The Scholar Fall 2019

THE SCHOLAR A PUBLICATION OF THE ROBERT D. CLARK HONORS COLLEGE

Meet the New CHC Faculty Members The Legacy of Professor Emerita Louise Bishop CHC Alum Jeff Whitty Times it Right Discovering Diplomacy in Music Between the U.S. and China

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Meet Your Dean CHC’s New Faculty in Residence New Honors for Chapman Hall

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Daphne Gallagher Leads Digitization Project

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Just the CURE You Need

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Mark Carey Wins Like a King

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Francesca Fontana Wakes up to Wall Street

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Hannah Bontrager: Leaps and Bounds

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Melissa Graboyes Lands NSF grant

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Start-up Looks to CHC Grads for its Future

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Speaking Broadly: Calderwood Seminars

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DNA Dig: Who Do You Think You Are?

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CHC Alum Jeff Whitty Times it Right

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Discovering Diplomacy in Music

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The Legacy of Louise Bishop

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Mentors Are Where You Find Them Contributors: Sarah Hovet, Isabella Garcia, Abbey McDonald, Lucy Kleiner, Jim Barlow, Derek Mailiolo, Leif Karlstrom, Travis Winn, Kai Welch, Daniel Knapp Editor: Laurie Notaro Copy Editor: Martin Dolan The Scholar is a annual publication of the Robert D. Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon.

1293 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1293.

541-346-5414, fax: 541-346-0125, honors.uoregon.edu.

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Gabe Paquette is an admitted—and avid trespasser.

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BY LAURIE NOTARO

That might have been the factor that lured him away from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he was professor of history and the director of the Latin American Studies Program.

Or it could have been that by coming to a major research university such as the University of Oregon, he could retain his career as a scholar and address his strongest passion—creating opportunities for undergraduates.

PHOTO BY JESSICA DOUGLAS

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MEET YOUR DEAN

honors.uoregon.edu/scholar

“Sometimes in the social sciences, people talk about trespassing from one discipline to another,” he said with a smile, followed by a sincere laugh.

“I found myself as a routine sort of trespasser.”

The new dean of the Clark Honors College is completely unapologetic about it; in fact, he sees this compulsion as an advantage, one that informs the mission of his new post.

“In the honors college, where you have very different disciplines coming together, you have issues in common from an array of perspectives,” he said with a genuine sense of excitement.

His eyes widened, and his smile grew brighter. “It’s really unique; it’s only something you have in an honors college or a small liberal-arts college.”

NOT FAR FROM THE TREE The son of two educators—his father in the arts and his mother in primary education—Paquette was born and raised in Brooklyn, and named for the protagonist Gabriel Oak in Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd, the book his parents were reading in an English course at Hunter College when they met.

“They almost named me ‘Oak,’” he noted, ‘but, thankfully, my grandmother intervened.”

CLOSE, BUT NO HOGWARTS A recipient of a mix of public and scholarship-funded private education, Paquette arrived at Johns Hopkins after teaching at Harvard University, Trinity College, the University of Cambridge, and Wesleyan University. Although he treasured his time at Cambridge as a graduate student and postdoc, it coincided with the Harry Potter

craze, which caused several memorable interactions for Paquette.

“I was often mistaken for Daniel Radcliffe,” he recalled with a laugh.

“It was actually worse when I was heading into a 16th-century building for high table, wearing a gown that resembled a cape.”

LEARNING TAKES SURPRISING PATHS “If you have a room full of brilliant students well-trained as writers and speakers, and then you have a faculty member who is a world expert in a particular area of study and is able to communicate that joy while at the same time being rigorous—I mean, good things are going to happen there, right?”

Paquette said. “And the result of those discussions can bring students into worlds they have scarcely imagined, perhaps to a major, perhaps a career, perhaps a passion.

“That’s what I want to foster and encourage. Twenty, forty years from now, for students to look back at their time at Clark Honors College and feel that it prepared them for all of the wonderful things in their life, and for a continuous intellectual adventure.”

An equal-opportunity, affirmative-action institution committed to cultural diversity and compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. This publication will be made available in accessible formats upon request. ©2019 University of Oregon MC090919-ST1748

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ROBERT D. CLARK HONORS COLLEGE

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Hometown: St. Louis, Missouri (and have a midwestern accent to prove it) Field of study? Cognitive neuroscience. My research focuses on memory and the neural processes that give rise to different forms of memory.

What courses will you be teaching? This year I’ll be teaching the same colloquium on neuroethics as well as teaching a 200-level course on The Science of Learning and Memory and teaching a Calderwood seminar in the spring.

What is the last fantastic book you read? I would have to say Never Let Me Go

by Kazuo Ishiguro, which I read last year, inspired by Ishiguro’s Nobel Prize win.

Not only was it beautifully written, but it appealed to my fondness for coming-of-age stories while raising thoughtprovoking ethical questions.

What do you do in your down time? What down time? :). I enjoy playing with my kids, hiking, visiting local wineries and farms, reading, writing, and traveling.

What do you love most about working with students? What I probably love most about working with students is how much I learn from them. They constantly surprise and impress me with new perspectives and insights, allowing me to see familiar material in a different way and ask novel questions.

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DAPHNE GALLAGHER Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies/Senior Lecturer of Anthropology From where did you hail?

I’ve lived in Illinois, Arizona, Washington DC, Wisconsin, Texas, and Michigan. This is my eighth year in Eugene and at the UO. Field of study? West African archeology.

What attracted you to CHC? The small class size and the emphasis on advising and mentorship.

What is the last fantastic book you read? Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adichie and N.K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy.

What do you do in your down time? Read, hike, travel, cook What do you love most about working with students?

Learning from the different perspectives they bring to the classroom.

What is the best piece of advice that you can give to students, gleaned from your own education? Seek out opportunities, don’t just wait for them to come to you. Meet with professors, ask questions of more advanced students, and reach out to alumni in your field of interest. If the opportunities or resources you’re looking for don’t exist, work to create them.

NEW FACULTY

NICOLE DUDUKOVIC Senior Instructor of Psychology

CAROL STABILE Professor, Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives Favorite aspect of being at UO: Working with my brilliant colleagues in the CAS Deans’ office the Division of Undergraduate Education and Student Success to get Willie and Donald Tykeson Hall up and running this fall.

Hometown: Stillwater, New Jersey.

If you had limitless funding, what academic adventure would you like to take students on? If I had limitless funding, I think I’d want to devise an experience that would encourage students to listen and work collaboratively with communities and organizations grappling with some of the challenges facing the world they’ll be leading.

What are you looking forward to the most at CHC? Teaching and working with students!

What is one thing about you that is unique, weird, or noteworthy? I grew up in a Western theme park.

CHRIS SINCLAIR Associate Professor of Mathematics Favorite aspect of being at UO: love the sense of community and the beautiful campus.

Hometown: Houston, Texas What did you aspire to be when you entered college? I wanted to be an astrophysicist.

If you had limitless funding, what academic adventure would you like to take students on?

I would love to take students to see neolithic monuments around the world with celestial alignments and talk about prehistoric calendars and early number systems.

What are you looking forward to the most at CHC? The students! I love working with our amazing students. I have had the opportunity to supervise several CHC theses, and I’m looking forward to working with these students in the classroom.

BRIAN MCWHORTER Associate Professor of Music Favorite aspect of being at UO? That’s easy – it’s the people. All of the people.

There’s a very creative vibe here that I feel fortunate to be part of.

Hometown: I’m originally from Portland and I did my undergrad here at UO. What did you aspire to be when you entered college?

From a very young age it was very clear: I was going to move to NYC and become a professional musician. I was undeterred and, as it happens, I was extraordinarily lucky.

Looking back, I sometimes wish that I was more openminded as an incoming student but people tell me that I was pretty stubborn.

If you had limitless funding, what academic adventure would you like to take students on?

Limitless? We’d completely remake Star Wars episodes 1-3 from the ground up. We’d travel all over the world to shoot and we’d probably need to go to the moon for a few scenes. It would take some time but it would be worth it.

For everyone.

What are you looking forward to the most at CHC? Meeting people who are also interested in remaking Star Wars episodes 1-3.

MICHAEL MOFFITT Philip H. Knight Chair in Law and Professor of Law

CAROL PATY Associate Professor of Earth Sciences

What is your favorite aspect of being at UO? Oregon is a place where people are open to—even eager for—new ideas.

Hometown: I lived in several states growing up, but my eyes still sometimes go to Wadsworth, Ohio on the weather map.

What did you aspire to be when you entered college?

An international diplomat who programs computer games on the side.

If you had limitless funding, what academic adventure would you like to take students on?

Research trips to learn on-site how traditional practices (for example indigenous peoples’ restorative justice traditions or minority religious communities’ “courts”) are shaping current procedures within modern justice systems. New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, eastern Europe, Mexico, and a number of places across the U.S. would be on my short list.

What are you looking forward to the most at CHC? The student energy!

What is one thing about you that is unique, weird, or noteworthy? My teenage daughter and I have each been writing fantasy novels.

We’ve each recently finishing drafts. Hers is good. Mine is “interesting.”

Hometown? Mongaup Valley, New York.

What do you love most about working with students? I enjoy their enthusiasm and excitement, it’s both inspiring and contagious.

What do you do in your down time? There wasn’t a lot of downtime over the last year with our family’s cross country move to Oregon. On weekends I enjoy working in the garden, and we have been exploring the region with our four-yearold son: from the coast to the mountains, and beyond.

What is the best piece of advice that you can give to students, gleaned from your own education?

Enjoy your time as a student!

