Dispatches

Goldberg’s bootleg lectures now on CD.

Like the most diehard fan of a rock band, Sidney Iwanter ’71 went to extremes to capture a piece of legendary UW history — professor Harvey Goldberg ’43, PhD’51.

After Goldberg told him “no” when he asked permission to tape his class, Iwanter stuffed the 1962 Bell & Howell recorder he received as a bar mitzvah gift under a bulky sweater and snaked the microphone cord through the sleeve to record dozens of lectures.

“Some people listened to The Doors at night; I just wanted to listen to [Goldberg],” says Iwanter, a Los Angeles television producer who funds an annual “love of learning” scholarship at UW-Madison.

Iwanter wasn’t alone. A handful of Goldberg’s students recorded his unparalleled lectures before a packed house in Agricultural Hall. Now some of these “bootleg” recordings are part of a CD collection released jointly by UW-Madison’s Harvey Goldberg Center for the Study of Contemporary History and the community-based Harvey Goldberg Memorial Fund.

Both groups received a number of recordings from Goldberg’s former students following his death from cancer in 1987. Since then, they have worked independently to preserve and protect the cassette tapes, which started to disintegrate after spending years stored in unstable conditions. Before turning his tapes over to the history department in 2004, Iwanter had kept them in cigar boxes under his bed. Others were stored in people’s cars.

“We thought, ‘This is his legacy here, and how do we preserve this and not just let it deteriorate and go to waste?’“says Mark Borns ‘80, JD’83, a former Goldberg student who went on to become his attorney and now serves as secretary-treasurer for the memorial fund.

Goldberg, who began teaching at the UW in 1963, wrote just three books — one in French — during his career, putting most of his academic efforts into preparing lectures.

“Harvey inspired a lot of people to do a lot of different things with their lives that they otherwise would not have done,” Borns says.

Another fan, Chibu Lagman MS’88, was not enrolled in Goldberg’s class, but won his reluctant permission to record the lectures when he promised to share the tapes with people in his native Philippines who were living under dictator Ferdinand Marcos. “Given the restrictions and censorship, we were so starved for the kind of lessons and information that Harvey imparted,” says Lagman, who donated his recordings to the project and now teaches Latin American studies at the University of Alberta and sociology at Grant MacEwan College. “His lectures and his friendship ... helped me bear the pain and loneliness of exile.”

Advances in audio technology made it possible to digitize and remaster some of the student-recorded lectures — diminishing the echo of Goldberg’s powerful voice within the walls of the cavernous lecture hall — and convert them to CDs. The center and memorial fund pooled their recordings to release the collection of lectures Goldberg gave from 1974 to 1976, most of them in his popular Contemporary Societies course.

With only a lecture outline on a three-by-five note card, Goldberg described a vibrant history of struggles against colonialism and imperialism around the world. The theme of resistance to domination by the West ran through the entire course, says Allen Ruff MA’76, PhD’87, who was a teaching assistant for Goldberg and today serves as president of the memorial fund.

“I’ve listened to all the CDs in the collection. In each lecture, there is something of significance, salient to this moment we’re currently in,” Ruff says. “The lessons [and] the continuities are staggering.”

To order Harvey Goldberg: The Bootleg Lectures, visit http://history.wisc.edu/Goldberg/hgc_cd/cd.htm or www.rainbowbookstore.org/goldberg.

— Jenny Price ’96

A landmark study spans a half-century — and counting.

Lee Schoenecker ’61, MS’64 doesn’t recall filling out a survey fifty years ago about his plans after high school, yet this long-forgotten event has stayed with him. Since then, the retired urban planner has spent many hours being surveyed via both telephone and written questionnaire. He recently provided a sample of DNA. Even his wife and siblings have become involved.

And he’s not alone. Like Schoenecker, more than ten thousand graduates from Wisconsin’s high school classes of 1957 have participated for a half-century in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS), one of the longest and most respected sociological investigations ever undertaken. Started at UW-Madison as a survey of high school seniors’ post-graduation plans, the WLS has since evolved into a study of the entire life course, including education, career, family, aging, and retirement.

As Schoenecker and other study participants have traversed these stages, their journeys have given social scientists unprecedented insight into how a lifetime of experiences influences quality of life as people age. WLS findings have appeared in more than four hundred books, journal articles, and other scholarly publications, and the study’s data have been requested hundreds of times by researchers worldwide. Along the way, the investigation has also had a profound impact on public policy and practices.

