Video from the May 8 Green Medicine Opening Event

From the mountains of Laos to the labs at UW Oshkosh

by Emily Romatoski and Dan Hager

He peers intently into the microscope, hoping to see quantifiable evidence in the traditional healing plants, roots and bark used by his parents and their parents and their parents.

    Slice.        
    Grind. 
    Set. 
    Observe. 
    Record. 
    Repeat.

Sitha Thor waters plants in a greenhouse.

These are steps that could very well help preserve the Hmong culture. Through these methodical steps that University of Wisconsin Oshkosh biology major Sitha Thor discovered a link between his family’s spiritual culture and the science that is the focus of his desired future as a research scientist or physician. This link reaffirmed what he had thought his whole life: Hmong herbs and plants have healing powers.

When Sitha works with the samples, he does not see only a few leaves or roots; he sees the stories of his family’s journey to America.

    Slice.

As Sitha slices apart the herb, his mind drifts to his family’s past. The slicing of the herbs reminds him of how his ancestors’ lives were torn apart by a war that they barely understood.

The Secret War

During the Vietnam War, the U.S. recruited, armed and trained Hmong men to fight what is now known as the Secret War in Laos against the rise of Communism and North Vietnamese. However, when the Vietnam War ended, and the Americans left the region, Laos fell into Communist hands. The Hmong were left to fend for themselves, against a regime set on eradicating the Hmong people. Many, including Sitha’s great--grandparents, perished as they fled from the Viet-Cong. The jungles became a new capricious home of sorts, sometimes welcoming, other times, with the Viet-Cong in pursuit, frightening. However, it was in this new home among the lush greenery that offered healing powers and became a welcomed tradition in the Thor family.

Sitha learned the role the herbs and plants played in his family’s survival through the stories of his parents’ escape from the Communists in the jungles. Sitha’s mother explained that, because of the Viet-Cong pressure, her family had to flee into the jungles with only the clothes on their backs. They had no time to gather any prized possessions, or much of anything. As a result many people fell ill in the unforgiving jungles. Rashes and fevers became a common occurrence in these makeshift jungle villages. It was at this time the refugees turned to herbal remedies to survive.

“One of them knew what kind of plants might help to ease those conditions and they actually used some plants from the wild,” Sitha said. “Those plants saved a lot of lives.”

    Grind. 

Sitha grinds samples from the herbs. He destroys the herbs, as the Viet-Cong once tried to do his family. 

Survival was the first part of much tougher journey that ground down the Hmongs’ spirits and beliefs. The daily grind of life was given a new meaning. Sitha reflects on all of his parents’ sacrifices. “It makes me have more insight and gives me more motivation of what I’m doing to make sure I made use of myself so it wouldn’t waste my parents’ effort of going through all that,” he said.

These herbs opened the gateway for many Hmongs to survive and to gather the strength to escape.

    Set.

Sitha sets up his experiment just as his parents set up a new life for the family in America. Sitha’s experiment will open new doors for future Hmong just as his parents’ journey did for him. His efforts in preserving his culture will pose a long journey, but that is nothing new for the Thor family, who live in Appleton, Wis., where Sitha, his wife and children share a large duplex with his parents and other extended family members.

Sitha can’t fathom how different this world of easily attainable food, shelter and comfort is to his parents and older relatives who have moved to the Fox Valley from Southeast Asia. For years, Sitha knew few details of his parents’ hard lives during the Vietnam War. He knows of their escaping to Thailand. Sitha’s mother, then with three young children, was eight months pregnant when the family fled Laos. Tragically, she lost the baby before it came to term. She blames the death on the lack of food and the constant struggle to find drinking water. “It was a boy,” Sitha said.

As Sitha’s mom tells the story, her face remains impassive. She talks of the treacherous rainy season in Thailand, where the Hmongs were placed in refugee camps. Drops from the sky represent the tears shed for what was lost and left behind. Sitha is often reminded of his mother’s tears when he waters the herbs and plants in the University greenhouse on the top floor of Halsey Science Center.

One of many plants Sitha Thor studies.

Coming to America

In 1986, more than 11 years after the Vietnam War, Sitha’s family joined a third wave of Hmong refugees to come to America. It was in this wave of refugees, when some of the Thor family herbs crossed into the American Territory, packed in banana leaves. The Thor family first landed in Seattle, Washington and then moved to Wisconsin in 1987. They’ve lived in Appleton since 1999. Sitha’s dad, Cherpheng, and mom, Seng, and their eight children joined other members of the Thor (also known as the Thao) clan which number about 300 in the Fox Valley.

   Observe.

Sitha peers through the microscope at the herb’s effects towards the viruses. He remembers observing his mother using herbs as a treatment in his past, when he was feeling ill (from a fever of many days) at from his pre-teen years to present.

It was at this early time that Sitha’s mother made him truly recognize the healing powers of the plants, bark and herbs. In Hmong, such remedies are called Tshuaj Ntsuab, which is loosely translated in English, “green medicine.”

Sitha’s mother would boil the tea and have Sitha drink the remedy. At the same time she would massage his body with the herbs believing the bad blood would be forced out. She would then poke his finger with a needle releasing one or two drops of this bad blood. “The interesting thing is that every time she does that, I get better,” Sitha said.

Even then, the healing powers of these herbs fascinated Sitha. These herbs were an integral part of Sitha’s life, yet he had very little understanding of their healing powers. His beliefs were based off what he was told and the effects he felt after using the herbs. His mother is known as an herbalist in the Hmong community. Her “green medicine” comes from her garden. Some dried roots and bark come from the mountains of Southeast Asia and are carefully stored in plastic bags. Her knowledge was passed from her parents, who learned from others and from a network of other Hmong herbalists. For Sitha’s mom, there is a remedy for practically any malady. And all it takes is a special herbal tea or specially made chicken soup.

Taking a Closer Look

Sitha never even thought to study the herbs until Dr. Teri Shors, biology and microbiology professor at UW Oshkosh, suggested he do so. Shors introduced Sitha to the McNair Scholarship program, a federally funded program at UW Oshkosh that aims to encourage underrepresented groups such as first generation college students or minorities to continue to graduate level studies. It is through this program that Sitha’s dedication to culture and passion for science crossed paths.

Terri Shors encourages students to take on research projects for reasons more than to bolster resumes. Read her story here.

As Sitha holds these herbs, he cannot help but be thankful for the sacrifices that were made by his family that led to the opportunity afforded to his studies today. Sitha collected the plants, herbs and roots from his mother and several aunts and uncles. Sitha’s mother fears that these sacrifices have been made for nothing as she feels the tradition of herbal healing will die with her generation. “It makes me sad inside to hear that from her,” Sitha said.



    Record.

Sitha records the results of his experiment. The recording of these results not only benefits science but also the Hmong history. A history of oral beliefs has the possibility to be written into scientific proof.

Sitha began studying his family’s herbs in Fall 2011 and was excited to form a collaborative project between the traditional healing practices of the Hmong culture and modern advances of Western science. “I feel that I get a chance to have a deeper understanding about the values of the Hmong medicine... and also the Western views of some of these beliefs,” Sitha said.

Put to the Test

In order to build this bridge, Sitha must undergo the tedious task of a repetitious experimental process. He first slices the fruit or plant he wishes to test. After, he grinds the sliced sample to a pulpy mixture that resembles minced garlic. He then sets the pulpy mixture into a sample tray.

Sitha leaves the lab and walks down a long hallway to retrieve the Vaccinia virus, a virus similar to smallpox (other viruses used were Influenza H1N1 virus and Herpes Simplex Virus 1). He then must return to the lab and flash boil the virus to prepare it for the experiment. 

He must now measure four precise but different concentrations of the herb to be pitted against the virus in a battle similar to Rocky Balboa vs. Apollo Creed in Rocky; the unknown underdog Hmong herbs versus the powerhouse Vaccinia virus. 

Sitha must now watch four rounds of this battle. He watches hoping his herbs stand their ground against a virus with a renowned reputation for destruction. The venue for this battle: the African Green Monkey Cell, a cell that has the potential to relate humans to other mammals. The African Green Monkey Cell acts as a different type of boxing ring. Instead of the fighting being merely in the ring, the fight is for the ring; the virus fighting for the destruction and the herb fighting for its preservation.

The first round, the least level of concentrated herb, is overtaken by the virus. This virus’ domination over the herb is illustrated by the holes it punches through the ring. The next two rounds see a small reverberation of the underdog herb. Despite the herb’s improvements the virus still stands stronger.