Enjoy the freedom of taking a variety of classes, and finding out more about yourself and what inspires you in the process.

What courses will you be teaching in winter and spring? Winter: Graduate Seminar in Computational Methods for Planetary Sciences; Spring: Calderwood Seminar: Chasing Planets.

Odd fact about you? Not sure that it’s odd as a planetary scientist, but I love good sci-fi (who doesn’t, right?). Currently anticipating the new season of ‘The Expanse.’

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CHAPMAN HALL RENOVATION GARNERS HISTORIC PRESERVATION AWARD

BY ISABELLA GARCIA The exterior of Chapman Hall has remained the same since 1939, when it was one of the first four “sister buildings” erected on the University of Oregon campus. But the interior has not.

A major upgrade last year removed the cramped hallways and dark classrooms, replacing them with curated study spaces and window-accentuating architecture that creates the open and collaborative environment that Clark Honors College thrives on.

The renovation was a win for the honors college and for historic preservation.

In recognition, Chapman Hall received a DeMuro Award, an accolade for historic preservation and reuse, from the historic-preservation organization Restore Oregon.

“To have the Chapman Hall renovation recognized by Restore Oregon with a DeMuro Award is a testament to the efforts of the entire project team,” said Renee Dorjahn, CHC assistant dean of finance and administration, who accepted the award last year. “The renovation very thoughtfully restored this historic building, making it more functional and welcoming, not only for the Clark Honors College but for all UO students and faculty.”

Chapman Hall is the first capital project on the University of Oregon campus to receive a DeMuro Award, named after Art DeMuro, a renowned Oregon developer and preservationist whose firm redeveloped the iconic White Stag Block in Old Town Portland.

The Chapman Hall renovation was among the larger projects, with staff,

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alumni, and community members coming together to contribute to the $10.5 million project. Other DeMuro winners this year ranged from the 1843 Ermatinger House in Oregon City, one of the oldest structures in the state, to such grassroots projects as the restoration of the Paul Bunyan statue in Portland’s Kenton neighborhood, which was spearheaded by the neighborhood association.

Congratulations to the entire Chapman Hall project team: Hennebery Eddy Architects KPFF Consulting Engineers Interface Engineering Fortis Construction

Chapman Hall also is on track to receive the LEED Gold rating from the U.S. Green Building Council, an environmental status that’s difficult for interior historic renovations to achieve given the constraints of the existing building. The project focused on repurposing existing materials, using reclaimed lumber for new fixtures and implementing energysaving technology, such as lights that dim or brighten based on how much light is coming through the windows.

“The success of the Chapman Hall Project is a testament to our continued efforts to preserve the university’s rich heritage, be a leader in sustainable design, and create wonderful learning spaces,” said Christine Thompson, director of planning for the Campus Planning and Facilities Management.

The focus on reuse and sustainability aligns with Restore Oregon’s mission to promote historic preservation.

“There is a growing awareness that historic buildings are not only cultural assets but assets in terms of sustainability,” said Peggy Moretti, the group’s executive director. “When you demolish buildings and throw them in the landfill, you’re throwing

Acoustic Design Studio The Facade Group/RWDI PLACE landscape architects University of Oregon

away a lot of embodied energy, and there is tremendous energy expended in the replacement. For a long time, people thought historic buildings are not energy efficient, but if their passive energy-efficiency features are repaired and maintained, and updated systems put in place, they absolutely can be quite efficient.”

A study by Preservation Green Lab, a research group for the National Trust of Historic Preservation, found that it can take new energy-efficient buildings twenty to thirty years to compensate for the climate-changing carbon impacts caused by their construction.

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VECTOR FROM FREEPIK.COM

“It’s going to be a really neat collaborative project that brings in a lot of the expertise we have on campus and will connect it not only to the classrooms here at the CHC, but also will create a resource that will be really broadly available.”

JUST THE CURE YOU NEED

BY ISABELLA GARCIA

DAPHNE GALLAGHER LEADS DIGITIZATION PROJECT WITH ART MUSEUM AND UO LIBRARIES

BY ABBEY MCDONALD In her cozy new office at Chapman Hall, which is often crammed with artifacts and stacks of readings, Dr. Daphne Gallagher welcomes students to chat about anything related to classes, travel, archeology, history, or life in general.

Whether it’s a question from Clark Honors College students about ancient burial practices, African Studies, or Atlantis, Dr. Gallagher has the expertise to answer it.

With archeological focuses on paleoethnobotany, agriculture, trade, and disease, her research has taken her around the world, including ongoing projects in West Africa.

Dr. Gallagher now can add leadership on a Mellon Grant-funded project to her already impressive resume.

In December 2017, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and the University of Oregon Libraries received a $300,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation, a prestigious nonprofit established in 1969 to fund research in the arts and humanities. Dr. Gallagher

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was chosen to work on the project to digitalize museum collections.

and looks for opportunities to further represent different groups.

“I’m very excited for Dr. Gallagher as she embarks on her project to develop a new course about how libraries and museums build, curate, study, and display their collections,” said Dr. Jenny Kreiger, a Mellon Postdoctoral Scholar in Library-Museum Collaboration at UO. “I think we’re all going to learn a lot from Dr. Gallagher and from each other as we work together.”

The project kicked off in March and gained momentum over the summer.

Dr. Gallagher is looking forward to working with an interdisciplinary group of archivists, librarians, open-education specialists, curators, and collection managers.

The Schnitzer Museum and UO Libraries aim to make their collections publicly accessible through digitization, so anyone can view them online regardless of whether they’re on display or archived.

This may seem like a straightforward task, but the process of archiving is much more than merely taking pictures.

“Digitization is really complicated,” Dr. Gallagher said. “The infrastructure that’s required to ensure your digital stuff is in a format that will be good for perpetuity, and that it’s reported, and that you can keep up, but then also on the flip side thinking about the ethics of digitization: Who’s making this choice about what to digitize?”

With her extensive background in colonial history, Dr. Gallagher thinks critically about these challenges. Along with considering what the communities who sourced the objects want, she also evaluates the diversity in the collections

“It’s going to be a really neat collaborative project that brings in a lot of the expertise we have on campus and will connect it not only to the classrooms here at the CHC, but also will create a resource that will be really broadly available,” she said.

From her work on the project, Dr. Gallagher is developing a hands-on seminar for CHC that will explore collection maintenance at libraries and museums. This is her first year as a faculty member at CHC, having previously worked in the department of anthropology. To date, her courses include an exploration of medieval West Africa and a course on the ethnobotany and conflict of the trans-Atlantic exchange.

In the coming year, Dr. Gallagher and her colleagues will continue to use the grant to promote accessibility and interactivity online, in museums and in the classroom.

The Center for Undergraduate Research and Engagement (CURE) has had great success in breaking down barriers to research and internship opportunities for University of Oregon students, and it’s only been on campus for about a year.

“CURE was established in the fall of 2017 to not only centralize the researchrelated opportunities for students, but to serve as a resource center as well,” said Lanch McCormick, the center’s director of student engagement.

“There are a lot of opportunities and resources here, but as a student, do you necessarily know where to start?

That’s one of the reasons why CURE was established.”

The center works collaboratively with other campus offices and programs, including the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program, the Office of Distinguished Scholarships, and the Career Center, to form an interwoven team of advocates for student success.

Christabelle Moore, a doctoral student serving as CURE’s undergraduate research engagement coordinator, described the center as the “connective tissue of the university.” CURE staff have a comprehensive understanding of the resources that exist across campus and use their connections to maximize student support. Essentially, the center is a one-stop-shop for students looking for research and internship opportunities.

“It’s been determined that engagement in these high-impact activities really connects students to the university, but also allows them to flex their intellectual prowess outside the classroom,” McCormick said. “Attending school isn’t just about going to classes, it’s about being involved and being engaged in your setting.”

The program offers an ideal launch pad for Clark Honors College students who are required to produce a thesis based on original research in their final year.

Housed within the Global Scholars Hall, where many first-year honors college students live, eat, and study, the CURE office is easily accessible to CHC students from their first day on campus.

Depending on their major, some students need to get into labs as early as their sophomore year to be on track for their thesis research, but the path to joining a lab isn’t always straight forward.

“We have so much research money coming into the university and there are so many projects going on, yet students still run into so many barriers,” Moore said. “Oftentimes, they are simple things, like not knowing something exists.”

Lab availability may be scattered across the websites of several professors, some of which may be out of date, and many students are hesitant to reach out to professors directly.

Drop-in advising on undergraduate research opportunities (and distinguished scholarships) is available Monday-Thursday 4-6 pm, GSH 104.

“You worked hard to get into UO, and there are numerous opportunities that you should take advantage of before your four years are done.”

One way of creating more transparency in the student search for research experience is the development of the CURE “tag” on the Career Center’s Duck Connect platform. Duck Connect lists openings for campus jobs, internships, and other opportunities. All UO students have access, so instead of reinventing the wheel, CURE collaborated with the Career Center to develop a CURE tag for lab openings, internships, and research opportunities. This compiled list not only helps students, giving them a central place to look for open positions with clear application requirements, but also helps faculty recruit from a wider applicant pool.

“It’s about empowering students to be their own agents and owning their process because at the end of the day, it’s got to come from you,” McCormick said. “You worked hard to get into UO, and there are numerous opportunities that you should take advantage of before your four years are done.”

cure.uoregon.edu

ROBERT D. CLARK HONORS COLLEGE

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CLARK HONORS COLLEGE HISTORIAN EARNS FAME AS A MOUNTAINEER

BY JIM BARLOW The awards, given every two years, are issued in memory of King Albert I of Belgium, who died during a solitary rock climb near Brussels in 1934. Carey, who received a gold medal and a certificate, is one of fifty-six recipients since the award was established in 1993.