“One of the big effects of the WLS was that it inspired a whole series of federal surveys, which have been carried out more or less regularly ever since,” says Robert Hauser, UW-Madison sociology professor and WLS director.

None of this would have been possible, though, without the cooperation of the graduates, which is why WLS researchers have been sharing results at more than fifty-five high school reunions held this year.

“We know class reunions are a big thing for everyone around the country, and the fiftieth reunion is very special,” says Carol Roan MS’89, PhD’94, WLS scientist and the reunion effort’s chief architect. “So we just saw this as an opportunity to give back to these people who have spent so much time with us.”

One of the reunions was Schoenecker’s own, in June. Amid a banquet and a pontoon boat ride, two dozen members of the Lake Mills High School Class of 1957 and their spouses listened attentively to a presentation by Roan, then bombarded her with questions. From the front row, Schoenecker posed several questions of his own about the study that has been part of his life for five decades.

“One of my classmates asked me recently, ‘Why are you so interested in this?’ “ he recalls, “And I said, ‘Because it’s part of me, and my family, and everything else.’ “

— Madeline Fisher PhD’98

Americans feel enormous pressure to stay forever young — or at least to age gracefully. Whether that cultural trait affects emotional and physical health has captured the interest of Carol Ryff, director of the UW-Madison Institute on Aging. Ryff’s groundbreaking longitudinal study of midlife and aging, which has surveyed more than seven thousand Americans ages twenty-five to seventy-four, has already demonstrated that a range of psychological and social factors are linked to biological markers for stress, immune function, and cardiovascular risk. Now, working with a team of U.S. and Japanese researchers, she is comparing those findings with data collected from one thousand residents of Tokyo. Ryff explains that while Japanese society emphasizes filial obligation, interdependence, and respect for the elderly, the youth-oriented United States values individualism and independence. One intriguing finding of the new study, she says, may be that “it’s easier to get old in Japan than in the U.S.”

— Staff

Efforts help to focus stem cell and regenerative medicine research.

Wisconsin has been the epicenter of human stem cell research since the world’s first human embryonic stem cells were isolated and cultured on the UW-Madison campus nearly a decade ago, setting off an international scientific frenzy.

Now, as dozens of laboratories scattered across campus work with stem cells of various kinds — embryonic, adult, and fetal — the research that seeks to capitalize on the body’s ability to maintain and heal itself has a formal home in the new UW-Madison Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center. The effort was announced in May at a UW Foundation event featuring famed developmental biologist Ian Wilmut, creator of Dolly, the cloned sheep.

Operating under the auspices of the Graduate School and the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, the center will be led by cardiologist
Timothy Kamp and neuroscientist Clive Svendsen.

“We hope the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center will serve as a catalyst on campus and bring together interdisciplinary efforts to advance stem cell and regenerative medicine research,” says Kamp. “It will provide communication and critical facilities and enhance faculty recruitment and retention to contribute to this effort.”

Svendsen and Kamp say the center will cover all of stem cell biology, exploring the potential of stem cells derived from all sources. They estimate that as many as fifty UW-Madison faculty are engaged to varying degrees in the pursuit of stem cell science and regenerative medicine. To amplify their work, the center will help develop core shared research facilities, a seed grant program, funding for postdoctoral fellowships, and programs for outreach and education.

The advent of the center is timely. Since 1998, when UW-Madison developmental biologist James Thomson won the race to isolate and culture human embryonic stem cells, the all-purpose cells that arise at the earliest stages of human development have become the focus of keen scientific competition worldwide.

“To allow the UW to maintain its leadership in stem cell biology, we need a clear campuswide organization that can facilitate and empower this research,” Kamp argues. “Collaborative efforts from a range of investigators working together will be needed to overcome the major roadblocks to realizing the promise of regenerative medicine.”

In short, the new center will be a critical catalyst and source of support for bringing Wisconsin stem cell science to fruition. The potential, say Svendsen and Kamp, is breathtaking, promising novel insight and treatments for a host of human diseases and conditions.

— Terry Devitt ’78, MA’85

Stem cell researchers face a particularly tough challenge: working with microscopic materials that are unpredictable. Despite a decade of advances, scientists are still honing the conditions under which stem cells will continue dividing indefinitely in culture or begin morphing into specific
cell types.

