p3 Juan ontiveros Camille Parmesan Nobel Prize Winner friar fellowship F O R P E O P L E W H O M A K E G R E A T T H I N G S H A P P E N A T U T Charles breithaupt Executive Director, UIL fiddler’s Hearth: employee discount Program business of the month Hollingsworth Longest tenured staff member with 54 years at UT institute for Historical studies institute for Historical studies Executive Director, Utilities and Energy Management Professor and artist M A R C H 2 0 0 9 Continued page 5
FOR PEOPLE WHO MAKE GREAT THINGS HAPPEN AT UT MARCH 2009 Fritz Henle. Sunset on Christiansted Harbor, St. Croix, Virgin Islands. 1960. Photo courtesy Harry Ransom Center R oy Flukinger, senior research curator of photography at the Harry Ransom Center, and the late photographer, Fritz Henle, have crossed paths to cre- ate both a book and a retrospective. Flukinger’s book about Henle entitled, “Fritz Henle: In Search of Beauty,” and an HRC retrospective exhibition by the same title on display now through Aug. 2, showcase thousands of negatives shot by Henle. e exhibition also shows 1,200 to 1,300 master prints of Henle’s best work. “One thing an artist can do in this world is to remind people that there is so much beauty that you only have to see it,” Henle said in Flukinger’s book, “Fritz Henle: In Search of Beauty.” See it, he did and he captured that beauty for all who view his work. Henle died in 1993. He was a vibrant individual who was impassioned by his love for photography and his drive to capture as many images as he could in his prolific life. He cherished freedom so much that he remained a freelance photographer for most of his career, not wanting to be limited in his range of work by the major publications that showcased his photographs. His clients ranged from industrial ones, beginning with shipyards in Ger- many and German superliners in 1928, to magazines including Life Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Glamour and Made- moiselle. He published more than 20 books of his work and had countless ex- hibitions all over the world. Flukinger planned the book and ex- hibition in tandem. e hardbound book’s cover features an image of Fritz’s camera’s viewfinder used for the major- ity of his life, the Rolleiflex. Helmut Gernsheim, author of “A Concise History of Photography,” sold his impressive historical photo collec- tion to the Harry Ransom Center in 1963. Gernsheim referred to Henle as “the man with the four sharp eyes.” He is referring to Fritz’s effective use of the Rollei to capture amazing images. For more than 60 years, Henle trained himself to visualize his world in squares. Even though he captured hundreds of thousands of images, Hen- le seldom shot two pictures from the same angle. His daughter, Tina Henle, recalls that he encouraged her to make Flukinger’s ‘Fritz Henle: In Search of Beauty’ Continued page 5 By Gloria Cisneros Lenoir WHAT’S INSIDE p2 Robert Hollingsworth Longest tenured staff member with 54 years at UT p3 Juan Ontiveros Executive Director, Utilities and Energy Management p6 Charles Breithaupt Executive Director, UIL p8 Institute for Historical Studies p9 Fiddler’s Hearth: Employee Discount Program business of the month p10 Camille Parmesan Nobel Prize Winner
Transcript
p3Professor and artistMelissa Miller named Texas Artist of the Year
p11friar fellowshipG. Howard Miller awarded $15,000 Friar Fellowship.
F O R P E O P L E W H O M A K E G R E A T T H I N G S H A P P E N A T U T M A R C H 2 0 0 9
Fritz Henle. Sunset on Christiansted Harbor, St. Croix, Virgin Islands. 1960. Photo courtesy Harry Ransom Center
Roy Flukinger, senior research curator of photography at the Harry Ransom Center, and the late photographer,
Fritz Henle, have crossed paths to cre-ate both a book and a retrospective. Flukinger’s book about Henle entitled, “Fritz Henle: In Search of Beauty,” and an HRC retrospective exhibition by the same title on display now through Aug. 2, showcase thousands of negatives shot by Henle. Th e exhibition also shows 1,200 to 1,300 master prints of Henle’s best work.
“One thing an artist can do in this world is to remind people that there is so much beauty that you only have to see it,” Henle said in Flukinger’s book, “Fritz Henle: In Search of Beauty.” See it, he did and he captured that beauty
for all who view his work.Henle died in 1993. He was a vibrant
individual who was impassioned by his love for photography and his drive to capture as many images as he could in his prolifi c life. He cherished freedom so much that he remained a freelance photographer for most of his career, not wanting to be limited in his range of work by the major publications that showcased his photographs.
His clients ranged from industrial ones, beginning with shipyards in Ger-many and German superliners in 1928, to magazines including Life Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Glamour and Made-moiselle. He published more than 20 books of his work and had countless ex-hibitions all over the world.
Flukinger planned the book and ex-
hibition in tandem. Th e hardbound book’s cover features an image of Fritz’s camera’s viewfi nder used for the major-ity of his life, the Rolleifl ex.
Helmut Gernsheim, author of “A Concise History of Photography,” sold his impressive historical photo collec-tion to the Harry Ransom Center in 1963. Gernsheim referred to Henle as “the man with the four sharp eyes.” He is referring to Fritz’s eff ective use of the Rollei to capture amazing images.
For more than 60 years, Henle trained himself to visualize his world in squares. Even though he captured hundreds of thousands of images, Hen-le seldom shot two pictures from the same angle. His daughter, Tina Henle, recalls that he encouraged her to make
flukinger’s ‘fritz Henle: in search of beauty’
Continued page 5
By Gloria Cisneros Lenoir
WHAT’S INSIDEp2 robert HollingsworthLongest tenured staff member with 54 years at UT
p3 Juan ontiverosExecutive Director,
Utilities and Energy Management
p6 Charles breithauptExecutive Director,UIL
p8 institute forHistorical studiesinstitute forHistorical studies
p9 fiddler’s Hearth:employee discount Program business of the month
p10 Camille ParmesanNobelPrizeWinner
1
Advertising Advertising director Jalah Briedwell
retail Advertising Manager Brad Corbett
Account executive Carter Goss
student Ad director Charlie Moczygemba
student Ad Manager Derek Diaz Deleon
Local display Account executives Kathryn Abbas Lauren Aldana Chelsea Anaya Jared Barker Landon Blackburn Ann Marie Burnett
Ryan Ford Jen Miller
Contributing stAff Writers Samantha Breslow Gloria Cisneros Lenoir Kira Taniguchi Elena Watts Richard C. White
Photographers Paul Chouy Debbie Finley John Foxworth Fritz Henle Shelley Neuman
student editors Samantha Breslow Kira Taniguchi Layout & design Elena Watts
editor Elena Watts
our Campus welcomes input from faculty and staff. Please contact elena Watts at 232-8351 or [email protected] with your suggestions for upcoming editions.
our campus • march 2009 • page 3page 2 • our campus • march 2009
Like countless generations of students before and after him, Robert Hol-
lingsworth first came to UT as a freshman in 1944. However, un-like the millions of students who have temporarily called Austin home during their college years, Hollingsworth’s time at the Uni-versity has been nearly uninter-rupted since then.
