College of Letters & Science | University of Wisconsin-Madison Annual Review, 2016-17
STRENGTH IN NUMBERS UW-Madison is at the forefront in closing the gender gap in math.
COLLEGE OF LETTERS & SCIENCE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN–MADISON
It will take more than a single campus initiative to move us . It’s going to take everyone and everything — an ongoing, endless string of nexts, and firsts, and accomplishments, and incredible discoveries that serve people everywhere. Find out more about the L&S Career Initiative and other efforts to help students move forward.
Explore our limitless potential at allwaysforward.org/initiative/ career-initiative/
L&S ANNUAL REVIEW College of Letters & Science University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2016-2017
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EDITORIAL STAFF Director of Communications: Mary Ellen Gabriel Writer: Katie Vaughn Design & Photography: Sarah Morton
LETTERS & SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION John Karl Scholz, Dean & Nellie June Gray Professor of Economics Cal Bergman, Associate Dean for Student Academic Affairs Greg Downey, Associate Dean for Social Sciences Anne Gunther, Associate Dean for Budget–Finance, Planning and Analysis Elaine Klein, Assistant Dean for Academic Planning James Montgomery, Associate Dean for Fiscal Initiatives ancy Westphal-Johnson, Senior Associate Dean for N Administration and Undergraduate Education Eric Wilcots, Associate Dean for the Natural Sciences Susan Zaeske, Associate Dean for Arts and Humanities UW-Madison College of Letters & Science Room 405 South Hall 1055 Bascom Mall Madison, WI 53706 To make a gift, please visit: allwaysforward.org/schools-colleges/ls/ We welcome your comments and story ideas for future issues: info@ls.wisc.edu ©2017 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
ON THE COVER: Mathematics and philosophy major Hannah DeBrine is one of several female math scholars finding strength in numbers at UW-Madison. Read more starting on page 12. (Photo by Sarah Morton)
4 Dean's Note 6 Moments & Mentions 10 The Internship Advantage 12 Strength in Numbers 16 The Shakesconsin Idea
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Research & Discovery
Alumni & Friends
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39 Investing in Students 41 The Sweet Spot: Gail Ambrosius 42 Josh Sapan: From Mad Town to Mad Men 43 Alumni Achievements 44 All Ways Forward 45 L&S Board of Visitors 46 The Last Word
Features
Hunting Dark Matter Regeneration Sensation Total Recall Digitizing the Middle Ages
The Student Experience
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The Wisconsin Idea
27 CAE: A System of Support 30 URS: Becoming a Thinker 32 Artistic Catalyst
Rock On! Issues of Ethics Political Newsmaker Harvesting Data A Student of the World
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DEAN’S NOTE In 2013, we launched the Letters & Science Career Initiative, an effort funded entirely through private donations. The goal: to radically transform career services by giving liberal arts students the resources to explore, plan and act strategically early in their college careers. The results have drawn other great public research universities to our campus to see how it’s done. Through the L&S Career Initiative, we aim to lead the nation in career services among public universities.
We knew that students and their parents were hearing that the liberal arts was a ‘luxury,’ and that they’d be better off studying fields where the job market is ‘hot’ right now. But we also knew that wasn’t what employers were saying.
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L&S Annual Review 2016-2017
A recent survey conducted by the Association of American Colleges and Universities found that two-thirds of those employers wanted college graduates with broad knowledge in the liberal arts, expert knowledge in their specific field and an electronic portfolio. We see this play out every year. Hundreds of employers attend our career fairs and heavily recruit our liberal arts graduates from across a wide range of majors.
The biggest predictors of successful job placement: • Actual work experience (such as through an internship) • Ability to articulate skills • Flexibility, problem-solving and critical thinking on the job The L&S Career Initiative prepares students for all three, plus mobilizes our formidable alumni to act as mentors and guides.
As an L&S alum, you are invited to support the L&S Career Initiative: • Support our students through a gift to the Career Initiative: allwaysforward.org/initiative/career-initiative/ • Become an alumni mentor: Contact Director of Career Advising and Communities Andrea Lowe at andrea.lowe@wisc.edu • Join the Badger Bridge network, where alumni and students can interact: badgerbridge.com We are committed to launching our students higher, sooner. With your help, they can soar.
On, Wisconsin! – Dean John Karl Scholz
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MOMENTS & MENTIONS TOP TEACHERS
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L&S faculty received nine of the dozen 2017 Distinguished Teaching Awards, an honor that has been awarded since 1953 to recognize the university’s best educators. Congratulations to this year’s winners: Sandra Adell (1), Professor of Afro-American Studies, Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award Andrea Arpaci-Dusseau (2), Professor of Computer Sciences, Van Hise Outreach Award Cindy I-Fen Cheng (3), Associate Professor of History, Inclusive Excellence Award Thomas DuBois (4), Professor of German, Nordic and Slavic Languages, Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award Ralph Grunewald (5), Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Folklore Studies and the Center for Law, Society and Justice, William H. Kiekhofer Award Daniel Kapust (6), Associate Professor of Political Science, Class of 1955 Teaching Excellence Award Jordan Schmidt (7), Associate Professor of Chemistry, Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award Claire Wendland (8), Professor of Anthropology, Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award Stephen Young (9), Assistant Professor of Geography, Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award
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$100 million The amount of new gifts the university has received to date through the Nicholas Match. Nancy Nicholas and the late Albert “Ab” Nicholas gave an incredible $50 million donation, asking alumni and friends to join them in supporting UW-Madison students. These gifts will be invested in the UW Foundation’s endowment, and once fully funded, will generate about $4.5 million in annual scholarships to recruit and retain outstanding students.
The number of L&S students who have graduated with a Digital Studies Certificate since it began being offered in fall 2012. The 15-credit program allows undergraduates to choose from more than 50 courses from a wide range of departments to create their own individualized digital curriculum.
L&S Annual Review 2016-2017
‘K’ IS FOR KINDNESS If it were up to Elmo, the world would be a kinder place — down to the very trash can Oscar the Grouch calls home. The beloved children's show Sesame Street is emphasizing kindness this season with the help of the Center for Healthy Minds, an L&S research center that studies the science of well-being and how it can be nurtured.
embrace that perspective, divisions become more permeable and less formidable as obstacles.”
“The kind of interventions and practices we’re studying have a great deal of relevance and promise for the types of problems we’re facing today in our culture,” says Richard Davidson, founder of the center and the William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry. “These strategies help people to recognize that we’re all the same — we all share a desire to be happy and free of suffering, and when we
“Providing parents and teachers the tools and resources they need to help instill kindness and empathy in their children is at the core of Sesame’s mission,” says Jeffrey Dunn, CEO of Sesame Workshop. “We want to engage in a national conversation about kindness.”
The center's Kindness Curriculum encourages children to be aware of both themselves and the world around them — work that aligns with Sesame Street’s goals.
– Marianne Spoon
HONORING RESEARCH Greg Nemet and Gregg Mitman are among just 35 distinguished scholars, journalists and authors named 2017 Andrew Carnegie Fellows by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The program supports scholars in the social sciences and humanities as they research challenges to democracy and international order. For Nemet, a professor in the La Follette School of Public Affairs, the fellowship will help fund a project to examine how solar energy has become inexpensive. Mitman, the Vilas Research and William Coleman Professor of History of Science, Medical History and Environmental Studies, intends to use his fellowship to complete a book exploring how the history of corporate land acquisitions has shaped the nation of Liberia. – Kelly April Tyrrell
The pleasure I received in seeing people’s views about Islam being transformed, in an age when Muslims are not seen in a very positive light, is an experience that has shaped me forever. –M ishal Shah, an international studies major from Lahore, Pakistan, who participated in a First-Year Interest Group focused on Jerusalem.
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CREATIVE FORCE Deshawn McKinney is a man with a plan. Kind of. “My path in college has just been letting the wind carry me wherever it does and I’ll land somewhere,” says the creative writing major. “That’s how it kind of feels. I’m at a point now where I trust that process and I trust that path.” So far, letting the wind carry him has worked pretty well. He has been named a winner of the Marshall Scholarship, a prestigious award given to up to 40 scholars each year to study at the graduate level at a UK institution in any field of study. Last November, he was named a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship. McKinney’s creative work centers on issues of identity and the intersectionality of race, class and gender. He’s also been an active supporter of Black Lives Matter and has worked on improving campus climate. He knows he wants a career in public service, helping others. What exactly does that look like? He’s still figuring it out. What he does know is that looking for opportunities and taking chances has worked well for him. – Käri Knutson
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A BIOCORE BIRTHDAY Back in 1967, the Biology Core Curriculum program formed to foster a collaborative learning community for a select cohort of young scientists. For the past 50 years, the integrated four-semester biology honors program has taken biological concepts to higher levels of thinking, preparing students for exciting research and work in the biological sciences.
I’ve spent years amassing this research. It’s really nice to be asked about it. – Susan Brantly. The Scandinavian Studies professor provided expertise for A Doll’s House, Part 2, a new Tony Award-winning Broadway play that continues Ibsen's cliff-hanging storyline from 1879.