“It’s a complicated problem, but when you distill it down, these are all just molecules,” says UW chemistry professor Laura Kiessling. “So, that’s where chemists can make a difference.”

Kiessling and her colleagues have devised a new system that can quickly and systematically screen hundreds of individual molecules for their ability to influence stem cell fates — a technique that could hasten efforts to develop stem cell therapies and attain new insights in developmental biology. The team’s chemistry-based system allows scientists to test not only molecules from nature, but synthetic ones, too.

— Staff

Research project brings fresh snacks to schools.

It makes more sense to eat fruits and vegetables from a farm down the road than from halfway across the country. That’s the driving force behind a UW-Madison research program seeking to make it affordable for schools to serve locally grown foods and encourage kids to eat fruits and vegetables by offering fresher, high-quality snacks.

Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch — a partnership between the university’s Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems and the Madison-based nonprofit REAP Food Group — first launched its weekly snack program in 2005 at Lincoln Elementary School.

UW researchers are studying the feasibility of processing locally grown fruits and vegetables off site, since many school districts lack the time, facilities, and resources to do so on their own. The produce is washed, chopped, and bagged at Willy Street Grocery Co-op on the city’s near-east side, and then delivered to Madison Metropolitan School District’s food service program for distribution to schools.

This year, children at four Madison schools are getting the chance to eat sweet potato slices, carrot coins, and sliced kohlrabi from local certified organic growers. “One of the goals of the program is to expose them to a wider variety,” says Doug Wubben, the project’s coordinator. “Children will eat their vegetables, if they’re presented with enthusiasm, and on a regular basis.”

— Jenny Price ‘96

The Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC) has served as a resource for Wisconsin teachers and librarians for more than forty years. Kathleen Horning ’80, MA’82 has been a librarian with the CCBC for twenty-five years, and knows a thing or two about what makes for a good read.

Q: What do you do with the CCBC?
A: I’ve worked primarily with multicultural literature over the years, and I compile lists of recommended children’s and young adult books. Each year we publish Choices, a listing of two hundred or so recommended books, and we travel around the state to speak with Wisconsin teachers.

Q: How are the books selected for Choices?
A:We have many discussions with Wisconsin teachers and librarians when we travel throughout the year, and we try to make note of the books they bring up. Whether they’re excited or concerned about a specific work, we’ll take it into consideration. And also, the four librarians we have on staff read — a lot!

Q: Harry Potter has been the biggest story in kids’ books in the last decade. What effects have you seen on children’s literature?
A: Where do I start? There definitely is much more fantasy than ever, often now in multi-volume sets. Cover art many times is boys with black hair and round glasses, whether or not that has anything to do with the work. Also, the Harry Potter books are beautifully designed, and most fantasy is now following suit, with quality paper, typography, and imagery. There also is more fiction than ever with many more adults trying their hand at writing it. Picture books used to be everywhere, and now it is difficult for picture books to get published.

Q: What else should kids read these days?
A: The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selsnik is currently one of my favorites. Some chapters are wordless, so it’s a fiction and picture book in one, and kids really seem to have a lot of fun with it. Also, many books are dealing with heavy social issues nowadays, which can make it hard to find good humor. The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary School by Candace Fleming features contemporary fables that are lighthearted but still end with a moral. I’d compare them with the old Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books of the 1950s.

Topical honey offers hope for healing diabetic ulcers.

You could call it sweet serendipity: Jennifer Eddy couldn’t stop thinking about honey on her honeymoon.

A UW Health physician in Eau Claire, Eddy was in medical school when she first heard that ancient peoples had used honey as a topical antiseptic. She read more about the topic while traveling right after her wedding. “When I came back, I talked with the infectious disease specialist at the hospital,” she says, “and luckily, she said let’s give it a try.”

Honey offers particular hope to people with diabetes. Diabetics typically have poor circulation and decreased ability to fight infection, so even minor cuts and blisters may turn into ulcers, often resulting in amputated limbs. Honey’s acidic pH and low water content, and the hydrogen peroxide secreted by its naturally occurring enzymes, make it ideal for combating organisms that have developed resistance to standard antibiotics. Treating wounds with honey has tremendous potential for the approximately 200 million people in the world with diabetes, 15 percent of whom will develop an ulcer. In 2001, the United States spent $10.9 billion to treat diabetic foot ulcers and provide amputations.

