College of Letters & Science
IN FOCUS
March 2021, Vol. 11, No.3
A muffled roar UWM linguist studies how face masks do - and don’t - impact speech Pg. 4
UWM student sa
Contents Feature Stories Student reflects on Hank Aaron’s aid Linguist studies face-masked speech AtmoSci devises a way to forecast peak gusts Alum creates Black history app with UWM help Biology alum doctors her rural hometown Students translate old Pabst papers JAMS alum enjoys Congressional internship
p.2 p.4 p.6 p.9 p.10 p.12 p.14
Columns Upcoming Events People in Print Video Story In the Media Laurels and Accolades Passings Alumni Accomplishments Published College the
the first
Tuesday
of Letters and
University
Contact
of
of each month by the
Science
at
Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
us at let-sci@uwm.edu
L&S Dean: Scott Gronert In Focus Editor: Deanna Alba
p.16 p.17 p.17 p.18 p.19 p.19 p.20
Hank Aaron left an incredible legacy on and off the baseball field. One of his many offthe-field contributions is benefiting a UWM senior, Hawa Brema. For the past four years, Brema’s academic studies at UWM have been funded through gifts to an endowment created by Aaron’s Chasing the Dream Foundation 4 for 4 Scholarship. The scholarship at UWM is in memory of Aaron’s longtime friend and UWM alumnus, the late Joseph Kennedy.
Babeball legend Hank Aaron ended his career with the Milwaukee Brewers.
Even a few weeks after Aaron’s death Jan. 22, Brema wipes away tears as she talks about him and what the scholarship has meant to her. “He changed my life. He literally changed a lot of people’s lives,” said Brema, who is a senior in human resources management. She is also earning certificates in real estate and cultures and communities, and plans to graduate in May. In September 2019, she had the opportunity to meet Aaron and his wife, Billye, in person when he invited all his foundation’s scholars from across the U.S. to his home in Atlanta for a barbecue and an Atlanta Braves game. The Aarons paid for the students’ expenses. “They were so nice, just really genuine people,” Brema recalled. Family came to U.S. Brema was born in Sudan and spent 12 years in Kenya before her family emigrated to the United States. “My dad’s big on education. He wanted us to come here for a better education,” she said. A graduate of Bradley Tech High School, Brema has five siblings, so college tuition was a challenge for her family.
Find us at UWMLetSci
2 • IN FOCUS • March, 2021
She connected with the scholarship through a program she was involved with through the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee. She has been a Hank Aaron scholar for all four years at UWM.
ays Hank Aaron ‘changed my life’
UWM student Hawa Brema got to meet Hank Aaron and his wife, Billye, in 2019, when the Aarons paid for all their foundation’s scholars from across the U.S. to come to their home in Atlanta for a barbecue and an Atlanta Braves game. (Photo courtesy of Hawa Brema)
In high school, she played softball, so had some familiarity with the game and learned more about Aaron’s baseball career when she applied for the scholarship. Aaron, a Hall of Fame player who began and ended his legendary baseball career in Milwaukee, had numerous ties to the city and to Wisconsin. He started his minor league career in Eau Claire, and went on to play for the Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves for 21 years, including for the 1957 Milwaukee Braves world championship team. (The franchise moved to Atlanta in 1966.) He returned from Atlanta to play for the Milwaukee Brewers for two years to wind up his career.
“In my humble opinion, he was no doubt the greatest player of our generation, but, more important, he was a great and wonderful human being,” Bud Selig, former baseball commissioner and owner of the Brewers and a longtime friend of Aaron’s, said at a memorial service. “Neither fame nor fortune changed his extraordinary kindness and empathy, which led to his greatness off the field. His impact not only in baseball but all of America will never be forgotten.” The scholarships, which have supported more than 100 students across the country since 2010, will continue.
Brema is the second student at UWM to receive the fouryear renewable scholarship.
“I’m glad I had the chance to meet him in person,” Brema said. “I don’t have any debt because of him and the scholarship. He was just a blessing. That’s all I can say.”
‘Great and wonderful human being’
By Kathy Quirk, University Relations
At his funeral in January, Aaron was honored for his contributions on and off the baseball diamond.
