Rackham Graduate School - University of Michigan

RACKHAMAlumni Magazine Fall 1999U NIVERSITY OF M ICHIGAN

RACKHAMAlumni MagazinePublished annually by the Horace H. RackhamSchool of Graduate StudiesEarl LewisVice Provost for Academic Affairs-Graduate Studies andDean, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate StudiesJill McDonoughAssistant to the Dean for Development and External RelationsKathryn D. HolmesSenior Development OfficerEditor: Elyse Rubin BuchananWriter: Jeffrey MortimerDesigner: Rose AndersonCover Photo: Philip DatilloContributing Photographers: Yvette Amstelveen,Salvatore Cerchio, Danielle Cholewiak, Jane Hamblin,Jim Hansen, Sharon Herbert, Jim Lang,Ron Midura, Bill WoodRackham Alumni Magazine welcomes your comments.Please send correspondence to Elyse Rubin Buchanan, Editor915 East Washington Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1070or e-mail: elyserbu@umich.eduCONTENTSalumni profiles2 Detective on a Dig8 Research is a Team Sport“Two roads diverged in 4a wood and I – I took theone less traveled by.”Rackham Executive BoardFrederick Amrine, Associate Professor of GermanicLanguages and LiteraturesCeleste Brusati, Associate Professor of History of ArtMary Anne Carroll, Associate Professor of Atmospheric,Oceanic, and Space Sciences and ChemistryRuth Dunkle, Professor of Social WorkPhoebe Ellsworth, Professor of PsychologyGeoffrey Eley, Professor of HistoryDavid Engelke, Professor of Biological ChemistryNancy Florida, Associate Professor of Asian Languages and CulturesSherman James, Professor of EpidemiologyBobbi Low, Professor of Natural Resources and EnvironmentCharlotte A. Otto, Professor of Natural Sciences, DearbornJames Penner-Hahn, Professor of ChemistryJames Porter, Associate Professor of Classical StudiesNancy Reame, Professor of NursingBeverly Schmoll, Professor of Physical Therapy, FlintElizabeth Sears, Associate Professor of History of ArtLynn Walter, Professor of Geological ScienceDavid Wigston, Professor of Biology, FlintRackham Board of GovernorsLee C. Bollinger, Chairman; President, University of MichiganEarl Lewis, Secretary; Dean, Horace H. Rackham Schoolof Graduate StudiesBilly E. Frye, Provost and Vice President forAcademic Affairs, Emory UniversityMelvin Oliver, Vice President for Asset Building andCommunity Development Program, The Ford FoundationMarina v. N. Whitman, Professor of Business Administrationand Public Policy, University of Michiganstudent profiles10 Salvatore Cerchiofeature articleIn•ter•dis•ci•pli•nary 6Yvette Amstelveen 12

From the DeanWelcome to the inaugural issue of the RackhamAlumni Magazine. Whether you graduated fiftyyears ago or just this past May, you belong to alarge and far-flung group of talented individuals who comprisethe Rackham alumni body: more than 85,000 peoplein all 50 states and 103 countries. With this publication, wehope to reconnect you with the Graduate School by profilingfive people whose lives and careers reflect the diversityand richness of the Rackham family.As one of the world’s foremost institutions of graduateeducation, Rackham oversees the training of the next generationof researchers, scholars, educators, policy-makers,and artists. In this issue we profile Yvette Amstelveen andSalvatore Cerchio, two of our outstanding graduate studentswhose work already embodies the sophistication,creativity, and intellectual rigor that bodes well for theirfuture careers.Rackham is proud to number among our alumni countlessindividuals whose work has a tremendous impact onthe decisions being made every day in every sector,whether private or public. Whatever their field, the mosteffective leaders are those who can think and work “outsidethe box,” can apply their own intelligence and experienceto a variety of situations and be successful. The threealumni featured in this issue — Wayne Patterson, AndreaBerlin, and Kathe Derwin — have taken what they learnedin graduate school and moved in directions they may nothave anticipated when they were students. They each canclaim important accomplishments within their professionaland personal lives, and are able to respond to whateverchallenges they may encounter.As the University moves into the next millennium, wefind that traditional academic disciplines grow less rigidand intellectual boundaries more porous, and that fruitfulwork is taking place among scholars who actively engagein conversations with colleagues from a variety of fields.Rackham is at the center of some of the University’s moststimulating interdisciplinary initiatives, for we work withindividual departments and faculty members to promote collaborative research and teaching. “Interdisciplinary” detailsthe significance of interdisciplinarity and its implications for the future of graduate education.The 21st Century bodes well for the Rackham Graduate School. I hope you enjoy this new magazine and that youwill continue to be proud of the legacy you share as part of the Rackham family.Best regards,Earl LewisPhoto by Bill Wood

