College of Letters & Science
IN FOCUS
September 2019, Vol. 9, No.9
Milwaukee on the silver screen
An independent film with UWM connections premieres to critical acclaim. Page 6.
Bring on t
Contents Feature Stories
Global Studie
Student’s internship with Fresh Coast Geosciences student examines Utah rocks Alum’s critically acclaimed film premieres Biology prof’s work on spiders and memory Meet the new Letters & Science faculty Psychologist studies marijuana and fitness Spanish alum is Racine Court interpreter
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Columns Passings Laurels and Accolades People in Print Upcoming Events In the Media Alumni Accomplishments
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L&S Dean: Scott Gronert In Focus Editor: Deanna Alba
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When it rains in Milwaukee, all that water has to go somewhere. Some of it ends up in the groundwater. Some of it flows into streams, rivers, and lakes, many times carrying contaminants like fertilizers or pesticides. The rest of it flows into the sewers in older parts of the City of Milwaukee, carrying debris from the streets and sending a deluge to the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewer District (MMSD) wastewater treatment plants. But, if Milwaukee residents find ways to divert that rainwater – say, by absorbing it in a rain garden or catching it in a 50-gallon rain barrel – that helps protect Milwaukee’s waterways and sewers from storm runoff. The Fresh Coast Resource Center is an initiative by MMSD that aims to help residents in Milwaukee County and surrounding communities not only install rain gardens and rain barrels, but to understand the impact of managing water where it falls with green infrastructure. As an intern who has worked with Fresh Coast for the last three years, UWM student Jasmine Viges has played a big part in both efforts. “We need to have more people understand why the small scale green infrastructure is important,” she said. “I love working with water. People are realizing more and more how important water is. We’re lucky we have the Great Lakes, this incredible resource, right next to us.” Viges is a global studies major with a focus on sustainability. She also has a minor in conservation and environmental science. Over the past three years, she’s installed her share of rain barrels and rain gardens. They’re small actions that collectively have a big impact. Viges estimates there are about 24,000 rain barrels in the Milwaukee region that can hold 50 gallons each. “Every time it rains, that’s 50 gallons times 24,000 rain barrels. It’s saving a lot of water from going into the sewer,” Viges said. “Right now, MMSD is treating lots of water, and a lot of it is rain water. ”
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Since the Rain Barrel Program started in 2004, it has built a capacity of about 1.2 million gallons of rainwater diverted into barrels during each rainfall. That may not seem like a huge amount given MMSD’s 740 million gallon goal, but every drop counts and it turns each rain barrel owner into an active stormwater manager.
the rain
es student shines at Fresh Coast internship for MMSD Rain gardens can absorb gallons of water as well. They use specially mixed soil and grow native plants with deep roots, like purple coneflower or butterfly weed, that soak up the water. As a bonus, these plants are a desired habitat for pollinators like bees and butterflies. But Viges’ work isn’t just about diverting storm water runoff and protecting the environment. It’s also about connecting with the community in meaningful ways. She smiles as she remembers one woman, recently in remission from brain cancer, who asked for help installing a rain barrel that she could use to water her vegetable garden. “You could tell she was so excited to have a garden growing again,” Viges said. “People tell stories about their life while we’re there and how excited they are to have a rain barrel or a rain garden.” Beyond green infrastructure projects, Viges has also staffed information booths at community fairs, taken photographs for brochures, helped translate flyers into Spanish to reach more Milwaukee residents, and helped
Global studies major Jasmine Viges smiles as she plants a rein garden with a fellow Fresh Coast intern. Rain gardens help absorb water from rainfalls to ease the burden on Milwaukee’s sewer system, as well as its waterways. Photo courtesy of Jasmine Viges.
craft the Fresh Coast Resource Center’s strategic plan, among other duties. In addition to honing her skills in marketing and community outreach, Viges has been learning the ins and outs of MMSD by taking field trips to sewerage plants and riding out on MMSD’s water sampling boat. This year, she’s taken a leadership position amongst her fellow interns and helped plan community presentations to spread the word about water conservation. “Most people don’t understand what ‘green infrastructure means, so we’re trying to find ways to help people understand what we mean. But those are all good challenges,” Viges said. “The longer I work here, the more I learn.” Viges plans to graduate in 2020. She hopes to find a job working with water conservation. By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science
College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 3
Geosciences student uncovers micr When rocks move along a fault plane, they often grind along each other as solids in what’s known as “brittle deformation.” When they’re moving against each other deep beneath the Earth’s surface, however, the enormous pressure and heat causes the rocks to squish together instead. It’s called a “shear zone.” But along the Willard Thrust Fault in Utah, there’s evidence of rock shearing even though the rocks weren’t deep enough to be in a shear zone. Chad Martin wants to know why, and he thinks the answer lies in water and microscopic grains of quartz. “What we’re thinking is that microfractures formed in these grains. There was normal brittle deformation. There was enough pressure for some these grains to start cracking and fracturing,” he said. “That allowed water to get into these grains and become part of their crystal structure.” When minute amounts of water – on the scale of parts per billion – enters
those cracks, it can cause hydrolytic weakening. Instead of cracking, the grains of quarts deform, acting like PlayDoh as they move. Martin is working toward his Master’s degree in geosciences at UWM. As part of his research, he’s spent the last year collecting quartz samples from the Willard Thrust Fault and examining them for evidence of microfractures. If he can find them, and find signs of water, he’ll be well on his way to proving his theory. There are three steps Martin follows to look for fractures. First, he grinds the rock down until it’s 30 microns thick so he can look at it under a petrographic microscope to identify strain features which show how the quartz grains have deformed. The second step is to look at those grains under a scanning electron microscope with a cathodoluminescence attachment. “It allows you to see the microfractures that you couldn’t see any other way,” Martin says as he points to an image of a quartz grain on his computer. It’s crisscrossed by tiny black lines, which are microfractures that opened in the rock but subsequently “healed” and disappeared from normal view.