College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 3
Speech unmasked
UWM linguist studies how masks impact intelligibility
Wearing a mask is one of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, but there’s no question that masks make it harder to understand what people are saying. Or that’s been the thought, anyway. UWM associate professor of linguistics Anne Pycha is the coauthor of a new study published in the journal Cognition that examined how well people can understand the speech of speakers wearing face masks. With Wisconsin and other states across the nation under a mask mandate to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, Pycha and her coauthors, Michelle Cohn and Georgia Zellou of the University of California-Davis, realized they had a golden opportunity. “Because we all wear face masks, the basic circumstances under which we produce and perceive speech have fundamentally changed,” Pycha explained. “We’ve all of a sudden got this barrier on our mouths that impacts how we speak. … Once we started thinking along those lines, we realized that the face masks presented a really interesting test case for researchers like us.” Experimenting with speech As it happens, Pycha said, humans are actually very good at communicating. In addition to signals like facial expressions and body cues, people naturally modulate their speech to reflect their environment – speaking louder in a crowded room, for example. She and her coauthors wondered: How do masks interfere with our speech? And can speakers overcome this new barrier to communication? To test that question, Pycha, Cohn, and Zellou had two speakers, a man and a woman, record specific sentences both while wearing a fabric face mask and not wearing a mask. The sentences were pulled from a standardized list called the “Speech Perception in Noise” set. They asked the speakers to record the sentences in three ways: Speaking in a casual, conversational tone; speaking with positive emotion; and speaking clearly to someone who might have trouble understanding. 4 • IN FOCUS • March, 2021
To each recording, the researchers added a bit of background noise to mimic what a listener might hear if they were listening to speech in a casual environment. Listeners in the experiment had to hear the recordings and then type the last word of the sentence they heard. Then, Pycha Michelle Cohn and her colleagues examined their answers for accuracy. In the sentence, “Miss Brown is considering the coast,” for example, respondents would have to type “coast” to be considered accurate. Answering “toast” or any other word would be a mark against intelligibility. Surprising results
Georgia Zellou
Some of the results were exactly what you’d expect. “When people were speaking casually, it was more difficult for our listeners to understand. Intelligibility went down when the mask was on. We’ve all had that experience,” Pycha said. The same held true when people were speaking with positive emotion. But, when the speakers were told to “speak clearly,” things got interesting. “The listeners were actually better able to identify words when the speaker was wearing a mask compared to when they were not wearing one,” Pycha said. “It’s almost as if, when you ask people to speak clearly in a noisy situation, intelligibility goes up, but when you
UWM linguist Anne Pycha’s research shows that when told to speak clearly, maskwearers are intelligible as ever. (UWM Photo)
ask them to speak clearly in a quiet situation, intelligibility goes down – which is surprising! It’s a testament of the power to the human voice to modulate itself,” she added. Zellou noted that researchers have seen this response before in other situations. “People adopt different speech styles when they talk to someone who may have a hard time understanding them or in a context where comprehension might be difficult (like a noisy room or wearing a face mask),” Zellou said. “(These styles) are known as clear speech. Clear speech is usually louder, slower, and more enunciated than more casual speech. This is thought to aid listeners in parsing the speech signal by helping them to identify the words more readily.” But how do people adapt their speech so quickly? “We don’t totally know. What we do know is that we’re really good at doing it,” Pycha said. “Part of what we’re trying to do in this research is pinpoint why.” Put it into practice This new research shows that asking people to speak clearly when they wear the mask will help make their speech more intelligible, so don’t be shy about asking people to repeat themselves or enunciate.
“In my own life, this has been successful in short conversations with the cashier at the grocery store, even with the additional barrier of the plexiglass,” said Cohn. “But we want to stress that this research was done on younger, non-hearing-impaired listeners. The extent this finding generalizes to other populations (e.g., hearing impaired adults who rely on lip reading) is still an open area for future research.” Pycha thinks that mask-wearers also need to be proactive about speaking clearly – not just to be intelligible, but also to help those hearing-impaired adults that Cohn mentioned, or people who may not understand English well. Speaking clearly increases the intelligibility of our speech, and people should try to help out others who may have a harder time understanding, she said. “I think it’s obvious that masks make it harder for all of us to communicate, especially because we can’t use facial cues like we can in mask-less situations,” Pycha added, “but it really only takes a small amount of effort to overcome that obstacle.” By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 5
Any way the w
UWM forecasters de A question about OSHA regulations may have led to a revolution in weather forecasting. In 2016, UWM’s Innovative Weather Center, a student-staffed agency that provides custom forecasts, was soliciting the Milwaukee Brewers as a possible client. The Brewers’ stadium features a retractable roof. When it opens or closes, the team needs staff members up high to oversee the operation. But OSHA has strict guidelines about the wind conditions that workers may be exposed to. The Brewers wanted to know: Could Innovative Weather predict peak wind gusts around the ballpark? “I looked into it and learned that not only do I not know how to forecast wind gusts, but nobody knows,” said UWM atmospheric sciences professor Jonathan Kahl. “There’s no consistency in the available methods and there’s no testing of the accuracy of those methods.” Kahl is not affiliated with Innovative Weather, though he works closely with the UWM faculty members who run the organization. After the Brewers posed their question, Kahl and Austin Harris, his Master’s student at the time, set to work to find a model that could answer it. Filling in the missing data
Wind spins the city of Milwaukee wind turbine at Port of Milwaukee. Photo courtesy of the Milwaukee city government. 6 • IN FOCUS • March, 2021
Wind gusts are caused by vertical air movement when fast-moving air high in the atmosphere moves downward toward the earth, bringing its momentum with it. Because they’re over so quickly and because scientists can’t easily measure vertical wind speed, it’s hard to predict the top speed of a wind gust.
Jonathan Kahl
To do so, scientists have compiled historical and current data from weather stations around the world to build models to estimate gusts, but there’s a problem with that information. “In the standard hourly weather reports that operational forecasters use … the reported wind speed is the average wind speed during only two minutes of the hour. The wind gusts are only reported if certain criteria are met. If the wind gust is reported, it refers to wind gusts during only 10 minutes of the hour,” Kahl explained. In other words, it’s likely that scientists are missing the strongest wind gusts. So, to build his forecasting model, Harris had to gather minute-byminute historical wind speed data for Milwaukee – 60 measurements an hour; 1,440 measurements a day; 525,600 measurement per year; and over 4 million measurements for eight years’ worth of data.
wind blows
evise new way to measure peak gusts uneven landscape and buildings, giving rise to larger vertical air motion, and thus, more wind gusts. “What (Harris) found is that wind speed and direction cause the greatest changes in the gust factor,” Kahl said. “He showed that if the wind speed forecasts are perfect, then this gust factor method would give very good gust forecasts.” Testing accuracy across America Kahl calculated gust factors at 15 locations across the United States. Then he tested Harris’ model. It worked; for about half the sites, the model was able to predict peak gusts out to three days in the future, and out to 24-36 hours into the future at the other half of the sites.
This map shows the peak wind gusts at each of the 178 sites where UWM atmospheric sciences professor Jonathan Kahl and his undergraduate research student, Brandon Selbig, calculated wind gust factors to test a new forecasting model that predicts peak wind gusts. Courtesy of Jonathan Kahl.