A L U M N I P R O F I L E S2DEInterdisciplinarity? Archeologypractically invented it, saysAndrea Berlin.“To me, it’s the most inherentlyinterdisciplinary field in the academy,”she says. “You cannot pursue itwithout understanding a great dealabout history, the classics, historiography,geography, geology, andmaterials science.”Any one of them — and manyothers — could come into play atany time, adds Berlin, an AssistantProfessor of Classical Archeologyat the University of Minnesota whoreceived her PhD in classical artand archeology from U-M(Michigan, that is) in 1988. “Theamount of stuff that I draw uponevery day that I’m standing out on asite … what part of graduate schoolprepared me for this? A small part;the rest I had to pick up on myown,” she says. “Any successfulpracticing archeologist draws uponthings that by rights fall within anumber of departments, but theyare all truly part of the core ofarcheology. There is no end to whatis relevant.”Basically, anything that helps tofill in a blank is useful, and imagination,to paraphrase Einsteinslightly, is at least as important asknowledge. The fondness of archeologistsfor detective fiction isalmost a cliché. “Archeologists as agroup are some of the biggest fanson earth,” says Berlin. “It must besomething that attracts that kind ofmind.”TECTIVE ON A DIGPhoto by Jim HansenAs she herself says,her field is “detectivework of the most funkind.” With, of course, atleast one conspicuousdifference. In dealingwith the non-literaryrecord, “you never knowif you’re right. You mayconstruct a scenario thathangs together in a waythat people in relatedfields find compellingand helpful, a little bitlike what in a court oflaw is circumstantial evidence,and when youaccumulate enough of it,you tend to feel you’vefound out the truth, butit’s not provable in thesense of a science problem.In the end, it’s likeone of those detectivestories. You need a storyline. You need imagination.”Take the pottery shestudied last summer at a dig inTurkey on the site of ancient Troy,pottery for the most part excavatedthe year before. Pottery is her specialty,and she was good enough atunearthing and interpreting it tomake a living as a free-lancer for adecade while her husband taughtand their two children were born,not to mention good enough to landa tenure-track job at Minnesotadespite 10 years out of the academicloop. She is one who can, in the“. . . it’s like one of thosedetective stories. You need astoryline. You need imagination.”words of the poet William Blake,“see a world in a grain of sand.”“Half the job is finding it and theother half is explaining what it isand why it’s there,” she says. Thematerial she had found dated fromthe 4th Century BC, a time whenTroy was largely invisible historically.

Thanks to the Iliad and theOdyssey, “Troy was to theGreeks what Plymouth Rockand the Liberty Bell are to us,” shesays. Ironically, the tales that made itfamous are generally regarded asmythical, while the real life of thecity centuries later is ignored. Butfrom what she collected and studied,it seemed clear to Berlin that somethingsignificant was going on.“If somebody had found this material40 years ago,” she says, “theywouldn’t have paid much attention toit, primarily because it wasn’t associatedwith any architecture but alsobecause people didn’t pay muchattention to small finds.”But the notion of what is worthyof investigation is different now. “Ilooked at all this material, a lot of itvery nice, a lot of it imported fromAthens, and I simply asked what’s itdoing here and what does it mean?”It was clearly not locally produced,and clearly not intended for householdutility.“You can’t have all this materialhere without somebody bringing it,”she says. “Why did they bring ithere? Why then? Why in this space?What is happening in the middle ofthe 4th Century? What is the connectionbetween Troy and Athens, whichis a sea away?”Cue the knowledge of history. Cuethe imagination. “The long and shortof it is that this was the period whenPhilip II of Macedon, Alexander theGreat’s father, was threatening totake away the independence of theGreek world and Athens was castingherself in the role of the savior ofGreece and invoking the help ofmany of her daughter cities, hercolonies, one of which was a city justa morning’s walk away from Troy.Athens anchored her navy there for atime, probably because it was a safeplace, out of the reach of Philip.”But the area was strategicallyimportant for other, less tangible,reasons, Berlin believes. “I thinkTroy was suddenly very helpfullybeing invoked as a prestigious symbolof Greek military hegemony andpolitical prominence,” she says.“Suddenly, in the middle of the 4thCentury, in an episode that is unremarkedupon by any contemporaryhistorians, Troy became a symbolagain and people came to visit theshrine at Troy and they brought dedications,and that’s what we found,their dedications.”“The need of the Athenians toinvoke not only actual militarystrength but also old symbols lendsmore depth to their fight againstPhilip, a fight they lost. The fact thatTroy and the sagas associated with itbecame important suddenly at thattime tells you two things. One is thatthey were not some constant part ofthe Greek self-consciousness or elsethere would have been evidence ofconcerted activity and dedications atthe site for the previous hundredyears, and in fact there wasn’t. Theother is that the Athenians apparentlydidn’t hesitate to invoke this powerfulsymbol just when it was necessary,” abehavior that makes them seem verymodern.Like their contemporary counterparts,they had no qualms aboutwrapping themselves in the flag, as itwere. Such an insight not only addsto our understanding of these people,but also makes them seem lessremote, less alien to ourselves.“This is an episode that nobodyknew about because nobody in antiquitywrote about it,” says Berlin,“and if we hadn’t found this material,nobody would know about it yet.Photo by Sharon HerbertAnd also if nobody bothered to lookat the material and ask what it wasdoing there and look for a contextthat would explain it. That is myfavorite thing to do. Nothing givesme a bigger charge than that.”After all, as she points out, “historyis made by everybody all of the timeand we are informed in a literarysense of about one-half of one percentof it. What I think I do is putpages back into the history books.” ■3