Geosciences graduate student Chad Martin collected rocks in Utah to Chad Martin.
The last step is a doozy: Martin has to travel to California to use a Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) beam microscope at Berkeley National Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS). Berkeley’s FTIR microscope is extremely powerful because it uses light from a synchrotron.
Geosciences graduate student Chad Martin used three different microscopes to search for evidence of water inside tiny pieces of quartz. 1. Chad Martin bends over the FTIR microscope at Berkeley National Lab the third image is a microfracture. 4. Martin used the FITR microscope to look for OH particles along the microfracture. The arrow points to a thin blue line that indicates where the OH particles apear - right alo
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roscopic secrets in Utah stones What it means for my work is very high precision. I can get a very fine beam out of it so I can map very small things.” When those individual wavelengths of light hit certain anomalies along the quartz microfractures – like, say, the water molecules that Martin is searching for – it registers as a “peak” that tells Martin he’s been successful. “What we’re trying to do is show evidence of water along those healed microfractures that you can’t see any other way, and see if these lines that I get on the FTIR can match up with the fractures,” Martin said.
understand how the Willard Thrust Fault formed. Photo courtesy of
“A synchrotron, the way it has been described to me, is basically a particle accelerator but for light,” Martin said. “So they have a center ring where they’re shooting light around it and they can peel off individual wave lengths and send it to instruments at very high power.
So far, his research has yielded promising results, but it is slow going. Creating a map of just a quarter of a single quartz grain can take up to 12 hours, and Martin can only use Berkeley’s FTIR for 72 hours at a time. Even so, he’s found evidence of water along microfracture lines that lend credence to his hypothesis that water caused the shearing in the Willard thrust fault.
geologic structures formed in the past, scientists might gain a better understanding of how the Earth might change in the future. Martin’s research is also important because he’s pioneered a new technique for examining rock samples. Usually, geologists use a mirror-finish and an epoxy to fix rock samples to microscope slides, but the epoxy would have thrown off the readings of the FTIR microscope. Instead, Martin used a heat-removable epoxy and, after he warmed up his rock samples on slides on a hot plate, took them off the slides and cleaned them in an acetone bath. “This is a viable method,” Martin said. “I showed it was possible.” Martin will present his findings at a conference for the Geological Society of America in Phoenix, Arizona, later this month. By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science
That’s important because the Earth is still moving. By understanding how
b. 2. With a petrographic microscope, Martin identified a small grain of quartzite to study. 3. Martin then used a scanning electron microscope to identify microfractures in the grain. The thick black line in ong the microfracture. Photos courtesy of Chad Martin.
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College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 5
Milwaukee’s Movie “Give Me Liberty” premieres with UWM connection Kirill Mikhanovsky and Alice Austen have written a critically acclaimed love letter to Milwaukee. Now they need the city to show them some love in return. The pair are co-writers of “Give Me Liberty,” an independent film that took both Sundance and Cannes by storm. The film follows 24 hours in the life of Vic, a medical transport driver who is supposed to be driving his client, Tracy, a woman with ALS, to her job. Instead, he finds himself dodging roads blocked by street protests and playing chauffeur to his grandfather’s friends, a troop of Russian émigrés stranded on their way to a funeral. Mikhanovsky, who also directed the film, graduated from UWM in 1998 with triple majors in Russian, linguistics, and film. Austen, a Chicago Director Kirill Mikhanovsky. Courtesy of Music Box Films. playwright, has UWM connections too: She worked as an adjunct professor in the theater department last year. The two began collaborating after Mikhanovsky attended a reading of one of Austen’s plays and was impressed by her skill. Five years ago, they began writing the script for “Give Me Liberty.” “We would literally take turns with the draft. We would pull the computer back and forth,” Austen said. “We started off with this idea of a film we could make where contemporary Milwaukee could be a character.” 6 • IN FOCUS • September, 2019
Mikhanovsky hopes that it will put the city on the filmmaking map. Wisconsin gives no tax incentives to film makers, which makes it tough to shoot anything in the state, let alone a small feature film. If “Give Me Liberty” does well at the box office, it might begin to convince the movie industry that Milwaukee is a viable filming locale. “We wanted this film to be a catalyst for the budding, developing film industry in this city. We want more films to be made here,” Mikhanovsky said. So, Mikhanovsky and Austen need people to buy tickets – especially in Milwaukee. They have a few compelling reasons why people should see their movie. 100 percent made in Milwaukee There is nothing Hollywood about “Give Me Liberty.” Despite several setbacks, the film was made entirely in Wisconsin. “We cast it, with four exceptions, entirely with Co-writer Alice Austen. Courtesy of Give Me Liberty Productions. people from Milwaukee. It was filmed in Milwaukee,” Austen said. “We hired locally. Many of our crew went to UWM’s film school. It was great to be on the forefront of that.” The filmmakers also formed partnerships with local organizations, including the Wisconsin African American Women’s Center, which allowed the crew to hold auditions in their building and use it as a base of operations during filming. They also paired with Milwaukee’s Eisenhower Center, which provides vocational training, education, and jobs for people with disabilities.