A model prediction Though there are several existing methods to predict peak wind gusts, no one model is more accurate than the others. For ease of use, Harris decided to improve on an existing model called the Gust Factor Method. “A gust factor is just a fraction: the (speed of the) wind gust divided by the wind speed,” said Kahl. Say that Milwaukee has a gust factor of 1.6. That means that on average, a wind gust in Milwaukee is 60 percent faster than the wind speed. If you have a forecast for the wind speed, you can estimate peak wind
gusts by multiplying the wind speed by the gust factor. A 10-mph wind would yield a 16-mph wind gust prediction, for example. “What (Austin) found was that the gust factors change depending on the weather conditions,” Kahl said. “In Milwaukee, for example, when the wind is from the east or the northeast, the gust factor is relatively small – like 1.5. When it’s from the west or the northwest, then the gust factor zooms up to close to 2.” That’s thanks to the surrounding surfaces. Wind blowing off of Lake Michigan typically has a smooth, flat ride over the water into the city. Wind from the west must travel over an
Kahl published his findings last year, but the research wasn’t done. The model works, but only if meteorologists know the wind gust factors in their area. “Our method to determine those gust factors requires an analysis of 4 million one-minute wind observations just from one location. It’s time consuming and complicated,” Kahl said. Brandon Selbig was up to the challenge. An atmospheric science major, Selbig is working toward his second bachelor’s degree after moving to Milwaukee and deciding to switch careers. When Kahl offered him a chance to help with research, Selbig was thrilled. “I’ve wanted to be a meteorologist since I was 14,” Selbig said. Continued on page 8
College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 7
Wind gust forecasting Continued from Page 7
N
W
E
Brandon Selbig
“Undergraduate research was not even an option at my last school due to my involvement in sports, and was not done in the way that UWM does it with paying student researchers while they gain experience.” Selbig and Kahl identified 178 sites around the nation where they wanted to calculate the gust factor to test the prediction model. Selbig wrote computer scripts to capture the minute-by-minute wind speed observations recorded over the last 8 years at each locale. Using that information, “We made ‘gust webs’ for the gust factors. It’s basically a spider plot. You have north, east, south, and west, and then rings of 0-5, 5-10, 10-15 and greater than 15 knots for a wind speed,” Selbig explained. “The gust webs say that if you can forecast what a wind speed might be at a time and what direction it will be coming from for a certain site, you can pretty accurately predict what the wind gust will be.”
8 • IN FOCUS • March, 2021
S This gust web diagram shows gust factors from a measurement site in Milwaukee. The gust factors are based on analysis of hourly wind speeds, wind directions, and peak gusts during 2010–17. The concentric rings represent mean wind speed ranges: 0–5 (center), 5–10, 10–15, and >15 kt (outermost). The radial lines represent the boundaries of 30o wind sectors, clockwise from north. The symbols represent the occurrence frequencies of mean wind speed and direction combinations. Courtesy of Jonathan Kahl.
Selbig plans to present parts of his research at UWM’s Undergraduate Research Symposium in April. Kahl has just submitted another paper detailing their findings, and the pair have also built a website showing the gust factors for the 178 locations they calculated. Eventually forecasters across the country might be able to use that data and Harris’ model to predict peak wind gusts in their own cities. In the meantime, Kahl and Selbig are tackling the next step of their research. “Another Masters student, Teresa Turner, did a project to evaluate the skill (accuracy) with which a model predicts
peak wind gusts in Milwaukee during specific gust-producing weather phenomena,” Kahl said. “She showed that for Milwaukee, the model was skillful for most of those conditions. “Brandon and I are taking Teresa’s results and adapting them to the 15 sites I used in last year’s paper. How well does the model perform in specific types of weather conditions?” The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind. By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science
App developed at UWM helps explore Black history Deborah Blanks has turned a project she started for her son in grade school into a Black history app that launched Feb. 17. It’s free and available in the Apple store, through Google, and on the web. Blanks, who earned her doctorate in urban studies from UWM, created the “Blackistory” app, with help from UWM’s App Brewery. The Brewery partners student developers with community members, health care providers and other nonprofit organizations to create a wide variety of apps. Blanks’ app grew out of her teaching her son, Geraud, about Black history. When he was 10, he was the only Black child in a predominantly white advanced math class, said Blanks. When he went to the playground for recess, he told his mom he wasn’t sure if he should stay and play with his white classmates from math class or with the other black students. Deborah Blanks “I told him, ‘If you’re a young Black man, it’s important you get along with both,’” Blanks said, but she also felt it was important he understood his own history.
As a result, she came up with 500 questions about Black history that over the next 32 years she developed and refined into 1,000 questions. That grounding in Black history served Geraud well, she said. “I saw he had a real understanding of who he was, his background and how history impacted him.” Geraud Blanks graduated from UWM with a double major in Africology and communication, earned a Master’s degree in communication and is working on his doctorate at Northwestern University. He is director of cultures and communities at Milwaukee Film. Along with wife, Element Everest-Blanks, and his mother, he owns Kairo Communications LLC, a communications consulting firm. Deborah Blanks’ focus in the firm is on research and analysis of racial equity issues such as police-community relations, government contracting and organizational capacity building. Important to understand history After working with her son in grade school, Deborah Blanks thought it was important to help other young people understand Black history.