Carey, a historian in Clark Honors College and the director of the Clark Honors College environmental-studies program, received a King Albert Mountain Award during ceremonies Sept. 8 in Pontresina, Switzerland. The King Albert I Memorial Foundation bestows the award to “persons or institutions that have distinguished themselves in some way in the mountain world.”

The certificate recognized Carey for his lifelong devotion to mountains, which began when he was a park ranger at Mount Rainier and Glacier National Park; his studies in Latin American and environmental history; his teaching role; and his Glacier Lab for the Study of Ice and Society at the University of Oregon.

Carey was joined on the winner’s podium by Nasim Eshqi, an Iranian female mountain explorer; Swiss filmmakers who documented a crosscountry skiing trip on the Silk Road; and representatives of Italy’s Val Grande National Park.

Carey has conducted research for two decades in the Cordillera Blanca, a stretch of the Andes Mountains in Peru that encompasses more than 500 tropical glaciers, and the valley below that’s home to 250,000 people, mostly farmers and ranchers. The Cordillera Blanca has a long history of glacierrelated floods and avalanches.

“I was pretty surprised. I was in shock when they got in touch with me,” Carey said. “I appreciate this award because it values the historical context that I bring into research on glaciers, climate change, and natural hazards. And it recognizes the fundamental importance of cross-disciplinary collaborations, which I have increasingly put at the forefront of my research practices with concepts like hydro-social modeling and integrated disaster prevention.”

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“Thousands of people have died as a result of these events,” Carey said.

“I don’t know of any other place in the world where glacier melting has been so catastrophic as in this one valley.”

People in the area, northeast of Lima, over many decades have adapted strategies to monitor glacial activity and construct artificial dams to prevent outburst floods from glacial

MARK CAREY

lakes. Yet, dangerous glacial lakes still exist, Carey said, and some remediation projects have fallen apart amid political and economic upheaval.

“I’m trying to understand the impacts of melting glaciers from a societal perspective, especially the politics behind the projects that are chosen to be completed,” he said. “After many decades of success preventing outburst floods, there are still vulnerabilities.”

A glacial lake near Huaraz, Peru, that burst in the 1940s and killed 2,000 people now has more water in it than it did then, Carey noted. The population of Huaraz seventy-eight years ago was 12,000; it now is 120,000.

“This is a story of both shrinking glaciers and societal change, which demands cross-disciplinary collaboration,” he said.

“In the last decade, I’ve also been looking at water issues related to glacier retreat, suggesting that we should not be focused solely on ice loss or just the climate story but rather be more attentive to downstreamwater management, rights, and the distribution of water from glaciers.

There is a supply of water that leaves the glacier, and as it does, it becomes deeply political and economic. Who gets that water and who doesn’t?”

That effort, which has led to Carey’s speaking with various government agencies and at academic conferences in Peru, is being done through the Transdisciplinary Andean Research Network, which Carey cofounded and leads with several other researchers in the United States, Canada, and Peru.

His glacier lab includes a mix of undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students, as well as occasional

postdoctoral researchers. Carey’s mentoring efforts with students led to his winning an all all-campus advising award in 2015.

“There is a lot of teaching and mentoring involved to encourage thinking about environmental problems in a broad way that brings in the social science and humanities to complement work in the natural sciences,” said Carey, who also is working with UO earth scientist Dave Sutherland on iceberg research in the North Atlantic.

In addition, he’s working on a book, geared to the general public, that will portray a 150-year period in which icebergs have captured people’s imagination. It will encompass, he said, how icebergs have influenced such things as artwork, tourism, shipping, and the oil industry.

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF MARK CAREY

Mark Carey never saw it coming, but his twenty years of research in a region of South America strongly affected by glaciers has elevated him to international mountaineering fame.

For Francesca Fontana, a typical day begins about 7:30 a.m., when she enters The Wall Street Journal offices in New York City, two hours before the stock market opens.

Her first task is writing “Stocks to Watch,” a column that discusses eight to twelve stocks expected to move throughout the day. When the market opens at 9:30, Fontana spends the rest of the day filing “Market Talks,” stories analyzing why and how prices and futures change.

She covers U.S. equities and stocks, some Canadian stocks, and the livestock and grain markets.

BY SARAH HOVET

“I’ve learned a lot about bushels of things,” said Fontana, now fluent in trade tariffs and soybean futures.

Fontana graduated from Clark Honors College in June 2017 and the next week began a writing internship with The Journal’s management and careers team. The F. James Pensiero Reporting Internship gives preference to students from state schools, and Fontana qualified.

“It felt crazy,” she said of getting the internship. “It was my dream internship, my dream job.”

She worked on feature stories and was under pressure to get them distributed on the newswires. As her internship ended, she stayed on to finish work on what she considers her most exciting project at The Journal.

The project was part of WSJ’s annual “Women in the Workplace” package.

Fontana tackled the issue of “vocal fry,” a verbal tic typically associated with women and deemed “unprofessional,” like upspeak. She described vocal fry as the scratchy quality a person’s voice can

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“We should listen to what women have to say and not how they’re saying it,” Fontana said.

Tasked with creating a video for WSJ’s Snapchat account, she talked to a linguist and an actress who visits a vocal coach to eliminate her vocal fry. Fontana learned that men often also speak with vocal fry, but it’s usually only an issue for women. Her biggest thrill came when her editor told her to narrate the video.

After the project concluded, Fontana freelanced in New York and briefly wrote for financial news website TheStreet.

She maintained relationships at WSJ and eventually landed a full-time job there.

As a first-generation, multiethnic student, Fontana at times felt isolated at the University of Oregon. However, she cherishes the opportunities CHC provided for her pursuit of her thesis.

While an undergraduate, she received a CHC thesis-research grant to travel to Chicago to report a story from her own past. Her research culminated in a book proposal and several chapters of an investigative memoir about a criminal trial involving her father that unfolded during her childhood. The proposal and beginnings of the memoir became her CHC thesis project. She took thesis credits for classes, allowing her to spend time interviewing and exploring records in Chicago while school was in session.

“It was challenging for me as a journalist, student, and person,” she recalled. “The project really shaped me and gave me my independence.”

In the process, Fontana learned “nothing can substitute for the work.” By that, she means work hard, but do work that is meaningful. As a School of Journalism and Communication student, she had felt pressure to jump from Flux Magazine to The Daily Emerald to a handful of other opportunities. But, ultimately, she learned to do the work she enjoyed doing, not the work other people expected her to do.

She has other thoughts on work.

“Make the time to not be working,” she advised. “It’s cool to get eight hours of sleep!”

Lindauer conceived the Calderwood Seminars not as courses to help students improve their writing, but as an avenue of translation, taking what his students had

Developed in 1984 by David Lindauer, a professor of economics at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, the Calderwood Seminars are adaptable across all disciplines. First offered at Wellesley, the program was extended to several selective private liberal-arts colleges, including Amherst, Smith, and Wesleyan.

The small-group courses teach students how to communicate academic knowledge to broader audiences and become familiar with different genres of public writing, including op-eds, features, profiles, and blog posts.

Beginning this winter, Clark Honors College will be one of four public honors colleges in the nation to offer the Calderwood Seminars in Public Writing.

In 2012, an opportunity arose for donor support to expand the pedagogy he employed in economics to other subjects and disciplines, and Lindauer suspected that the approach would be easily adaptable.

His hunch proved correct: During the past seven years, 24 Wellesley faculty members have taught Calderwood Seminars, engaging more than 500 students. Most of these faculty added Calderwood Seminars to their teaching portfolios and offer them on a regular basis. A year ago, the

“The primary motivation was to get senior majors to think like economists and to use writing as a means for students to take stock of what they had learned as economics majors,” he said. “Today, I recognize the independent importance of public writing as a skill that students should have as they leave our campuses.”

learned about economics and presenting it to an audience that lacks such specialized knowledge.

“The seminars empower the knowledge students gained from earlier courses and help students identify their ‘voice’ in their major field of study,” Lindauer said. “In terms of

The Calderwood Seminars are structured so that students gain experience editing the work of others and learn how to give and receive criticism.

“In these seminars, students learn to translate complex, specialized knowledge learned in the classroom to other settings. They also discover the power and applicability of what they’re learning at the UO to the world beyond our campus,” he said.

Dean Gabe Paquette sees the establishment of the Calderwood Seminars as demonstrating the honor college’s commitment to experimentation with cutting edge approaches to teaching and learning.

program expanded to other campuses; it will arrive at CHC in winter 2020.

“As a class, we will work together to develop each student’s narrative voice for

Chasing Planets, one of the seven seminars scheduled for next year, will be taught by Professor Carol Paty.

Over the next three academic years, the CHC will offer 18 Calderwood Seminars, on such subjects as the Supreme Court, planetary science, social justice, disability studies, public science, and the Civil War.

Lindauer sees the program as a a natural fit for CHC. “These seminars make it possible for students to contribute to public debate while strengthening their ability to communicate complex knowledge to nonspecialist audiences,” he said.” These are increasingly crucial skills.”

writing, these seminars give students the opportunity to write for an audience other than their professors and to demonstrate command over their subject by writing for the public.”

“CHC students are among the highest achieving students in the nation,” Paquette added. “The Calderwood grant enables us furnish them with a special academic program in which to cultivate and apply their formidable talents. We are truly fortunate to bring the Calderwood Seminars to the University of Oregon.”

