Author Archives: Maureen Harmon

A Whole New Ball Game

Posted on by Maureen Harmon

Close your eyes and picture it, this curious moment, framed like something out of a film. A couple of hale lads on a sunny afternoon in the fall of ’48, the golden light of early autumn casting shadows on the grass outside Curtis Hall. Two freshmen tossing a ball—nothing unusual there. Only it’s not a football, not even a game of catch with a hardball and gloves.

They’re using … sticks?

“We drew a crowd,” Dick Bonesteel ’52 says, chuckling at a memory six decades old. “Most of them had never seen a lacrosse stick.”
Dick “Bones” Bonesteel and John “Dad” McCarter ’52 were Ohio boys, but they might as well have been three-eyed aliens for the looks they got that day. Four years of high school in New England explained it. Bonesteel and McCarter spent their prep years at the Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts, and when they came home before heading off for college, they brought with them an invasive species: this sport with a funny name, something like hockey with an airborne component, or rugby with sticks.

Most of a lifetime has passed, and lacrosse at Denison long ago matured into a fixture—one of the best small-school programs in the nation. But 60 years after the university adopted it as a varsity sport, it’s worth remembering the game’s unlikely origins on campus: a university that wasn’t interested, and a group of players (and coaches) who weren’t entirely sure what they were doing, but stuck with it anyway.

Enthusiasm trumped inexperience for the eight players Bonesteel and McCarter recruited for the first Denison lacrosse squad, a neophyte gang that dubbed itself the Granville Lacrosse Club (GLC) when the administration denied it official affiliation with the Big Red. It proved a minor obstacle, as did the initial lack of a full roster when they took the field against Kenyon for their debut match in the spring of ’49. “We had no goalie,” Bonesteel recalls. “We had to borrow one from Kenyon.”

The April 14, 1950, edition of The Denisonian advertised the return of the GLC that spring as “merely a group of interested men who gather together to play nearby colleges in informal lacrosse matches.” The media coverage confers a level of legitimacy on the second-year program—even if it was only three paragraphs on page 6. Ohio State and Oberlin joined Kenyon on the schedule that spring, with home matches played on the Granville High School football field. Most of the ’49 squad was back, and there were a half dozen or so newcomers, including a freshman who had taken the same prep school route that Bonesteel and McCarter had.

Springfield, Ohio native Edward “Bud” Miller ’54 arrived at DU in the fall of 1950, and if he didn’t miss the frigid winters from his time at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, he was happy to find at least one reminder of New England: lacrosse. Miller was among those who straddled the transition from the unaffiliated GLC to an official Denison varsity sport in 1953—a year too late for Bonesteel and McCarter to take part. But their legacy had legs, even if it still lacked success in the record books. Even now, Miller remembers much about Denison’s lacrosse debut.

“They asked Ken Meyer to be the coach,” Miller says of the war hero and former Big Red star quarterback who went on to a long career coaching college and pro football. At the time, Meyer ’50 was a DU football assistant who, Miller says, “didn’t know anything about lacrosse and would freely admit it. Before the season he sat me down and said, ‘Tell me all you know.’”

Miller remembers being one of just two players on that ’53 squad with any real playing experience, and it showed. The record book reveals that Denison’s first official lacrosse team went 0-7, with two losses apiece to Kenyon, Oberlin, and Ohio State, and one more to the Cleveland Lacrosse Club. The following year, Meyer handed over the reins to Rix Yard, who went a combined 1-14 in his first two seasons, the only win a 6-5 victory over Ohio State in the opening game of 1955.

Of course, Yard would figure it out. He coached 10 seasons in all, and his teams’ records improved every year, culminating with marks of 10-1 and 12-0 in ’62 and ’63. Miller’s great regret from his Denison days was that he “only had one year to play for Rix.” Bill Mason ’57, a co-captain and MVP of Denison’s ’57 squad, remembers Yard’s knack for finding lacrosse talent in other sports’ leftovers.

Mason was playing basketball at Denison but readily admits he was far from a star player. “I was the only junior playing junior varsity at Denison in 1956,” Mason says. “Dr. Yard saw me and said, ‘You’re not going to play a lot of basketball here, but I’ll make one heck of a lacrosse player out of you.’”

Mason ended up as Yard’s assistant in 1958 and filled in as head coach for one season—DU went 11-1 under his guidance in ’65—before making way for Tommy Thomsen, who established the Big Red among the nation’s elite. Thomsen’s teams went 255-97 over his quarter century in charge, leaving a foundation that current coach Mike Caravana and, for a brief stint in the 2000s, Matt McGinnis, have carried on. Coming into the 2013 season, DU’s all-time record stood at 562-241-3.

