If, in the realm of commerce, entrepreneurs are those innovators and visionaries who claim a niche, fulfill a need, or offer a solution, then we might argue that, in the realm of higher education, faculty engage in their own entrepreneurship. In many cases, they push through the obvious boundaries of discipline and departmental and traditional thinking, to pioneer new developments in teaching or scholarship. Here’s a small selection of where Denison’s faculty is mixing the old, the new, the tried, the true, and the totally unexpected.
Ron Abram
Studio Art
Ron Abram’s layered and finely etched lithographs are seen all over campus, not just in the halls of the Art Department. His printed and framed work is also on the walls of Burke Gallery, along with a large flat panel TV screen, connected to an iPod, or in this case a “vPod.” One of Abram’s latest works on display, titled “Engrams,” allows the gallery visitor to select digital videos from the vPod that then run on the monitor. Like the lithographs, these video selections are layered with both multiple exposures and many meanings, drawing inspiration from trips to Japan, gardens there and closer to Denison, and video of other works of art juxtaposed with soundtracks of ambient soundscapes or pop music.
Dave Goodwin
Geosciences
Ron Abram’s layered and finely etched lithographs are seen all over campus, not just in the halls of the Art Department. His printed and framed work is also on the walls of Burke Gallery, along with a large flat panel TV screen, connected to an iPod, or in this case a “vPod.” One of Abram’s latest works on display, titled “Engrams,” allows the gallery visitor to select digital videos from the vPod that then run on the monitor. Like the lithographs, these video selections are layered with both multiple exposures and many meanings, drawing inspiration from trips to Japan, gardens there and closer to Denison, and video of other works of art juxtaposed with soundtracks of ambient soundscapes or pop music.
Eduardo Jaramillo
Modern Languages
Eduardo Jaramillo has translated high technology into Spanish, or vice versa (of course, that’s Latin, but still…). Using the support Denison’s computing services staff, he places language lessons on the Internet as podcasts. If you haven’t tapped into the world of podcasting or audio blogging, you’ve still likely seen people walking around with MP3 players like the ubiquitous iPod, earbuds pouring music into the soundtrack of the day. The technology is increasingly being used for information and communication as opposed to strictly entertainment. On campus, that means a passing student may be listening to the Black Eyed Peas, but they may well be doing their Spanish homework. What’s more, campuswide “WiFi” means that digital homework can get done anywhere, linked to anything on the web, including the next Spanish assignment.
Tom Schultz
Biology
Tom Schultz would like you to look at bugs. Don’t like bugs, you say? But have you really seen them, as camouflaged beetles or conspicuously colored damselflies? When the Tight Distinguished Professor of Natural Sciences gets ready to go out into the field to do research, always running in the back of his mind is the question “What photos do I need to take to help students back on campus understand what I’m getting at?” Why? Because “learning is the most enjoyable thing in my life, and I don’t really learn anything until I’ve explained it to another.” Whether on his next trip to Costa Rica to look for forest openings and hollow trees, where pockets of water breed damselfly larvae, or walking around the village where beetles outnumber Granville residents by the thousands, he’s looking for shots that can add to the “Schultz Insectary,” an online archive of insect photographs. To get your own closer look, go to “content.denison.edu” and click “browse.”
Dan Gibson and Wes
Walter Physics
Dan Gibson and Wes Walter have a giant laser in the basement of Olin, but no one’s too worried—as long as you wear proper eye protection when it’s in use. Physics professors often work with gadgets and devices with long names, but “negative ion accelerator mass spectrometer” is a beauty (they’re still working on a catchy nickname). Their work on campus, and at the internationally known Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, where there is a larger accelerator, allows them and their students to indirectly observe the structure of atoms. Many of us have heard of huge, miles-wide devices like “superconducting supercolliders” which crack apart the core of atoms, but work that Denison physicists can do, right in Olin’s basement, also teases out hidden details of atomic structure, with implications for nanotechnology and material science.
Dave Pryzbyla
Organizational Studies
How atoms put their own pieces together is puzzling, but no less intriguing are the reactions of people, interacting in complex systems at work, or simply, organizations. Organizational Studies is one of Denison’s newer academic programs, and is directed by psychology professor Dave Pryzbyla. In looking at multiple career paths, “Denison is one of the few liberal arts institutions that provide students with (the) opportunity” to apply this approach to organizational settings. How do individuals and groups function in the workplace? Since you can’t put people into accelerators or sealed chambers and slam them into each other, the art of observing, inferring, and predicting human reactions to various organizational environments is the next best thing.
Paul Djupe Political
Science
Paul Djupe is as involved in active research as any scientist. In the social sciences, that usually means testing survey instruments, putting surveys out “in the field,” and analyzing results. The trick of any survey is figuring out how to get responses that are accurate reflections of the respondent’s true feelings, and that’s assuming they know themselves. Djupe is looking at the tricky intersection of expectations about social and political beliefs—particularly at the crossroads of religion and politics—and which demographic populations actually hold which views.