In Focus Vol. 11, No. 4

College of Letters & Science

IN FOCUS

April 2021, Vol. 11, No.4

Writing what she knows Alum draws on her memories of UWM and Milwaukee for her debut novel Pg. 8

Ask this alum an

Contents Feature Stories Alum at IBM says Ask Me Anything History students make Spanish Flu podcast Grad student creates cardiac cell algorithm Biology undergrad studies perch aquaculture English alum’s debut novel is set at UWM History student tells of Black-owned brewery Biology grad student uses big data on bats

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Columns Laurels and Accolades Video Story People in Print Program Spotlight Upcoming Events Alumni Accomplishments In the Media

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L&S Dean: Scott Gronert In Focus Editor: Deanna Alba

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Jonathan Adashek (‘96, BA Political Science) has made his ma giant’s Global Communications and Corporate Citizenship orga His team operates in more than 170 countries, but Adashek ha Communications Officer at Nissan and in Paris, France, as the Edelman Public Relations. Before his jump to the private secto worked on presidential candidate John Kerry’s campaign.

In March, he Zoomed in to meet with several students in the C Q: How many languages do you speak?

A: I speak one. I speak English. I learned some basics whenever I moved places or would travel places for extended periods of time. But, I only speak English, but I can still get in a taxi in Japan and get anywhere I need to go.

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Q: Given your current position, what was the most helpful thing that got you to where you are?

A: If I were to be honest about it, I was a terrible student. I’m going to be the wrong person to talk to about classes. The only thing I would say is to do a lot better than I did.

I tried to stay singularly focused on what I wanted to do, and that’s been very helpful. ... Don’t run from something. Run to something. Run to an opportunity that you think you are going to love and is right for you.

When I was at Microsoft and knew it was time to look for something new, I said, “I want to be the chief communications officer at a big multinational (company).” Nissan was an amazing opportunity. It was staying singularly focused on being the chief communications officer for a Fortune 500 that got me there.

Q: What keeps you up at night?

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A: There’s one thing that keeps up at night and that’s people. People is the thing I love most about my job and people is the thing I worry most about in my job. You can have the best idea in the world, but if you don’t have people to carry out those plans, you can’t do anything. You won’t get anywhere. I want to make sure that I have the right people doing the right things.

nything: IBM officer tells all

ark all around the world. In his current role as the chief communication officer for IBM, he is in charge of the corporate anization, in addition to overseeing internal and external communications, content creation, social media, and more. as plenty of international experience: Before joining IBM, he lived and worked in Yokohama, Japan, as the Chief e Alliance Global Vice President, Communications for Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi. He’s also worked with Microsoft and or, Adashek spent time in Washington, D.C. in various roles at the White House and Treasury Department, and also

College of Letters & Science for an “AMA,” or an “Ask Me Anything” session. Here are his responses.

Q: How do you start networking?

A: The tools on networking – like LinkedIn – make it much easier than when I was trying to network. I would say, what are you interested in? Find a few people who would be interesting to talk to, whether you know them or not.

Make some cold calls.

When I was younger I read the paper and it says, “In May, East Timor will celebrate their independence.” ... I did a quick search online and found the name of an organization tied to East Timor. I found a number, I made a cold call, and less than a month later, I was in New York City meeting the foreign minister of East Timor, who won the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize, and he said, “Would you be willing to come to East Timor to help us secure our independence as UN rolls out?”

It was a cold call! But it turned into something. So talk to your friends or your professors, but when you’re done, say, “Can you give me names of two or three other people?” Ask them to help build that network.

Q: How do you select your team members?

A: I’m not going to hire somebody because I’m being a nice guy. … I want to know what benefit I’m going to get out of it. Why are we going to get better with you on the team? Everybody has value they can add.

I look for people who have a propensity to learn - people who are going to dig in, roll up their sleeves, learn about the business, and get to a place where they’re going to be really smart on it.

I don’t have a communications degree, as you all know. I’m a big proponent of diversity. I look at diversity of lived experiences as well, because that helps provide value that you can bring to the table.

Q: You started at IBM in January 2020. You’re coming into a new CEO who would be coming in in April. COVID happens. It’s a contentious political season. How did you balance so much change at one time?

A: When I was at Microsoft, we had an event called the Microsoft CEO Summit. We would get the Who’s Who in business. ... I was talking to somebody and the topic of work/life balance came up.

They said that they don’t believe in work/life balance; it’s work/life harmony. There will be ebbs and flows between work and your personal life. Taking that approach has really helped in the last year.

Now, the person I was talking to happened to be (Amazon CEO) Jeff Bezos!

College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 3

Podcasts and Pandem

History students create ‘The Health A deadly virus swept through world, infecting and killing millions. People were required to wear masks and avoid mass gatherings, schools and businesses were temporarily shut down, and governments grappled with how best to address the pandemic.

But we’re not talking about COVID-19.

A little over 100 years ago, the Spanish Flu raced across the globe with such virulence that the pandemic still lives in collective memory. What’s interesting, said UWM assistant professor of history Christopher Cantwell, is that the disease changed, but between 1918 and 2020, the pandemic response hasn’t.

“In some ways, this is one of the few times that history literally repeated itself,” he said. “We have new technologies and better ways of caring for people who are sick. But the principles, the public health policies, and the problems are all the same.”

So, Cantwell and his students set out to explore that déjà vu. They did so in a 7-part podcast called, “The Healthiest City.”

Public history students in professor Christopher Cantwell’s “History and New Media” class created a podcast exploring Milwaukee’s response to another pandemic - that of the 1918 Spanish Flu. Image courtesy of “The Healthiest City” podcast.

Podcast pedagogy During a normal academic year, Cantwell’s “History and New Media” class would have met in-person to explore new ways to present historical information with a focus on podcasting.

Of course, 2020 was anything but normal. For the safety of everyone during the coronavirus pandemic, UWM shifted most of its classes, including Cantwell’s, online.

“I knew this academic year would be a challenge in general,” he said. “So I 4 • IN FOCUS • April, 2021

asked myself, what can I do for my students to give them something real to point to at the end of it? I told them early on, rather than talk about podcasting, let’s just make a podcast.”

Podcasts are enjoying a hey-day at the moment, and high-quality podcasts rely on extensive research and clear, articulate writing to present stories and information – exactly the kind of skills Cantwell wants his students to develop in his class.

And learning about producing podcasts might just make his students more attractive when they hit the job market.

“Part of the goal for the class is to train students both in the tools and techniques of podcasting so they can develop these kinds of shows at the museums, libraries, or cultural centers they may end up in. That is a skill set they can bring with them,” he said.

