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Ameritech grant boosts high-tech learning by Jim Klapthor Ameritech this fall granted Albion College $10,000 to develop the Internet learning capabilities of elementary school instructors and College students preparing for teaching careers. The grant will fund a pilot project providing both in-service and pre-service elementary teachers with the technical skills needed to create and incorporate Internet media into their instruction, according to Reuben Rubio, director of Albion’s Ferguson Center for Technology-Aided Teaching. “The goal is to give our students real experience in making decisions about what does or doesn’t make good software for teaching and learning mathematics,” said Rubio. In that way, students “can make sound decisions about how to effectively integrate software—designed by themselves or others—into their curriculum.” In addition, the participating elementary teachers will create Web-based materials addressing math proficiency expectations set forth by the Michigan Department of Education, according to Rubio. The materials

will be specifically used in conjunction with a classroom at the city of Albion’s Crowell Elementary School, but also will be available to teachers worldwide via a project Web site. After the pilot program is completed and evaluated, it will be extended to other academic areas and other higher education institutions. “The best investment we can make is in our children,” said Bob Cooper, president of Ameritech Michigan. “We at Ameritech are thrilled to help teachers tap into the power of the Internet to create the classrooms of tomorrow today.” The program will involve approximately 30 Albion College students enrolled in the College’s education program as well as 20 inservice teachers and 25 elementary students. With an average of 25 children in each elementary class in the Albion Public Schools, this program could realistically result in over 1,200 elementary students annually benefiting from this effort. This Ameritech program, administered by the 19-member Michigan Colleges Foundation, is another example of the commitment Albion College is making to advance technology-aided teaching. Ameritech is the premier provider of communications services in the Upper Midwest, with 13 million customers and more than 21 million access lines across Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Tune in to ‘Jeopardy!’ Feb. 7-18 The answer is: This Albion College student is a member of the Ford Institute and Honors Institute, hails from Lapeer and carries a 3.98 grade point average. If your response is, “Who is Kurt Medland?,” you’re right. Junior Kurt Medland will represent Albion College during “Jeopardy! College Championship Week,” Feb. 7-18. He is one of only 15 college students participating in this special edition of the popular television game show, and was chosen from more than 10,000 students requesting an audition. Medland e-mailed his audition request to the show’s producers last summer. Shortly afterwards he was asked to audition in Indianapolis where he impressed the “Jeopardy!” producers enough to receive an invitation to join the college championships. “I’m really looking forward to it,” Medland says of his pending national television appearance. “People have told me for years I should do something like this [be on “Jeopardy!”].”

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Robin Hartman’s article [Io Triumphe, Fall 1999] extolling the career of Fritz Shurmur, ’54, as an exceptional football coach overshadows his years at Albion College as its men’s swim coach. When I came to Albion in 1957 and joined the swim team, we had a nucleus of very good swimmers who came out of the Michigan high school swim powers of the mid-’50s. With Fritz as our coach, we

“It’s still like a big dream.” Medland will have to squeeze in his preparation for “Jeopardy!” with his regular studies on campus. In addition to his involvement with the Ford and Honors Institutes, Medland is also working with anthropology professor Elizabeth Brumfiel cataloging Indian artifacts found in the Whitehouse Nature Center. Taping for the show at the Columbia TriStar studios in Culver City, CA, will take place Jan. 15-16. Medland is guaranteed to play one of five games to be taped the first day. A special videotaped greeting from President Peter Mitchell and several hundred Albion students is also slated to air during Medland’s appearance. –J. Klapthor

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completed the next few seasons as undefeated MIAA champions. I remember some of our zany swimmer antics and Fritz’s exasperation during our annual road tour of outstate swim meets. . . . We all well remember that toothy grin when we won all of those meets—we were forgiven and Fritz still had his job. Colin Stafford, ’61, Bloomfield Hills, MI

