Alumni Magazine 2001-2002 UNIVERSITYOFMICHIGAN - Rackham ...

Alumni Magazine 2001-2002
U n i v e r s i t y o f M i c h i g a n

CONTENTS
From Research into Reality 2
Alumni Magazine
Photo by Bill Wood
The Countess 3
Published annually by the Horace H. Rackham
School of Graduate Studies
Earl Lewis
Vice Provost for Academic Affairs-Graduate Studies and
Dean, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies
Jill McDonough
Assistant to the Dean for Development and External Relations
Kathryn D. Holmes
Senior Development Officer
Editor: Elyse Rubin
Writer: Jeffrey Mortimer
Designer: Rose Anderson
Cover Photo: Bill Wood
Contributing Photographers:
Lin Goings, Peter Pagnotta, Sheila Ryan,
Virginia G. Schendler, Bill Wood
Rackham Alumni Magazine welcomes your comments.
Please send correspondence to Elyse Rubin, Editor
915 East Washington Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1070
or e-mail: elyserbu@umich.edu
Rackham Executive Board
Earl Lewis, Chair, Rackham Graduate School
Vice Provost for Academic Affairs - Graduate Studies,
and Dean of the Graduate School
Phoebe Ellsworth, Professor, Psychology
David Engelke, Professor, Biological Chemistry
Caroline Gaither, Associate Professor, College of Pharmacy
Richard I. Hume, Professor, Molecular, Cellular and
Developmental Biology
Susan Juster, Associate Professor, History
Vahid Lotfi, Professor, School of Management - Flint
Bruce Mannheim, Associate Professor, Anthropology
Ronald Marx, Professor, School of Education
Charlotte Otto, Professor, Natural Sciences - Dearborn
James Porter, Professor, Classical Studies
Phillip Savage, Professor, Chemical Engineering
Louise Stein, Professor, School of Music
Michael Thouless, Professor, Mechanical Engineering
and Applied Mechanics
Lynn Walter, Professor, Geological Sciences
Jean Wineman, Professor, School of Architecture and Urban Planning
Rackham Board of Governors
Lee C. Bollinger, Chairman; President, University of Michigan
Earl Lewis, Secretary; Dean, Horace H. Rackham School
of Graduate Studies
Billy E. Frye, Chancellor, Emory University
Roberta W. Gutman, Corporate Vice President and
Director of Global Diversity, Motorola
Melvin Oliver, Vice President for Asset Building and
Community Development Program, The Ford Foundation
Renaissance Man 4
More than Meets the Ear 5
Empowering Healthy Neighborhoods 6
Algorithms for Better Living 7
Archiving Books and Bytes 8
Service with a Smile 9
Advocating for Access 10
Workforce Wizard 11
Nature’s Negotiator 12

From the
Dean
Welcome to the third annual issue of the Rackham Alumni
Magazine, and thank you for spending some of your
time with us. Our theme this year might be expressed as
“The Value of Academic Training Outside Academia,” and it goes
right to the heart of the current national debate about the need to
reform graduate education. There have been several reports over the
last decade or so that it takes too long, that it’s too expensive, that
it’s too narrow. However, when we do our job well, we train people
to become leaders, in whatever professional milieus they choose.
Here you will be introduced to several alumni and current students,
including Ingrid Sheldon, a former teacher who served four
terms as Mayor of Ann Arbor; David Wu, an accomplished musician
and graphic designer whose research focus is the retina;
Heather Wathington, who is parlaying her academic interests and
corporate experience into building support for the loftiest goals of
higher education; and Ted Tyler, whose activities on behalf of social
justice have paralleled his successful business career.
Corporations, government, and nonprofit agencies, as well as
academe, need people who are trained as linguists, social anthropologists,
literary critics, and historians. Quite honestly, there still
remains a tension inside of the academy. It has required a great
degree of soul-searching to say that if the only thing we’re doing is
training faculty, we have missed the opportunity to truly educate
beyond the baccalaureate level. Our mission is at least twofold: not
only to reproduce the next generation of university and college faculty,
but also to reproduce the next generation of social leaders, no
matter where they work.
Students have many different interests. It’s a disservice to try to
shoehorn them into following one, when what we should do is provide
them at an early stage with the means to learn that they can do
many things, and probably will. Those who pursue multiple careers,
inside and outside the academy, will tell you they are constantly
Photo by Lin Goings
learning. The completion of a degree is not the end but, in some
sense, the beginning of the learning process.
Those of us who are in mainline academic appointments must begin to realize we need more and more involvement with those
who are not. This is a symbiotic relationship. In engineering, a good proportion of the new faculty that we have hired in recent years
have come from research labs and industry. The same thing is true of the growth in the number of clinical professors both in law and
in medicine.
In recent years, the idea of learning for the sake of learning has been diminished, if not discouraged. The people profiled in this
magazine are ambassadors for the notion that there is indeed an intrinsic value to learning. Although sometimes specialized and even
esoteric, learning — in and of itself — is part of the process that equipped them to respond to the many challenges presented to them
over a lifetime.
A final word about Rackham. In the last few months, we have all reexamined our values and our priorities. What has emerged
from this period of reflection is the inspiring determination of our students to move forward, to complete their degrees, and to
use their considerable talents for the good of the larger world. Their work has just begun and carries with it the promise of a
brighter future.
Best Regards,
Earl Lewis

