NOW THE NORM
Professor Craig Professor
Hargrove
When organic chemist and chemical biologist Helen Blackwell ’94 was appointed to the competitive Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) Named Professorship last spring, she knew the honor came with an unusual bonus: in addition to winning a $100,000 research award, recipients were able to choose the name associated with the professorship. While that honor usually reflected someone associated with Wisconsin, it wasn’t required, and Blackwell had another idea. She is now the Norman Craig Professor of Chemistry, named for Norman Craig ’53, one of her Oberlin professors. The title will remain with her beyond the five-year lifespan of the award. “Norm had a really significant impact on me at Oberlin,” says Blackwell, a professor at Wisconsin for more than a decade and a half whose research focuses on the chemical signaling in bacteria, which plays an important role in infection. “I had a close relationship to a lot of the faculty, but he was a real advocate. He didn’t say, ‘Helen you can do anything,’ but he made me feel like I could.” “I thought she could!” says Craig, who taught at Oberlin for 43 years before retiring in 2000. “Helen was a very engaging and capable student. I had a very high regard for her.” Blackwell had to call Craig for his approval, a moment she says was “better than getting the award itself.” Craig was pretty pleased with the moment, too. “She called me on the telephone out of the blue and told me she was going to associate my name with this new professorship,” Craig says. “I was overwhelmed and stunned and didn’t understand immediately what all it meant. It was such a surprise.” Craig said that although he hadn’t kept in close touch with Blackwell, he had “kept aware of her career as a rising star. She’s on a very high trajectory doing exceedingly important research that can affect all of us,” he says. “I think he inspired me to try and dream big,” Blackwell says. “I always said if I ever got this award, I would name it after Norm.”
Watkins
PAUL A CO UR T, M A NISH MEH TA
making you question the evidence of your own eyes.” Since Acquanetta’s summer run, Hargrove has made her Metropolitan Opera debut in the chorus of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, joined the company of Evita, and will return to The Met in January and tour a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado as Peep-Bo. Watkins
traveled to Hong Kong to sing in The Merry Widow. Artman is working on possible new stagings of Acquanetta in New York, Los Angeles, and many other places. “I’m hoping there will be even more productions since people really want to see it and the subject is fascinating and so timely,” she says.
OBERLIN ALUMNI MAGAZINE 2019 / FALL/WINTER
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