Lauren ‘Lolo’ Spencer, Steve Wolski, and Chris Galust in GIVE ME LIBERTY. Courtesy of MusicBox Films. (Click photo to view the movie trailer.)
“(Eisenhower) embraced the idea of making a film with some of the clients at the center. It was incredible,” Mikhanovsky said. One of the clients sang “Born in the USA” during filming, and Bruce Springsteen watched the film, was impressed with it and with the performance of the song by a young man with disability, and gave the filmmakers his blessing to use it in the film. But Milwaukee offers far more than its partnerships, valuable as they are. It’s a Rust Belt city undergoing a reinvention, and the two screenwriters wanted to capture the zeitgeist. “Milwaukee is an incredible city. It’s the backbone of America, and it feels very authentic,” Mikhanovsky said. “It’s incredibly diverse; it’s incredibly cinematic. It was a natural decision to want to make something written for the character of this city.” Critical acclaim The world seems to agree: The critics love it. “Give Me Liberty” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival where it received glowing reviews from Manohla Dargis, a film critic for The New York Times who is “one of the most revered and feared in equal measure,” according to Mikhanovsky. Then the film showed at Cannes, which is almost unprecedented; the world’s premier film festival, held in France, does not show films that have already been screened at other festivals. “Give Me Liberty” marks just the fourth exception in 20 years.
Mikhanovsky reported that “Give Me Liberty” received a ten-minute standing ovation at Cannes, outstripping applause for “Rocketman” and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” The LA Times called it a “brilliant madcap farce on wheels, a heady and rambunctious state-of-the-union address (that) may be one of the bigger movies you’ll see this year.” The film has been acquired by 30-plus countries for distribution, and it’s showing on 128 screens in France and 100 in Russia. “Give Me Liberty” is playing in select cities in the United States, distributed by Music Box Films in Chicago. It premiered in Milwaukee to a sold-out Oriental Theater. “This is the first narrative feature film that is 100 percent Milwaukee-made that is getting national distribution,” Mikhanovsky said. “We’ve done the heavy lifting,” he added. “We don’t receive incentives from Milwaukee. Instead, we want Milwaukee to own this film, be proud of it, and come out and support its distribution by buying tickets and watching it. The way we see it, it’s a way of showing one loves Milwaukee. The world is looking at Milwaukee to see how commercially viable the film is. if it is, other theaters nationwide will want to program it too.” Continued on page 8 College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 7
“Give Me Liberty” premieres A joy to watch Milwaukeeans should be proud because it’s a good movie: Poignant without being sappy, humorous without being over-the-top. As the film progresses and Vic’s day spins further out of control, disparate groups begin to come together in the back of his medical transport van. It’s a film about the American Dream, and how everyone, from women with ALS to Russian immigrants, are still reaching for it. The performances are outstanding, the filmmakers promise. Mikhanovsky and Austen were especially struck by Lauren “Lolo” Spencer, a first-time actress who, like the character Tracy, has ALS. “I want Lolo to win an Oscar. The scenes with Lolo and Chris (Galust, who plays Vic) really stand out,” said Austen. “There’s a beautiful story of how their characters bond. Both of the actors are so cinematic and powerful together. It’s really gratifying to see it come to life.” Mikhanovsky and Austen poured a lot of their own experiences into the film as well, and it shows. Like Vic, Mikhanovsky is Russian and worked as a medical transport driver at one time, though the film is not biographical. Austen admits to including small scenes from her life as well: One moment between Tracy’s grandmother and Vic’s grandfather in the film grew out of a real-life wedding where Austen witnessed two elderly relatives sit down together. “It was amazing – a moment between two people of the same generation who had seen the same big things and small things passing in their lives,” she said. “It’s not saccharine; it’s not politically correct … but it’s ultimately very optimistic.” And that’s why everyone should see the film, Mikhanovsky added. “If you want to have fun and support your community, look no further.” By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science
“Give Me Liberty” is currently showing at: • Oriental Theater, 2230 N. Farwell Ave., Milwaukee • Marcus Ridge Cinema, 5200 S. Moorland Rd., New Berlin • Marcus Majestic Cinema of Brookfield, 770 N. Springdale Rd., Waukesha (Top to bottom) Lauren “Lolo” Spencer in GIVE ME LIBERTY. All photos courtesy of Music Box Films. Cast in GIVE ME LIBERTY. Chris Galust and Lauren “Lolo” Spencer in GIVE ME LIBERTY. Chris Galust in GIVE ME LIBERTY. 8 • IN FOCUS • September, 2019
Passings Ronald Overdahl passed away on July 31, 2019, at age 74. Ronald graduated from UWM in 1973 with a bachelor’s degree, majoring in Political Science. He taught photography at UWM and was a news photographer with the Milwaukee Journal from 1967-2001. Overdahl was inducted into the Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio for a 1972 photo of the Green Bay Packers in action. Ronald’s full obituary can be viewed at https://bit.ly/2M3u6mM.