S T U D E N T P R O F I L E S
2
Photo by Bill Wood
From Research
into Reality
“Public Policy means more than ‘How do
we solve this particular problem’ ”
Susan Moffitt found out early how
challenging it can be to stand in
front of a classroom. As an
American teenager attending private
school in France while her father
worked there, she was assigned to
teach the week reserved for the study
of U.S. history.
“I prepared, I prepared, I prepared,”
she says. “The three branches of
government, major presidencies,
major wars, then I did my little intro
and opened up the floor for questions
and the first one I got was on Al
Capone, of all things. That was my
introduction to teaching. You think
you can answer all the questions, but
the truth is there’s always a curveball.”
Her career since then shows that
Moffitt was clearly undaunted. A doctoral
candidate in political science at
Michigan, she pursues answers in her
research with the same zeal she brings
to bridging disciplines and teaching
classes.
While a graduate student at U-M’s
Institute of Public Policy Studies, she
met David K. Cohen,
John Dewey Collegiate
Professor of
Education and
Professor of Public
Policy. “He proposed
that, after I finished
my master’s degree,
I come on as a fulltime
research associate
in the School
of Education and
we could write a
book together on
Title I, the largest
federal education
program,”
Moffitt recalls.
Enacted in 1965
as part of
President
Lyndon
Johnson’s War
on Poverty,
it’s now
found in 95
percent of all
school districts.
Its
ubiquity
was at least
as appealing as the light it
sheds on public education issues.
“Title I is a very nice window into
broader education problems,” she
says. “It illuminates the problem of
implementing public policy when it’s
created at one level and expected to be
enacted at another level. The goals
that schools are expected to achieve
have grown dramatically, and our
book is about what kind of resources
we would actually have to have in
place to be able to meet these very
ambitious goals.” In two words,
“more” and “better.” Says Moffitt:
“We argue that knowledge and ideas
can play a significant role in the formation
and re-formation of policy, and
in implementation. Developing knowledge
about school improvement and
the capacity to help schools improve
are vital to implementing ambitious
school reform.”
Researching the book convinced
her that she needed a PhD. “I wanted
to get a little more theoretical grounding,
a little more quantitative training,
and I also wanted to be able to teach
and have my own research agenda in
public policy,” she says. “I always
want to make sure my work has realworld
implications or is connected
with salient public policy problems.”
That, and the fact that her husband is
an aerospace engineer in not-so-distant
Dayton, Ohio, helped her choose
Michigan. “It’s a fabulous department,
especially for someone whose interests
are applied as well as theoretical,”
she says. “In American government,
Michigan just trumps everybody.”
Her dissertation examines public
participation in federal agency
policymaking, clearly wedding her
theoretical and practical concerns.
“I’m looking at how expertise is a
political resource for agencies, and
how they use their public advisory
committees’ expertise to help them
manage their political environment,”
says Moffitt. “When I have my policy
hat on, I think about how this matters
to drug approval, how this bears on
student financial aid or on the collection
of education statistics. The political
science part makes me think of
what this means for democracy, how
can it speak to our democratic institutions.
And that’s useful. Public policy
means more than ‘How do we solve
this particular problem’ ”
In a sense, public policy also
includes working with youth groups,
volunteering for public radio and local
election boards, and participating in
the Vice President’s Performance
Review Task Force, all of which
Moffitt has done. “I found when I was
a graduate student instructor that students
appreciated it when I could
bring our discussion back to personal
stories, whether it was about working
on the National Performance Review
Task Force or showing them what
campaign propaganda actually looks
like,” she says. “Getting my hands
into applied politics a little bit helped
make me a better teacher.”
Pedagogy – her own – is a key tile
in Moffitt’s life mosaic. “Given the
range of paths I could pursue, I find
academia compelling because it
allows me both to conduct rigorous
research that bears on important social
and political issues, and to equip others
with knowledge and tools to participate
in policymaking,” she says.
“Neither teaching nor research alone
would fulfill what I see as a twofold
responsibility.” ■

