In Focus Vol. 11, No. 1

College of Letters & Science

IN FOCUS

January 2021, Vol. 11, No.1

What A Character Alum Jake Gill gifts UWM language students with his character-learning app

“Check out” this Eng

Contents

When she grows up, Shannon Siebers wants to be a professional book hoarder.

Feature Stories English major works for Germantown Library Mathematician’s patterns for concrete Global Studies alum gives access to app UWM physicist researches “space weather” UWM historian’s work on race in Star Wars

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Columns Passings Planetarium Spotlight Upcoming Events Alumni Accomplishments Program Spotlight: Portuguese Video Story Laurels and Accolades In the Media People in Print Published College the

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

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“That’s what librarians are,” she said with a laugh. “We’re nerds. We love talking about books.”

Siebers has worn the “nerd” label proudly for years, starting when she was 5 years old. The granddaughter of a librarian’s assistant, Siebers practically grew up in the stacks Germantown Public Library.

“The library is my hometown. It’s just around the corner from my house,” she said. “I definitely remember having a little library card with my 5-year-old handwriting on it. My kindergarten class would walk over there and check out books.”

Looking back, she added, “I don’t know how the librarians dealt with us.”

When she turned 16 and began looking for a job, it was a no-brainer: Siebers wanted to work at the library. Her grandmother suggested volunteering to get her foot in the door, but the library had other plans: Siebers was called in for an interview and then offered a job as a page. She’s worked there ever since.

Now Siebers is a student at UWM and contemplating her own future as a librarian. Most students might opt for a major in information science or technology, given that most librarians are required to have a Masters in Library and Information Science, but instead, Siebers is indulging her inner nerd. She’s majoring in English.

“It was pretty clear that it doesn’t matter what you did for your undergraduate. I asked my boss and she said that it made the most sense to do something with books,” Siebers said. “Having a broad education about literature has been wonderful. I’ve loved every single one of my English professors.”

She’s a particular fan of The Picture of Dorian Gray and other classic literature, but her favorite book is “whatever I’m reading right now,” Siebers said.

She has put that love of literature to good use as she’s moved up the ranks in the library. As a page, Siebers was in charge of re-shelving books and helping at the circulation desk, but after three years, the director named Siebers a youth services intern, expanding her job duties with the library.

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2 • IN FOCUS •January, 2021

“My job is basically event programming, and it gets weirder from there,” Siebers said.

She’s talking about events like the day the library made a life-size Candyland board game and patrons played by moving around colored squares taped the floor. Then

glish major’s fantastic library job These days, as the pandemic has forced patrons to stay at home, she and her colleagues are finding new ways to keep people engaged by making craft and recipe kits to distribute.

While she’s crafting and planning events, Siebers is also gaining valuable experience that will give her a leg up when it comes time for graduate school.

“I’ve learned so much about what libraries do and how they operate, from the inside out,” she said. “It’s so nice to have experience before getting my MLIS. Experience is the no. 1 requirement for a job in this field.”

She’s not sure where she’d like to attend graduate school – UWM, UW-Madison, and the University of Illinois are all on her list – but wherever she ends up, Siebers will take her love of the library with her.

“I believe that information and education should be accessible to everybody,” she said. “Libraries are one of the only places that are accessible to everyone, no matter who you are, no matter what you look like, and no matter how much money you have.”

UWM English major Shannon Siebers sits atop a throne of books at the Germantown Public Library. Siebers has worked at the library since age 16 and plans to get a Masters of Library and Information Science after she graduates next year. Photo courtesy of Shannon Siebers.

there was the haunted house that she helped coordinate with the library’s teen advisory board (“They were pretty creepy. It was nice,” she said), and the usual summer reading programs and events for families.

And when it’s safe to gather in libraries again, Siebers has a request.

“Just say hi to the librarians. We’re nerds. We’ll talk to you about books.”

By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 3

A concrete theory

UWM mathematician

Concrete is a universal building material, but it’s prone to wear, tear, and cracking over time. In addition to the main loading patterns, in large structures, deformations caused by temperature fluctuations - if not properly compensated for - can be a driving force of premature failure. To counteract that deformation, engineers usually design large structures to be assembled from lay it in large slabs.

Those slabs are joined together with connection elements shielded from aggressive environments by a rubberized membrane, almost like caulk.

But, said Burns Healy, that connection element is expensive and concrete often fails at those joins.

“It would be much better if we could make larger monolithic pieces of concrete without joints rather than having to connect each of them,” he said.

That’s why Healy is teaming up with researchers from civil and environmental engineering professor Konstantin Sobolev’s group in Burns Healy the UWM College of Engineering and Applied Science. They’re trying to find new ways of shaping concrete through 3D printing that will increase its durability – and hopefully decrease its cost.

Healy is a visiting assistant professor in UWM’s Mathematical Sciences Department. He specializes in geometry and topology, the study of distance and shape.

When civil engineering PhD student Aparna Deshmukh approached the math department looking for help in her project to create stronger concrete structures through 3D printing, Healy volunteered to collaborate.

A pattern to follow It’s expensive to 3D print concrete, so instead of printing shapes and then testing what structural properties the 4 • IN FOCUS • January, 2021

finished product has, Healy is helping Deshmukh take a “math-up” approach by using modeling to understand what properties a finished product might have once it actually exists.

To do that, he’s examining existing research and determining what physical properties certain designs have once they’re created and printed. These properties include parameters like a Poisson’s ratio – a measure of the deformation of a material perpendicular to where pressure is applied – as an anisotropic An example of a strain, and if a material deforms more repeating pattern in one direction than another.

“The idea is to look at all of the systems that have been used so far … and say, these systems all have x, y, or z properties and this is how they work,” Healy explained. “If you want a certain property, look at the collection of systems that had that property. What, mathematically speaking, do those systems have in common that you can try to emulate?”