Dean Paquette views the Calderwood Seminars as an opportunity to raise CHC’s profile and to provide students with a learning opportunity previously available only to students at private colleges and universities. He sees the match of the college and the seminars as a perfect fit.

communicating meaningful science to a broad audience,” she said. “We will also strive to foster a sense of understanding related to public perception of science through science fiction, and how messaging for public consumption is linked to ‘popular’ representation.”

CLARK HONORS COLLEGE RECEIVES PRESTIGIOUS CALDERWOOD SEMINAR GRANT

FRACESCA FONTANA

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By leaps and bounds

HANNAH BONTRAGER AS ALICE IN BALLET FANTASTIQUE’S PRODUCTION OF ALICE IN WONDERLAND.

CLARK HONORS COLLEGE ALUMNA HANNAH BONTRAGER TAKES BALLET BEYOND THE STAGE

BY DEREK MAILIOLO Onstage, a sleek-suited Mad Hatter tapdanced at his notorious tea party. A raucous Tweedledee and Tweedledum flipped and cartwheeled, at one point balancing giant pinwheels on their noses. A psychedelic Caterpillar pirouetted across the stage in streaks of dazzling purple and green.

Ballet Fantastique’s world premiere of Alice in Wonderland at the Hult Center in May showcased what has come to be expected of the company’s performances: the unexpected. The show’s energy, full of flashing technicolor lights, booming bass and fast-paced dance routines, felt more like a pop concert than a ballet.

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Behind much of the choreography, story and costume—leaping and twirling in Alice’s sky-blue, polka-dot dress—was Hannah Bontrager (’07), cofounder of Ballet Fantastique.

At the popular college hangout Agate Alley, Bontrager ordered a glass of white wine, then addressed a string of text messages. Her work never seems to stop, and she says she likes it that way.

Every day, she gets to create art, the thing she’s most passionate about, the thing she can lose herself in.

The glass of wine was more of a prop as Bontrager enthusiastically answers every question with elaborate personal stories. She spoke with particular fervor about Ballet Fantastique, buttressing the academy’s rise to fame with grand hand gestures as if she still were onstage.

Ballet Fantastique originally slated three performances of Alice in Wonderland on Mother’s Day weekend, but the demand for tickets was so high

it added a Sunday-night performance was added. Bontrager has stunned local business leaders with the success of her Eugene-based ballet school and performance company, who are the only resident performers at the Hult Center.

Doing the unexpected seems like a mantra for Bontrager, who was just 16 when she founded Ballet Fantastique with her mother, Donna. In 2017, she received a 20 Under 40 Rising Business Star award for establishing a full season of ballet shows, some of which are performed internationally.

Staging high-energy shows based on well-known stories is meant to attract a wider audience, some of whom would never see a more traditional, abstract ballet.

Since she was a young girl directing neighbor kids in backyard dance and theater shows, Bontrager has had an insatiable passion for the performing arts. She began ballet almost as soon as she could walk.

Classically trained in the Russian technique known as the Vaganova Method, she rehearsed a minimum of four hours each day. The method, developed by esteemed ballerina and teacher Agrippina Vaganova (18791951), requires dancers to harmonize their upper body movements with their legs and feet.

What still draws Bontrager to the Vaganova method—and why she teaches it—is its multidisciplinary focus on ballet, especially the storytelling aspect.

“It’s art and it’s athletics and it’s music and it’s theater,” she said. “I love that intersection between all of those things.”

Her mother became a teacher of the Vaganova method when Bontrager was halfway through high school, and the two began offering lessons out of what used to be a community building turned hair salon in downtown Eugene.

When they founded Ballet Fantastique in

2004, it was solely a ballet school for children. As the school attracted more students each year and Bontrager’s high-school graduation approached, she found herself at a crossroads.

On one hand, she already was a ballet teacher in a growing a family business.

She had been accepted by the University of Oregon and the Robert D. Clark Honors College, all paid for by the full-ride Staten Staton Scholarship.

“But my dream was still to go off the big city and be professional ballerina,” she said.

When the Colorado Ballet in Denver offered her an apprenticeship, Bontrager couldn’t resist. She contacted Clark Honors College, which agreed to hold her scholarship for a year.

After high school, she moved to the Mile High City, where she continued training in the Russian style. Persevering through the brutal schedule a ballet company demands, Bontrager performed

in the company’s full performance season—including 36 performances of The Nutcracker that year.

“I rode my bike in the snow to work at Starbucks every morning, then danced all day,” she recalled.

Although she loved performing and training under prestigious instructors, she was ready to return to Ballet Fantastique to continue her education.

“I missed teaching kids, having a creative voice,” Bontrager said. “I had this experience that I thought was everything I wanted, and I realized that what we were doing back home was really special.”

Another draw was Clark Honors College and the chance to do independent research, to pursue her own interests and turn them into a tangible project.

By the time she began classes in 2003, dawn-early days and long nights had become habit. In addition to her classes,

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she worked as an editorial assistant at a publishing company and as the lead grant writer for Ballet Fantastique, which is dependent on such funding.

Bontrager now wants to take some time to settle.

“My dream and goal is to be able to stabilize now for a bit and ensure that what we’re doing is sustainable,” she said.

“I would sleep midnight to 4 a.m., get up, work for three hours, go to the ballet company for four hours,” she said. “Then at night I would write grant applications.”

It was a nonstop ride, but that’s what she always expected of an artist’s life.

Bontrager particularly appreciated honors-college professors, who took an interest in her work outside of class and respected her artistic ambitions.

“I felt like if they’re taking me this seriously, then maybe I can have the courage to believe in myself,” she said.

Honors classes left indelible impacts that continue to manifest in unexpected ways. Last season, Ballet Fantastique performed an original ballet version of The Odyssey.

“That was my first honors-college paper with Professor (Ce) Rosenow,” Bontrager said.

Like any performance art, ballet lessons and performance tickets can be costly.

That’s why Ballet Fantastique, in addition to its classes and professional performances, engages in nonprofit outreach programs that provide dance education to local underserved schools.

This final element is something Bontrager first pursued through thesis for the Clark Honors College: “Moving Education: Building a Model Integrated Dance Partnership for Elementary School Classrooms.” Her research showed how dance lessons could be used to more effectively teach math and science. In true honors-college spirit, the project required Bontrager to meld what she has learned as a dance and English major with a minor in arts administration.

At the time, Bontrager already was the

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executive director of and grant-writer for Ballet Fantastique. By her senior year at Oregon, she secured grant funding through the Lane Arts Council to implement her thesis research in local elementary schools.

This was during the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) era, when, Bontrager said, state-standards testing prioritized math and science classes over the arts.

A survey by the Center on Education Policy found that in 2006, four years after President George W. Bush signed NCLB legislation into federal law, 71 percent of the nation’s 15,000 school districts had reduced the hours of instructional time spent on music, history and other subjects to leave more time for reading and math.

“There was no way to find teachers who were able to carve out time for arts education,” said Bontrager, who developed dance lessons to prepare students for standardized tests.

Using funding from the Lane Arts Council, she implemented her lessons at Edison and Moffitt elementary schools to supplement science instruction.

She remembers a second-grade class at Edison whom she taught bird migrations using choreography from The Nutcracker. English-language-learners (ELL) showed marked improvement.

“The ELL kids were stunning their teachers by knowing lessons because they had danced it,” Bontrager said Amid a crammed, wide-ranging college schedule, this thesis work stands out in Bontrager’s mind.

“It really taught me the really crucial life skill (of) how to juggle a thousand different things at the same time,” she said.

Ballet Fantastique’s outreach builds on Bontrager’s thesis research, and the company still uses many of the instruction forms she created for it.

Staff members teach lessons at schools where many students come from lowincome families who could not otherwise afford dance lessons. Before the world premiere of Alice in Wonderland, the cast danced a special free performance for disadvantaged students in the community.

Bontrager said seeing the wonder on the kids’ faces reminded her why she started Ballet Fantastique, which has served more than 2,000 local students since 2004.

Through her indefatigable ambition, Bontrager amassed a $500,000 operating budget for Ballet Fantastique last year. The funding went to the year’s four shows, which included a wild west take on Shakespeare’s As You Like It and a world premiere of Cleopatra, featuring music from another electro-swing band, Beats Antique. Additional funds expanded youth outreach and dance initiatives in Eugene.

The numbers speak for themselves. In the article about Bontrager’s 20 Under 40 award, The Register-Guard reported that Ballet Fantastique’s operating budget has increased 25 to 30 percent in each of the past five years. The average for an arts nonprofit is 1 to 5 percent. With such fast growth,

Managing such a hefty workload may seem daunting, but Bontrager has been working toward this goal her whole life.

“My mom and I get to argue for work about what color Zorro’s pants should be—how amazing is it that I get to make art?” she said.

Hers has been an untraditional but rewarding path. Whether enduring twenty-hour rehearsal days, biking through snow or applying for federal grants at age 19, Bontrager has thrived because in this line of work, the art onemakes needs to shine.

“This job is about owning it and making it happen,” she said. “There are no excuses that we can give to our audience.”

Nearly two hours had passed by the time I finished asking Bontrager my interview questions. The glass of white wine waited nearly full beside her. It seemed like the ballerina of beverages: light, refined, and willing to offer its entirety for the sake of art. Our talk was running well past the time I had requested of her, so we finished our drinks and asked for the check.

Bontrager checked her phone, which had been buzzing occasionally as we talked.

Her eyes widened at the time, and after paying, she hurried out into the dwindling daylight. She had work to do.

