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October 29, 2012
What moment in the classroom stands out as the most memorable? Memorable moments are when I realize that through a class experience students discover something fundamental. As part of a course on sustainable development related to hydropower projects proposed in Chilean Patagonia, a student pointing down at the Baker River valley said to me almost…
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October 22, 2012
Brittany Galisdorfer moved around a lot as a child, living in six different states before college. But she found a home when, as a freshman at U-M in 2001, she volunteered in the city of Detroit and fell in love with it. Galisdorfer, a business analyst in the Office of Financial Analysis, now uses her…
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October 15, 2012
Christine Modey has always loved cookbooks, but it wasn’t until she taught a special section of English 125 last fall that she was able to collaborate on the creation of one. As a lecturer with the Sweetland Center for Writing, Modey teaches several classes and seminars, including a section of the first-year writing requirement English…
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October 8, 2012
As the Children’s Program Coordinator for Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum, Liz Glynn works to bring science to children. Her most useful tool for the job is her “bag of tricks.” “It could contain anything, really,” she says of the bag she always brings on field trips. “I like to have magnifying lenses, so…
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October 1, 2012
A large puppet — the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex — hangs from the ceiling of a concrete room, accompanied by similar puppets that annually perform on the streets of Ann Arbor during the carnival-esque event called FestiFools. The puppet holds a carrot in one claw, and a chocolate bar in another, with Mark Tucker,…
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September 24, 2012
On most days Mark O’Brien, a U-M insect division collection manager, is found sorting dead insects into 8-foot-tall specimen cabinets that fill several rooms in the Museum of Zoology within the Ruthven Museums Building. “We’re maybe one of the best kept secrets on campus because we’re not really known for having a program in entomology…
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September 17, 2012
Photo by Scott C. Soderberg, Michigan Photography. Regular Michigan Radio contributor Anne Curzan says she is a linguist partly because her “mathy” brain gets the system of the English language. But what really inspired her to make the study of English her life’s calling was the creativity and quirkiness that often shapes the evolution of…
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September 10, 2012
Julia Child was not pleased with Kathy Goldberg’s question. In the early 1990s at a food event in Aspen, Colo., Goldberg, now an MHealthy dietitian, dared to ask Child about substituting olive oil for butter in a traditional bechamel (white) sauce recipe. Photo by Austin Thomason, Michigan Photography. “She said, ‘Why would you want to…
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September 4, 2012
Shelie Miller, who won a National Science Foundation award for her development of a switchgrass research tool, says biofuels won’t solve our energy or climate problems — but they can help. “They are a source of domestic energy that can create jobs and stimulate rural economies,” says Miller, an assistant professor of natural resources and…
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August 13, 2012
As President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney prepare for a showdown this election year, Marti Towas remembers the time she led her own political campaign. Towas, now an administrative assistant senior with the Comprehensive Cancer Center, in 1978 ran for the post of Hamburg Township Clerk, and won. Photo by Scott C. Soderberg, Michigan Photography.…