L&S Annual Review 2016-2017
MOMENTS & MENTIONS
THE POWER OF PEERS It’s no secret on campus that introductory computer science courses can be quite challenging. So a new tutoring lab within the Department of Computer Sciences is providing students with the extra help they may need to succeed. The Computer Sciences Learning Center, which opened in 2016, is run by 15 tutors and supported by funds from a generous gift that Sheldon and Marianne Lubar of Milwaukee gave the department in 2015. Students can drop in for asneeded, peer-to-peer help. Michael Cook says students often speak more freely with tutors like him than with their course instructors. “There is a different dynamic between
a student and a tutor,” he says. “[Students] are aware that we don’t control grades, and [they] are much more open when asking questions.” Tutoring services also help students understand how they’re doing relative to peers, which is important, says faculty associate Laura Hobbes LeGault. “Students may feel embarrassed about needing help, and then the tutor will say, ‘Oh, yeah, I’ve had that question 12 times already.’ So students realize that the fact they’re having trouble is not a personal reflection on them. Getting help gives them a reality check in a positive way.” – Jennifer A. Smith
THE L&S LENS
Snapshots of Letters & Science life, as filtered through Instagram.
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THE INTERNSHIP ADVANTAGE L&S students find experience in the working world a powerful launchpad to successful careers. By any account, Grace Corry has an impressive resume. She’s a triple major in Political Science, International Studies and French. She’s spent hours volunteering, and she’s committed to a career that prompts positive change. Yet there’s something else that sets the student from Shorewood, Wisconsin, apart from the crowd: her internships. It’s hard to overstate the importance of internships. They let students test out career paths, gain valuable skills and make connections in the field. This experience matters. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, a full 95 percent of employers consider it a factor in hiring decisions. Grace Corry in the American Family Insurance Dreambank office in Madison. (Sarah Morton)
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What’s more, the organization also reports that slightly more than half of internships become full-time jobs, meaning a cool summer gig could very well become that first step on the career
path after graduation. But as Corry can tell you, it takes some work to get there. In the fall of her junior year, Corry began researching internship opportunities. Inspired by her parents and older sister who work in the nonprofit sector, she set her sights on positions with community involvement in the description. “I’ve seen how fulfilling it can be to give back in your job,” she says. An internship within American Family Insurance’s Community Investment Department piqued Corry’s interest. She interviewed in November, started in late May and decided to stay a full year. American Family is a sponsor of the L&S Career Initiative, which aims to prepare liberal arts students for the future by helping them identify their interests and skills, network, connect with alumni and land internships.
L&S Annual Review 2016-2017
It’s training you to go out into the real world. Seeing actual results of your work in a company or in the community, that’s really cool. – Grace Corry As one of roughly 70 interns at American Family, Corry participated in lunch-and-learn sessions and got to help her department partner with United Way of Dane County on a major conference. While Corry understands that students already pack a lot into their schedules, she says they would be wise to make time for an internship. “It’s training you to go out into the real world,” she says. “Seeing actual results of your work in a company or in the community, that’s really cool.”
KEY SPONSORS The College of Letters & Science aims to be the go-to source for top talent acquisition. Thank you to the following employers who have partnered with the college on the L&S Career Initiative:
Altria American Family Insurance Epic Systems Corporation Cintas Covance Enterprise Qualtrics
– Katie Vaughn
L&S BADGER INTERNSHIP PROGRAM Recognizing the importance of internships in students’ career preparation, the college recently launched the L&S Badger Internship Program. It is a holistic program that supports the student’s entire internship experience: identifying opportunities, applying and interviewing, scholarships, support during the internship and reflection about the experience. The program is open to all L&S students.
GET INVOLVED WITH INTERNSHIPS Help L&S diversify and grow our internship opportunities. Together we can increase the number of Badgers working for your organization. Visit careers.ls.wisc.edu to learn more.
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STRENGTH IN NUMBERS More female mathematicians teach, mentor and conduct research at UW-Madison than at nearly any other major research university in the country. They’re not only helping to change the face of math here and now, but making it easier for future generations of women to pursue the path. By Katie Vaughn
Most women working in math today are used to being the “only” one. The only girl who ignored the teacher who said boys are better at math. The only girl on the high school math competition team. The only female student in advanced college math courses. The only woman in her graduate school cohort, or even among fellow professors at a university. So the fact that the UW-Madison Department of Mathematics has nine female faculty members — with two more starting this fall — is significant. The number is the largest in the department’s history. And the UW-Madison math department now has one of the highest proportions of women among all major research universities across the country. Math department chair and professor Gloria Mari-Beffa teaching Math 519: Ordinary Differential Equations. (Sarah Morton)
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While they’re still a relatively small percentage of the math department faculty, working alongside 39 male professors, their presence is felt throughout Van Vleck Hall. And don’t underestimate their power in paving the way for up-and-coming female mathematicians.
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happen to be female. We have recruited an extraordinarily strong group of junior faculty.” The diversity of a department can make a difference in hiring. Some newer faculty cite the number of women working here, and holding positions of leadership, as deciding factors in their acceptance of positions. “This clearly indicates the inclusive climate in the department,” says Wang. “And the senior female faculty are great role models for young ones.”
Assistant professor Lu Wang (left) works with master’s degree student Siting Liu. (Sarah Morton)
Adding Up Most public research universities have just two or three women in their math departments. That’s where UW-Madison’s average used to hover. But when Leslie Smith became the first female department chair in 2005, she made a concerted effort to make the hiring process more inclusive. “I am proud of the fact that the department was successful in hiring for academic excellence and increasing diversity at the same time,” she says. In 2011, Melanie Matchett Wood and Tullia Dymarz joined the ranks of Smith, Julie Mitchell, Autumn Kent and current department chair Gloria Mari-Beffa. Betsy Stovall came aboard the next year, followed by Lu Wang and Qin Li in 2015. Mariya Soskova starts this semester. The university is also utilizing the Clare Boothe Luce Program, which is named after the first woman elected to Congress from Connecticut and awards grants to universities to support students and professors and encourage women in math, science and engineering. The math department used it for the first time to hire Mihaela Ifrim, who also begins this fall. “Things are changing fast,” says Mari-Beffa. “Every season now, the faculty bring first-rate candidates to the table — some of whom
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Kent, meanwhile, is encouraged by the sense of support that’s been building as the department’s demographics shift. “The strong female presence adds a layer of insulation against institutional sexism, and gives us strength,” she says. “A woman in the mathematics department at Wisconsin has more freedom to be a strong voice than she would at many other institutions.” While Stovall wasn’t aware of the number of female faculty when she joined the department, she appreciates having women as professional peers. But she’s most inspired by the work of her colleagues. “We have hired good mathematicians,” she says. “Some of these are women. Our department wouldn’t be as strong had we not hired these people.” As Eric Wilcots, associate dean for the natural, physical sciences and mathematical sciences, points out, seeking excellent female and male faculty fosters intellectual diversity and improves the department’s standing as a math powerhouse — now ranked 12th in the nation. “Strength begets strength,” he says. “When you’re only sampling half of the population, you’re really missing out on brain power.”
Critical Numbers Research has shown that parents, teachers, even toys play a role in discouraging girls from studying math. This creates a pipeline issue that results in fewer women in undergraduate and graduate math programs, and even fewer in interesting, challenging and often lucrative careers in math and science.
L&S Annual Review 2016-2017
According to the National Girls Collaborative Project, an organization that encourages girls to pursue careers in science and math, women earn 57.3 percent of bachelor’s degrees in general, but just 43.1 percent of the degrees in mathematics. And while women make up half of the country’s college-educated workforce, they hold only a fourth of the jobs in computer and mathematical sciences. A key problem along the way is the notion of talent, the fantasy that for some people, math is effortless and that if you have to work at it, you’re simply not a “math person.” “Confusion doesn’t mean you’re bad at math,” says Mari-Beffa, adding that not understanding something in math pushes her to explore and solve it. She wouldn’t make discoveries without some uncertainty at the outset.
Modelling Change When Anne Ulrich came to UW-Madison, she didn’t think she was good enough at math to pursue it as a career. But an honors course taught by Dymarz changed her mind. “That was the one that inspired me, the one that made me want to go to class,” says Ulrich, now a math and computer science double major. “I realized that math is where I was called to be.” Professor Matchett Wood never had a female math professor. But as the first high school girl to compete on Team U.S.A. in the International Math Olympiad, she understands the importance of setting an example to younger generations. She has coached subsequent competitors and is cognizant of what it means to stand in front of a lecture hall. “It’s really helpful to see people who look like you,” she says. For female math students at UW-Madison, that's becoming more common. “Half of my math professors have been women,” says Hannah DeBrine, a math and philosophy double major. “They’ve been really important in normalizing it, in showing that it’s an option.”
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THE WOMEN OF UW-MADISON MATH Tullia Dymarz
geometric group theory
Mihaela Ifrim
mathematical analysis and partial differential equations
Autumn Kent
geometry and topology
Qin Li
applied math
Gloria Mari-Beffa differential geometry
Julie Mitchell
computational mathematics
Leslie Smith applied math
Mariya Soskova computability theory
Betsy Stovall analysis
Lu Wang
geometric analysis
Melanie Matchett Wood number theory
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THE SHAKESCONSIN IDEA
A yearlong focus on Shakespeare saw L&S exploring the Bard’s impact across campus and beyond. By Katie Vaughn When First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare made a stop last fall at the Chazen Museum of Art as part of its tour of all 50 states, the public had a rare chance to view the first collected edition of William Shakespeare’s plays — the original source for such works as Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar and The Tempest. The book, published in 1623, is displayed opened to a famous passage from Hamlet, and crowds assemble simply for the chance to lay eyes on the Folio and the famous “To be or not to be” quote. What magical combination of words and ideas has made the Bard’s works seemingly immortal for 400 years? Two L&S professors thought this would make a great question for students to explore, especially given the stir created by the First Folio arriving on campus. Joshua Calhoun, an assistant professor of English, and Jonathan Senchyne, an assistant professor in the School of Library and Information Studies and director of the Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture, created Shakespeare and Media, a 100-level English course that examined Shakespeare’s ideas in various forms — from handwritten scrolls and printed books to graphic novels and social media — from when the playwright died in 1616 through 2016.
