Marshall Earns Poetry Prize
Professor Nate Marshall’s first book is “testament to home, to struggle, and to survival . . . a reminder of the places most people would rather forget.”
VISITING ASSISTANT PROFESSOR of English Nate Marshall may be new to Wabash, but he’s been known nationally since he starred in the award-winning documentary Louder Than the Bomb, which chronicled the world’s largest youth poetry slam.
Now his debut collection of poems, Wild Hundreds (University of Pittsburgh Press), has earned him the 2014 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.
In Wild Hundreds, Marshall explores “the perils and praise songs of black lives on the South Side of Chicago, where he grew up.” Publisher’s Weekly calls the book “an insider’s perspective that asks the reader to parse the sociopolitical systems that imperil black lives—not through abstract ideology, but through authentically rendered eyes: ‘every kid that’s killed is one less free lunch, / a fiscal coup. welcome to where we from.’
“Much of the collection takes shape through the voice of a young black man navigating high school, family, friendships, and the physical and mental dangers that surround him as he strives toward manhood.”
The Devil’s Lake literary journal calls the book “A testament to home, to struggle, and to survival . . . a reminder of the places most people would rather forget.”
Marshall is coeditor of The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, a member of the poetry collective Dark Noise, and also a rapper.
Profs Walk the Talk Of Civic Involvement
Professors Joyce Burnette and Ethan Hollander may not have won their respective races for Crawfordsville City Council last fall, but they learned a great deal about themselves and their community. They hope their students will learn something, too.
“I learned that this town is full of people who care about their community,” says Professor of Economics Burnette. “I learned that people are concerned with the quality of jobs available, and whether there are things for young people to do.”
Associate Professor of Political Science Hollander learned how little it really takes to make a big difference.
“It’s a small place and every voice can count, but only if people are willing to get up and do something. Some of our city council races were decided by dozens of votes. That means that even just a small group of people could have changed the outcome.”
The duo were part of a slate of Democratic candidates that increased dialogue citywide with competitive races in each ward. Knowing they’d be campaigning with a solid team aided both political newcomers in the decision to run.
“I was willing to do it because I wasn’t doing it alone,” Burnette explains. “Having five other Democrats run made the whole thing easier and more fun.”
Hollander praised the teamwork and the experience of walking the district and meeting voters together.
“There is a lot to love about Crawfordsville,” says Hollander. “But we’ll never see that if we don’t look. And we’ll never look if we start out with unfounded assumptions.”
Hollander encourages his students to leave their preconceived notions behind, as well, and realize their potential to positively impact the community during their four years in Montgomery County.
“I hope our running for office sends them the message that Crawfordsville is the city they live in, not just the city where their college is located. That’s a key difference, and if they realized it, it might encourage them to take advantage of what the city has to offer.”
NSF Funds Effort to Translate Science
In an era of climate change, disease outbreaks, and rapidly advancing technology, understanding science is more important than ever. Yet scientists and the general public don’t seem to speak the same language.
Teaching Wabash students how to bridge that communications divide is the goal of two Wabash professors whose work was recently funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
Assistant Professor of Chemistry Laura Wysocki and Assistant Professor of Rhetoric Sara Drury were awarded a two-year, $208,954 grant by the NSF to study and develop ways of teaching the effective communication of scientific research.
Wysocki and Drury plan to create modules in chemistry classes that will enable chemistry majors to translate complex concepts or results into understandable terms for the general public. They also hope to increase the ability of non-science majors to understand the importance of research and evidence in public decision-making.
Taking Responsibility for Communication
A textbook published in October by three Wabash professors and a former teacher at the College offers a new approach to public speaking that ties it directly to civic engagement and participation in democracy.
Public Speaking and Democratic Participation: Speech, Deliberation, and Analysis in the Civic Realm was written by Wabash Professors of Rhetoric Jennifer Abbott and Todd McDorman, Assistant Professor of English Jill Lamberton, and Monmouth Professor David Timmerman, who taught at Wabash for more than a decade.
Oxford University Press describes the book as “a comprehensive introduction to the basic skills involved in public speaking— including reasoning, organization, outlining, anxiety management, style, delivery, and more—through the lens of democratic participation.