always been interested in
numbers that shed light on
“I’ve
social issues,” says Joann
Vanek, the woman who designed and
conducted global statistics programs
for the United Nations for more than
20 years. “The world today runs on
numbers and people want numbers,
but often they don’t know how, or
don’t want to take the time, to do the
work that’s necessary to use numbers
appropriately. It’s hard work. And it’s
not very glamorous.”
When she started graduate school
in 1963, she wasn’t particularly
focused on either gender issues or statistics.
Decades later, she has emerged
as a pioneer in the nascent field of
gender statistics, and her career since
has significantly influenced the way
the world’s governments think about,
and use, social data.
“When I came to Michigan, I had
more of an historical interest,” she
recalls, “but at Michigan, you can’t
help but take up statistics, and the
quantitative nature of that training is
what sensitized me to the importance
of numbers. It gave me an understanding
of data, how to put it together,
how to analyze it, and how to use it to
make a statement about what is happening.”
When Vanek began conceptualizing
and preparing the first issue of The
World’s Women: Trends and Statistics,
she had to work hard through three
important steps. “First of all,” she
says, “the data had to be put together
in a way that was usable to non-statisticians.
Let’s say someone wanted to
compare the status of women in countries
around the world — on indicators
such as employment, education,
life expectancy. The data to do this
were collected by different authorities,
so we had to take all these data
from different sources and put them
together in a way that people would
have access to them, and they could
be used to describe what is happening.”
“A second problem is that national
statistical systems had been set up in a
way that didn’t reflect gender issues.
The work that women do is often not
well measured, and often health statis-
The Countess
tics aren’t disaggregated by sex. A
third issue is because you’re dealing
with national statistics, you
have to know a lot of the conventions
and the methods used to collect
data to use them correctly.”
Such meticulous work paid off.
Since its first issue in 1991 (the
third came out in 2000), The
World’s Women has become the
UN Secretariat’s best-selling
research publication, a recognized
authority as well as a template for
cognate statistical compendiums.
“Previous UN publications in statistics
hadn’t really analyzed statistics,”
she says, “but this one’s
first sentence was ‘Words advocating
the interests of women,
however plausible and persuasive
they may be, need numbers to
influence policy — and change
the world.’ That was a monumental
statement for a UN Statistics Division
publication.”
“The world today runs on
numbers and people want
numbers, but often they don’t
know how, or don’t want to
take the time, to do the work
that’s necessary to use numbers
appropriately. It’s hard work.
And it’s not very glamorous.”
“At the same time, a woman in
Sweden was doing a similar publication
for her own country, and both of
these publications have generated a
great deal of interest and now inform
the policy debate. They have been so
popular that part of what we in the
United Nations, the Swedish authorities
and others have done is assist
countries in developing such publications
as well as to improve the underlying
data on women.”
Vanek’s dissertation, Time Spent in
Housework, was a trailblazer, too. “I
was interested in looking at lifestyle
and leisure patterns, using a multinational
time-use survey that had been
Photo by Virginia Schendler
collected across 13 countries,” she
says. “I wasn’t interested in gender
issues at that time. I analyzed the data
in terms of leisure patterns, but the
most dramatic findings related not to
leisure but to housework.”
After retiring from the UN earlier
this year, she became co-director of
the statistics program for Women in
Informal Economy: Globalizing and
Organizing (WIEGO), a worldwide
coalition of grass-roots organizations,
academic institutions and development
agencies to support women
workers in the informal sector.
“There’s a movement to try to
improve the conditions of these workers,”
she says. “It so happens that
most of them are women and they
have no job security or social protection,
very low wages and long working
hours. Again, numbers are very
important to show how numerous
these workers are and to document
their working conditions. That’s my
role in it. Sometimes I’d be working
on these reports and come across statistics
that bring home the difficulties
of the life of these people. We’re so
removed from their life situation and
yet the statistics push one to do
more.” ■
A L U M N I P R O F I L E S
3

S T U D E N T P R O F I L E S
4
Photo by Bill Wood
David Wu finds retinas beautiful.
Also music, medicine and graphic
design. Directly admitted to
the University of Michigan Medical
School from high school in Brighton,
Michigan via the Inteflex program, he
took three years of undergraduate and
graduate courses, assisted on numerous
research projects, and completed
his first two years of medical school
before taking a temporary leave of
absence to pursue a PhD in
Neuroscience.
In his spare time, he plays the
piano, carillon and clarinet. He helped
organize and performs in the
Alexander Borodin Society, a group of
medical and graduate student musicians
who play recitals in the UM hospital.
He is one of the founders and
serves on the executive committee and
as principal clarinetist for the Life
Sciences Orchestra (LSO), a full symphonic
orchestra of 70 faculty, staff,
and students from life sciences units
around the university. He also does
graphic design — he and his Mac
have helped create brochures for student
groups, student handbooks for
the medical school and websites for
the Neuroscience Graduate Program
and Borodin Society. Most recently,
he designed the logo, posters, concert
programs, and website for the LSO.
Wu believes the same aesthetics
enjoyed in music and design are found
in science. “It’s hard to study a complex
system like the human body or
the retina and not get an appreciation
of how beautifully they are designed,”
he says. “We’ll be studying things in
the lab that make no sense, and
inevitably, in a week or a year or 20
years from now, someone will realize
it was designed this way for a reason.
The best examples of design are found
in nature.”
The research bug first bit Wu
between his junior and senior years in
high school. “Dr. Kenneth Balazovich,
a UM scientist living in Brighton,
came to our high school asking if any
students were interested in hanging
out in the lab,” he recalls. “His slogan
was ‘come and see how research is
really done.’ I spent a summer with
him and, after that, I never wanted to
leave the lab.”
By his second year of medical
school, that feeling was even more
pronounced. In addition to his studies
and his music, he had been researching
retinal regeneration in the laboratory
of Pamela Raymond, Professor of
Cell and Developmental Biology. “I
had worked on other projects, but this
was the first time someone gave me
free rein to figure out whatever I had
to do to solve this problem,” he says.
With only a few months left before
the clinical phase of the MD curriculum
began, he made his decision.
“I realized I wasn’t ready to go to
the hospital and give up my research
project just yet. I met several
Rackham students while in the lab,
“It’s hard to study
a complex system
like the human
body or the retina
and not get an
appreciation of
how beautifully
they are designed.”
Renaissance Man
and after interacting with them I realized
that I wanted the scientific rigor
and discipline that comes with getting
a PhD. And I also realized that there
are actually many ways to help people,
and research is one way I want to
help.”
His current research in the W.K.
Kellogg Eye Center lab of Dr. Donald
Puro, Professor of Ophthalmology and
Physiology, could help many – its
focus is diabetic retinopathy, a leading
cause of blindness in working-age
Americans. “The retina is the neural
tissue inside your eye that can sense
light,” Wu explains. “Any tissue needs
a blood supply to stay alive and function,
and we are studying how that
blood supply keeps retinal neurons
happy. We think that retinal neurons
may have ways of telling the retinal
blood supply whether they are receiving
enough oxygen and nutrients. In
the retinas of patients with poorly
controlled diabetes, the blood vessels
don’t work well. They become very
leaky, the neurons don’t get the nourishment
they need, the retina eventually
dies, and patients lose their vision.”
Wu aspires to a life like Dr. Puro’s,
who he says has “the best job in the
world. He sees patients once a week.
He does surgery once a week. The rest
of the time, he’s in the lab, learning
about basic mechanisms, trying to
understand the design of nature.” ■

