year before they land somewhere. What that says is that you’ve got a chance to intercept them.”
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Who says big ideas are rare? Cont’d
How did Wood come to this conclusion? He had run across a stray fact in a recent issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. “It was an article that talked about, at one point, the number of cancer cells per millilitre of blood,” he said. “And I looked at that figure and said, “ Something’s wrong here. That can’t possibly be true.” The number was incredibly high. Too high. It has to be one cell in a hundred litres, not what they were saying—one cell in a millilitre. Yet they spoke of it so confidently. I clicked through to the references. It was a commonplace. There really were that many cancer cells.” Wood did some arithmetic. He knew that human beings have only about five litres of blood. He knew that the heart pumps close to a hundred millilitres of blood per beat, which means that all of our blood circulates through our bloodstream in a matter of minutes. The New England Journal article was about metastatic breast cancer, and it seemed to Wood that when women die of metastatic breast cancer they don’t die with thousands of tumors. The vast majority of circulating cancer cells don’t do anything. “It turns out that some small per cent of tumor cells are actually the deadly ones,” he went on. “Tumor stem cells are what really initiate metastases. And isn’t it astonishing that they have to turn over at least ten thousand times before they can find a happy home? You naïvely think it’s once or twice or three times. Maybe five times at most. It isn’t. In other words, metastatic cancer—the brand of cancer that kills us—is an amazingly hard thing to initiate. Which strongly suggests that if you tip things just a little bit you essentially turn off the process.” That was the idea that Wood presented to the room in St. Louis. From there, the discussion raced ahead. Myhrvold and his inventors had already done a lot of thinking about using tiny optical filters capable of identifying and zapping microscopic particles. They also knew that finding cancer cells in blood is not hard. They’re often the wrong size or the wrong shape. So what if you slid a tiny filter into a blood vessel of a cancer patient? “You don’t have to intercept very much of the blood for it to work,” Wood went on. “Maybe one ten-thousandth of it. The filter could be put in a little tiny vein in the back of the hand, because that’s all you need. Or maybe I intercept all of the blood, but then it doesn’t have to be a particularly efficient filter.” Wood was a physicist, not a doctor, but that wasn’t necessarily a liability, at this stage. “People in biology and medicine don’t do arithmetic,” he said. He wasn’t being critical of biologists and physicians: this was, after all, a man who read medical journals for fun. He meant that the traditions of medicine encouraged qualitative observation and interpretation. But what physicists do—out of sheer force of habit and training—is measure things and compare measurements, and do the math to put measurements in context. At that moment, while reading The New England Journal, Wood had the advantages of someone looking at a familiar fact with a fresh perspective. That was also why Myhrvold had wanted to take his crew to St. Louis to meet with the surgeons. He likes to say that the only time a physicist and a brain surgeon meet is when the physicist is about to be cut open—and to his mind that made no sense. Surgeons had all kinds of problems that they didn’t realize had solutions, and physicists had all kinds of solutions to things that they didn’t realize were problems. At one point, Myhrvold asked the surgeons what, in a perfect world, would make their lives easier, and they said that they wanted an X-ray that went only skin deep. They wanted to know, before they made their first incision, what was just below the surface. When the Intellectual Ventures crew heard that, their response was amazement. “That’s your dream? A subcutaneous X-ray? We can do that.” Insight could be orchestrated: that was the lesson. If someone who knew how to make a filter had a conversation with someone who knew a lot about cancer and with someone who read the medical literature like a physicist, then maybe you could come up with a cancer treatment. It helped as well that Casey Tegreene had a law degree, Lowell Wood had spent his career dreaming up weapons for the government, Nathan Myhrvold was a ball of fire, Edward Jung had walked across Texas. They had different backgrounds and temperaments and perspectives, and if you gave them something to think about that they did not ordinarily think about—like hurricanes, or jet engines, or metastatic cancer—you were guaranteed a fresh set of eyes. There were drawbacks to this approach, of course. The outsider, not knowing what the insider knew, would make a lot of mistakes and chase down a lot of rabbit holes. Myhrvold admits that many of the ideas that come out of the invention sessions come to naught. After a session, the Ph.D.s on the I.V. staff examine each proposal closely and decide which ones are worth pursuing. They talk to outside experts; they reread the literature. Myhrvold isn’t even willing to guess what his company’s most promising inventions are. “That’s a foo’s game,” he says. If ideas are cheap, there is no point in making predictions, or worrying about failures, or obsessing, like Newton and Leibniz, or Bell and Gray, over who was first. After I.V. came up with its cancerfilter idea, it discovered that there was a company, based in Rochester, that was already developing a cancer filter. Filters were a multiple. But so what? If I.V.’s design wasn’t the best, Myhrvold had two thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine other ideas to pursue. In his living room, Myhrvold has a life-size T. rex skeleton, surrounded by all manner of other dinosaur artifacts. One of those is a cast of a nest of oviraptor eggs, each the size of an eggplant. You’d think a bird that big would have one egg, or maybe two. That’s the general rule: the larger the animal, the lower the fecundity. But it didn’t. For Myhrvold, it was one of the many ways in which dinosaurs could teach us about ourselves. “You know how many eggs were in that nest?” Myhrvold asked. “Thirty-two.” In the nineteen-sixties, the sociologist Robert K. Merton wrote a famous essay on scientific discovery in which he raised the question of what the existence of multiples tells us about genius. No one is a partner to more multiples, he pointed out, than a genius, and he came to the conclusion that our romantic notion of the genius must be wrong. A scientific genius is not a person who does what no one else can do; he or she is someone who does what it takes many others to do. The genius is not a unique source of insight; he is merely an efficient source of insight. “Consider the case of Kelvin, by way of illustration,” Merton writes, summarizing work he had done with his Columbia colleague Elinor Barber: After examining some 400 of his 661 scientific communications and addresses . . . Dr. Elinor Barber and I find him testifying
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Who says big ideas are rare? Cont’d
to at least 32 multiple discoveries in which he eventually found that his independent discoveries had also been made by others. These 32 multiples involved an aggregate of 30 other scientists, some, like Stokes, Green, Helmholtz, Cavendish, Clausius, Poincaré, Rayleigh, themselves men of undeniable genius, others, like Hankel, Pfaff, Homer Lane,Varley and Lamé, being men of talent, no doubt, but still not of the highest order. . . . For the hypothesis that each of these discoveries was destined to find expression, even if the genius of Kelvin had not obtained, there is the best of traditional proof: each was in fact made by others. Yet Kelvin’s stature as a genius remains undiminished. For it required a considerable number of others to duplicate these 32 discoveries which Kelvin himself made. This is, surely, what an invention session is: it is Hankel, Pfaff, Homer Lane,Varley, and Lamé in a room together, and if you have them on your staff you can get a big chunk of Kelvin’s discoveries, without ever needing to have Kelvin—which is fortunate, because, although there are plenty of Homer Lanes,Varleys, and Pfaffs in the world, there are very few Kelvins. Merton’s observation about scientific geniuses is clearly not true of artistic geniuses, however. You can’t pool the talents of a dozen Salieris and get Mozart’s Requiem. You can’t put together a committee of really talented art students and get Matisse’s “La Danse.” A work of artistic genius is singular, and all the arguments over calculus, the accusations back and forth between the Bell and the Gray camps, and our persistent inability to come to terms with the existence of multiples are the result of our misplaced desire to impose the paradigm of artistic invention on a world where it doesn’t belong. Shakespeare owned Hamlet because he created him, as none other before or since could. Alexander Graham Bell owned the telephone only because his patent application landed on the examiner’s desk a few hours before Gray’s. The first kind of creation was sui generis; the second could be re-created in a warehouse outside Seattle. This is a confusing distinction, because we use the same words to describe both kinds of inventors, and the brilliant scientist is every bit as dazzling in person as the brilliant playwright. The unavoidable first response to Myhrvold and his crew is to think of them as a kind of dream team, but, of course, the fact that they invent as prodigiously and effortlessly as they do is evidence that they are not a dream team at all. You could put together an Intellectual Ventures in Los Angeles, if you wanted to, and Chicago, and New York and Baltimore, and anywhere you could find enough imagination, a fresh set of