The Hill, 2008 - Hoover Library - McDaniel College

carpe
diem
Focus on Africa
Christopher Molam, on the Hill this semester as a
visiting Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence from
Cameroon, hopes that by the time he leaves campus
anyone he has met, taught or chatted with
will have a deeper appreciation of the rich diversity
of culture, issues and ideas among Africa's numerous
countries,
He especially hopes to change students' perspectives
through two Courses he's
teaching: Economic Rights and Development
and African Political Economy.
"Students who will be the leaders of
tomorrow need a clearer picture of Africa,"
says Molem, whose expertise is
in African development and political
economies
and globalization.
Molem is chairman of the department
of economics and management
at the University
of Buea in Cameroon,
which he said is the only Englishspeaking
university in the central African
sub-region with about 16,000
students. A typical development economics
class, he said, enrolls about
800 students, and sometimes as many
as 1,150 ~ a huge difference from his
classes at McDanieL Just eight students
are in his Economic Rights and
Development course, for example.
In addition to his teaching duties,
Molem has joined his McDaniel host,
Debora Johnson-Ross, associate professor of Political
Science and International Studies, in several
public-speaking engagements. The two professors
recently spoke at the Peace and Justice Studies Association
in Portland, Ore. In November, they
planned to present a paper at the African Studies
Association Meeting in Chicago.
Molem worked with Johnson-Ross two years
ago when she spent a year in Cameroon on a Fulbright
grant. This year, she received a Fulbright
Scholarship-in-Residence award to bring him to
McDaniel.
His students are as enthusiastic about him as
he is about them. "It started out as Just a class to
take," said Shawn Christianson '11, a political science
major. "But now it has become a personal
interest of mine. He's by far the best professor
l've had." _
Ask the Expert
Is a lightbox an efFective treatment for
Seasonal AfFective Disorder How does
it work
Assist.nt Professor ofPsychololY
M.deUne
Rhodes:
~~:' ~~:~~b:;~A~ i;~~~~ :~: ~~~rr~~a~si:!;e~ ~~rotonin
~ which is involved in regulating mood,
feeding, energy balance and sleep, among other
things ~ is decreased among people who suffer
from SAD. In general, seratonin levels are decreased
during the winter due, at least in part,
to decreased exposure to light because of
shorter days. One nondrug therapy effective
for many is exposure to light ~ simply more
sunlight if possible for mild cases, or a hghtbox
if sun is in short supply or it's a more serious
case. There is a great deal of evidence
that lightboxes can have robust effects to enhance
mood among SAD sufferers and there
are a number of ongoing clinical trials tnvestigatingthiseffect.
There is also evidence that Iightboxes can
work for those of us with subclinical
SAD symptoms.
I am originally from the Gulf Coast of
Texas, but! did my graduate work in Albany,
NY., where it is cold and gray from October
through April. The farther you get from the
equator,
the less light you have. So it was a pretty
big adjustment for me. I got a lightbox from the
Sunbox company for my office and used it the
entire time I lived there, from 1999 to 2005. I
could really tell the difference. It is not a trivial
investment, about $300. But then, SAD is
not trivial; it is recognized in the Diagnostic
Statistical Manual as a Major Depressive
Disorder with Seasonal Patterns.
Iplaced the Iightbox near mycomputer ~
you don't have to look directly at it ~ and
turned it on for 15 to 20 minutes first thing
in the morning. I don't know that it helped
me become more of a winter person; Istill
don't like snow or cold. But it certainly did
help with not feeling like Iwas going into hibernation,
which is basically what people
who have SAD are doing, they're sleeping a lot
more and their food intake
increases.
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