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L&S Annual Review 2016-2017
Shakespeare and Media was more than a deep dive into the Bard’s plays. The course also explored how his words have been written, printed, performed and retold over four centuries — and why they’ve gained cultural authority and continue to be used in the present day. “One of the overarching ideas is how and why stories get told over time and to what effect,” says Senchyne. “It’s the essential question of the humanities.” Gabby Heytens, a student majoring in communication sciences and disorders, recognized the Bard’s lasting impact. It’s the reason she got interested in Shakespeare in high school and wanted to take this class, along with about 200 other students, many of them non-English majors. “Shakespeare has such timeless themes,” she says. “Romance, war, action, the underdog rising.” Riffing on the public nature of the Folio, the defining assignment of the class was to present something about Shakespeare to an audience outside of class. Zhouyan Chen, an English major and an exchange student from China, created a modern Chinese translation of Romeo and Juliet. She’d seen some translations before, but they’d been in strict poetic verses. She believed a more contemporary take on Shakespeare would appeal to Chinese readers.
A LITERARY STORM For a split second, Krista Claypool’s English class is silent. All eyes are on four girls at the front of the room, frozen in dramatic poses. One is sprawled across a chair, reaching out to classmate lying on the floor, while the final two stand to the left, staring at a map. “It’s Alonso and Antonio — they’re looking for the ship!” a student calls out. “And baby Miranda and Prospero are on their shipwreck.” “Yes!” the girls exclaim as they take their seats. As this exercise at Milwaukee High School of the Arts proved, students are enthusiastically engaged with The Tempest, the selection for the latest edition of Great World Texts in Wisconsin. Organized by the Center for the Humanities and launched in 2005, the program brings together UW-Madison scholars and teachers and students from across the state for a creative and multidisciplinary exploration of a shared work of world literature. This year, 26 schools — large and small; urban, suburban and rural; public, private and charter — participated, making it the largest Great World Texts class to date, with nearly 2,000 students delving into William Shakespeare’s story that begins with an overthrown duke who is exiled on a remote island with his daughter. Continued on page 18.
Opposite: Shakespeare. Engraving by Martin Droeshout, 1623. William Shakespeare's Hamlet in the First Folio, 1623. (Folger Shakespeare Library) Below: Students in Krista Claypool's English class work together to interpret scenes from The Tempest. (Sarah Morton)
“His language, his choice of words, is enchanting,” she says. Senchyne and Calhoun dubbed the project the Shakesconsin Idea, a mashup of Shakespeare and the Wisconsin Idea. “Once Shakespeare or Marie Curie or Galileo had a great idea, how did they make it something that you can hold in your hand and share?” Calhoun asks. “Every student faced that challenge. In our class, they explored how good ideas have been communicated throughout centuries.”
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Continued from page 17.
Many of those students came together at the Great World Texts conference, held in April at Union South and the Discovery Building and featuring an interactive keynote address by novelist Margaret Atwood, whose Hag-Seed is adapted from The Tempest. Great World Texts selections have been drawn from a body of global literature spanning China, Russia, Nigeria, India, Colombia and beyond, and representing time periods ranging from 441 B.C. to 2002. This was the first year the program has focused on an English author. “The Tempest is arguably the most global of Shakespeare’s plays,” says Great World Texts program coordinator Devin Garofalo.
The issues raised in the play allowed teachers from across disciplines to be involved. English, history, art, science and math teachers could all find relevance in The Tempest. The topics also lent themselves to rich discussions — on colonialism, slavery, globalization, human impact on the environment and much more. Garofalo most enjoyed seeing how students grappled with the complex issues presented in the text — specifically the power differentials, and especially because Shakespeare doesn’t reveal where he stands on them. “There’s no consensus on the part of scholars,” she says. “There are many different arguments to be made. Students can contribute a lot to those conversations. They’re by no means exhausted.” – Katie Vaughn
HOLLYWOOD BARD In November, University Opera staged Falstaff, an opera by Guiseppe Verdi that draws upon Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Henry V and The Merry Wives of Windsor. David Ronis, the inaugural Karen K. Bishop Director of University Opera, updated the work to be set in 1930s Hollywood. Shakespeare’s knight who had fallen from grace was recast as a silent film actor who was pushed out of work with the advent of the “talkies.” “Our chief concern was to make sure that the essential story of Falstaff was being told,” says Ronis. “Human nature hasn’t changed in 400 years. The desires and passions that make people tick are essentially the same and we recognize those in ourselves when we see a Shakespeare play.”
Singers Sarah Kendall, Paul Rowe, Jiabao Zhang, Benjamin Schultz, Claire Powling, Talia Engstrom and Jess Kasinski perform scenes from Falstaff during a dress rehearsal. (Sarah Morton)
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L&S Annual Review 2016-2017
RESEARCH & DISCOVERY
It’s a 20-minute elevator ride down to the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota, where the former Homestake gold mine will soon hold the LZ Dark Matter Experiment in its cavernous belly. Most scientists, wedged in shoulder-to-shoulder, don’t mind the slow descent through 4,850 feet of dirt and rock — any faster, and they might pass out, the way researchers do up at SNOLAB (another underground physics lab in Ontario) where every month or so, someone faints on the way down.
UW-Madison scientists join forces with top physicists, engineers and technicians around the world to prove the existence of dark matter. By Maggie Ginsberg
“At first you’re like, oh my gosh, I’m underground, there’s a lot of rock above me,” says assistant professor and astrophysicist Kimberly Palladino, who’s helping head up the team of nine UW-Madison scientists and engineers tapped to work on the LZ experiment, a collaborative U.S. Department of Energy-funded project comprised of more than 200 of the best minds from 31 institutions around the world. “After a week, it’s just where your office is.”
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With the LZ experiment, researchers are competing in a global race to finally “see” dark matter — arguably the most captivating piece of the still-unfolding puzzle of how our universe was formed. Physicists theorize that matter as we know it — walls, floors, your feet on the ground — accounts for only five percent of the total floating around and through us at all times. The other 95 percent is composed of either dark energy or dark matter, thus far only visible by its gravitational effect on what we can see — sort of like the way negative space helps define the shapes in a painting. Einstein first predicted the dark energy phenomenon within his general theory of relativity in 1916, calling it the “cosmological constant.” But he predicated his “constant” on the notion that the universe is static. When he learned the universe was actually moving, Einstein called the cosmological constant the “biggest blunder of my life.” However, Einstein was on to something, and later scientists picked up the thread. Above: Duncan Carlsmith and Kimberly Palladino. (Sarah Morton) Opposite: A northwestern view of the Sanford Lab surface campus in South Dakota. (Matthew Kapust)
In the 1930s, Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky proposed the concept of dark matter to explain a “mystery mass” that had to be helping hold the luminous parts of the universe together. But it wasn’t until the 1970s that American astrophysicist Vera Rubin was credited with confirming dark matter as the impetus for spiral galaxies spinning faster than scientists had previously assumed from their studies of visible stars.
Newer observations have confirmed that this dark matter knitting galaxies and galaxy clusters together cannot be made up of ordinary atoms. All of this, plus the astounding revelation that the overall expansion of the universe is even speeding up, have brought many researchers to double down on efforts to define the enigmatic dual mysteries of dark energy and dark matter they’re certain not only exist, but explain everything. They just have to prove they’re there. “Even physicists don’t know what this stuff is. I’ve never seen it,” laughs physics professor Duncan Carlsmith. And yet, he may devote the rest of his career to trying. Two years ago, Carlsmith switched from particle physics to astrophysics because of this project, which aims to detect dark matter using 10 metric tonnes of liquid xenon in a cylinder about the height of a human body, buried deep beneath the ground so as to avoid interference from cosmic rays and anything radioactive, which is in everything, even fingerprints. That inner cylinder is insulated inside a larger one that keeps the liquid xenon cool, and scientists hope that dark matter particles, whatever they are (theoretically an as-of-yet uncategorized form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particle, or WIMP) will interact with the xenon in a measurable way. Palladino explains it like this: If xenon atoms get hit, some become ionized (releasing an electron) and others excited (forming a molecule with a mate). Then, as they relax, they give off
THE SEARCH CONTINUES Other experiments, including projects run by the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center — IceCube, the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory (HAWC) and Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) — are searching for the signatures of dark matter. In addition, UW-Madison scientists are working at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, searching for evidence that dark matter is produced during high-energy particle collisions. This combination of efforts provides the best opportunity yet for uncovering more about the nature of dark matter, and with it the evolution and structure of our universe.