eyes, and a room full of Varleys and Pfaffs. The statistician Stephen Stigler once wrote an elegant essay about the futility of the practice of eponymy in science—that is, the practice of naming a scientific discovery after its inventor. That’s another idea inappropriately borrowed from the cultural realm. As Stigler pointed out, “It can be found that Laplace employed Fourier Transforms in print before Fourier published on the topic, that Lagrange presented Laplace Transforms before Laplace began his scientific career, that Poisson published the Cauchy distribution in 1824, twenty-nine years before Cauchy touched on it in an incidental manner, and that Bienaymé stated and proved the Chebychev Inequality a decade before and in greater generality than Chebychev’s first work on the topic.” For that matter, the Pythagorean theorem was known before Pythagoras; Gaussian distributions were not discovered by Gauss. The examples were so legion that Stigler declared the existence of Stigler’s Law: “No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer.” There are just too many people with an equal shot at those ideas floating out there in the ether. We think we’re pinning medals on heroes. In fact, we’re pinning tails on donkeys. Stigler’s Law was true, Stigler gleefully pointed out, even of Stigler’s Law itself. The idea that credit does not align with discovery, he reveals at the very end of his essay, was in fact first put forth by Merton. “We may expect,” Stigler concluded, “that in years to come, Robert K. Merton, and his colleagues and students, will provide us with answers to these and other questions regarding eponymy, completing what, but for the Law, would be called the Merton Theory of the reward system of science.” In April, Lowell Wood was on the East Coast for a meeting of the Hertz Foundation fellows in Woods Hole. Afterward, he came to New York to make a pilgrimage to the American Museum of Natural History. He had just half a day, so he began right away in the Dinosaur Halls. He spent what he later described as a “ridiculously prolonged” period of time at the first station in the Ornithischian Hall—the ankylosaurus shrine. He knew it by heart. His next stop was the dimetrodon, the progenitor of Mammalia. This was a family tradition. When Wood first took his daughter to the museum, she dubbed the fossil “Great GrandUncle Dimetrodon,” and they always paid their respects to it. Next, he visited a glyptodont; this creature was the only truly armored mammal, a fact of great significance to a former weaponeer. He then wandered into the Vertebrate Origins gallery and, for the hundredth time, wondered about the strange openings that Archosauria had in front of their eyes and behind their nostrils. They had to be for breathing, didn’t they? He tried to come up with an alternate hypothesis, and couldn’t—but then he couldn’t come up with a way to confirm his own hunch, either. It was a puzzle. Perhaps someday he would figure it out. Perhaps someone else would. Or perhaps someone would find another skeleton that shed light on the mystery. Nathan Myhrvold and Jack Horner had branched out from Montana, and at the end of the summer were going to Mongolia, to hunt in the Gobi desert. There were a lot more bones where these came from. ILLUSTRATION: BARRY BLITT Article reprinted with permission
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Book Review: Adventures Among Ants By RICHARD B. WOODWARD Published: June 9, 2010
Adventures Among Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of Trillions By Mark W. Moffett, University of California Press, 280 pages Ants have been subterranean rulers of the earth since the extinction of the dinosaurs at the end of the Mesozoic era. Native to every continent except Antarctica, tireless in their urge to propagate and expand, they have evolved an astounding social organization with single-minded discipline. The size of a colony among the perhaps 10,000 to 12,000 species can vary from as few as four individuals to close to a trillion. In tropical regions they are estimated to make up more than 25 percent of the entire animal biomass. Mark W. Moffett, the author of “Adventures Among Ants” and a student of the eminent biologist Edward O. Wilson, shares his mentor’s fascination with the lowly creatures. This history of his adventures in South America, Africa, Borneo, India and the United States is packed with graphic enthusiasm for their industry as well as close-up photographs of intimate behavior that Professor Wilson calls “the best ever taken.” Mr. Moffett is a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution who writes with an entertainer’s instinct for hooking a restless audience. Luckily, our voyeurism about the gory, pitiless world of insects is also his. Raised on horror tales of army ants, he appreciates the frightening tactics of marauder ants in India, a species that swarms over its prey with a practice called “mobbing.” In equatorial Africa he describes the flank of a tethered antelope that had been devoured by driver ants: “It’s no coincidence that people living within range of driver ants keep their babies on their bodies and let their livestock roam free.” Such exotic behavior is not confined to exotic locales. On a slope of the Sierra Nevada he witnesses the species Polyergus breviceps raid a nest of Formica argentea and carry away the young to be raised as slaves. He reports from an ant battlefield near San Diego where supercolonies of Argentine ants clash in internecine warfare that leaves an estimated 30 million dead every year, a casualty a second. Mr. Moffett’s guide can be read before taking a trip to Brazil or around the backyard. His sympathetic profiles of his fellow researchers around the world suggest that, like this vital but often invisible player in the ecosystem, they don’t command the respect they deserve. Along with honoring the interdependence of life forms and offering provocative thoughts on the meaning of individuality within a rigid but highly intelligent mass-minded hierarchy, the author heightens awareness of the mundane, deadly struggles for survival that go on every day beneath our feet.
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011
Extended Mentor Bios Richard Anders Richard Anders, J.D., co-managing director of Rubin/Anders Scientific, is an entrepreneur with a background and interest in computers. A lawyer by training, he founded Jurisoft, which he sold to Lexis/Nexis, he published newspapers, and was a founding trustee of the Massachusetts Interactive Media Council. Richard is a trustee of the Boston Museum of Science, a member of the MIT/Harvard Medical School HST program advisory council where he teaches a course on biomedical entrepreneurship, a trustee of the Boston Biomedical Research Institute and an overseer of the Gardner Museum. He is a member of the Institutional Review Board at the Dana Farber Cancer Center, which reviews clinical trials for the hospital. He founded the angel group Launchpad and in 2008 founded MA Medical Angels (MA2), one of the country’s only angel groups focused exclusively on life sciences. In addition to serving on the board of Bliss Healthcare, he serves on the boards of Quosa, Inc. Richard is a graduate Summa Cum Laude in mathematics from Harvard and holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Jean Auel ‘03 Jean Auel is a record-setting, best-selling author whose 1980 debut “The Clan of the Cave Bear,” founded a new genre, The Pre- Historical Novel, set in what would become Europe with interactions between Cro Magnon and Neanderthals. The sixth book of her Earth’s Children series, “The Land of Painted Caves”, was released in bookstores in March 2011. By resuming the story of Ayla and Jondalar, Ms. Auel expertly brings to life the world before human history. She is an in-demand speaker, lecturer, and researcher, mother of five, grandmother of fifteen, and great-grandmother of six. Rick Bass Rick Bass was born in Fort Worth, Texas, the son of a geologist, and he studied petroleum geology at Utah State University. He grew up in Houston, and started writing short stories on his lunch breaks while working as a petroleum geologist in Jackson, Mississippi. In 1987, he moved with his wife, the artist Elizabeth Hughes Bass, to the remote Yaak Valley near Troy, Montana, where he worked to protect his adopted home from roads and logging. Rick has served on the board of the Yaak Valley Forest Council and Round River Conservation Studies. He lives in Missoula, Montana, with his wife and two daughters, Mary and Lowry. His papers are held at the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library at Texas Tech University and Texas State University–San Marcos. Rebecca Bendick Rebecca Bendick, Ph.D. studies the deformation of the Earth’s lithosphere over a range of length scales from thousands to tens of kilometers. She is especially interested in understanding the mechanisms that produce the continental landscape, especially how landscape is related to the simple forces associated with tectonics and topography. This research uses many different tools, including numerical simulation, GPS geodesy, seismology and tectonic geomorphology. Working worldwide, she currently has active research projects in the Western U.S., Central Asia, Ethiopia and subduction zones globally. She is interested in the relationship between scientific research and human societies, especially in the context of geologic hazards. The pervasive lack of information transfer from earthquake research to people living in zones of high earthquake hazard has led to hundreds of thousands of fatalities in the past decade, a crisis unlikely to change in the future unless basic earthquake literacy is provided to those at risk. Roger Bingham Roger Bingham is a British science communicator, writer, and public television producer and host. He is co-founder and director of The Science Network and creator of the Beyond Belief conferences. Bingham created the KCET Science and Society Unit. There he wrote and produced the Frontiers of the Mind series, which included “The Addicted Brain”, “The Sexual Brain”, “The Time of Our Lives”, and “Inside Information”. He has co-authored two books, “Wild Card” (1974) and “The Origin of Minds: Evolution, Uniqueness, and the New Science of the Self “(Harmony, 2002). Adapted from Wikipedia. John Buck John Buck is a sculptor and printmaker who works in wood, bronze, and glass. He has received many awards and commissions, and has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions. John has also taught art in England and the U.S. Matt Bundle & Brent Ruby Matt Bundle and Brent Ruby study how much the human body can endure and use those results to ensure safety and performance in tough work environments. Matt Bundle is the director of the University of Wyoming’s Biomechanics Laboratory. His research endeavors focus on examining the link between the energetics and mechanics of both human and comparative locomotion. Brent Ruby study how much the human