Hollingsworth, 82, has spent 60 of the last 65 years either at-tending or working for UT. The 54 years he has spent working for UT make him the longest tenured staff member at the University of Texas.
“The University has been good to me; it’s been a good fit,” he said. “They’ve allowed me to stay on as long as I have and do a lot of the work that I’ve enjoyed over the years.”
Hollingsworth has humbly gone about his work as a research engineer and science associate in the Applied Research Laborato-ries with quiet determination. He was unaware and almost embar-rassed upon learning that he held the honor of being the longest tenured Longhorn staffer.
“I didn’t know that; that’s re-ally a surprise,” he said. “It kind of makes me feel ancient, but I’ve certainly enjoyed it. I’ve enjoyed it all.”
A Dallas native who grew up in Beaumont, Hollingsworth knew from a young age that he was des-tined to be a Longhorn. The pride and traditions of the University of Texas were deeply ingrained in his family history. Nearly every-one in his immediate and extend-
ed family attended UT. Burnt orange was in his blood.
“I knew all about Austin from my family so I was very happy to come here,” he said. “There was not much doubt that I’d be here.”
Despite the deep roots his fam-ily planted in Austin long before he came to the city, Hollings-worth could not have imagined staying with the University for as long as he has. He has deep-ened those family roots through the life he has made for himself and his family and the lasting im-pression of the work he has done, work which has strengthened our country’s military over the last 60 years.
Even before his professional ca-reer would take a permanent hold in Austin, the seeds of Hollings-worth’s personal life were sown at UT.
“We met at the University,” Hollingsworth’s wife, Helen, said laughing. “Where else would we have met?”
Hollingsworth, who came to UT as a freshman in 1944, met his wife in September of 1945. Helen spent her freshman year at Baylor before transferring to Tex-as the following fall. The two met through mutual friends and were married on Christmas Eve 1948.
After earning a bachelor’s in physics in the spring of 1948, Hollingsworth continued his ed-ucation at UT, earning his mas-ter’s in mathematics in 1950.
While most students either take time off after graduating from college or dive headfirst into the job market, a few desire a permanent career at their alma
mater. For Hollingsworth the decision to stay at the University was as easy as any decision he has ever made.
Looking back on her husband’s career, Helen said she understood early that Hollingsworth’s work was more than just a job to him. Although many of his colleagues retired through the years, Hol-lingsworth’s drive kept him mov-ing forward.
“A lot of people just want to retire as soon as they can,” Helen said, “but working at the Univer-sity has been his joy in life.”
In September, just months after graduating in the spring of 1950, Hollingsworth began work in the Defense Research Laboratories, a division of the University that has since been renamed Applied Research Laboratories.
Another major milestone for Hollingsworth occurred just three days after he started work-ing at the lab. His wife gave birth to the first of their four sons. For a man who exemplified the defi-nition of Longhorn longevity, it should come as no surprise that every one of his four sons attend-ed UT.
Hollingsworth’s career took hold at the perfect time, when the lab, created in 1946, was still in its infancy. Since then, the lab has engaged in countless government sponsored research programs.
The programs, which deal pri-marily with acoustics, electro-magnetics and information sci-ences, share the common goal of strengthening America’s national security through research, teach-ing and public service.
While the lab’s contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense represent a considerable portion of its workload, the division also dedicates itself to several non-gov-ernmental sponsored projects.
A pawn in his fair share of campus chess during the last 65 years, Hollingsworth has moved numerous times with the division to meet its ever-expanding needs. Despite the changes of locale, he has managed to hold the same job the entire time. And that is just
fine with him. But it was not fine for many of
his coworkers. For decades Hol-lingsworth saw many of them leave the University for govern-ment positions after years of work on military projects. Unlike them, Hollingsworth found ev-erything he needed at UT and so did Helen, who was just as happy to settle down in Central Texas as Hollingsworth was.
“This is where I wanted to be,
Hollingsworth, ut’s Longest tenured staffer54 years as research engineer, science associate in Applied Research Laboratories defines Longhorn longevityBy Richard C. White
Photo John FoxworthRobert Hollingsworth (right) at Applied Research Laboratories with Karl Fisher, director of signal and information sciences.
Continued page 3
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our campus • march 2009 • page 3
so I was glad that it worked out that way,” she said. “When he started work he could have made more money elsewhere, but we decided we’d rather stay here.”
While others grew tired of the monotony of working in the same job for decades, Hollingsworth’s passion for the job left him with-out the need or desire to seek em-ployment outside of the city he has called home since the 1940s.
“Often my colleagues over the years would go off and get jobs with the government, but I didn’t want to do that,” he said. “I want-ed to stay at the University and continue doing what I’ve been doing. I’ve never wanted to leave Austin.”
Hollingsworth has worked on
dozens of government contracts for several divisions of the Armed Services, though the majority of his work has been with the Air Force and Navy.
Given the importance of the projects and the meticulous at-tention to detail necessary to car-ry them out to the military’s sat-isfaction, it is not uncommon for Hollingsworth or his colleagues to spend several years working on one specific contract. In his most recent project, Hollingsworth has spent several years fine-tuning deals with sonar development for the Navy.
Hollingsworth’s work was in-terrupted in the mid-1980s when he temporarily retired. However, after a few years away from the only professional work that he has ever known, a job that he tireless-ly dedicated himself to for nearly 35 years at that point, it was no
surprise to him or Helen when he felt the pull to return to UT just four years into his retirement.
“He came back because he wanted to,” Helen said. “He would have worked for free if that’s the way to do it because that’s his second home out there, out at the lab.”
There are four other University staff members who have worked 50 or more years at UT, but even though he temporarily retired, Hollingsworth’s 54 years still manages to outdistance them all, including that of legendary football coach Darrell Royal and his 52 years, Reuben Wallace’s 53 years, Kenneth Vaughan’s 51 years and Jack Shooter’s 50 years.