By any and every measure, Big Red lacrosse has come a long way, and it’s difficult now to imagine the sport’s stuttering birth on campus—difficult unless you were there, of course. Bonesteel is happy that there are still a few half-hidden reminders. “Somewhere in the old athletic complex, there was a hallway with pictures on both sides of the walls,” he says. “Way down at the far end, there was a group picture of the Granville Lacrosse Club, the 10 guys who made up the team my freshman year. We stand out like a sore thumb. We’re the only guys standing there with lacrosse sticks.”

Finding Denison in the City of Light

Posted on by Maureen Harmon

As Denisonians around the world united on Jan. 30 for the “After Work with Denison … Everywhere!” event, seven came together for the very first time at Harry’s Bar, the oldest American watering hole in Paris, France. For many of us, it was the first time we dropped the names of Slayter, Olin, and Beth Eden since leaving the top of the Hill for the foot of Montmartre.

What draws Denisonians to the City of Light?  “The amazing food!” was easily the first response around the table, particularly by Matthew Ketcham ’02. Ketcham came to Paris for an M.B.A. program, was offered a job with a French company, and has since settled right in.

Other responses were more sentimental. “It’s the view of certain things.  I don’t want to be the person who visits.  I want to live here,” said Karen Decter Malek ’88, who studied in Paris her junior year and found her way back permanently just after graduation.

For me, my path to Paris lies between the two. What began as culinary curiosity evolved into my unexpected dream job as an illustrator and a food stylist for magazines and commercial advertisements.

And love provided the backdrop. It is Paris, after all.

Surrounded by other Denisonians at a snug round table at Harry’s Bar, along with our triumphant tales of Denison, we exchanged our France horror stories.  Although love, art, business, and curiosity led us all here, navigating a country where the first answer is “non” takes a continual amount of commitment, courage, and perseverance.  And everyone could commiserate over expiring visas, language mishaps, and cultural clashes, I was surrounded by new friends who all had the same two pinnacle places in their personal histories.  And it was an overdue pleasure.

 

WHERE WERE YOU ON JAN. 30?

While seven alumni met up in the City of Lights, hundreds of Denisonians were getting together all over the United States (as well as Shanghai and Rio) to reminisce with old friends or make new ones. Here were the top five places to be that night, based on number of Denisonians all in one room.

 

New York: 130

Columbus, Ohio: 113

Washington, D.C.: 109

Chicago: 100

Boston: 73

Advice From the Expert: Interviewing 101

Posted on by Maureen Harmon

When demonstrating why you’d be a good fit for the position, make sure you use concrete examples of your work. Use statements such as, “As you can see from my resumé, I’ve had experience working with …” or “My background at Google is a good example of how I transformed the way people think about computers.” The more examples you use, the easier it is for the interviewer to see you in the position for which he or she is hiring.

Know where your weaknesses lie.  Saying you don’t have any weaknesses, or worse, that you share a weakness that isn’t work-related, may stop the interview in its tracks.  Think about a weakness that can be perceived as a strength. “I have a tendency to take on more than I should,” for example, covers an area of opportunity, while also revealing the fact that you have a strong work ethic.

You may be asked, “Why should we hire you over other candidates?”  Stop!  You can’t compare yourself to the other candidates.  What you can do is say, “I can’t speak to the skills of the other candidates, but I do know why I’m a good fit for this position.” Then begin to tell them how your skills and abilities will add to the bottom line.

Prepare questions. You’ll be spending 40 hours or more a week in this position, so there has to be something you want to know.  Don’t ask about benefits or salary and don’t ask any questions that could easily be answered in company literature or on its website. Ask about the culture, the team, and specifics about the work.

Practice with a colleague or trusted friend. If you make a mistake, it’s not like your job’s on the line.

Once Upon A Time

Posted on by Maureen Harmon

It’s the jitterbug, not the Harlem Shake, but from maypoles to flash mobs, dancing on the quad has long been a Denison rite of spring. So have dogwood blossoms, outdoor classrooms on the shady lawn, impulsive romance, and the wearing of shorts.  In the late 1950s, “Bermuda Shorts Day” combined all the joys of spring into one, like, crazy theme, and as an alumna from the era recalls, there was a particularly frisky novelty to wearing Bermudas in front of Doane, at a time when strict dress codes
allowed only dresses and skirts for young women.

On Board

Posted on by Maureen Harmon

In January, Denison’s board of trustees welcomed a new member. Meet Amy Todd Middleton.

Amy Todd Middleton ’93

Senior Vice President,

Global Strategic Marketing, Sotheby’s

Todd Middleton began her career at Sotheby’s in 1993. Early on, she played an instrumental role in many of Sotheby’s pivotal single-owner sales, such as the Duchess of Windsor sale, the estate of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the estate of Pamela Harriman, the estate of John Hay and Betsey Cushing Whitney, and the Barry Halper collection of baseball memorabilia.

