Staff Spotlight

  1. April 4, 2005

    Spotlight: Collecting the fungus among us

    It’s in the flu medicine your doctor prescribes. The mulch heap for your garden is packed with it, too. It’s tossed in with the $25 insalata di funghi at your favorite Italian restaurant. (Photo by Marcia Ledford, U-M Photo Services) It’s fungi, and for Pat Rogers, collection manager for fungi and lichens for the Herbarium,…
  2. March 28, 2005

    Spotlight: Making connections

    If you dial the telephone and tell the operator you don’t know the name of the person you seek, you may hear a click, if not a slam. (Photo by Marcia Ledford, U-M Photo Services) That is unless you are calling U-M operators such as Benisa Anderson, an Information Technology Central Services (ITCS) employee who…
  3. March 21, 2005

    Spotlight: Double duty: She serves campus and community

    Susan Rowe spends her weekdays keeping the U-M-Dearborn government relations office running smoothly. After work—and sometimes during her lunch break—she’s focused on a different office. (Photo by Jennifer Sroka, U-M-Dearborn) Rowe is one of six Wayne City Council members who oversees budget and services for the small, 20,000-person community in western Wayne County. Serving her…
  4. March 14, 2005

    Spotlight: The skeleton man: All skin and bones

    The smell of dried bones and dusty fur peppers the air as you enter Steve Hinshaw’s office. Tucked away between rows of file cabinets filled with thousands of skulls and skeletons, he sits at his desk organizing genera or updating databases. Steve Hinshaw displays the bones of three animals cleaned by beetles in the Museum…
  5. March 7, 2005

    Spotlight: A flare for fireworks

    By day, Robert Pichler is a safety analyst for the U-M Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI). By night, he plays with fire—fireworks, that is. Robert Pichler holds a demonstration fireworks shell showing the inner components. On a real shell, the inside would contain tiny stars made from gunpowder and charcoal composite that create fireworks’ shapes and…
  6. February 21, 2005

    Spotlight: Translating with care

    A glass of rum welcomes all visitors to the Dominican Republic, a Spanish-speaking nation in the Caribbean that is blessed with pristine beaches, warm weather and an easygoing atmosphere. The capitol, Santo Domingo, is an old city abuzz with activity. Professor Maureen Tippen, left, and Rebecca Pettengill, right, volunteer every year for a medical mission…
  7. February 14, 2005

    Spotlight: She’s got sole

    She’s a four-mile-a-day walker. She has a 40-minute commute to work—on foot. And she walks so much that she hasn’t owned a car in 18 years. Not impressed? You should be. At 85 years old, Fredda Clisham is leaving commuters half her age in the dust. (Photo by Martin Vloet, U-M Photo Services) Clisham, a…
  8. February 7, 2005

    Spotlight: Of mice and horses

    Their tiny haunches may not fit into an English saddle, but Janet Hoff has found a way to train lab mice as effectively as she does her horses. Hoff, a lifelong horse lover, teaches mice to perform simple tasks—such as walking across mouse-sized balance beams—as part of her job as research associate and coordinator for…
  9. January 31, 2005

    Spotlight: Around the world in one semester

    Joseph Dupont is like the Ellis Island of U-M. Joseph Dupont helps Eun-Jeong Kim of Korea, a graphic design senior. Derrick Ma, a senior work-study student from White Lake, Mich., who is majoring in economics and political science, looks on. (Photo by Marcia Ledford, U-M Photo Services) Every year, all of the University’s 1,000 new…
  10. January 24, 2005

    Spotlight: A hike through history

    Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Sophocles’ Antigone, Plato’s Apology. (Photo by Marcia Ledford, U-M Photo Services) Written thousands of years ago, these books have survived wars, calamities and upheavals to be regarded as some of the most significant classical books of all time. Their importance is such that studying them is required of all…