linguistics”
sounds like some arcane
“Discourse
corner of academe, but her
specialty actually reflects the breadth
of Frances Trix’s perspective and
experience.
“Discourse is when you go above
the level of a grammatical unit,” says
Trix, who holds a bachelor’s and master’s
in Near Eastern languages and
literature and a master’s and PhD in
linguistics — all from the University
of Michigan — and is an Associate
Professor of Anthropology at Wayne
State University in Detroit. “You’re at
a cultural unit. It has a social meaning.”
That counts for a lot with Trix, who
spent the decade after getting her first
master’s degree teaching in a
Lebanese village and running a bilingual
program in Dearborn, Michigan,
among other things, and who has seasoned
her academic career since with
her advocacy on behalf of oppressed
minorities in the Balkans (the result of
a year studying Albanian in Kosovo
on a fellowship at the University of
Prishtina) as well as consulting for the
National Aeronautics and Space
Administration.
“… all interesting
things in life come
back to language.”
Real life was a harsh teacher in
Kosovo. “The tension in daily life was
something I had never experienced,”
she says. “I got picked up by the
secret police. I had all my mail read.
For some people who know the communist
world, it may have come easier,
but I was naïve and unprepared, so
I think the political aspects hit me
more profoundly.”
From 1968 until his death in 1995,
Trix was a student of Baba Rexheb,
the leader of a Sufi Muslim
monastery in suburban Detroit, a relationship
made possible in part because
she spoke Turkish. “It’s not the average
academic thing,” she says of her vita.
Her regular visits to the monastery
provided “a wonderful juxtaposition,”
More than Meets
Photo by Bill Wood
the Ear
says Trix. “With Baba, there was no
syllabus, no exams. As in other spiritual
traditions, you study with your
teacher until your teacher passes on.
Baba taught by the way he lived. With
the university, you give lectures and
write articles, it’s a little more secondhand,
but I had this remarkable
teacher throughout.”
Trix synthesizes her academic
knowledge and practical experience
into her current work. “I get into
interesting research at Wayne State
because our anthropology department
has a very strong applied component,”
she says. “That’s how I got working
for NASA. A graduate student in one
of my seminars was working with a
colleague of mine on analyzing close
call data for the shuttle program. She
asked me if I thought I could find
subtle linguistic clues in the shuttle
problem reports. I said, ‘I can always
find subtle linguistic clues.’ I was
being kind of offhand but, of course,
all interesting things in life come back
to language.” ■
A L U M N I P R O F I L E S
5

S T U D E N T P R O F I L E S
6
Photo by Bill Wood
Shannon Zenk knew just what she
wanted, and just where to find it.
After receiving her bachelor’s
degree in nursing from Illinois
Wesleyan University, she worked for a
year in a medical-surgical unit of a
hospital, then for another year as a
nurse case manager in home health
care before earning master’s degrees
in Nursing and Public Health from the
University of Illinois-Chicago.
“I think I recognized that influences
on health were much bigger than the
education I provided, such as what to
eat or do for exercise,” Zenk says.
“That just didn’t cut it. Structural factors
like poverty and the neighborhood
conditions under which people
lived had a much greater impact. I
wanted to understand better what
those bigger factors were. It’s one
thing to advise people to change their
diet and exercise more; it’s another to
make that possible for people.”
It seemed clear to her that identifying
the underlying structural factors
and connecting them to people’s lives
and health would require research, as
well as critical input from community
members themselves. The answer was
community-based participatory
research, in which community residents,
organizational representatives,
and academics work together to carry
out research and interventions.
It also seemed clear to her that the
University of Michigan was the place
to go for this. She’s currently working
on two projects in the city of Detroit
under the aegis of the Detroit
Community-Academic Urban
Research Center, a partnership
between community-based organizations,
health agencies, and the
U-M Schools of Public Health and
Nursing.
“One of my goals when I came here
was to learn how to work with community
members and organizations in
order to do this kind of research, how
to form and sustain relationships, and
draw on the strengths of all of the
partners involved.”
“There are a number of advantages
to this approach,” she adds. “You
build on strengths and resources that
are already in the community instead
of solely focusing on problems. And
the information gathered is more
locally relevant and useful when you
engage people who live in and are
knowledgeable about the community.”
One of the projects she’s involved
with is the East Side Village Health
Worker Partnerships, an intervention
project for which a five-year followup
survey was just completed. “The
aim of the project is to understand
social factors that influence the health
of women and families living on the
east side of Detroit, as well as to conduct
interventions to address these
factors,” Zenk says. One purpose of
the follow-up survey is to evaluate the
“We define the environment very broadly.
Do people have access to fresh fruits and
vegetables Do they have access to safe
places to exercise What stressors do they
experience, such as lack of employment
opportunities and discrimination”
Empowering
Healthy
Neighborhoods
intervention, which involves about
40 lay health advisors from the
community.
The intervention component is crucial
to Zenk, and to her passion for
this kind of research. “The ultimate
goal is to solve problems and improve
people’s quality of life and their
health.”
If that means some walls between
disciplines or between the academy
and the community it works with have
to come down, then so be it. Zenk
sees her department, Health Behavior
and Health Education, as “a way to
blend social science and medical science.
One of my interests and one of
the interests of the department is how
the environment, social and physical,
shapes people’s health.”
And, she says, “We define the environment
very broadly. Do people have
access to fresh fruits and vegetables
Do they have access to safe places
to exercise What stressors do they
experience, such as lack of employment
opportunities and discrimination”
The ultimate goal is to make a difference
that outlives the study.
“Sustainability is an important part of
this approach to research,” Zenk
says. “As a partnership, we’re developing
resources and relationships that
will continue beyond the funding
period and current projects.” ■