Missoula, Montana
body can endure and use those results to ensure safety and performance in tough work environments such as special military operations, wildland firefighting and ultra-endurance settings. They research solutions to fatigue, overheating and other risks. Their results may offer changes in training procedures or supplemental feeding regimens. Ruby has studied wildfire fighters since he began working at UM in 1994 as an assistant health and human performance professor. He has found they can shed up to eight liters of water over 24 hours and burn 4,500 to 6,500 calories — the equivalent of eating eight to 12 Big Macs per day. Matt Bundle is the director of the University of Wyoming’s Biomechanics Laboratory. His research endeavors focus on examining the link between the energetics and mechanics of both human and comparative locomotion. In particular, he and the members of his lab group are currently investigating how muscle function and gain mechanics limit maximum sprint speed in humans, and the relation between relying on anaerobic energy for muscular force production and the impairment in force production that occurs as the duration of an all-out effort extends from seconds to minutes. Deborah Butterfield Deborah Kay Butterfield is an American sculptor. She is best known for her sculptures of horses made from found objects, like metal, and especially pieces of wood. Butterfield’s work has been exhibited widely and there is demand among art collectors for her sculptures. She began crafting horses out of scrap metal and cast bronze in the early 1980s. She would sculpt a piece using wood and other materials fastened together with wire, then photograph the piece from all angles so as to be able to reassemble the piece in metal. She only works in the winter, so her works usually take 3 to 5 years. Roz Chast Roz Chast has loved to draw cartoons since she was a child growing up in Brooklyn. She attended Rhode Island School of Design, majoring in Painting because it seemed more artistic. However, soon after graduating, she reverted to type and began drawing cartoons once again. Her cartoons have also been published in many other magazines besides The New Yorker, including Scientific American, the Harvard Business Review, Redbook, and Mother Jones. Her most recent book is a comprehensive compilation of her favorite cartoons called “Theories of Everything: Selected, Collected, and Health-Inspected Cartoons” of Roz Chast, 19782006. She also illustrated “The Alphabet from A to Y”, with Bonus Letter, Z, the best-selling children’s book by Steve Martin. Dalton Conley Dr. Dalton Clark Conley is an American sociologist. He is best known for his contributions to understanding how socioeconomic status is transmitted across generations. He is University Professor of the Social Sciences and the Chair of the Department of Sociology at New York University. Dr. Conley also holds appointments at NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service, as an Adjunct Professor of Community Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and as a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). In 2005, Dr. Conley became the first sociologist to win the National Science Foundation’s Alan T. Waterman Award. Adapted from Wikipedia Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a Hungarian psychology professor, who emigrated to the United States at the age of 22. Now at Claremont Graduate University, he is the former head of the department of psychology at the University of Chicago and of the department of sociology and anthropology at Lake Forest College. He is noted for both his work in the study of happiness and creativity and for his notoriously difficult name, but is best known as the architect of the notion of flow and for his years of research and writing on the topic. He is the author of many books and over 120 articles or book chapters. Martin Seligman, former president of the American Psychological Association, described Csikszentmihalyi as the world’s leading researcher on positive psychology. Csikszentmihalyi once said “Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason. His works are influential and are widely cited.”
June 23-26, 2011
Extended Mentor Bios, Cont’d Jacques d’Amboise Jacques d’Amboise is a well-known American ballet dancer and choreographer. Jacques was a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, where ballets were especially created for him by famous choreographer George Balanchine. Mr. d’Amboise has also choreographed ballets for the New York City Ballet. As well as ballets, he has danced in films. He has received many honors and awards, including 1990 MacArthur Fellowship, a Kennedy Center Honors Award, a National Medal of the Arts, a New York Governor’s Award and an Honorary Doctorate Degree from Boston College. Mr. d’Amboise founded National Dance Institute in 1976, which has been teaching school children how to dance for the past 30 years. Adapted from Wikipedia. Jeremy Denk American pianist Jeremy Denk has steadily built a reputation as one of today’s most compelling and persuasive artists with an unusually broad repertoire. He has appeared as soloist with many major orchestras, including the Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, New World, St. Louis, and San Francisco Symphonies, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and London Philharmonic. Last season he played concertos by Beethoven, Copland, Mozart, Schumann, and Stravinsky, whose Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments he performed under the direction of John Adams, first with the London Symphony Orchestra in London and Paris, and then as part of Carnegie Hall’s City Noir. He appears often in recitals in New York, Washington, Boston, and Philadelphia. During the 2010-11 season Denk releases his first solo recording, “Jeremy Denk Plays Ives.” Rita Dove Rita Dove, Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia and former U.S. Poet Laureate and Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress, is the author of nine collections of poetry, including “Thomas and Beulah”, winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize, and, most recently, “Sonata Mulattica” (2009). She collaborated with composer John Williams on the song cycle “Seven for Luck”, which was premiered by the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood in 1998, and also on Steven Spielberg’s documentary “The Unfinished Journey”, which premiered at the Lincoln Memorial for “America’s Millennium” on New Year’s Eve 1999/2000. Her other publications include short stories, a novel, and the drama “The Darker Face of the Earth”, which was produced at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and London’s Royal National Theatre, among many other venues. She also edited “The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry”, available in bookstores in the fall of 2011. Ms. Dove has received numerous honors, among them the NAACP Great American Artist Award, the Heinz Award, the National Humanities Medal, the Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service, and the Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal. In 1993 she was the featured poet at President Bill Clinton’s first White House state dinner, and in 2011 she read her poetry during the White House poetry evening hosted by First Lady Michelle and President Barack Obama. A Chubb Fellow at Yale University and the recipient of 22 honorary doctorates, Dove is a former senator of the academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa, a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Currently she serves as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Claudia Dreifus ‘09 Ms. Claudia Dreifus writes for the Tuesday science section of the New York Times. She is known internationally for her interviews with scientists, policymakers, and international figures. She is an author and a professor at Columbia University. Ms. Dreifus’ work appears in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Smithsonian, AARP - The Magazine, and Scientific American. She has also been an interviewer over the years for every major New York City newspaper, including Newsday, the New York Post, and the Daily News. Adapted from Columbia School of International and Public Affairs website Annie Duke ‘09 Ms. Annie Duke is a professional poker player and author who won a bracelet in the 2004 World Series of Poker and was the winner of the 2004 World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions, where she earned the Winner-Take-All prize of $2,000,000. Ms. Duke writes and speaks on poker-related subjects and promotes poker-related organizations. Since 2000, she has been a spokesperson for Ultimate Bet and has written many articles for the online poker website. In 2005, Ms. Duke penned her autobiography, “How I Raised, Folded, Bluffed, Flirted, Cursed, and Won Millions at The World Series of Poker.” Adapted from Wikipedia.