Including the six years he at-tended UT, Hollingsworth’s 60 years with UT have taught him that being a Longhorn means giv-ing something back. He is grate-
ful that his contributions have been through work at the Univer-sity that has given him so much.
“I’m proud to be a Longhorn,” he said. “It’s been a good relation-ship.”
For a man who has spent nearly 75 percent of his life either at-tending or working for one uni-versity, Hollingsworth feels ful-filled and does not have a single regret. While he admits he does not know how much longer he will remain at UT before finally retiring for good, one thing he is sure about is that he would not trade his time at the University for anything in the world.
“It’s getting up close, I may have to retire one of these days because I can’t keep up with the young sci-entists,” he said, “but I still take a lot of pride in what I do and I still love my work.”
54 years as research engineer, science associate in Applied Research Laboratories defines Longhorn longevity
HollingsworthContinued from page 2
Due to his groundbreak-ing work to make UT’s power plant more en-
ergy efficient, Juan Ontiveros has been appointed to a National Re-search Council committee to help make the controversial Capitol Power Plant in Washington D.C. more energy efficient.
Ontiveros has worked in the UT system for 18 years. He has served as executive director for Utilities and Energy Manage-ment for the last 11 of those
years. Prior to coming to Austin, he was director of facilities for the University of Texas at El Paso for seven years. His knowledge stems from his work at the White Sands Missile Range and his experience as chief engineer on a service con-tract for the Army Materiel Test and Evaluation Directorate. He earned his degree from the Uni-versity of Texas at El Paso in me-chanical engineering, with addi-tional coursework in energy, fluid and heat transfer.
The Capitol Power Plant, which has become controversial because it runs on coal, is dete-riorating as a result of age and quickly becoming less energy efficient. Ontiveros’ purpose as part of the committee is to make recommendations about how the functions of the Capitol Power Plant can best be altered to meet the impending energy efficiency requirements of the U.S. Capitol Complex.
The Capitol Power Plant was
originally built in 1909 to supply steam and electricity to the U.S. Capitol Complex. Although the plant no longer produces elec-tricity, it still provides steam and chilled water to heat and cool the 19 million square feet of space.
“For me, it is an honor to be a part of this committee, to be a part of the future of that plant,” Ontiveros said. “I’m obviously pretty excited about that part of it.”
Juan ontiveros National Research Council committee member making D.C.’s Capitol Power Plant energy efficientBy Kira Taniguchi
Photo Debbie Finley
Continued page 11
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our campus • march 2009 • page 5page 4 • our campus • march 2009
Our Campus: What is your mission in life?Roy Flukinger: My mission in life: Spread the great word about photography and not to forget to enjoy the rest of the trip. What was it that Franklin P. Jones said about love? “Love doesn’t make the world go around but it makes the trip worthwhile.”OC: Expand upon your mission in life relative to your profession.RF: I think photography is one of the most expressive and won-derful mediums in the world. I think it has critical impact upon everyone in every day of their lives, and I think it is an impor-tant task to help people under-stand it better and appreciate its significance and impact. That’s what we do here by preserving these materials, making them available for scholars, and help-ing them interpret and under-stand it.OC: You have written many books. What kind of photogra-phers have you written about? RF: It has been a broad range. It has been about historical indi-viduals: Paul Martin and Lewis Carroll. Then there have been contemporary people like David Douglas Duncan, Eve Arnold and Eliot Elisofon. And there have been books that have been on a variety of photographic and art historical subject matters, ev-erything from the early calotype process to the history of pho-tography in Texas. Some books I’ve been principal author on and some I’ve merely contributed an essay to. Many books are collab-orations or edited collections of a number of people’s works.OC: Do you take photographs yourself?
RF: Not much any more. I used to quite a bit. I used to have de-signs on being a photographer once upon a time way back when, but I am too fascinated by the history. History is my passion. I enjoy the history of photography. I find I have an affinity for writ-ing and talking about both pho-tography and history, so I com-bined the two. Plus there are so many better photographers than I was. I’d rather help them out. So I guess I’m a weekend photog-rapher and that’s about it.OC: Do you have any plans for your own negatives?RF: No, you archive the photo-graphs and collections that are significant and important. Mine aren’t.OC: Are you working on any books right now?RF: Yes, the big book that I have coming out in another year or so is the one on the Gernsheim Col-lection. HRC will be doing an exhibit in the next year or two.OC: Is the Gernsheim Collec-tion considered the largest in the world?RF: I don’t think it was ever con-sidered the largest but it certainly is one of the finest of all time. OC: How many photographers’ works are included in the collec-tion?RF: Over 1,000. There are prob-ably about 30,000 to 35,000 images in the Gernsheim Col-lection, which is our foundation collection. This is not the total that we have in the HRC. The 30,000 to 35,000 figure refers to negatives and prints, mainly prints and they are by the artists considered to be the major pho-tographers of the 19th and 20th centuries. The Gernsheims did a
magnificent job. They built a su-perb collection.OC: Have you acquired other collections?RF: Yes, we have but theirs is the big, core one. Our acquisitions have ranged in the past 30-plus years from the archives of impor-tant photographers like Duncan and Elisofon to collecting indi-vidual works.