– Eric Hamilton
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L&S Annual Review 2016-2017
RESEARCH & DISCOVERY
With the LZ experiment, researchers are competing in a global race to finally ‘see’ dark matter — arguably the most captivating piece of the still-unfolding puzzle of how our universe was formed. ultraviolet light. Palladino imagines dark matter like a thermal wind of particles scattering like billiard balls. Though a direct hit is probably rare, hopefully a few xenon atoms will catch a glancing, measurable blow. Palladino worked for three years at Stanford University’s National Accelerator Laboratory on the LUX detector (a predecessor to the LZ detector) before she was recruited by Carlsmith to LZ and UW-Madison. “As an undergraduate, I studied the Cosmic Microwave Background, and I thought, well, they’re just measuring the same thing better and better. I want to do something, you know, crazy,” says Palladino, who moved to Madison in the summer of 2016. “I want to be involved in finding something for the first time.” Carlsmith’s motivation is similar: “This is an outstanding mystery, and we know it’s there,” he says, reflecting that when he was a grad student, the Quark Model, foundational to his particle physics work today, was only a hypothetical “nobody” believed. “When I look back in history and go, you know, what those people were doing, playing around, it changed the world,” says Carlsmith. “I want to be a part of that. I want to contribute.” Dark matter is just mysterious and compelling enough to attract the likes of Carlsmith and
Palladino, as well as an influx of student interest. But a long-term experiment like LZ will likely run at least 15 years in one form or another; the LZ detector itself won’t even finish construction until 2020. Though the Department of Energy refers to this schedule as a “fast track,” for the professors and researchers that are in it for the long haul, it can be disconcerting to think that decades of work may lead to discoveries that unfold beyond their lifetimes. But that’s okay, says Palladino, who was only 10 years old when she first announced to her family that she would be a physicist. “You should question how the world works and be curious about it,” she says. Should the LZ experiment work, the celebration will be thrilling — and short-lived. Findings demand replication on a larger and larger scale, and discoveries only lead to more questions. And, yet, as Carlsmith points out, when you can understand a thing, you can gain control over it, even put it to good use. “We understood light,” he says, pointing out the relatively new phenomenon known as electricity, “and then we had lamps. And lasers. And fiber optic communication systems. It’s through understanding physics that all that became possible.”
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REGENERATION SENSATION Phil Newmark, a developmental biologist who studies the mysteries of how the body regenerates damaged tissue, joins L&S. When Phil Newmark began studying planarians in the mid-1990s, only a handful of labs around the world still used the freshwater flatworms for research. But Newmark’s curiosity led him to a fellowship with a planarian research group at the University of Barcelona, Spain. After that experience, Newmark was hooked. He brought a thermos full of the creatures, collected from a fountain pool in the city, back to the U.S. to form his own colony. The freshwater flatworms are remarkable creatures because they’re capable of regenerating their entire body from scratch. The model organism offers a way to better understand stem cell-driven regeneration processes, an important step in regenerative medicine and the promise of therapies to repair or replace damaged human tissue. “I remember planarians back from the days of my freshman biology class, when I thought they were the coolest things ever,” he says. “Their stem cells respond to various injuries and somehow are told that when a head or tail is missing, make a new head or a new tail. They really are just amazing.” Newmark brought that enthusiasm — and a reputation as an international leader in stem cell biology and regeneration — with him when he joined the Department of Integrative Biology and Morgridge Institute for Research last fall.
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“Our stem cell and regenerative medicine portfolio is one of UW’s strengths, and adding someone of his caliber will help us continue to stay on the front end of innovation in this field,” says Chancellor Rebecca Blank. “The kind of basic research performed by Professor Newmark ... holds enormous promise for treating and preventing a wide range of serious diseases and disorders.” Newmark also is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, part of a prestigious group of about 300 U.S. scientists who are pushing the boundaries of biomedical research. Beyond fundamental questions, Newmark’s work has immediate implications for a tropical disease called schistosomiasis, which is second only to malaria in scope and kills more than 200,000 people per year. It turns out the parasitic worms that cause this disease share a lot of biology with planarians, and Newmark’s lab has identified many new avenues for fighting the parasite. “Schistosomiasis is one of a whole group of neglected diseases that are essentially diseases of poverty,” he says. “Many result from not having access to clean drinking water or clean water in general. The number of people affected by these diseases is really staggering.” – Brian Mattmiller
L&S Annual Review 2016-2017
RESEARCH & DISCOVERY
TOTAL RECALL
Magnetic brain stimulation can bring back stowed memories. It’s clear that your working memory works, or you wouldn’t be able to remember a new phone number long enough to dial it.
The fact that you’re able to bring it back at all in this example proves it’s not gone.”
Describing how it works, however — how the brain determines what to keep in mind, and what to set aside but keep handy for quick access — is a work in progress. Work that may sharpen our theory of the mind and even help people suffering from schizophrenia or depression.
Researchers were also able to bring the seemingly abandoned items back to mind without cueing their subjects. Using transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, to apply a focused electromagnetic field to a precise part of the brain involved in storing the word, they could trigger the sort of brain activity representative of focused attention.
“A lot of mental illness is associated with the inability to choose what to think about,” says Brad Postle, a psychology professor. “What we’re taking are first steps toward looking at the mechanisms that give us control over what we think about.”
Furthermore, if they cued their research subjects to focus on a face, a well-timed pulse of TMS would snap the stowed memory back into attention, and prompt the subjects to incorrectly think that they had been cued to focus on the word.
Postle’s lab is challenging the idea that working memory remembers things through sustained brain activity. They caught brains tucking lessimportant information away somewhere beyond the reach of the tools that typically monitor brain activity — and then they snapped that information back into active attention with magnets.
“We think that memory is there, but not active,” says Postle. – Chris Barncard
Postle’s group conducted a series of experiments in which people were asked to remember two items representing different types of information (they used words, faces and directions of motion) because they’d be tested on their memories. When the researchers gave their subjects a cue as to the type of question coming — a face, for example — the electrical activity and blood flow in the brain associated with the word memory disappeared. But if a second cue came letting the subject know they would now be asked about that word, the brain activity would jump back up to a level indicating it was the focus of attention. “People have always thought neurons would have to keep firing to hold something in memory,” says Postle. “But we’re watching people remember things almost perfectly without showing any of the activity that would come with a neuron firing.
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DIGITIZING THE MIDDLE AGES A digital platform that fosters connections among medieval maps and manuscripts has the potential to unlock secrets of the past — and may just revolutionize how humanities scholarship takes shape in the future. Inside his Helen C. White office, Martin Foys is careening through a thousand years of history on his desktop computer. As he pulls up the Cotton Map — created in the early 11th century and believed to be the earliest detailed English map of the world — he’s plunged into the medieval past.
Above: The Cotton Map. Opposite: Martin Foys and Heather Wacha. (Sarah Morton)
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Here, East, not North, is oriented on top. Words are handwritten in Latin. The landscape is embellished with mountains, jagged rivers and buildings signifying cities. And is that a lion roaming over eastern Asia?
A quick click on a city in southern Europe reveals scholarly transcriptions, translations and links, opening a virtual world of discovery about the place. Foys can also add his own notes and even zip over to other maps that feature this same point of interest. A network of knowledge grows with every keystroke, thanks to a digital environment known as DM, pioneered by Foys. “Suddenly, with DM, you have this resource that connects them all together,” says Foys, whose expertise melds medieval literature
L&S Annual Review 2016-2017
RESEARCH & DISCOVERY and the digital humanities. “It’s an old-school scholarly enterprise but with radical technological advancements.”
Digital Culture, and Heather Wacha, who came to UW-Madison last fall as a post-doctoral fellow in data curation for medieval studies.
The Cotton Map is one of nine early medieval maps of the world from British libraries that Foys and his team are annotating in a project called Virtual Mappa, funded by a $250,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and in partnership with the British Library. When it is published online, it will make scholarship on these cartographic works easily available to researchers and the general public. And Virtual Mappa will showcase the power and potential of the DM platform that Foys has spent years developing — and is now creating a home for here at UW-Madison.
“It’s been one of my priorities to pursue projects that push us to think anew about print and digital texts, not as dueling competitors for our attention,” says Senchyne. “I knew that the CHPDC and DM could come together to pursue these questions by working on old texts in new environments together.”
DM originally stood for Digital Mappaemundi, as mappaemundi are medieval European maps of the world. Foys launched it in the mid-2000s for the study, annotation and linking of medieval maps, which are rich with historical, religious and ethnographic information. Now renamed Digital Max, DM adds meaning and context to the data it connects. But medieval maps aren’t the only materials that can utilize DM. It’s a potent resource for disciplines across the humanities. “Simply put, DM is an online resource in which you can create a collection of digital images and texts and identify moments you want to annotate and link together,” he says. “You can create layers and layers of linked information.”
Mapping Potential UW-Madison has been home to vibrant digital humanities collaborations since 2010, when former English professor Michael Witmore (now the head of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.) first began using data mining and visualizations to explore new meaning in Shakespeare’s work, and convened a working group for “digital inquiry.” When Foys joined the UWMadison English department in 2014, he found enthusiastic colleagues in Jonathan Senchyne, director of the Center for the History of Print and
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While nothing can replace the thrill of holding a piece of parchment from the 11th century in one’s hands, working in DM allows a scholar to search for an item, find details, tag and access related documents, add notes and more. “The scholarly aspect flows much more easily,” Wacha says. It’s a revolutionary increase in pace, a far cry from when scholarship moved ahead slowly through citations and indexes in published articles and books. And the “open-source” model changes things, too. “The traditional model of humanities scholarship is the lone individual in a room cranking away,” Foys says. “Digital humanities has allowed for ease of collaboration.” But humanities scholars can take heart: DM doesn’t require them to do any coding. “We’re bringing the power of digital application and database management to a highly specialized but technically ‘everyday’ user,” Foys says. “What this resource does is it allows anybody — anybody — to use it.” For Senchyne, the DM platform helps reveal what readers and creators of medieval media knew all along — that there was meaning in every symbol, image and word. A map was a historical document, a political statement and more, often with connections to other documents. “What we find, looking at all these layers at once, is that the medieval page was always that layered — always churning under the surface of the page with more information and links out in all directions. A specialist’s trained eye could always see the layering. But bringing the text or map into the DM environment makes those layers
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more readily visible, more present, to students, readers and scholars today.”