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hiest City’ podcast “The Healthiest City” The podcast is produced in partnership with the Milwaukee County Historical Society, which provided Cantwell’s students with access to its historical archives for research. Episodes span a variety of topics, from the history of Milwaukee’s public health to how schools and hospitals responded. Each starts out with a focus on a particular aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic – an interview with a Columbia St. Mary’s ICU nurse to talk about health care, for example, or a narrative from a Milwaukee Public Schools teacher to talk about the pandemic’s impact on education – before pulling back to examine a similar aspect from 1918.

The podcast pulls its name from a book by historian Judith Leavitt. The book outlines the history of public health in Milwaukee, including how the city so deftly navigated the 1918 pandemic that it had the secondlowest rate of infection in the nation despite its dense population – thus earning the “Healthiest City” designation.

A brief history of the Spanish Flu The influenza virus has been around as long as there have been people to catch it, but the strain in 1918 was particularly deadly. The most prevalent origin theory suggests that the Spanish Flu is not Spanish at all, but instead jumped from birds to humans near a military training base in Kansas.

U.S. troops carried the virus from Kansas to the front lines of World War I in Europe, and then brought it back to America when they returned home from the fighting. In all, the Flu claimed about 50 million lives world-wide.

“It gets to Milwaukee in September of 1918 through January of 1919. Around 1,100 people died and 30,000 people got it,” Cantwell said.

“Schools were shut down for five weeks over the span of a couple of months in two separate shut-downs.”

The pandemic left its mark on history, but it’s far from being stuck in the past.

“You can draw a straight line from the Spanish Influenza to the flu vaccine that we get every year,” Cantwell said. “That history is still around us.”

“We panicked a bit at first. Milwaukee did really well during the 1918 Flu. That doesn’t lend itself to a dramatic story on audio,” Cantwell recalled. “It was like, ‘They closed the city, “I’m very hesitant to call him ‘Patient 0;’ the Flu could have everybody followed the rules, and everything was fine!’ already been here in Milwaukee,” she hedged. “(But) he That’s not a good story.” was the first recorded patient.”

So, the podcast starts the narrative a bit earlier. Almost 30 years before the Flu, Milwaukee’s health department badly Grev is a public history graduate student and co-produced bungled its response to a smallpox outbreak in 1894 to the Episodes 3 and 5 of “The Healthiest City.” While she’s always been a fan of podcasts, this is the first time she’s point that mothers led riots in the street as health officials forcibly removed their children for quarantine. The next time ever made one. She cobbled together her own recording studio by draping sound-dampening blankets around her a sickness hit, Cantwell said, Milwaukee’s then-Socialist mattress and crawling beneath her bed with a computer city government remembered the lessons from 1894. and a microphone.

“Wearing masks, closing large spaces of gatherings – Podcasting was a fun challenge, especially when it came those were the policies implemented in 1918 and those to research. Episode 3, co-produced by graduate student are the policies that work today,” Cantwell added. “I Katie Bischof, centers on how the Spanish Influenza think one major difference between then and now is that spread through the world and eventually made its way to there was a radically different understanding of what Milwaukee via Stacy, a lieutenant stationed at the Great government can do and what government is for. When Lakes Naval Station in northern Illinois. the city shut things down, people by and large, at least in Milwaukee, followed the rules.”

‘History in your pocket’ The Spanish Flu arrived in Milwaukee in the body of one Vernon Stacy. Christina Grev tracked him like a detective through history.

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College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 5

History podcast Continued from Page 5

Grev worked backward from his arrival in Milwaukee to track his movements and the spread of the Flu. She stumbled onto a treasure trove of information in the Naval Base’s old bulletins, archived online.

In those papers, she found the first report of an outbreak at the station. “The first couple of patients with the Flu (recorded in Milwaukee) came from that base,” she added.

A doctoral student in applied mathematics has developed an algorithm that will allow heart cell researchers to get their results in minutes, rather than hours.

John Jurkiewicz is involved in a partnership between UWM’s Department of Mathematical Sciences and the Advocate Aurora Research Institute. His algorithm can isolate valuable experiment data in a fraction of the time that scientists previously needed to do the work manually.

Christopher Cantwell

Grev and Bischof also pulled in medical historian Micaela Sullivan-Fowler at UW-Madison for a Zoom interview to get her expertise. “She was the glue that put all of our stories together,” Grev recalled.

In fact, Cantwell said, one side effect of the class’ virtual environment was that students were eager Christina Grev to interview experts that they might never have thought to contact otherwise.

“They interviewed an author (on the west coast) who wrote an article about Milwaukee bars during the pandemic. They said, hey, can we call you and interview you? The virtual format allowed us to expand the scope of who to talk to, because everybody is a Zoom call away right now,” he said.

Grev is proud of the finished product, and grateful to both learn about podcasting and about public health in the city.

“We’re reliving history in a way,” she said, echoing Cantwell. “Things have changed, but not that much. I loved this class. I think my classmates did a fantastic job.”

And with the podcast available in so many places, she added, “It’s like having a piece of history in your pocket.”

By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science 6 • IN FOCUS • April, 2021

An algorithm for the heart

The Advocate Aurora lab studies heart cells, using them to measure cardiac cell function, aid in developmental studies and, eventually, help conduct drug testing. Their work involves giving the cells an electric shock and recording what happens. But that’s when things get tricky.

It’s difficult to separate the electrical signal of activity across some tissue John Jurkiewicz (called field potential, or FP) from the activity of each individual cell (called action potential, or AP). The frequencies connected to action potential are the valuable ones – a heart cell’s AP can say quite a bit about its activity and health.

Before Jurkiewicz created his algorithm, Advocate Aurora lab members had to weed out those valuable signals by hand. It would take an afternoon to parse out one day’s experiment, and they were faced with 1 terabyte of data. “They came to us and said, ‘Can you help?’” says Jurkiewicz, whose faculty advisor is mathematics professor Peter Hinow. “So we came up with an algorithm that can segment this data stream automatically.

“It turns out the AP versus FP classification is ‘easy’ for mathematicians to do,” says Jurkiewicz, whose paper on the work was accepted fo the Journal of Electrocardiology. And he made a point to run the algorithm on his consumer-grade laptop so researchers wouldn’t need a supercomputer to use the tool. He also wrote the program in the open source language Python.

“We would like to make this as accessible as possible,” Hinow says.