Missoula, Montana
Bonnie Dunbar Bonnie Dunbar accepted a position as a payload officer/flight controller at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in 1978. She served as a guidance and navigation officer/flight controller for the Skylab reentry mission in 1979 and was subsequently designated project officer/ payload officer for the integration of several Space Shuttle payloads. Dr. Dunbar became a NASA astronaut in August 1981. A veteran of five space flights, Dr. Dunbar has logged more than 1,208 hours (50 days) in space. She served as a mission specialist on STS 61-A in 1985, STS-32 in 1990, and STS-71 in 1995, and was the Payload Commander on STS-50 in 1992, and STS-89 in 1998. Dr. Dunbar has served as an adjunct assistant professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Houston. She is a private pilot with over 200 hours in single engine land aircraft, has logged more than 1,000 hours flying time in T-38 jets as copilot, and has over 100 hours as co-pilot in a Cessna Citation Jet. George Dyson George Dyson is a scientific historian, the son of Freeman Dyson, brother of Esther Dyson. He is the author of “Project Orion: The Atomic Spaceship” and “Darwin Among the Machines.” He once lived in a treehouse in British Columbia at a height of 30 meters Royce Engstrom The University of Montana’s 17th President, Dr. Royce C. Engstrom, assumed his duties on October 15, 2010, after serving as Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs for three years. Throughout his career, President Engstrom has been an enthusiastic participant in undergraduate research, first as a student, then as a mentor, and finally as an administrator working to develop undergraduate research programs. He is a Past-President of the Council on Undergraduate Research and has been active in the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, a federal program designed to help states build their research infrastructure and competitiveness. He served as Chair of the National EPSCoR Coalition and the National EPSCoR Foundation. President Engstrom is interested in science policy, higher education public policy, program development, and in building relationships between the various stakeholders in higher education. Murray Gell-Mann Dr. Murray Gell-Mann is Professor and Co-Chairman of the Science Board of the Santa Fe Institute, and author of the popular science book, “The Quark and the Jaguar.’ In 1969, Dr. Gell-Mann received the Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. His “eightfold way” theory brought order to the chaos created by the discovery of some 100 particles in the atom’s nucleus. He has received the Ernest O. Lawrence Memorial Award of the Atomic Energy Commission, the Franklin Medal of the Franklin Institute, the Research Corporation Award, and the John J. Carty medal of the National Academy of Sciences. He has been awarded honorary doctoral degrees from many institutions, including Yale University, the University of Chicago, the University of Turin, Italy, and Cambridge and Oxford Universities, England. In 1994 he shared the 1989 Erice “Science For Peace” Prize. Dr. Gell-Mann is the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Theoretical Physics Emeritus at the California Institute of Technology, where he taught from 1955 until 1993. He is a director of the J.D. and C.T. MacArthur Foundation, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a former Citizen Regent of the Smithsonian, 1974-1988, and a former member of the President’s Science Advisory Committee, 1969-1972. Sheldon Glashow Dr. Sheldon Glashow is the Metcalf Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Boston University. He was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979 with Abdus Salam and Steve Weinberg for their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles. Larry Gonick Mr. Larry Gonick is a cartoonist best known for The Cartoon History of the Universe, a history of the world in comic book form, which he has been publishing in installments since 1977. From 1990 to 1997, Mr. Gonick penned a bimonthly Science Classics cartoon for Discover Magazine. According to his own website, it’s Mr. Gonick’s mission to bring people the information they need to make wise decisions about the future of the human community and to save the world. The diversity of his interests, and the success with which his books have met, have together earned Gonick the distinction of being “the most well-known and respected of cartoonists who have applied their craft to unraveling the mysteries of science.”
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Extended Mentor Bios, Cont’d Victoria Gray Victoria Gray, J.D., MBA, UCLA, is the founder of Student Achievement & Advocacy Services, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to helping exceptionally promising young people meet their full potential through advocacy, mentorship, and scholarships. Student Achievement’s primary program, Adventures of the Mind, is a mentoring summit that brings teens together with the world’s greatest thinkers and doers. “Adventures is like Davos but with brilliant high school students,” said Murray Gell-Mann ~1969 Nobel Prize in Physics
She also created the Achievement Advocate Certificate for Financial Literacy “AACFL”, whose mission is to provide an online adaptive curriculum that will make an in-depth level of financial knowledge and management skills available to students starting from the fifth grade through adulthood. Keyed to the national financial literacy standards developed by Jump$tart, a non-profit coalition of corporate, academic, non-profit, and government organizations dedicated to improving financial awareness. AACFL will match students with mentors from the financial services industry for support to complete the program. The result is a certificate of 12th grade financial literacy that assures employers, lenders, and landlords, that the bearer has proficiency in this essential life skill. Carol Greider Dr. Carol Greider is the Daniel Nathans Professor and director of molecular biology and genetics at the Johns Hopkins Institute of Basic Biomedical Sciences. She completed her Ph.D. in molecular biology in 1987 at the University of California, Berkeley, with Elizabeth Blackburn. At Berkeley, Dr. Greider discovered the enzyme telomerase, which is a key player in cancer. Her work has sparked a tremendous amount of research aimed at therapies that might foil cancer cells from proliferation. In 1996 she was appointed by President Clinton to the National Bioethics Advisory Commission. In 2006 she was awarded the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research. Brad Grossman Brad Grossman is a creative and cultural advisor, producer and entrepreneur. His bi-coastal Grossman & Partners is a “think-tank/ do-tank” for progressive-minded individuals and organizations from a wide swath of fields—media/entertainment, science/technology, finance, policy, fashion/art/design, and lifestyle. Clients include C-Suite executives, entrepreneurs and heads of non-profits, as well as creative and thought leaders. Brad acts as a connector to opportunities, ideas and relationships beyond a client’s core competency. His current work evolved out of the four years he spent as a full-time cultural attaché for Brian Grazer, a position Brad designed and that was featured in The New Yorker. Brad conceived an incubation program for the Academy Award- and Emmy-winning producer, exploring concepts and linking with extraordinary entities outside the entertainment business. Brad’s experience in the field includes 15 years in independent and studio film production at Sony Pictures Entertainment and Universal Pictures. He co-founded Out in Television & Film, a networking and educational organization for LGBT filmmakers and executives, and InstaTutor, an academic coaching company for high-school students. Brad graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in English Literature and Cultural Studies from Brown University. Dick Heckmann Richard J. Heckmann, Dick has been the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Heckmann Corporation, a holding company of China Water and Drinks Inc., since May 2007. Mr. Heckmann has been the Chief Executive Officer of K2 Sports since October 2002. He served as the Chief Executive Officer and President of Siemens Water Technologies Corp. since July 16, 1990. Mr. Heckmann served as the Chief Executive Officer of K2 Inc., from October 2002 to February 16, 2007. He has been described as a serial entrepreneur, having started his own company back in 1969 at the age of 23. Jack Horner Dr. John “Jack” Horner is one of the world’s premier paleontologists. In 1975, he was hired as a research assistant in the Museum of Natural History at Princeton University, where he worked until 1982. From 1982 until the present he has worked at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana, where he is Curator of Paleontology. Dr. Horner discovered the first dinosaur eggs in the Western Hemisphere, the first evidence of dinosaur colonial nesting, the first evidence of parental