In the fourth round, the Hedychium coronarium herb rallies back with a vengeance. The virus does not stand a chance against some of these prepared Hmong herbs that are backed by thousands of years of Hmong tradition and supported by millions of Hmong people.

Sitha observes this victory when the Hedychium coronarium herb he tested knocks out the Vaccinia virus. A victory for Sitha’s herbs meant a victory in the revival of the Hmong culture.  As Sitha sees the positive results of the experiment, he cheers in his head. This cheer is not just for Sitha though, it is for the many Hmong people who have used and continue to use these natural healing methods.

Sitha records this victory in the books.



    Repeat.

Sitha cleans his station and chooses the next fruit or plant sample to test. He must tediously repeat this experiment. Repetition is nothing new to Sitha. This entire understanding of the Hmong culture is based on the retelling of an oral history. Sitha hopes to preserve this history by transforming the oral beliefs into a scientific written document.

It is imperative to the Hmong culture that Sitha records the Hmong tradition not only to preserve the history but also to further its endeavors in the future. Sitha has two children with his wife, Sandy, a UW Oshkosh student studying social work.

Their son, Kaio, 7, and daughter, Kyla, 2, are two major forces behind Sitha's determination. He feels these plants can foster the continued practice of the Hmong culture by younger generations in the Thor family.

"At some point my children or their grandchildren will be wondering about their grandparents or great-grandparents about their origin" Sitha said. "These plants can tell us a lot about the past."

So until this gap is bridged and until the tradition of these herbs are preserved, Sitha's journey will continue forward.

    Slice.        
    Grind. 
    Set. 
    Observe. 
    Record. 
    Repeat.

Update: As of March 2013, Sitha Thor has grown approximately 80 plants from his mom and relatives in the University greenhouse. He has tested over 70 herbs, plants and bark. More than a dozen have shown anti-viral properties. Sitha plans to attend graduate school in Fall 2013 at an institution that will allow him to continue his research on "green medicine." Sitha is also a recipient of the Chancellor's Award for Excellence for Spring 2013.

the final countdown

Nazar Kulchytskyy is two points up with 55 seconds left in the match. He sees the exhaustion in his opponent’s face but doesn’t let up. Too much is at stake. They are the last two men standing in the 165-pound class of the NCAA Division III Wrestling Championship. The wrestlers twist each other around a big white circle painted on a blue mat, grappling and grunting like ogres.

With the clocking ticking down… eight, seven, six… his opponent lunges, aiming for Nazar’s legs, but Nazar fends off the last-ditch effort. Seconds later, the crowd goes wild. Nazar grins broadly and celebrates with a backflip.

A junior at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Nazar has just become a two-time NCAA DIII Champion. He’s made history, as no one from the university has won the title before, and no one has won it two years in a row.

It hasn’t been an easy journey. Just over a decade ago, Nazar was living in Ukraine, dreaming of the day he would be called the world’s greatest wrestler.

Though winning a couple of national titles may be a dream come true for some collegiate athletes, Nazar is only warming up.

humble beginnings

Nazar Kulchytskyy [nuh-zar kull-chit-skee] was born in Sosnivka, Ukraine, a small, rural town of about 15,000. His parents were both music teachers whose only wish for their three children was to have better opportunities than what Ukraine could provide.

Nazar, age 8, and his coach, Leonidas.

Nazar started wrestling when he was 7. New to the mat yet, he lost the first tournament he went to. A few months later he tried a second tournament and won. It was then Nazar gained confidence and realized he could win; he beat older boys with experience.

He continued to wrestle older boys because he placed into their weight class. He got so good he can’t remember a time since that first loss he’s placed lower than third.

Nazar's adolescence was dominated by wrestling. Instead of playing soccer with friends for fun like other eight-year-old boys in Ukraine, his strict father limited him to two activities, school and wrestling. Nazar didn't mind.

His coach, Leonidas, saw his dedication and potential early on. He liked that Nazar never gave up, even on the tough days. Leonidas challenged the young wrestlers with hard training exercises that left some unable to breathe. "If you want to be a champion, do it," he’d tell them. "If not, you can leave."

Nazar was one of the few who never left. In fact, he’d stay after practice to train more. Before he was 10, he had already made a lifetime goal: Nazar Kulchytskyy would be a world wrestling champion.

A goal like that meant a lifetime of work, and Nazar soon learned how hard that work would be.

discipline

When he was 12 years old, Nazar moved to Odessa, Ukraine with his coach and one other young wrestler to be in a wrestling club and train. Odessa was more than a thousand miles away from home.

If missing his family wasn’t hard enough on him, the training was. Every day Nazar woke up at 5 a.m. to run at least three miles before wrestling practice. Then he’d attend school and after-school wrestling practice. By the time he completed his homework it was time for bed. The next day the cycle repeated.

When the weekend came, he was usually too tired have fun with friends. "All you want is to sleep, and just relax and get ready for next week," Nazar said.

The discipline paid off. Nazar won five Ukrainian National Wrestling Championships and placed third in the European Wrestling Championship - all before the age of 17. In the meantime, back home his parents were trying to move their family to America, seeking a better life for their children.

He also tried to find a way out of Ukraine. With his older sister’s help he began contacting coaches in Germany and America to see if he could move and wrestle there.

They found Larry Marchionda of Fond du Lac, Wis., a former international wrestler who now runs his own wrestling business called World Class Wrestling Enterprises. Marchionda was conducting business online when he received a one-sentence email from Nazar:

“I want to come to America and learn English and wrestle can you help” (sic)

Marchionda liked Nazar’s priorities. “I liked it because he said learn English first, and then wrestle,” said Marchionda, who is also the wrestling administrator at UW Oshkosh. “So that meant to me that he really did want to learn.”

Nazar with Larry Marchionda (left) and his father, Arkadiy Kulchytskyy (right).

It took about 2 ½ years, but Nazar’s family got lucky. In 2008 they won the Green Card Lottery, or Diversity Immigrant Visa Program. The annual U.S. program makes 55,000 visas available worldwide by drawing from a random selection of entries from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States, according to the U.S. Department of State website.

According to statistics from the Diversity Visa Program website, the odds of the Kulchytskyy family winning were about 1 in 500.

Before he could move to America, Nazar needed one more thing: his high school diploma. He didn’t want to leave Ukraine just shy of graduating high school, so he studied even harder and took exams early. His Ukrainian diploma now proudly hangs next to his American one.

That spring Nazar, 16, his mom and dad boarded a flight to America, ready to start a new life in a land where endless opportunities awaited. 

changes

Leaving Ukraine was bittersweet. Nazar couldn't wait to see what America would be like. He imagined a life free of worries and financial struggles.

However, Nazar was leaving loved ones behind - his brother and sister who couldn't come because they were too old to qualify for the visa, as well as many relatives. He had to leave wrestling friends, the people of Odessa who had come to love him as a local celebrity and Leonidas, his beloved wrestling coach for the past five years.

“Do your best, and always remember what I’ve taught you,” Leonidas told him right before he left for America.

His parents, too, were faced with big changes. They knew coming to America would give their youngest more opportunities to be successful. But it also meant they would trade their love of teaching music for working in a factory. They don’t mind, because a factory job in America has provided more financial stability than teaching in Ukraine.

the land of opportunity

When they arrived in Wisconsin, they finally got to meet Marchionda, who’d kept in close contact. He got the family settled in Prairie du Chien, Wis., and set Nazar up with a new wrestling coach and team at the local high school. Even though he had already graduated from high school in Ukraine, the American system was different and he still had to go to senior year.

However, Nazar couldn’t wrestle competitively. He was considered a professional at the high school level because of the championships he’d won. But he took it to his advantage and worked on his English skills instead.

The first year in America was rough. Nazar had already learned English for 10 years during school in Ukraine and thought he would be in good shape to speak. His first conversation was with his coach, he said, and it was a rude awakening. He couldn’t understand a word.

“That was a really tough year for me,” Nazar said. But he didn’t give up; instead he immersed himself in conversations as much as possible. “I just like to communicate with people,” he said. After a year he learned more words, then how to build a sentence and the rules of the English language.

Everybody in his high school liked Nazar because he was so different. “I didn’t have a tough time making friends,” he said. “Tougher time was to talk and talk well.”

Sometimes words weren’t needed, especially on the sports field. He and his new friends broke through the language barrier by playing basketball and soccer - they made a connection without words.