By Becky Lang, University Relations

Emma Kraco worked in aquaculture for several years before deciding to go to college. UWM’s Freshwater Sciences program attracted her to the university. (UWM Photo/Elora Hennessey)

Undergrad’s research focuses on fish-fry staple yellow perch Emma Kraco was always interested in biological sciences in elementary and high school.

“I loved looking for bugs, looking at tiny things up close.

It just made sense to get interested in water, especially fresh water. It’s absolutely teeming with life all the time.”

In her teens, her interests led to a job in aquaculture, and she ended up working in the field for several years. “I’m a nontraditional student because I didn’t come to college right out of high school,” she said. She worked for both Sweet Water Aquaponics in Bay View and Central Greens in Milwaukee Story Hill’s area.

Through that work, she got to know Fred Binkowski and Dong-Fang Deng, senior scientists in UWM’s School of Freshwater Sciences.

Deng especially inspired Kraco. “It’s not often you meet women working in aquaculture, especially aquaculture science,” Kraco said.

Kraco, now a senior, enrolled at UWM in 2018, majoring in biology with a focus on molecular and cellular biology as part of her continuing interest in aquaculture.

She chose UWM specifically because of its Freshwater Sciences program. “I wanted to work in the Great Lakes.

I’ve lived in Milwaukee most of my life, and the idea of staying here appealed to me.”

Her research has focused on yellow perch, an aquaculture food fish that is in high demand in the Great Lakes region. Working with her mentor Deng, she has looked at different ways of raising the perch, particularly how water temperature and salt in the water impact affect fish as they grow from the embryo and larval stages.

Her work has been supported by a UWM Support for Undergraduate Research Fellows grant.

This is also important for the Great Lakes fisheries right now, Kraco said, because climate change is making the Great Lakes warmer and more saline. Her research with Deng is also expanding into studying the impact of microplastics in the water or feed of the yellow perch. That work is supported by an Undergraduate Water Research Fellowship Program of the UW System.

Such basic research is important to the future of aquaculture, Kraco said. “You want to raise healthy fish with a high survival rate.”

Her research work has helped in her courses, Kraco added. “I think it absolutely contextualizes everything I’ve learned in the classroom. I’m able to expand on everything that comes up in lectures or even in laboratory classes. It helps to be able to put what I’m learning into practice right away.”

By Kathy Quirk, University Relations College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 7

Milwaukee on the Pa

Alum’s debut no Zhanna Slor’s debut novel is a fun mix of genres – a bit of memoir, a bit of mystery, and a lot of love for Milwaukee. “At the End of the World, Turn Left” is set not only in the city, but partially near the UWM campus. Slor, a 2008 graduate who majored in English, is set to release her novel on April 20. The book is available locally through Lion’s Tooth bookstore and also available through commercial retailers.

Before its release, Slor sat down to talk about her work, her relationship with Milwaukee, and the stories from her childhood that shaped her characters.

Tell me about the book.

It’s a literary mystery that takes place mostly in Riverwest and some on the East Side. It’s about two sisters who get tangled up in their father’s shady USSR past. The father asks the older sister, Masha, to come back from living abroad in Israel to help him find the younger sister, Anna, who goes missing in Riverwest. As Masha looks for Anna, it brings up old demons that she’s been avoiding.

You also see Anna, six months prior, and what brings about her drop off the face of the earth.

Why set the book in Milwaukee?

I started the book when I was in my 20s and I was living in Chicago. I was trying to work through my childhood and through my experiences in Milwaukee. When I was in college, I found the first community I ever really felt comfortable with in Riverwest. It’s very unique. I’ve always wanted to set something in Riverwest.

What’s your favorite thing about Riverwest?

Fuel Café, although it’s closed now, which is so sad. It’s almost like a character in my book. I spent like every day studying at Fuel.

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And some of your book is set right here at UWM, right?

Anna is a student at UWM, so she lives on the East Side on Oakland and Prospect, based on the house I first lived in when I attended UWM. It’s very present in the book – UWM, and the area around it.

I understand this book started out as a very different piece of work.

It took such a journey. It was (originally) an essay collection. Then I turned it into a memoir because (my editor at the time) said it needed more of a plot arc to sell it. The problem was, when we put it in a memoir, my life story was not that interesting. I was like, what if we turned it into a novel? That’s where I started the younger sister’s storyline, Anna, the one who is a college student.

age

ovel is set in the city and on campus Was there a favorite part for you to write?

There are some scenes with the grandparents in the book that still make me laugh when I read them. They are almost word-for-word things that happened with my grandparents. They’re both dead, so it’s almost like I get to hang out with them again every time I read it.

Also, I really like the scenes between Masha and Liam in the beginning, chapter two and three. In the beginning, Masha is returning from Israel and her friend tells her to check out this punk house in Riverwest called Valhalla, which is kind of a joke and kind of a reference to one of the punk houses that was around in 2006 or ’07. People who are into the music scene will know it.

You mostly write essays and have won awards for your work. How was writing a novel?

Zhanna Slor

I threw out the whole book and started over. I made up this whole new plot for her; now that she wasn’t me, it was much easier. Then the publisher dropped it and I sat on it for a while, revising and rewriting her storyline.

A year or so later, (editor and bookseller) Tim Hennessey was doing a ‘Milwaukee Noir’ story collection and asked me to be a part of it. I said, ‘That sounds fun. That needs to be set in Riverwest.’ I started writing the older sister’s storyline, thinking it would be related to Anna but a separate project. But then I was like, wait, these would work really well together! So, I started weaving them together and that turned into the current version of the book.

My (new) editor was really helpful. She would tell me things like, ‘This part is great, but let’s work on the tension. We’re a crime publisher; this needs way more crime.’ I kept having to put these poor characters into criminal situations and was getting stressed out for them. I’m so used to writing essays about feelings and memories, so it was quite a learning experience to write something with tension and plot and clues.

Do you really get stressed out for your characters?

Yes! I get stressed when I read stressful situations in books. There’s this part at the end that I still get so stressed out reading that I have to skim it.

I was surprised I could even write the thing, but I did manage. I get very attached to the characters – especially Anna, because she did start out as a version of me at 19.

There’s a lot of you woven into this book, in fact. Some side characters are UWM students like you, and some are immigrants from the USSR, like you. Can you talk about your experiences that helped form your characters?

Continued on page 10 College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 9

Milwaukee novel Continued from Page 9

Historian tells a story

My family immigrated from Ukraine when I was five and my sister was seven, similar ages to the characters in the book. We didn’t speak any English at first. I was obsessed with going back home and wouldn’t accept that we wouldn’t go back home.