We’ve collected significant in-dividual works by important his-toric photographers who are not in Gernsheim’s holdings from the 19th and 20th centuries. We’ve also developed resources, raised funds and collected a number of works by contempo-rary photographers because I be-lieve we should always continue to add contemporary work to the department’s collections as well. One cannot ignore the vast num-ber of significant photographers doing work today who are living, breathing and creating, and who fortunately don’t stop. That’s what Helmut [Gernsheim] did too. Helmut is probably most famous for the now classically historic (let’s be frank – dead)photographers that he amassed, but there were always a number of living photographers of his era that he collected as well. It is the younger photographers of each generation who continue to lead the art in new and important di-rections. I should add, I no longer am encouraged to do that. All the acquisitions are now managed by David Coleman, who’s the cura-tor of collections. David’s the one to ask about contemporary col-lecting policies. I’m telling you what I did [before]. Now I am senior research curator of pho-tography. I serve as a resource
authority to scholars and peers, work on books, articles, lectures, exhibitions, and I also do some teaching as adjunct.OC: What courses do you teach?RF: Generally, I have taught courses on photography, photo history, art history, and in the school of library and informa-tion science. Most recently I have taught a course on manag-ing photographic archives as well as co-teaching one on the great ideas of the 20th century.OC: In reference to Fritz Henle’s exhibit, did you go to St. Croix to do research?RF: Yes, for a week I was there. I looked at all of the family ar-chives there, and I also looked at all of the sites where he pho-tographed. I did interviews with all of the family and a number of his friends.OC: Do you want to say any-thing about the Fritz Henle show and the book?RF: They were designed in tan-dem. There are a few more im-ages in the show than fit into the book. It is largely the same. The book is limited on the number of words and the number of pic-tures that I could include.OC: How many images are in Fritz’s collection?RF: The negatives are in the hun-dreds of thousands. I believe ev-erything has a contact print but not everything is printed. The project we were engaged with him on, what we called the Fritz Henle Master Print Project, has about 1,200 to 1,300 prints. We did it over a number of years. Fairleigh Dickinson financed the first few hundred over the first three years. Then we did oth-
ers in the years after to acquire some more. We did it until the time he died, 1993. Probably if Fritz was still alive, we’d still be printing. He was continually discovering work he had forgot-ten or he had not paid attention to. As with most photographers, things you took in say 1937, you may not have thought it was that great, but you saw it again 40 years later, and you’d say, “Wow.” He was rediscovering his own imagery while he was doing it, which was fascinating. That was one thing that made the project particularly appealing. There is an old Minor White axiom that most photographers photograph better than they know they do. That’s true. You go back and see things that you discounted, you didn’t have time to print, or you thought were just secondary back when you did them. Forty years later you go “Wow, I didn’t focus on that. That is really fascinat-ing.” Fritz would do a lot of that, and that made the project very worthwhile.
One other thing about the show is that we included a num-ber of modern, very large prints in it. Part of the reason we did that is that Fritz was an early pioneer who included these big enlargements in his exhibitions. As early as 1936, he was show-ing very large prints from some of the negatives. We decided to feature some of that, in terms of large-scale imagery, to show not only the breadth of the vision, but how the print could be appre-ciated in a different scale. That is important because now it is a fad, having such big prints, but in Fritz’s day it was quite revolu-tionary.
interview withroy flukingerHRC’s senior research curator of photography
Roy Flukinger with Henle’s “Nieves,” Mexico, 1943, in the Harry Ransom Center’s retrospective on display through Aug. 2.
Photo Shelley Neuman
4
our campus • march 2009 • page 5page 4 • our campus • march 2009
each shot count before she went on shooting trips.
Henle’s eventful life began in Dortmund, Germany. Although he was born to a family of medical doctors and scientists, his love of photography drove him down a different career path. His travel-ing adventures began at an early age when he was a student in the Bavarian Institute of Photog-raphy, Germany’s finest school for traditional photography. As a student, his photographs were published in a periodical in Mu-nich.
That publication led to an op-portunity to photograph a two-week Mediterranean tour by the North German Lloyd steamship line, which carried him to Egypt, the Middle East and Greece.
Henle’s photography instruc-tor, Hanna Seewald, came to his defense when he was missed at school. Seewald asked Henle to present his exquisite work to the school’s director, which pre-vented his expulsion from the institute.
Henle’s wife, Marguerite, was a model for many of his nude images and his faithful helper. She often carried his photog-raphy equipment on their jour-neys throughout the world. His children also assisted him by or-ganizing negatives, selecting im-ages for printing and keeping the collection in order. All of Henle’s family members felt they had photography ingrained in them.
When Henle began processing negatives in his childhood home, he would listen to musicians playing the music of Mozart or other classical masters from his
darkroom that sat below the family’s music room. Because his father, Adolf Henle, was the director of the Dortmund Phil-harmonic Society, music was intertwined with Henle’s love of photography. According to a passage from Flukinger’s book, Henle spoke of the beauty he was attempting to capture in musical terms, “harmony, tone, balance, interpretation, performance, or even abstracts such as love and hope.”
The photographs in the exhibit are lyrical masterpieces creat-ing an overture of harmonious visions. “Fritz Henle: In Search of Beauty” provides all of the in-triguing facts about his life, as well as some of his best images. Due to space limitations, the ex-hibit contains more images than the book. It is worth the experi-ence.
Flukinger’s book on HenleContinued from page 1
5
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Henle’s “The Woman and the God,” Paris, 1938 (top left); Henle’s “Ha-waiian Net Caster,” Hawaii, 1947 (top right); Henle’s “Frida Kahlo at Xochimilco,” Mexico, 1937 (left).
Photos courtesy Harry Ransom Center
page 6 • our campus • march 2009 our campus • march 2009 • page 7
Charles Breithaupt, who was named director of the University Interscho-
lastic League last month, called it “a little bit daunting” that there have only been six before him. “Great men who will go down in history as some of the most dy-namic men in the state,” he said of his predecessors.
According to the league’s Web site, “The purpose of the UIL is to organize and properly supervise contests that assist in preparing students for citizenship.” It is ex-tremely important that students learn how to deal with adversity, but even more important that they learn to deal with success,” Breithaupt said.
“Learning that if you have abilities, how you utilize those in companionship with your fellow man [is most important],” he said. “How can we work together coop-eratively? How can we utilize a set of goals to help enrich our lives?”
Breithaupt worked for the league 17 years before becoming executive director. After a career
in high school coaching, he be-came assistant athletic director in June 1992 and director of athlet-ics in March 1995. When he was appointed assistant director of the league in 2004, he retained his duties as director of athletics.
As for his predecessors, Bre-ithaupt is honored to be in their company and has nothing but re-spect and praise for their accom-plishments.
“If you think about men like Roy Bedichek – he was a great author and naturalist – he had a tremendous influence on the for-mation of the league,” Breithaupt said. “He wasn’t the first, but he was the second [director], and he really shaped the future of the league.” Bedichek was the league’s director from 1922 to 1948.
Dr. Bailey Marshall, direc-tor from 1977 to 1995, took the league through the ‘70s and ‘80s, when it was sued at every turn and changed many of its rules to advance with the times.
“And the director that I fol-lowed, Dr. Bill Farney, was a great
mentor to me,” Breithaupt said. “He made the league what I call user friendly.”
Farney, director from 1995 to 2009, returned control of the league to the schools by opening doors for them to make propos-als and share in decision mak-ing. Farney is an inspiration, said Breithaupt, because he has such a heart for people.
“I’ll always hold him near and dear to my heart because he cares so much about those in need,” he said. “There is not a person I’ve ever met who was a better giver.” According to Breithaupt, Farney contributed his knowledge, his wisdom and his financial support to help people who were less for-tunate.
