Campus News

Brandy Todd

DEAD ON ARRIVAL

Brandy Todd has a busy life. When she’s not putting her education/outreach “Robot Rat Racers” through their paces at the UO Oregon Center for Optical, Molecular, and Quantum Science, cavorting with her fellow Eugene Slug Queens, or inspiring middle school girls to get excited about science through her STEM SPICE camps, the triple Duck writes science fiction novels with her husband, Lorne, under the pen name BL Craig.

The couple had been knocking around the idea of writing together, and the pandemic presented an opportunity for collaboration at home. “I’m the one who can bang out a lot of words really fast. He’s better at plot,” says Todd (BS ’01, sociology; MPA ’10, public administration; PhD ’15, educational leadership).

AfterLife: An Undead Space Opera, the first book in the Reanimate Saga series, follows a heroic male protagonist who immediately dies and winds up on a survey ship with a crew who have been dead for quite a while.

Todd is emphatic that these are not zombie novels. “We don’t use the ‘z’ word,” she says.

Rather, the “reanimated” corpses become the property of a megacorporation and are actually vital to the survival of humanity. Although the books touch on serious themes, Todd says, the characters entertain themselves in the afterlife through art and movies, close friendships, and lots of gallows humor.

“It happens to be set in a space opera setting—you know, aliens and intrigue, and spaceships,” she says, “but it’s really more about trauma and loss and finding a new place.”

The series continues with AfterDeath: An Undead Chronicle and AfterAll: An Undead Reckoning, with more books to follow. Visit blcraig.com for details.

JUST THE QUACKS, MA’AM

ournalism student Lauren Yang Brown is among eight college students nationwide selected by media groups Poynter and MediaWise to be “campus correspondents.” They’ve been trained to help peers spot misinformation online and in social media. Oregon Quarterly tested Brown in sniffing out the truth of four “fowl” facts:

1. A duck’s quack doesn’t echo. LYB: FALSE. Her tip: “There are three big questions to consider when reading information online: Who’s behind that information? What’s the evidence to support the fact? And who are the sources?

“There were lots of credible websites like Snopes.com and PolitiFact.com, all citing a study from the University of Salford, England, that the duck quack does have an echo. You want multiple sources for confirmation, and academic papers are good, too.”

2. Only ducks native to the northern hemisphere can withstand extreme cold. LYB: FALSE. Her tip: “It’s definitely worth it to check the accuracy when you’re seeing broad statements on social media. Sometimes you need to ‘read upstream’—a term coined by the Stanford (University) History Education Group—which means clicking through a page’s hyperlinks to find the original sources of references. On Wikipedia, I found the Muscovy duck is native to Australia and New Zealand. But Wikipedia is not always the most reliable source, so I checked the citations after each fact in the article. I found that information for the Wikipedia article came from a conservation center and the owner of a waterfowl farm, which I felt to be accurate sources.”

3. There once was a mother duck with . . . 77 ducklings. LYB: FALSE. Her tip: “When it comes to news outlets, they do a decent job. They’re not always the best, but this story was heavily reported by lots of newspapers. It was a very cute, feel-good story—but every single news site said there were 76 ducklings, not 77. When all of them are saying the same thing, that’s pretty trustworthy.”

4. According to an urban legend, The Duck once jumped out of an airplane. LYB: TRUE. Her tip: “When you’re doing a keyword search, sometimes you have to be creative. I tried ‘Puddles the Duck jumps out of airplane,’ and was getting nothing. But then I looked up ‘Puddles the Duck skydiving,’ and that confirmed through various news sites—ESPN, Business Insider, USA Today—that not only did The Duck skydive during the ESPN College GameDay show in 2012, but it lost its costume head midair.”

Earlier this year, paleontologists John Orcutt, PhD ’11 (geological sciences), and Jonathan Calede, MS ’10 (geological sciences), identified a new saber-toothed cat species that roamed North America more than five million years ago. Machairodus lahayishupup weighed more than 600 pounds, making it one of the largest cats in history (and similar in likeness to the Machairodus pictured here). The two developed the project from their inspection of an unidentified giant feline’s forearm bone at the UO Museum of Natural and Cultural History. The specimen was uncovered in northeastern Oregon on the traditional homelands of the Cayuse, now part of the federally recognized Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Orcutt and Calede worked with the tribes to name the new species; “Laháyis Húpup” means “ancient wild cat” in the Old Cayuse language.

Thomas brings hiphop and urban dance expertise to the UO

UO’S 2021 FRESHMAN CLASS BREAKS BARRIERS AND RECORDS

The UO’s entering class for fall 2021 is the university’s largest ever. The new Ducks are also the most academically prepared, the most diverse, and the first class to be recruited virtually.

“This is a day for the record books, and I could not be prouder,” says Roger Thompson, vice president for student services and enrollment management. “I knew as record applications began to roll in this year, we had an incredible amount of interest in the University of Oregon, but I am even more pleased to know that we grew without sacrificing the qualities we value in our students.”

Preliminary data indicate that the UO’s first day of classes brought in 4,602 first-year students to campus, which represents a growth of 17 percent over last year and 53 percent over the last 20 years.

New Ducks also established several records for academic achievements and more:

• Highest freshman high school grade point average of 3.73, compared to last year’s 3.68—the previous UO record • The freshman class is the most diverse racially and ethnically • Including 1,036 transfer students, the total of 5,638 undergraduates is a new UO high

“The UO has been on a trajectory for more than a decade now,” Thompson says. “The academic quality, incredible access to facilities, outstanding programs, top faculty, and many other reasons make this a special place and many high school students are taking notice.”