A L U M N I P R O F I L E S4Two roads diverged in a woodand I–Itook the one less traveled by.When Wayne Pattersontalks about a broaderpalette of possibilitiesfor people withPhDs, he need onlypoint to his own.While a graduate student, he“imported” an inner-city math educationprogram from California toMichigan and later helped establishit nationally. He returned tohis native Canada for a time,became assistant to the DeputyPrime Minister, and eventuallyserved four years as Vice Presidentof the national Liberal Party. Backin the states, he launched the computerscience program at theUniversity of New Orleans,became the school’s Associate ViceChancellor for Research, thenmoved on to the University ofCharleston, South Carolina as VicePresident of Research and Dean ofthe Graduate School.He has just returned to theUniversity of Charleston, SouthCarolina, from a leave duringwhich he served as the Dean inResidence at the Council ofGraduate Schools in Washington,D.C., conducting a national studyon graduate certificate programsand exhorting all and sundry toconsider more options.“I can serve this world by bringingone set of talents to differentfields,” he says. “I wouldn’t be satisfieddevoting an entire career tojust math, or just politics. The purposeof a PhD is not just to producefaculty for Research I institutions,doing the same things theirfaculty advisors did before them.The earlier that graduate studentscan see other ways to use theirdegrees, the healthier graduateeducation will be.”His intention was to become acollege mathematics professorwhen he enrolled in the Universityof Michigan Math Department’sdoctoral program in the 1960s, andthat was typical of such students atthe time. Higher education inNorth America was mushrooming,and the demand for traditionallytrained academics was high.As part of the U-M program, hewas sent to a different research– Robert Frostinstitution each summer. On one ofthose jaunts, to Berkeley, he metthe founder of Project SEED, aprogram that put college facultyand graduate students into innercityclassrooms to teach advancedalgebra and calculus to fifth andsixth graders. Patterson becameconsumed by the project, devoting“The earlier thatgraduate students cansee other ways to usetheir degrees, thehealthier graduateeducation will be.”40 or more hours a week to itwhile doing his thesis research intopology, although he still finishedhis PhD earlier than most of hisclassmates. “Although my ProjectSEED activities were not universallysupported by the powers thatbe in the U-M Math Department,