“So it’s become a tremendous organization because of the influ-ence of those past six directors,” he said. “They all put their mark on this league.”
Reared in Buna, a small town outside Beaumont, Breithaupt graduated from high school with 70 classmates in 1972. He earned
his bachelor’s and master’s in edu-cation from Lamar University and his doctorate in educational administration from UT. “And the rest of my education came from the school of hard knocks,” he said with a laugh. “I have to tell you that experience has been the greatest teacher.”
He said that most importantly, his parents were interested in his success and they instilled in him the significance of hard work. “I was very fortunate to a have a family that supported me in the high school activities I chose to participate in,” he said, “and I par-ticipated in everything because there weren’t many of us.”
He continued that for young boys of his generation, the Viet-nam War was an issue. “The world was changing in the ‘70s,” he said, “and I had a low draft number.” That ended about the time he graduated, and he never wanted to do anything but teach. It was his goal and he got that op-portunity. Throughout his time before the league, he was a high
school teacher, coach and princi-pal for 17 years in Beaumont-area schools.
According to Breithaupt, the league has a responsibil-ity through its activities, whether musical, academic or athletic, to showcase the abilities of the participants, while allowing the activities to be vehicles for stu-dents to become better people. He is often asked to whom he an-swers. “The UT VP’s office [Vice President for Diversity and Com-munity Engagement Gregory Vincent], Legislature, 28-mem-ber legislative council and every school’s superintendent, teacher, coach [and] administrator across the state, every parent who has a question,” he responded. “We are a service organization, we work through the University of Texas in providing information and put-ting on championship events.”
But it is not that simple, accord-ing to Breithaupt. They organize and resolve conflicts for a chal-lenging, complex organization. “It’s more the day-to-day opera
Charles Breithaupt, University Interscholastic League’s executive director, represents the league’s interests before the Texas Legislature.
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page 6 • our campus • march 2009 our campus • march 2009 • page 7
tions, the issues schools face, because any time you have competition, you have rules,” he said. “And there will be people who will push the edge of the envelope, people who would like to take advan-tage of another opponent, so you have to make sure you’re working together to solve those issues.”
Breithaupt considers the formation of the Med-ical Advisory Committee his biggest accomplish-ment with the league so far. “We had seven deaths all in one year,” he said, “not all of them attributed to athletic competition, but they happened to be athletes during the fall of 2000.”
The committee’s tasks include examining each student’s medical his-tory, particularly in re-
gard to head injuries, heat susceptibility and heart problems prior to partici-pation. “And so the for-mation of the committee has helped with the goal to keep activities safe,” he said. “And I’m very proud of the work the committee has done the past several years. It’s one of the best things we’ve ever done.”
On the cusp of the league’s 100th birthday in 2009-2010, he said the important thing is to have a vision for the organiza-tion, to see that it survives because it has served so many students so well through the years. “My fo-cus is on putting the league in a position to make it an-other 100 years,” he said.
He wants students to tell the league what they want, rather than the league telling students what they need. “We’re going to bring in the best and brightest students to talk about what they
see the UIL as being, and we’re going to call them the elite 100.” There may be activities we are not offering, like wheelchair competitions, track and field, lacrosse, bowling or chess, that the students would be more interested in than the traditional sports currently offered, he said.
Breithaupt is blessed to work with so many great people in the league. “Our music director, Richard Floyd, is an internationally known band leader. We’re so fortunate to have him on staff,” he said. “Treva Dayton, our academic director, is a nationally renowned debate leader. And her assistant Janet Riggins, is in the same boat: two great debate in-structors.”
His sentiments are re-turned. “His [Breithaupt’s] work with Texas schools and with the league have given him a level of un-
derstanding and depth of knowledge about ex-tracurricular activities in Texas that would be dif-ficult to match,” said Day-ton, who has worked with Breithaupt since 1992. “And perhaps more im-portantly, he brings pas-sion for education and for providing students with opportunities to become the best that they can be.”
Floyd said Breithaupt is a passionate supporter of the fine arts and values the impact these activities have on the lives of young people. “He takes the time to understand the scope and depth of our music program,” Floyd said, “but at the same time clearly communicates his trust in our music department to do what is best to serve the 500,000 music students across the state of Texas.”
Students have inspired Breithaupt the entire span of his 34-year career. He recalled one incident
in particular when the league started a wrestling program in 1999.
“It was a brand new pro-gram, and we always won-der when we add some-thing new how valuable it will be,” he said, “what kind of participation rate you’ll have, what kinds of kids will come out.”
The very first year, Chris Medina assuaged their concerns. He was legally blind and made it to the championship round in wrestling. “Those are the kinds of stories you look at; here’s a person that probably would not have been able to participate in anything else in athletics, but he was able to wrestle and he was able to be suc-cessful,” Breithaupt said. “That’s the kind of story I relish.”
Even more important to Breithaupt are the letters he receives from former students about the les-sons they learned while
BreithauptContinued from page 6
Continued page 8
‘Dr. Breithaupt was a successful teacher and coach himself, and he has always been sup-portive of the academic and fine arts programs that UIL offers. He knows that academic success is critical to high school students, whether they also compete as athletes, musicians or academic contestants or not. He supports all UIL programs that serve Texas students and schools, and cer-tainly the staff members responsible for those programs. He is a team player – and a team builder – dedicated to enhancing UIL pro-grams across the board.’— Treva Dayton, UIL Academic Director
7
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While the main goal of the Institute for Historical Stud-
ies is to enhance the intellectual community through examples from the past, the institute’s own history is limited.
Founded two years ago in Janu-ary 2007, Institute Director Julie Hardwick remembers the seeds for the institute being sown when William Powers took office as UT president in February 2006. The result has been a history depart-ment of which other universities nationwide are taking note.
“When he became president, President Powers decided to make the history department the first center of excellence in the Col-lege of Liberal Arts,” Hardwick said. “One thing the Institute of Historical Studies is doing very effectively is that it’s promoted a national footprint for the Univer-sity’s history department.”
The institute’s main goals are to enhance the education of gradu-ate students, to evaluate and hire qualified educators, to bring in more distinguished guest speak-ers and to host symposiums, which all augment the intellectual and social community of the Uni-versity of Texas.
The institute also employs an impressive staff of academic minds whose collective work var-ies among the many scholarly fields of history. In particular, such faculty and staff members include a Pulitzer Prize-winner, a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, recipients of numerous national book awards and fellowships, as well as seven current or former Guggenheim Fellows.