Photo by Sheila Ryan
One of Milton Morris’ most
memorable moments as a
member of Northwestern
University’s football team came
against the University of Michigan, a
33-yard pass reception when he was a
freshman in 1988. In 1992, Michigan
caught Morris — he earned his master’s
and PhD in electrical engineering
from U-M — and then Guidant
Corporation of St. Paul, Minnesota,
did the same. Fewer than four years
after joining that company, one of the
world’s leading makers of cardiac
devices, Morris became its manager
of tachycardia therapy research, in
charge of designing and testing products
that will add many moments to
many lives.
Where he’s at right now offers him
the best of several worlds. He still
does research, publishes articles and
presents at professional conferences,
although his research is usually, and
understandably, targeted toward specific
applications. He also returns to
Ann Arbor periodically, both to recruit
doctoral students for Guidant and as a
member of the Rackham Dean’s
Advisory Board, and he teaches courses
at the University of Minnesota.
Algorithms
for Better Living
“It’s not necessarily about saving
lives but certainly improving
the quality of life.”
Multiple worlds are nothing new to
Morris, although he says excelling
both academically and athletically is
not as rare as the conventional wisdom
would have it. This is based not
only on his own playing career, but
also on the three years he spent tutoring
athletes while he was in graduate
school, the last two focused on football
players.
“The college athlete probably gets a
bum rap,” he says. “There are a lot of
really bright guys on the football team
and I’m not sure people are aware of
that or care to acknowledge it. I am
still familiar with the pain and struggle
associated with undergraduate
football and engineering.”
The loop he’s in now has been dominated
by spearheading improvements
to the implantable cardioverter defibrillator
(ICD), the most recent addition
to Vice President Cheney’s internal
hardware. “Guidant is a major
manufacturer of that device, although
his comes from the competition,” says
Morris, “but he does have one of our
stents!”
The ICD addresses irregularities in
the heartbeat that can render victims
fatigued and dizzy. “It’s not necessarily
about saving lives but certainly
improving the quality of life,” he says.
“A major thrust of what I’ve been
doing here for the last three years or
so is designing the algorithms that
allow the device to detect an atrial
arrhythmia from a ventricular arrhythmia
and also to evaluate the actual
therapies and the diagnostics that this
device would provide. I actually came
up with some of the algorithms, tested
those algorithms and transferred them
over to the design teams, set up some
clinical studies in Europe and Asia to
look at therapies for atrial fibrillation,
and did a whole host of other miscellaneous
things to help the design
teams alter their device.”
Morris never dreamed of a career in
medical science when he started graduate
school as a signal processing
major, but it just happened that the
signal he was processing was a biological
one. “That required me to
learn about biophysics, physiology
and in particular cardiac electrophysiology,”
he recalls. “I found the material
that I was being taught really compelling
and very interesting. It struck
a chord with me and I haven’t looked
back since.” ■ 7
A L U M N I P R O F I L E S

S T U D E N T P R O F I L E S
8
Archiving Books
and Bytes
is good,” says
Christopher Frey. “We
“Paper
know it works.”
Then he quotes computer scientist
Jeff Rothenberg: “Digital information
lasts forever or five years, whichever
comes first.” But Frey is no Luddite.
He received his Master of Science
Information in Archives and Record
Management from the University of
Michigan School of Information in
August, already has considerable
experience in working with digital and
paper documents, and envisions that,
at least initially, as a career path.
On the other hand, he came to
information science via the path of
history. His bachelor’s is in Medieval
and Renaissance
Studies and he once
contemplated a
career in teaching.
“I wanted a field
whose purpose is to
show that history is
relevant,” he says.
“One summer, I got
a part-time job at
the Bentley
Historical Library, about”
and I said, ‘Wow, I
really like this archives thing,’ so I
“Privacy and free
access are both
great things, but
which are we
more concerned
came back the next summer. They said
if I really liked archives, I should go
to the premier archives program, and
that’s how I got into the School of
Information.”
Thus, he’s well aware not only of
paper’s virtues and limitations, but
also of the hegemony of the contents
of all those documents, regardless of
how, or on what, they’re stored and
distributed.
“I have tremendous respect for the
original documents and the authority
of the documents,” he says, “but some
days I feel like if the warehouse
caught on fire, it would just be a lot
less work for me.” Electronic documents
are an answer to the weight and
space problems that paper presents,
but what about durability And
privacy
“My interest
in government
records
specifically is
that these are
documents
that are
meant to be
seen,” he
says. “This is
your government
at work,
these are your tax dollars, these
shouldn’t be hidden in a box. But
there are also consequences for when
this information is easily available. It
used to take a very determined
researcher to find out a lot of personal
information. When someone
can just turn on their
computer and go click,
click, click, there’s a whole
different set of implications.
Privacy and free
access are both great
things, but which are we
more concerned about”
Information science
seems to be an arena where
not only does history converge
with technology, but
a whole host of such complex questions
also meet, if not collide.
“One of the most exciting things
about the field is that with every issue
that comes up, there are all these balances
you have to strike,” Frey says.
Fortunately, he feels his training has
prepared him well.
“The School of Information is really
interdisciplinary,” he says. “I came
in from the humanities angle and I
had to learn a lot more about computers
than I did before. If I’m going to
be putting information on line, I can’t
just think about the documents and the
history, but how to make them accessible
in a meaningful and usable way.
The concept of usability and user testing
is really big at SI.”
Frey spent two months in the summer
of 2000 with a team of fellow SI
Photo by Bill Wood
students at the University of Fort Hare
in South Africa, where he learned
about a whole new universe of difficulties.
“My colleagues went on this
road trip to check out some schools
that were looking into the possibilities
for distance education in some very
rural areas. They didn’t even have
electricity or a phone line, much less a
computer.”
The University of Fort Hare itself is
somewhat of a relic from the days of
apartheid; it was the first, and for
many years the only, college in South
Africa to admit blacks. But this also
made it the alma mater of Nelson
Mandela and many other prominent
black leaders in the country, including
the father of the incumbent president.
In addition, some of the African
National Congress’ archives are
housed there. The government, Frey
says, seems ambivalent about supporting
Fort Hare, especially now that the
historically white, and more prestigious,
institutions are integrated.
“There was one room that had all
the files of every student who was
ever there,” he says. “I looked up
Mandela, and his folder was missing.
Either someone had realized this was
his folder and removed it, or it was
just misplaced or lost. The point is
they didn’t have a program set up to
deal with this, and part of the problem
was resources. If they can decide that
that is a priority, they can make sure
they’re not losing the records of future
Mandelas.” ■