After a brief departure to pursue an opportunity in the world of consulting, Todd Middleton returned to Sotheby’s in 1996 to work on special projects in the managing director’s office. Over the last 16 years, she has held roles as the head of international client services, director of online auctions for jewelry, director of special events and sponsorship marketing, and director of North American marketing. She became the worldwide director of strategic marketing in 2008, a role in which she continues to serve.

After graduating from Denison, Todd Middleton pursued graduate studies in journalism at New York University. She is involved with many philanthropic organizations, serving as a patron for The New York Botanical Garden and as a board member of the Sylvia Center, a program that inspires young people to discover good nutrition.

50th Spring of Silent Spring

Posted on by Maureen Harmon

Born in 1907 to a working-class family, Rachel Carson grew up less than a mile from the American Glue Factory in Springdale, Pa. The smoke stacks from the horse abattoir were visible from her bedroom window. So perhaps it was no surprise that she cared about the environment at an early age.

Carson, who would go on to earn a master’s degree in zoology from Johns Hopkins before working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a science editor, became well-known for her nature writing. She published several best-selling books about the sea, including Under the Sea-Wind, The Sea Around Us, (for which she won a National Book Award), and The Edge of the Sea. However, it was her work-related entrée to scientific research that alerted her to the long-term effects of pesticides, DDT in particular, on wildlife—a troubling phenomenon that she documented in Silent Spring.

Before the book’s publication in September of 1962, the general public had little access to scientific writing. “This was during the years after World War II, and people put science on a pedestal,” says Andy McCall, assistant professor of biology, who participated in a panel discussion with other Denison professors to celebrate the book’s contributions to their disciplines. In other words, science was something to marvel at, not something to be questioned.

Carson’s exposé turned that veneration on its head. In a New York Times article about Carson, author and environmentalist Bill McKibben said, “She was the very first person to knock some of the shine off modernity.”

Carson testified about the use of pesticides before Congress in 1963, less than a year before she died of breast cancer on April 14, 1964. “Through her book and actions, she introduced what we now call the ‘modern environmental movement,’ which uses policy, informed by science, as the major tool to combat environmental issues,” says panelist Olivia Aguilar, assistant professor of environmental studies. “In fact, many have argued that her testimony to Congress helped to spur the development of the Environmental Protection Agency and its first hard-hitting policies concerning clean air and water.”

Her investigation also provided a compelling motive for research and pushed resources toward biological and chemical studies. And even after 50 years, Carson’s initial concerns continue to be relevant today. McCall says, “At that time, the public had no idea that insects could develop a resistance to pesticides. That’s a problem we’re still working on.”

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Open-Door Policy

Posted on by Maureen Harmon

When James W. Toy ’51 enrolled at Denison in 1947, the gay community on campus hardly warranted the name.

“There was no such thing,” Toy says. “Or if there was, it was underground, and I was unaware of it.” Then again, at the time, Toy, who grew up in Granville, wasn’t even aware that he was gay.

“I didn’t know the word ‘gay.’ I didn’t know the term ‘sexual orientation,’” Toy says, adding that such things were not discussed in the Granville of his youth. Toy had the added distinction of being biracial—his father was Chinese, his mother white—and though he found a home on campus in the American Commons Club, a fraternity that was open to all regardless of color, race, or creed, it would be many years before he would discover his sexual orientation, let alone find others who shared it. “I thought there was no one like me, and I would remain isolated for my entire life,” he says. “I had no concept of either being in the closet, or coming out.”

It’s hard to imagine what Jim Toy would make of Taylor Klassman’s experience of life at Denison in the new millennium. Klassman ’13 is president of Outlook, the college’s gay-straight alliance, an organization whose purview encompasses all things GBLTQA. The acronym stands for gay, bisexual, lesbian, transgender, questioning, and allied—the latter being the contemporary term for straight friends and supporters. Though Klassman describes isolated incidents of homophobia on campus—“a lot of that happens, unfortunately, between friends, or in roommate situations”—she paints a picture of a school where most gay and lesbian students are out of the closet, and where older LGBT alumni find it difficult to believe that things could have changed quite so much. This raises an obvious question: How exactly did Denison get from there to here?

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Dorm Food Do-Over

Posted on by Maureen Harmon

When you were a student and you couldn’t make it to the dining halls, maybe you dined on a smorgasbord of foodstuffs that came from a science lab (spray cheese, anyone?) instead of a farm.