Photo by Jane Hamblinmy thesis advisor, Frank Raymond,and my other committee membersalways expressed confidence in mycommitment as a research mathematician.”He then devoted 10 years full-timeto Project SEED before his return toCanada and subsequent careers. Hecontinues to volunteer for the program,whose long-term results havebeen stunning.“Between 30 and 40 studies of ithave been done over the years,” hesays. “One was in the Dallas schooldistrict, and I don’t know of anyother study like this in education.They did a statistical analysis of studentswho were in Project SEED infourth, fifth and sixth grades, comparedto a matched control group,and followed them through 12thgrade. A minimum of six years later,there were still statistically significantdifferences in math achievement,fewer dropouts, better retention,more students taking collegeprep mathematics and so on. They’vebeen following up Project SEED studentsfor 10 years now, and theresults hold up.”Patterson’s current work couldprove comparably dramatic in itsown way, albeit at the other end ofthe educational continuum. He’s justfinished a book, based on surveydata from 200 schools, on policiesand procedures for graduatecertificate programs, just oneof the many alternatives to traditionalgraduate degree programsthat have materialized inthe last decade or so.“Certificate programs generallyare shorter-term, nondegreeprograms, offered atvarious levels by professional,undergraduate, continuing educationand graduate schools,”Patterson explains. “We’ve tended touse the term graduate certificate tomean that the content of the curriculumis part of the approved graduatecurriculum of the university. Let’ssay you have a number of courses inthe master’s of public administrationprogram on geographic informationsystems. You might define a set offour or five courses as ‘geographicinformation systems’ and reofferthem as a certificate in that area.”Patterson vividly recalls the dayswhen a master’s degree itself wasgenerally regarded as a sort of consolationprize for doctoral candidateswho, for one reason or another, fellby the wayside.But, he says, “In the last 20 years,the number of students doing whatwe would call professional master’sdegrees has just exploded. We awardeight times as many master’s degreesnationally as we do doctorates. Manymore schools have a specific curriculumdesigned for the master’s. Therequirement to write a thesis for amaster’s has virtually disappeared,and that’s an indication of a moreprofessional than research orientationto that degree. This whole move tocertificates and other forms of postbaccalaureateeducation continues atrend that really started with the professionalmaster’s degree.”“Post-baccalaureate education” isthe phrase of choice at the Councilof Graduate Schools. “It certainlyincludes our traditional models formaster’s and doctoral education,” hesays, “but it also brings in all theeducational needs a person mighthave once they’re beyond the firstdegree level. A remarkable numberof two-year institutions are involvedin post-baccalaureate education, aswell as something like 1,400 corporateuniversities. The face of postgraduateeducation is really changinga great deal.”The reality is a given. Theresponse is not. “I guess the questionis whether it’s something the graduateschools in the country wish toendorse, participate in, ignore, fight,or take a leadership role in,” saysPatterson. “There are a lot of differentways of looking at it. But I talkto more and more deans who see tryingto provide alternative forms andformats for education beyond thebachelor’s degree as a necessarycomponent of what we do.”The other side of the coin is thatstudents choosing the traditionalroute need not limit themselves tothe traditional choices.“I think it’s important for peoplegoing into graduate school to recognizethat the people who come outwith PhDs can do many differenttypes of things,” Patterson says.“There are options in public service,in government, in corporations.There is something about the disciplineof having to do unique andoriginal research that prepares you toproblem-solve in many differentareas, and that’s the real value of thePhD process.” ■5

adj. Of, relating to, or involving two or more academicdisciplines that are usually considered distinct.– The American Heritage DictionaryThe idea of lowering the barsbetween disciplines is notnew, but in many ways it’solder than the idea of separatingknowledge into disciplines inthe first place. “More and more, aswe move into the late modern age,we’ve come to realize that somehowit’s time to put the pieces backtogether.” says Earl Lewis, Dean ofthe Graduate School. “There havealways been little nodes within theacademy where people came togetherto wrestle with questions. You see itin scholarly journals—eight peoplepublishing a common article.”What differentiates the Universityof Michigan from its peers in thisregard is the extent to which interdisciplinarityhas been not onlyembraced but also institutionalized.The list of programs, courses and initiativesthat formally incorporatesome degree of multidisciplinaryresearch and teaching is a long one,including women’s studies, African-American studies, bioengineering,neuroscience, the American culturedoctoral program, a joint program insocial work and the social sciences, anew interdisciplinary mathematicsprogram, a master’s program infinancial engineering that straddlesthe College of Engineering and theBusiness School, the RackhamInterdisciplinary Lectures, and theRackham Summer InterdisciplinaryInstitute.6“External reviewers always notethe range of interdisciplinarity onthis campus and how unique it is,”says Lewis. “The University ofMichigan probably stands at the endof the spectrum in terms of the numberof faculty and even graduate studentswho are interested in someaspect of interdisciplinary training,teaching and research.”An historian himself, Lewis findsdeep roots for this phenomenon.“Part of it has to do with the makeupof the various departments where,structurally, it has been possible tohave joint appointments,” he says.“In the history department, my owndepartment, half the faculty havejoint appointments with other units,and some of us with more than one.Throughout LS&A, you see moreand more faculty with joint appointments.That increases the likelihoodthat faculty and graduate studentswill live in more than one space oncampus, and that they’ll invite colleaguesfrom outside the university toinhabit those spaces, too, as guestlecturers and so on. There’s also thissense here that we want to rewardgood ideas and opportunities thatforce faculty and students to thinkout of the box, and that also encouragesa certain kind of interdisciplinaryapproach.”Dr. Jonathan Metzl has been out ofthe box for some time now. Heearned a bachelor’s in English as wellas his MD in a six-year program atthe University of Missouri-KansasCity, picked up a master’s in humanitiesduring his psychiatry residencyat Stanford, then came to U-M topursue a doctorate in the Program inAmerican Culture, meanwhile seeingpatients two days a week and teachingin the women’s studies program.He was also co-director with CarolHorn, Associate Professor of Nursingand Women’s Studies, of theRackham Summer InterdisciplinaryInstitute.“There’s just the atmosphere herefor creating those kinds of links,” hesays. “That’s not to say there aren’tgreat bureaucratic hurdles to getover, especially dealing with bodiesas diverse as the Medical School andLS&A, but people’s open-mindednessto that is really remarkable here,and it’s also institutionally supported,which makes a huge difference.Everybody everywhere is ‘interestedin interdisciplinarity,’ but putting astructure in place where people arerewarded for it and encouraged to doit makes it a much more valid undertaking.My sense is that, at otherinstitutions, the message is that interdisciplinarityis something you cando after you’ve gotten tenure and aresafely tucked away some place.That’s when you can dabble in otherthings. Treating it as a from-theground-upundertaking makes it amore powerful discourse and morebroadly interactive.”

