Still a Scholar, Teacher, and Scientist
I think it’s important for the Dean of the College to be engaged with his or her discipline because we are asking faculty members to do the same thing. They have many teaching and service responsibilities on this campus, but we still ask faculty to remain active in their disciplines and to continue to make contributions so that they are actively engaged.
I don’t see it differently for me.
—Dean of the College and Professor of Chemistry Scott Feller, after receiving a five-year, $511,500 grant from the National Science Foundation. The grant funds research work for Feller and students as they examine the effect of lipids containing polyunsaturated omega-3 fatty acids on the membrane-protein interface. The grant lasts through 2020, ensuring 22 years of continuous NSF support for this project, which began with Feller’s arrival on campus in 1998.
A Shocking Collaboration
In February, Physics Professor Martin Madsen and Technician Matthew Roark offered their expertise (and the Society of Physics’ Students’ Tesla coil) to music Professor Peter Hulen to bring electronic music to light and lightning in Salter Hall.
Hulen played his composition “Buzz Feed” on a singing Tesla coil—a solid-state coil modified to produce musical tones by modulating spark output.
“It was like composing for a harpist,” Hulen said. “I treated the Tesla coil just like any other instrument with its own possibilities and limitations. And, with Martin present, I was collaborating with an expert who knows the instrument in ways that go far beyond what my composer’s perspective provides.
“There’s no way anyone could do something like this without all the work and expertise that Martin and Matthew bring to it, or the support of the whole Physics Department, since they are onboard with using the Tesla coil in this way.”
Sharing Credit The latest publications co-authored by Wabash faculty and students.
“A diary study of the influence of Facebook use on narcissism among male college students” by Nathan Walters ’13 and Professor of Psychology Bobby Horton, is published in the November 2015 edition of Computers in Human Behavior.
The study explores the relationship between gran-diose narcissism and Facebook use among college students and found, consistent with previous work, narcissism was positively correlated with frequency of Facebook use.
Walters is pursuing a master’s in psychology at Ball State University.
“Synthesis of high contrast fluorescein-diethers for rapid bench-top sensing of palladium” by Weston Kitley ’13, Peter Santa Maria ’13, Ryan Cloyd ’14, and Assistant Professor of Chemistry Laura Wysocki was published in April in Chemical Communications, a journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry. During their undergraduate days, Kitley, Santa Maria, and Cloyd co-presented some of this research at the 2013 spring meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans, part of a large contingent of Wabash chemistry majors who presented at the conference that year.
Walsh's Grant Aids Brain Research
Assistant Biology Professor Heidi Walsh has been awarded an Indiana Academy of Science grant to aid in the study of how peripheral factors of obesity affect the brain.
The grant provides Walsh and three students with laboratory and research materials in the pursuit of preliminary data in the study of cellular mechanisms in the hypothalamus that link obesity and infertility.
“We’re zooming in at a real cellular level at how these cells respond to changes in the body during obesity,” says Walsh.
Student involvement is key to the multifaceted project, as each student is responsible for work that intersects with other parts of the project.
“This helps the students get some hands-on experience,” says Walsh. “They have their own research project, and that can be life changing for students to take ownership of that and see every single step through. I want them to synthesize their work into some type of presentation they can share with students here at Wabash and even at conferences.”—Richard Paige
"On a First-Name Basis"
Professor Dwight Watson recalls the day Dean of the College Paul McKinney ’52 told him he had earned tenure. The director, playwright, and teacher appreciated the news but was distracted by a couple of student comments in his portfolio.
“I wasn’t sure I had communicated well to them,” says Watson. “You’re always trying to figure out how to better meet the needs of students.”
When he mentioned his concerns to McKinney, the chemistry professor offered surprising advice.
“Paul said, ‘You should teach like you direct.’ That has stayed with me all these years,” Watson says. “It allows me to think more completely about my work as a teacher. These divisions we have between the classroom and the stage or the classroom and immersion learning are just manufactured walls. It all flows together in a way.”
Watson’s 34 years as a teacher at Wabash all came together in April when he was honored with the McLain- McTurnan-Arnold Award for Excellence in Teaching.
“The author of nine books and plays with creative work appearing in seven different anthologies, Watson has received playwriting awards in more than a dozen different competitions. He has taken our students on immersion trips across this country and across the world and has traveled to China to teach theater courses,” Dean of the College Scott Feller said in announcing the honor at Awards Chapel. “Dwight has established himself as a professor with an exceptional capacity for productive scholarship, for exceptional creativity in the arts, and most importantly, as an outstanding teacher of Wabash men.”
That teaching combines the best of theater and pedagogy.
“In the theater we try to make good use of all the minutes we have in our rehearsal time,” Watson says. “Similarly, I try to shape the classroom in a way that has a dramatic arc; that leads to some kind of enlightenment. I do see similarities between the theater and the classroom. It’s a remarkable gift to be able to see education from those various viewpoints, and theater, my lab, allows us to do that kind of investigation.”
Even during his undergraduate days, Watson was drawn to teaching.
“I was attracted to the whole concept of college and the ideas that are being tossed about,” Watson says. “I had that desire to teach. As I developed a greater knowledge and experience in theater, I began to think, Well, I could probably do what this director and teacher is doing.”
It’s a thought he encourages in his own students.
“Sometimes I even tease them and say that I really expect them to get to the place where we can topple that professor-student notion. I want them to call me Dwight. I want to be re-spected, but I want students to get to the point where they are comfortable having more thorough conversations with people about theater. When they get to that place where they exert their talents and their purpose in it all and I see that strength come out, I just want to get out of their way and let them do it, make room for them.
“I love it when we reach the place where we are on a first-name basis.”
Many of those names decorate his office walls on the posters from the more than 40 plays he has directed at Wabash.
“I try to make sure all their names are on the posters whenever possible, because they mean so much. We start with uncertainties and only slight familiarity with one another, yet by the end a real bond is created—a trust that allows them to be expressive and creative.
“I think that is a remarkable thing—to be allowed into a classroom or theater space that encourages that kind of growth. I’ve been blessed with meeting many fine young men and working with those students. It’s difficult in some ways to see them leave, but you know that they are still in conversation with us somewhere.” —Richard Paige, Steve Charles
Congratulate Professor Watson: watsond@wabash.edu