“By integrating the theme of civic engagement throughout, Public Speaking and Democratic Participation offers a direct and inspiring response to the alarming decline in civic participation in the U.S. and the climate of vindictiveness in our current political culture.”
As reviewer and Penn State University Professor Lyn J. Freymiller put it: “The authors suggest that the endeavor of good speaking has a lot to do with being a responsible citizen in society. The book returns to this idea throughout and appropriately ties concepts back to this notion of taking responsibility for our communication.”
Hot off the Press
• The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility, written by Gregory Clark with Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics Daniel Diaz Vidal, Yu Hao, and Neil Cummins, won the 2015 Gyorgy Ranki Prize from the Economic History Association for being the best book in European economic history published in the past two years. Reviewing for the Wall Street Journal, Trevor Butterworth calls the book “an epic feat of data crunching and collaborative grind... Mr. Clark has just disrupted our complacent idea of a socially mobile, democratically fluid society.” Barbara Kiser put it more simply in Nature: “Audacious.”
• LaFollette Distinguished Professor in the Humanities emeritus Raymond Williams H’68 is chief editor of Swaminarayan Hinduism: Tradition, Adaptation, and Identity, published by Oxford University Press in January 2016 and co-edited by Yogi Trivedi. The book is the first multidisciplinary study presenting new and relevant information about the history, theology, and arts of this sect of Hinduism which is the most prominent form of transnational Hinduism in the world. Williams also chaired the advisory committee for National Geographic Sacred Journeys, a Children’s Museum of Indianapolis exhibit and collaboration between the National Geographic Society and Lilly Endowment Inc.
Master Teacher, Compassionate Mentor
RICH DALLINGER once said that team teaching has been central to the Wabash chemistry department since as long as he could remember.
“Science is a community activity, and watching excellent teachers work together reinforces that idea for students,” he said in a WM interview in 1998. “You have to leave your ego at the door a little bit.”
It wasn’t surprising then that he resisted a big reception to mark his retirement after more than three-and-a-half decades serving Wabash. The veteran professor wanted to end his days in Hays Science Hall the way he loved to spend them: teaching.
So on October 23—celebrated by chemists as “Mole Day” to commemorate a basic measuring unit in chemistry—he delivered a farewell lecture to students, former students, and faculty colleagues in Hays 104. The College’s largest classroom was packed.
Professor Lon Porter snuck in a few accolades before the master could begin.
“It’s been said that wizards are just like chemists, but not as cool,” Porter said. “Rich is a masterful teacher, purposeful leader, and a compassionate mentor to both students and colleagues.
“Those that cry ‘the lecture is dead’ would think again after attending one of Rich’s beautifully organized classes. Rich’s consistent level of excellence is something that both students and colleagues admire and aspire to meet.
“Rich has built one of the most amazing research laboratories you can imagine, and the laser facility served as Rich’s intellectual workshop that yielded over 30 peer-reviewed research publications. Many of these articles were coauthored with Wabash students. In fact, Rich has served as research mentor to over 30 Wabash students during his career!”
Dallinger walked his audience through a visual tour of that research in spectroscopy, weaving in the names of students and colleagues, including frequent collaborator Mike Hopkins at the University of Chicago.
Porter mentioned Dallinger’s contributions outside of the chemistry classroom at the national level and on the Wabash campus.
“He has enriched the Wabash experience of our students in freshman tutorials, C&T, Senior Colloquium, and EQ,” Porter said. “Rich is an honorary member of the Sphinx Club. He’s served on the Lilly Scholarship Selection Committee, was chair of the Pre-Health Committee for six years, faculty advisor to Kappa Sigma for 25 years, and joyfully served as official scorer for the Wabash basketball program for 27 years.”
Porter also pointed out that for years, Dallinger had “anchored the first-year chemistry experience.” Recently he has enjoyed sharing those teaching assignments with his son, Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry Greg Dallinger, so during this final lecture, the father asked his son and teaching partner to stand.
Then the man who once called team teaching “a wonderful way to see new people in action, to receive some of their excitement and ideas,” said, “That Greg became a colleague of mine here is perhaps the high point of my career. It’s been a thrill teaching with him.”