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care among dinosaurs, and the first dinosaur embryos. His research covers a wide range of topics about dinosaurs, including their behavior, physiology, ecology and evolution. In 1986 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. He has written 40 professional papers, 25 popular articles, co-authored five popular books, and co-edited one technical book. His work has been featured in numerous magazines and television specials. Dr. Horner was the technical advisor to Steven Spielberg for the movies “Jurassic Park” and its sequel, “The Lost World.” Ben Huh Ben Huh is the owner of the phenomenally popular blog, I Can Has Cheezburger, which along with lolcats features comical pictures of cats with captions, and other animal images. The website is one of the most popular internet sites displaying lolcats receiving as many as 1,500,000 hits per day. ICHC was instrumental in bringing animal-based image macros and lolspeak into mainstream usage. Huh told Wired Magazine, “I used to want to create memes more. But what’s more satisfying: playing on the playground or building a playground for a bunch of people to enjoy? I’m much more the person who’d rather build it. That brings me satisfaction.” Naveen Jain Naveen Jain is a business executive and an entrepreneur, founder of InfoSpace and Intelius. Naveen was born in 1959 in the Northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. As a child and young man, Mr. Jain witnessed firsthand the dire effects of poverty and illiteracy, especially upon women and children. His parents also instilled in him the importance of education as a key to improving one’s life. Mr. Jain vowed one day that he put himself in a position to help his fellow Indians, as well as anyone who is held back by lack of education, sexism, and grinding poverty. Walter Kirn Walter Kirn is an American novelist, literary critic, and essayist. His latest book is the 2009 memoir “Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever.” He has also reviewed books for New York Magazine and has written for The New York Times Book Review and New York Times Sunday Magazine, and is a contributing editor of Time, where he has received popularity for his entertaining and sometimes humorous first-person essays among other articles of interest. He also served as an American cultural correspondent for the BBC. Adapted from Wikipedia. William Kittredge William Kittredge (born 1932) is an American writer from Oregon, United States. He became a major voice with his 1987 collection of essays, “Owning It All,” about the modern West. He followed with his famous book, “Hole in the Sky: A Memoir.” His book “The Nature of Generosity” holds forth on the value of what he terms extreme long loop altruism, elaborating with refreshing insights and wisdom on sustainability, civilization, and its relationship to culture, history, and human nature. He was also co-producer of the movie “A River Runs Through It. “ He has received numerous awards including a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford and Writing Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. With Annick Smith, he edited “The Last Best Place: A Montana Anthology. “ Adapted from Wikipedia. Joanna Klink Professor Joanna Klink is the author of “They Are Sleeping” and “Circadian.” Her poems have appeared in Chicago Review, Boston Review, The Kenyon Review, and other journals. A recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, she has been a permanent member of the poetry faculty at the University of Montana since the fall of 2001. Ms. Klink’s poem “Thoughts on Fog” was a feature on Poetry Daily. Kathy L’Amour Kathy L’Amour is the administrator of a minor publishing empire, the works of her late husband, famed author Louis L’Amour. Born in Southern California, the daughter of a land developer and a silent movie star, she grew up in the environment of Hollywood and on ranches. After marrying Louis L’Amour she acted as her husband’s business manager and agent, and has since managed his intellectual property through five decades. Kathy L’Amour has utilized her position in publishing to distribute over one million free books to our military stationed all over the world. Her husband Louis L’Amour wrote 120 books before he died that have seen over 300 million copies in print. She is an active supporter of Adventures of the Mind and the Mesa Verde National Park.
June 23-26, 2011
Extended Mentor Bios, Cont’d Melanie Lawson Journalism has always been in Melanie’s blood. She started first as a full-time general assignments reporter at Channel 13, then went on to become the co-anchor of Live at 5 and Channel 13’s midday show, Eyewitness News at 11am. Melanie also hosts a weekly Community Affairs program called “Crossroads”, focusing on issues and events around our city. -- Melanie has had a varied and exhilarating stint at Channel 13. She has covered virtually every city, state and national election during her career. She has traveled to Cuba, Panama and Africa, among other places. She’s won numerous awards for her reporting, including an Emmy for her coverage of President Clinton’s visit to South Africa, the only local reporter in the nation to make that trip. And Melanie has interviewed a wide range of notables, including three U.S. Presidents, Henry Kissinger, the Dalai Lama, poet Maya Angelou, Grammy Award winners Destiny’s Child, former heavyweight champion boxer George Foreman, director Spike Lee, legendary journalist Barbara Walters, evangelists Joel and Victoria Osteen, Hall of Famer Magic Johnson and actors Lily Tomlin, Shirley McLaine and Denzel Washington. -- But Melanie’s favorite stories are those about Houston’s rich, multiethnic community - especially stories about children and those quietly working to make a difference in their lives. Jennifer 8 Lee Jennifer 8. Lee is an American journalist. Ms. Lee was not given a middle name at birth and later chose her own middle name. She chose “8” as a teenager because of the prevalence of her first name. She interned at The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Newsday and The New York Times while working on her applied mathematics and economics degree and writing for The Harvard Crimson. She writes for the Metro section of The New York Times. Ms. Lee wrote a book about the history of Chinese food in the United States and around the world, titled “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles”, documenting the process on her blog. Louis Lerman Louis Lerman, Ph.D. (Philipps University, Marburg Germany), MS (Stanford) Mr. Louis has wide experience in science, technology, and business, and is a member on the Insitu board of directors. He started his career as a researcher in astrophysics, geophysics, and nuclear physics. While at Stanford, as a Hertz Fellow in the Applied Physical Sciences, Louis led the development of a flotilla concept for low-earth orbiting unmanned space systems. Louis has also just finished directing an international research project in high-energy nuclear physics started while at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Louis’ work on the origin of life has been on the cover of Time magazine along with features in Newsweek and the New York Times. His work on sea-surface and atmospheric processes is currently being applied to the search for life on Mars. He’s been a conceptual and strategic advisor to companies ranging from real-estate development to web-based service providers. Within science policy, he has worked extensively on the problems of international technology transfer, scientific exchange, and human rights. His avocational background includes art, music, and history; any of which he is likely to be found doing. He continues to develop novel education programs for young children based on the synergies of science, art, and music. Louis’ interest in Insitu stems from the new classes of scientific research missions arising from Insitu’s new technologies. Louis is a principal in Pteranodon Ventures and Engram Associates and monitors investments in real estate, technology, manufacturing, and services. John Lilly Mr. John Lilly is the Chief Executive Officer of the Mozilla Corporation, a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates development of the open source Mozilla Internet applications, including the Mozilla Firefox web browser and the Mozilla Thunderbird email client. Mr. Lilly currently serves on the board of directors of the Open Source Application Foundation and Participatory Culture Foundation. He earned a B.S. and M.S. in computer science from Stanford University and holds five US patents.