The designs that Healy is researching are made up of repeating patterns – think of the design of lines and rhombuses on sheet metal flooring, for example – and those patterns have different properties that affect the integrity of the concrete.

“What I noticed when I was being shown all of these (patterns) is that mathematically speaking, we understand all of them,” Healy said. “It turns out there are exactly 17 different kinds of patterns that these things can have, and these are called the wallpaper groups.”

Wallpaper groups are a way to classify repeating patterns, and mathematicians like Healy have long studied their characteristics.

“The question is, to what extent are values (like anisotropic strain and Poisson’s ratio) influenced by the wallpaper group associated to the pattern that it was modeled on? That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” he added.

n helps print better building materials Auxetic aesthetic One of Deshmukh’s goals is to create auxetic concrete, so those properties are a fundamental piece of the building puzzle.

the properties of wallpaper groups. If he can apply what he knows about certain patterns based on their wallpaper group, he can better predict a pattern’s Poisson’s ratio, anisotropic strain, and other properties and determine if that pattern might make a good auxetic material.

What does it mean to be auxetic?

The next steps

“Imagine a mattress. If you push down hard enough, the sides will bulge out a little bit. … It’s a bad behavior for most materials to have for undergoing day-to-day anisotropic strain, like cars driving over asphalt,” Healy said. “This repetitive loading results in the fatigue of the material because it changes the geometry - specifically, the ratio between height and width. For long-term durability response, you would prefer that if you pushed it in, it would resist the expansion, contracting at the sides as well.

Healy is in the process of writing a paper examining the mathematics of the project, which he and his collaborators hope to use as a touchpoint to secure funding from the National Science Foundation. He estimates the paper will be completed later this month.

“That’s what it means to be auxetic. If you provide a positive force, you expand in all directions. If you provide an inward force, you contract in all directions.”

Auxetic materials maintain their structural integrity longer than non-auxetic materials. The catch is that materials aren’t naturally auxetic; instead, auxetic properties come from “meta materials,” or the way that a builder puts a material together.

Healy also plans to examine systems in which patterns are self-repeating, like the beginnings of fractals.

In practice, creating an auxetic concrete could mean that buildings materials will be more structurally sound and last longer. And, Healy noted, as the world advances further into the space age, these materials will be essential in creating structures in environments without atmospheres – like a building on the moon.

After all, with a strong foundation, the sky’s the limit.

By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science

For this project, Healy and Deshmukh are interested in finding the designs or systems that create the best auxetic material.

That’s where the wallpaper groups come in.

Healy knows An example of a structure with auxetic properties. Image courtesy of Burns Healy.

College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 5

An alum of outstandi

Jake Gill gives back with the gift of S

Students taking Chinese and Japanese classes at UWM are getting a little extra help this year, thanks to the generosity of a linguistically-gifted alum.

Jake Gill is the CEO of Skritter, an app that helps students achieve fluency in reading and writing Japanese and Chinese characters.

Gill, who graduated from UWM in 2011, majored in global studies and took eight semesters of Chinese language courses during his time at the university.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, Gill knew one of the many casualties would be students’ language studies.

“We’re doing social distancing, there are stay-at-home orders, and people are not going to school. There’s this huge gap in the teaching curriculum,” he said. “How do you address character assessment?

How do you help students practice their Chinese?”

In March, when lockdown orders first began, Gill and his team offered language teachers across the country a free trial of the app’s services to help them finish out their students’ academic year. But Gill wanted to do something extra.

“We’re seeing some really nice growth this year in this business, which I was not expecting at all,” he said. “It gives me more time and energy to think about how can I give back to the programs and the people in my life who have gotten me to the point where I am today.

“UWM was such an integral part in every opportunity that I’ve had since 6 • IN FOCUS • January, 2021

UWM global studies alum Jake Gill (far left) stands with the Inkren Skritter leadership team during a company trip to Taiwan in 2019. Photo courtesy of Jake Gill.

enrolling. So, I hit up my old Chinese teacher.”

That would be Lixin Cai, a lecturer in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature. Gill emailed her with an offer: Would UWM students like to have free access to the Skritter app for the 202021 school year?

Cai jumped at the chance, and took it one step further by designing a pilot program that would integrate Skritter’s learning tools with UWM’s first-year Chinese language curriculum.

The No. 1 character learning app Skritter is a product of Inkren, Inc. The company was founded in 2008 by three college students who wanted a more efficient study tool for their Chinese and Japanese language classes.

Continued on page 8

Through August 2021, UWM Chinese and Japanese students as well as UWM alumni can access the Skritter app for free.

1. Go to skritter.com/ signup

2. Enter the activation code MKE2021 3. Download the Skritter app on your smartphone 4. Begin learning to read and write Chinese and Japanese!

ing character(s)

Skritter

Meet Global Studies alum Jake Gill Jake Gill’s dream was to be a Chinese teacher. It came true, but not quite in the way he expected.

Gill is a native of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. He graduated from high school in 2003, but wasn’t quite ready for college. Instead, he and a friend founded their own car business. It took a lot of hard work, and even some international travel – in a search for a manufacturing facility, Gill even went to live in Indonesia for a month. He picked up the language surprisingly quickly.

“It was in that moment that I realized I wasn’t an idiot and I could learn a foreign language,” he recalled. “I thought I was a linguistic failure in high school. Turns out that in order to learn a language, you have to speak it with people.”

When the business went under, Gill decided to get his degree. UWM was an easy choice; it was close, both of his parents were alumni, and Gill had several friends who were going through the university’s Chinese and Japanese programs.

Those languages in particular called to him.

Gill jumped a few majors before settling on Global Studies, a program that allowed him to both study language – he picked Chinese – and study abroad, once in Taiwan and once in Beijing. It was at UWM that his dream to be a Chinese teacher was born. He indulged it by serving as a teacher at a local weekend school catering to the children of Taiwanese parents.

an email from the guys who ran Skritter saying, ‘Hey, you want to write for us?’ I thought that was a perfect fit for making a couple of extra bucks while I was in school, so I started writing for them in 2011.”