UWM Photo by Troye Fox
Spiders weave a web of memories Arachnophobes might want to skip this story. Because spiders might be more intelligent than you think. To compensate for not seeing very well, spiders usually manage their world by detecting vibrations in their webs. They even strike a specific pose to do it, spreading their two front legs apart and remaining still. But Rafael Rodríguez Sevilla, an associate professor of biological sciences who researches the cognitive abilities of miniature brains, has evidence that black widow spiders make mental maps of their webs. And about 50 percent of the time, they rely on memory before vibrations. “We’re trying to describe components of active consciousness,” he says. “Are they aware of their memories with such a small brain? We think the answer is yes.” In one experiment, Rodríguez Sevilla and his lab members swapped the current webs of hungry spiders with older webs containing no food. Half of the spiders conducted a fruitless search for up to a full minute when confronted with their new location. So single-minded was their persistence that not even live prey inserted elsewhere on the web distracted them. “They are attending to the mismatch between their environment and their memory,” Rodríguez Sevilla says. “You can see the same behavior in humans. That confusion is a sign of higher intelligence.” The researchers tested for memory of the web’s contents across several spider families. They found that not only did the spiders remember they caught something, but they also remembered features of the prey and the quantity of it. Memory in tiny creatures was long thought to be a hardwired behavior that didn’t require much mental capacity. “Our results,” Rodríguez Sevilla says, “suggest that the ability to make mental maps is a common feature of animal brains, even relatively small and simple ones.”
Gregory Mursky, Emeritus Professor of Geosciences, passed away on August 23, 2019, at age 90. Dr. Mursky was a professor in the department of geosciences who began teaching at UWM in the fall of 1964. His career at UWM spanned over three decades before he retired in 1997. During that time, he taught thousands of undergraduate and many graduate students in geological subjects dealing with mineralogy, petrology, geochemistry, and the geology of the planets and our moon. While at UWM, he also served as Chair of the Geology Department (as it was known at the time), and played a key role in the development of the Department, including hiring and staffing the faculty. Dr. Mursky had an impressive list of publications dealing with his research and several textbooks for college geology students. He had a keen interest in the Ukrainian Academic and Cultural Societies, and was instrumental in the introduction of Ukrainian courses at UWM. Dr. Mursky’s obituary is online at https://bit.ly/2Zrwg6M.
By Laura Otto, University Relations College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 9
New year, new faces: Meet the incomi
Susana Antunes
Jue Chen
Jonah Gaster
Assistant professor, Spanish and Portuguese
Assistant professor, Foreign Languages & Literature
Assistant professor, Mathematical Sciences
PhD 2017, University of Massachusetts-Amherst Previously Coordinator of the Portuguese Program and lecturer at UWM Research focus: Portuguese, Brazilian, and Lusophone Contemporary Literature, with a specialization in Travel Poetry. Current projects: I am working on a book based on the idea of itinerancy as a vital element of human existence. This book scrutinizes and reevaluates the corpus of poems integrating Jorge de Sena’s and Cecília Meireles’ “travel poetry,” proposing poetic itineraries bearing their own itineraries. My research establishes the itineraries from “travel poem” to “walk-poem,” redefines the idea of “travel poem” and proposes new perspectives of analysis for poems that can be classified as “walkpoems”. Fun fact: Jorge de Sena’s birthday, one of the two authors I worked in my dissertation, is on the same day I was born.
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PhD 2016, Princeton University Previously Visiting Assistant Professor at Kalamazoo College Research focus: Chinese literature, with current focus on medieval and early modern (700-1400) Chinese poetry. Research discoveries: In recent years I have been researching the literary activities of Chan Buddhist monks in early modern China. So far they have not been well studied as participants in literary activities; I hope my work will in the end be able to achieve a new account of the literary and intellectual history of China from the 10th to the 14th centuries. Current project: After finishing my first project on Du Fu (712-770), who is often referred to as “China’s Shakespeare,” I am now about to start a new project on Chan Buddhist communities and Chan poetry in Song (960-1279) and Yuan (1271-1368) China. Fun fact: I like cooking! I’m looking forward to inviting colleagues to my home and enjoy beer, wine, and homemade Chinese cuisine.
PhD 2014, University of Illinois Chicago Previously CRM-ISM Postdoctoral Fellow at McGill University Research focus: My work is in geometric topology and geometric group theory. Broadly speaking, this subject is about shapes of spaces. Specifically, I tend to spend my time thinking about geometric structures on surfaces and three-dimensional spaces, and curves and graphs associated to such spaces. Current project: In ongoing work with Brice Loustau, we are studying combinatorial approximations of harmonic maps (aka very wellbalanced maps) between hyperbolic surfaces -- these are surfaces that are endowed with a particularly nice kind of geometry. Fun fact: My wife, Elly Fishman, is an award-winning journalist (formerly an editor of Chicago Magazine) who will also be joining the campus community this fall. She’ll be teaching a class about magazine feature writing in the Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies Department.
ing Letters & Science faculty members
Derek Handley
Maria Novotny
Charles Paradis
Assistant professor, English
Assistant professor, English
Assistant professor, Geosciences
PhD 2018, Carnegie Mellon University
PhD 2017, Michigan State University
PhD 2017, University of Tennessee Knoxville
Previously Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition at Lehigh University Research focus: African American Rhetoric, Rhetorical History, and Rhetorics of Place. I’m currently looking at responses to urban renewal in the 1950’s and 1960’s within the context of the Black Freedom Movement. Goals for the year: To make significant progress on my book project, “The Places We Knew So Well Are No More:’ A Rhetorical History of Urban Renewal and the Black Freedom Movement,” which looks at the rhetorical strategies and tactics used by African-American communities in Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, and St. Paul as they resisted urban renewal. The book shows how African Americans have used places, narratives, and civic engagement to lend force to their arguments about their neighborhoods. Fun fact: I’m a Navy Veteran with 28 years of total service. Go Navy! Beat Army!