“What I learned as a single parent is that you can’t focus on making a better future for just your child only. You have to be committed to make the world better for all families.” Learning more about Black history can benefit all people, especially in learning about the roots of racism, Blanks added. “The more you know not just about our struggle and the diaspora, but also our achievements and contributions in the U.S., the better you can understand the cause and effect, how all of this impacted where we are today.” Those who shape and make decisions about people of color particularly need to understand this history, she said. “Sometimes they don’t totally understand the people they’re making decisions about and how those decisions impact their lives. There is wisdom and talent and wonder in the Black experience that you should connect with and work to serve.” Competition The current version of the app gives users the chance to try out the 1,000-question quiz on their own or compete against themselves to see how quickly they can answer questions, Blanks said. They are fine-tuning one segment of the app that allows users can compete against others. “Working on this project was a welcome change from our current medical and research-based projects, said Chase Letteney, senior iOS developer for the App Brewery. “Collaborating with Dr. Blanks on how to create an app where gaming and learning can be done in on multiple platforms was fun.” Blanks plans to continue to enhance and improve the app, based on feedback, and is conducting research to create a smaller, separate app for Wisconsin Black history to bring it down to the community level. IIt’s important for all to understand the significance of Black history as part of U.S. history, she said. “The level of respect Black folks are given should be magnified 100 times. We’ve shown our allegiance to this country, contributed greatly to it, and challenged it to be better and to live up to its ideals.” By Kathy Quirk, University Relations College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 9
Dr. Devitt is in: Alum returns home to pract When she was growing up, Phoebe Devitt used to follow her father on his rounds at the local hospital or accompany him on house calls to the local Amish community. She was a fixture at his clinic, where her mother also worked as a nurse. Everyone knew Dr. Devitt’s daughter in the small village of Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin. But these days, everyone just calls her Dr. Devitt, too. Phoebe Devitt is a family medicine doctor practicing in Viroqua, Wisconsin, just 20 miles away from her hometown. Her husband, Dr. Joel Charles, now runs the same clinic where her father used to practice, and even works out of the same office. Together, they’re helping to take care of the people of rural Wisconsin, handling delivering babies to end-of-life care and everything in between. It’s a big job, but Devitt loves it, and she loves her hometown most of all. The journey leads home Growing up, all Devitt wanted to do was get out of Soldiers Grove. The tiny town has a population of roughly 600; all of its residents could live in just one of towers of Sandburg Hall. When it came time for college, UWM seemed like the perfect fit – her relatives were close by, and she would finally get to experience city life after a lifetime in a place where her nearest neighbors lived over a mile away. “I was definitely a city girl, I thought,” Devitt said with a laugh. “I spent my first year in the dorms. … I loved it. I was craving that community.” But the more she experienced of the “big city,” the more Devitt realized she actually loved her little town. “I realized that I wanted to come back to my hometown specifically,” she said, so she planned her studies accordingly. “I knew I needed a skill that would be practical in a rural setting.”
Phoebe Devitt graduated from UWM in 2009 after majoring in Biological Sciences. She now practices m
Picking UWM’s pre-med track was an easy choice; Devitt’s father and grandfather were both physicians, so it made sense to go into the family business. Devitt majored in biological sciences and graduated with her BS in 2009. She attended medical school at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, where she met her husband, and they both completed their residencies in Santa Rosa, California. Then, they moved back to Soldiers Grove, though Devitt made a conscious choice to work a little farther away from her hometown. “A lot of the community, being so small, watched me grow up. In their eyes, I’m still their sixth-grade student or a little girl on the track team,” she explained. But sometimes, she still sees a familiar face when some patients seek her out – “Just based on the fact that they appreciated my father as their physician,” she said. But lately, things have been overshadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
10 • IN FOCUS • March, 2021
tice rural medicine That came with an added risk for Devitt; for the past nine months, armed with just an N95 mask and a face shield, she’s been caring for COVID patients while pregnant with her second child. Only in the last month did she take some time for maternity leave. “It’s (a trauma) that I’m still working through,” she admitted. “COVID has just been a whirlwind for all of us.” The pandemic is made more challenging by the independent culture that defines many parts of rural Wisconsin. People prefer not to wear face masks, even though doing so is one of the most effective ways to stop the spread of the virus. There is a light at the end of the pandemic tunnel; for the past two months, Devitt and her colleagues have been working to vaccinate their patients. Rural rewards When there’s not a pandemic, though, Devitt loves her job. Each day brings something different.
medicine near her hometown of Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin. Photo courtesy of Phoebe Devitt.
Navigating COVID Though the population is sparse and spread out, COVID-19 descended on Soldiers Grove and the surrounding areas the same as it did everywhere else in Wisconsin. But unlike places like Milwaukee, Madison, or Green Bay, rural Wisconsin lacks the resources to handle more serious COVID cases. There are no cardiologists at the local hospital, no intensive care doctors, and no back up. There’s just Devitt, her husband, and six other doctors who also do work at the local hospital. “It’s hard not to have back-up in any setting, but especially during COVID-19. Our bench isn’t as deep,” Devitt said. “There have definitely been points that we were taking care of people who were far sicker than we’re used to.”
As a family medicine doctor, she cares from patients from childhood into old age. She and her husband also do inpatient care for some of their patients at the local hospital. On any given day, she might help a patient manage their diabetes, conduct a sports physical for a high schooler, or deliver prenatal care to an expecting mother. She might be called on to deliver those babies too; both Devitt and her husband handle obstetrics. With so few doctors around, they have to be willing to wear all kinds of hats. Devitt doesn’t mind. “There’s nothing like bringing a baby into the world,” she said, smiling. And there’s nothing like practicing medicine in a small town where you get to know everyone. “Part of the reason I came back was the people,” she said. “They’re so grateful and loyal to their doctors, and they tell you about it.” By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science Devitt, who was pregnant at the time, shows off her COVID-19 vaccination. She and her colleagues have worked to care for COVID-19 patients in a location with few resources. Photo courtesy of Phoebe Devitt. College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 11
Graduate students translate the redi In 2005, a bit of Milwaukee history was unearthed in an old metal box. Located at Pabst Farms in Oconomowoc, the box held about 350 letters written from 1841 to 1887 by members of the Pabst and Best families, founders of what became the Pabst Brewing Company. The letters, however, were written in a German script that is difficult to understand. Fifteen years later, two UWM students tackled that challenge and revealed what the long-lost letters say. In spring 2020, the Pabst Mansion set up a partnership with UWM’s Translation and Interpreting Studies program to translate the letters. Over the course of an eight-week summer internship, Nastassja Myer and Marisa Irwin, graduate students in Translation and Interpreting Studies, translated and transcribed 50 pages of letters. The letters were largely personal in nature, often written between members of the Pabst and Best families, to their friends or to their business partners from across the country.