He didn’t stop there; over the next few years, Gill began doing app testing and institutional sales for Skritter as well.

Gill graduated from UWM in 2011 and started coursework towards a Master’s degree. A few years into his studies, the founders of Skritter wanted to make the transition out of their company to pursue other projects. They hired Gill as Skritter’s new director.

“I was a little bummed, because I really, really wanted to be a Chinese teacher. For a week, I was kind of sad. But at some point, (I realized) I still get to teach in some way because of what Skritter does,” Gill said.

Like all great heads of tech companies, Gill joked, he dropped out of his Master’s studies to handle the running of Skritter. He oversaw every area except for programming, and had big ideas to move the company in exciting new directions. But to do that, he needed a little more ownership.

I made a push and and I became the CEO,” he said. “So, blogger to CEO in about seven years.”

He also received a Fulbright Scholarship through the Associated Colleges of China that allowed him to participate in a six-week teacher training course, entirely in Chinese.

He credits UWM as the foundation of his success. Faculty members like Lixin Cai nurtured both his business sense and his language skills. One lecturer in particular, Andrew Olson, was a non-native Chinese speaker and demonstrated that non-native speakers like Gill could be good at Chinese.

“While I was there, I met this guy, Ben, and he was a writer for Skritter. I was blogging on my own and having fun, and he recommended me to Skritter,” Gill said. “I got

“Early on, I had a really nice support structure at UWM,” Gill said. “UWM was such an integral part in every opportunity that I’ve had since enrolling.”

College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 7

Language learning app Continued from page 7

Skritter started life as a website that taught character recognition and writing, but it required users to have their own tablet to plug into their computer in order to draw the characters. In 2012, the company developed an iOS application.

“That was the game-changer for Skritter,” Gill said.

“Now, you didn’t need to go buy your fancy tablet; you could just use your phone. You could study from anywhere, and you could get that pen-and-paper feel just with your finger and the screen.”

Today, Skritter is ranked as the No. 1 character learning app in the world.

Unlike the Roman alphabet, where letter symbols are associated with particular sounds, Chinese and Japanese are character-based languages. The form of a character may have a meaning and a sound, but the meaning and sound are not necessarily related.

“We can’t just open a book in Chinese and sound it out. We’ve got to know the characters and what they mean,” Gill said. “This is a really complicated process for foreigners, but it’s not impossible and there are a lot of tips and tricks along the way.”

Skritter helps by having its users study “flashcards” that quiz them about a character, definitions, the pronunciation of the word, or how to write a character. The app emphasizes words that users struggle with while still reviewing phrases other words and phrases from time to time before they are forgotten.

“The end result is that our average user learns a character in about 90 seconds of total condensed study time in the application, and they learn them to an 87 percent retention rate,” Gill said.

Gill became the CEO of Skritter in 2018.

Since taking over, he’s begun to steer Skritter to become more friendly to first-time Chinese and Japanese learners with a new, free guest experience and beginner-friendly content videos and lessons.

8 • IN FOCUS • January, 2021

Why Chinese?

“It is the second lingua franca that you probably don’t already speak. It’s a beautiful language with rich history and culture, and I do think that if we’re looking at trajectories and trends in the world, China is and will continue to remain a superpower.” - Jake Gill Giving back to his alma mater Using the app came with a bit of a learning curve for UWM students. Gill created several videos to explain how to use the software, and there were some kinks that had to be worked out as everyone navigated both how to use the app and how to attend classes remotely at the start of the semester. Gill reported that he received some valuable feedback from UWM students and he plans to incorporate their advice to improve the app for users around the world.

He has also joined them for discussions about his career path and sat in on a virtual language table, an informal gathering for speakers of all levels to practice their Chinese together.

Talking with his former teachers and their students felt “like a reunion” for Gill, who added that, “It just brightened my day to see how enthusiastic students were about learning Chinese.”

“If I can inspire one person in the program to go on and learn Chinese to an advanced level, then mission accomplished for me,” he said. “It’s been a blast. I would love to continue this moving forward. If you’re in the Chinese or Japanese program at UW-Milwaukee, you should get access to Skritter. Without that language program, there’s no me and there’s no Skritter (as it looks today). So many people are in need right now, so I want to pay it forward in some way.”

By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science

UWM astronomer helps discover extrasolar ‘space weather’ If you wanted to look for life on planets around stars other than our sun, known as exoplanets, you would first locate the ones in the “Goldilocks zone.” That’s the area – not too close, not too far – at just the right distance from a star where a planet might have liquid water.

Unlike the sun, most stars in the Milky Way galaxy are small, relatively cool red dwarfs – called M dwarfs. Proxima Centauri, the sun’s closest neighbor at only 4 light years away, is an M dwarf with two exoplanets that could be habitable.

However, stars, including M dwarfs, emit flares – brief but powerful eruptions of intense electromagnetic radiation that occur on the stellar surface. And, at least for the sun, these components of “space weather” are accompanied by clouds of ionized gas that could harm life.

Using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder radio telescope in Western Australia, astronomers including David Kaplan, UWM associate professor of physics, have linked stellar flares with accompanying bursts of radio waves.

“Whenever our sun emits such bursts, it also shoots out clouds of gas,” said Kaplan. “So we are pretty sure now that when we see such bursts from other stars they are also shooting out similar clouds.”

David Kaplan (UWM Photo/Peter Jakubowski)

The work makes it possible for the first time to produce space weather reports around nearby stars outside the solar system – and it brings new information to bear on the search for habitable exoplanets.