And maybe that sounds appealing in your early 20s, but the faux glow eventually wears off. Yes, for most of us, the memory of homemade dorm food is best left in the dorm—preferably in a drawer next to the Twinkies and Ritz crackers.

But what if those lackluster memories were replaced by more elegant and creative interpretations of the dorm food we knew and (sort of) loved? Like mac ’n’ cheese made with real cream and tender, smoky bacon and eaten with a linen napkin in your lap, not a plastic fork at your side? Or how about a towering crown of cappuccino ice cream, marshmallow fluff, and bittersweet chocolate sauce to replace that microwaved marshmallow and chocolate sandwich that you used to call a s’more?

Consider the following recipes your dorm food redux—a remodeling of food from your Denison days. Let’s raise a glass of really cheap wine (out of a sense of nostalgia, of course) to the beautiful ways in which these five graduates have given dorm food a much-needed makeover.

 

Breaking Through

Posted on by Maureen Harmon

In September 1664, Jan de Decker sailed up the Hudson with a cargo of powder and forty slaves recently arrived in New Amsterdam from Barbados. His errand, beyond turning a profit, was to meet with the English at Orange to discuss the surrender of Dutch territory to British rule. By all appearance he had abandoned his country to pursue his own fortune.  His descendants, small farmers and village artisans, multiplied and fanned westward from the Hudson Valley through the Southern Tier and Finger Lakes region of New York State, intermarrying with the English and French.

Three hundred and four years later, never suspecting that anyone in my line had engaged in such traffic, I worked with my peers to clean up the waterfront of Peekskill, New York. We made an apt crew: Frank, Paul, Ben, and myself: shoulder-to-shoulder, two white and two black. We were the “Can-Do’s,” a group of volunteers from Saint Peter’s, the boarding school I attended as a result of my brother’s brush with the law. My parents had wished to remove him from his circle of quasi-delinquents. They’d given me a choice: go with Tom or attend Brighton High, living at home as an only child. Sibling allegiance and family unity allowed no room for hesitation: I chose to go. I might have gone anywhere to escape the boredom of another suburban school year, but to me at that age the Hudson Valley with its mists and crumpled landforms seemed an enchanted if melancholy country. Just north of Peekskill, upriver from Bear Mountain Bridge, the navy stashed a fleet of destroyers left over from World War II. In rainy weather their profiles might pass for a ghost squadron commanded by Hendrick Hudson.

In ill-fitting gloves we gleaned a mixed refuse: broken bottles, government forms, torn clothes, a mysterious green ash. We avoided the fish that gave the shoreline its distinctive odor. They lay everywhere, in varied stages of decomposition, with staring, desiccated eye, like lost souls. Out on the water, freighters shuttled back and forth between Albany and New York City. Behind us, on the elevated right-of-way, New York Central freight and passenger trains rolled north and south. Train and ship horns wailed into far longitudinal distances. Peekskill itself saw little commerce, and dull brick factories lay in ruin about the shore. Only the nuclear power plant at Indian Point, south of town, offered a promise of revival. For now this stretch of Hudson shore existed as an unpatrolled waste, a space for dying and discarded things, the sluggish wave depositing an oily detritus. I made no complaint. I liked this dreary beach set amid dead wharves on a notoriously polluted river. “Suzanne takes you down to her place by the river” sang in my head. The far shore lay in full sun, and as the clouds broke I entertained visions of caravels swinging out of the sky to take us away. There was no mistaking the futility of this enterprise: within a week our effort would be erased. But it offered the grit of a hands-on activism, put us in touch with a world we knew we would have to address—the true nasty condition of things our parents and most of our teachers had lied about. For youth there is tonic in seeing the world ugly, as it is.

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Of Bodies and Minds

Posted on by Maureen Harmon

Udo Schlick has just approached two employees of the Kentucky Science Center carrying a human spleen in one hand and a kidney in the other. He holds them out for takers. “This just got real,” says Mark Sieckman, manager of executive initiatives. He and Brittney Gorter, the senior manager of marketing and sales, are turning the organs over in their hands. Weighing them. Staring at them. They’re a little grossed out. Or they’re just in awe. It’s hard to tell. As for Schlick? He’s clearly enjoying this.

These are “touchable specimens,” he tells Gorter, a rare find in the BODY WORLDS exhibit that Schlick and his team from Germany are installing at the Science Center for a five-month run. The rest of the specimens—a brain over here, a diseased lung lying next to its healthy counterpart, a skeleton propped in the corner with his face toward the wall as if he had been caught talking in class—will not, by any means, be “touchable.” As the day plods on, they will be carefully unwrapped and encased in glass with accompanying fun facts. “20 cigarettes a day produce five fluid ounces of tar, the equivalent of a cup of coffee,” reads one. Another: “Every minute, 1.5 gallons of air passes through the lungs.”