Previously Assistant Professor of English at UW-Oshkosh Research focus: My research explores how discourses and technologies silence some embodied experiences of health and medicine. I co-direct a community organization, The ART of Infertility, which hosts art workshops for reproductive loss patients to depict their experiences with grief and the reproductive healthcare industry. The organization has over 200 pieces of narrative art from which I curate art exhibitions around the U.S. Research discoveries: My research offers visual examples of how individuals identify with infertility. However, as they reach a “resolve”, such as having a child, they no longer selfidentify as infertile. As such, advocacy work around infertility and access to alternative family-building is not very sustainable. The exhibits that I curate offer a more sustainable advocacy infrastructure to increase public awareness about infertility. Fun fact: I am an avid musky fisherwoman. In the spring, I help a family friend on their maple syrup farm in Northern Wisconsin.
Previously Post-doctoral Research Associate at Los Alamos National Laboratory Research focus: Contaminant hydrogeology Research discoveries: The mixing of native surface water with uranium-contaminated groundwater can effectively mobilize uranium and may lead to enhanced uranium recovery and remediation of radionuclide-contaminated sites. Current projects: Radionuclide concentrations and isotopic signatures in leachate from coal flyash stabilized soils. Goals for the year: Successfully teach Physical Hydrogeology (GEO SCI 463) in the fall, begin flowthrough column experiments in my lab, and secure external research funding Fun fact: I had a brief career as a commercial truck driver.
College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 11
New year, new faces, new faculty
Rebecca Shumway
Sarah Vigeland
Associate professor, History
Assistant professor, Physics Assistant professor, Chemistry & Biochemistry
PhD 2004, Emory University Previously Associate Professor of History at College of Charleston Research focus: My research focus is West Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly the transatlantic slave trade and its aftermath in Ghana and other Anglophone West African countries. Research disoveries: In the records of the British slave trading company, I found that in addition to buying and selling enslaved Africans to slave ships, the company also owned hundreds of enslaved Africans who lived and worked in the coastal trading forts their entire lives. Many of these “castle slaves” were women, and many were raising their children (some fathered by Europeans) within the castle walls. Current projects: My book project examines the development of nationalist ideology and racial (African/black) consciousness in southern Ghana in the early and mid-nineteenth century. Fun fact: My family has recently adopted a very sweet 5-year-old Labrador retriever named Obi! 12 • IN FOCUS • September, 2019
PhD 2012, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Previously Postdoctoral Researcher at UWM Research focus: I study black holes, neutron stars, and white dwarfs. Most of my research involves gravitational waves, which are ripples in spacetime produced when massive objects accelerate. I develop techniques to detect gravitational waves and use those observations to study the systems that generated them. Research disoveries: I recently led a paper that searched our data for gravitational waves from supermassive black hole binaries. We didn’t find any, which lets us constrain how many supermassive black hole binaries exist in the local universe. Supermassive black hole binaries form when two galaxies merge, so this also tells us something about the merger histories of local galaxy clusters. Current projects: I am part of a collaboration called NANOGrav, which detects gravitational waves by monitoring a collection of pulsars. Fun fact: I’m an avid knitter. I started knitting when I was a college student in Minnesota, and I realized how important it was to have a warm hat and mittens.
Jarett Wilcoxen
PhD 2013, University of CaliforniaRiverside Previously Postdoctoral Researcher at UC-Davis Research focus: I study enzyme mechanisms and how the structure of an enzyme active site can influence the overall reaction. All of the enzymes I study use metals in the active site to generate a highly reactive intermediate to accomplish difficult chemical reactions. Research disoveries: Using electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy, I gained molecular level detail of several enzyme intermediates that are too unstable to be observed by any other method. One of these intermediates helped shed light on a new reaction type in a family of enzymes. Current projects: I will be looking at interesting reactions with poorly understood reaction mechanisms. One enzyme is important in the global nitrogen cycle and another in tRNA modifications. Fun fact: I’ve lived in California my whole life. Winter will be a little colder than I’m used to.
Laurels and Accolades
Marijuana impairs young brains, but fitness may help Neuropsychologist Krista Lisdahl recently completed a six-year study of brain functioning in teens and young adults who regularly smoke marijuana. It showed that smoking pot at least once a week changes a teenager’s thinking abilities.
of fitness and then compared their performance on neuropsychological tests. Participants abstained from marijuana smoking for three weeks before taking a test called VO2 max, which measured how efficiently they use oxygen during intense exercise
Moreover, the research confirmed findings of previous studies showing an association between chronic Krista Lisdahl pot-smoking and poorer working memory and slower processing speed.