Even though Earth is protected by a magnetic field, space weather from the sun can still affect communications, transportation and the electrical grid. M dwarfs have many more flares, and the habitable planets are much closer in, making them more vulnerable to dangerous radiation, said the paper’s lead author, Andrew Zic, of the University of Sydney.

“This is probably bad news on the space weather front,” Zic said.

“It seems likely that the galaxy’s most common stars – red dwarfs – won’t be great places to find life as we know it.”

“Before now, there was no direct way to monitor space weather from another star,” Kaplan added, “so we did not know how bad the problem really was.”

Published Dec. 9 in The Astrophysical Journal, the research also was done in collaboration with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, the University of Western Australia, University of Colorado and Curtin University.

By Laura Otto, University Relations The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder radio telescope in Western Australia was used to observe a stellar flare on Proxima Centauri.(CSIRO/Alex Cherney)

College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 9

UWM historian takes on race, relationsh The Star Wars movies are a major force in popular culture, spanning eleven motion pictures and dozens of associated television shows, books, comics, and other media. They’re also a mirror for the eras in which they’re written, and that’s particularly evident when it comes to racial representation.

Greg Carter, an associate professor of history at UWM, studies interracial relationships and mixed-race identities in the United States. He’s also a huge fan of Star Wars. Why not, he thought, combine his interests in his research? So, Carter is writing a new book that explores race and identity in a galaxy far, far away.

Tell me about your book.

Being a historian and writing about Star Wars, the fun challenge is to go back in time and look at it with fresh eyes. We’ve had Star Wars going on 44 years now, with billions in merchandising and terabytes of web conversations.

Part of what I am doing is going back in the historic record and looking at how race relations and racial representations unfolded at the times of the movies’ releases. Since in many science fiction movies and TV shows, race is hidden under other symbolic layers, it is not always obvious.

I think that the real interface has been in the stuff that the fans say, do and believe. This has been the nexus between the fantasy world of Star Wars and our real world of race relations in the U.S. That carries through to the current day.

The book I’m writing does have some analysis of the story of Star Wars and its visual representations, but I also look at the story of a fanship surrounding the movies. Minority fans are very marginal in that, unfortunately. Finding their voices has required more work than the mainstream, predominately white fan voices.

Does Star Wars have a large non-white fanbase? I think most people think of a Star Wars fan as the stereotypical white nerd who lives in the basement.

See? Even for the white fans, there’s a stereotype of what they look like, which isn’t really true. I think overall, the real fan looks nothing like the stereotype.

If it’s hard to see the white mainstream fan for what they are, it’s especially hard for writers to develop an eye for detecting the minority fans. I’m resistant to say minorities don’t like Star Wars or don’t like collecting, cosplaying, and writing fan fiction. Instead, I’ve been asking – how do they do it differently? What is important to minority fans? Where can I find their perspectives?

10 • IN FOCUS • January, 2021

You mention there is hidden symbolism to denote races within science fiction. How so?

In the initial thinking that led to this project, I had a literal spreadsheet where I laid out every interracial and inter-species relationship I could think of in all of the movies. Whether based in cooperation, servitude, intimacy, or violence, white characters are the norm, are the most valued. Most other sentient beings are subservient. Often, when is someone doing labor, it’s a droid, alien, or indigenous being. Princess Leia even calls Chewbacca a ‘walking carpet.’

Star Wars is very elitist. Generally, when we look at them in a racial way, aliens and androids are non-white people. They are secondary to the main characters, who are mostly white.

What about among the main characters?

In the book I look at the idea of, was Darth Vader black? I look at the sources and the conversations coming on the heels of blaxploitation movies in the early 1970s. Hearing James Earl Jones’ voice, who was not a major blaxploitation star, but was in black films of that time, Darth Vader was not that Greg Carter clearly a white guy.

It’s very easy now to say, Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker and Luke Skywalker’s father – definitely a white guy. But when you go back to 1977 and view Darth Vader as an original moviegoer might have interpreted him, there is the black suit, the swagger, and the very distinctive voice of James Earl Jones.

In the original trilogy, there is one black character.

What was the fan reaction to Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian?

It was incredibly revolutionary for Lucas to cast the African American actor, even that prominently. Lando was a developed character who contributed to the story.

He’s in two of the movies, and he has a positive legacy.

At the same time, Lando was a sidekick to Han Leia, and Luke, three squarely white people. I have not run across backlash to Billy Dee Williams’ casting. That kind of reactionary, hostile attitude seems to take off later with the prequel movies.

hips, and representation in Star Wars The most recent Star Wars movies feature actors of several different races. What has fan reaction been to the new casting?

George Lucas is, I believe, a regular guy who absorbed the well-meaning thoughtlessness of the time and didn’t put in a minority actor until the second movie. I think a lot of his work since then has been trying to remedy that.

The prequel movies (1999-2005) had a lot of diversity – more minority characters, more speaking aliens. Lucas did stumble here and there, but I think the prequels are far more diverse than the originals. And the sequels (2015-19), definitely. A woman is the hero of the whole trilogy. A Latino actor (Oscar Isaac) and a Black actor (John Boyega) join her as principals. I think that, for viewers who care about diverse representation, the excitement going into the recent trilogy sprung from the minority characters.

There’s also been backlash.

Let’s talk about the backlash.

It was disappointing that the moment the teaser trailer for “The Force Awakens” came out later in 2014 and John Boyega’s face was up there, there was a voice in the internet that hated it and wanted to boycott the movies.

Hostility increased for “The Last Jedi” (2017).

A scholar at USC named Morten Bay did a content analysis of six months of tweets and discovered that 11.4 percent of the ones mentioning the film’s director came from rightwing political activists, bots, and trolls/sock puppets. The total number of hateful, racist, sexist statements was probably about 21.9 percent, but it’s still enough that it’s disconcerting.