The institute he co-directed bothmodeled such activity and provided aplace, like Virginia Woolf’s A Roomof One’s Own, where interdisciplinarityitself could be engaged.We were going to create a systemthat was free of hierarchy, but whenwe got together in a room, peoplewere aware of who was above whomon the ladder, or who was in a disciplinethat was ‘in’ in certain crowdsor better funded. Being able toaddress those differences and talkabout them in ways that were uncomfortablesometimes lets participantsunderstand why interdisciplinary isdifficult even though it is supported.And having a realistic sense of that isconducive to creating projects orawarenesses that are more likely to besuccessful.”Elizabeth Wingrove, AssistantProfessor of Political Science, wasone of 19 faculty members (alongwith four postdoctoral scholars and11 graduate students) who were institutefellows. Each was asked to participatein a small working group,one of whose charges was to plan atleast one event for the University andgeneral communities. Wingrove’sgroup included representatives ofEnglish, biology, history, pharmacologyand obstetrics/gynecology, andshe describes her ongoing relationshipswith them, as well as being“part of the constituent audience” forother groups’ projects, as “sort of thegift that keeps on giving.”“A great thing that came out of itwas the opportunity to meet people Iwould not otherwise have met, and tothink of them as resources for bothteaching and research that I hadn’tknown before,” she says. “Chattingwith folks in kinesiology, nursing, thelife sciences, was an amazing thing tobe able to do, even though it was notalways easy.”But, for Wingrove and her colleagues,it was the point. “I’ve cometo realize I need structural, institutionalsupport—time, money, accessto people—to do what I thought Iwas doing fairly well on my own,”she says. “I need to talk to folks whoactually do work in medical research,who work in policy oriented work,and certainly historians. I could listthem all, but the point is that when Ifirst heard about the Institute, Ithought not only was the theme[‘Disciplinary and InterdisciplinaryApproaches to the Body: From Cellto Self’] interesting and right onpoint with what I do in my research,but this would also be an opportunityto meet these people every day andtalk to them.”One of them, a colleague ofWingrove’s in their project group, isGina Bloom, who is nearing her doctoratein English and is also in thewomen’s studies certificate program.Although it certainly wasn’t part ofthe Institute’s formal syllabus, “I’mhelping Liz with some editing,” shesays. “I met her through the Institute.One of the nice things that emergedfrom that is getting to meet somepeople. As a grad student, it’s sometimestough to meet professors outsideyour department.”Gabriela Frank is a pianist anddoctoral candidate in music theoryand composition. She, too, wasmoved to apply for the Institute bythe opportunity to build upon theinterdisciplinary foundation shehad already laid. “One of my specialtiesis South American music,”she says, “and I did some scholarlywork with some of the professorshere, reading a lot of the writersand poets and learning about thepolitical history of South America.I’m also very interested in howbrain science relates to music. I’mpartially deaf myself, and I’vealways wondered about Beethovenand his deafness and how thataffected his music.”Choosing the human body as atheme for an interdisciplinary instituteseems to have been a tellingstroke. “The discipline of music centersaround the body,” says Frank.“You have to be able to master yourbody to master the instrument. I wasthe only musician participating thissummer and it was wonderful. Icould draw connections to whateveryone was doing. That’s what getsinteresting, when you have peoplewho are experts in different fieldslooking at the same thing and offeringdifferent explanations. I hadopportunities to talk to very intelligentpeople at the University ofMichigan who are not musicians. Ihad to retrain myself. I couldn’t talkabout fingerings because it wouldn’tmean anything.”But this is far from the end-gamefor the idea of disciplines. Perhapsironically, the concept of interdisciplinaritymight not only strengthenand refine disciplines but also itselftake on some of their characteristics.“I don’t believe disciplines are goingto disappear at all,” says Lewis. “Ithink interdisciplinarity will becomethe connective tissue that makes itmore sensible for disciplines to exist.“There is a training in learning abody of knowledge and a point ofview that is incredibly important inentering into any academic discussion,”says Metzl. “The counterpointis that interdisciplinarity itselfbecomes disciplinary by the nature ofinstitutions and funding. But at thesame time, if that new disciplinarystructure encourages people to thinkabout different perspectives inaddressing any number of problems,that seems like a pretty good thing.” ■7