Nazar in front of the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Already in 2010, Nazar had caught the U.S. Olympics Committee’s attention. He was invited to - and did - train at the Olympic Center in Colorado Springs, Colo. He also caught the eyes of many Division I schools. He would soon be choosing a college to attend, and the best of the best were wooing him.

Unfortunately, an injury changed his plans. He nearly tore his ACL [anterior cruciate ligament] during practice three days before a national tournament. Still, he competed and placed third, which ranked him second in the country. He practiced through the pain of his knee for almost a year before undergoing surgery.

He was sidelined after knee surgery in June 2011, so he enrolled at UW Oshkosh to recuperate. The plan was to stay a year, then move to a Division I school.

Even then Nazar couldn’t be kept out of the wrestling room at UW Oshkosh. He met coach Christopher Stratton and began practicing with Titan wrestlers as soon as he could. Nazar quickly became a team leader and arguably, the most dominant wrestler in the country.

“It’s just a pleasure being on his team cause he’s so good,” Stratton said. “He is an elite athlete.”

Nazar knows what it takes to be a winner. “When you see results, you keep working even harder,” he said. “You enjoy it because you want another medal, you want to win another tournament.”

To non-wrestlers, brute force may be the key to winning, but Nazar compares wrestling to chess - it’s all about brains. “The best guys in the country and the best guys in the world.. they’re fast, their technique is well, they’re strong, they’re powerful,” he said, “but strategy is number one.”

winning

Before a tournament there are headphones in Nazar’s ears. Sometimes he listens to classical music if he needs to clear his mind, sometimes European techno if he needs to pump up. But just before a match, Nazar can be found alone. No noise, no people, no music, just Nazar.

“I think about [the] match and make a strategy,” he said. “And then I’ll just go in and do it.”

He’s racking the wins, including the Freestyle World Trials in April 2012, which qualified him to represent the U.S. at the 2012 Olympics in London. But because he is not yet a naturalized American citizen, Nazar could not participate. He’s received the 2012 and 2013 WIAC Wrestler of the Year award, and dons countless gold, silver and bronze medals around his neck in a picture posted on Facebook.

Nazar wears some of the many medals he's won.

In this audio-only podcast, Nazar discusses the hard work involved with wrestling. Produced by Noell Dickmann.

The plan to transfer to a bigger school has been all but forgotten. “I just can’t transfer,” said Nazar, who turned down a scholarship to UW Madison. “There’s just such nice people here who help me. I’m really close to graduation, so I don’t want to go somewhere else.”

That doesn’t mean he has dropped his main goal. He will participate in the Ukraine World Trials in the summer. If he wins he will go to the World Championship.

“My biggest dream is to be Olympic Champion,” Nazar said. “So all these tournaments are just good experiences before that biggest dream.”

He plans to become an American citizen in summer 2013 and graduate that December. Then he hopes to move to the Olympic Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., and compete in the 2016 Olympics.

fish out of water

Even off the mat, Nazar’s determination can be seen in everything he does.

At UW Oshkosh, he took a swimming class as a general education requirement for his major, human services and leadership. The class did a timed, 500-yard swim at the beginning and end to see how much they improved over the semester.

Nazar took one last glance at his old time before diving into Albee Pool. He didn’t have to beat the old time, it wouldn’t affect his grade, but he wanted to.

Minutes later he touched the pool wall in completion. He heard his classmates chatter over their improvements. Then Nazar heard his new time from Titan Swimming Coach Jon Wilson.

He was the only student who didn’t beat his old time. Without a word, Nazar got out of the water, grabbed his towel and walked away.

Later that day Wilson heard a knock at the door during the Titan Swim Team practice. He knew who it was.

“Can I try again?” Nazar asked.

“Of course,” Wilson smiled.

This time, everyone in the pool cheered him on, including the Titan Swim Team. “Go! Go! Go!” they shouted as he glided past in the water.

He again touched the pool wall. Nazar had beat his previous time by 30 seconds, an incredible feat for any training, competing swimmer, let alone a wrestler. 

off the mat

Nazar seems just the opposite of a dominant athlete off the mat. A friendly smile and bright “Hello!” always appear when he sees a friend or meets someone new.

He is still known in Ukraine for his success, and some of his fellow wrestlers are actually happy he’s left because they have a better chance to be No. 1 in the country. Nazar humbly laughs it off; he’s just happy they can be successful too.

Nazar uses Lucas Peters, 6, to explain a move during a Mat Rats practice at UW Oshkosh. Photo by Alex Beld.

For now Nazar is happy where he is, but he’s not standing still. He helps coach the Mat Rats, an Oshkosh-area youth wrestling program that uses the UW Oshkosh mats to practice. An idol to the young boys, they all want to be the best.

One boy, Lucas Peters, is somewhat of a mini-Nazar. The 6-year-old had barely any experience on a Thursday, and then Nazar gave him some tips. Lucas won a tournament that Saturday.

At a Tuesday practice, Nazar noticed another boy. “He’s hurting me!” the boy whined, his face red and eyes tired as he was held down by his opponent. Nazar chuckled from afar as he mimicked the boy under his breath; champions don’t complain.

Nazar didn’t have any idols when he was a little kid; he just wanted to be the best wrestler ever. “I just want to be who I am, and keep improving and having fun,” he said.

Someday he will open his own wrestling club and start an exchange, where he will send wrestlers to different countries to learn and train. He’s already doing the latter, and will bring UW Oshkosh wrestlers with him this summer to train in Ukraine. After, he’ll stay behind and visit his siblings and extended family.

Nazar is thankful for his family. His wish for his parents is to not have to work anymore; to be able to relax in a Jacuzzi and do nothing, he said. He wants to repay them, for he knows how lucky he is to have parents who have made such incredible sacrifices to better their child’s life and how much they support his wrestling endeavors.

Ultimately, wrestling is not just a sport to him, Nazar said. It’s a part of life. It’s molded who he is and guides him in everything he does.

“I could be in Ukraine right now on a farm and have nothing, and now I’m here,” Nazar said. “It’s all because of wrestling.”

touching lives

On the wall of Kimberly Udlis’ office is an untitled poem written by a patient on July 22, 1994. On that day, the patient had been told by his physicians that he needed open-heart surgery, after a less invasive procedure had failed. Udlis, then barely one year out of nursing school, held his hand after he was given the news. They talked a bit about the surgery, joked a bit about their favorite hockey teams and then she finished her night shift.

“It wasn’t anything special or out of the ordinary,” says Udlis, now an advanced practice nurse prescriber at Agnesian HealthCare in Fond du Lac, Wis., and an assistant professor of nursing at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.

But to that patient, Udlis was special and her care of him was extraordinary. In the poem, the patient wrote the following:

Dr. Udlis with her mother, Patricia Noble.

“...when in my sadness I reached out
and you took my hand and comforted me.
Once upon a time happens frequently in fairy tales and infrequently in life.
And this is one of those times.
You touched my life,
Girl dear.
And I’m the better for it.”

Almost two decades have passed since Udlis cared for that patient, but she can recite those lines from memory. For her, that poem serves as a framed reminder of the importance of what she does as a nurse practitioner and teacher.

“It’s what I see when I walk into my office right behind my desk. It reminds me that everything you say matters or what you don’t say, sometimes, matters,” she says. “What was like such an insignificant moment to me had great impact on someone else. ”

The Healing Profession

Udlis grew up in Sault Ste. Marie, a city of 75,000 in the province of Ontario, Canada. Her father worked for the Canadian government and was the local administrator for Ontario’s Ministry of Community and Social Services. Her mother was a branch administrator for a life insurance company.

While both parents wholeheartedly supported Udlis and her brother’s educational journeys, Udlis credits her mother for instilling in her a passion for nursing. Her mother, Patricia Noble, rose from an entry-level job at an insurance company to become a top executive. But, she says, her mother really wanted to be a nurse, but had to defer that dream when her father, Udlis’ grandfather, died unexpectedly when she was a child. With her formal education ending at high school, her mother found another avenue for the nursing dream.

“I can remember my mother always saying, ‘My daughter’s going to be a nurse, she’s going to be a nurse,’” Udlis says. “I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know the word, ‘nursing.’”

However, when she was about 11, the idea of it being a valued profession came to the forefront. She had encountered two nurses who were caring for her grandmother. One was pleasant and kind; the other was not. “I remember wanting to be in a position someday to make a patient feel as special as the kind nurse did,” she says.