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Shahara Ahmad Llewellyn Shahara Ahmad-Llewellyn is the former owner and Vice Chairman of the Philadelphia Coca-Cola Bottling Company, the largest Coke bottler in the U.S. She is a founding member of Jazz at Lincoln Center, where she serves as Vice Chair, and The New 42 Street Corporation where she is also Vice Chair. Ms. Ahmad-Llewellyn also serves as Vice Chair of the National Constitution Center and is the Chairman of Peace Games. She is a member of the Student Achievement Advisory Council, which matches mentors with high-potential. She served as the first Vice Chairman of America’s Promise - The Alliance for Youth, an organization founded by Secretary of State Colin Powell. She served as Co-Chair of The Northside Center for Child Development and Vice Chair of the New Jersey Nets and Devils Foundation. She is a former Presidential appointee to the Board of Governors of the International USO and served on the Board of WNET Channel 13 (the local PBS station). Ms. Ahmad-Llewellyn has a B.S. degree in Business Administration from Temple University. Karl Marlantes Karl Marlantes was raised in Seaside, Oregon, a small logging town just south of the Columbia River on the Oregon coast. He was selected to play in the Oregon Shrine All Stars football game his senior year in high school. He attended Yale University on a National Merit Scholarship where he was graduated cum laude in Economics and played varsity football and rugby. He attended Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship where he earned an M.A. in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics. In between Yale and Oxford, he served three years with the United States Marine Corps in Vietnam as an infantry officer where he was highly decorated. He made his living as an international consultant in strategy, mostly for energy companies, and was the managing director of an international corporation based in Singapore. He is the author of the New York Times best selling novel, “Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War.” His next book, “What It Is Like to Go to War”, will be published this September. Karl has five children, three boys and two girls, and now lives with his wife, Anne, in Washington state, about an hour east of Seattle. He also has two dogs and a wonderful blue 1982 Toyota pick-up truck. He still likes to watch the local high school football team, hike in the Cascade Mountains, which are only half an hour from his house, play the piano, and spends far too much time watching Net Flix. Robert McCurdy Robert McCurdy is an American artist known mainly for his oil painting portraits. He is featured in the National Portrait Gallery and known internationally for his unique and masterful portrait painting style. Mary McFadden Ms. Mary Josephine McFadden is an American fashion designer and writer. Her career has included Director of Public Relations, Dior New York, merchandising editor, Vogue, South Africa, travel and political columnist, Rand Daily Mail, South Africa, founder, Vukutu sculpture workshop, Rhodesia, freelance editor for My Fair Lady, Cape Town, and Vogue, Paris, special projects editor, American Vogue, New York, freelance fashion and jewelry designer, and president of Mary McFadden Inc. She launched Mary McFadden Studio in 1995, began designing neckwear in 1999 and debuted the Mary McFadden Collection in 2001. She has received many honors including the President’s Fellows Award of the Rhode Island School of Design and has served as President of the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Ms. McFadden’s collections have been shown on runways in New York, Paris, Rome, Milan, and Tokyo. She won a Coty Award in 1976 and entered the Coty Hall of Fame in 1979. Bill and Kathy Magee Dr. Bill Magee is a leading plastic and craniofacial surgeon who devotes half of his professional life as a volunteer to Operation Smile, the organization that he and his wife Kathy began in 1982. Dr. Magee joins Operation Smile’s volunteer teams on numerous overseas missions each year to perform reconstructive surgery. He held the Kasanjian Lectureship at the American Society of Plastic Surgery in San Francisco in 1977 and has written numerous articles for scientific journals and has contributed chapters for books. Kathy Magee, a former nurse and clinical social worker, serves as President of Operation Smile on a full-time, volunteer basis and is a lifetime member of the Board of Directors. She and Bill are the parents of five children, all of whom have served on medical missions and are active in volunteer work for Operation Smile. The Magees have received numerous awards for their humanitarian work.
June 23-26, 2011
Extended Mentor Bios, Cont’d Deborah D. McWhinney Deborah McWhinney has been President of personal banking and wealth management and Head of global digital merchant acquiring at Citigroup, Inc. Ms. McWhinney served as Chief Personal Wealth Overseer of Citigroup, Inc. , until February 14, 2011. She served as an Executive Vice President of Schwab Charles Corp. She served as President - Schwab Institutional of Charles Schwab Corporation (CSC) and Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. (Schwab) from 2001 to May 21, 2007. She served as an Executive Vice President of Charles Schwab Corp. from 2001 to May 21, 2007. Adapted from BusinessWeek.com. Mark Moffett aka Dr. Bugs Dr. Mark Moffett is a modern-day explorer, who regularly goes where few people have been before. He’s a Harvard-trained ecologist and award-winning photographer, and has penned more than 24 articles for National Geographic Magazine, which has featured nearly 500 of his images, including more covers for National Geographic than any other photographer. Dr. Moffett has discovered new species and behavior while risking life and limb to find stories that make people fall in love with the unexpected in nature. He was awarded the 2006 Lowell Thomas Medal from the Explorers Club and Rolex and the Roy Chapman Andrews Society Distinguished Explorer Award in 2008. With a Ph.D. from acclaimed conservationist Edward O. Wilson, Mark remains active in science, with over 80 peer-reviewed publications. He’s been the subject of a PBS special. Dr. Moffett’s work has won him the top invitational awards in photography and journalism, and a medal for writing from Harvard. Kary Mullis Dr. Kary Mullis is a biochemist. He shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Michael Smith, receiving the prize for his development of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), which allows the amplification of specific DNA sequences. The improvements provided by Dr. Mullis have made PCR a central technique in biochemistry and molecular biology. He received the Japan Prize in 1993. He received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1972, focusing on the synthesis and structure of proteins. Following his graduation, he became a postdoctoral fellow in pediatric cardiology at the University of Kansas Medical School, going on to complete two years of postdoctoral work in pharmaceutical chemistry. Peter Norvig Peter Norvig is an American computer scientist. He is currently the Director of Research (formerly Director of Search Quality) at Google Inc. He is a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and the Association for Computing Machinery. At Google Inc he was Director of Search Quality, responsible for the core web search algorithms from 2002-2005, and has been Director of Research from 2005 on. Previously he was the head of the Computational Sciences Division at NASA Ames Research Center, making him NASA’s senior computer scientist. He received the NASA Exceptional Achievement Award in 2001. He has served as an assistant professor at the University of Southern California and a research faculty member at the University of California at Berkeley Computer Science Department, from which he received a Ph.D. in 1986 and the distinguished alumni award in 2006. Gerry Ohrstrom Gerry Ohrstrom is a director of various companies and nonprofit organizations, including the Reason Foundation, the Property and Environment Research Center, the International Policy Network, and the American Council on Science and Health. Gerry is a member of the President’s Council at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and of the New York Academy of Science and has been a board member of Africa Fighting Malaria since 2007. Lisa Randall Professor Lisa Randall studies theoretical particle physics and cosmology at Harvard University. Her research connects theoretical insights to puzzles in our current understanding of the properties and interactions of matter. She has developed and studied a wide variety of models to address these questions, the most prominent involving extra dimensions of space. Her work has involved improving our understanding of the Standard Model of particle physics, supersymmetry, baryogenesis, cosmological inflation, and dark matter. Randall’s research also explores ways to experimentally test and verify ideas and her current research focuses in large part on the Large Hadron Collider and dark matter searches and models. Randall’s studies have made her among the most cited and influential theoretical physicists. She has also had a public presence through her writing, lectures, and radio and TV appearances. Her book “Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions” was included in the New York Times’ 100 notable books of 2005. Randall
Missoula, Montana
has also recently pursued art-science connections, writing a libretto for “Hypermusic: A Projective Opera in Seven Planes” that premiered in the Pompidou Center in Paris and co-curating an art exhibit “Measure for Measure” for the Los Angeles Arts Association. Randall has received numerous awards and honors for her scientific endeavors. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Randall is an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy and an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics. She was a fellow of the American Physical Society, and is a past winner of an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship, a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, a DOE Outstanding Junior Investigator Award, and the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. In 2003, she received the Premio Caterina Tomassoni e Felice Pietro Chisesi Award, from the University of Rome, La Sapienza.” In 2006, she received the Klopsteg Award from the American Society of Physics Teachers (AAPT) for her lectures and in 2007 she received the Julius Lilienfeld Prize from the American Physical Society for her work on elementary particle physics and cosmology and for communicating this work to the public. Professor Randall earned her Ph.D. from Harvard University and held professorships at MIT and Princeton University before returning to Harvard in 2001. She is the recipient of Honorary Degrees from Duke University, Brown University and University of Antwerp. Professor Randall was included in the list of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” of 2007 and was one of 40 people featured in “The Rolling Stone 40th Anniversary issue” that year. Prof. Randall was featured in Newsweek’s “Who’s Next in 2006” as “one of the most promising theoretical physicists of her generation” and in Seed Magazine’s “2005 Year in Science Icons.” In 2008, Prof. Randall was among Esquire Magazine’s “75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century.” Richard Roberts Dr. Richard Roberts is an English biochemist and molecular biologist. He was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Phillip Allen Sharp for the discovery of introns in eukaryotic DNA and the mechanism of gene-splicing. The main theme of his work in biology has centered on the belief that we must know the structure of the molecules we work with if we are to understand how they function. Dr. Roberts was knighted in the 2008 Birthday Honours. Stephen Roulac Stephen Roulac is a nationally recognized expert on strategic management, capital markets, securitization, institutional investing, property analysis/valuation. He organized, led, and had major impacts on developing national consulting practices of Kenneth Leventhal and Deloitte & Touche. He has been a leading academic, serving on the faculties of Stanford Graduate School of Business, UC Berkeley Architecture Department, and Hastings College of Law. He is the author of 200-plus articles and a dozen books, many considered landmarks, and is a Forbes columnist. Mr. Roulac is much in demand as a professional speaker. He’s the past President of American Real Estate Society – Ph.D. (finance and strategy), Stanford; JD, UC Berkeley; MBA, Harvard; BA, Pomona – CPA and CMC. Adapted from RoulacGlobal.com. Steve Running Steven W. Running, Ph.D. in Forest Ecology, has been with the University of Montana, Missoula since 1979, where he is a University Regents Professor of Ecology. His primary research interest is the development of global and regional ecosystem biogeochemical models. He is a Team Member for the NASA Earth Observing System, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, and he is responsible for the EOS global terrestrial net primary production and evapotranspiration datasets. He has published over 260 scientific articles and two books. Dr. Running has recently served on the standing Committee for Earth Studies of the National Research Council and on the federal Interagency Carbon Cycle Science Committee. He has served as a Co-Chair of the National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Climate System Model Land Working Group, a Member of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program Executive Committee, and the World Climate Research Program, Global Terrestrial Observing System. He currently serves on the advisory NASA Earth Science Subcommittee, and the NOAA Science Advisory Board Climate Working Group. Dr. Running shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 as a chapter Lead Author for the 4th Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Dr. Running is an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and is designated a Highly Cited Researcher by the Institute for Scientific Information. In the popular press, his essay in 2007, “The 5 Stages of Climate Grief ” has been widely quoted.