Schlick is whistling.

This is one of several exhibitions from the BODY WORLDS company making their way around the globe. Each one tends to come with a lot of community chatter, because while the brains and the spleens and the hearts are wild enough, the main features are the whole bodies on display. They’ve been dissected down to muscle and bone and then preserved using plastination, a complicated technique that involves removing water and fat from the body and replacing it with specialized polymers. The process was developed at the University of Heidelberg’s Institute of Anatomy back in 1977 by Gunther von Hagens, the anatomist who created BODY WORLDS.

He was the first to display bodies in such a way, but many companies followed, including some whose methods of body procurement were in question. (BODY WORLDS’ specimens all come from the Institute for Plastination, also founded by von Hagens, which currently boasts 13,000 willing donors on its roster.)

The exhibition, called Vital, that’s being set up now in Kentucky, exposes the realities of human health—hence the smoker’s lung and the full digestive system stretched out in a vertical display, but it’s not all about the nasty things that we put our bodies through. It’s about the beauty of fitness and movement.

Tucked into a back corner, the first full body exhibit is already in place. A man, carved down to muscle, holds a female acrobat in the air. Male and female flamenco dancers—positioned in traditional flamenco stances—will make their debut in the main gallery. A man with a lasso will appear later. So will a fencer. The bodies are there, stripped to the barest bare one can be. And they are unabashedly controlling the entire room.

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Big on Bluegrass

Posted on by Maureen Harmon

It was a Saturday afternoon in February when sophomore Mackenzie Maynard ’15 and other members of Denison’s Bluegrass Ensemble gathered in Burke Hall to practice and perform works by bluegrass A-listers like Tim O’Brien and Bryan Sutton. Performing for anyone can be nerve-wracking, but this session had an added element of anxiety—O’Brien and Sutton were sitting just a few feet away.

The workshop was part of the annual Bluegrass Festival at Denison, and it was one of several highlights of the bluegrass weekend for Maynard, who aspires to be a professional fiddle player in a country-style band. “We learned their music last semester,” she said. “It was definitely intimidating to play for them, but it gave me good experience playing in front of a small group of talented people. It’s a whole different emotion.”

The festival’s schedule was packed with events for music novices and experts alike, with three concerts and six workshops boasting the talents of O’Brien, Sutton, David Grier, the DePue Brothers Band, and Denison faculty members Mark Wade, Andy Carlson, and Casey Cook, among others. All workshops and concerts were free and open to the public—so the local community could get in on the grooving—and the final concert took place at the Midland Theater in Newark.

It’s all over now (except for those students who are pursuing Denison’s bluegrass concentration and immersing themselves in this music all the time), but don’t worry if you missed the banjo and mandolin stylings. Maynard and other student bluegrass performers will put on their end-of-year concert in April in Swasey Chapel.

From the Archives

Posted on by Maureen Harmon

This christening cup was a gift from the Class of 1892 to Carter Barnett, the second black student to graduate from Denison, or more specifically to his son, Carl, the first child born to a member of the class. Inscribed on the cup is the phrase “America’s Hope,” acknowledging the promise of a new generation.

A center fielder on the championship 1890 Denison baseball team, Barnett lived with “Auntie Jack” (Mrs. Samuel Jackson), the cook at the Sigma Chi House, and that’s where he met Jackson’s niece, Callie, a member of Granville’s first black family and a student at Granville High School. The two married in 1893 after she finished high school and before they moved to West Virginia, where Carter worked as a principal for segregated schools.

In addition to Carl, the Barnetts had another son, Leroy, and they sent both boys to live with their grandparents in Granville to attend its integrated school system. The boys would later move on to Ohio State, where Carl graduated as a licensed architect but taught for the majority of his career because of discriminatory practices. Leroy obtained a degree from the medical school and went on to practice. Given their stories, the cup appears almost prophetic of the challenges and advances the Barnetts made in the tumultuous racial climate of the 20th century.

It’s All in the Details

Posted on by Maureen Harmon

 

Michelle Clark ’13

Track and Field, Biochemistry Major

Clark makes a playlist before every season and must listen to all the songs—in order—before she races. She also chooses a warm-up T-shirt at the beginning of every season and must wear it to prepare for each race. “It changes season to season,” she says, “but once I pick it, I stay with it.”

Chad Kosanovich ’13

Track and Field, Biochemistry Major

For warm-up gear Kosanovich insists on wearing faded green Umbro shorts and an animal shirt that, as he puts it, “adequately channels my spirit animal on the day of the race.” His current choice? A shirt printed with a family of red-eyed tree frogs. Other options include snakes and dinosaurs.