Lisdahl found that high aerobic fitness, indicated by the VO2 score, was related to better performance of visual memory, verbal fluency and sequencing abilities.
“The more joints they smoked in the past year, the worse they did on the cognitive performance,” says Lisdahl, an associate professor of psychology. “These areas of cognition were still worse in the marijuana users compared to controls, even after they stopped using for three weeks.” The study stopped short of answering definitively whether people who smoked pot in their teens and early 20s permanently harmed their cognitive abilities. But it did show that aerobic fitness may protect against some of the cognitive damage that young marijuana users are inflicting on their still-developing brains. Lisdahl separated the study’s marijuana smokers by their levels
Most interestingly, aerobically fit marijuana users did better on the cognitive tasks such as processing speed, visual memory and sequencing ability compared to users who weren’t fit. Lisdahl notes that the study offers some health intervention possibilities. “We could take people who are trying to quit and offer a method to improve brain function while they are scaling back use,” she says. “It would be an inexpensive treatment option. “This could boost several other areas besides cognition,” Lisdahl continues, “because brain receptors for cannabis, called CB1 receptors, are involved in a lot of other functions besides enabling pot smokers to experience that high. These include emotional control, mood, cognition and pain tolerance.” Because most research on exercise involves older adults, the study also adds insight into the effects of aerobic fitness in young people. That’s important because activity levels of young adults drop dramatically after high school.
Pi Sigma Alpha is the national Political Science honors society. UWM’s Epsilon Xi Chapter was selected as one of Pi Sigma Alpha’s Best Chapters 2018-2019. The award honors chapters that are active in their universities and are energetic and creative in furthering the goals of the honors society. UWM’s chapter will receive a $500 cash prize. Pi Sigma Alpha will also donate a $200 check in chapter president Kristin Trenholm’s name. Sonia Khatchadourian (English) and Aragorn Quinn (Foreign Languages and Literature) were named UWM’s 2019-20 Fellows/ Scholars in the Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars Program. Khatchadourian and Quinn will complete professional development and a Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SoTL) project they will share at the UW System’s Teaching and Learning Conference in April. Graduate student Giselle Pu (Communication) was awarded the Emerging Scholar Research Award in the Mobile Interest Group of the International Communication Association in May.
People in Print Mark L. Dietz (Chemistry and Biochemistry) and C.A. Hawkins. 2019. Task-specific ionic liquids for metal ion extraction: Progress, challenges, and prospects. In Ion Exchange and Solvent Extraction: Changing the Landscape in Solvent Extraction (ed. Bruce A. Moyer), CRC Press: 23 (83-113).
By Laura Otto, University Relations College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 13
Court is in session: Spanish alum interpret “Do you understand that you have waived your right to a trial?” the Racine County Court judge asks from his bench. At the table for the defense, Vicki Bermudez leans in close to the defendant, a Hispanic man accused of driving without a license. Quietly, she speaks rapid-fire Spanish into his ear, translating everything the judge says almost as he says it. The defendant nods along and answers, si. “Yes,” Bermudez clarifies for the courtroom. Later today, she will be asked to interpret for a crime victim, and after that, for a mother attending her son’s hearing in juvenile court. “There’s no day that’s the same,” Bermudez says with a smile as she returns to her office between cases. Bermudez is a certified court interpreter, and she’s one of just three full-time county-employed court interpreters in the state - there’s one in Milwaukee and two in Madison who share one full-time position. Even so, these interpreters can’t handle every case, so the counties, and all other county courts in Wisconsin, rely on freelance interpreters to translate for defendants, victims, and other non-English speakers. When they’re translating for court or at conferences, interpreters use simultaneous interpreting, meaning they orally interpret languages almost as soon as their clients hear or speak the words. In medical and community interpreting, they rely on consecutive interpreting, where one party speaks and the interpreter listens, then interprets the entire thought. Legal interpretation Interpreting is just as much an art as it is a science. Bermudez has to hear words in English, process their meaning, determine the corresponding words in Spanish, and speak them to her client, all at the same time. To make things more difficult, language isn’t a wordfor-word exchange. Some phrases don’t have a direct translation between English and Spanish, so Bermudez has to convey the meaning however she can. And she has to translate every word faithfully no matter what it is.
14 • IN FOCUS • September, 2019
Vicki Bermudez stands on the steps of the Racine County Courthouse, where she works as a Spanish language court interpreter. Photo by Sarah Vickery.
“In one case, there was a temporary restraining order in place, and a request was made to turn it into a four-year injunction. … The ex-husband had sworn at the ex-wife a bunch of times, and (the file) was just full of the stuff he had said,” Bermudez recalled. “I don’t even swear in English, so it’s one of the areas where my terminology is weak. I had to go online, find a dictionary of swear words, and print it out so that I could be prepared for whatever was coming, because I knew the commissioner would ask for the specific words that were used.” The majority of her work involves defendants who are charged with driving without a license or with DUIs, but Bermudez has been called to interpret in all kinds of cases. She recalls one contested custody hearing where everyone unexpectedly but amicably settled their dispute moments before she walked into the courtroom. The kicker was that she’d spent the majority of their previous hearing simultaneously interpreting for both the father suing for custody and his children’s guardian. “I was the only one scheduled to interpret for what was supposed to be a 15-minute hearing for one of the parties. It last 90 minutes - and still had to be continued later that afternoon!”