Udlis had always been a strong student and had a clear vision of her future. During orientation in her pre-nursing program at Lake Superior State University, one of her professors asked the future nurses, “Where do you see yourself in 10 years?”

Udlis responded without hesitation. “I’ll be Dr. So-and-So. I’ll be married to somebody so I’m not sure what my last name will be, but I’ll have a Ph.D.”

All this from some fresh-faced freshman.

After graduating with her nursing degree, Udlis worked in a cardiac unit and later, in the intensive care unit.
She later earned her master of science in nursing degree with family nurse practitioner emphasis and her family nurse practitioner degree from UW Oshkosh in 1999. Two years later, she returned as a faculty member when Rosemary Smith, Dean of the College of Nursing, asked if she would be interested in teaching. Udlis was interested and has been teaching at UW Oshkosh since.

Through her unwavering focus, Udlis did fulfill her bold declaration. She earned her Ph.D in Nursing from Marquette University in 2009 and became Dr. Udlis. She married Seth Udlis, a family physician in Fond du Lac in 1996. Udlis has a stock answer ready when people impolitely question her career path and say, “Why don’t you just be a doctor?” With a doctorate’s in hand, she smiles broadly and tells them, “Well, I am.”
She has been practicing as Nurse Practitioner at Agnesian Health Care since 2007. Udlis equates her unwavering dedication to her education to a marathoner running the 26.2-mile race. “You don’t want to be asked at mile 20 how you feel, but you want to look back and say, ‘I really enjoyed my time in school. I got a lot out of my education,’” Udlis said.

Her sons, Eric, 12 and Ethan, 10, are fully aware of the type of work their parents do. “What happened to me as a child is already kind of happening to my kids whether we recognize it or not,” Udlis says. “We’re always talking about health care related careers. And even if the kids mention something as simple as ‘I want to be a doctor when I grow up,’ we’re already saying, ‘Be a dermatologist.’ Or my oldest son one time said, ‘I want to be an eye doctor,’ and we’re already saying, ‘Be an ophthalmologist!’”

Although Udlis and her husband have a great love and respect for the medical field, she stresses that they will let their children head into whichever careers they’d like. “We’re trying to support what their interests are,” Udlis says.

Healer and Teacher

Udlis receives self-fulfillment from the dual lives she leads. On Wednesdays, she works at Agnesian Healthcare in the Cardiology Department. On the other days, she is an assistant professor who teaches several grad courses—Clinical Management & Pharmacology, Advanced Epidemiology and Biostatistics and others at

UW Oshkosh. She also serves as the college’s assistant director overseeing the Family Nurse Practitioner and Doctor of Nursing Practice Program. “I couldn’t imagine not practicing,” Udlis said. “I couldn’t imagine not teaching. My teaching makes me a better practitioner, and being a practitioner makes me a better teacher.”

When Udlis lectures, she includes real-life examples from her practice. According to the student surveys, her students learn better when she shares her professional experience as part of the lessons.
During a fairly dense endocrinology lecture, Udlis paused between slides and shared a quick anecdote about a patient, who was covered in tattoos. “I say ‘I’m going send you for some blood work’ and the guy says, ‘I hate needles.’” Like a practiced storyteller, Udlis smiled broadly at her students before finishing the story. “And I’m looking at his tattoos and they’re filled with ink and I’m like, ‘Really?’” The class laughed appreciatively.

Udlis has no problem sharing light-hearted moments from her practice in class because she wants her students to see the patients as people. “I think that it’s important that we role model well for our students, and that we show them that, as professors, we’re involved in a profession that we respect,” Udlis said. “[But] at work we tend to have a little bit of levity and a little bit of fun in-between patients as well.”

Nicole Brown, a former student of Udlis, likes the personal touch. “Dr. Udlis has laughed in every class at least once and has always made a conscious effort to make her students laugh,” Brown says. “Her lectures are full of anecdotal experiences and a wealth of knowledge. Dr. Udlis teaches in a way that students can understand, process and apply.”

Anna Christian, who graduated in May 2012 with a doctor of nursing practice degree, appreciates Udlis’ high standards.

“I have to honestly say that I don’t think I would have done as well or even finished this plan of study if it wasn’t for Dr. Udlis’ attention to detail and input into submitted work,” Christian says. “I feel very privileged that she was my instructor because of her unbiased input and understanding that all students come from different backgrounds and practice situations.”

Through student evaluations and scuttlebutt in the hallways of the nursing building, Udlis knows how students regard her. “I think I have developed a reputation for being a hard professor here and that’s OK,” she says with a smile. “When students leave my classes, they may be a little tired, but they will know what they will do as nurses is important and what they know is critical to what they will do.”

She wants her students to know that every day they work as nurse practitioners, they will make decisions, some tougher than others. “I tell them, ‘When you tell a patient, ‘I think you’re OK, I am not concerned about that, you are OK to go home,’ or when you tell a mother, ‘I believe your child is fine, the fever will pass, it will take a couple days,’ you have nobody standing behind you saying you made the right decision,” she says. “What you have are your knowledge and skills. People will listen and trust what you say. This is why the education is so important.”

Udlis is gratified when she hears from former students, now working in the field. “Every now and then you get a little thank-you note from a student,” Udlis said. “Somebody said you made a difference and it reminds you that ‘OK, I’m doing a good job.’”

In addition to her practice and her teaching, Udlis is also a researcher, having published and presented her work. Her research focus is two-fold; exploring health outcomes in cardiac patients and also examining outcomes in nursing education. She is currently a member of the Curriculum Leadership Committee for the National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties as well as a member of Doctor Nursing Practice National Task Force for the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. “The [research] that is nearest and dearest to my heart was the study that I did looking at the outcomes of patients with internal cardiac defibrillators because as a nurse practitioner I care for these people,” Udlis said. “It was a lot of fun to do because the results of the study were directly applicable to my career and practice setting. I hope to continue with it and further develop the technology on dependency concept with the patients.”

Fulfilling a Dream

When Udlis takes the rare break to reflect on her career path, she always goes back to the person who put her there—her mother. “I think she would say that I did the things she had hoped to do and always hoped I would do. She never misses a chance to tell me how proud she is, to the point where I often ask her to stop. But I try to remember that sharing the journey is important.”

With the idea of sharing in mind, Udlis established the Patricia M. Noble Scholarship in honor of her mother. The scholarship will be awarded to graduate students in the UW Oshkosh College of Nursing, with a preference given to the doctor of nursing practice students.

“My mother had these goals and aspirations, and then life circumstances presented barriers to having that education,” Udlis says. “Maybe if my mom had [this] opportunity at her time, her dream could have come true.”

On the scholarship endowment certificate are the words:

In honor of a mother’s dream and in gratitude for helping to make her daughter’s dream come true, the Patricia N. Noble Scholarship Fund was created in March 2011 for students requiring financial assistance in order to achieve their dream in nursing, despite adverse circumstance.

So what did the mother think of this scholarship, which was unveiled to her at Christmas 2011? The mother was touched beyond words. However, there was a tinge of regret, Udlis recalls. “True to my mother’s nature, the only thing she was disappointed about was that I did not put my name on the scholarship, but I didn’t want to put my name on it,” Udls says. “This is the way it is supposed to be.”

research matters by Kimberly Udlis, Ph.D., FNP-BC Currently, I am involved in several research projects at various phases. I am very pleased to be leading two research teams of College of Nursing graduate students. One team is actively involved in examining the outcomes of care for heart failure patients. Another team will be exploring the evidence surrounding mandatory vaccinations of health employees. The emphasis on health and wellness has brought about a change in our health care environment. Health care agencies are becoming more interested in supporting and facilitating their patients’ goals of achieving a better state of health. I am currently working with a physician to examine the impact of group visits incorporating health and wellness teaching on health outcomes. Finally, my main research trajectory has been in the area of quality of life in persons with cardiovascular disease. I recently completed a research study examining the effect of technology dependency on quality of life in persons with internal cardioverter defibrillators. The next project that is currently being developed is determining the incidence and prevalence of skin infections, specifically MRSA, in persons who are to undergo implantation of a pacemaker or internal cardioverter defibrillator.

Dr. Udlis lectures to nursing students.

the teacher’s son

On the grounds of the National Primary and Middle School in Bangalore, India, B.S. Sridhar reflected on his father’s lessons:

You need to be a life-long student to be a productive citizen. You need to live a life giving back to the community.