Danny Kraus ’13

Baseball, Economics Major

According to Kraus, he and his teammates all have their own superstitions that develop throughout their season. But this much is certain: steppingon the foul line before and during the games is a universal “no-no,” and the same wristbands, arm sleeves, undershirts, and sliding shorts are worn by all players for every game.

Spencer Riehl ’13

Lacrosse, Economics Major

Riehl has invested in a new pair of red socks to wear at every game this season. If the socks aren’t enough, you can spot him on the field with the unique eyeblack style of a backwards “7,” which he has worn since high school.

Carly Schultz ’14

Golf, Environmental Studies Major

Everyone on the golf team has her own signature marker. Schultz has used a smiley face marker since her first year at Denison.

Jessica Robertson ’13

Softball, Psychology Major

Robertson says music plays an important role in the softball team’s pregame rituals. In addition to dance parties in the locker room, each player has a walk-up song that plays as she approaches home plate.

Kelsey Geppner ’14

Tennis, Economics and Communication Double Major

While some traditions such as stretches and warm-up music before matches are consistent from year to year, the seniors of the girls’ tennis team greatly affect current team rituals. Geppner recollects that their playlist last year was dominated by 50 Cent because their senior Sarah Short ’12 “was obsessed.”

Talk Back

Posted on by Maureen Harmon

For the first time since he was a toddler, Michael McKinney ’15 had to think about speech. Tasked with promoting an iPad app designed for nonverbal students, McKinney considered the physical process of forming words. He imagined the struggle of getting his ideas across without speaking. “Those who are speech impaired have the capacity to communicate,” said McKinney, a biology major from Grand Rapids, Mich., “but they can’t physically do it.”

The app McKinney was promoting, Speech Hero, started as a conversation over Christmas dinner a few years ago. McKinney’s cousin, Aynna, is a speech-language pathologist and a graduate student at the University of Tennessee. She chatted with family about the ways her clients benefited from using pictures to communicate, but was troubled by the fact that the current devices used to assist nonverbal people were incredibly expensive. The ones attached to wheelchairs, for example, cost as much as $10,000.

McKinney’s brother Andrew designs apps for a living and saw the potential to create something big. After two years of research and development, Speech Hero emerged, offering a voice for those who are unable to speak. With tiles of pictures and words, it bridges the gap between mental thoughts and expressed ideas.

After following Aynna’s work with students and medical clinics, along with his brother’s creation of the app, Michael gained the understanding necessary to create a detailed video tutorial.

An app with 10,000 preprogrammed tiles may seem intimidating, but the video guides the viewer through Speech Hero’s user-friendly functions. The video also demonstrates how users can customize specific tiles based on their needs. Similar to the way Google remembers searches, the app is quickly able to predict what users are going to say. Soon, a string of words and pictures can express anything from a simple suggestion to more complex thoughts. McKinney also left a few personal touches, such as pictures of himself and his friends in a folder to show teachers how they can organize their students.

McKinney expressed interested in creating more videos if his brother expands the app. He noted that while biology and videos don’t typically overlap, “I was able to apply nonconventional skills and creative thinking.”

“It’s nice to put all our talents together,” said Aynna.

The app, which is currently available on the iPad for $99, is targeted toward medical companies and doctors. After a few months on the market, it is already expanding to schools, parents, and speech pathology centers.

“We want these children to have the best ability to communicate,”said Aynna. “Everybody has the right to a voice.”

Hey Baby, What’s On Your Mind?

Posted on by Maureen Harmon

Babies are cute. They have always been objects of our attention. But infants don’t just merit observation for their overall adorability. As it turns out, their minds are pretty interesting too.

In Denison’s new Infant and Child Cognition Lab, Rebecca Rosenberg, assistant professor of psychology, and a group of student assistants are studying the ways in which infants perceive the world. The lab, which just opened eight months ago, is younger than most of the babies who pass through its bright yellow halls, but it’s already shaping up to be a promising addition to the research community.

Scientists and philosophers have been interested in babies’ minds for centuries, but it’s only in the last couple few of decades that scientists have developed new tools and techniques to better understand their subjects’ cognitive capabilities. Even so, there are plenty of questions still unanswered. The age-old battle over nature vs. nurture, for example.

But these subjects present a tough problem: you can’t exactly ask a baby complex questions or have him complete a survey. So scientists have developed clever, yet relatively simple ways to attempt to what’s going on in the brains of babies, and Rosenberg is using those techniques to further the research.