If it takes beer to get people interested in history, that’s fine.

I remember spending a lot of time with my grandparents. They basically raised us. My parents worked two jobs and attended UWM to get English versions of their Soviet degrees, so they were busy. I learned English over the summer in JCC camp, and when I started school at the Atwater kindergarten, I was already fluent. Kids learn so fast.

In his early 30s, Harry decided he wanted to take his life in a different direction. He had an undergraduate degree in communications and had been working as a radio disc jockey when he took a trip to Germany with his sister. She was so impressed by his descriptions and knowledge of the sites they visited that she asked if he had ever thought about teaching history.

The downside, of course, is that my Russian is now very bad. It started going downhill when we moved to Hartland when I was 10 and were no longer around my grandparents or other Russians. My parents also insisted that we speak English in the house. I still understand enough to get by, but I don’t feel comfortable having deep conversations.

It’s a huge theme of my book, actually.

It created this wall between me and my grandparents. I could never really talk to them in the way that I wanted to as an adult.

Why should people read your book?

It’s a very fun read. I’ve heard that from a few early readers. It grabs you from the first page – it’s a mystery; you want to know what happens! Second, it’s an interesting cross-section of cultures. There’s Riverwest, there’s Russian immigrants, Jews, artists. It’s not normally what you would read in a mystery book or even a literary book.

That makes it very fun too. Also, it’s representing Riverwest and UWM. Milwaukee people should enjoy the local tidbits.

By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science 10 • IN FOCUS • April, 2021

That’s the view of John Harry, a history graduate student who has focused his research on beer and Black capitalism.

As he looked into university history programs and topics he could write about, his advisors suggested that his idea of focusing on “American history” was a bit broad.

Black leaders bought brewery As summarized in a story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in November, Black community leaders and businessmen formed United Black Enterprises to invest in businesses that would support employment and growth in the Black community. They bought the brewery, which was originally founded in 1913, in 1970. Among the partners were Theodore Mack, a community activist and social worker who had worked as a production supervisor at Pabst, and Henry Crosby, a successful life insurance salesman.

Peoples Beer only lasted a few years under Black ownership, but Harry’s research led to unexpected connections and a broader exploration of Black entrepreneurship in Wisconsin.

“I had been collecting beer antiques and memorabilia for my whole life, so I said, ‘What about beer history?’ and they said that sounded fascinating.”

When Harry gave a talk on the subject of Peoples at Vennture Brew on North Avenue, he met a guy wearing a Peoples Beer jacket. That was Craig Crosby, the son of Henry Crosby, one of the founders That subject of Peoples. A retired started Harry off lighting technician, in a whole new Crosby was a beer direction. While memorabilia collector researching an old himself.

Although Henry brewery in Oshkosh, Crosby had died in 2012, Craig Crosby he came across another Craig Crosby and his family long-closed brewery that were delighted that someone had been located across the street was taking an interest in the – “Peoples Brewing Company,” company’s history.

Wisconsin’s first and only Blackowned brewery.

Crosby had a collection of “That was kind of my entry into beer history, but it’s not just beer history,” said Harry. “That’s what gets people interested, but it was more a story about Black capitalism…how the Black community was trying to build its own capitalism during the Civil Rights era.”

Peoples memorabilia, and shared company and family history with Harry. “There were things that I knew that he didn’t, and so we were able to throw some stuff back and forth, and that was kind of cool,” Crosby said.

y of Black capitalism through beer academic work, it might be a footnote somewhere,” he said. “Being a white male who comes from privilege, I have to approach this with a sense that I have a lot of empathy, but this is not my experience. I have to tell the story from that perspective, being as respectful as possible.”

One factor that gets overlooked in a lot of discussion about racial equity is the challenge of access to capital, Harry said. “Beer history is kind of an entry into a topic that otherwise might be more difficult for some people and communities to approach.”

John Harry’s interest in beer antiques and memorabilia led him to choose beer history as the focus of his studies at UWM. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)

Broader goal than beer Harry, a home brewer, even found the original recipe for Peoples and brewed up a batch for a project and shared a six-pack with Crosby.

of reasons – the support from the Black community wasn’t as strong as the entrepreneurs had hoped, federal contracts that had been promised didn’t materialize and larger, whiteowned breweries forced out many smaller brewers.

“Through this we’ve become friends,” said Crosby. “I’ve told him his research made me feel really good. I’m glad that somebody took an interest in what my dad and the group tried to do. The fact that John was doing what he was doing to bring that information back out really made me happy.

If my dad was still alive he’d approve.”

In addition to working with Crosby to gather more of the oral history of the company, Harry flew to Atlanta last January – just before the pandemic – to interview 84-year-old Pearl Mack, the widow of Theodore Mack. While the Mack family is working on its own testimonial and history, she shared some of her memories of Peoples.

The goal of Peoples was broader than just brewing beer.

Families can provide a unique perspective, Harry said. He hopes to continue sharing the story and working with the Black community on other research on Black business and entrepreneurship.

“Mack had made large investments trying to get the beer into the urban areas that he hoped would respond to the Peoples cause. He really wanted Peoples to be the beer of Black culture in America,” Harry wrote for the blog Good Beer Hunting.

The brewery failed for a variety

Finding untold stories

“One of the duties of historians in modern times is to find the stories that have not been reported on, and Black capitalism through the lens of brewing is one of those stories. In most

Harry plans to receive his master’s degree in public history in May 2021 and go on for a doctorate, building on his research to look more broadly at Black capitalism in his dissertation.

‘Milwaukee’s a great city’ He came to UWM for the graduate degree because he liked the program, the people in the department and the city. “Milwaukee’s a great city with all the festivals and concerts in normal times. Even if these aren’t normal times, there’s no place else I’d rather be. I love being a Milwaukeean.”

And Harry has no regrets about his career switch. “The radio industry doesn’t pay that well, so the vow of poverty you have to take as a grad student wasn’t that much of a change,” he said with a laugh. “I always joke that I tried to find a career that paid less than radio and here I am.”

He has made his choice to make public history his future. “I’m not just stopping at a master’s. My wife is very supportive of all this. I’m a little older, so this is my chance to do this. Even though it’s hard sometimes, it’s very rewarding.”

By Kathy Quirk, University Relations

College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 11

Laurels and Accolades Daniel Agterberg (Physics) is among the 151 Outstanding Referees of the Physical Review journals, as chosen by the American Physical Society for 2021. Each year since 2008, the Outstanding Referee program has recognized approximately 150 of the currently active referees for their work. This is a lifetime award comparable to a Fellowship in the American Physical Society and other organizations.