Service with a SmilePhoto
“The concept of
being a generalist
has been very good
for my community
involvement. I like
the human service
side, the social
service, as well
as the arts.”
by Bill Wood
A L U M N I P R O F I L E S
The words most often used to
describe former Ann Arbor
Mayor Ingrid Sheldon’s administration
include “moderate,” “conciliatory”
and “accessible.” A Republican,
she was elected four times to the highest
office in a city whose registration
is overwhelmingly Democratic. Her
peers were as fond of her as the electorate
was: she was also elected
President of the Michigan Municipal
League and served on the board of the
Michigan Association of Mayors.
But her academic training was in
education, a B.S. from Eastern
Michigan University and a master’s
from Michigan. “In that day and age,”
she says, “a woman who wanted a
career was either going to be a teacher
or a nurse, unless you were really
adventuresome and daring.”
One of her courses might have presaged
her career, however. “I really
was fascinated by a class from the
School of Natural Resources, a policy
class of some sort, where we would
play a type of simulated city game,
each of us taking different roles,”
Sheldon says. “I was assigned the role
of supervisor, and each of us would
then have a problem and from our perspectives
and roles would develop different
conclusions. They would be fed
into a giant computer, which took a
whole week, and then the results came
out and we would find out what our
decisions meant. That was my first
taste of government at the practical
municipal level.”
She considered a return to elementary
teaching once while she was, as
she puts it, “going through one of my
midlife crises.” Because she hadn’t
taught long enough in one system to
have tenure, she had to submit to the
hiring process in the Ann Arbor
school system. “The director of
human resources found my file, which
I thought was quite amazing,” Sheldon
recalls, “then she looked at it and said,
‘Nope, we just can’t hire you because
you’re too much of a generalist. You
have no specialty.’ ”
Service must not have been one of
the official categories. In addition to
her terms as mayor and her four years
as a member of Ann Arbor City
Council, Sheldon has given her time
and talents to the Ann Arbor Summer
Festival, the Michigan Theater, the
Ann Arbor Convention and Visitors
Bureau, Huron Valley Child Guidance
Clinic, Ann Arbor Ecology Center,
Ann Arbor Thrift Shop … well, it’s
quite a list. As Sheldon says, “The
concept of being a generalist has been
very good for my community involvement.
I like the human service side,
the social service, as well as the arts.”
She also served by performing
more than 600 weddings while she
was mayor, enriching the city’s coffers
by $25 each time. “It was a neat way
to be a part of somebody’s life in a
very positive manner, and maybe
influence some good patterns of living
for the future,” she says.
As for her own future, “I’m still in
the discovering mode,” she says. “I’ll
probably just end up being that community
whatever, fill in the blank. As
my son said, when you’ve been mayor
of Ann Arbor, is there anything
better” ■
9