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September 2019
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Unlike many of the certified court interpreters, Bermudez did not grow up in a bilingual family.
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“At one point, my grandfather taught me the numbers one through six, and I remember having this great desire to know the rest of the numbers through ten,” said Bermudez, laughing. And learn she did. She took Spanish classes in junior high and high school and became fluent when she studied abroad in Argentina. After she earned her associate’s degree from what was then UW-Waukesha (now UWM at Waukesha), Bermudez and a girlfriend traveled to Spain hoping to find jobs and live abroad. Bermudez did - and then she found a husband too. They relocated to the United States. Bermudez put her career on hold as they raised a family, but she always wanted to finish her degree. One day, she learned about court interpreting.
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Upcoming Events September 6
“It my first inkling that there was anything besides teaching or business that you could do with Spanish,” she said. “So I went to the first court interpreter orientation, and that was the first of many steps to becoming a certified interpreter.”
Ctr. for 21st Century Studies: Fellows’ Presentation and Open House. 3:30 p.m. Curtin 939. Lean about C21’s role on campus.
After passing several written and oral exams in English and Spanish covering both simultaneous and consecutive interpreting, Bermudez was certified to work in Wisconsin courts. A year later, she graduated from UWM with a B.A., finally earning the degree that she had wanted for years. She majored in Spanish and graduated in 2008, just one year after her daughter earned her bachelor’s.
Department of Geosciences Fall 2019 Welcome Event. 4 p.m. Greene Geological Gallery, Lapham Hall.
Bermudez worked as a freelance interpreter before joining the Racine County Court system last year when the county created the staff interpreter position. A little advice Bermudez loves her job, and the court system will continue to need certified interpreters as the country’s demographics shift. Even so, she warned, becoming certified, either for medical or legal work, is a long, hard, expensive process. She and other interpreters have some advice: Be honest with yourself. “Make sure you are fully bilingual and be honest in your ability. Are you willing to learn and put the effort into it? Are you willing to work hard?” she asked. And, she added, students who are bilingual should make an effort to volunteer their skills – both for practice and to give back to the community. Finally, “Keep in mind that language acquisition helps you see things in different perspectives,” Bermudez said. “You learn to think outside the box. I think it helps you understand people and cultures and all kinds of ways. In other words, embrace learning a language, because there are many rewards.” By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science
September 12
An evening with Sean Carroll. 7 p.m. Union Wisconsin Room. Tickets are $22/$25/$30 for students, faculty and staff, and the general public. Physicist and author Sean Carroll discusses quantum mechanics, relativity, space, and time. Sponsored by Boswell Book Company. Tickets include a signed copy of Carroll’s book. General public tickets at https://seancarrollmke.bpt. me/. All others at Union info desk with ID.
September 13
Neuroscience Seminar: Learning to remodel the adult damaged brain. 2 p.m. Lapham N101. Theresa Jones, University of Texas-Austin. Geography Colloquium: Spatial Analysis and Visualization of Sexual Offenses and Drug Overdoses. 3 p.m. AGS Library. Rebecca Headley Konkel, UWM.
September 20
Neuroscience Seminar: Probing cellular and molecular mechanisms of axonal repair using zebrafish. 2 p.m. Lapham N101. Michael Granato, University of Pennsylvania. Continued on page 17 College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 15
In the Media and Around the Community Education can lift people out of poverty, but how much education people attain is related to how their society values and prioritizes education, A. Aneesh (Sociology) told The Borgen Project. https://bit.ly/2M6hz1U Postdoctoral research Brooke Dulka (Psychology) penned a blog post for The Scientific American that explored Karyn Frick’s (Psychology) research examining the connections between estrogens and diseases like Alzheimer’s. https://bit.ly/2Yedv6d Students should make a plan for their career, future job options, and budget, Rebecca Neumann (Economics) told Fox6 News. (https://bit.ly/2HjTdhj) She also explained how people’s expectations impact the yield of treasury bonds in Fortune Magazine. https://bit.ly/2KOYWOi
This summer, UWM became the first public university in the nation to offer a completely online Jewish Studies major. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on the new offering. https://bit.ly/31o2koy Debbie Hanula (Psychology) commented on promising research that shows that tracking eye movement can reveal whether or not a person recognizes another person, with implications for law enforcement, in an article on VOA News. https://bit.ly/2P6TwCo Why are there hardly any pigeons in Milwaukee? Peter Dunn (Biological Sciences) told WUWM’s Bubbler Talk show that falcons and hawks are to blame.