In the months following the December 2019 release of “The Rise of Skywalker,” it’s interesting that fans are critiquing the producers and critiquing representations and so on. I think a lot of people could tell that Disney and Lucasfilms kowtowed to the backlash and played it safe by dropping progressive storylines and sidelining minority actors. (Director J.J.) Abrams built up a lot of that stuff in “The Force Awakens” and dropped it when he returned to the director’s chair.

That’s incredibly disappointing.

In fact, some of the fans got really invested in these characters and relationships.

Yes. The last chapter of my book looks at ‘shipping,’ which is a fan activity based on the hope that particular characters get together in a romantic way. All through the recent sequels, “Reylo,” the fantasy that Rey and Kylo Ren would become romantically involved, has been the prominent ship out there.

Cosplayers dress as Jawas and Tusken Raiders at a comic convention. UWM history professor Greg Carter says that aliens in Star Wars films are symbolic of racial minorities.

She’s too good for him.

Right? I never liked the guy.

I’ve been following “Finnrey” a lot, which is a dark horse in the realm of shipping. Even people who don’t love Finnrey recognize that the first movie did set up that Finn (played by black actor John Boyega) and Rey (white actor Daisy Ridley) had a deep emotional connection that producers later dropped.

Sci-fi is often seen as a pioneering genre – Star Trek featuring TV’s first interracial kiss, for example.

Given the tokenism and symbolism, does Star Wars buck the trend of science fiction being progressive?

I wouldn’t go that far. George Lucas was a fallible creator, but the values that he tried to put into the movies are anti-militarism and anti-imperialism. It’s people coming together against ‘the Man.’ It’s planted in his time, in the early ‘60s and ‘70s and Vietnam, but also very liberating.

That’s a very different mission than Star Trek’s original series, which was pro-NATO, pro-UN, and pro-inclusion.

Rather than ranking them as more or less progressive, I think it’s better to look at the story each are trying to tell.

By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 11

Passings Irvin (Irv) Mitchell, who served as a senior academic advisor in the College of Letters & Science from 1982-2013, passed away on Oct. 23, 2020.

Irv mentored countless students who needed that extra push, smile, and urging to persevere. Their success was his first priority. The majority of those students graduated from UWM due to Irv’s positive impact on them. Over the years, he still heard from many of those students.

Irv fell in love with golf after playing in the UWM Faculty/Staff Golf League for many years. Golf became his therapy while battling cancer. He was active in Academic Staff Governance in a variety of roles. Irv was a phenomenal speaker and in demand for many campus events. He spoke at new faculty/staff orientations on the topic of “The UWM Student,” which he took on with his usual panache and humor. His sessions always had high ratings from attendees. He later channeled that energy into becoming a reverend.

Irv will be missed by his friends, colleagues, students, and co-workers in Student Academic Services. His obituary can be viewed at https://legcy.co/3mTCGU3.

Irv Mitchell

Rev. John “Denny” Fischer passed away on Dec. 4, 2020. Denny was an assistant professor in the Department of English, where he taught courses covering British literature and religion. He retired from teaching in 2018 after serving UWM for more than 50 years. Denny touched the lives of countless students during his impressive tenure.

His influence extended beyond campus; he was also the associate pastor at Christ Church in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin. Denny was also known for his talent on the keys, and was hailed throughout southeast Wisconsin as a recital pianist.

Denny will be remembered for his kindness, generosity, and love for his students and congregation. His obituary can be viewed at https://legcy.co/2LfJNrE. Denny Fischer

Roy Swanson, who served as a professor of comparative literature at UWM for 36 years, passed away on Dec. 15, 2020. His legacy has long been ensured in the department with the Roy Arthur Swanson Comparative Literature Merit Scholarship (RASCL), which was established in 1998 to honor his love of comparative literature and support students in the pursuit of their own passions.

Roy was a decorated military veteran, serving in World War II and receiving a Bronze Star during his service. In his teaching career, he was a faculty member at several universities, including the University of Minnesota where one of his students included none other than Bob Dylan. He loved all of his students and won Distinguished Teaching awards recognizing his skill and passion for education.

Over the course of his career, he wrote several notable academic words and continued writing after his retirement. He was a sought-after speaker and even delivered the UWM Commencement Address in 1999.

Roy’s family encourages those who wish to honor him to make a donation to the RASCL scholarship. His obituary can be viewed at https://bit.ly/2X2C6Yu.

12 • IN FOCUS • January, 2021

Roy Swanson

Planetarium Spotlight The UWM Planetarium closed this crazy year out with over 400 viewers of the virtual Under African Skies program. Every Friday from Nov. 6 to Dec. 4, five UWM speakers guided viewers through their home countries of Uganda, Malawi, Algeria, Egypt, and Kenya. In conversation with Planetarium Director Jean Creighton, they shared everything from food, music, and art, to personal heroes and social leaders.

The night sky is a connecting thread under which people meet for food, music, leisure, work, agriculture, and more. Speaker Jackline Kirungi shared her nostalgia for the rural life of Uganda, where people socialize at night by sharing stories and food under the stars. Dr. Wilkistar Otieno of Kenya relayed how traditionally, Kenyan people were deeply in tune with stars to guide them in seasonal and agricultural cycles. Major social events such as weddings occurred during full moons for the light, which can make a significant difference in places with few other sources of light.

Community was also a theme throughout the series. Both Mohamed Maache of Algeria and Dr. Tarek Elgammal of Egypt shared their experiences of the festivities associated with Ramadan, the holy month of fasting for Muslims, which begins and ends with a crescent moon each year.

Speakers shared their personal connections to the stars in touching ways. Dr. Lucy MkandawireValhmu sang a song that children in Malawi sing as they anticipate the appearance of the moon so they can play outside in its light. Lake Malawi itself is called “lake of stars” because fisherman use lanterns to guide them under the stars as they fish at night. Elgammal also shared a children’s song for when a tooth falls out, in which they ask the sun to give them a bright new one. In fact, Tarek Elgammal’s very name has astronomical connotations: It means “the roving star that pierces the space fabric.”