Eddy first used honey with a patient in 2001, after all traditional medical therapy had failed. Although surgeons had told the patient he would die if they didn’t amputate his foot, he refused. Then Eddy suggested honey treatment. After weeks of applying honey and a gauze bandage to his wounds, they began to improve; within months, they were completely healed.

“I thought, the whole world is going to be interested in this,” Eddy recalls. But initially, she found that wasn’t the case. So she got to work, publishing a case study. Now, with funding from the Wisconsin Partnership Fund for Health and the American Academy of Family Practice Foundation, she is conducting a clinical trial to assess the effectiveness of honey as a topical treatment for diabetic ulcers.

“I’ve been surprised how open the patients are to the idea,” says Eddy, “and by positive response from the physician community.”

Some honeys have been shown to have higher antibacterial properties, but Eddy’s study is using generic brand honey because she believes it has the biggest public health ramifications. Despite its widespread availability, she cautions patients against using honey without a physician’s involvement. Patients interested in enrolling in the clinical trial can visit uwhealth.org or call (715) 855-5683.

— Karen Roach ’83

These days, parents no longer drop their sons and daughters off at residence halls for fall semester with a promise to talk again over the Thanksgiving turkey. On average, in fact, college students and their parents willingly catch up by phone two or three times per week.

Now a new Parent Program is making it easier for families to stay connected. Launched this summer, the program informs parents about key milestones and campus issues, and serves as the go-to option when they have questions or concerns. Nancy Sandhu ’96, MS’03, the program’s coordinator, says that a UW-Madison survey found that parents wanted ongoing communications from the university.

“Parents overwhelmingly had a good experience with the campus during the admissions process, the campus visits process, and through the summer orientation,” she says. “But they truly — and this was a theme — felt like they dropped off the map after the freshman year started.” Families’ information needs change over time, she adds, noting that parents of freshmen have an interest in health and safety, for example, while those with seniors want to learn about career services.

The program has launched a new Web site (www.parent.wisc.edu), a hotline, and an e-mail service, and this fall it will produce a newsletter.

The overall program goal, Sandhu says, is to help parents play an active and constructive role in supporting student success. Part of her duties, she expects, will be to gently remind parents about how much information they can legally access — that, no, they won’t automatically receive copies of students’ grades simply because they pay the tuition bills.

— Staff

UW trains the next generation of rural doctors.

There’s no doubt about it: the United States is facing a shortage of doctors. Americans are getting older and living longer, so the problem will only get worse as time goes on. Rural communities will be particularly hard hit as the number of country doctors shrinks.

That is, unless the UW has anything to say about it.

This fall the School of Medicine and Public Health launched the Wisconsin Academy for Rural Medicine (WARM) to address the rural doctor shortage. By training students to practice medicine in smaller communities, the UW hopes to boost the number of physicians in underserved areas.

Though there may be a looming shortage, WARM is selective about its students, says Byron Crouse, associate dean for rural and community health. He hopes the program will include as many as twenty-five students within the next few years, but it began with just five, many of whom are from rural areas — and thus are more likely to return home, he reasons. Crouse says that these physicians also tend to be nontraditional students, who have gone out and worked before going to medical school.

“We can’t wait until someone calls up and says, ‘Boy, we’re really short on doctors,’ ” he says. “The lead time for medical education is such that we really have to be planning at least ten years in advance.”

Students who enroll in WARM will study a rural core curriculum during their four years of medical school. They will choose electives that are relevant to rural medical practice, and spend much of their third and fourth years at affiliate sites in La Crosse, Green Bay, or Marshfield.

“It’s an exciting area of medicine that is in need of doctors,” says Diane Anderson, a WARM student from Waupun, Wisconsin. “I believe the answers to some of our nation’s health care challenges will be found in rural practice, as we have to do more with fewer resources.”

Despite advances in rural medicine, many people still envision old-fashioned doctors carrying black medical bags and vials of potions from door to door. Crouse says he wants to dispel that myth. Today’s rural hospitals have all the technologies that urban facilities do.

That being said, rural doctors usually have to deal with a broader scope of practice than their big-city counterparts do. For example, the family physician in a rural community could have to handle cradle-to-grave care: obstetrics, pediatrics, geriatrics, and everything in between.