Envisioning Opportunities For several months, Wacha, whose two-year post is supported by the Council on Library and Information Resources and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has been completing and editing the more than 2,000 annotations in Virtual Mappa. She marvels at how she can spend hours working on a detail, unraveling a transcription or digging for clues about a specific reference. The work is so engrossing, she doesn’t notice the passing of time. “For me, medieval manuscripts offer an intimate connection to the people who lived then,” she says. She has also begun work on a new project focusing on a series of 14th-century English manor and court rolls. Held in UW Special Collections, they are records of estate transactions and summaries of court cases.
In digitizing the rolls so they’re available for uploading into DM, Wacha is digging into such details as how many crops a tenant was growing for the lord or lady of a manor, or why a person sued a neighbor back in the 1300s. “You get the sense of what’s happening in everyday life,” she says. “The whole world just comes alive.” The rolls represent the first Wisconsin-based application of the platform, and Foys anticipates more as the university becomes a DM hub. Indeed, for Foys, the greatest excitement comes from thinking about uses he can’t yet predict. “The goal is to produce an open-source resource that has life far beyond what I’m currently imaging it for,” he says. “The best pieces of software continue to flourish because people find other uses for it. My dream is that DM is simply the seed.” – Katie Vaughn
LINKING AND LEARNING The Cotton Map was created circa 10251050. The original map is housed in the British Library in London. Thanks to DM, you no longer need to fly across the pond to unlock the map’s mysteries in person. When the Cotton Map is viewed within the DM platform, blue outlines appear, indicating that an area of the map is linked to an annotation providing translations or other context. By clicking, say, on the outline of the oversized lion in the Asia portion of the map, users can learn in the annotation that the animal is accompanied by Latin text reading “here lions are abundant/plentiful.” Additionally, the DM platform allows scholars to make connections between the Cotton Map and other medieval maps and manuscripts.
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L&S Annual Review 2016-2017
THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE
A SYSTEM OF SUPPORT For 50 years, the Center for Academic Excellence and its predecessor programs have focused on UW’s underrepresented students. By Katie Vaughn Abike Sanyaolu sits in her Bascom Hall office, scrolling through her contacts on LinkedIn. There’s a legal intern at a district attorney’s office, a Greenpeace program manager and a medical student. A marketing coordinator in California, an assistant basketball coach in Florida, a Google employee in Illinois. “I have students everywhere,” says Sanyaolu, an assistant dean and director of advising services for the College of Letters & Science’s Center for Academic Excellence. That she still thinks of these flourishing young alumni as her students shows Sanyaolu’s pride in them. She knows their road to success wasn’t easy.
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CAE students (left to right) Jerry Xiong, Kayla Hui, Joyce Jimenez and Myxee Thao. (Sarah Morton)
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You may be aware that first-generation college students (and more than 19 percent of L&S students are the first in their families to pursue higher education), students of color (11 percent of last year’s freshman class was made up of African American, Latino/a, Native American and Asian American students) and students from low-income families face myriad issues that lead to higher dropout rates. But until you’ve felt the crushing pressure of wanting to lift your family out of poverty, or endured the unsettling sensation of feeling like an outsider or tried to navigate a university system without the guidance of a family member who’s been through it before, you can’t fully understand the complex journey these students begin the moment they receive their acceptance letters.
Below: Kayla Hui. (Sarah Morton) Opposite: George Shinners. (Dana Crary)
The Center for Academic Excellence does understand. For 50 years now, CAE and its predecessors — the Five Year Program and the Academic Advancement Program — have worked to ensure that obstacles don’t become permanent road blocks on students’ paths to success. The program leads first-generation students, low-income students and students of color through the entire UW-Madison experience, with a focus on making them feel supported along the way and helping them create experiences and connections that will serve them after graduation.
Come As You Are Set on an underground level of Bascom Hall, CAE feels tucked away from the bustle of campus. There are spots to spread out with books or tap away on a computer. It’s a place to come as you are, to find opportunities and community and ask for help when you need it. When a student walks in to CAE, everyone — advisors, associate deans, fellow students — knows his or her name. No one is a stranger here. Initially, Jerry Xiong, an economics major from Milwaukee, became acquainted with CAE because of mandatory meetings with advisors. “I enjoyed it so much that I would be in the CAE space almost every day,” he says. “CAE has provided me a support system of reliable staff that can help me with job opportunities, internships, advising — almost anything.” CAE staff, many of whom are former participants of the program, understand the struggles students face and are ready to intervene, whether to help with a problem in a class, an issue with a roommate or feelings of pressure or loneliness. For Kayla Hui, such assistance was especially helpful as she considered changing her major. The first-generation college student from Chicago was initially on the pre-med track, seeking a career that would provide financial stability. “I wanted to pick up my whole family,” she says. But after struggling with classes, she realized it was important to choose a career that would make her happy. Studying abroad in Rio de Janeiro and spending a spring break volunteering with Habitat for Humanity in Alabama opened her eyes to inequities in health. So she’s decided on a major in gender and women’s studies with a global health certificate, and plans to become a nurse practitioner with a master’s degree in public health. Still, it was difficult to explain the change to her family. “But they don’t know how hard it is to take classes you’re not passionate about,” she says. “I told them, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be successful.’”
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L&S Annual Review 2016-2017
THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE
When a student walks into CAE, everyone — advisors, associate deans, fellow students — knows his or her name. No one is a stranger here. A Bright Future With an intense focus on each individual student, CAE director DeVon Wilson and his staff also look to the bigger-picture impact of the program. They want to not only guide students through bumps in the road, but also expose them to life-changing opportunities such as research, internships and study abroad. “We want to ensure that all students get to have the Wisconsin Experience,” he says. “I always thought about this as being the next iteration of what had been done historically. We’re evolving the kinds of things that were really the cornerstone of the Five Year Program and the Academic Advancement Program.” As he looks to the future, Wilson envisions CAE as much more than graduating and launching historically underrepresented students. “One of my goals is to make the center the preferred destination for multicultural students,” he says. “And that when medical and graduate and law schools are looking for a pipeline, they look here.”
GREAT EXPECTATIONS George and Jane Shinners established the Shinners Family Fund Scholarship with an important stipulation: that it be available to students for their full undergraduate career. “I expect them to be here four years,” says George Shinners, CEO of Antigo Construction & Supply in northern Wisconsin. While he pursued a degree in psychology and later a master’s in industrial relations at UW in the early 1960s, Shinners was dismayed to see some students drop out. “I saw too many who didn’t make use of their talent,” he says. “Sometimes it was because no one spent time with them, telling them they could do it.” Recently, with the help of Nicholas Match funds, the couple increased the scholarship so that it can grow from assisting 21 students to 48 — including Wisconsin residents participating in the Center for Academic Excellence — and award an annual total of $100,000 indefinitely.
And he takes seriously CAE’s role in developing the next generation of leaders.
“It’s pretty fantastic to think it’s going to continue forever,” Shinners says.
“We need folks who will be future justices, governors, chancellors and business leaders,” he says. “We can’t afford not to have our young people pursuing those pathways.”
For details on how to support students,
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visit allwaysforward.org/student-support/
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BECOMING A THINKER The Undergraduate Research Scholars program, which connects students with in-depth academic explorations, faculty mentors and peer support, can be a defining experience at UW. Growing up in Appleton, Wisconsin, Cesar Martinez pored over articles in Nature and lit up in his high school AP Biology class. He came to UW-Madison with a strong interest in science and was delighted to discover that he could take part in research as an undergraduate, thanks to the Undergraduate Research Scholars program in L&S. As a freshman, Martinez worked in a neuroscience lab, studying vesicle trafficking. He later investigated the impact of stroke on a molecular level and then turned to probing the epigenetic role of a protein with a stem cell researcher. Above: Cesar Martinez. Opposite: Hawa Keita. (Sarah Morton)
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While different in focus, these three research opportunities helped Martinez recognize that he
enjoys the processes of gathering information and culling different perspectives — the steps that take place before he dons a lab coat. “The main thing is putting things together,” says the neurobiology and French major. It’s an important realization as he prepares for medical school and begins to weigh career options in health care.
Discovering Oneself Such fine-tuning of skills and interests happens regularly with participants of Undergraduate Research Scholars, a program that connects first- and second-year students with research opportunities and thought-provoking discussions that put their study into a broader context.
L&S Annual Review 2016-2017
THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE
The program, which started in the late 1990s, allows students to earn credit while gaining research experience and interacting with faculty, and it connects them with fellow participants and peer mentors in weekly group meetings. “The idea was to create a campus-wide program for early undergraduates to be involved in the research and creative work of faculty and staff,” says director Amy Sloane. “And also to have a peer teaching, learning and mentoring component, to learn from peers who have had that research experience.” Right now, URS students are working on the IceCube project, analyzing literature from a 20th-century African American playwright and researching bilingual Spanish students, among other fascinating pursuits. Yet Sloane believes it’s the skills that come with research — delving deep into a project, working collaboratively, solving problems across disciplines — that have the greatest impact on students. “I tell them, ‘I’m not interested in you becoming a technician, but a thinker,’” she says.