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‘See you at the movies’ D. TRUMPIE PHOTO

by Jake Weber Weddings, funerals, birthdays, graduations— all are important cultural events, nowhere more so than in the movies. Yet, notes Albion professor of English Paul Loukides, “[movie] weddings are not particularly happy occasions. Birthday parties are often awful. . . . There are exceptions, but mostly there’s a sense of loss, fatigue, anything but transcendence to a higher state.” The tension between real-life ritual occasions and their film counterparts fascinates Loukides, so much so that he coauthored a book on the subject, Reel Rituals: Ritual Occasions from Baptisms to Funerals, published earlier this year by Bowling Green State University Popular Press. Reel Rituals takes Loukides’ anthropological, sociological and philosophical research of rituals and applies that study to film analysis. Loukides has spent much of his career studying the extent to which film reflects the culture that produced it. Before Reel Rituals, he co-edited a five-volume series, Beyond the Stars, that explores the characters, conventions and themes of American popular film. Film is a “democratic art,” he says, and merits consideration not only as a communications medium but as an art form. “Film” he argues, “has the dimensions of what we want from an artistic experience—depth of craft and depth of meaning.” His ideas may not seem controversial today, but there was a time when his interest in popular film would have been met with derision and disbelief in many academic circles. Loukides, who retired at the end of the fall semester, leaves behind a legacy of not only developing film studies offerings for Albion College, but helping to establish the study of film and of popular culture as accepted academic disciplines. Loukides joined Albion’s English faculty in 1962, his arrival on campus closely coinciding with that of the first wave of Baby Boomers. He realized that higher education needed to address the orientation as well as the culture of this “media generation.” “It seemed to me that film ought to be a subject taught in small liberal arts colleges,” Loukides explains. After all, he says, many literary works that are now considered classics were originally written for a broad popular audience. Why shouldn’t great films deserve similar attention, especially since a strong case can be made that film is the art form of the 20th century? He found like-minded scholars in the newly formed Popular Culture Association. “I was part of a group . . . that invented the field of popular film studies,” says Loukides, who has been an active leader in the association for more than 30 years. “That was pretty exciting.” Today, the film studies field has expanded to the point where it is represented on nearly every college and university campus. While he has developed a number of courses devoted to film and film-making, Loukides occasionally uses film in other courses he teaches, such as Great Issues in the Fine Arts, to explore the role of the artist and the arts in society.

Paul Loukides “His knowledge of film in general and the history of World War II in particular was a strong complement to my own interests and capabilities,” says Albion historian Geoffrey Cocks, who teamed up with Loukides to teach a course on Film Images of World War II several times during the past 15 years. “Paul is also the author of one of the single best statements about war films I have ever heard. In characterizing those wartime and postwar films that glorify combat for patriotic reasons and leave out the suffering and physical ugliness of war, Paul observed, ‘It’s one of those films where lots of people get killed and nobody gets hurt.’” His interest in film notwithstanding, Loukides has also nurtured and advised numerous aspiring writers as a teacher of creative writing at Albion. “He always knew when to push and when to give me time to try something else,” says Aimee Mepham, ’99, an M.F.A. candidate in creative writing at Indiana University. “He also helped me figure out what to do with my life as a writer.” While most of Loukides’ own writing over the past several years has been devoted to scholarly articles and books, he now looks forward to the chance to get back to some fiction of his own. He is some 50 pages into what he estimates will be an 800-page novel on the life of 19th-century American balloonist John Wise. An antiques collector, Loukides came upon a copy of The History and Practice of Aeronautics, published by Wise in 1850, at an auction. “It’s about how to make your own balloon, how to make hydrogen gas, everything,” laughs Loukides. “And [Wise] is not a bad writer. I read the book and thought, ‘This is great stuff. This is somebody I’d really love to write about.’” In preparation for the novel, over the years Loukides has also done extensive research into 19th-century technology and took a sabbatical to follow some of Wise’s travels through New England. Along with his novel, Loukides also hopes to devote more time to his interests in photography, pottery and antiques restoration. And without a doubt you’ll be seeing him at the movies.