S T U D E N T P R O F I L E S
10
Advocating
“Education means a tremendous amount
to me in terms of who gets access to it,
who’s able to stay in the academy,
and what they have to do to stay.”
Heather Wathington is one of
those rare individuals in whom
the practical and the idealistic
coexist comfortably, even complementarily.
Her idealism undergirds her
work as a doctoral student in the
School of Education and a graduate
research assistant for the Kellogg
Forum on Higher Education for the
Public Good, an initiative of the
Kellogg Foundation that promotes the
non-monetary benefits of higher education.
Her pragmatism recognizes
that even an initiative such as this one
depends on, well, money.
After graduating from Wellesley
College, Wathington earned a master’s
in higher education policy and administration
from the University of
Pennsylvania. To finance her studies
at Penn, she spent two years as a legal
assistant in a law firm and three as a
legal analyst for Prudential Insurance.
She had, in fact, long planned to go to
law school, but “after three days as a
paralegal, I hated it,” she says. “All
the talk was about dollars.”
While juggling both her course
work and her corporate work,
Wathington embarked on some
enlightening volunteer work. She
helped direct, and developed the curriculum
for a program called College
for Kids that introduced underserved
Photo by Bill Wood
second through sixth graders in
Philadelphia to the college experience.
“I was really introduced to the idea of
what philanthropy could do,” she says.
“It’s a lot of work for the people who
are trying to get the money.”
Wathington’s research interests are
access and equity, and diversity and
student learning outcomes. “Education
means a tremendous amount to me in
terms of who gets access to it, who’s
able to stay in the academy, and what
they have to do to stay.”
Michigan’s doctoral program in
higher education administration has
afforded Wathington the opportunity
to pursue her interests in both research
and philanthropy. “When I applied
here, I said my primary concern was
looking at students’ access to higher
education,” she says. “Then I worked
on research projects and they’re
dependent, of course, on grants, and I
became interested in the dance
between the faculty member and the
funding agency.”
She and one of her professors, also
a novice fund-raiser, learned how to
write grants together, and then
Wathington joined the Kellogg Forum.
The fit has been a comfortable one.
“They really, really believe in higher
education for the public good,” she
says.
for Access
Wathington has found her life’s
work in using her unique range of
skills to keep the public good within
academe’s field of vision. “It’s been a
real passion of mine to get a job in a
foundation and see what it’s all
about,” Wathington says. “I hope
some of the things the foundation
thinks are important will be what I
think are important, too.”
Her sense of what’s important, of
what the public good encompasses, is
as broad as her background: “How do
we change institutions to be caring
places that are really committed to
these missions that they proclaim
How do we get people to be concerned
about their neighbors How do
we develop leaders with moral compasses
How do we teach a love and
appreciation for the arts What do
these institutions owe — because they
do — to the communities they abide
in and the people who live there And
how do they meet the needs of those
communities That’s what higher education
is supposed to be about; we’re
supposed to be about making it
better.” ■

Workforce Wizard
Photo by Peter Pagnotta
“M
y interest in community
involvement really began
in the management training
program I attended when I first
joined Western Electric (now Lucent
Technologies),” says Ted Tyler, who
earned his master’s degree in Public
Administration from Rackham in
1958. “The company introduced us to
things outside of business, and
encouraged us to get involved in
social issues. It was 1967. We worked
with John Lindsay, the Mayor of New
York City at that time and others to
establish a successful program in the
community that became known as the
Workshop in Business Opportunities.
Out of that experience, I developed a
real interest in educational equality
and economic opportunity for all.”
As Tyler’s career led him to different
cities across the country he continued
to volunteer as Vice Chair of the
United Fund Drive in San Francisco,
Board of Directors of the Columbus
Symphony, and Chair of the United
Negro College Fund Drive in
Allentown, Pennsylvania.
By the time he and his wife Mary
moved to Scottsdale, Arizona in 1998,
he had retired, but had not lost his
passion for volunteerism. He knew in
his heart that a laid-back lifestyle just
wasn’t for him. A chance meeting
with former Mayor Sam Campana
eventually led to Tyler taking charge
of a local workforce development
effort. Mayor Campana arranged for
him to meet Phil Carlson, President
and Chief Executive Officer of the
Scottsdale Area Chamber. The
Chamber had just completed a survey
indicating major concern about
employers’ ability to attract and retain
a capable workforce. Carlson recruited
Tyler to head up the workforce
development initiatives in Scottsdale.
Tyler recruited a Task Force team to
help define the scope of the issues,
and develop a plan to help. The three
components of their plan include: an
internship program that brings educators
and employers together to strategize
improvement in workplace skills,
a program to improve the customer
service skills of entry level workers,
and an effort to connect older workers
interested in re-entering the workplace
with suitable employers.
“I have a responsibility of making
sure our members, especially those in
the private sector, are familiar with all
available career programs in our community.
We have a One-Stop Career
Center, and the Employer Incentive
Program that provides training dollars
to private sector employers to hire low
income people over age 55. At our
next meeting we are including a presentation
from Scottsdale Youth
Services to discuss programs already
in place to assist youths, including
those at high risk, to establish career
paths and find jobs. I am also inviting
the Director of Workforce Development
from our community college to
discuss how we can help qualified
people who are interested in changing
careers become certified as K-12
teachers. We have a critical teacher
shortage here in Arizona.”
“This is a labor of love,” Tyler said.
“I’ve gotten so immersed in this project,
and each day I more fully realize
the huge potential of what we are
working on, and how important it will
be to the community.” ■
“This is a labor of
love … I’ve gotten
so immersed in this
project, and each day
I more fully realize
the huge potential
of what we are
working on, and how
important it will be
to the community.”
A L U M N I P R O F I L E S
11