Mark Lawrence, the institute’s program coordinator, said the in-stitute is dedicated to the entire general scope of human history and not just one specific place in time.
“The institute is designed to advance the study of history on a very broad front. It doesn’t favor any particular type of history,” Lawrence said. “The preference is really to create a broad umbrella under which scholars can advance their research and come together to talk about important historical questions.”
One of the more specific goals the institute works toward is to better educate teachers. In April, it will host a weekend workshop for 40 kindergarten through 12th grade teachers from Region 13, which includes Austin and sur-rounding Central Texas cities.
“Sometimes there’s a discon-nect between the way we talk and think about history and what students are learning in school,” Hardwick said. “We want to work with Texas teachers more clearly and help them enrich their cur-riculum.”
Previous workshops have fo-cused on environmental history, while future workshop topics are being discussed. One of the pro-posed topics is Mexican-Ameri-can history in Texas.
Because the goal is to help Texas teachers go beyond the bare minimum teaching standards re-quired by the state Legislature, Hardwick believes the public ed-ucation workshops are the most important programs the institute offers.
“One of the issues for us is the materials teachers receive through state textbooks, which speak very closely, sometimes not very cre-atively, towards the state-mandat-ed standards,” she said. “Teachers with the appropriate support and training can offer a much richer education to their students than the state-mandates indicate.”
Hardwick hopes to expand the program beyond the realm of Re-gion 13 in the near future. One idea is to host summer workshops, which would make it possible for teachers outside of Region 13 to travel to Austin. Workshops are currently held during the school year.
For Hardwick, the initial suc-cess of the workshops is crucial in gauging whether to allot the time, funds and effort needed to thor-oughly implement future teacher workshops.
“We hope to expand it to a Tex-as-wide program,” she said. “So we’ll see how the first one goes.”
While Hardwick is proud of the teaching workshops, Lawrence lauds the scholarly workshops.
The institute offers two to three workshops a month where UT and other university faculty can
discuss their work with gradu-ate, and occasionally undergradu-ate, students. Past speakers have touched on issues such as Chinese history and black history.
“We’re trying to reach beyond the scholarly world and hit all stu-dents,” Lawrence said, “but inevi-tably something like this is going to be of greater interest to gradu-ate students.”
The institute’s programming this year and next addresses the broad theme of crossing and defending global borders. The theme is not to be confused with immigration. Rather, the pro-gram emphasizes how nations work together to resolve intercon-nected environmental issues that affect us all.
“A major challenge within the international community is to deal with environmental prob-lems that require broadly regional solutions,” Lawrence said. “They are problems that are very much in the moment in the 21st cen-tury.”
In addition to his many other responsibilities, Lawrence is in charge of organizing a major conference that will serve as the centerpiece for the institute’s programming this year. The conference titled “The Nation-State and the Transnational Environment”will be held at the AT&T Center from April 16 to 18 and will expound in greater detail the many specific themes of global borders. It is open to the public without charge.
“We’re hoping to attract some folks from around town,” he said. “We are trying to reach beyond the academic world in some re-gards. That’s the hope we have. With some features of the insti-tute, such as the conference, we’re trying to get beyond students al-together and reach the broader community.”
The conference, through schol-arly papers, will show how nations have worked together throughout history to solve transnational is-sues including control of fishing stocks, migratory wildlife flying across national borders and con-trol of the Rhine River. Current issues, such as global warming, will be discussed in light of solu
Institute for Historical Studies Promoting National Footprint
By Richard C. White
Photo Paul Chouy
Continued page 11
8
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participating in the league’s com-petitions. “To see how successful these young people have become, not because of the extra activi-ties, but [because of] opportuni-ties they’ve had, the relationships they’ve made and the develop-ment of their minds and bodies,” Breithaupt said, “I believe tells the story of the UIL.” Every coach, teacher and administrator can say the same thing about students’ ex-perience through UIL, he said.
One of Breithaupt’s proudest moments was when the basketball team he coached won the state championship at Erwin Center in 1991. “[I am] proud [now] because of the quality of the individuals, not so much their basketball tal-ent, but what they turned into,” he said. “Texas’ great citizens: an orthopedic surgeon, two school
superintendents, one principal, one head basketball coach in a private school, an assistant bas-ketball coach, another is a minis-ter, another is in the military.”
He said that he is proud to know they are the new leaders of our state and proud to have been associated with them. “It was a magical time,” Breithaupt said. “[I] enjoyed every moment of my relationship with them.”
Lately, Breithaupt has been spending time with his first grandchild, eight-month-old Rea-gan. “She’ll be an All-American in three sports and valedictorian,” he chuckled. “No pressure.”
Breithaupt’s wife Debbie re-cently retired from teaching. “She is the only teacher in the history of Georgetown to have been named teacher of the year for elementary and secondary,” Breithaupt said. “If I had been half the teacher
she is, I’d have won about 15 state championships.”
Their daughter, Dia Robbins, is a sixth grade language arts teach-er, and her husband Tom Rob-bins is football and baseball coach and science teacher at Westwood High School in Roundrock.
When asked if he has time for hobbies, Breithaupt said he loves to read and that he fell in love with historical novels when he read his first one: “Centennial” by James Michener. The English teacher in him likes “Great Expectations,” written by his favorite British novelist, Charles Dickens.
“I looked at myself as young Pip [in “Great Expectations”], because the young boy was not of much means, but had high hopes and benefactors who helped him along the way,” Breithaupt said. “It was the same for me, a lot of people have helped get me here.”
Charles BreithauptContinued from page 7
UT EMPLOYEE DISCOUNT PROGRAMsponsored by Human Resource Services THIS MONTH Fiddler’s Hearth
By Samantha Breslow
The Employee Discount Program is a Human Resource Services initiative that offers discounts on a variety of products and services to University of Texas at Austin faculty and staff. Fiddler’s Hearth, a public house that serves cuisine and drinks from the seven Celtic nations, offers a $2 discount on items found on their Celtic Traditions and New Cuisine menus after 5 p.m.
The family-friendly public house opened its doors in Austin on Nov. 9, 2008 at 301 Barton Springs Rd. Fiddler’s Hearth is a family-run business that blossomed when founder, Carol Sheehan, realized that South Bend, Indiana was lacking in Celtic cul-ture. Her daughter and restaurant manager, Kate Sheehan, said her mom is always the first to get her hands dirty. So with her knowledge of Celtic cul-ture and no restaurant experience, Carol decided to open her first public house in South Bend, and her second in Austin.