Speakers also shared cultural connections, such as Arab peoples’ influence on astronomy. That is evidenced by the vast number of Arab poems on the subject, one of which Maache read. Elgammal mentioned ancient Egypt’s understanding of the sun’s path, as exhibited by the temple built in 1300 BCE for Ramses II in such a way that, twice annually, the sun appears in the entrance and illuminates the temple to mark Ramses’ birth and coronation dates.

Throughout this series viewers saw the expansiveness of the African continent and the diversity of its countries and peoples, and they were treated to speakers’ personal and cultural connections to the night “Think of it as Thanksgiving stretching The Planetarium virtually invited several speakers sky. Everyone was invited to enjoy the for 30 days,” said Elgammal, with to present at the “Under African Skies” program in community and neighborliness across a “carnival of food” eaten with November and December. From top to bottom are a continent that contains people family, friends, and even strangers screenshots of conversations with speakers from Egypt, more diverse than the rest of the passing by who become new Algeria, and Kenya. world combined. Rich cultures, friends. According to Maache, heartwarming stories, all under a “only love is exchanged” between beautiful night sky – what a way to end 2020! people during this month, with the atmosphere full of fireworks, street activities, and celebrations. Maache and If you missed it, you can watch the whole series on Elgammal both expressed their nostalgia for growing the Planetarium’s YouTube channel at up on dense neighborhood streets where people of all bit.ly/38ahjHX. ages hang out and where every house is your house.

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January 23 Manfred Olson Planetarium Virtual Open House. 2 p.m. via Facebook Live. Celebrate the Planetarium’s 55th anniversary with a virtual tour of the night sky, popular program highlights, and more. Sign up at https://bit.ly/3oaXeIf.

January 29-30 Virtual Planetarium show: The secret lives of planets. 7 p.m. via YouTube. Register for this live event at https://bit.ly/391qSJI. The YouTube link will be emailed to you along with your receipt. Learn more at https://bit.ly/2LfWy5O.

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Alumni Accomplishments Anselmo Villarreal (’86, MA Economics) has announced that he will be taking over as the new leader of Southwest Key, a Texas-based nonprofit centered on social justice. He leaves his long-time position as the President and CEO of La Casa de Esperanza in Waukesha, Wisconsin, where he has spent the last 31 years of his career. https://bit.ly/3qD46iX Bernard Bull (’06, MA Liberal Studies) begins his tenure as the new president of Concordia University Nebraska in August. Bull is currently the president of Goddard College in Vermont. https://bit.ly/3gnzaij

Larissa (Kammerud) Brigham (’15, BS Microbiology) was awarded a scholarship from the Wisconsin Foundation for Vision Awareness (WFVA) and the Wisconsin Optometric Association (WOA) to support her optometry degree. Brigham was a pre-optometry student while at UWM and is currently a fourth-year student at the Chicago College of Optometry. https://bit.ly/3m4vfbe

Anselmo Villarreal

Alex Paniagua (’19, BA English) joined the Wisconsin Bankers Association as a writer/editor in the organization’s communications arm. The Wisconsin Bankers Association is the largest financial trade industry association in the state. https://bit.ly/37tylBs Pat Slane (’83, MS Mathematical Sciences) was named the director of NASA’s Chandra X-ray Center, which controls science and flight operations for the space agency’s Chandra’s X-ray Observatory. Slane has a long history with the observatory and took over as its director in late September. https://go.nasa.gov/2JLFmEX Vincent Pope (’85, BA Political Science) was appointed the engineering manager of Diversified Plastics, Inc. (DPI), a custom plastic-injection molder. Pope will work with customers to ensure the company is meeting their manufacturing needs. https://bit. ly/377CaMr

Michael Licari (’97, PhD Political Science) was named the new president of Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee. Licari is currently the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Indiana State University, as well as a professor of political science. https://bit.ly/3b1mTiP

14 • IN FOCUS • January, 2021

Pat Slane

Program Spotlight: Portuguese UWM’s Portuguese language creative writing journal, O Canto do Mar, published its fourth annual edition this spring, marking four years that the journal has solicited poetry, short stories, and other creative writing piece. The journal is available in printed form, thanks to support from the UWM Center for International Education, and exists in a digital format at https://uwm.edu/spanishportuguese/media/o-canto-domar/.

Since its creation in the spring of 2017, O Canto do Mar has grown in length each year. The 2020 edition features writings from approximately 50 contributors - both UWM Portuguese students and members of the Milwaukee community - and spans 80 pages in length.

The journal’s editor, Susana L.M. Antunes, delivered a presentation on the journal and her students’ work at the III World Conference on Teaching and Learning Portuguese, which was held Nov. 27-28 via Lima, Peru.

Susana L.M. Antunes and Luis Filho, a now-graduated journalism, advertising, and media studies major, founded UWM’s Portuguese language creative writing journal in 2017.

Her virtual presentation was titled, “O Canto do Mar: A Pedagogical Project of Creative Writing in the Classroom.”.

Antunes is the Portuguese program

coordinator at UWM and was named an assistant professor of Portuguese in 2019.

Video Story In December, UWM held Commencement exercises for the winter graduation Class of 2020. Fourteen new graduates shared favorite memories, reflections on graduating during a worldwide pandemic, and advice for future Panthers. https://youtu.be/7n4CxvDWp88

Laurels and Accolades Student Elizabeth Kuhlmann (Psychology) is the recipient of Northwestern Mutual’s Childhood Cancer Survivor Scholarship. The awarded is designed to defray the costs of education for cancer survivors and their families, who often face financial hardships in the wake of their treatments. Kuhlmann was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome after graduating from high school. She and 42 fellow recipients received a $5,000 renewable award. https://bit.ly/2LncMtH

Student Jessica Gatzow (Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies) produced an audio story that was selected to be aired on Wisconsin Public Radio. The piece explored the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on UWM bands and musicians. https://bit.ly/3m9YqtE College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 15

In the Media and Around the Community There’s a growing interest in the historic slave forts scattered along Ghana’s cost, Rebecca Schumway (History) said in a Christian Science Monitor article regarding slave history narratives.