“In rural communities, you have to be comfortable with a lack of anonymity,” says Crouse. “People say it’s kind of [like] living in the fish bowl. But that reflects the values, and so we try to admit students who have a bond to rural life.”

— Erin Hueffner ‘00

In this age of terrorism and uncertainty across the international stage, one question isn’t creating a burning crisis: where is the true heir of the king of France? Still, this mystery — the search for the Lost Dauphin, the eldest son of Louis XVI — has intrigued a variety of figures over the last 212 years, including Mark Twain. The UW Libraries’ Special Collections has brought together more than five hundred pamphlets devoted to the hunt.

The Lost Dauphin, a.k.a. Louis XVII, is believed to have died at the age of ten in 1795 in the Temple Prison in Paris, where he was incarcerated by the leaders of the French Revolution after they had executed his father. But his body was never produced, and so many French royalists — especially those with a bent toward conspiracy theories — cling to the notion that he somehow escaped. In the nineteenth century, at least a hundred people claimed (or were claimed by others) to be little Louis, including naturalist John James Audubon and Wisconsin missionary Eleazer Williams (at right). Mark Twain satirized such claims by making an obvious con man a “Lost Dauphin” in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Milwaukee historian William Ward Wight became caught up in the search for the Lost Dauphin when he was writing a biography of Eleazer Williams in the 1920s. He collected pamphlets issued by those claiming to be Louis XVII or his descendants, and when he died in 1943, he left them to the UW Libraries. Though the mystery of the Lost Dauphin has long gone out of fashion, the library retains the collection as a record of the public’s fascination with this royal mystery, and of the persistence of his legend. The materials are kept in Special Collections at Memorial Library, which is open Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

— John Allen

See how Madison has changed through the ages in Historic Photos of Madison, a new book by Don Johnson, head of library communications at the UW. Johnson collected nearly two hundred photos for the 216-page book, which was published in July by Turner Publishing.

UW-Madison’s physics department honored Robert Fassnacht, the research scientist killed in the 1970 Sterling Hall bombing, in May by dedicating a plaque near the site of the explosion. Fassnacht, a thirty-three-year-old husband and father of three young children, was a postdoctoral student in physics working on an experiment in a basement laboratory when the blast occurred. The bombing injured three others and damaged twenty-six buildings in the area.

More than five thousand eighth-graders across the state have signed up for the Wisconsin Covenant Program since it launched in May, pledging to keep a B average, stay out of trouble, and take college preparatory courses during high school. The program, created by Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle ‘67, promises each student financial aid based on his or her needs and a spot at one of the state’s universities or technical colleges. Funding for the program was in dispute during state budget negotiations over the summer, but students can continue to sign up.

History professor Jeremi Suri has published what may be the authoritative account of late twentieth-century American foreign policy: Henry Kissinger and the American Century. The book offers a look inside the complicated and controversial legacy of one of the dominant figures in U.S. Cold War diplomacy.

The UW System Board of Regents and Paul Barrows, former UW-Madison vice chancellor for student affairs, reached a settlement in June, bringing an end to Barrows’s claims against university administrators. Under the agreement, in which neither party claims victory, the university will pay Barrows $135,000. An academic staff appeals committee ruled last year that UW-Madison officials did not have enough evidence to reprimand Barrows for alleged sexual harassment.

Want to see stuff blow up from behind the safety of your own computer screen? Then check out the Chemistry Comes Alive! Web site, created by Jon Holmes, John Moore, and Jerry Jacobsen, all of the chemistry department. The site recently won the Pirelli International Award, which carries a 15,000 euro cash prize. Visit it at www.jce.divched.org/JCESoft/CCA/pirelli/.

Playing fantasy baseball is about more than drafting pitchers and hitters. Erica Halverson, an assistant professor in educational psychology, and Rich Halverson, an assistant professor in educational administration, are studying three fantasy baseball leagues to learn more about learning in online environments. The project is funded by the MacArthur Foundation, which is backing research into educational innovation.

The Wisconsin Formula Team won the Society of Automotive Engineers Foundation Cup at its annual competition in May. More than a hundred schools from eleven countries took part in the competition, in which teams of student engineers design, build, and race cars. This marks the eleventh automotive engineering contest that the UW has won in the last nine years.