A L U M N I P R O F I L E SPhoto by Ron MiduraResearch is a Team Sport8Research, says Kathe Derwin,is a team sport.She’s well acquainted withboth. An avid participant of bothhigh school and collegiate sports,Derwin spent her tenure as a U-Mbioengineering graduate student asa research assistant under the mentorshipof Dr. Lou Soslowsky inProfessor Steve Goldstein’sOrthopaedic Research Laboratories.A bioengineering pioneer and“an impact player” in the fieldglobally, Goldstein “built up a labwith a lot of different peoplearound,” says Derwin, who receivedher doctorate in 1998. “We interactedextensively with clinicians, scientists,and engineers. He set up amodel for bridging disciplines, andall the people he’s trained havegone on to replicate that.”Including Derwin, who is busysetting up her own lab at theCleveland Clinic Foundation toresearch how mechanical factorsinfluence the injuries, healing,remodeling, and aging of tendonsand ligaments. “I’m interested inbasic questions,” says Derwin, “butin concert with those, I would liketo do some clinical projects withour orthopaedic surgeons here.” Herinterest in such work demonstratesDerwin’s belief that “with so muchto study in this field, it will taketeams of people talking to eachother across disciplines to evenbegin to cover it all.”With an undergraduate degree inmechanical engineering from theUniversity of Massachusetts-Amherst, she briefly consideredmedical school before choosing adifferent spot on the healing artscontinuum: improving the tools thatdoctors can use to help theirpatients.What she wants to avoid, shesays, is “getting so focused on ourwork in the lab that I forget we canget a lot of valuable information outof patients. There are things thatcan be investigated, on the applicationend, right along. When you’reinvestigating basic questions, youhave the attitude that the sky’s thelimit and we just need to knowinformation, but ultimately it has tobe in an applicable form. In the

“Our ultimate goal is to replace or repair orregenerate tissue that isn’t doing well.”end, if it’s not cost-effective and insurance won’t pay for it, it’s not going tohappen.”“It doesn’t keep you from wanting to know,” she hastens to add, “butboth of those things have to happen. Part of coming out of a Goldstein labis that you’ve been taught to consider the whole continuum—from basicresearch to application.”It’s part of keeping your eye on the prize. “Our ultimate goal is toreplace or repair or regenerate tissue that isn’t doing well,” she says.“Whatever the tissue of interest might be, whether it’s bones or cartilage orligaments, the basic concepts are very similar. What matters is making animprovement to health care and people’s quality of life. What can we dobetter than what we’ve been doing? Can we engineer some sort of substituteor graft or prosthetic that the body is going to like and that will last?”Derwin is enthusiastic about the opportunities afforded her at theCleveland Clinic, both to develop a research program as well as contributeto the education of the next generation of biomedical engineers. The Cleveland Clinic’s mentorship program with cityhigh schools, as well as its affiliation with neighboring universities, will allow Derwin the opportunity to develop andteach new courses and to mentor students at various levels. “With the recent explosion of interest in this diverse field,programs everywhere are rethinking what it means to train new biomedical scientists. That will mean new courses aswell as hands-on laboratory experiences. It is exciting to be able to be a part of this growing and dynamic newdiscipline.” ■Photo by Jim Lange❒❒❒❒Please Send Me More Information About:Establishing a Trust or Bequest to Benefit Rackham’s Students and ProgramsFunding Summer Research and Travel Awards for Graduate StudentsCreating a Named Endowed FellowshipPlease add me to your mailing list to receive further information about RackhamMy correct name and address is:_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Is Your Mailing Label Correct?We want to list the name of each University friend and alumnus/a correctly. But sometimes we need your help. If youare not satisfied with the way that your name and address appears on the address label of Rackham Alumni Magazine,please e-mail your corrections to rackham.alums@rackham.umich.edu/ or complete and return this form to theRackham Development Office, 915 E. Washington, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1070.❒ Please correct my name and/or address as written aboveVisit the Rackham Graduate School Web Sitehttp://www.rackham.umich.edu/9