For a schedule of the current season performances and for more information on Ballet Fantastique’s education and outreach initiatives, visit balletfantastique.org.

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you attain, how active you keep your brain in your old age, your diet, your exercise—all of these things play into whether you might develop late onset Alzheimer’s.”

GENETICS CLASS SEEKS ANSWER TO QUESTION: WHO AM I ?

Through his research on APOE, Temple learned that the gene also is linked to intracerebral hemorrhage—an emergency condition in which a ruptured blood vessel causes bleeding in the brain— which Temple suffered when he was 17.

BY ISABELLA GARCIA On the first day of class, Amy Connolly asked her students whether they would want to know when and how they were going to die.

Who Am I? A Genetic Inquiry, an interdisciplinary science course focusing on the genetic-testing service 23andMe, investigates the concept of DNA testing as a crystal ball. The class poses questions about the ethical practices of genome analysis and genetic big data while giving students the tools they needed to investigate the validity of the results and the science backing it up.

Connolly formed the idea for the course six years ago when her parents gave her a 23andMe testing kit for Christmas. At the time, the service tested for all kinds of genetic mutations that may lead to certain health risks and diseases, such as a mutation in one of the BRCA genes— responsible for tumor suppression—that has been linked to a greatly increased risk of breast cancer. Using mutation associations to identify possible diseases and conditions, 23andMe was able to report personalized health information in addition to ancestry and other genetic markers.

“It was really exciting to get that information back,” she said. “It was a whole bunch of data just about me, and I got to dig through it.”

Connolly enjoyed the experience so much that her parents wanted to get

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kits as well, but when they ordered their tests in 2013, they received letters stating that the Food and Drug Administration had shut down the genetic-testing service. 23andMe had marketed the testing kit as providing diagnosis-level information without FDA approval, a violation of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, and was forced to limit their results to ancestry only.

“What inspired this course were a lot of discussions that came up during that time period, especially with my parents who really wanted this information and were no longer allowed to get it,” Connolly said. “What rights do people have to their genetic information?

What are the dangers of everyday people learning about things like their risk for breast cancer? What will the everyday person be able to do with this information? There are a lot of big questions that come out of that.”

Those questions started to have more complex answers in April 2017, when the FDA released a statement announcing that 23andMe had been approved to expand their testing to ten diseases and conditions, including Parkinson’s, late-onset Alzheimer’s, and hereditary thrombophilia, a blood-clot disorder.

With the service back up and running, Connolly created the course that she had been contemplating for years.

“I thought it would be a really fun way

to get people to learn about genetics and also to dive into those big philosophical issues,” she said.

Students can order their own 23andMe kit and work with their data; if they chose not to study their genome, students use sample results or theorize the genetics of a famous figure.

During the course, some students learned they had genetic health-risk indicators, putting them in a potentially unnerving situation.

Seth Temple studied his own genome and learned that he was placed at a 20% to 30% risk of developing lateonset Alzheimer’s, an age-related brain disorder resulting in the loss of mental function. 23andMe reported that Temple had a copy of an apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene that has been linked to those who develop Alzheimer’s later in life.

Temple looked at the results rationally, guided by information he learned through the course and his personal experiences. Temple’s greatgrandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s, and his grandmother had always been diligent about keeping her brain active to stave off the disease. Temple viewed the information he received from 23andMe the same way.

“There is a preventative aspect of learning about genetic health risk factors,” he said. “The education that

“It was interesting, five years later, to see that perhaps my genetics could have been related to why that happened,” he said. “That made it real as well, to see that there are some red flags in my family history and my personal medical history, so I should take measures to live a healthy lifestyle.”

Not everyone who receives potentially frightening results has the same type of training that Temple received in this class, emphasizing that the information only indicates a chance at developing a health issue. That is why 23andMe makes a point to explain that its service isn’t comprehensive.

“Before you even open your report, it explains that it doesn’t sequence the whole genome and that they’re only looking for specific variants,” said Megan Deck, who also studied her personal genome. “They try to make it really clear, probably to help with liability issues, and it’s important for people to read that and not skip through it.”

Cameron Colbert also studied his own genetic information, but he had to dive into the fine print to learn that 23andMe reports their ancestral information with a 50% confidence rating.

“When the default is 50% confidence, that’s a coin flip,” Colbert said. “Selling these kits is what’s driving their business model, so it would be bad business for 23andMe to be in full disclosure about how unsure these tests can be in some cases.”

This technology lies on the cusp of consumer health and capitalism, and

it’s often described as “entertainment genetics,” which some students cited as a potential conflict of interest.

That’s where the context proved by Connolly’s course helps students read beyond face value.

“I’m glad that I learned that these results aren’t comprehensive and that they aren’t showing everything about your DNA,” Deck said. “Maybe I can spread that knowledge to other people who are considering getting the test, or already have it, and are anxious about looking at the results.”

The course also was full of “messy” discussion that could be frustrating for those with a distaste for gray areas.

Connolly’s approach to some of the more difficult and sensitive conversations, such as how genetics may impact ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender identity, was to build a respectful space that allowed students to safely feel uncomfortable.

“I do like complexity to be part of the conversation, and I want people to leave with an appreciation of human variation,” Connolly said. “I don’t have the answers about how to perfectly talk about this stuff, but I care about these issues, I care about people feeling welcome, and I want to talk about these tricky topics.”

One of Temple’s biggest takeaways from the course was understanding the weight of both nature and nurture.

His report informed him that he had a predisposition to be a sprinter because of his fast-twitch muscle fibers. That’s when Temple, a five-time marathon runner and successful endurance athlete, knew that genetics aren’t a crystal ball, but a starting point.

“I’d hate to see in the future if we start looking into genetics and saying, ‘Don’t do that, you’ll be bad at that because your genetics say so,’” he said.

“Practice is going to make you better at something regardless of whether you are genetically predisposed to it.”

As 23andMe continues its research, it will add more FDA approved genetic tests. The service continuously updates, giving its customers new information on their DNA as each new test is approved.

That keeps Connolly on her toes.

“I’ve planned this class with the mindset ‘This could be the scariest thing that people could learn,’ and then in the middle of term they’ve done something to change it,” she said. “Maybe that’s no longer the scariest thing people could learn, because now they’re talking about Alzheimer’s and breast cancer.

Because the service changes, my class has to be current to whatever 23andMe is offering.”

Ultimately, not shying from difficult issues left Connolly’s students with a nuanced understanding of genetic-data practices and the potential impact of the information as it becomes more prevalent in our society.

“Going into the class,” Colbert said, “I thought that if we have this technology we should be using it, but now I wonder what would happen if it got out of hand. The scariest thing is having aggregated data of people around the world and using that to select people for insurance, jobs, things like that—it sounds like a Black Mirror premise or something.

I’m not saying that it’s happening right now, but it’s a worry with this technology.”

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“At that time, Michele and Steve became aware that enterprises that had successfully migrated to the cloud were experiencing difficulties because their employees were unfamiliar with the cloud applications, and in particular with Microsoft’s Office 365,” he said. “The typical reaction from enterprises was, ‘We are now on the cloud, what next?’

Nulia was created to address this issue, initially with Office 365 but in the future with other cloud applications.”

Impressed with the Zimbas’ insights and ability to identify a novel and disruptive solution, Shephard came onboard.

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And today, all five of those CHC students who met at the dive bar can be found clicking away in the Nulia office.

So far, 12 students have crossed that creative bridge between Nulia and Clark Honors College.

“We’ve continued to recruit from the honors college because students really do have the skills we need,” Zimba said.

“They’re a great resource.”

Nulia, which was founded in 2017 by a team led by Steve and Michele Zimba, debunks the one-size-fits-all mind-set of digital training and instead creates individualized modules for Microsoft Office 365 and other software as a service product to foster rewarding, realtime software training.

Nulia’s success has encouraged the company to create a fellowship opportunity for CHC students, which will launch in the near future. They see those students, who have grown up in a digital world, as an embodiment of the company’s goals.

“Our company is made up of a really experienced founding executive team,” Michele Zimba said. “But all we do is

“They’re fearless in a way that my generation never will be,” Zimba said. “And that’s the fearlessness that we want to impart in the users of our platform.”

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For Shephard, who also is an instructor at CHC, the opportunity to become involved was quite intriguing, especially considering the Zimbas’ concept.

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“The group is very interdisciplinary and unified by students who are interested in thinking about scientific topics in a historical or anthropological frame,” Graboyes said. “Not just science as science exists separate from everything else, but how is it embedded in society and culture and history?”

Those fingertips belong to employees who recently voted for the first time but still can’t order a beer. Nulia, a platform-development start-up, is built on unfaltering faith in the next generation, known as the digital natives. That generation make up more than half the company’s workforce.

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The research group is a collaborative space where students can learn from one another, particularly about

During their two to three years in the lab (students can enter as sophomores and juniors and participate until they graduate), students also work on their thesis projects under Graboyes’s mentorship. The topics range in subject matter, but all take an interdisciplinary approach to thinking about global health topics.

Although this sounds like a stereotypical business design, Nulia’s has a twist.

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Instead, there is a “blindness to the history” within the health community that has attributed past failings to lack of funding or insufficient effort.

Graboyes’s research shows that plenty of funding and sophisticated technologies and techniques were used in previous elimination campaigns. The real shortcomings, she said, lie in the very idea: Is it feasible or appropriate to try to eliminate malaria in tropical Africa?