Gladys Mitchell-Walthour (African and African Diaspora Studies) was recognized by the National Conference of Black Political Scientists for her contributions as a Program Chair in the organization’s first-ever virtual conference, held March 10-13, 2021. After 52 years of holding annual conferences and faced with the conditions imposed by COVID 19, the Conference Program Chairs pivoted with poise, strategic thinking, and high level technical and organizational skills to bring a record number 491 people to the annual conference. The organization recognized that, “None of this could have happened without the leadership of Dr. Gladys Mitchell-Walthour. We are in her debt and are grateful for the support that her colleagues at University of Wisconsin offered.”

Carolyn Eichner’s (History and Women’s and Gender Studies) book, Franchir les barricades: Les femmes dans la Commune de Paris (Editions de la Sorbonne, 2020), is a finalist for the Prix Augustin Thierry, awarded by the City of Paris. This extremely prestigious award recognizes a work of history focusing on any period between Antiquity and the late 19th century.

Karyn Frick and her graduate student, Lisa Taxier (both Psychology), were profiled by the Alzheimer’s Association of Wisconsin in honor of International Women’s Day in March. Frick’s profile is available at https://bit.ly/2Q15RJi and Taxier’s is available at https://bit.ly/3t3lH4o.

UWM Journalism students garnered 32 Milwaukee Press Club awards, more than any other competing university, for their journalism efforts in 2020. In a range of categories including “Best Pandemic Story” (audio/visual/online), “Best News Writing,” “Best Still Photograph,” and more, student journalists won for their work across several classes in the university’s journalism program. A full account of awards is available through Media Milwaukee.

UWM professor earns lifetime achievement award Professor Kimberly Blaeser was recently recognized by the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas with the 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award.

“Receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award is both humbling and heartening,” Blaeser said. “Thinking about my own role models who previously received this recognition and knowing I was selected by my fellow Native writers gives the recognition special significance.”

Established in 1991, the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas is an organization of Native American writers, based at the University of Oklahoma. Awards for First Book of Poetry, First Book of Prose and Lifetime Achievement are given out annually by the group.

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A faculty member in the English Department and American Indian Studies Program, Blaeser specializes in poetry and creative nonfiction.

Kimberly Blaeser An awardwinning poet, Blaeser has published eight books including five poetry collections as well as short stories, creative nonfiction, and scholarship. Her plays have been performed in the U.S. and Canada and her poetry translated into multiple languages.

Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. Her writing has won numerous awards.

Blaeser was Wisconsin’s poet laureate for 2015-2016, and she was named a fellow in 2020 by the Wisconsin

By Lauren Bruenig, University Relations

The Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas will hold an award ceremony for Blaeser and the 2020 award recipient once health guidelines allow them to do so.

“I am somewhat emboldened to continue to push my writing, but also to move forward projects like In-Na-Po, Indigenous Nations Poets, a national organization I founded in 2020 whose mission is partly to mentor younger Indigenous poets,” Blaeser added. “So, writing and service — continuing the same path I have been following, but with a greater sense of urgency and satisfaction.”

Video Story In this edition of UWM Panthers on Screen, students and faculty, including several from the College of Letters & Science, talk about what they’re most looking forward to as UWM plans for in-person classes, on-campus events and more in the Fall 2021 semester. https://youtu.be/8G5zeiNI3jY

Using big data to make bats a bit less mysterious

Doctoral candidate Xueling Yi uses data science to research bats under the guidance of Emily Latch, a professor of biological sciences.

Latch’s lab is devoted to studying animal genetics and evolution to improve conservation and management.

“There are more than 1,400 bat species in the world,” Yi says. “In that lineage, that group, there are so many things that we do not know.”

Among the problems to be solved: the little brown bat’s losing battle against a disease called white-nose syndrome. A fungus interferes with their hibernation cycle, so they

wake up a lot during the winter. It’s a life-threatening situation, because the strain to cope eventually becomes too much, and Latch says their population is being decimated.

Studying bats’ history and geographical tendencies can help better understand their susceptibility to disease. Yi’s research focuses on those aspects for the big brown bat, which is less susceptible to white-nose syndrome than its smaller cousin and may be growing in population.

The big brown bat is commonly found from southern Canada to northern South America. Yi has analyzed the species

and created genetic, genomic and environmental databases about it.

“Using modeling approaches, you can estimate in which type of environment a bat will be found,” she says. That allows her to predict population spread and allows local authorities to manage public health.

Yi’s work earned her a 2019-20 Northwestern Mutual Data Science Institute scholarship, and it could provide answers that help bats of all types, big and small.

By Silvia Acevedo, University Relations

College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 13

People in Print DeAnne Priddis (’15, PhD), Erin K. Ruppel, and Nancy A. Burrell (all Communication). 2021. A dyadic analysis of grandparent and adult grandchildren solidarity and topic avoidance. Communication Studies, 72(2): 146-162. https://bit.ly/3dyd4bM

Sarah Riforgiate, Alice Gattoni, and Jessica Kahlow (all Communication). 2021. “Shhhhh, I’m working!”: Working from home and struggling to manage relationships. In Casing Mediated Communication (eds. C. Liberman & K. Wright). Kendall Hunt. https://bit.ly/3fDr4nf Thomas Haigh (History). 2021. When hackers were heroes. Communications of the ACM, 64(4): 28-34. https://bit.ly/3fDyXsR

Christopher Cantwell (History) and Kristian Petersen, eds. 2021. Digital Humanities and Research Methods in Religious Studies. DeGruyter. https://bit.ly/3fHTv3e Uk Heo (Political Science) and Seongyi Yun. 2021. US Military Deployment and Its Effects on South Korea’s Politics and Economy. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 56. Online. https://bit.ly/3dwPe05 Uk Heo (Political Science). 2021. Asia in 2020: the COVID-19 Pandemic and the US-China Trade War. Asian Survey, University of California Press, 61(1), 1-10. https:// bit.ly/2PDangZ

John Jordan (Communication). 2021. Criticism of metaphor. In Rhetorical Criticism: Perspectives in Action (3rd ed.) (Ed. Jim A. Kuypers). Rowman & Littlefield.

Sergey Kravtsov (Atmospheric Science). 2021.

Monopoles in a uniform zonal flow on a quasi-geostrophic beta-plane: effects of the Galilean non-invariance of the rotating shallow-water equations. Journal of Fluid Mechanics. https://bit.ly/3dBxP6b Michael Miner (’20, PhD Sociology). 2021. Caught in Limbo: Mapping Social Spaces for First-Generation Students in Graduate School. Humanity and Society.