Denison’s lab joins the ranks of other infant cognition labs in colleges and universities across the country, including Yale, Stanford, and Ohio State, Most of these labs can trace their research back to Jean Piaget, a pioneering developmental psychologist, who developed observation techniques and inferences about child cognition. Since then, researchers like Rosenberg have learned even more through their own research and techniques, and they’re finding that infants know more than we originally thought.

Right now, for example, Rosenberg and her students are working with babies ranging in age from seven to 20 months, to study the ways in which the infant brain transitions into an adult one, particularly through memory capacity. Put simply: can adult minds remember more short-term information than the minds of infants? The answer might surprise you.

In one study, for example, researchers display four objects, such as toy ducks or trucks, in front of a baby. Then they hide the ducks in a box with a secret opening on the back side. While the baby searches, the researchers slip one two of the ducks out the back. After finding two ducks, the babies generally stop searching, unable to remember that there are still two ducks somewhere in the box. But if the researchers split the four ducks into two smaller groups of two beforehand— a process known as “chunking”—the infants, ranging in age from 13 to 20 months, often keep searching for all four ducks. As it turns out, adults use a similar strategy to remember objects. It’s no coincidence that seven-digit phone numbers are divided into sets of three and four.

“It’s not likely that anyone taught these infants how to group quantities,” says Rosenberg, who studied infant cognition as a graduate student at Harvard and during a post-doc at Johns Hopkins. “It may be a natural, built-in process that speaks to the continuity between infant and adult minds.” Who knows what these babies might teach us next?

For more information about the lab, including how to participate in studies, visit babylab.denison.edu.

Talk of the Walk

Posted on by Maureen Harmon

A Menu of Memories
When I think back on my college days, food plays a lead role.

When I lived in the dorms back in college, my friend Jen down the hall smuggled in what I’m sure was an illegal sandwich-maker. A beautiful little machine that turned white bread and American cheese singles into a glorious gooey cheese pocket. It was the perfect antidote to our late-night hunger when the dining hall and the student union were closed. Boy, did we love that sandwich-maker.

Jen and I had a lot of wonderful times together (I remember laughing until tears streamed down our faces), and much of our relationship, now that I think about it, revolved around food. We earned extra money in college by working in a chain restaurant, a steak house, where we’d pilfer thick-cut fries from under the heat lamp in the kitchen, and where we were required to country line dance during certain songs. Jen used to hide in the kitchen cooler every time a song would blare through the speakers. I took the floor and loved it. (Recently, I passed a branch of that restaurant on my way to interview Joanna Haas ’89 for our story, “Of Bodies and Minds,” which starts on p. 30 and, not surprisingly, I thought of Jen.) She and I got into a pretty heated political debate once in a restaurant at the local mall when we were supposed to be Christmas shopping. And I remember one particular afternoon when we were surely broke but took ourselves out to a nice restaurant on Lake Erie anyway—because we felt like it.

Another roommate, Teresa, taught me how to make a cheese appetizer that’s really a meal. We’d do sit-ups in our phys ed class and then come home to pour cheese and garlic and pizza sauce into a casserole dish. We would heat it until it burst upward and spluttered over the sides of the dish, then we’d eat it with hefty tortilla chips. (We really did feel like we had earned it.) These days I take that appetizer to family picnics.

When Teresa used to head home for the weekend, she’d always come back with her mom’s blueberry pie. We’d eat it for dinner (warm, with vanilla ice cream on top) and then breakfast the following morning (warm, no ice cream). To this day, I have never tasted another blueberry pie that good.

And one of my favorite memories revolves around the years that some of us would get together to cook a giant Easter dinner for our friends who stayed in town over spring break. It was during one of those cooking sessions that I learned one friend’s secret for an astonishing green bean and bacon dish. (Sauté the beans in bacon fat—and don’t knock it ’til you try it. Paula Deen’s got nothing on this guy.)

While the opening pages of this issue focus on food students might make in the residence halls, I’m guessing it will conjure a lot of memories for our readers about meals shared with friends anywhere and anytime throughout their college days. For example, every time I pass a Perkins Family Restaurant (they’re big in the Pennsylvania area, where I went to college), I think about the time when my husband and I started dating. We were seniors and could spend a whole morning (okay, early afternoon) filling our coffee cups and lingering over scrambled eggs and sausage and hash browns and giant, warm blueberry muffins.

Maybe, as our story states, tastes grow more sophisticated with age. Maybe, 15 years out of college, I should be wishing for a nice piece of salmon and some steamed broccoli every night. But I’ll tell you what, when I’m feeling like comfort, there’s nothing like a slice of warm blueberry pie with vanilla ice cream on top.

Or a good ol’-fashioned grilled cheese sandwich.

Maureen Harmon

Editor

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A Note from Denison’s…Mayor?