On that pleasant January day in 2012, Sridhar, an associate professor of business at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, and his siblings stood on the grounds of the school that their father founded more than 75 years ago. They saw their father’s life’s work in the shining faces of more than 700 students. The Balakuntalam siblings, five total, were back in India to celebrate what would have been the 100th birthday of their father, who passed away in 1980. They came back to honor the man, who taught them to value education for themselves and others by establishing the Srividya Foundation, which will focus on making educational opportunities available to children who cannot afford them. The foundation’s first order of business is to provide uniforms for the students at the first school that their father founded.

Sridhar and his siblings did not want to make a big fuss over their return to the school. They had just wanted to drop in, reminisce a bit, then leave. But when word got around that the sons and daughters of the founder, Balakuntaalum Sundareswara, were on the campus, the school canceled classes and held an impromptu welcome presentation.

Sridhar was touched beyond words. He said his father would have been terribly embarrassed by the attention, but would have loved that the school is thriving and the children are learning.
And he would have loved that his son Sridhar is continuing that tradition of cultivating young minds.

Building Foundations

Sridhar was born in Bengaluru, the capital city of the Indian state of Kamataka, which is situated in southern India. His father was a trained child psychologist, but chose to go into education. His mother, a consummate volunteer and avid reader, provided the steady hand in the rearing of five children. His mother was the only daughter of an affluent businessman and came from a family steeped in community service. When Sridhar’s parents got married, his father did not want the customary dowry that is provided from the bride’s family. “My father who was an idealist wanted none of that. He said, ‘Just come as you are,’ which meant that my mother had to give up a lot of her comfortable living,” Sridhar says. “As a Gandhian, my father could go into the field and pursue his vision, but the person that kept the family intact and gave him all the support was my mother. We owe a lot to her.”

Sridhar says his father trained teachers and taught high school for a few years, but was disenchanted with the quality of educational foundation the students had prior to entering high school. His father took a 50 percent pay cut so he could start a kindergarten and middle school. That school, the National Primary and Middle School, opened in 1937. After a few years, the family moved from town to town while the father promoted his educational visions. Sridhar remembers several schools that were so impoverished that the students had no furniture. But the children were not lacking education-wise because of teachers who truly cared.

Since that first school, his father had helped found several more schools and until his death continued to train teachers and mentor many others. “He firmly believed that you cannot really educate students unless the teachers have had good training and preparation,” he says.

Education was paramount, Sridhar said. His parents’ home was filled with books and news magazines. “We did not have a radio in our house until I was 12,” he says. “I did not grow up with television.”

His parents often hosted well-known Indian poets, authors and artists, and encouraged the children to interact and engage with the guests. They were followers of Mahatma Gandhi, who valued education and culture. “That was invaluable,” Sridhar says of lively dinners and friendly debates with guests. “That was huge as an education.”

Arts and Science

Sridhar enjoyed and excelled in school. He knew what society’s expectations were of him. A professional career that begins with engineering school, medical school, something of that ilk. However, that was not what interested Sridhar. “I took science, I enjoyed it, but I had never any inclination on becoming an engineer or doctor, which for the larger community is almost taboo,” he says.

“How could you not think of becoming an engineer or doctor?” well-meaning friends and relatives would say somewhat incredulously. Sridhar smiles broadly. “For me, liberal education was more fun.”

He “dabbled in literature” while majoring in physics and chemistry and minoring in mathematics at Bangalore University. Between his undergraduate and first graduate degrees, he was selected as a Naval Aviation Cadet Officer. He was one of 16 people out of 7,000 applicants accepted into that program. After 18 months, an ear problem grounded his flying days. He then made the transition from science to management.
That switch wasn’t too hard because he had always exhibited leadership qualities even as a boy, from leading student organizations, fundraisers, participating in music competitions, debate, and plays. In college, he competed in literary debate in three languages. (He has comfortable fluency in five languages.) “Leadership came very naturally for me,” he says. “So, to me, management is about leading people and leading organizations.”

After his stint with the Navy, Sridhar immersed himself in the world of business. He has worked as a personnel officer, personnel and administration manager and chief personnel manager for several large companies in India. He earned his first of three advanced degrees, a master’s of arts in personnel management and industrial relations from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India. 

Teaching as a Vocation

He had entertained the idea of teaching, having participated in employee training sessions at various companies. However, he had a different view about teaching as a vocation than his father, who had viewed teaching as a calling. His father’s life and career choices meant the family lived in poverty. Rich in ways not measured by money, yes, but poor in reality, nonetheless.

Sridhar says he has a more pragmatic way of looking at life than his romantic father. “I was looking for an opportunity to be gainfully employed and be comfortable,” he says. “I wanted something that could balance my economic needs as well as my professional needs.”

He began questioning his career path. His wife, Sandhya Sridhar, worked for a bank as a Selection Psychologist; he was head of HR for a large company. They have two children and lived a comfortable life. “I said, ‘Money and power is good, but is this really what I want to do for the rest of my life?’ The answer was, ‘No.’”

He thought about what he liked to do–learning and teaching. He could have stayed in India to do just that, but he felt he would have to give up too much to do so. But teaching in the United States, now that had promise.

He made his way to Columbus, Ohio, on straight immigration to study organizational behavior and marketing at the Ohio State University where he earned his M.B.A. and doctorate’s degrees. (His wife Sandhya Sridhar also earned her doctorate’s degree in business there, and now also teaches in the College of Business at UW Oshkosh.) Soon after graduating in 1987, he landed a teaching position at UW Oshkosh, where he has earned numerous teaching honors including the Excellence in Teaching Award, Management & Human Resources Team (2007, 2011) and Beta Gamma Sigma Professor of the Year (2003, 2006). “In the U.S. you have a fairly decent standard of living as a teacher,” he says with a smile. “Teachers are still not compensated well compared to a plumber or an electrician. On the other hand, I can’t complain. My needs are minimal and I can have fun with teaching.”

Making Connections

At UW Oshkosh, Sridhar teaches both graduate and undergraduate students. He is the founding advisor of the International Business Club, which began in 2001. Bryant Nankee, a senior majoring in marketing and minoring in global business, says Sridhar’s teaching have helped him with his current position as a marketing intern at Oshkosh Corp. “A lot of the course material has allowed me to better understand how to communicate with employees and customers of Oshkosh that are of different cultures,” says Nankee, who is also the Treasurer of the University’s International Business Club. “Wanting to pursue a degree in the international field, I can take away many of the subjects he teaches and be able to use them in the future.”
Kathryn Simon, a marketing senior and President of the International Business Club, says she is struck by Sridhar’s willingness to help. “Dr. Sridhar has taught me the power of connecting with people,” says Simon, who is working as an intern at New North in De Pere, Wis. “He has shown me that it is important to make connections with business professionals. I truly value his advice.”

Tim Fliss, who earned his MBA from UW Oshkosh in 2000, says he often uses Sridhar’s lessons in his job as Vice President of Human Resources at Bemis Company, a multinational company and major supplier of flexible packaging in Neenah, Wis. “Dr. Sridhar used several effective teaching and facilitation techniques to push us out of our comfort zones and think about new possibilities,” Fliss says. “This experience had a profound impact on me and was a catalyst that resulted in several years of rapid personal and professional growth. I also have used many of Dr. Sridhar’s concepts and techniques as I coach and develop leaders in my role as Vice President of Human Resources at Bemis Company.”

Bridging Worlds

In September of 2012, Sridhar passed his quarter-century mark as a professor at UW Oshkosh. His commitment and passion to teaching remain as strong as ever. “There is not a semester when I don’t take a close look at my syllabus and the contents,” he says.

One student recently inquired about an upcoming Spring class. “He sent me an email about three days ago saying, ‘I want to be prepared for your class. I know you are a tough task master, and I want to use these three weeks to prepare.”

Sridhar took the student’s request to heart. “The last two days I updated my entire course content, and my wife was saying, ‘I thought you wanted to relax,’” he says with laugh. “I said, ‘No, I don’t want to send him a bad syllabus.’”

Sridhar still keeps current with his field with outside consulting projects. He works with local companies in the Fox Valley including nonprofits like the Leadership Oshkosh, Paine Art Center, Oshkosh Symphony in Oshkosh and several small, medium and Fortune 500 companies in the area. “The reason I consult is not because of the money because money comes and money goes,” he says.

He says he is a better teacher when he can bring real-life experience into the classroom. “You gain more credibility when you are conveying abstract concepts like strategy, culture, motivation and leadership” he says of his consulting work. “You get a chance to test your concepts, test your techniques. You can bring the experience to validate or invalidate the textbooks.”