S T U D E N T P R O F I L E S10Salvatore CerchioSalvatore Cerchio fell in loveon his 20th birthday. That’snot unusual, except that theobject of his passion was, andremains, the humpback whale.He was a junior at TuftsUniversity, cruising the species’Caribbean breeding grounds aspart of a marine biology programfor undergraduates. “I got hooked,”he says. “I don’t know why, but Iwas seduced by it.”His ardor has since taken him tothe Moss Landing Marine Labs ofSan Jose State University, wherehe earned his master’s; to Hawaii,where he did research for sixyears, and to Isla Soccoro, anisland 400 miles off the west coastof Mexico, where he is about tospend his fourth winter observinga breeding population of humpbackwhales.It also, in a sense, brought himto the University of Michigan. “Irealized that if I wanted to do realresearch and make it my ownresearch, I needed to have a PhD,”he says. He also sought mentors inrelated but seemingly disparatefields.“My focus was always bioacoustics,”he says. “My master’swas on geographic variation inhumpback whale song, and I wantedto stretch out from the somewhatinsulated umbrella of themarine mammal world and workspecifically with professors thathad experience with birds andbirdsong. Often, the marine mammalfield is kind of myopic, andcoming here and getting thesebroad diverse influences has beenexcellent for my development.”One influence was RobertPayne, Professor of Zoology. “Bobworks on village indigobirds, aspecies which has a very interestingsong behavior, very convergentPhoto by Salvatore Cerchiowith humpback song behavior, acontinual variation of song overtime,” says Cerchio. “There areonly two species of birds known todo this, and humpback whales.Bob’s work figured prominently inmy discussion in my master’s thesis.I also wanted to work withJohn Mitani (Associate Professorof Anthropology), a primatologistdoing behavior and bioacousticswith primates.”Once at Michigan, he found it“a great place for evolution,” bothhis own and the field. “Cominghere was a real eye opener,” hesays. “What I’ve learned on thetheoretical basis of evolution andbehavior has really helped me out.I’ve also gotten involved in molecularwork. I had had no inclinationto do that but, after being here ayear, learning what facilities werehere, what opportunities I had andwhat I could do by applying

molecular techniques to my behavioralquestions, it was clear that thiswas the best thing I could do.”In 1997 Sal joined Jeff Jacobsenand Luis Medrano in a project startedover a decade ago. They spentthree months each winter on aMexican Navy base on Isla Soccoro,using crossbows to take biopsies ofwhales, recording their songs andphotographing them. “What we aredoing there is quite unique,” saysCerchio. “Although there exists alarger sample of biopsies from theAtlantic, something like 3,000 overtwo years, our sample in Mexico ismuch more thorough because thepopulation is much smaller. We’venow sampled 400-500 out of a thousandindividuals, and we hope tohave another 150-200 after next season.Plus there is a sighting historyof individuals with behaviors thatgoes back 10 years, plus songs frommany of these animals. In a year ortwo, this sample is going to be a veritablegold mine of information, andwe should be able todo some very interestingstudies with it.There are no otherhumpback whalepopulations that willbe as thoroughlysampled, that’s forsure.”As part of Sal’sdissertation he willbe assessing paternityand male reproductivesuccess.Using the same technology utilizedin human forensic work, he creates aDNA fingerprint of skin samplesobtained from the mother and calf.By comparing a mother’s genotype toPhoto by Danielle Cholewiakher calf’s, he identifies what part ofthe calf’s genotype came from thefather. This is then compared to thegenetic fingerprint of all the malewhales that were sampled. If a matchis found, paternity is determined. Bycomparing many samples he will beable to discern whether humpbacksare polygynous breeders.What’s the point? There are several.First is the growth of humanknowledge: this is the first largestudy of reproductive success incetaceans. Secondly, this researchwill create a model for studyingother species.Finally, there are implications formanagement and conservation of thespecies, which was hunted almost toPhoto by Bill Woodextinction before making a comeback.Successful conservation of thehumpback whale populations musteventually derive from the work ofscholars like Cerchio, lured by thewhales and their siren songs. ■Photo by Salvatore Cerchio11