Online. https://bit.ly/31KBfhs

Justin Trujillo and Valerica Raicu (both Physics). 2021.

Real time monitoring of the evolution of an epidemic regarded as a physical relaxation process. Physics Letters A, 388(127074). https://bit.ly/31MG0Yc Richard J Ward, John D Pediani, Sara Marsango, Richard Jolly, Michael R Stoneman, Gabriel Biener, Tracy M Handel, Valerica Raicu (Physics), and Graeme Milligan.

2021. Chemokine receptor CXCR4 oligomerization is disrupted selectively by the antagonist ligand IT1t.

Journal of Biological Chemistry, 296: 110139. Online. https://bit.ly/3cQsyJa

Sarah Riforgiate and Samentha Sepulveda (both Communication). 2021. Managing and being managed by emotions. In Handbook of Management Communication (Eds. Francois Cooren & Peter StucheliHerlach). Boston: DeGruyter Mouton. https://bit. ly/39EjBjN

Comfort Tosin Adebayo (’20, PhD), Erin Sahlstein Parcell (both Communication), Lucy MkandawireValhmu, and Oluwatoyin Olukotun. 2021. African American women’s maternal healthcare experiences: A critical race theory perspective. Health Communication, 2021. Online. https://bit.ly/3cRGwKO Brittnie Star Peck (’19, PhD) and Erin Sahlstein Parcell (both Communication). 2021. Talking about mental health: Dilemmas U.S. military service members and spouses experience post deployment. Journal of Family Communication. Online. https://bit.ly/3cMLQ1V Lisa Silverman (Jewish Studies). 2021. Rethinking Jews, Antisemitism, and Jewish Difference in Postwar Germany. In The Future of the German Jewish Past: Memory and the Question of Antisemitism (Eds. Gideon Reuveni and Diana Franklin). West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press. Pp. 135-146. https://bit. ly/3wqYwDf

Morgan E. Stevenson, Amanda S. Nazario, Alicja M. Czyz (all Psychology), Heather A. Owen (Biological Sciences), and Rodney R. Swain (Psychology). 2021.

Steve Miller, Kenn Chua, Jay Coggins, and Hamid Motor learning rapidly increases synaptogenesis and Mohtadi (Economics). 2021. Heat Waves, Climate Change astrocytic structural plasticity in the rat cerebellum. and Economic Output. Journal of the European Economic Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 177. https://bit.

Association. Online. https://bit.ly/3cMJzDM ly/3wts6YL Eduardo Cruz-Chu, Ahmad Hosseinizadeh, Ghoncheh Mashayekhi, Russell Fung, Abbas Ourmazd, and Peter Schwander (all Physics). 2021. Selecting XFEL single-particle snapshots by geometric machine learning.

Structural Dynamics, 8(1). https://bit.ly/3upg29s 14 • IN FOCUS • April, 2021

Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece (Film Studies). 2021.

Tasteful Networks of Attention: Language, Listening, Meaning, and Art House Exhibition. In The Oxford Handbook on Cinematic Listening (Ed. Carlo Cenciarelli).

Oxford University Press. https://bit.ly/3sUAkr0

Spotlight on STEM

In honor of International Day of Women and Girls in Science on Feb. 11, 2021, UWM hosted a screening of the documentary film “Picture a Scientist,” which follows the trials and triumphs of three scientists establishing their careers in a sometimes-hostile work environment. Among the scientists featured is Jane Willenbring, the sister of UWM mathematical sciences professor Jeb Willinbring.

In March, Jane Willinbring joined a panel of UWM scientists, all women, to discuss some of the sexism they have faced during the course of their careers, and to uplift and support students and up-and-coming women in STEM.

Jorge A. Boscoboinik, Florencia Calaza, Michael T. Garvey, and Wilfred Tysoe (Chemistry and Biochemistry). 2021. Identification of Adsorption Ensembles for Hydrogen and Oxygen Adsorption and Ethylidyne Formation on Au/Pd(111) Alloys. The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 114(4). https://bit.ly/39Eo7yL Sara VanderHaagen (Communication). 2021. Review of “Practicing Citizenship: Women’s Rhetoric at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair” (1st ed., vol. 44). Women’s Studies in Communication.

Ira Driscoll (Psychology), Ma Yue, Catherine L. Gallagher Sterling C. Johnson, Sanjay Asthana, Bruce P. Hermann, Mark A. Sager, Kaj Blennow, Henrik Zetterberg, Cynthia M. Carolsson, Corinne D. Engelman, Dena B. Dubal, and Ozioma C. Okonkwo. 2021. Age-related tau burden and cognitive deficits are attenuated in KLOTHO KL-VS heterozygotes. Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 79(3), 1297-1305. https://bit.ly/31Lwg03 Kellie S. Gross, Randie L. Alf, Tiffany R. Polzin, and Karyn M. Frick (all Psychology). 2021. 17b-estradiol activation of dorsal hippocampal TrkB is independent of increased mature BDNF expression and is required for enhanced memory consolidation in female mice.

Psychoneuroendocrinology, 125, 105110. https://bit. ly/39H5nPn

Aaron W. Fleischer, Jayson C. Schalk, Edward A. Wetzel, Alicia M. Hanson, Daniel S. Sem, William A. Donaldson, and Karyn M. Frick (all Psychology). 2021.

Long-term oral administration of the novel estrogen receptor beta agonist EGX385 enhances memory consolidation and alleviates drug-induced hot flashes in ovariectomized mice. Hormones and Behavior, 130, 104948. https://bit.ly/3sRLM6G Mrinmayi Kulkarni and Deborah Hannula (both Psychology). 2021. Temporal regularity may not improve memory for item-specific detail. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 623402. https://bit.ly/3cPqb9d Sydney Trask, Shane E. Pullins, Nicole C. Ferrara, and Fred J. Helmstetter (all Psychology). 2021. The anterior retrosplenial cortex encodes event-related information and the posterior retrosplenial cortex encodes context-related information during memory formation.

Neuropsychopharmacology. https://bit.ly/3ds473u Andrew W. Manigault, Ryan C. Shorey (Psychology), Gabrielle Decastro, Haley M. Appelmann, Katrina R. Hamilton, Matt C. Scanlin, Christopher R. France, and Peggy M. Zoccola. 2021. Standardized stress reduction interventions and blood pressure habituation: Secondary results from a randomized controlled trial. Health Psychology, 40(3), 196-206. https://bit.ly/3fDFJih College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 15

April 2021

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April 8 Global and International Internships and Career Development. Noon. via Zoom. UWM’s Career Planning & Resources Center presents on its resources as several L&S departments present internship opportunities.