Sridhar wants his students to the see the world from different perspectives. In one recent MBA online class, International Business, he posed a question to his graduate students, “How do you market pizza in Kenya and Nigeria?”

For two days, the students, all in their 30s, engaged in a lively online discussion about the unlikelihood of marketing to people who “lived in trees,” had no infrastructure or need for such modern goods. “They had so many solutions and preconceived notions,” Sridhar recalls.

Then the teacher taught them a lesson with simple YouTube clips. He posted videos of modern supermarkets in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, and Lagos, the most populous city in Nigeria. “The students were shocked,” he says, chuckling. “They said, ‘We don’t have supermarkets like this in Appleton or Oshkosh.' Suddenly they started thinking about these African countries as having great potential for business.”

If there is one lesson that Sridhar stresses to his business students, it is this: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

He wants his students to understand that best-laid plans often are rendered useless because they are not in sync with the culture of the organization. “The hardest thing for an organization is building and sustaining desired organizational culture.” In other words, people. How do you attract and retain people, the right kind of people with right kind of values, beliefs and talent,” he says. “They have to understand that people are your most important asset.”

Giving Back

Though both his parents passed in the 1980s, their lessons on education and community service still resonate in Sridhar.  “They’ve taught me that learning is fun and that you grow by giving,” Sridhar says.
He lives those lessons daily. He teaches, keeps current in his field, and he gives back to the community by volunteering in many organizations. He has served as president of the Oshkosh Area United Way. He founded Seva, a volunteer group that serves lunch at the Salvation Army in Appleton every Saturday since 1993. He co-founded IndUS of Fox Valley, Inc., a volunteer organization whose mission is to promote “Indo-American friendship and goodwill by serving the community through social, cultural, educational and charitable activities,” and has served as its founding president for six years.

Since 1999 IndUS produces an annual cultural extravaganza that includes an exhibition, musical and dance performances and a multi-course authentic Indian dinner prepared by a renowned chef. The past five years, the gala has been held at the Radisson Paper Valley Hotel in Appleton and has attracted a sell-out crowd of 400 attendees.

It is in this venue that another side of Sridhar appears, one that his parents had cultivated when he was young and engaged in lively debates with authors and other creative souls. He has written, directed, and produced two plays, three dance-dramas, and seven musical-dance revues that have been staged in Oshkosh, Appleton and Madison.

For the most recent one in November titled “The Mysterious World of Indian Mythology,” Sridhar wrote and directed the dance drama. The dancers were from Kalaanjali School of Dance & Music, Madison, and Kanopy Dance, the resident dance company of Overture Theater of Madison. Only hours before the main event, Sridhar was going over the final blocking with the professional dancers from the Kalaanjali. His body swayed with the music, his arms flowed in time as the dancers swirled and twirled on stage.

“I am a great believer of liberal education so for me the liberal education has continued,” he says, adding that the business world would benefit greatly from people who embrace the arts. “A liberal education widens your mind. It teaches you how to learn. Art, music and literature are symbiotic with what I do as a professor of business.”

He doesn’t mind the long hours and the stress that comes with producing the cultural program at the annual event. “I learn so many new things,” he says. “It’s actually quite selfish on my part because I always come out ahead. I continue to grow.”

by Noell Dickmann
Student Features Reporter

beyond the statistics

Carmen Heider stood behind the lectern and smiled broadly at the people gathered in front of her. Some were dressed in semi-formal attire; others were in matching blue-green prison apparel. On that day at the Taycheedah Correctional Institution in Fond du Lac, Wis., Heider, an associate communication professor at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, was celebrating her students’ success.

Half the class were known as “Inside” students, women incarcerated in Wisconsin’s largest female prison; the other half were UW Oshkosh students, known as “Outside” students. But behind the prison walls and in Heider’s eyes, they were all one and the same. Heider’s course is part of the Inside-Out Prison Exchange program, a national program that brings together college students and incarcerated people to learn about each other and to dispel myths and stereotypes.

“I am honored and very proud to be a part of this,” Heider said of the Inside-Out program. She unabashedly proclaimed this class as her favorite teaching experience because of the confidence it instills in the “Inside” students and the lasting impact it has on the class as a whole. She introduced two students who were chosen by their fellow classmates to give remarks at the ceremony that signified the completion of the program.

Shartina, an “Inside” student, shared how her life has changed through taking this course under Heider’s direction. “I feel as though I’ve been pushed out of my comfort zone, pushed to challenge my thinking,” Shartina said. “Inside-Out has equipped me with a broad base of knowledge, a motivation to live beyond the statistics... What is before me is far greater than what is behind me.”

Wade, a senior at UW Oshkosh, recounted how he was a little unsure about going to prison for a class and how quickly that apprehension went away. “As the weeks went on, Thursday was the new day to look forward to,” he said. He explained how the class gave the UW Oshkosh students a more accurate portrayal of incarcerated women than the stereotypes on TV, movies and in the general media. “Because of this class...those stereotypes are gone.”

Carmen Heider with the students of the 2012 Inside-Out Prison Exchange class at Taycheedah Correctional Institution.

In this audio-only podcast, Carmen Heider tells why she teaches. Podcast produced by student features reporter Noell Dickmann.

Lessons Learned

Heider’s students at Taycheedah Correctional Institution won’t forget the lessons learned during the semester. At the closing ceremony, there was plenty of laughter and a palpable sense of camaraderie. The students knew the rules from Day 1–—no telling each other’s backstory, no sharing of crimes and misdemeanors, no last names. These restrictions allowed the students to feel free of the labels that unjustly define them.

While the students were friendly, there was a no hugging rule, even on the last day (though one “Outside” student managed to sneak in a few when no one was looking).
The “Outside” students said they gained a new perspective on the people behind the prison walls. The “Inside” students of the spring 2012 class said they felt encouraged and empowered.

“The most rewarding part about the class is to be able to feel like a human being,” said Enna, one “Inside” student.

Another “Inside” student echoed that sentiment. “It’s the one day a week I didn’t feel incarcerated,” Amy said. “I would be ecstatic the rest of the day after class.”

“Inside” student Ana noted Heider’s dedication - not just to the program, but to the content too. “She has this inner passion and fire,” she said. “She’s really devoted to what she does and that translates when she speaks.”

“Outside” student Nicole said she felt so inspired after completing the course with Heider that she decided to major in criminal justice. She hopes to some day work in a women’s prison.
Upon hearing those words, Heider beamed with pride. “This,” she said after the ceremony, “is why I do what I do.”

Since 2000, Heider has been teaching in the Department of Communication at UW Oshkosh. She is the author of numerous publications on women’s studies and rhetoric, and has received awards for her teaching including the 2005–2006 Wisconsin Teaching Fellow and the 2011 College of Letters and Science Community Engagement Award.

Tiny Town, Big World

Heider grew up in the town of Deshler, Neb. Her father was a livestock and crop farmer, her mother, a former elementary school teacher who left the profession to raise two daughters. The town’s population of about a thousand meant the farmer’s daughter was always finding ways to keep herself amused.

“I was outside a lot when I was little,” said Heider, who remembers building frog houses along a nearby creek and exploring the land with her dog. “My mom always said that I was good at entertaining myself.”
Heider learned at an early age that there was a big world outside her little hometown. She had the urge to see all of it–a trait inherited and nourished by her mother through family trips. She remembers one learning experience when she was about 10 years old, on a trip to Mesa Verde, Colo. The cliff dwellings of the Anasazi people there showed an entirely different way of life to Heider.

Every other year the family would travel to Colorado to see relatives; the years in between they would visit somewhere else, often national parks. “I think that sparked a lot of my curiosity,” Heider said. “Just learning about different things, seeing different things and realizing that not everybody lives the way we do in Deshler, Nebraska.”

Heider was a good student in high school, a social student, but a serious student nonetheless. She always enjoyed reading and analyzing different things, and she excelled in her English classes. One English teacher, Jeanne Weiner, introduced Heider to symbols through George Orwell’s Animal Farm. “I still have my notes from the class that I took with her,” she said. 

Hooked on Rhetoric

Her interest in symbols would further ignite into rhetoric when Heider became a student at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, majoring in speech communication and journalism. An undergraduate course required her to read The Language of Oppression by Haig A. Bosmajian, and Heider was hooked on rhetoric ever since. “It changed the way I thought about words,” Heider said of the book.