Posted on by Maureen Harmon

Denison, in many ways, is like a town within the village. After all, more than 650 people are employed by the college in diverse faculty and staff roles; 100 more work on campus through contractors in areas like dining services and telecommunications; and roughly 1,000 students draw a paycheck for part-time on-campus employment. Gross annual payroll and benefits amount to $56 million. The college administers almost 1,000 acres of land and nearly 100 buildings of all descriptions: from classrooms, laboratories, and residence halls to gymnasiums, theaters, and houses for visiting and junior faculty. Two thousand, one hundred and fifty persons—our students-—live on campus for nine months of the year, together with a number of assistant deans for residence life. This year, Denison will have about $105 million in operating expenses (covered, thankfully, by income from both operating and nonoperating sources). Total assets, including both investments and physical plant, are valued at over $1 billion. During each of my 15 years in the Denison presidency, we have had millions to tens of millions of dollars’ worth of renovation or new construction taking place on campus to sustain the college’s success. No, Denison is not a Fortune 500 operation, but there is a lot of business going on.

Yet, leading this college is less like the leadership required of a for- or nonprofit corporate CEO and much more like that provided by the mayor of a municipality. And it’s not just because we don’t see ourselves, as a matter of both mission and culture, as being a business, or even because I stand in a long line of Denison presidents who’ve been trained as teachers/scholars rather than as accountants, financiers, or facilities managers. Rather, it is, in the first place, because we are literally city-like in so many ways. There are the faculty, staff, and contract employees who are primarily denizens of the day plus dozens to hundreds of daily campus visitors, mail and package couriers, and other men and women with specialized skills whom we ask to meet the often unexpected needs of a complex community. On some days, there are probably more people on our campus than throughout the balance of the Granville municipality. We have miles of campus roads, sidewalks, pipes, and electrical conduit—and thousands (yes, thousands!) of stairs up and down our hills. Denison has a steam heating plant, a safety and security department, repair shops, a motor vehicle fleet, a large information technology unit, dining halls and snack bars, a couple of retail stores, and extensive indoor and outdoor athletic and recreation facilities. And we have snowplows! Who could forget this as March comes into Granville again as a lion? With all this “stuff” taking place on our campus, it’s no wonder that much of the time I feel like I’ve got a little city by the tail.

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The Birthday Swim

Posted on by Maureen Harmon

At 6:45 a.m. on a chilly Saturday in September, Sarah Peck ’05 stripped down to nothing but a swim cap and goggles and dove—rather quickly—into the water just off Alcatraz Island near San Francisco, Calif. Peck, who had done the 1.5-mile “Escape from Alcatraz” swim eight times before, typically wears a wetsuit. On this particular day, however (in 59-degree water, no less), Peck swam naked. That’s right, naked. The best part? It was in honor of one big birthday bet gone terribly right.

In July, nearly three months before the aforementioned dip in the San Francisco Bay, Peck heard Scott Harrison, founder and CEO of “charity: water,” speak at The World Domination Summit. After listening to Harrison talk about the world and the need for water, Peck thought, “I get to swim in an abundance of water all the time. I can’t imagine having to look for or live without clean water.” The more Peck, a former Denison swimmer, thought about the major role water has played in her life, the more she realized she wanted to do something about the problem.

During the conference, Peck quickly brainstormed a plan to benefit charity: water, a nonprofit organization that brings “clean, safe drinking water to people in developing countries,” and proceeded to share that plan with Harrison. In lieu of gifts for her 29th birthday, she would ask friends, family, and (as it turns out) people she’d never met to donate to charity: water. Her goal? Raise $29,000. Her promise if she met that goal? A swim from Alcatraz to San Francisco in her “birthday suit.”

In July, Harrison looked skeptical. Now, he’s congratulating Peck on one of his organization’s biggest single-party campaigns. To date, more than 500 people have come together to donate $32,398 to Peck’s birthday campaign. Through charity  water, 100 percent of that money will fund water projects in the field.

“A lot of people enjoy being a part of something that makes such a big difference,” Peck says. “Collectively, we all did something really big. Every donation— small or large—made a difference. This became bigger than just a fundraiser or a naked swim.” —Emily Hopcian ’12

Alumni Society

Posted on by Maureen Harmon

Once Upon a Time…

What’s this sweet coed doing with the most prurient potboiler of the mid-20th century? She appears to be giggling. The must-read Peyton Place was more or less the Fifty Shades of Grey of its day, and came to define the sordid underside of postwar suburban life. Very racy stuff. Sandy Teel Trainer ’60 (pictured) claims no memory of this 1957 photo, the room, or even the bedspread, but the book? “Of course. Everyone was reading it. And yes, I can guarantee there was a lot of giggling.” —James Hale ’78

 

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