Analyzing Impact Each week, URS students come together in small groups led by a pair of fellows, typically juniors or seniors who have been through the program. These hour-long gatherings bring students out of their
Every week, URS asks students to think seriously and engage with each other and challenge each other’s ideas in an academic way. – Amy Sloan
respective research endeavors to reflect on their work and talk about the world beyond campus. “Every week, URS asks students to think seriously and engage with each other and challenge each other’s ideas in an academic way,” Sloane says. This mentoring, paired with the research opportunities and the encouragement to think critically, can be life-changing for students. “They start developing a more purposeful and intentional path,” Sloane says. “They have a better sense of clarity in the decisions they’re going to be facing. They think, how does this work that I’m doing have a larger effect on the world?” – Katie Vaughn
DIGGING IN During the 2014-2015 academic year, I was involved in a geography research project with URS. I researched soil from northern Minnesota under the mentorship of Professor Joe Mason. The experience taught me how multifaceted and interdisciplinary research is. Although I was doing research in geography, I was using skills from other many other STEM fields. In addition, I learned the value of patience and precision.
– Hawa Keita, a chemistry major from Brooklyn, New York
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ARTISTIC CATALYST What happens when you combine a passion for chemistry with a newfound fascination with African art? You build a unique set of skills, knowledge and experiences to pursue a future as an art conservation scientist. After a freshman year filled with intense math and science courses, Victoria Cooley turned to a novel to unwind. Reading about a rare-book expert — who sets off on an adventure after discovering tiny artifacts in the binding of a historic manuscript — got her thinking about how she might use a chemistry degree in equally exciting ways. The Geneva, Illinois, native — and fourthgeneration Badger — spent the past four years pursuing a chemistry major and a certificate in African studies, with a distinct plan of becoming an art conservation scientist specializing in African artifacts.
Victoria Cooley with Danu, a work by contemporary African artist El Anatsui, in the Chazen Museum of Art. (Sarah Morton)
“Right now, a lot of conservation science is focused on Western art and works on paper,” she says. “And most of it is approached from a fine arts, not a science, background.” But there’s much to be learned from works of art from Africa, Cooley says, particularly items
utilized in ceremonies or daily life. “Much of African art is not meant to be conserved,” she says. “It’s meant to be used, not hung on a museum wall.” Cooley, who is a recipient of the Leo and Jean Besozzi Scholarship, which recognizes highachieving L&S seniors, is particularly fascinated with Islamic art from around 1100. It’s often difficult to determine an object’s provenance by studying its design or ornamentation. But if conservation scientists analyzed the chemical composition of, say, the clay of a vessel, they could pinpoint the region where the material originated. “That’s where science can tell us more,” she says. To forge an academic path toward conservation science, Cooley complemented her chemistry courses with classes in African Studies — delving into geography, history, literature, language and art — and enhancing her studies with activities outside the classroom. And she continued to build knowledge in chemistry. In fact, she conducted research at four different laboratories so she could learn a wide range of techniques and pick up skills in working with and analyzing sensitive materials — all essential for a life as a conservation scientist handling and examining historic, fragile and unusual works of art. Cooley’s lab work solidified her desire to attend graduate school in art conservation and one day work at a museum with a strong African collection. “I really enjoy the analysis side of research,” she says. “That’s what I want to apply to art.” – Katie Vaughn
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L&S Annual Review 2016-2017
THE WISCONSIN IDEA
ROCK ON! Want to identify the geological wonder all around you? There’s a UW-designed app for that. As you hike a craggy trail, ever wonder what rocks you’re seeing along the way? A new app developed by UW-Madison geoscientists can provide answers, improving your geologic knowledge while also feeding crowd-sourced data back to scientists. Shanan Peters, a professor of geoscience, and Patrick McLaughlin, formerly at the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey, created Rockd to open a two-way channel between geology experts and amateurs. The app can be used it as a portable, GPSpowered field guide — one that has access to large geologic data sets — but Peters hopes its interactive features will raise the sum of geologic knowledge. “Users can upload their observations and photos, and compare those to what others think or know about that location,” Peters says. “The big idea is, ‘Tell us what you saw and I will tell you what I saw.’” – David Tenenbaum A river-dissected plateau near Moab, Utah, shown in Rockd. Colors depict the age of rocks; two winding rivers cut deeply into the strata.
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ISSUES OF ETHICS As Katy Culver takes the helm of the Center for Journalism Ethics as its third director, she does so with recognition of the crucial need for ethics in the field of journalism today. Ethics has always been the common thread throughout my career, whether I’m teaching it, whether I’m practicing it. It’s always been something that really grounds me, the idea of what integrity means in communication and how we practice it. The Center is very much about offering resources to students and educators. It’s about being here for the industry, when they have questions. It’s about shining a light on what good practices are and not being shy about when there are failings.
Katy Culver is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, James E. Burgess Chair in Journalism Ethics and director of the Center for Journalism Ethics. (Sarah Morton)
There’s a lot of criticism that journalism ethics is this walled garden where in newsrooms people have all these conversations and we have our ethics codes and we work on them but we never involve the public. And I would really like to see the Center be part of opening up the gates and getting the public more involved. It’s partly what I do in my research, but also I don’t think many people have the first clue how many difficult decisions arise in newsrooms every day. And how thoughtful journalists are about weighing them.
NEWS FOR NOW Fake news. Conspiracy theories. Public mistrust. The Center for Journalism Ethics tackled these topics in an annual conference that brought journalists, scholars, students and the public together on campus in March to discuss how to ensure a free and responsible press in times of extreme partisanship.
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It’s ironic, probably the biggest element of journalism ethics is invisible. It’s the choices you make to not do things. To not call a family that’s going through a crisis. To not run an arrest report because you don’t think someone’s a public figure. It’s what we don’t do, and that’s so invisible. So I’d like to see better public understanding of that. We spent a good century hammering out all sorts of ethics that we were going to be using in newsrooms, and we thought about concepts like minimizing harm and what it means to be independent. But new technologies are challenging that. In journalism, I can make a decision, a very common decision, not to name the victim of a sexual assault, for instance. But then we see that popping up on Yik Yak or Snapchat, identifying people you would not in the news. It doesn’t automatically mean you change your norms, you don’t loosen things because someone on Snapchat is doing it. But being aware of what information is out there and how that affects your practice is important. I would love to see the Center help people better appreciate the value of journalism and trust journalism. Democracies cannot function without strong journalism. Our founding fathers saw that. We see it all the time. When journalism is working hard and working well, we function better as a society. – Katie Vaughn
THE WISCONSIN IDEA
POLITICAL NEWSMAKER Katherine Cramer, a political science professor and director of the Morgridge Center for Public Service, spent five years popping into small Wisconsin towns to chat with citizens. What she discovered was a growing sense of bitterness. Her book, The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker, explores that feeling of being overlooked that many media have since cited as one reason behind the rise of Donald Trump to the presidency.
Coverage from around the country: These rural residents tell me that no one is listening. A look at the conditions of many of their towns, and at the evidence that poverty and unemployment are higher and household incomes are lower in rural Wisconsin, suggests they may be right.
– Kathy Cramer, in a September 16, 2016, opinion piece in The New York Times It’s just been harder and harder for the vast majority of people to make ends meet. So I think that’s part of this story. It’s been this slow burn. Resentment is like that. It builds and builds and builds until something happens ... If you’re wondering about the widening fissure between red and blue America, Kathy Cramer is one of the best people to ask.
– Jeff Guo, The Washington Post, November 8, 2016 The perception among these voters is that the federal government is more and more guided by coastal elites concerned with providing benefits to people not like them. It is perhaps in that way that race became a focus of the election — not in any new form, but because Trump activated long-standing underlying racial prejudices about “who should get what,” says Cramer.
– Mark Sappenfield, The Christian Science Monitor, November 17, 2016 For decades, Wisconsin has been politically malleable, but the window for Cramer's work ended up being particularly fascinating and telling ... even Cramer was surprised by the extent of the resentment stemming from a growing rural-urban divide, and now its consequences.
– Michael Kruse, Politico, January/February 2017 Kathy Cramer’s journey to the center of the political landscape began with road trips to corners of Wisconsin many people only drive through — if they drive there at all.
– Mark Sommerhauser, The Wisconsin State Journal, February 20, 2017
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HARVESTING DATA Two UW-Madison researchers have created tools to help managers of farmers markets around the country collect, interpret and utilize metrics to bolster their business model. Less than a month into her job as director of special events for the Downtown Fond du Lac Partnership, Dusty Krikau was tasked with overhauling one of the organization’s signature projects, the city’s farmers market. The mission was to move the market from a parking lot, where it had been held for more than a decade, to Main Street. There, traffic would shut down each Saturday from mid-May through October so patrons could shop and visit surrounding downtown businesses. “Some people were very vocally not okay with the change,” says Krikau. “I knew data would verify that what we were doing would make sense. But we had nothing to stand on.” Fortunately, in that spring of 2015, two UWMadison researchers offered to help collect evidence of the market’s economic impact. Alfonso Morales, a professor of Urban & Regional Planning, and graduate student Lauren Suerth had already worked with nine farmers markets in three regions — including Williamson, West Virginia; Athens, Ohio; and Crossroads, Maryland — over the past year. Using a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, they sought to collect robust and reliable data that would aid organizers in make sound decisions to ensure their markets thrive and grow.