Taking research into the “real world” can give students a better understanding of how they can apply their research outside traditional academic pathways. Graboyes also highlights connections between coursework and real-world research in her Global Health Research Group, comprised of a dozen CHC students she mentors. Students in the group are participating in global health-research projects and writing theses on global health topics, and they will present their work at the undergraduate-research symposium in addition to presenting it at South Eugene High School.

Nulia’s office space, featuring bright windows and accented with purple and green paint, is cavernous. As is common in most businesses, the employees work in teams. Desks have been pushed together to create microworkspaces, each speaking its own language and focused on a unique goal.

One hub is fluent in Twitter and all things marketing; the next speaks platform creation; a third is fueled by data analytics and mathematical jargon. The office smells like caffeine and hard work; the space buzzes with voices and the sounds of fingertips hitting keyboards.

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Her current research is on a century of efforts to eradicate malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, specifically on the island of Zanzibar. Continued efforts, funded through the President’s Malaria Initiative, the Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization, have failed to eliminate malaria in the region, but the approach to combat the disease hasn’t been adjusted to address the failures.

Graboyes also shares her own drafts of proposals to show what higher academic processes look like. To date, the students in the Global Health Research Group have won funding to support their research with multiple VPRI Summer Research awards, UROP awards, Gilman Scholarships, departmental funding, and CHC Thesis Awards.

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Graboyes is a professor of African and medical history, often combining the subjects to explore the history and ethics of global health efforts in Africa.

She recently received a prestigious CAREER award from the National Science Foundation that will fund her continued research and fieldwork in Zanzibar, and the involvement of dozens of CHC students for five years. One component of the grant is meant to provide students with learning experiences in the field, to engage with the realities of historical and anthropological research. She plans to take four CHC students to work in the World Health Organization’s archives in Geneva during spring break in 2020.

the thesis and the intimidating process of applying for fellowships and competitive scholarships at the University of Oregon and the national and international level. The seniors are able to provide guidance by sharing winning proposals, scholarship-application essays, and other academic materials to provide a guideline for what succeeds.

n the second floor of a faded brick building in downtown Eugene lives Nulia, a problemsolving enterprise disguised as a tech company.

A little more than a year ago, the founders and the digital natives first collided at a dive bar across the street from the Clark Honors College campus.

The Zimbas and Nulia chairman Jim Shephard supplied tater tots and introduced five students—all from the honors college—to the professional world of problem-solving.

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Interdisciplinary research is a hallmark of Clark Honors College and a value that Dr. Melissa Graboyes exemplifies in her work.

up to make the same mistakes again because they haven’t engaged with the historic realities of past attempts that haven’t worked out well,” Graboyes said.

STORY BY LUCY KLEINER

set the rails because we want to have a company that’s going to survive our generation.”

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MELISSA GRABOYES ON MALARIA, AFRICA, AND HOW TO RIGHT PAST MISTAKES IN GLOBAL HEALTH

TECH START-UP PULLS FROM CHC TO PUSH FORWARD EUGENE COMPANY SHOWS FAITH IN THE NEXT GENERATION

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Y T T I H W F F JE REFLECTS

N A G N I T I R ON PLAY-W

CEO OF BITBULL CAPITAL JOE DIPASQUALE, JEFF WHITTY, AND MELISSA MCCARTHY AFTER THE BAFTA AWARDS, 2019.

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Can You Ever Forgive Me? follows author Lee Israel (played by Melissa McCarthy) as she forges letters from famous writers to make a living. The 2018 film was a hit with audiences and was nominated for three Academy Awards, including best adapted screenplay.

Whitty—widely known for his hit Avenue Q, the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical—has had great success with strong writing and relevant themes, which is why many of his works continue to run long after he has moved to new projects. Avenue Q and other long-running shows have kept the creative integrity Whitty gave them, but other works, he feels, have distorted that integrity. In one instance, that led to a legal battle that changed his work, even though the project still bears his name.

Ultimately, Whitty always falls back on following his curiosity—a path he recommends to everyone. many seeds and pray that some of them will grow, and this one grew at this time with these fine actors. I’m so privileged to be among them.”

Whitty has chased his curiosity coastto-coast, from growing up in Coos Bay to taking a Green Tortoise bus to New York City after graduating from Clark Honors College in 1993. After his acceptance into the graduate acting program at New York University, he combined his English degree with a love of theater and focused on writing screenplays.

He approached writing as improv in front of a keyboard, a process that led him to write the libretto for Avenue Q and launch him into the world of musicals.

“It’s like the nightmare won’t end,” Whitty said. “I’m OK talking about it now because I’m looking at the ashes of everything and realizing I meant well all along and it just happened. Everything that happens in your life is just material to work in later.”

Reflecting on his time in the honors college, Whitty cites Professor Louise Bishop as a motivator for one of his works.

Which is why the Oscar nomination was very nicely timed.

In one of her literature courses, Bishop assigned Sir Philip Sidney’s The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, a 16th century story Shakespeare pulled from for King Lear. Whitty was shocked to learn Arcadia had never been adapted for the stage, so

“I’ve worked very hard my whole career and it’s nice when that gets rewarded now and then,” Whitty said. “You plant so

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“My version of Head Over Heels is thanks to her,” Whitty said.

he wrote the off-Broadway version of Head Over Heels.

MELISSA MCCARTHY IN CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?

“It was a quiver in my arsenal,” Whitty said. “I discovered a poetic side of myself I didn’t know was there. The whole thing ended up being in iambic pentameter because I discovered why Shakespeare did it—it flows beautifully out of the mouth. That was all from the honors college.”

In a serendipitous turn of events, Avenue Q returned to the University of Oregon campus last fall, just as the New York cast announced its final season of the musical, ending its 15-year run. The turn of events prompted Whitty to reflect on the Q’s life cycle.

“I am a ruthless reviser of my own work; there are so many changes I would like to make in the show,” Whitty said, considering the promiscuous character Lucy the Slut’s evolution into a Kardashian-style celebrity and the transition of the song ‘Mixtape’ into a Spotify playlist.

“At a certain point, you can keep changing and trying to adapt with the times, but the times change so quickly, so in a way I’m OK with it being a bit of a period piece in the way that any of the

great musicals are set in a specific era: Sweeney Todd, Annie. To have Avenue Q locked in that period, it’s OK.” The strong setting in Avenue Q also remains because Whitty’s tendency toward serial revision means he has tried it all before a show hits the stage.

“There is a real arithmetic to my comedy and it has to be played with full sincerity,” he said. “You can’t ever mug, meaning winking at the audience like ‘This isn’t really real.’ That’s what actors have to do when the writing isn’t really good.”

Looking forward, Whitty hopes to keep exploring new forms, from writing a TV series about a drug-dealing, middle-aged prostitute who combats the portrayal of gay people in television to entering the

world of software-app development.

Whitty’s dream has been tested time and again, and each time he has come out stronger on the other side.

“Ten years it took me to make a living out of an art for —I did every job to keep myself together,” Whitty said. “You will just go through so much rejection, and what I learned through being on the other side of the audition table is that it’s not you, it’s not who you fundamentally are.”

TONY-WINNER AND OSCAR-NOMINATED JEFF WHITTY WALKS WITH TONY-NOMINATED AND ALSO UO ALUM HEIDI SCHRECK DOWN THE RED CARPET AT THE ACADEMY AWARDS, 2019.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF JEFF WHITTY

The recent success of Clark Honors College alum Jeff Whitty’s first screenplay couldn’t have come at a better time.

Ultimately, Whitty always falls back on following his curiosity—a path he recommends to everyone.

“Follow that thing in life where time goes by and you don’t notice it or you can’t

believe four hours just went by,” Whitty advised. “Keep curious your whole life and good things will result.”

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF LEIF KARLSTROM

MUSIC DIPLOMACY IN TIBET: A RIVER STORY FROM THREE CLARK HONORS COLLEGE ALUMNI LEIF KARLSTROM | TRAVIS WINN | KAI WELCH Weathered Buddhist prayer flags flap silently along the water’s edge, like decaying ribbons. Mani stones, inscribed with mantras and prayers of Tibetan Buddhism, pebble the banks of the Daqu River as we glide past on rubber boats.

It is August 2017, and four University of Oregon alumni—three of us Clark Honors College graduates—are lazily floating down a wilderness river through the Tibetan Plateau in Western China. Although we passed few signs of human occupation, indications of snow leopards were visible along the river’s edge; this remote region is home to the one of the highest concentrations of the big cat and other high-altitude fauna anywhere on the planet.

The four of us—Travis Winn, who runs Last Descents River Expeditions and has traveled in China since 2000; Kai Welch, a Grammy-nominated founder of Music for Wild Places; Trip Jennings, a National Geographic Explorer and Banff Film Festival-winning filmmaker; and me, now a professor in Earth sciences at UO and member of the acclaimed bluegrass band Front Country—found ourselves on a nine-day float trip making music with traditional Tibetan musicians.

Kai summed up our endeavor well—he called it “musical diplomacy.”

Next year, China is opening the first formal national park in its history, tailored explicitly after the model that successful melds conservation and tourism in the United States. This park, the first of ten to come, will encompass 123,100 square kilometers of Qinghai Province’s Sanjiangyuan area, which means “source of three rivers.” For context, that’s more than half the total area of America’s national parks combined.

To bring attention to the opening, the Chinese government funded the music festival and a trip down the Daqu as a way to document the natural and cultural elements of the area.

The region is remote but far from unoccupied. Tibetan nomadic yak herders traveling by car or motorbike were a common sight. They would visit our camps in the evenings, to stare and take selfies with us strangers (most everyone has a smartphone here, where cell service came before power lines). It was a surreal reminder that, in this place, national park status and conservation efforts will need to encompass not just wildlife but the indigenous human life that has been present here for thousands of years.