How do our digital lives impact our personal lives? Noelle Chesley (Sociology) answered the question on WUWM. https://bit.ly/2ZpfdSY
Milo Miller (L&S College Relations) runs the Queer Zine Archive Project, and he explained the history and basics of queer zines and digital archiving in an article published on Women Write About Comics. https://bit.ly/34njO70
David Kaplan (Physics) lead a team that discovered a new millisecond pulsar, a rapidly-rotating neutron star that emits aa beam of electromagnetic radiation. Phys.org reported on the discovery. https://bit.ly/33Calbl
Why do so many couples get David Kaplan engagement photos these days, even if they’re taking them in grocery stores? “Social media”, Eric Lohman (Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies) told Business Insider. https://bit.ly/2L0QzxJ
Patrick Brady (Physics) explained some of the finer points of the search for gravitational waves in an article in The Economist. https://econ.st/2KXUPhy
https://bit.ly/2YDcC7w
Rachel Buff (History) outlined the conditions facing detained migrants in U.S. border camps in an article in Newsweek. https://bit.ly/2YS4Xxl
Rachel Buff
Jean Creighton (Planetarium) explained some of the science behind discoveries about the moon at Milwaukee’s “Under One Moon” event in August celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Moon Landing. On Milwaukee reported on the event. https://bit.ly/33tLztU
16 • IN FOCUS • September, 2019
Few children in the United States learn Yiddish as their first language anymore, Joel Berkowitz (Jewish Studies) told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as the paper reflected on the death of Paul Melrood, one of the city’s remaining original eastern European Jewish immigrants. https://bit.ly/2LgG35M Most people warn college students against incurring debt, but William Holahan (emeritus Economics) said in an Urban Milwaukee opinion piece that taking out some loans may help students in the long run – if done wisely. https://bit.ly/2LgH11U
Alumni Accomplishments Emerald Mills (’04, BA Communication) has helped to bring Milwaukeeans together over food by organizing Diverse Dining, monthly community-based dinners designed to help people from all backgrounds connect with each other. Mills was featured in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for her work. https://bit.ly/2KsWKKR Emily Topczewski (’15, Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies) has just embarked on an ambitious 16-month, cross-country project to make a documentary called, “We the Voters.” Topczewski plans to conduct 2,500 interviews in hopes of showing that people have more in common than they realize. She was profiled in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for her work. https://bit.ly/2KhZoEg
Alexander Rassogianis (’82, MA History) received a positive write-up for his new collection of short stories, “Short Stories of Life, Love, and Remembrance,” in The National Herald. The book explores different characters grappling with the beauty and tragedy of life. https://bit.ly/33nVX6t
Kenneth Pobo (’83, PhD English) released two new books of poetry this year entitled, “Dindi Expecting Snow” and “The Antlantis Hit Parade.” The first explores the struggles of the child of Brazilian immigrants struggling to connect with her cultural heritage while embracing her home in Michigan. The second features unique personalities beset by the vagaries of love and loneliness. https://bit.ly/2KB81ZK
Anna Topol (’94, Applied Math and Computer Science) was recognized by Continental Who’s Who as a Pinnacle Professional of the Year in the field of Technology and Innovation. Topol is the Chief Technology Officer of Global Think Labs of IBM Research at Thomas J. Watson Research Center, the headquarters for the IBM research division. https://bit.ly/33Rmuti Craig Wiroll (‘10, BA Journalism, Advertising and Media Studies) was named Executive Director of the Milwaukee Preservation Alliance Board. Nickie Michaud Wild (’06, MA Sociology) joined the faculty at Upper Iowa University as an assistant professor of sociology. Wild earned her PhD from the University at Albany/SUNY. Wild will teach on UIU’s Fayette campus. https://bit.ly/2Pr4BhS
Alexandra Talsky (‘19, BA Global Studies) was interviewed by The Chronicle of Social Change for her take on barriers to higher education for children in the foster system. https://bit.ly/2KZ2BsI
Annik Dupati (Lott) (’95, BA; ’97, MA Art History) was named as an M List Award recipient. Presented by Madison Magazine, these awards recognize innovation and entrepreneurial spirit in Madison, Wisconsin. Dupaty, an event coordinator at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, was lauded for her efforts in furthering diversity and inclusion.
Annik Dupati
https://bit.ly/2LfA5Cj
Bill Werra (’92, BA Economics) joined C&W Environmental Solutions as chief growth officer and a member of the executive leadership team. He will align the company’s sales and marketing with business development. C&W specializes in dust collection and air pollution control. https://bit.ly/2L6L7JV Caitlin PenzeyMoog (’01, BA Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies) was profiled in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel following the release of her new book, “On Spice: Advice, Wisdom, and History with a Grain of Saltiness.” https://bit.ly/2PG1gf1
Upcoming Events September 25
2019 Faye Sigman “Woman of Valor” Lecture: The Making of the Magid Chronicles. 7 p.m. Ovation Jewish Home, 1414 N. Prospect Ave., Milwaukee. A behind-thescenes look at the making of The Magid Chronicles by Veretski Pass, in collaboration with Joel Rubin. Free and open to the public. https://bit.ly/2Lgzv7b
September 25
Planetarium Event: Moonshots Then and Now – Why Google Isn’t NASA. 7 p.m. Manfred Olson Planetarium. Free and open to the public. https://bit.ly/2krAuYP
September 26
Veretski Pass with Joel Rubin: The Magid Chronicles (concert). 7 p.m. St. John’s on the Lake (Chapel), 1800 N. Prospect Ave., Milwaukee. Free and open to the public. https://bit.ly/2zzJbUU
September 27
Geography Colloquium: Increasing Collective Efficacy – A Milwaukee-Based Approach to Building Safe & Empowered Neighborhoods. 3 p.m. AGS Library. Bree Spencer, Safe & Sound. Planetarium Show: Creepy Cosmos. 7 p.m. Manfred Olson Planetarium. Tickets are $6. Family-friendly and open to the public. https://bit.ly/2PybcCy College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 17