In a new take on “period” dramas, The Lily, published by the Washington Post, interviewed Elana Levine (English) in an article examining why pop culture has attached so much important to a woman’s first period but ignores other instances of menstruation.

Jeffrey Sommers (Global Studies and African and African Diaspora Studies) reflected on the rise and end of Donald Trump’s president in an opinion piece for the Canadian Dimension, and discussed the “Future of Trumpism” on 104.1 Milwaukee Radio.

He also took to the Russianlanguage publication Eurasia.Expert to discuss how the coronavirus pandemic has affected global competition.

How long until a bubble bursts? PhD student Danielle Harms (English) discussed the challenges of maintaining a small social “bubble” during the COVID-19 pandemic in this Spectrum 1 News article.

Kristen Murphy (Chemistry), director of the American Chemical Society’s Examinations Institute here at UWM, was invited to participate in the US Copyright Office’s “Sovereign Immunity Study” on Dec. 11.

Murphy’s talk was entitled, “Evidence of Actual or Threatened Copyright Infringement by States.”

People’s Brewing, the first and only black-owned brewery in Wisconsin, was founded in the 1970s. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel featured the business in an article that quotes graduate student John Harry (History), who has made People’s Brewing the topic of his thesis.

Jennifer Haas and Seth Schneider (both Anthropology) were interviewed by CBS 58 News about the significant archaeological finds that UWM researchers and archaeologists unearthed after a yearlong excavation in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

16 • IN FOCUS • January, 2021

William Holahan (emeritus Economics) defined “defund” and “socialism” and why these words can sound scary to voters in an opinion piece for The Cap Times.

Did three typhoons in South Korea in September lead to some of the deadliest wildfires the state of Oregon has ever seen earlier this year? It’s likely, Clark Evans (Atmospheric Science) told Eugene Weekly. He was also interviewed by CBS 58 News to explain why Wisconsin might experience a snowy winter, thanks to El Niña.

Kathy Dolan (Political Science) noted the gains women have made in voting and running for elected office, but added there is a way to go before there is parity of the sexes in politics in an article in The San Diego UnionTribune.

With a more diverse set of newly-elected Republican representatives, minority caucuses in Congress may have a chance to create real dialogue on issues affecting their demographics, Paru Shah (Political Science) told USA Today.

Psychology Today featured

Anne Basting (English) to spotlight her work in using the arts to improve dementia care and connect with people struggling with the condition. Basting also shared suggestions for staying safely connected with our older relatives during the holidays on Wisconsin Public Radio.

The University of Texas at Austin featured Julia Guernsey (’92, MA Art History) as a faculty member interested in introducing students to underrepresented art.

In an AFP article, Thomas Holbrook (Political Science) worried that if some citizens feel as though the 2020 presidential election were “stolen” from Donald Trump, it could lead to an increased tolerance for fringe conspiracy groups.

Felipe Alberto (Biological Sciences) explained his grant to study giant kelp for use as a biofuel on WUWM Radio.

Continued on page 18

People in Print Alexander L. Wallace, Kristin E. Maple, Alicia T. Barr, and Krista M. Lisdahl (all Psychology). 2020. BOLD responses to inhibition in cannabis-using adolescents and emerging adults after 2 weeks of monitored cannabis abstinence. Psychopharmacology (Berl), 237(11): 32593268. https://bit.ly/2MkoyFI Ryan M. Sullivan, Alexander L. Wallace, Natasha E. Wade, Ann M. Swartz, and Krista M. Lisdahl (all Psychology). 2020. Assessing the role of cannabis use on cortical surface structure in adolescents and young adults: Exploring gender and aerobic fitness as potential moderators. Brain Sciences, 10(2): 117. https://bit.ly/3rOOcD2

Alexander E. Wallace, Natasha E. Wade, and Krista M. Lisdahl (both Psychology). 2020. Impact of 2 weeks of monitored abstinence on cognition in adolescent and young adult cannabis users. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, .26(8): 776-784. https://bit.ly/3aZexZ3

Morgan E. Stevenson, Chelsea C. Miller, Heather A. Owen (Biological Sciences), and Rodney A. Swain (all others Psychology). 2020. Aerobic exercise increases sprouting angiogenesis in the male rat motor cortex.

Brain Structure and Function, 225(8): 2301-2314. https://bit.ly/3rQBrYi

Morgan E. Stevenson, Amanda S. Nazario, Alicja M. Czyz, Heather A. Owen (Biological Sciences), and Rodney A. Swain (all others Psychology). 2021. Motor learning rapidly increases synaptogenesis and astrocytic structural plasticity in the rat cerebellum. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 177: 1-8. https://bit.ly/2LgCe40

Igor Fortel, Laura E. Korthauer (Psychology), Zachery Morrissey, Liang Zhan, Olusola Ajilore, Ouri Wolfson, Ira Driscoll (Psychology), Dan Schonfeld, and Alex Leow, 2020. Connectome signatures of hyperexcitation in cognitively intact middle-aged female APOE-є4 carriers.

Cerebral Cortex, 30(12): 6350-6362. https://bit.ly/2LjmAEY

Jenna Katherine Blujus, Laura E. Korthauer, Elizabeth Awe, Marijam Frahmand, and Ira Driscoll (all Psychology). 2020. Single nucleotide polymorphisms in Alzheimer’s Disease risk genes are associated with intrinsic connectivity in middle age. Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 78(1): 309-320. https://bit.ly/3pGQD8I David C. Osmon, Kaitlynne N. Leclaire, Ira Driscoll, and Chandler J. Zolliecoffer (all Psychology). 2020.