June 23-26, 2011
Extended Mentor Bios, Cont’d Ginny Ruffner Ginny Ruffner is a renowned glass artist who also explores and blends many mediums including painting, sculpture and glassblowing. She is former President of the Glass Art Society and taught at the Pilchuck Glass School (co-founded by Dale Chihuly). She is recipient of the Urban Glass Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She is best known for her innovative and colorful lamp-worked sculptures. Her art has been featured in many museums and galleries, and she has been commissioned to create public art. Ms. Ruffner was profiled on the NPR show Weekend America on March 18, 2006 and a documentary about her is currently in production. M. Sanjayan M. Sanjayan is the lead scientist for The Nature Conservancy, where he specializes in human well-being and conservation, Africa, wildlife ecology, and media outreach and public speaking on conservation issues. In addition to being the Conservancy’s lead scientist, Sanjayan holds a doctorate from the University of California, Santa Cruz and has a research faculty appointment with the Wildlife Program at the University of Montana. Sanjayan’s scientific work has been published in journals including Science, Nature, and Conservation Biology, and he co-edited the book Connectivity Conservation. He frequently speaks at internationally recognized venues, including the World Forum on Sustainable Development, International Women’s Forum, and TED. He is a Catto Fellow with the Aspen Institute. When not at work, Sanjayan can be found either trekking in Africa or fly-fishing in Western Montana, where he tries to live. Adapted from the Nature Conservancy website. Prageeta Sharma Prageeta Sharma is the author of “Bliss to Fill” (Subpress Collective, 2000), “The Opening Question” (Fence Books, 2004, winner of the 2004 Fence Modern Poets Prize) and “Infamous Landscapes” (Fence Books, 2007). Sharma’s poems and writing have appeared in Art Asia Pacific, Bomb, Boston Review, Fence, Indiana Review, The Literary Review, Vanitas, Women’s Review of Books and other journals. She is the recipient of the 2010 Howard Foundation Grant. Prageeta Sharma holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from Brown University (1995) and an M.A. in Media Studies from The New School (2002). Charles Simonyi Mr. Charles Simonyi is a computer software executive who, as head of Microsoft’s application software group, oversaw the creation of Microsoft’s flagship office applications. Born in Hungary, he went to the U.S. to study at UC Berkeley and did graduate work at Stanford. From 1972 to 1980, Mr. Simonyi worked at Xerox Corporation’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where he created the first WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-whatyou-get) text editor called Bravo. He left Microsoft in August 2002 to found Intentional Software Corporation, a software engineering company with an emphasis on productivity applications, where he is currently President and CEO. Mr. Simonyi has been an active philanthropist. In 1995 he established an endowed chair, the Simonyi Professorship of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, first held by the now retired Richard Dawkins. He also established a Charles Simonyi Professor for Innovation in Teaching endowed chair at Stanford University. In January 2004, he created the $50 million Charles Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences, through which he plans to support Seattle-area arts, science, and educational programs. Initial grant recipients include the Seattle Symphony, and the Seattle Public Library. In 2005, the Fund donated $25 million to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. In January, 2008 the Simonyi Fund and Bill Gates pledged $20 million and $10 million “respectively” to the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. In 2007, he became the fifth space tourist and the second Hungarian in space. Mr. Simonyi returned to space in 2009. Alex and Andrew Smith Andrew Smith is a filmmaker, poet, screenwriter, and Assistant Professor in the School of Media Arts at the University of Montana. Alex Smith is a prize-winning filmmaker, screenwriter, educator and author of short fiction. Alex teaches Screenwriting and Directing at the University of Texas at Austin, and is the Creative Director of the non-profit University of Texas Film Institute (UTFI). The brothers co-wrote and co-directed the feature film, “The Slaughter Rule”, starring Ryan Gosling, David Morse, and Amy Adams. The Slaughter Rule garnered top awards at the Santa Fe, Nashville, and Sydney Film Festivals, as well as the Critic’s Prize at the Stockholm International Film Festival. Adapted from Montana Public Radio.