S T U D E N T P R O F I L E SPhoto by Bill WoodYvette Amstelveen12Yvette Amstelveen’s current titleis Visiting Scholar at theUniversity of Michigan Schoolof Art, the first painter ever to holdthat position. But the adjective in thattitle is as meaningful to her as thenoun: she’s going to get around.Like any serious artist, she spendsher prime time in the studio. She hasalready created considerable art in her24 years, and her pieces have beenexhibited at the National Arts Club.Likewise, her academic credentials —a bachelor of fine arts from the CooperUnion in New York City and a masterof fine arts in painting from U-M —are very much in order. A native ofSuriname, she moved with her familyto Miami when she was eight, speaksthree languages, and was even one ofGlamour magazine’s top 10 collegewomen in 1996.Photo by Bill Wood

But perhaps her true art, or calling,is beautifying people’s lives byenabling them to do their own art,whether by teaching urban childrenin their schools or immersing herselfin the Lower Cass Corridorproject in Detroit. As one of thefew painters working on the project,her plan is to use the abandonedbuildings in the neighborhoodto create temporary art installationsas a window series of paintings.By involving residents in thedesign and implementation of theinstallations, for example, by usingtheir own patterns of clothes andfaces, she wants to help them createa “neighborhood board quilt”that will immediately beautify thearea, uplift spirits, and develop agreater sense of ownership andpride in the community.What she calls “a neighborhoodboard quilt” is a variation on hertheme for the summer of 1998,when she worked with kids — inNewark, Brooklyn, and Ann Arbor— to create neighborhood canvasquilts of their self-portraits. Lastsummer, she taught teens at theAnn Arbor Art Center, free-lancedfor Martha Stewart Living magazineand did missionary work inHungary for the Assemblies of Godchurch. For two of her years atCooper Union, she commutedevery Saturday to the Bronx to, yes,teach art to children.Her art, her community activities,and her faith are interwovenfor Amstelveen. “There’s this chapterin Isaiah that talks about providingthe wanderer with shelter,clothing the naked, looseningchains and cords when people areunder oppression, and your lightshall rise in the darkness,” she says.“When I go to Newark or ConeyIsland, I could paint beautifulthings on the outside, but if I canaffect that life, allow them to seebeauty through art, then that’s whatI want to do.” ■Photo by Yvette Amstelveen2 Timothy 2:20in the Private Collection of John WoodfordPhoto by Yvette Amstelveen13

Rackham AlumniMAGAZINEThe University of MichiganThe Horace H. RackhamSchool of Graduate Studies915 East Washington StreetAnn Arbor, Michigan 48109-1070NON-PROFIT ORG.US POSTAGEPAIDANN ARBOR, MIPERMIT NO. 144The Regents of the UniversityDavid A. Brandon, Ann ArborLaurence B. Deitch, Bloomfield HillsDaniel D. Horning, Grand HavenOlivia P. Maynard, GoodrichRebecca McGowan, Ann ArborAndrea Fischer Newman, Ann ArborS. Martin Taylor, Grosse Pointe FarmsKatherine E. White, Ann ArborLee C. Bollinger (ex officio)The University of Michigan, as an equal opportunity/affirmativeaction employer, complies with all applicable federal andstate laws regarding non-discrimination and affirmativeaction, including Title IX of the Education Amendments of1972 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. TheUniversity of Michigan is committed to a policy of non-discriminationand equal opportunity for all persons regardlessof race, sex, color, religion, creed, national origin or ancestry,age, marital status, sexual orientation, disability, or Vietnameraveteran status in employment, educational programs andactivities, and admissions. Inquiries or complaints may beaddressed to the University’s Director of Affirmative Actionand 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 informationcall: (734) 764-1817. AAO: 4/28/98