Reversal learning in young and middle-age neurotypicals:

Individual difference reaction time considerations. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 42(9): 902-913. https://bit.ly/3n6R22E Rose Wesche, Carol L. Galletly, and Ryan C. Shorey (Psychology). 2021. Developing an inclusive Safe Dates program for sexual and gender minority adolescents: A pilot study. Journal of Adolescence, 86: 11-14. https://bit.ly/357xRQ6

Caitlin R. Bowman (Psychology), Takako Iwashita, and Dagmar Zeithamova. 2020. Tracking prototype and exemplar representations in the brain across learning. eLife, 9; e59360. https://elifesciences.org/articles/59360

Alexandra Spaulding and Philip Chang (both Physis).

2020. The Effect of Impact Parameter on Tidal Disruption Events. \mnras. https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.07318 Adil Amin and Daniel F. Agterberg (both Physics).

2020. Generalized spin fluctuation feedback in heavy fermion superconductors. Physical Review Research, 2(1). https://bit.ly/38U6ycZ Han Gyeol Suh (Physics), Henri Menke, P. M. R. Brydon, Carsten Timm, Aline Ramires, and Daniel F. Agterberg (Physics). 2020. Stabilizing even-parity chiral superconductivity in Sr2RuO4. Physical Review Research, 2(3). https://bit.ly/3n6Sj9W Darshana Wickramaratne, Sergii Khmelevskyi, Daniel F. Agterberg (Physics), and I. I. Mazin. 2020. Ising Superconductivity and Magnetism in NbSe2. Physical Review X, 10(4). https://bit.ly/354xwh7 Takahiro Kobayashi, Yoshitaka Nakata, Koichiro Yaji, Tatsuya Shishidou, Daniel Agterberg (Physics), Shunsuke Yoshizawa, Fumio Komori, Shik Shin, Michael Weinert (Physics), Takashi Uchihashi, and Kazuyuki Sakamoto. 2020. Orbital Angular Momentum Induced Spin Polarization of 2D Metallic Bands. Physical Review Letters, 125(17). https://bit.ly/2MsvGQC Zhuozhi Ge, Qiang Zou, Huimin Zhang, Chenhui Yan, Daniel Agterberg, Michael Weinert (both Physics), and Lian Li. 2020. Superconductivity on Edge: Evidence of a One-Dimensional Superconducting Channel at the Edges of Single-Layer FeTeSe Antiferromagnetic Nanoribbons.

ACS NANO, 14(6): 6539-6547. https://bit.ly/38YSQWn Daniel F. Agterberg (Physics). 2020. The symmetry of superconducting Sr2RuO4. Nature Physics. https://go.nature.com/3rQEhMW Continued on page 18 College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 17

In the Media

Continued from page 16

Milwaukee Public Museum CEO Ellen Censky (’79, BS Zoology) was profiled in Milwaukee Magazine to detail her plans for the future of the Museum.

Julie Bowles (Geosciences) helped explain why Eos magazine chose to focus its January 2020 edition on magnetic fields.

Architectural historian Justin Miller (Archaeological Research Laboratory) explained some of the processes of the Wisconsin State Historic Preservation Office in an article by The Herald-Independent.

People in Print

Fox 6 News tested the masks of people on the street to

determine their bacteria content, and then asked Sonia Bardy (Biological Sciences) to interpret the results.

Most of the bacteria lab technicians found is supposed to be there, she reported.

It’s been 21 years since the Y2K scare. CNN looked back on the big event in their podcast “The Y2K Story” and talked to A. Aneesh (Sociology) to learn about the global effort to prevent computer catastrophe. Aneesh is featured in Episode 5, “A Global Solution.”

Continued from page 17

Daniel F. Agterberg (Physics), J.C. Séamus Davis, Stephen D. Edkins, Eduardo Fradkin, Dale J. Van Harlingen, Steven A. Kivelson, Patrick A. Lee, Leo Radzihovsky, John M. Tranquada, and Yuxuan Wang. 2020. Review of The Physics of Pair-Density Waves: Cuprate Superconductors and Beyond. Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics, 11: 231-270. https://bit.ly/2LcZGPV Viktorija Bilic (Translation and Interpreting Studies). 2020. ‘Warum noch länger die demütige Magd, die ihrem Herrn die Füße wäscht?’: Mathilde FranziskaAnneke’s Feminist Manifest Das Weib im Conflict mit den socialen Verhältnissen (1847). The Sophie Journal, 5(1): 1-16. https://bit.ly/2MuKUVh Viktorija Bilic (Translation and Interpreting Studies). 2020. The Online Computer-Assisted Translation Classroom.

Translation & Interpreting - The International Journal for Translation and Interpreting Research, 12(1): 127-141. https:// bit.ly/3hCozAm

Celeste Campos-Castillo (Sociology). 2020. Gender Divides in Engagement with COVID-19 Information on the Internet among US Older Adults. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B. https://bit.ly/2Lb4vJo Celeste Campos-Castillo (Sociology) and Denise L. Anthony. 2020. Racial and Ethnic Differences in Self-Reported Telehealth Use during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Secondary Analysis of a US Survey of Internet Users from Late March. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. https://bit.ly/3hB0Y38 Celeste Campos-Castillo (Sociology) and Linnea I. Laestadius. 2020. Racial and Ethnic Digital Divides in Posting COVID-19 Content on Social Media Among US Adults: Secondary Survey Analysis. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22(7): e20472. https://www.jmir.org/2020/7/e20472/ Leslie J. Harris (Communication). 2020. “Whores” and “Hottentots”: Protection of (white) women and white supremacy in anti-suffrage rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 106(3): 253-257. https://bit.ly/3pIn5Yf