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“As a scholar of markets, I always understood the need market managers had for data collection tools to support them in decision-making,” says Morales, who edited Cities of Farmers, a book about urban agriculture, with Julie Dawson, an assistant professor of horticulture. Soon, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation learned of the project and asked Morales and Suerth to bring the approach to a handful of markets within the state — including the one in Fond du Lac. In doing so, they ultimately created Metrics + Indicators for Impact or MIFI, an online toolkit that provides markets with proven strategies to collect data, interpret information and make customized reports. In working with markets, Morales and Suerth guided directors in collecting data on the number of visitors, where they came from and how they got to the market, as well as the types of products vendors sold, the amount of money they made each week and how shoppers paid for goods, among other metrics. Then they taught them how to interpret their findings and relay the information to their communities, vendors, sponsors and stakeholders and in grant applications. “A lot of markets have to rely on grant funding just to exist,” says Seurth. “Grant applications want to see hard numbers. This information is needed on multiple fronts.” And market managers quickly learned that digging into the data can offer incredible insights and identify new opportunities. “The market in Monroe, Wisconsin, discovered a large number of visitors from the Chicago region,” Morales says. “The market in Hernando, Mississippi, used data to initiate a grant application
L&S Annual Review 2016-2017
THE WISCONSIN IDEA
process that won them $50,000 to support senior citizen transportation to the market.” Morales hopes market managers across the country utilize the MIFI toolkit to help identify and meet goals. He’s also keeping in mind a broader aspect to all that information being collected nationwide. “Eventually scholars will have data that will be useful to advance new knowledge and subsequent policy in support of local food systems activities,” he says.
Krikau reported that in 2016, the farmers market brought $1.1 million in additional economic activity and five new jobs downtown and generated more than $250,000 in estimated sales to roughly 80 vendors, a significant increase from years past.
The Downtown Fond du Lac Farmers Market. (Sarah Morton)
“There are good numbers coming out of this market move,” she says. “We’re creating that sense of economic boon, of an upward spiral.” – Katie Vaughn
Back in Fond du Lac, Krikau is looking forward to another season of farmers market monitoring. She learned a lot over the past two years, and thanks to Morales and Suerth, she was able to create economic impact reports to show the positive effects of moving the market downtown.
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A STUDENT OF THE WORLD In her four years at UW-Madison, Jenny Ostrowski has studied abroad in Jordan and China, participated in internships in Ecuador and Uganda and completed a research project in Jordan. But an experience volunteering in Greece forever changed the International Studies and African Languages and Literature major from Superior, Wisconsin. This past year, I spent about seven months studying Arabic in Jordan, and for part of last summer I also found myself volunteering at a refugee camp in Lesvos, Greece. As you may know, Lesvos, located near Turkey, has been an important point along migrants’ and refugees’ journeys to Europe.
It probably comes as no surprise that when I was working in the camp, I applied my Arabic skills daily, helping to communicate everything from housing disputes to medical appointments. But I was baffled to find that my Spanish skills were also in high demand. This was because a significant number of people from Latin America, many of them victims of human trafficking, were passing through the camp. Because very few translators — many of whom were refugees themselves and volunteered for the job — could speak Spanish, I found myself dusting off my gap-year Spanish skills to help aid workers identify and address trafficking cases. Many of the Spanish-speakers I worked with in the camp — mostly women who had been almost completely isolated from family and friends — simply wanted to chat, to let me know what was on their minds, to connect with another person and engage in the simple pleasure of idle conversation and tell me that they were really craving fried chicken, that their roommates were annoying or that they really missed their kids today. And I am so, so glad that because I’ve studied languages, in addition to helping the aid workers with their very important work, I also got to be the person who listened. I came out of this experience with a renewed sense of purpose and of responsibility to use language skills in a way that is useful and, when appropriate, to be of service to others. — Jennifer Ostrowski
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L&S Annual Review 2016-2017
ALUMNI & FRIENDS
INVESTING IN STUDENTS
Inspired by their sons’ unique experiences in the College of Letters & Science, Kevah and Michele Konner made the decision to help other liberal arts students define their careers. By Katie Vaughn When it was time for their twin sons to review their college acceptance offers, Kevah and Michele Konner took each one aside. Not wanting Joshua or Seth to have regrets about where they pursued their education, the couple advised their sons to choose a university without consulting one another. They both picked UW-Madison. And the entire Konner family is grateful. Not only because the foursome from New York became dedicated Badgers, but also because the two young men were able to forge independent paths at the university, and ultimately launch successful careers.
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When we heard about the Career Initiative, we thought, wow, this is something the College of Letters & Science really needs. – Kevah Konner Both sons started out in different Lakeshore residence halls back in the fall of 2012, and embraced unique experiences at the university. Seth went on to live near State Street and major in Economics, with a certificate in Environmental Studies. He’s now an associate solutions analyst for a financial software company in Chicago. Joshua, meanwhile, moved closer to Camp Randall and double-majored in Environmental Studies and Conservation Biology, with a certificate in Engineering for Energy Sustainability. He now works as a business development analyst for a commercial solar energy developer in New York City. The Konner family was impressed by the breadth and diversity of course offerings at the university, which allowed both Joshua and Seth to explore the many different career paths before committing to their majors. Kevah and Michele witnessed their sons’ journeys on many visits to Madison over the years. Inspired by what they were seeing, they wanted to give back to the university to help other students thrive. When they learned about the College of Letters & Science Career Initiative, they were moved by its practical yet powerful mission in teaching students to leverage their liberal arts educations into successful careers. “When we heard about the Career Initiative, we thought, wow, this is something the College of Letters & Science really needs,” Kevah says. The Konners knew the college had a great reputation, and that its graduates performed well in jobs across the country. “They’re great ambassadors wherever they go,” Kevah says.
themselves for interviews and land jobs — especially when L&S students have so many different ways they can apply their skills, knowledge and degrees. The family established the Konner Family Letters & Science Career Initiative Fund to support the program, which is funded entirely by alumni and donors. They’re particularly interested in ensuring the success of Taking Initiative, the signature career-prep course of the Career Initiative program that gives students the tools to explore career opportunities as well as the practical skills to guide them through internship and employment pursuits. “We are so proud to be associated with the program,” says Michele. The Konners consider their involvement an investment in the future, just as undergraduates who participate in the Career Initiative invest in their own. When students spend time preparing for the working world, they will likely get a better job right out of college, Kevah says, and they certainly pick up tactics and skills they can use throughout their careers. “We all take great pride in supporting the Career Initiative with students gaining skills that are really important — not just for one job but for their entire lives,” Kevah says.
For details on how to support the L&S Career Initiative, visit allwaysforward.org/initiative/ career-initiative/
Yet they also understood how difficult it can be for students to find internships, prepare
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L&S Annual Review 2016-2017
THE SWEET SPOT From a childhood on a dairy farm in Seymour, Wisconsin, to now spending much of her time in Costa Rica, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador to work with farmers who grow cacao that she turns into fine chocolates back in Madison, a sense of place permeates everything Gail Ambrosius does. Falling in love with dark chocolate on a class trip to Paris, earning a cartography degree at UW-Madison and working as a state cartographer before launching her namesake chocolate business have been important plot points on her map to success. What drew you to be a geography major? Maps, geography and the environment were always interesting to me. When my older brother got a degree in cartography I realized you could make a career of mapping, so I explored the possibility for myself. I earned a B.S. in cartography in 1993. Describe your path from student to cartographer to chocolatier. Settling on cartography was a relief. I finally found a field that resonated with me. Working in the Cartography Lab as a student was great fun — I learned how to make my first maps. The crew was also very welcoming and lasting friendships formed. After graduation, I worked at a private firm in Berkeley for about a year before returning to Madison to work as a cartographer for the DNR. Laid off after 10 years, and with the cartography world shifting, I decided to try something new. Being a chocolatier is art and science, and that attracted me. Chocolate is a product that grows around the world, so there is a fair amount of
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Gail Ambrosius near the upper Amazon Basin in Ecuador, on her way to visit an organic cocoa cooperative. (Submitted photo)
geographic knowledge needed to keep up with it. My training took me to France, seminars in Amsterdam and travels to Central and South America to meet cocoa farmers. What role does geography play in the work you do now? Cacao, the raw ingredient that becomes chocolate, is grown in equatorial regions around the globe. In searching for chocolate, there is exploration of the different countries and regions, each having their own reflection on quality and flavor … I focus on single-origin chocolate because it is place-specific. Each region or location has unique characteristics which influence the flavor. I think it is fascinating that a chocolate from Colombia can taste so different than a chocolate from Ecuador. What do you know now that you wish you had as an undergrad at UW? That a major in one thing or another is not locking you into any specific career. Having a college education is only the beginning of lifelong learning. Your career can be whatever you choose it to be. – Katie Vaughn
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FROM MAD TOWN TO MAD MEN Josh Sapan took his communication arts degree all the way to the top of AMC. We’ve followed Don Draper through the fantastic highs and lows of the 1960s advertising industry. We’ve learned how a chemistry teacher could become a drug dealer. And we now possess insights into surviving a zombie apocalypse.
Above: Josh Sapan. Below: The cast of Mad Men, Season Four. (Frank Ockenfels/AMC)
Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead have drawn us into their unique worlds because of their incredible storytelling and vivid sense of place. And these hit AMC shows have all become part of popular culture thanks to L&S alum Josh Sapan, who has helmed the network for the past two decades. When the Brooklyn, New York, native came to Madison in the 1970s to attend UW, he found the environment as transporting as the sets of his famed television shows. The lakes and rolling farmland of Dane County were a stark contrast to the dense urban environment in which he grew up. “It’s an absolutely exquisite physical place,” he says. “It was pretty exotic for me.”