Irwin grew up in Milwaukee surrounded by the Pabst legacy. To read the words of these Milwaukee contemporaries that she had learned about for years, she said, was eyeopening. “You felt like you were getting a peek into their private lives,” Irwin said. “You can’t really get more Nastassja Myer authentic than that.”
Viktorija Bilic, associate professor in Translation and Interpreting Studies and a coordinator on the project, said that the letters also show readers a little about the culture of Milwaukee at that time. “They show what a German “One of the things I’ve enjoyed about this project was that it wasn’t just transcribing and translation,” Myer said. “It was place Milwaukee was that they could speak German with a lot of genealogy and local history. So many things had to almost anyone around them.” come together to correctly read the letters. It was more than Combining two languages a translation project; it was a historical project as well.” The process is not as simple as reading the original The letters are steeped in Milwaukee history. The Best script and writing it down in English, Bilic said. “One of family created the brewing company after emigrating from the challenges is reading the script, this old German Germany. Pabst Brewing Co. started as Best & Company, handwriting. If you don’t get that right, then the translation then later became Phillip Best Brewing Company during can’t be right either.” the time these letters were written. Frederick Pabst, Best’s son-in-law who owned half the company’s stock, purchased The letters’ authors used the German Kurrent script, half of the company’s stock after his father-in-law passed which is difficult to read even for those fluent in German, away and bought the remaining half when his brother-in-law Irwin said. The language is even more difficult, she said, also passed, leaving him sole owner of the company. He because Germany did not have a standardized spelling renamed it Pabst Brewing Co. and expanded the company. system until the early 20th century.
12 • IN FOCUS • March, 2021
“So even when you have the handwriting, when you’ve discovered what the word is, it may not be how it’s spelled currently,” Irwin said. “You have to ask yourself,
iscovered words of the Pabst family ‘Is it an old word that you don’t know because it was written in the 1850s? Is this a misspelled word? Is this a word in a different language?’” The writers were fluent in both German and English and would combine the two languages to create new spellings, Myer said. The word “store” might be spelled in a more Marisa Irwin German way, like “stohr,” and Milwaukee could be spelled in several different ways, such as “Milwaukie.” “It is a mixing of two languages,” Myer said. Solving a puzzle Other times, Myer and Irwin understood the language but not the context surrounding the letter. “Sometimes it can feel like solving a puzzle, because they are taken out of context. Of course, these people know what they’re talking about, and they know the people mentioned. They don’t explain around things,” Bilic said. “For us we need to decode what is going on here, do as much research as possible, and (figure out) how are the people related.” The students and Bilic worked closely with Jocelyn Slocum, curator of collections and communications manager at Pabst Mansion. She was able to give the students valuable information on Pabst history to make sense of the letters.
“We were able to make connections through these translations as well,” Slocum said. “The work they did is making it so that these collections can be an actual useable resource for exhibitions or researchers. To have it be widely available is huge.” Bilic and Slocum are confident they will Viktorija Bilic make more connections within the Pabst family and Milwaukee’s history as they work through the remaining letters. A rare graduate degree experience UWM is one of three schools in the country with a graduate program for German to English translation. This makes UWM students especially qualified to translate these letters, Bilic said. While both Myer and Irwin noted how the internship made them feel more connected to Milwaukee, it also gave them valuable professional experience in translating, Irwin said. “We’ve all been in internships where you’re just the coffeedelivery person,” Irwin said. “(Here) the emphasis is on actually working and developing skills that we can apply when we graduate, which I think sets UWM apart from other translation programs in the country.” Bilic hopes to continue the internship over the next few years to transcribe and translate the complete collection. By Amanda Neibauer, University Relations College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 13
From Wisconsin to Washington, alum aids co If you follow Congresswoman Gwen Moore’s social media, you have Emma Rappaport to thank for some of those Tweets. Rappaport graduated from UWM in 2018 after majoring in journalism with a focus on advertising and public relations. Today, she’s a press intern in the Congresswoman’s office, drafting press releases, newsletters, and social media posts to help spread Moore’s legislative ideas and messages. Rappaport spoke about her internship and her decision to jump into politics at an especially fraught time in the Capitol. Let’s start with a bit about you – what drew you to public relations? I originally went to UWM for teaching because I like learning and being
able to share my knowledge. While I realized that wasn’t the path for me, I always knew that I had a strength for writing. I found JAMS (Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies) through a friend of mine in one of my gen eds. As I got further along and took more JAMS classes, I realized I liked creating content, and especially copy for advertising. How did you end up interning in Washington, D.C.? I’m actually working remotely right now, so I’m remotely in D.C. I’m on Eastern Time for work, but I’m actually still in Wisconsin. Pretty much any Democrat from Wisconsin that worked in Congress, I just went and applied for their general (internships), as well as some more political-based nonprofits. I applied to the National Organization for Women, the DNC, and the ACLU. I ended up
hearing back from Congresswoman Gwen Moore – full circle back to Milwaukee! – and they referred me back to their press secretary. I’m from Milwaukee. Just having those Milwaukee ties and having a bit of a journalism background (really helped). I interviewed with the press secretary and they liked what I had to say and what I had done in the past, and now I’m here! This seems like an interesting time to get into politics, what with a tense situation in Washington after the 2020 election and the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. What made you decide to jump in now? I found out I had the internship at the beginning of December. I started working when the new administration started. On Jan. 6, that was in the in-between period where I hadn’t started yet, but I knew everything that was happening. It took me aback. Just having a connection with that gave me a bit of a different perspective on events. I knew I wanted to get into politics now after the past four years and after everything that transpired in 2020. With my personal beliefs … and knowing that I would work with (Gwen Moore) in the Progressive caucus who has strong values and ties to the community and being involved with the action – that’s what draws me to politics. As a press intern, what do you do?