The Sheehans prefer Fiddler’s Hearth be called a public house, rather than the familiar term pub, to dispel common misconceptions.
“Most Americans think of a pub as a wood-pan-eled bar with Guinness on tap,” Carol said. “But there is more to a public house. It serves as a com-munity living room.”
Big tables create a community dining environ-ment and the fireplace serves as a source of congre-gation. According to Carol, public houses also have historical significance in American culture, since the United States Constitution was drafted in a
public house. Keeping in tune with history, Fiddler’s Hearth also serves as a meeting place for neighbor-hood associations and non-profit organizations.
The cuisine is authentically Celtic, featuring items like shepherd’s pie and all-you-can-eat fish and chips on Friday afternoons. Carol said they are picky about their cod. The buttery, flaky fish is pre-pared in a light beer batter and wrapped in newspa-per. She continued that all of their ingredients come from local farms and vendors with the exception of the banger’s sausage and white and black pudding, both imported from Chicago. They prepare the ma-jority of their selections from scratch.
“We corn our beef and make our own hash and bacon,” Carol said.
Music adds to the atmosphere at Fiddler’s Hearth. On Tuesday nights, they host trivia and an Irish tune session, while live Celtic-themed bands add authentic flair on Friday and Saturday evenings. A children’s area filled with toys and books helps par-ents relax around the fireplace, and Celtic-themed movies are shown on Monday nights.
The Celtic Cultural Center will host a St. Pat-rick’s Day celebration, which will feature Gaelic language lessons, step dancing, bagpipes and popu-lar Celtic bands, on March 17 at Fiddler’s Hearth.
“They [bands] really got their finger on the pulse of Celtic music in America,” Carol said. “The bands are incredible.”
Fiddler’s Hearth is only one of the businesses that offers great discounts through the Employee Discount Program. Be sure to browse the entire list of discounts regularly at www.utexas.edu/hr/edp for substantial savings.
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page 10 • our campus • march 2009 our campus • march 2009 • page 11
It was Camille Parmesan’s re-search on butterflies, specifi-cally Edith’s checkerspot and
the Quino checkerspot in 1996 that led her to the international science arena and an eventual Nobel Prize. She was invited to participate in work with the In-tergovernmental Panel on Cli-mate Change of the United Na-tions Environment Programme, and she accepted.
An associate professor of biolo-gy at UT, she was admonished by professional colleagues that she needed to be involved in research that would advance her career in the university setting. It was tremendous work that involved many time consuming, ardent discussions. It was exhausting and emotional, Parmesan said, but she felt the ecological work was imperative. Her contribu-tion in the work with IPCC in 2007 turned out to be quite help-ful in her career; it led to the No-bel Peace Prize.
Her short career includes mag-nificent work on a paper entitled “Ecological and Evolutionary Responses to Recent Climate Change” (2006), and more re-cently on species’ translocations outside of their native range as a conservation tool. It is a compre-hensive paper that discusses “Eco-logical changes in the phenology and distribution of plants and animals in marine, freshwater, and terrestrial groups.” Phenol-ogy refers to climactic changes as observed by plants and animals.
Her conclusion is that, “. . . in-dependent syntheses of studies worldwide have provided a clear, globally coherent conclusion: Twentieth-century anthropo-genic global warming has already affected Earth’s biota.” Anthro-pogenic means caused by humans and biota means flora and fauna or plants and animals of a particular region. In other words human activities have caused changes in the global warming of the world, and the plants and animals are di-
rectly affected. Parmesan very carefully pro-
vides specific examples of the adverse effects on plants and ani-mals. Her work is supported by eminent researchers in these wide fields. Included in her sources is much of her prior research, which is immense.
INTERVIEW WITH CAMILLE PARMESAN
Our Campus: What is your per-sonal life mission?Camille Parmesan: I’ve al-ways wanted to do something that helps society. When I was younger, I was determined to be a medical doctor. I did a study of the basic ecology and evolu-tion of butterfly interactions. I obtained good scientific results and did well with publishing that, but I wasn’t being true to myself. This was so much basic research. So I somehow wanted to do science that had more im-mediate relevance for society. My
butterfly research had helped to document population extinctions driven by extreme climate events. This provided a great foundation for studying impacts of climate change. I got a NASA fellowship to study the impacts of climate change. It enabled me to travel from Mexico to Canada over a four-year period. The goal was to figure out whether the distribu-tion of this butterfly species was stable or showing some sort of re-sponse to recent climate change. After four years of doing re-search, I was able to show that the butterflies had shifted northward and upward, just as you’d expect from the amount of warming ex-perienced by the western USA.OC: Has your research on the butterfly affected your current standing in research?CP: Yes, things were already starting to improve. I wrote my paper on the butterflies shifting their range, and within months, I was invited to talk at a White House seminar series. That’s also the paper that got me invited to be a lead author of Intergovern-mental Panel on Climate Change report. In IPCC, I found I was a junior scientist surrounded by sil-verbacks. OC: What is a silverback? CP: A silverback is a very senior and distinguished person in a field. It is the dominant male go-rilla or the king of the jungle.OC: Where do you go from here?CP: I’ve made my name, so I can focus on research that interests me most. I have done extensive field studies in the United States and Europe and would like to get back to doing more field work. I have expanded my work into meta analysis, huge analyses and have started getting into the hu-man health impacts of climate change. For all of these animals that are changing where they live, there are a lot that are vec-tors of diseases for humans. My
work has a lot of implications on biodiversity and human health. I edited a SCOPE Assessment (Scientific Committee on Protec-tion of the Environment), a book which is being published right now. There are very few studies of how disease organisms or their vectors in the wild are respond-ing to climate change. There are many projections that indicate some diseases will increase their prevalence in the USA. I’m be-ginning to work with scientists in the field of human health to fig-ure out how changes in wild ani-mals might affect the risk of dis-eases for humans. For example, many tropical diseases are carried by certain species of mosquitoes. There is the Dengue fever, a vi-rus, which is already endemic in south Texas. Another disease to look into is the malaria protozoa, associated with warm and humid climates. We ‘re at the northern limit for many of the traditionally tropical diseases. As climate gen-erally warms, many regions in the USA may be gradually becom-ing more climatically suitable for these diseases, and so humans in these areas could become more at risk. I’m excited. I’m coming full circle since I’ve originally wanted to be a medical doctor and am now bringing my ecological work to bear on human health issues.OC: What is your work week like?CP: I work every evening and every weekend. Not working is unusual. I’m going to go for two weeks to Plymouth for vacation but will end up having to deal with email while there. OC: You must get so much email. How do you handle so many?CP: I can go to France. Everyone feels that you’re available all the time, but it does help to get physi-cally more distant. But more and more, (the) modern Internet has led people to expect immediate responses no matter where you
Photo coutesy Camille Parmesan
By Gloria Cisneros Lenoir
Nobel Prize WinnerCamille Parmesan
Continued page 11
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page 10 • our campus • march 2009 our campus • march 2009 • page 11
OntiverosContinued from page 3
The National Research Council (NRC) was established in 1916, after President Abraham Lincoln signed a congressional charter granted to the National Acad-emy of Sciences, under which the NRC functions. According to the NRC Web site, their mission is “to improve government deci-sion making and public policy, increase public education and understanding and promote the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge in matters involving science, engineering, technology, and health.”