But this is where, hopefully, the similarities to U.S. national parks will end.

U.S. national parks have a troubled history when it comes to Native Americans, who were driven out because human habitation of park areas was at odds with the American idea of wilderness at the time. The government in Beijing has a unique opportunity to succeed where our country has failed— to preserve not only a stunning landscape but also the long-time human occupants of that landscape, in a time where ethnic minorities the world over are increasingly marginalized.

Here, with the support of the provincial government, we

KAI WELCH RECORDING IN TIBET

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were helping to softly advocate for the presence of local people in the park, and for the preservation of local culture as part of China’s national parks program.

Fourteen years before this epic trip down the Daqu River, Travis, Kai, and I were just rambunctious University of Oregon students, enrolled in CHC. We never took a class together but have a shared appreciation for guidance and inspiration of CHC faculty. Our friendships at the time had little to do with coursework, and we’ve had very different lives in the years since graduation. Still, as sometimes happens, our paths converged again years later.

Travis and I met through a group of UO students who pursued our ambitions in the wilderness more tenaciously than in the classroom. What we lacked in self-preservation instincts we made up for with enthusiasm for the wild places of the American West—a typical spring break could be spent hanging off of El Capitan in Yosemite or paddling Class V rivers in the Pacific Northwest. Travis and I lived together during my last year at Oregon. While I was battling through degrees in physics, violin performance, and math, Travis was taking his first formative trips to China, sparking his passion and inspiration for the disappearing treasures that were, and are, China’s wild rivers. Just as efforts to dam the Grand Canyon launched the Sierra Club in the 1950s, Travis hoped that by exposing the Chinese public to river resources under threat from dams, some of these amazing places could be preserved. He moved to China after graduating and starting a river guiding business that doubled as an environmental advocacy group.

In 2008, I went to China to visit Travis, where we did a “last descent” of the Great Bend of the Yangtze River with some fellow UO alumni, including Trip Jennings, who was at the start of an illustrious career in environmental filmmaking. Things were more difficult for Travis than he initially had imagined, and he was struggling to remain

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optimistic as more and more sections of river disappeared behind dams. In fact, our trip was not really a success; today, the Great Bend section, with its thousand-year-old ethnic minority villages and stunning natural splendor, is under water behind a hydropower dam.

Kai and I also met at UO through the outdoors; one of our first experiences together was a long rock climb an hour from Eugene that left us sunburned and dangling 20 feet off the ground due to

a rappelling miscalculation. But we also shared a passion for music. Rather than pursue a formal music-performance degree as I did, Kai developed his craft independently. His CHC thesis involved a combination of original songs, photographs of wild places, and creative writing centered on the conflict between humans and the natural world.

After graduating, Kai moved to Nashville with little more than ambition and a back pack, having spent his summer climbing in Yosemite. He played in bands for a few years, working construction on the side, until he was “discovered” by folk/bluegrass songstress Abigail Washburn. They wrote and recorded a record together, which started a positive feedback loop that has propelled Kai onto some of the world’s biggest stages, into musical circles he hardly dared to dream of, and toured the world with multiple Grammy-winner Kacey Musgraves.

Along that path, he and I started a professional relationship—Kai produced my band Front Country’s first full length record, which helped our Bay Area bluegrass five-piece dive into touring full time and led to an International Bluegrass Music Award nomination.

During this time, Kai also started a project that synthesized his passion for music with his love of outdoors and adventure, a nonprofit called Music for Wild Places. His organization brings world-class musicians—many with little

to no outdoor experience—on guided trips into the wilderness with their fans, to experience live music in places they never would have imagined going. Most of these adventures are river trips.

In the summer of 2016, Travis invited me to his wedding in Colorado. He had been living in China full time for nearly ten years, and both his personal life and business had been on a roller coaster.

During the wedding festivities, Travis told me stories of Chinese politics and living in Beijing, far from the wild places he loved. He was still trying to protect the landscapes and cultures of Western China and Tibet but had moved to a metropolis where he could interface with the Chinese culture directly. And it had taken its toll.

I composed a tune for the wedding and recorded it on my phone, then played it for Travis and his wife, Weiyi. On a whim, I floated the idea of bringing Western

musicians on a river trip in China. Travis got excited, and we talked about the potential for this to crystallize into a cultural exchange, to showcase through art the landscape and people of the Tibetan rivers Travis was running. He mentioned something about a new national park he was involved with.

A few months later, Travis wrote to say he had secured funds from the local government to bring in Western musicians for a festival to help open Sanjiangyuan National Park, an area where Travis had led commercial trips.

The Daqu River cuts through a gorge at the foot of the eastern Himalayas, 13,000 feet above sea level. Rather than develop the region or dam the river for power, the Chinese government had agreed to protect Sanjiangyuan, which contains the sacred headwaters of the Yellow, Yangtze and Mekong rivers.

This was serious! I was in the midst of juggling my job at University of Oregon as a professor in Earth sciences and touring with Front Country in my free time. I was in no position to take on organizing this. I reached out to friends, including Kai for his experience facilitating music on river trips and Trip to document the journey on film, and I pitched the cultural exchange to my band. I was met with interest and willingness to put a project together, to document a river trip that both would showcase the new park in a unique way by creating new music collaboratively between American and Tibetan folk musicians.

A remarkable mobilization of forces began—chatting by Skype from opposite ends of the Earth with Trip on assignment in Thailand, Kai on tour in Hawaii, Travis in China, me traveling or in Oregon. We exchanged scattered emails regarding logistics and finances and sponsors and news media. It very nearly didn’t happen. But the Chinese government’s support was real, and enough pieces came together that we found ourselves committed and buying plane tickets. A final stumbling

block occurred when Trip came back from Thailand with dengue fever three weeks before our departure date, but he recovered enough to make the flight from Oregon.

After an exhausting overnight flight to Yushu, whose commercial airport is the sixth highest in the world at 12,837 feet, and a day of acclimatization, we found ourselves driving over a 15,500-foothigh pass to start a nine-day river trip.

With us were the four other members of Front Country, three nomadic Tibetan musicians who spoke no English and nearly no Mandarin, three American river guides, and about a dozen paying Chinese guests—mostly children participating in an “outdoor school” run

by Travis and the guide—who spoke little English.

I was a bit nervous about the multiple language barriers but soon realized this was the whole point: Through music and a shared curiosity about the landscape we were entering, it was easy to develop friendships even though we had little to nothing in common in normal life. As the days passed, we moved through a wild landscape at a river’s pace, through gorges of limestone and sandstone reminiscent of landscapes in the American Southwest but carpeted by the green flora of the Tibetan Plateau, while trying to forge musical connections between the oral folk music of the United States and Tibet.

It was the perfect vehicle for integrating people and place, creating an opening to learn more about the challenges in Sanjiangyuan.

By the end of our journey, we had documented some unique musical interactions, with video footage and reflections from passengers that we hope will be an effective representation of the place but also of the potential of the park.

None of us had expected that our early adventures in the outdoors as UO and CHC students, combined with a passion for music and sharing wild places, would allow us to contribute to such an important country’s budding conservation movement. The journey touched not only our lives, but also those of Chinese families and students who funded the trip, and, most important, local musicians who had never seen their tremendous landscape from the perspective of the river.

Our first music on the river was tentative and separate; both the Tibetans and Front Country played familiar material while trying to find common ground.

The Tibetan music was foreign to us, but the manner of their playing—songs learned by ear from one musician to another—is common to the Appalachian folk traditions we knew. We found that their melodic patterns worked well with the bluesy scales often utilized in American folk music, and eventually we succeeded in joining forces. Our joint songs were composed in the great tradition of combining and plagiarizing ancient melodies to create new music.

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After a platinum career in the Clark Honors College, Professor Emerita Louise retired this

A PA S S I O N I G N I T E D

past spring, but insists on a life that’s still full of students.

PROFESSOR EMERITA LOUISE BISHOP IN HER GARDEN. PHOTO BY SARAH NORTHROP

It is a rare moment when Professor Emeritus Louise Bishop is not within arm’s reach of a book.

When she was a child, her dolls played the famous roles in Shakespeare’s plays after she found her mother’s high school volume on a bookshelf. Romeo and Juliet was a frequent production in the theater of her bedroom.

“It had a red cover,” she remembers.

Her 32-year career at the University of Oregon included roles from a nontenuretrack faculty position in the English department to associate dean in the Clark Honors College, earning not only a tenure position along the way but the Herman Award for Faculty Achievement (2014) and the Ersted Award for Distinguished Teaching (1993), the university’s two highest faculty honors.

During those years, she has been teacher to thousands, adviser to almost that many, and mentor to hundreds of CHC students. Some of them credit her for their successful careers, achieving

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seemingly impossible goals, and for being a touchstone when a student needed a guiding light or just a word of encouragement.

Although it seems obvious that Bishop was destined for the role of professor, she didn’t go to college directly after high school, to the deep disappointment of her parents, who encouraged her love of reading. Instead, she worked two years in a New Jersey advertising agency, pasting up ads, before enrolling in Fairleigh Dickenson University in in Teaneck, New Jersey.

“It was a private school near my house,” she said. “I worked my way through college—my parents didn’t pay for it.

I finished in 1978, and I had so much fun as an English major, I applied to grad school at Fordham University and got in.”

It was at Fordham, a Catholic and Jesuitaffiliated university in New York City, that she taught for the first time. Bishop recalls being very nervous that day.