Journalism, advertising, and media studies alum Emma Rappoport graduated in 2018. Photo courtesy of Emma Rappaport. 14 • IN FOCUS • March, 2021
I work under the press secretary in Gwen Moore’s office. The press secretary is the head of all of the communication. Daily, I’ll draft social media content to send to her. Depending on what’s going on and how the news flow changes,
onversation with Congressional internship that impacts what is posted. She’ll edit posts and post it to the Representative’s social media. I’ll draft certain press releases or newsletters, or create graphics. I created a graphic for Black History month, when Gwen Moore proposed legislation to honor the 6888th Battalion, which was an all-female, all-black battalion in World War II. They came to Europe facing a backlog of two years’ worth of postal work, and they (cleared it) in six months. So, I stay on top of legislation to know what to talk about. There are a few things with an omnibus, a set of a bills regarding maternal health and rights of mothers. There’s a lot going on with the COVID relief bill and all of those markups. My job is basically getting bits and bobs from the press secretary or other legislative assistants and helping compile information to share with constituents.
This sounds like the content generation you did at UWM. I will say that’s one thing I loved about the JAMS department, is that it was set up like a work environment. There was so much that I was able to take with me to multiple jobs. Was it cool seeing your words out on social media? Yes! It was super exciting to see my words out there, and the fact that I was able to capture (Moore’s) voice was really rewarding. Back at the end of January, for Holocaust Remembrance Day, that Tweet was my first one that was published verbatim, without edits. Her post regarding the beginning of Black History Month was written by me and only had minor edits. She had a virtual briefing for the Violence Against Women Act, and there was a graphic I designed for that.
Your name isn’t attached, but your words are helping inform the national conversation! That’s exciting too. Being from Milwaukee, Gwen Moore was a household name growing up. Being able to be part of that bridge to connect, especially with social media being a digital archive, and knowing that I contributed to that, is pretty cool. What do you want to do with this experience? I definitely love the political world and would love to continue on this route. I’ve always had a passion for climate change and the climate crisis and conservation. I’d love to steer my path that way. I’d love to stay in the news and be a voice for these important issues. By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science
That seems like a huge job with a lot of moving parts. How do you keep on top of it? One thing that I took from UWM, my professors had us use TweetDeck a lot. I use it to keep track of what other officials are saying, whether it be in the House or the Senate or the state. I keep up with state and local news as well as national news. I have a few news apps on my phone that will notify me. I check that in the morning to see what other people are talking about to draft things. (I write) commentary in regards to the impeachment trials, or COVID relief, or the Wisconsin State Assembly, and things like that.
Rappaport is a remote intern for Congresswoman Gwen Moore’s press office.
College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 15
March 2021
Upcoming Events Sun
Mon 1
March 2 The Sidewalk School with Felicia Rangel-Samponaro (founder and director) (Virtual Event). 4:30 p.m. via Zoom. The Sidewalk School provides education to migrant children displaced at the U.S.-Mexico border. Sponsored by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) and the Institute of World Affairs/Center for International Education (CIE). Register at https://bit.ly/3b4mJqt.
March 3 Imagining a Society that is a Bridge to All (Virtual Event). 3 p.m. via Zoom. A talk with Edafe, executive director of the RDJ Refugee Shelter in Harlem. Join the meeting at https://bit.ly/3bPKWjo.
March 4 Neuroscience Seminar: Parkinson’s Disease Genetics in Latinos: what do we know and how do we move forward?. 2 p.m. via Zoom. Dr. Ignacio Mata, Cleveland Clinic. Join the meeting at https://bit.ly/3sB79sq.
March 10 Author Talk with Reyna Grande. 4:30 p.m. via Zoom. Grande is the author of the bestselling memoir, “The Distance Between Us.” Sponsored by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Register in advance at https://bit.ly/2OewrOc.
March 12 Neuroscience Seminar: Connecting the dotsDrosophila models of aging and gene-environment interactions relevant to Parkinson’s disease. 2 p.m. via Zoom. Hakeem Lawal, Department of Biological Sciences, Delaware State University. Join the meeting at https://bit.ly/37WnWhL. Planetarium Show: Northern Lights. 7 p.m. via YouTube. Experience the northern lights at this FREE event. Recommended for ages 5 and up. Register at https://uwm.universitytickets.com/?cid=195.
March 13 Planetarium Show: Northern Lights. 2 p.m. via YouTube. Experience the northern lights at this FREE event. Recommended for ages 5 and up. Register at https://uwm.universitytickets.com/?cid=195.
16 • IN FOCUS • March, 2021
Tue
2
Wed 3
Thu
Fri
4
Sat
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
March 17 Women’s and Gender Studies Brown Bag: Feminist Pedagogy in Action – Creating & Facilitating the Personal Archive Assignment (Virtual). Noon. via Microsoft Teams. Krista Grensavitch and Abby Nye, UWM. Join the meeting at https://bit.ly/3bRhiuf.
March 19 Neuroscience Seminar: Disruption of cerebellar postnatal development precedes neurodegeneration of Purkinje cells in a mouse model of Niemann-Pick Type C disease. 2 p.m. via Zoom. Ileana Soto-Reyes, Rowan University. Join the meeting at https://bit. ly/3dZxfkD. Planetarium Show: Asian Celebrations. 2 p.m. via YouTube. Explore Asian celestial celebrations with special guest Dr. Ahmad Hosseinizadeh of Iran. This event is FREE. Register at https://uwm.universitytickets. com/?cid=195.