S T U D E N T P R O F I L E S
12
Nature’s Negotiator
“People walking through the Arboretum see this beautiful, lush, green area, but unfortunately,
over the last century, invasive species have been introduced that have completely altered the ecosystem…”
very common for
Americans to view conflict in
“It’s
a negative context,” says
Nick White, “but sometimes conflict
can promote positive change, if it’s
handled in an appropriate manner.”
Moving conflicts, specifically over
natural resources, toward solutions
has already been a major part of
White’s life’s work, and now he’s
working toward a PhD in dispute resolution
from the University of
Michigan’s School of Natural
Resources and Environment (SNRE).
“When you come into complex
conflicts, it’s easy to take a position
of I’m good and you’re bad, I’m right
and you’re wrong,” he says. “It simplifies
things, but natural resource
issues aren’t simple. People aren’t
simple. You have to get beyond those
first positional stances and look at
what lies underneath and what the
interest of each party is, but far too
often people stop at the surface. There
are times when people’s needs can be
met. It takes a lot of work. But it can
be done.”
Shortly after earning his B.S. in
environmental science from Michigan
State University’s Lyman Briggs
School, White joined the Peace Corps
and was sent to Niger, a West African
country that has been devastated by a
poor economy and desertification. It
was an eye-opening introduction to
real-life complexities.
“The natural environment in Niger
is going through drastic change:
deforestation, desertification, drought,
extensive loss of animal and plant life,
and increased human population.”
Moreover, says White, “many cultural
and societal norms stayed the same.”
When a father dies, his property is
divided among his sons. The more
sons who survived, the smaller each
one’s plot becomes. Eventually, that
plot of land can only sustain so
much.”
“Being in the Peace Corps showed
me you could have scientific answers
to natural resource problems, but there
Photo by Bill Wood
are all these political and social issues
to be addressed, too,” says White. He
decided that a good way to address
them would be by bridging the divide
between the natural and social sciences.
He worked for Ed LaForge, the
state representative from his native
Kalamazoo, Michigan, first as an
environmental/public policy intern in
Lansing and then as Interim Director
of LaForge’s district office. He
received his M.S. in environmental
policy/dispute resolution from
Michigan State and became a mediator
for the Dispute Resolution Centers
of both Central Michigan and
Washtenaw County. He came to
Michigan to continue his education
“because Professor Julia Wondolleck
and SNRE have a strong history of
teaching and creating practitioners of
conflict analysis and dispute resolution.”
His master’s thesis examined the
pros and cons of institutionalizing
environmental mediation in Michigan
as an alternative to litigation. I came
to UM because I wanted to continue
that line of work. What I’m doing now
is evaluating the different institutionalized
models that have emerged for
environmental dispute resolution.
Some states have formalized the
process either in the university or the
judicial system, then there are nonprofits
out there that provide this, as
well as the federal government. I’m
fascinated in understanding where
these models work best and where
they don’t.”
Since the fall of 1999, White has
been one of four student caretakers at
the University of Michigan
Arboretum. His work there illustrates
his approach. “People walking
through the Arboretum see this beautiful,
lush, green area,” he says, “but
unfortunately, over the last century,
invasive species have been introduced
that have completely altered the
ecosystem in very dramatic fashion.
What we try to do there is remove the
invasive species to give the native
species a chance to regain a foothold.
If you just look at it, you see a pretty,
natural area. But what’s going on there
is an area that’s wholly changed.
That’s the complexity. People say we
need to set aside green areas and I
think that’s great, but the environmentalists’
challenge is helping the public
understand that it gets more complex
than just setting aside a green area.
We need to think about what that
green area is.”
What excites White is the opportunity
to blend his worlds in the service
of the one we all inhabit. “It’s very
rewarding to know that I can participate
both in helping the scientific and
political communities come together
and in finding solutions to natural
resource disputes,” he says. “Each of
them standing alone is much less likely
to be able to address natural
resource problems. Research contributes
a tremendous amount to society,
but I want to be the person who is
helping apply that research to society’s
problems.” ■

Remember Michigan.
Live Forever.
Introducing the
New Charitable Gift
Annuity Program
No matter what your generation, your
days at Michigan helped make you
who you are today.
Now you can give something back to
the school that gave you so much —
and give yourself a little something
too — with the University of
Michigan’s new Charitable Gift
Annuity Program.
A Gift Annuity
Provides You With:
✦ An immediate income tax deduction
and capital gains tax savings;
✦ A lifetime stream of fixed income;
✦ Annuity rate yields that may be
higher than many investment
returns; and
✦ The means of making a future
significant gift to the Rackham
Graduate School.
How Does it Work
Here’s an example. A gift of $30,000
from a 75-year old donor nets an
immediate current-year tax
deduction of $12,473, plus a
guaranteed lifetime annual
income of $2,370. (Minimum age
requirement of 50, and minimum
gift amount of $10,000.)
To Learn More …
Contact the Rackham Graduate
School’s Development Office at
734-647-4572
or
email us at
Rackham.alums@umich.edu
Photos courtesy of Bentley Historical Library,
University of Michigan

Rackham Alumni
MAGAZINE
The University of Michigan
The Horace H. Rackham
School of Graduate Studies
915 East Washington Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1070
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US POSTAGE
PAID
ANN ARBOR, MI
PERMIT NO. 144
The Regents of the University
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Laurence B. Deitch, Bingham Farms
Daniel D. Horning, Grand Haven
Olivia P. Maynard, Goodrich
Rebecca McGowan, Ann Arbor
Andrea Fischer Newman, Ann Arbor
S. Martin Taylor, Grosse Pointe Farms
Katherine E. White, Ann Arbor
Lee C. Bollinger (ex officio)
The University of Michigan, as an equal opportunity/affirmative
action employer, complies with all applicable federal and
state laws regarding non-discrimination and affirmative
action, including Title IX of the Education Amendments of
1972 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The
University of Michigan is committed to a policy of non-discrimination
and equal opportunity for all persons regardless
of race, sex, color, religion, creed, national origin or ancestry,
age, marital status, sexual orientation, disability, or Vietnamera
veteran status in employment, educational programs and
activities, and admissions. Inquiries or complaints may be
addressed to the University’s Director of Affirmative Action
and Title IX/Section 504 Coordinator, 4005 Wolverine Tower,
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1281, (734) 763-0235; TDD
(734) 647-1388. For other University of Michigan information
call: (734) 764-1817. AAO: 4/28/98