Missoula, Montana
Frank Sulloway Dr. Frank J. Sulloway is a Visiting Scholar in the Institute of Personality and Social Research at the University of California, Berkeley. He has a Ph.D. in the history of science from Harvard University and is a former MacArthur Fellow (1984-1989). His book “Freud, Biologist of the Mind,” provides a radical reanalysis of the origins and validity of psychoanalysis and received the Pfizer Award of the History of Science Society. Dr. Sulloway has written about the nature of scientific creativity and he has published extensively on the life and theories of Charles Darwin. Amy Tan Ms. Amy Tan started off as a business writer before trying her hand at fiction. Her first book “The Joy Luck Club” won The National Book Award and the L.A. Times Book Award in 1989. Her other novels include “The Kitchen God’s Wife,” “The Hundred Secret Senses,” “ The Bonesetter’s Daughter,” and “Saving Fish from Drowning,” all New York Times bestsellers and the recipient of various awards. She is also the author of a memoir, “The Opposite of Fate”, two children’s books, “The Moon Lady” and “Sagwa,” and numerous articles for magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, and National Geographic. Ms. Tan’s work has been translated into 35 languages. She is currently working on a new novel, and created the libretto for an opera of “The Bonesetter’s Daughter,” which premiered in September 2008. Ms. Tan’s other musical work for the stage is limited to serving as lead rhythm dominatrix, backup singer, and second tambourine with the literary garage band, the Rock Bottom Remainders, whose members include Stephen King, Dave Barry, and Scott Turow. Richard Taylor Richard Edward Taylor, CC, FRS, FRSC is a Canadian-American professor (Emeritus) at Stanford University. In 1990, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Jerome Friedman and Henry Kendall “for their pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model in particle physics.” His research interests include experimental particle physics, electron scattering; engaged in H1 experiment at the HERA electron-positron collider in Hamburg, Germany; gravitational wave research and space-based studies of x-ray and gamma-ray astronomy. Adapted from Wikipedia and Stanford.edu. Mark Tercek Mark Tercek is president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy, a leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. The Conservancy uses a science-based, collaborative approach to solve complex global challenges: conserving critical lands, restoring the world’s oceans, securing fresh water and reducing the impacts of climate change. Before joining The Nature Conservancy, Mark was a managing director at Goldman Sachs, where he played a key role in developing the firm’s environmental strategy. From the Nature Conservancy website. Anna Thomas Anna Thomas is an Academy Award nominated screenwriter, as well as a producer, director and author. Her film credits include “El Norte,” for which she was nominated for an Academy Award, “A Time of Destiny,” “Frida”, and “My Family, Mi Familia.” She most recently produced “Infinite Space: The Architecture of John Lautner,” a feature documentary about the visionary mid-century architect. Thomas is a founder of the IFP West (now Film Independent), and is on the faculty of the American Film Institute. Thomas is also the author of four best-selling cookbooks. While she was a film student at UCLA, Thomas wrote “The Vegetarian Epicure,” which became a phenomenal success and remains a classic, widely acknowledged as the book that brought pleasure to vegetarian cuisine. Her food writing has appeared in many publications, including Gourmet Magazine, Bon Appetit, and the LA Times, and her latest book, “Love Soup,” recently won the prestigious James Beard book award. Matt Trevithick Matt Trevithick joined Venrock in 2004 after a 4-year investigation of energy-related applications of nanotechnology. Matt previously co-founded and sold two software companies - LiquidMarket, a product search and comparison shopping service, acquired by NBC Internet in 1999 and Flash Communications, a developer of instant messaging technology, acquired by Microsoft in 1998. In addition to his entrepreneurial efforts, Matt worked in project finance and currency trading in Tokyo, London, Singapore and New York. As a co-founder of two acquired companies, combined with his energy and finance background, Matt has an in-depth understanding of the entrepreneur and what it takes to get across the finish line.
June 23-26, 2011
Stephen Wolfram Stephen Wolfram is a distinguished scientist, inventor, author, and business leader. He is the creator of Mathematica, the author of A New Kind of Science, the creator of Wolfram|Alpha, and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research. In recognition of his early work in physics and computing, Wolfram became in 1981 the youngest recipient of a MacArthur Prize Fellowship. After more than ten years of highly concentrated work, Wolfram finally described his achievements in his 1,200-page book “A New Kind of Science. “ Released on May 14, 2002, the book was widely acclaimed and immediately became a best seller. Its publication has been seen as initiating a paradigm shift of historic importance in science, with new implications emerging at an increasing rate every year. Wolfram has been president and CEO of Wolfram Research since its founding in 1987. Herschel Walker Herschel Junior Walker is a mixed martial artist and a former American football player. He played college football for the University of Georgia Bulldogs and earned the 1982 Heisman Trophy. He began his professional career with the New Jersey Generals of the United States Football League (USFL) before entering the National Football League (NFL). In the NFL he played for the Dallas Cowboys, Minnesota Vikings, Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1999. Dennis R. Washington Dennis R. Washington was raised in Missoula, Montana. At a young age, he began working in heavy construction. In 1964, he formed his own construction company and, blessed with a superb business sense, continued building a remarkable career in heavy construction. Dennis today owns or has an interest in the Washington Companies, a dynamic group of private enterprises involved in rail and marine transportation, aviation, mining, heavy equipment, and environmental remediation, doing business internationally. The American Academy of Achievement and the Horatio Alger Society, among others, have honored Dennis for his many accomplishments and exemplary story of entrepreneurial success. He is listed among the Forbes 400. Dennis has received honorary doctorates from both The University of Montana and the University of South Carolina. Washington donated the construction of The University of Montana’s Washington Grizzly Stadium. An avid philanthropist and supporter of young people and education, Dennis has created several significant scholarships and fellowships. Phyllis J. Peterson Washington Phyllis J. Peterson Washington is a native Montanan and has for years done business in the fields of interior decorating and fine antiques. Her retail business, which operated in Missoula for years, is now Phyllis Washington Antiques located in Palm Desert, California. Phyllis graduated from the University of Montana with a degree in Education, and taught primary grades in Missoula. In recognition of her activity and achievements in the field, she was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Education from The University of Montana. With a strong belief in the value of education to better people’s lives, she has been a staunch supporter of the University. Phyllis has chaired a major capital campaign and organized fund-raising events on behalf of the University. In acknowledgement of her energy and support toward its construction, The Phyllis J. Washington College of Education and Human Sciences there bears her name. Phyllis also serves as chairperson of the Dennis & Phyllis Washington Foundation, founded in 1988. The Washingtons also have an ongoing commitment to Young Life, a Christian youth ministry, donating the Washington Family Ranch in Oregon to create a summer camp for teenagers and recently expanding it to host 8,000 campers a year. Sam Wang Dr. Samuel S. H. Wang is an associate professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton University. He graduated with honors in physics from the California Institute of Technology and holds a doctorate in neuroscience from Stanford University School of Medicine. His career includes research at Duke University Medical Center and at Bell Labs Lucent Technologies, and science and education policy work for the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources. He is a W.M. Keck Foundation Distinguished Young Scholar and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow. Dr. Wang has written over forty scientific articles on the brain, and is co-author of the book “Welcome to Your Brain.” His research interests are far-ranging and include cellular learning mechanisms, brain evolution, and the development of optical tools for probing the brain. Dr. Wang’s current research focuses on the cerebellum, a brain region that coordinates sensation, movement, and higher cognition.
Missoula, Montana
Robert Wilson Dr. Robert Wilson is an American astronomer, Nobel laureate in physics, who with Arno Allan Penzias discovered in 1964 the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), which served as important confirmation of the Big Bang theory. Dr. Wilson and Dr. Penzias also won the Henry Draper Medal in 1977. After their pioneering research on cosmic background radiation, Wilson and Penzias both enjoyed prolific and long-term careers at Bell Labs. In addition to the Nobel Prize, Dr. Wilson has received many awards for his work.
June 23-26, 2011
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June 23-26, 2011
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June 23-26, 2011
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June 23-26, 2011
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THANK YOU TO THE FOLLOWING PHOTOGRAPHERS: COVER: Lewis and Clark, 1805. With Sacagawea at Three Forks of the Missouri, Granger Collection, New York, NY FIRST TAB PAGE: All photos compliments of the Jim Sheldon, Chapter President, the Ice Age Floods Institute, Glacial Lake Missoula Chapter. THIRD TAB PAGE: Main Hall by Todd Goodrich, Staff Photographer, University of Montana Public Relations View of Missoula from Mt. Sentinel by Todd Goodrich, University of Montana Public Relations Hellgate Store, UMT010244, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, The University of Montana–Missoula FOURTH TAB PAGE: Missoula at Night by Nelson Kenter www.kenterphotography.com Farns at the Griz Game by Todd Goodrich, University of Montana Public Relations Homecoming by Todd Goodrich, University of Montana Public Relations Painting the “M”, UMT012552, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, The University of Montana–Missoula FIFTH TAB PAGE: Griz Game by Todd Goodrich, University of Montana Public Relations Washington Grizzly Stadium by Todd Goodrich, University of Montana Public Relations Monte by Todd Goodrich, University of Montana Public Relations Griz Game by Todd Goodrich, University of Montana Public Relations Track Meet at Dornblaser, Morten J. Elrod, UMT010034, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, The University of Montana–Missoula
Missoula, Montana
June 23-26, 2011