March 24 Planetarium Show: Lunar Light. 7 p.m. via YouTube. Explore lunar topics ranging from eclipses, phases, cultural connections, and the next chapter in our exploration of the Moon. Recommended for ages 5 and up. Register at https://uwm.universitytickets. com/?cid=195.
March 28 Planetarium Show: Lunar Light. 2 p.m. via YouTube. Explore lunar topics ranging from eclipses, phases, cultural connections, and the next chapter in our exploration of the Moon. Recommended for ages 5 and up. Register at https://uwm.universitytickets. com/?cid=195.
People in Print Sarah Vanderhaagen (Communication). 2021. “A grand sisterhood”: Black American women speakers at the 1893 World’s Congress of Representative Women. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 107(1). Online. https://bit.ly/3qoRwn8
Ivonete Silva Lopes and Gladys Mitchell-Walthour (African and African Diaspora Studies). 2020. “Return to your countries” parliamentarians of color: Trump, racism and the repercussion in the black media of the USA. Federal University of Rio de Janeiro School of Communication Journal, 23(3). https://bit.ly/301G6di
Gladys Mitchell-Walthour (African and African Diaspora Studies) and Fernanda Barros dos Santos. 2021. Afro-descendant women Bolsa Familia and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and women, infants, and children beneficiaries’ perceptions of skin color and class discrimination in Brazil and the United States. Cultural Dynamics, 33. Richard Grusin (English) and Jocelyn SzczepaniakGillece (Film Studies), eds. 2021. Ends of Cinema. University of Minnesota Press. https://bit.ly/3bblrZp John T. Gagnon and Maria Novotny (English). 2020. Revisiting research as care: A call to decolonize the narratives of trauma. Rhetoric Review, 39(4). https://bit.ly/2OdHhUB
Video Story Meet Africology Now, one of UWM’s 200+ student organizations. Africology Now is an academicbased organization that helps students explore various topics within the African diaspora. https://youtu.be/puE8wuVU2V4
Throughout the spring semester, the College of Letters & Science will host welcome events for new freshmen starting college in Fall 2021. Contact let-sci@uwm.edu if you haven’t received your invitation. In March, these majors will hold hosted events: March 4 @ 2:15 pm African and African Diaspora Studies March 4 @ 2:15 pm Classics and Philosophy March 4 @ 4:15 pm Math, Actuarial Science, and Data Science March 11 @ 2:15 pm Economics March 11 @ 2:15 pm Conservation and Environmental Science and Geography
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 where volunteers across Milwaukee donate their time to help with neighborhood clean-ups or winterizing the homes of local older adults who need assistance. You can sign up as an individual or as part of a team. Individuals will be grouped as a team before being sent out to do service.
March 19 @12:15 pm Political Science
The event runs from 9 a.m. until approximately 1 p.m. (depending on how quickly you finish your volunteer project). Questions? Email zgarrity@uwm. edu.
March 19 @ 2:15 pm Biological Sciences
Sign up: https://bit.ly/3r63eDk.
March 11 @ 4:15 pm Communication March 19 @12:15 pm International and Global Studies
March 25 @ 2:15 pm Art History March 25 @ 2:15 pm Sociology March 25 @ 2:15 pm Psychology March 30 @ 4:15 pm Pre-healthcare
Date: Saturday, April 17 Time: 9 a.m.-1 p.m. College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 17
In the Media and Around the Community Ingrid Jordt (Anthropology) was a virtual panel member in a discussion about the future of Myanmar after a military coup. The talk was part of a series of free lectures in South Bend, Indiana.
There’s a lot of money riding on accurate weather forecasts. Paul Roebber and Clark Evans (both Atmospheric Science) explained how forecasting impacts the economy on WUWM Radio.
William Holahan (emeritus Economics) has an idea to help the economy and to improve the lives of Wisconsinites: Invest in the state’s ailing infrastructure. He expressed his views in a piece published in The Cap Times.
At a town hall held in Milwaukee by President Joe Biden, Joel Berkowitz (Jewish Studies) asked the commander in chief how the nation should address and combat the threat of white supremacist groups like the Proud Boys. TMJ4 and WISN 12 covered the event.
Cinematic spaces have long been associated with danger and anxiety, Jocelyn SzczepaniakGillece (Film Studies) said at a roundtable titled “1920/2020,” hosted by the Carsey-Wolf Center, an institute of media studies at the University of California-Santa Barbara. She also discussed how theater owners reacted to passage of Prohibition in a University of Wisconsin-Madison humanities lecture in February.
In February, President Joe Biden received a policy paper entitled, “Recommendations on Brazil to President Biden and the New Administration.” As the national cocoordinator of the US Network for Democracy in Brazil and as a Washington Brazil Office Advisory Board member, Gladys Mitchell-Walthour (African and African Diaspora Studies) was one of the policy experts who co-authored the paper, the BBC reported. More women than ever were elected to Wisconsin’s legislature this session, but they still only make up one third of the seats, Kathy Dolan (Political Science) observed in The Badger Herald. Coffee lover and graduate student Jennifer Ulbricht (Geosciences) was profiled in the Kenosha News for opening her East View Coffee Company in December. Ulbricht sells bulk coffee beans imported from countries around the world. A. Aneesh (Sociology) appeared in a featured interview in the Italian magazine Changes.
18 • IN FOCUS • March, 2021
The Door County Pulse profiled Alessandra Simmons (’20, PhD English) and featured her poetry in February.