Her eyes burn with excitement as she explains the topic of rhetoric, which she said has two parts. First, symbols such as language, images and names make up the world. Second, rhetoric is designed to understand how these symbols function, how we make sense of the world through them.
Heider also took part in forensics throughout college. She did informative speaking, persuasive speaking and communication analysis, but her best event was after-dinner speaking. “It was humorous speaking and I talked about my hometown, Deshler,” Heider said with a laugh.

For the after-dinner speech Heider often used the hometown newspaper, the Deshler Rustler, as fodder, especially a section that highlighted important events in the town’s history. One headline from the past read, “The wholesale grocery company received a cart of bananas on Wednesday and a cart of grapes on Saturday.” Another headline from 1986 read, “Just what is a wild boar?”

“The overall point was that small, rural towns actually can be interesting places to live,” Heider said.

After graduating from UN–Lincoln in 1987, Heider worked for a few years at a bank doing collections and at a newspaper creating advertisements. It was during this time that she realized she wasn’t really doing what she wanted. “I felt like I wasn’t learning enough,” she said. “I missed being in the classroom.”

Her longing to learn propelled Heider to apply at a new master’s program in speech communication at Texas A&M University. Right away she knew she had made the right move. “I loved being able to spend my time reading the articles that were required for the class, writing the papers and just learning about things in more depth,” said Heider, who earned her master’s degree in 1993.

Her renewed enjoyment of the classroom made her start thinking about pursuing a career in academia. “It just seemed like a good fit,” said Heider, who then went on to Pennsylvania State University for her doctorate in speech communication, which she received in 2000. Heider started teaching at UW Oshkosh the
same year.

Learning Abroad

Heider has been teaching at UW Oshkosh for more than a decade, but has yet to grow tired of it. She stays enthusiastic by not limiting the learning to the four walls of a classroom. She has led several study abroad trips to Greece and Tanzania. “We can learn inside the classroom, but I think we can learn a lot of things outside of the classroom too,” Heider said. “The travel experiences or going to a prison can be really phenomenal ways to learn the subject matter in less traditional ways.”

The Tanzania trip is a journey that takes her students more than 8,000 miles from home–away from running water, away from people who speak English, away from comfortable homes and people who wear shoes. In Tanzania, the students are thrown into a desert of poverty, where lions and tigers roam free, where houses are made of sticks, where people get their dinner by a bow-and-arrow and where naked, starving orphans are covered in flies.

Well, not quite. Such misconceptions are exactly why Heider brings her students to the East African country.

While Tanzania does have its problems, Heider said, UW Oshkosh students can see first-hand how the people address them despite a lack of resources. During the three-week study abroad program, students saw the Tanzanians practice AIDS education, engage in a grass-roots fair-trade movement and observed local women learning trades to become self-sufficient.

Heider recalls an especially touching moment during the January 2012 trip to Tanzania. During a session with a local group of women in a very poor area of the country, the study abroad group learned how to hand-weave baskets. Even though the two groups of people faced a challenge–the Tanzanian women did not speak English and the UW Oshkosh students did not speak the local language of Swahili–they found a way to communicate with each another. “It was magical,” Heider said. “We connected, and that was really powerful.”

Even Heider was caught up in the moment; she purposely over-paid for a hand-made necklace and through a translator told the seller, who tried to give her the change, to “just keep it.” The woman was beyond grateful. “The expression on her face was like she had won the lottery and it was 11,000 shillings, which is probably $8,” Heider said. “I will never forget that.”

Carmen Heider in Tanzania with UW Oshkosh instructor Liz Cannon, Ph.D., and a local student from Tanzania.

In this audio-only podcast, Carmen Heider tells why she encourages students to study abroad. Podcast produced by student features reporter Noell Dickmann.

Expanding Worlds

Whether it’s traveling, researching or diving into stereotypes, exploration spreads to every aspect of Heider’s life. Her husband Paul Czisny, a self-employed attorney, shares her passion. In the summer the two head southwest for hiking expeditions.

From getting married in 2004 at Yellowstone National Park to hiking the Grand Canyon rim to rim, to the top of Mount Elbert (the highest point in Colorado), they can be found outdoors where the rocks are red and the mountain peaks scrape the sky.

While retirement is a ways off, they do share a dream of joining the Peace Corps together. “Being immersed in another culture for two years would be a powerful experience,” she said. “It would enrich my teaching and my research too.”

For now, Heider is happy researching, teaching and expanding her students’ worlds. “I hope I can help students step back and see things from multiple perspectives, and I hope that I can help students understand the importance of asking the “why” questions,” she said.

Heider has climbed part of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania; she has seen the struggles of society both in America and abroad. She has seen the good and the bad, and all that is in between the two, and has learned that people everywhere are typically more similar than different.

She said it is critical that students leave her courses with a broader understanding of the role that language and symbols play in shaping identities and communities.

“I hope students learn that language has consequences, and that those who have the power to control language also have the power to direct our attention and actions in certain ways,” she said. “However, if we change the language, we can change how we think, and sometimes, how we act.”

by Samantha Anderson and
Brittany Lemmenes, Student Features Reporters

Teaching Through Stories

Michelle Kuhl is fired up. On this day, she is faced with this challenge: make Coming of Age in Mississippi, a 1968 memoir by Anne Moody about her life as an African American girl growing up in Mississippi, relevant to her students in this time, in this place.

She turns to the students in her African American History class, which is glaringly homogenous, and asks, “Is there a black experience, or is it unique to the individual?” The students divide into groups to dissect her question, and Kuhl works the room, making sure that each cluster is on track. She listens in, sometimes jumping in with a counter argument that gives the students pause.

One group ties the question to educational experiences. They share stories about their school life when they were kids. One girl talks about her small, rural, predominantly white school. Another, who went through the Milwaukee school system, shares the struggle he faced going to an overcrowded but terribly underfunded school. The teachers, he says, were overwhelmed and unequipped to control the students.

The 90-minute class started with a story about a black girl in Mississippi, but it ended as a conscious race experience. For Kuhl, the story served as a vehicle to get her students to think, to process and see life through different lenses.

Kuhl, an associate professor of history at UW Oshkosh, teaches through story. Whether it’s about the American Revolution or the backstory of unions during the Industrialization Age, her students learn history through her stories.

Kuhl’s storytelling ability runs in the family. Her father, Paul, a history professor, exposed Kuhl and her two siblings to educational opportunities, like trips to museums. Her mother, Sarah, was a kindergarten teacher and a natural storyteller.

Her mother would regal her with tales of growing up in Wichita Falls, Texas. Then she’d let her daughter take center stage so she could tell a story of her own. “That had a lot of influence on me,” Kuhl says. “I think that prepared me to be a history professor in a great way—that I spend a lot of my days telling stories.”

Kuhl took an interest in history at a young age, though she wouldn’t realize her true love for the subject until her college years. Her favorite book in second-grade was a biography of Harriet Tubman. She liked the adventure of the story: a slave woman who escaped from her owners, but risked her life many times by returning to slave country to rescue others. “I liked learning about injustice and overcoming it,” Kuhl says.

Michelle Kuhl converses with students in a discussion group during class.

In this audio-only podcast, Michelle Kuhl talks about how she responds to students who say history is boring. Podcast produced by student features reporter Noell Dickmann.

Kuhl grew up in Pfafftown, N.C., a town situated outside the larger Winston-Salem, a major producer in North Carolina’s cigarette industry. As a kid, field trips for Kuhl involved going to a cigarette factory, much like kids in Wisconsin go to dairy farms. She recalls going to the RJ Reynolds Co., which manufactured the iconic Camel cigarettes, and petting the life-sized camel made out of tobacco leaves in the company’s lobby. “They’d hand out packs of cigarettes to the kids as a parting gift and say, ‘Now remember, this is for your parents,’” she says with a laugh.

As a young girl, Kuhl realized that not all people were treated the same. When she was 6 and raised as a good Catholic, she declared at Sunday school that she wanted to be a priest when she grew up. The nuns were horrified and suggested she be a nun instead. Kuhl didn’t much like that idea. “I thought, ‘Who wants to be a nun?’”

She was constantly told she couldn’t do such things because she was a girl and given messages that a girl’s self-worth is related to her appearance. As a self-described organic feminist, she was never interested in the culture of waking up an hour early to do her hair and makeup like other girls in the 1970s. She never hid the fact that she was smart and didn’t understand why other girls at school did. In high school Kuhl joined the marching band and debate club and took accelerated classes. “I think I could win an award for nerd,” Kuhl laughs again.