“I remember being very concerned about what I was wearing,” she says with a laugh. “But you have to remember that I was teaching students only four or five years younger than myself.”

During her education at Fordham, Bishop received sage advice from Constance Hassett, one of the university’s only female professors: Use one guiding principal per class. It was exactly what Bishop needed to hear, and it shaped her teaching philosophy for decades to come.

“I wanted the students involved,” she says. “I was never keen on just being up there, lecturing.”

She has carried that philosophy with her for more than three decades.

Bishop graduated from Fordham with her Ph.D. in medieval literature—now a married woman whose first baby was due in six weeks.

“The nice thing about graduation gowns are that they are very forgiving when you are pregnant,” she adds. “And I was very pregnant.”

After her daughter was born, Bishop returned to Fordham as an associate dean in the business school. In 1987, the University of Oregon came looking for her husband, Professor James Earl, an Anglo-Saxonist in literature. They relocated to Eugene, where Bishop landed in the English department before eventually applying for a position at Clark Honors College.

“I taught my first class in the honors college and, wow, students were asking me to talk to them about the subject in office hours,” she recalls. “‘Have you ever read this? What should I read next?’ What I learned is that the honors-college teaching is constant.

The students want to learn, they are in small classes, they know each other.”

Bishop achieved tenure at Clark Honors College in 2007, but it wasn’t just her classes that she cherished.

In the role of adviser, she could guide students about issues that weren’t limited to subject matter or the classroom.

It’s professors like Bishop that build a community and are dedicated to their​ students to the point where one of them, Jeff Whitty, a Tony Award-winning playwright, credits her for work done his success decades out of college (see “Jeff Whitty,” pg. 22).

With her retirement in spring of 2019, current and past students were eager to express their gratitude and thanks to one of the most influential figures in their academic lives, and contributed to a collection of letters that were presented to Bishop during the graduation ceremony that year.

“You were kind, funny, and understanding. You made me feel like I belonged in the CHC and I was no longer afraid. From the first day, I felt supported by you,” Aspen Csaszar wrote.

“I feel so lucky to have been able to take your HC 222 course two years ago.

You came to class with such infectious spirit and energy every day, and I knew right then and there that I had found my role model,” wrote Elmira Louie, now a graduate student at University of

California, Davis. “Thank you for changing my life, as well as that of countless others!”

But after a career dedicated to guiding, mentoring, and teaching, what does a professor emerita do without students and a classroom every day?

“I’m not teaching; that doesn’t mean my life is without students,” Bishop says. “I am on Facebook, I see my students there; I’m writing letters of recommendation, taking reference calls, I see students when I travel around, so my life is not without students, it’s just without official classes.”

Today, she’s heading to the Kiva to buy soap, then she’s going to make fig-pear jam, using pears from her own tree.

“And then,” she says with a touch of anticipation, “I’m making pepper jam with peppers from my own garden.

It’s going to be a sunny day today.”

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< DANIEL KNAPP IN THE BEGINNING DAYS OF URBAN ORE.

MENTORS ARE WHERE YOU FIND THEM

Here are some rules for proceeding adaptively: Follow the question, define and measure its components accurately.

Learn widely at first. Take ideas and protocols freely from all disciplines.

Construct something new and sustainable. And don’t be afraid to try things out.

BY DANIEL KNAPP, PH.D. At 78, I’m a Clark Honors College elder.

I was in graduating class No. 2.

I eventually applied my multidisciplinary learning to scavenging at a dump in the waters of scenic San Francisco Bay when I left academia after eight years of teaching college. The folks at the Berkeley bayfill saw only another scavenger like themselves, specialized to handle metals. I had learned metals from another Oregon mentor, Tomas Brandt, an articulate dumpster-diver and surreptitious recycler. Brandt wanted to shrink and starve landfills. A consistent man, he organized his life to do that every day.

My honors college teachers made me acutely aware of the need for adaptive social change if humans were to survive on this planet. To create adaptive change requires understanding what is adaptive, and a very good way to learn that is to find exemplars who have adapted well.

One needs mentors. Mentoring occasionally happens in the context of a formalized mentor-mentee relationship.

Far more often, however, we find our own mentors, although we might not tell them we regard them that way, and incorporate their worthy ways into our own paths.

Once in awhile, the mentors aren’t people, but institutions.

When I understood that mentors can be anywhere, I found that my life was rich in them. Clark Honors College was a fledgling institution full of passion that mentored as well as taught me. I learned to define, think, and analyze in many formats and with many subjects.

These skills propelled me into the start-up action of various social-change movements.

I embraced these collective survival efforts as a swimmer from a capsized boat might grasp a life preserver. In Eugene, I worked on the War on Poverty; the Oregon Country Fair; and the Lane County Office of Appropriate Technology.

In Berkeley, California, starting with almost nothing, two partners and I salvaged materials from a landfill and built a multimillion-dollar resourcetrading business, Urban Ore. The Ore, in which my wife and I now are the sole shareholders, is thirty-eight years old. I’m hoping it sees its 100th birthday in 2080.

An especially influential mentor was big-thinker Bill Wooten. He and his wife, Cynthia, remain a huge cultural force in Eugene and Lane County. After I resigned my professorship in 1976, these two luminaries became friends and collaborators until Bill’s death in 1995. Cynthia remains a close friend.

Clark Honors College itself was my first mentor. When I arrived at the University of Oregon in 1958, I found a CHC faculty that was small, distinguished, kind, brilliant, and committed to multidisiplinary learning. Change was possible, I saw.

Introduction to Social Science was taught by Professor Lucian Marquis, whom I idolized. We met in a rustic meeting room at the College Side Inn, at the time a coffeehouse. Lucian introduced me and my twenty or so classmates to a teaching style I called “Inquiry.” He lectured only occasionally and for a few minutes at a time. He mostly assigned readings and managed conversations about them.

Like many of the honors college’s “first faculty,” Dr. Marquis was a European immigrant, a Holocaust survivor. He wanted us to understand the roots of that twisted and evil time. We learned to avoid letting disciplinary boundaries restrict our understanding.

We were taught to see the phenomena we studied as they were, removing ourselves as best we could.

The first faculty were looking for a cultural renaissance that the honors college could bring to fruition through its students because of its commitment to multidisciplinary learning. Useful change could be cooperative and unified, and it could break boundaries, I saw.

Philosopher, entrepreneur, and political theorist, Bill became the articulate voice of a mass movement of people descending on Eugene from all over the U.S. Bill, who hailed from Oklahoma, had a strong voice and gravitas.

There was a great need for brainy, brawny leaders like Bill. Thousands of young folks were migrating into Lane County, looking to build a future together—something different from conventional patterns, more satisfying, peaceful, and sustainable. This movement was anarchically creative, friendly, and curious. Participants tried things that hadn’t been done before. It was exhilerating.

A lot of the action emanated from the Odyssey, Bill and Cynthia’s coffeehouse

on Willamette Street near the train station and Growers Market. You could get locally produced lunches and light dinners there, along with conversation.

The air was electric. Not only was change possible, these people were figuring out what specific adaptations would work, and how to organize them.

Bill described it this way: We of the Odyssey were there to serve the people of the movement with information about shelter and employment in addition to food and entertainment. In our view, the movement would have to feed, house, clothe, and employ itself.

Through the Free University, courses were offered in carpentry, cooking, canning, and gardening. Food co-ops were started. People were taught how to farm, to raise animals, grow crops, fruit and nut trees, and vegetables. They learned how to sew, to spin and weave, to make things out of wood, leather, and metals. A wide range of handicrafts was transmitted to a thousand or so relatively unskilled people by a few local artisans in a very short time, for free.

Eugene’s counterculture went far above being “anti-.” Its fundamental contribution was to add something new, fun, and supportive to the existing human mix. It facilitated cultural expansion. In Eugene and around Lane County, it embraced culture, it created culture, and in the end it became culture.

When our current status was still a vision of the future, Bill dealt with some underlying impulses: I had run for the State Senate in 1970 to test the waters, learn what I could. One of my handouts read, ‘WOOTEN AGAINST PROGRESS.” It argued for turning away from the economic imperatives of metropolitan culture in favor of a policy of no growth, decentralization, and selfsufficiency…a world beyond mass

production, beyond global conflict over planetary resources. We were seeking a way out of this suicidal dead-end for the species.2 Bill wasn’t elected, but he led the Oregon Country Fair, which embraced both appropriate technology and Zero Waste recycling, my most important preoccupations. Bill considered the fair’s potential as a vehicle for social and economic change this way: The community quickens its wits and improves its grasp on life through the Fair … The staff, the Village, the … booth people replicate in miniature the components of modern authority; the bureaucracy, the city, the state, and the business community. In planning … and conducting the Fair, the alternative community gains practice for participating in the larger society and perfects its models for that society’s eventual reform.

(The Fair) could be an Archimedian point of political leverage.3 Urban Ore is working to be an “Archimedian point of political leverage” in the field of resource management.

We say “End the Age of Waste!” Bill’s big thinking lives on in the people, like me, whom he mentored.

My mentors have inspired me, and their examples have helped guide my life. Conducting a life by a mentor’s teachings should be an effort sustained by continuing inspiration and satisfaction. For me at 78, following my mentors has paid off by building my sense that I have done my best to make a contribution. I wish everyone lucky enough to grow old a similar sense as they slow their pace and become reflective.

PROFESSOR LUCIEN MARQUIS >

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1

OREGON COUNTRY FAIR: The Early Years, By Bill Wooten. Unpublished manuscript; 10 pages. Ibid.

2

3

Ibid.

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