Joel Berkowitz
Bettina Arnold and PhD student Joshua Driscoll (both Anthropology) published articles in Archäologie in Deutschland in a special series of articles focused on the archaeology of ancient alcohol. Meet alum Sherwin Hughes (’00, BA Sociology), the morning host of Milwaukee’s new Black radio station, 101.7 The Truth, which launched in January. Hughes discussed growing up in Milwaukee in an interview for Urban Milwaukee. If winter blues are getting you down, you’re not alone. Christine Larson (Psychology) addressed seasonal depression in an article published in the Milton Courier. A hundred years ago, the nation was in the grip of another pandemic - the 1918 Spanish flu devasted the world. Chris Cantwell (History) and his students created a podcast exploring the pandemics of then and now, reported WISN 12 News. Melinda Brennan (Women’s & Gender Studies) will present a lecture titled, “Intersectionality at the Crossroads of Gender and Race: Material Support Across Difference” for Edinboro University’s Women’s History Month programming. People might be more familiar with UW-Madison’s mascot Bucky than actual badgers, but Emily Latch (Biological Sciences) shed some light on this interesting animal in an article published on HowStuffWorks.com.
Laurels and Accolades Elisabetta Cova (Classics) was appointed the Vice President for Wisconsin for the Classical Association of the Middle West and South State. CAMWS is an academic organization for Classics teachers, undergraduates, and graduate students. Kimberly Blaeser (English and American Indian Studies) saw her poetry included in four recent publications, including, “No More Can Fit Into Evening: An Anthology of Diverse Voices,” “In Other Words: Poems by Wisconsin Poets in English and Chinese,” “Through This Door: Wisconsin in Poems,” and “Yellow Medicine Review: Women’s Wisdom, Women’s Strength.” Brenda Cárdenas (English) and Margaret Noodin Kimberly Blaeser (English and American Indian Studies) also have poems included in “Through This Door: Wisconsin in Poems.” Margaret Noodin (English and American Indian Studies) is the coauthor of a new book, “Enduring Critical Poses: The Legacy and Life of Anishinaabe Literature and Letters.” Noodin also penned a chapter for the book focusing on Anishinaabe author Jim Northrup, whose manuscripts and ephemera are part of the UWM Archive Collection. David Pacifico (Art History) co-edited a book on Peruvian architecture titled, Ancient Households on the North Coast of Peru. One of the book chapters covers his research on social hierarchies in the ancient city of El Purgatorio and another focuses on his research into ancient households in that region.
alida cardós whaley (Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies) is among the recipients of Milwaukee Magazine’s inaugural Unity Awards, meant to recognize individuals who are working towards equity and justice within the Milwaukee community. whaley has founded or been involved with several efforts to support and uplift alida cardós whaley (photo by Andy indigenous, black, and brown Lira, A.L.L. Creative Studio) communities within the city. Read more about their award in the UWM Report. Peter Blewett’s (English) poem, “The Butcher,” originally published in Poetry East (no. 31), was selected for inclusion in Poetry East’s 100th issue, “The Bliss of Reading.” Blewett’s poem is one of 100 poems selected from the first 99 issues of Poetry East. PhD student Hamideh Moayyed (Urban Studies) was declared the 2020 Damon Anderson Memorial Scholarship winner by the Wisconsin Land Information Association. The award supports students working toward a degree related to land information, such as geographic information systems, geography, or urban planning. The scholarship comes with a one-year student membership to the WLIA. Moayyed plans to graduate this summer and hopes to work as a transportation planner. Woonsup Choi (Geography) received the Outstanding Community Service Award from the Korean-American Association for Geospatial and Environmental Sciences (KAGES). KAGES is a nonprofit organization supporting Korean-American students, scientists, and other professionals in the geospatial-technical and environmental sciences fields.
Passings Edoardo A. Lebano, 86, of Bloomington, passed away Saturday, Nov. 28, 2020 at his home. A professor emeritus of Italian at Indiana University and a naturalized American citizen, Dr Lebano was born in Palmanova (Udine), Italy. After his marriage to Mary Vangeli of Washington, D.C., in 1967, he came to America where he earned his PhD in Romance Languages at the Catholic University of America. He taught Italian at a Foreign Service Institute, the U.S. State Department, University of Virginia, UW-Milwaukee, and at Indiana University from 1971-2000, the year of his retirement.
Dr. Lebanno authored many scholarly publications and conducted national surveys of the teaching of Italian in the United States, published both in this country and in Italy. Professor Lebano is a member of several professional associations, as well as NIAF. He was lectured widely in Italy and the United States. He has been the recipient of several teaching awards, and in 1988 President Francesco Cossiga of Italy has conferred upon him the title of Cavalier della Republica Italiana for Cultural Merit. A full obituary is available at https://bit.ly/3dWgvLe. College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 19
Alumni Accomplishments Dennis Kois (’95, BA Committee Interdisciplinary Major) was named the executive director of the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin. The Observatory is hailed as the birthplace of modern astrophysics and is home to the world’s largest refracting telescope. Kois brings a wealth of leadership experience to the position, most recently as the executive director of the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, New York. https://bit.ly/3oSjZAb Shellie Russell-Skerski (’85, BS Biological Sciences) joined Samaritan Health Center – Newport in Oregon in February. Russell-Skerski is a pediatrician and will be seeing patients ranging from birth-18 years old. She attended medical school at the Medical College of Wisconsin and completed her residency at University of Texas Health Center at Houston. https://bit.ly/3a0aPx8 Darian Dixon (’15, BS Geosciences) is making his mark a world away. Dixon is a part of the NASA crew overseeing the rover Perseverance which recently landed on the surface of the planet Mars. He leads the team that operates Perseverance’s cameras which scan the Martian surface. https://bit.ly/2ZJdoho Lindsey (Shreves) Peterson (’18, Masters of Public Administration) began her new role as the village administrator/clerk/treasurer for the Village of Darien in Walworth County, Wisconsin, on March 1. She was previously a senior budget and management analyst for Milwaukee County. https://bit.ly/2P8hQnP