The committee will report directly to the Architect of the Capitol (AOC), which operates the physical facilities of the Capi-tol and related federal buildings. The committee’s project title is “Evaluation of Future Strategic and Energy Efficient Alternatives for the Delivery of Utility Servic-es to the U.S. Capitol Complex: A Workshop.” The committee is evaluating consultant-generated alternatives and will recommend how the Capitol Power Plant can best meet energy efficiency re-
quirements based on the studies and their own expertise.
“Our responsibility is to pro-vide them [the AOC] a report at the end that says we have looked at what you’ve done, but we sug-gest you look at the following areas,” Ontiveros said. “And we will give them a final report – a recommendation.”
Ontiveros’ connections through organizations in the industry, as well as his background in central utility plant modernization and operations, led to his appoint-ment to the ad hoc committee. The other committee members’ diverse backgrounds range from a civil engineering professor at Stanford to the CEO and co-founder of Structural Preserva-tion Systems.
The committee, which consists of eight members and one chair, will meet twice to discuss alter-native methods of energy efficien-cy for the Capitol Power Plant. Discussions at the first meeting, which was held in Washington D.C. in December, were mainly about their purpose and the stud-ies they are commissioning. The second meeting will be held in Washington, D.C. this month.
Steven Fenves, committee chair, said they will point out strong and weak points in the con-sultant’s recommended options, rank the options, recommend certain criteria for the architect to use in evaluating the proposed options, and identify additional studies needed to strengthen the case for the proposals.
“The NRC provides unbiased evaluations, advice and recom-mendations to federal agencies,” Fenves said.
Part of the committee’s chal-lenge stems from the fact that Congress advocates the contin-ued use of coal to operate the plant. According to Ontiveros, other challenges to making the Capitol Power Plant more en-ergy efficient and in turn, more environmentally friendly, are the enormous upfront costs as well as finding a place to dig that will not obstruct the view of the Capitol.
“I think that they have an op-portunity to be a showcase to the nation,” Ontiveros said. “Right now, if you look at all of the nega-tive press, it’s kind of a black mark against the nation.”
The use of coal at the Capitol Power Plant has garnered na-
tional attention. The first ever national protest against coal was held at the Capitol Power Plant on March 2. Ontiveros hopes this sparks change in Congress to move toward a more efficient and environmentally friendly plant. Soot, carbon dioxide emissions and dust particulates in the air are some of the health impacts that result from the use of coal, he said.
“When you are trying to push environmental legislation and green energy and all of these things, when the power plant that serves the Capitol is using coal – it’s not a very good thing,” Ontiveros said. “I think they have the opportunity to do this right.”
The committee’s goal to make the Capitol Power Plant more environmentally friendly can benefit from Ontiveros’ experi-ence with UT’s plant, which uses natural gas. Just by switching fuel, the Capitol Power Plant can cut its emissions by half.
The power plant that Ontive-ros operates on UT’s campus, which services about 16 million square feet, is a primary example of a large scale, energy efficient system that controls UT’s energy
costs. Ontiveros said the objective should be to use as little energy as possible, as cheap as possible.
During the past 10 years, On-tiveros has invested $150 million in energy efficient technology such as new chilling stations and combustion turbines for UT’s power plant. By producing ener-gy more efficiently, Ontiveros has been able to reduce emissions.
“If you master plan properly and carefully study your system, there are current technologies you can use to reduce your fuel costs, which pay for itself and improves the environment at the same time,” Ontiveros said.
Growing pressure from the nation to find alternative meth-ods to the Capitol Power Plant coupled with possible resistance from Congress mean Ontiveros will have to use his expertise to make effective recommendations to the architect.
“If I could get them to where they could handle all of their future growth and cut their to-tal emissions and still emit all of their energy, it would be a great world,” Ontiveros said. “So I think if I did it, they should be able to do it too.”
tions to previous dilemmas found by past generations.
“Obviously if one nation depletes an entire region of an ocean, that can disadvantage several other countries,” Lawrence said. “So now these countries have to come to terms with working with each other.”
While conferences and work-shops provide scholarly fare, the real benefit of the Institute for Historical Studies is evident in the
far-reaching benefits of its collec-tive work.
By better knowing the practi-cal solutions to problems that have plagued mankind in the past, Hardwick and Lawrence and the rest of the institute’s staff hope to ultimately bring about a better to-morrow.
“In the end our goal,” Lawrence said, “is to shift away from history and toward the future.”
are. I get 50 to 100 emails a day. I don’t have a personal as-sistant, and I have to respond myself. OC: Do you really have to re-spond to every email yourself?CP: Yes, if I have a real vaca-tion, then I get about 1,000 emails to respond to when I get back.OC: Besides your work in the higher education academic set-ting, how do you share your
work?CP: A lot of what I do is out-reach. For instance, I recently went to Zilker Elementary School. Children can have really insightful questions. Mostly people are really appre-ciative of my efforts to do out-reach. Sally Ride Science has also been a fun group to work with – they aim to encourage girls to be excited about the sci-ences at a young age.OC: What about women in the sciences?
CP: Many women don’t have the confidence of their male peers. It is confidence that makes a difference. My mom got a master’s degree in geol-ogy in the ‘30s, which was very rare back then. She was a fan-tastic role model. My father was also supportive. I have five sisters. One is a geologist. One is a practicing nurse, one has a degree in biology. Out of six females, all have university degrees. Two have degrees in psychology.
ParmesanContinued from page 10
Institute for Historical StudiesContinued from page 8
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