Register at https://bit.ly/3dygLOB. Marden Lecture in Mathematics: A Modern Approach to Simulating Flight. 4 p.m. via Zoom. L. Ridgway Scott, emeritus University of Chicago, presents. This lecture is accessible to all; no advanced mathematical knowledge is required. https://bit.ly/3fE3fvy Making the Invisible Visible: Universities’ Institutional Debt, Austerity and Resistance. 4 p.m. via Zoom. Eleni Schirmer, UW-Madison. https://bit.ly/3uAr4ZB

April 9 Anthropology Colloquium: On the Immediacy of Home(land) – Heimat Politics in Germany. 3 p.m. via Zoom. Nitzan Shoshen, University of Mexico. https://bit. ly/2PCwRyP

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April 21 Women’s and Gender Studies Brown Bag: From Theory to Practice – Engaging Students in WGS General Education. Noon. via Microsoft Teams. Dong Ibister, UW-Platteville. Join at https://bit.ly/2PrfReX

April 28

Planetarium Show: Asian Celebrations. 7 p.m. via YouTube. Explore Asian celestial celebrations with special guest Vinaya Valsan, who will focus on traditions of India.

Free. https://uwm.universitytickets.com/?cid=195.

Planetarium Show: Bizarre Black Holes. 7 p.m. via YouTube. Jolien Creighton, UWM, dissects major discoveries from the last 5 years related to black holes, gravitational waves, and neutron stars. Free. Register at https://bit.ly/2OlNbTT.

April 10

April 30

Religious Studies Research Conference. 9 a.m. Online.

Student researchers present their work surrounding Religious Studies. https://bit.ly/3rRzXvI

April 12-16 UWM Virtual GIS Days 2021. 9:30 a.m. Online. Register for various activities including hands-on workshops, presentations and keynote speaker Yolanda Chioma Richards-Albert, speaking on “Location Matters – GIS and its Role in Racial Equity and Social Justice.” See the full agenda and register at https://bit.ly/3fIUmku.

April 14 Planetarium Show: Asian Celebrations. 7 p.m. via YouTube. Explore Asian celestial celebrations with special guest Aragorn Quinn, who will focus on traditions of Japan. Free. Register at https://uwm.universitytickets. com/?cid=195.

April 16 Neuroscience Seminar Microtubule Actin Crosslinking Factor 1 (MACF1), a novel target in glioblastomas. 2 p.m. via Zoom. Presented by Dr. Quincy Quick. Join via https://bit.ly/3dxbMOh.

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Neuroscience Seminar: Mechanisms underlying activity dependent and homeostatic plasticity at the Drosophila Neuromuscular Junction. 2 p.m. via Zoom.

IBruno Marie, University of Puerto Rico. Join the meeting at https://bit.ly/2PXGw2R.

Join UWM to Make A Difference!

Members of the UWM community are invited to take part in the city-wide Spring Make a Difference Day on Saturday, April 17, 2021.

Make a Difference Day is a volunteer event to assist with neighborhood clean-ups or winterizing the homes of local older adults. You can sign up as an individual or as part of a team. Individuals will be grouped as a team before service.

Questions? Email zgarrity@uwm.edu.

Sign up: https://bit.ly/3r63eDk. Date: Saturday, April 17 Time: 9 a.m.-1 p.m.

Alumni Accomplishments Sean Rebholz (’10, BA History) recently joined First Citizen’s Bank as the Vice President/Financial Sales Manager at the bank’s Hartland, Wisconsin branch location. He brings with him seven years of retail banking experience. https://bit.ly/3sPVaaz Alexia “Lexi” Brunson (’20, MA Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies) was featured in 88.9 Radio Milwaukee’s Women’s History Month series recognizing women’s contributions to the city. Brunson runs CopyWrite Magazine, a publication dedicated to the stories of Milwaukee’s black and brown residents. https:// bit.ly/396gEIz

Catherine Jozwik (’16, BA English) launched Brewtown Buzz South, an online publication highlighting the positive stories of the people and places in the southern Milwaukee suburbs. Her new venture was featured on the Milwaukee Record’s website. https://bit.ly/2PiD0zL Nyesha Stone (’18, BA Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies), the founder of Milwaukee media company Carvd in Stone, won $10,000 on WISN’s “Project Pitch It” show which challenges budding entrepreneurs to pitch their business in an effort to garner funding and mentorship. Nyesha Stone Carvd in Stone is devoted to delivering positive news and supporting the community through scholarships, grants, and community programming. https://bit.ly/3sTbw2p Tom Pausma (’12, BS Biological Sciences) will take over the dentistry practice of longtime Sun Prairie dentist R.J. Carpenter. With the new dentist will come a new clinic name: 608 Family Dental. Pausma has worked in private practices in other cities in Wisconsin. https://bit. ly/39GSl4o

Ross Lowinske (’97, BA English, Advertising, and Film) was named the new creative director of Brew Agency, an advertising agency based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Lowinske boasts 20 years of industry experience and has worked for clients including Sears, GE, and ESPN. https://bit.ly/3rPLlZd

Sean Kiebzak (’13, BS Conservation and Environmental Science) was promoted to the CEO of Arts@Large, a Milwaukee-based organization that brings equitable arts-integrated learning experiences to students and young people in the city. Kiebzak was serving as the interim CEO before his appointment, and has been with the Sean Kiebzak organization in different capacities over the last decade. https://bit.ly/3sSCk2H Melissa (Herguth) Songco (’09, MS Urban Studies and certificate in Nonprofit Management) was named the new CEO of Habitat for Humanity of Waukesha County. She previously worked with Milwaukee Habitat for Humanity as the nonprofit’s development director for over a decade. https://bit.ly/3mhI6sp Leah Hagen (’10, BA; ’13, MA Communication) was promoted to the position of student outreach specialist at Gogebic Community College in Michigan. She was previously the manager of the campus bookstore. https://bit.ly/3mk9KF3

Krista Brookman (’97, BA History) was named the new senior vice president, DEI Strategy and Global Client Services at MCCA’s Advisory Practice. MCCA, the Minority Corporate Counsel Association, is committed to the hiring and advancement of diverse lawyers in Krista Brookman law departments and law firms. Brookman is a seasoned advocate for women’s and minority advancement. https://bit.ly/316wZZp Sarah Zens (’10, BA Communication) will be in charge of overseeing virtual and live events for the Daily Reporter as the media company’s new events manager. Zens was previously the events manager for Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce. https://bit.ly/3cc5ofM College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 17

In the Media and Around the Community The famous Pabst family of Milwaukee left behind a historical treasure trove of family letters. ABC 7 News reported how Viktorija Bilic and graduate student Marisa Irwin (both Translation and Interpreting Studies) translated the letters from an old style of German to reveal insight into Milwaukee’s past. WUWM also reported the story.