So taken was he with the openness of the landscape, Sapan lived on a farm in Cottage Grove for part of his college career. He was also involved in film societies, helping to screen works of cinema that featured the thoughtful and dramatic types of storytelling that are now hallmarks of great television. “The experiences surrounding the classes complemented them tremendously,” he says. Sapan joined AMC Networks in 1987. He earned a reputation as an innovator, and brought vision and creativity to his role as CEO of AMC Networks in 1995, overseeing not only AMC, but also IFC, BBC America, SundanceTV, WE tv, IFC Films and other entertainment outlets. Fast Company named him number 21 on its list of the 100 most creative people in business in 2010, placing him in the company of Lady Gaga, James Cameron, Jay Z and leaders at Apple, ESPN and Kickstarter. Sapan has a keen eye for identifying programs that offer something different, but it wasn’t without risk that he brought them to the screen. “We were betting on the attractiveness of storytelling at its best,” he says. “It’s always hard to know what will be big, if one’s personal impression will translate to success.” Outside of his New York City office, Sapan is an avid reader of fiction and an enthusiastic theater-goer — and, yes, he watches TV, too. He is always looking for new ways of telling stories and engaging audiences, and he’s particularly interested in the impact of technology. “What’s next is unknown because the technology is unknown, and that’s terribly exciting,” he says. “Nothing is more fun for me.” – Katie Vaughn
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L&S Annual Review 2016-2017
ALUMNI ACHIEVEMENTS The Wisconsin Alumni Association bestowed its highest honor, the Distinguished Alumni Award, on two prestigious L&S graduates. Judith Faulkner, M.S.‘67, Computer Sciences
Doris Feldman Weisberg, B.S.‘58, Psychology
Faulkner is the founder and CEO of Epic Systems, which she began in 1979. Epic has since grown to become the leading provider of integrated health care software.
Weisberg was part of the team that launched the Food Network, where she produced numerous shows and was the managing editor of food news. She has also produced cooking shows for Lifetime Television and is a professor emerita at City College of the City University of New York. She was the director of the Speech and Hearing Center and retired in 1992 as the chair of the speech department.
Epic’s clients include many of the country’s top hospitals and health systems, including Johns Hopkins, Cedars Sinai, Kaiser Permanente, CVS Health and Walgreens. With more than 9,500 employees, it is the largest tech-based firm in Wisconsin, and more than half of the U.S. population has its medical information in an Epic system. In 2013, Forbes called Faulkner the “most powerful woman in health care.” She received honorary doctorates from UW-Madison and from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. She also serves on the board of visitors for the UW-Madison Department of Computer Sciences, and Epic has endowed three faculty positions within the department.
Weisberg is on the board of the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association and a member of the UW Foundation's Women's Philanthropy Council and the Department of Political Science’s board of visitors. Weisberg and her husband have created a planned gift to establish the Doris Feldman Weisberg and Robert Weisberg Center for Progressive Political Thought. They also established the Doris and Robert Weisberg Current Issues Symposium Fund at the Memorial Union. – Niki Denison
Honoring Entrepreneurial Achievement Michele Boal, B.A.‘91, Journalism and Mass Communication In honor of her entrepreneurial success and commitment to encouraging the next generation of innovators, Boal earned a UW-Madison Entrepreneurial Achievement Award.
Above, from top: Judith Faulkner and Doris Weisberg. Left: Michele Boal.
Boal is the co-founder and chief philanthropy officer of Quotient Technology (formerly Coupons.com), a Mountain View, California, company she started with her husband in 1998 that has grown to 650 employees around the world. She also started Coupons for Change in 2011 to help end childhood hunger. Boal is a member of the Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund and serves on the College of Letters & Science Board of Visitors. – Carrie Springer
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ALL WAYS FORWARD The All Ways Forward campaign is the largest comprehensive campaign in the history of UW-Madison. A committee of dedicated leaders offers their vision and generosity to inspire support for key College of Letters & Science campaign goals: on RESEARCH & INNOVATION I support direct investment in discovery and innovation across the university and L&S in the areas of hard sciences and medicine, but I have a deep and personal commitment to the History Department because its research efforts do not always have the same level of institutional support that the hard sciences do. We must ask why, as well as how.
– John Rowe, ‘67 on THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE A degree from L&S is an introduction to a world of opportunity. If we can help students to articulate their skills and ambitions, network them with alumni who care and provide a level of astute advising about career options, then we will have fulfilled our responsibility among public universities in preparing liberal arts students for successful lives and careers.
– Todd Warnock, ‘83 on STUDENT EXCELLENCE Pursuing a degree in L&S can be a great adventure. But we need to make sure our students have the support they need, not only to embark on that adventure, but to flourish while they are here. Everyone, no matter their circumstances, should be able to take full advantage of all the opportunities this college has to offer.
– Doris Weisberg, ‘58 on FACULTY EXCELLENCE To this day, I remember the faculty at Wisconsin who opened my mind and helped determine my direction. World-class faculty can go anywhere — we want to make sure that their research and teaching benefit Wisconsin.
– John Holton, ‘72
Support for the College of Letters & Science is critical to the future of the university. Visit allwaysforward.org/ schools-colleges/ls/ to make your gift today.
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L&S BOARD OF VISITORS 2016-2017
Board Chair Patricia Donovan Wright President, Donovan Wright Advisors LLC Communication Arts B.S.‘74 Joy Amundson Consultant, Amundson Partners Journalism B.A.‘76 Barbara Arnold Vice President, Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. (Retired) Social Work and Sociology B.A.‘73; Law J.D.‘76 Herman Baumann III Founder, Green Line Strategies LLC Journalism B.A.‘75 Michele Boal Co-Founder/Chief Philanthropy Officer, Coupons.com Journalism B.A.‘91 Nancy Borghesi Senior Vice President, CCC Information Services Inc. (Retired) Economics B.A.‘69 Robert Buono Owner, Henry Street Partners, LLC International Studies and Political Science B.A.‘69 James Burgess Investor/Community Advisor Journalism B.S.‘58 Kenneth Ciriacks Vice President, Technology, AMOCO Corporation (Retired) Geology B.S.‘58
Shoshana R. Dichter Senior Vice President, Communications, Wheels Up Journalism B.A.‘92
Alice Mortenson Director of Community Relations, M.A. Mortenson Company History B.S.‘62
Robert Harty President, Cavelle Consulting Group Inc. Political Science B.A.‘82; Journalism & Mass Communication M.A.‘92
Charles Phipps General Partner, Sevin Rosen Funds
Louis A. Holland, Jr. President and Chief Financial Officer, Cumota LLC Economics B.A.‘86
Phillip Schemel Managing Partner, Schemco LLC Economics and Political Science B.A.‘82
William Jordan Vice Chairman, Air Wisconsin Airlines Corp. Journalism B.A.‘73
Stanley Sher Of Counsel, Cozen O’Connor History B.S.‘56
Michele Konner Kay Koplovitz Founder. Koplovitz & Company Radio, Television & Film B.S.‘67 Jeffrey Lyons Executive Vice President, Charles Schwab & Company, Inc. (Retired) Political Science B.S.‘78 Rob McGinnis Chairman and CEO, IPSG, LLC Political Science B.A.‘90
Steve Pogorzelski Consultant and Angel Investor Journalism B.A.‘83
George Shinners President/Owner, Antigo Construction Inc. Psychology B.S.’61; Industrial Relations M.S.‘64
Konrad Testwuide IV Senior Advisor, Rapid Ratings Economics and Investment & Banking B.A.‘80 View a roster of current and emeriti L&S Board of Visitors members at go.wisc.edu/lsbov
David Meissner Chairman, Public Policy Forum (Retired) History B.S.‘60
PROVIDING VISION & SUPPORT The L&S Board of Visitors helps the college maintain its tradition of excellence in education, research and outreach. This select group of key stakeholders serves as an advisory group and works in partnership with Dean Karl Scholz to advance the mission of the college. Your support keeps L&S strong and growing into the future. Visit allwaysforward.org/schools-colleges/ls/ to make a gift.
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THE LAST WORD
BREAKING GROUND L&S Dean Karl Scholz, Mead Witter School of Music Director Susan Cook, George Hamel, Pamela Hamel, Susan Feith, George Mead and Chancellor Rebecca Blank broke ground on the new Hamel Music Center on October 28, 2016. The center, which will feature a 662-seat concert hall, a 325-seat recital hall, a large rehearsal space and state-of-the-art technologies, will be the performance space of the Mead Witter School of Music, and is expected to be completed by fall 2018. “The performance center not only will change the entire performing experience for UW-Madison students and faculty — it will transform the public’s expectations and ideas about a musical education at UW-Madison,” says Scholz. (Photo by Andy Manis)
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L&S Annual Review 2016-2017
Your life, your plan.
You’ve made choices, and you’ve reaped the rewards. Being in charge of your own legacy is part of who you are. If there’s a plan, you’re going to be the one to make it. To discuss your goals and ways to give back to the UW, contact Jennifer McFarland in the Office of Gift Planning at the University of Wisconsin Foundation: jennifer.mcfarland@supportuw.org or 608-308-5311
supportuw.org/gift-planning
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