Anne Bonds (Geography) delivered two talks on gender, white supremacy, and power in a two-day event titled, “Rethinking White Supremacy in Precarious Times.”

Avoiding difficult topics is not actually creating a more civil discourse, Bill Keith (English) opined on WUWM in a piece about how to speak civilly with others.

On the one-year anniversary of the coronavirus lockdown in the United States, Shawn Cahill (Psychology) reflected on the toll the pandemic has taken on people’s mental health in a segment on Fox 6 News.

Statutes requiring that absentee ballots remain uncounted until election day were responsible for delays in election results, rather than fraud, Kathy Dolan (Political Science) explained in an article for Wisconsin Watch.

The northern lights are a beautiful sight, so Jean Creigton (Planetarium) explained how to view them in Milwaukee on WUWM’s Lake Effect show.

Hong Min Park (Political Science) and Kundan Kishor (Economics) were both interviewed in a CBS 58 News segment explaining how the COVID-19 stimulus check rollout might work and what it would mean for the economy. Park also discussed partisan gerrymandering and the importance of redistricting on WUWM’s Lake Effect show.

Juan Orjuela (’17, BS Biological Sciences and Conservation and Environmental Sciences) shared his experiences and hopes of bringing more diversity to the field of veterinary medicine via the Veterinary Information Network.

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Joseph Rodriguez (History) presented on “Latinos in Milwaukee” virtually via the Menomonee Falls Public Library for the National Endowment for the Arts’ “Big Read” program in March.

On the anniversary of the bloody end of the 1871 Paris Commune, Caroline Eichner (French) spoke about exiled Commune leader Louise Michel on a news program aired on France Info TV. She also shared her research on the role of women in the Paris Commune for an episode of “radio 1871,” an audio series created for a history seminar at Simon Fraser University. Eichner and/or her work were also mentioned in other French publications regarding the Paris Commune, including on MSN France and ChEEk magazine.

The pandemic has revealed the disparities in Milwaukee’s workforce and revealed how many industries rely on the labor of black women, Scott Adams (Economics) told TMJ4 News in a segment discussing the economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.

Milwaukee’s lion statues are kings of the urban jungle.

Richard Leson and Sarah Schaefer (both Art History) explained why the animals feature so prominently in the city’s architecture on WUWM Radio’s Bubbler Talk show.

Wearing a facemask does make it harder for people to understand your speech, unless you make a concerted effort to speak clearly, according to research by Anne Pycha (Linguistics). CBS 58 News reported on her findings.

Hamid Mohtadi (Economics) is the coauthor of a new study that predicts that heat waves, which are expected to increase in duration and severity over the coming years, could cause 10 times more damage to crops than current projections, according to a news release on Phys.org.

The Yale School of Medicine published an article expounding on Karyn Frick’s (Psychology) impressive research into how estrogen affects memory with implications for conditions like Alzheimer’s Disease.

Plant lovers got to meet garden designer Danielle (Goodrich) Bell (’13, Conservation and Environmental Science) in a virtual meeting hosted by Wild Ones. Bell, the owner of the Milwaukee-based native landscaping company Native Roots, designed several native garden outlines for the Milwaukee area.

When the pandemic forced people into isolation without social distraction, the downtime to explore their selfidentity likely led to a spike in people coming out as queer, Cary Costello (Sociology) said in an article published by Mashable.

Scholars who study evangelicalism shouldn’t have been surprised by the number of evangelicals who both supported and participated in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, Christopher Cantwell (History) argued in the magazine Religion Dispatches.

Instagram pre-professionalizes would-be reality television stars, Maureen Ryan (21st Century Studies) said in an article for The New Yorker examining the rise and potential fall of the HGTV cable channel.

Chia Youyee Vang (History), the interim Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer at UWM, was a panelist in an April discussion hosted

by WUWM Radio about racism toward Asian Americans in Wisconsin.

Vang was also featured on History.net for a feature about her new book, Prisoner of Wars, detailing the life of a Hmong pilot trapped in a POW camp in Laos during the Vietnam War. Student Matida Bojang (Biochemistry) is a counselor with Project Recovery, a group that supports mental health among those struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic. She was featured on WKOW, an ABC affiliate in Madison, Wisconsin, for her work.

A beer is only as good as its hops, and Jennifer Jordan (Sociology) knows Wisconsin’s hops have a fascinating history. She outlined her research in an article for Good Beer Hunting and gave an interview for the website’s podcast.

On the 140th birthday of Polish strongman and wrestling champion Jan Stanisław Cyganiewicz, Neal Pease (History) was quoted in an article exploring the wrestler’s life featured in the Polish publication The first News.

Wisconsin has more than its fair share of outsider artist environments, and Wisconsin Public Radio turned to Courtney Anderson Kramer (’15, MA Art History) to find out why.

What makes a film a classic and why should you watch “Singing in the Rain”? Find out in this interview with Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece (Film Studies) on Wisconsin Public Radio.

Natasha Borges Sugiyama (Political Science) detailed the findings of her research into if grants to support children in countries like Brazil also elevated the economic status of women in an article published in The Conversation.

“TimeSlips” is a nonprofit organization founded by Anne Basting (English) that engages seniors with open-ended questions to combat loneliness. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel explained some new aspects to the program in a recent article.

Rebecca Neumann (Economics) shared her feelings of sorrow and helplessness in the wake of a mass shooting at a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado in March on CBS 58 News.

Gladys Mitchell-Walthour (African and African Diaspora Studies) was an invited speaker for the University of Goiás Television in Brazil on March 31. She spoke on Brazil-U.S. relations and on human rights.

Using open-source materials saved students at UWM a combined $686,462, Diane Reddy (Psychology) reported in a Wisconsin Public Radio piece about public universities’ moves away from traditional textbooks.

The Tehran Times reported that Liam Callanan’s (English) novel, Paris by the Book, has been translated into Persian.

Derek Handley (English) described his experiences as a Chamberlain Fellow at Ameherst College in an article published in the The Phoenix, the daily campus newspaper of Swarthmore College.

College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 19