Growing up in North Carolina also exposed Kuhl to racial issues as the state was in the middle of transitioning to integration. She rode one of the integrated school buses in the area, a bus driven by a high school student as part of his driver’s ed class. On this bus were students in both middle and high school, some of who claimed they were proud members of the KKK.

During one of the 40-minute rides to school, Kuhl, then 10, saw a group of white boys from the back of the bus hanging out the window, hollering and harassing a black woman and her teenage son as he went to get on the bus. The mother was so upset that she pointed a shotgun at them, which made the boys laugh harder.

“I remember thinking, ‘This is strange,’” Kuhl says. “I wasn’t scared of her... I was always more scared of the white boys.”

Women and History

Like many college students, Kuhl didn’t know what she wanted to do when she started at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, so she dipped into a variety of subjects she liked, collecting course credits across the board.

Sophomore year she took a U.S. Women’s History class that completely changed how she looked at the world. Finally she was given insight to the strange and confusing situations of her youth. In that class, Kuhl learned about how women had been in a subordinate position and was impressed by how they got out of it. She was hungry to learn more. “It helped me understand my life and the world around me,” Kuhl says. “It just helped make so many things make sense to me.”

By the time she was a junior she realized that she was accumulating more history credits than any other subject. She felt the same connection and clarity taking history classes she had felt that sophomore year. She became a history major.

At that time, North Carolina State did not have a women’s studies program. Undeterred, Kuhl created her own informal women’s studies degree. She did so by relating papers and projects to a feminist perspective. After graduating from North Carolina State University in 1991 with a bachelor’s in history, Kuhl was still uncertain on what path to take. She wandered for a while, staying with relatives in Texas for a year, then headed back to North Carolina. Back in Raleigh, she worked her way up in a catering business she’d been at throughout college. But after a while, catering wasn’t cutting it. “I missed the world of ideas,” Kuhl says. “And I missed thinking about how the world worked, and reading books about ideas.”

In order to fulfill her desire for intellectual discovery, Kuhl enrolled in graduate school at the State University of New York at Binghamton, and pursued studies in American History. By that point Kuhl knew she wanted to be a historian, and she chose to become a history professor. She received her master’s degree in 1995 and continued on there for her doctorate.

After she received her doctorate in 2004, Kuhl wrote many essays, including one that was published in Interconnections: Gender and Race in American History by Carol Faulkner and Alison Parker. She is currently working on a book about the anti-lynching movement called Manly Martyrs: African Americans and the Anti-Lynching Battle.

In Manly Martyrs, Kuhl wants to know how African Americans dealt with lynching. How did they experience, fight against and overcome it? “I think secretly I was hoping to find a story about women saving the day,” Kuhl says, “and though women were important in the struggle, I got more interested in questions of how manhood was being defined.”

Kuhl began teaching at UW Oshkosh in 2004 after she was a visiting professor at Utica College in New York and the University of Texas at Dallas. Had she been asked as an undergraduate, Kuhl would not have wanted to go into teaching. She was more ambitious than that, or so she thought, at the time. Now, she appreciates the profession. “I think being a teacher is very ambitious,” she says. “You’re trying to shape people’s minds and teach them to think, so I have more respect for the profession now and see teaching as something that’s hard to do.”

She finds value in the dual roles that she plays—as a researcher and writer while alone, and that of a thought-provoking, idea-bouncer while in the classroom. “I really like that energy and that dynamic,” she says.

Plus, she is now able to find answers to all of the questions that have plagued her throughout life, especially from a feminist perspective. The life of a professor, however, is not always easy. Sometimes nobody reads the research that took months to complete, write about and publish. Sometimes students just don’t care about class. That’s why Kuhl has what she calls her “insurance against despair.”

On her University website page is a quote from John Hope Franklin, a renowned U.S. historian and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Honor, that serves as a reminder that all the work is worth it.
“I would only add that when one begins a poem, a hymn, a short story, or even a history, one must be optimistic about its completion and about what it seeks to teach. If one believes in the power of his own words and in the words of others, one must also hope and believe that the world will be a better place by our having spoken or written those words.”

Knowledge and Wisdom

After teaching for 13 years, Kuhl knows her goal when she faces a new group of students each semester. She wants them to come away with a combination of knowledge and wisdom.

In her mind, knowledge is timely, but wisdom is timeless. She says studying history exercises the mind in such a way that you have to think critically. “You have to imagine choices people have made, you have to think about a really different world, you have to look for patterns and evidence,” Kuhl says. “That kind of practice of doing history can create wisdom.”

But wisdom is not easily gained, and neither is an A in Kuhl’s classes, so she does her best to show students their work pays off in the long run. “I try to show students that it’s a process, it’s not just memorizing facts,” she says. “It’s not just one damn thing after another.”
She pauses. “History is making sense of what we know, and that’s more like a puzzle. There’s no right answer; everyone has to make sense of the past on their own terms.”

Michelle Kuhl challenges students during a small group discussion.

In this audio-only podcast, Michelle Kuhl tells a story about her favorite historical person. Pdcast produced by student features reporter Noell Dickmann.

According to her students, Kuhl’s lessons have lasting effects. Journalism major Brittany Farrell left Kuhl’s class still thinking about what they had discussed minutes before. “I found the knowledge that Dr. Kuhl opened up to me carries into my personal life and guides me on certain issues outside of school,” Farrell said.

Jasmine Draxler, a history major, appreciated Kuhl’s vast knowledge about the subject of the class. “She really excels in teaching details about African Americans,” Draxler said. “More than what you would learn from a survey.”

In a recent student opinion survey, a student wrote, “Kuhl got me really interested in history. I wanted to do the homework. Helped me decide to get a history minor.”

But not all of Kuhl’s students are as enthusiastic about history. She teaches 120 students in two sections of her history survey class. At the beginning of each semester, she asks them how many students are taking the class because they love history, and how many are there only to fulfill a general education requirement.
Only a handful of students raise their hands for “love history.” “So I’m faced with four to six history fans, and over 100 people who just want to trudge through the course,” Kuhl says.

It’s a struggle to get students to care about history, but she finds fun ways to help them learn, like through song. Students often get confused about the Federalist, Anti-Federalist, and Jeffersonian political factions, so she asks them to pick a theme song that best represents the ideals of each and they sing them in class.
“I think if people are willing to sing ‘Eye of the Tiger’ to represent the Federalists, or ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ to represent the Jeffersonians, then students feel my classroom is a safe environment to do something risky for the sake of learning,” Kuhl says.

Kuhl’s colleagues sing her praises. Kim Rivers, professor and chair for the history department, has worked with Kuhl for years and enjoys the directness of her associate. “Michelle is a dedicated teacher and scholar who always exhibits professionalism in the classroom and in the department,” Rivers said.

Stephen Kercher, associate history professor, admires the versatility in which Kuhl can teach a wide range of courses. “I’ve had the privilege of watching her teach, and it’s fair to say that she inspires envy with the way she relates to her students,” Kercher said. 

History Lessons

Kuhl’s love of history is felt as strongly as home as it is as work. Her husband, Jeff Pickron, is a historian and lecturer at UW Oshkosh. Together they have two daughters: Clio, 10, and Eliza, 5.  “I think we bore our children to death,” Kuhl laughs. “When we watch the news we contextualize everything. If they ask us questions such as why people wear shoes, we start back in ancient history and give them the history of shoes.”

As for her teaching, she finds her greatest rewards from students who develop a true appreciation for history. She recalls one student who told her at a history club function how much he hated her class, how she gave too much work and how she was too hard on the students.

“Then he said when he was studying for the final exam, he realized he loved the class, that he learned and understood so much,” she says.

Kuhl is happy when her students appreciate the lessons they learn in the time spent with her. She hopes they learn one more lesson, too. “Instead of accepting the world around them as inevitable and natural, they’ll realize the world constantly changes,” she says, “and it changes because people with visions shape the world according to their visions.”

Her wish for her students? “Maybe our students will roll up their sleeves and work to remake the world according to their visions.”

Student Assistant Features Editor Noell Dickmann also contributed to this report.

finding inspiration

Frost fogged the windows of the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh Nursing Education building, where Dr. Patricia Scanlan, her graduate students, 10 children from 1st–4th grade and their parents were gathered for a celebration of literacy.

It may have been under 20 degrees outside, but inside, the warmth was felt as the elementary-aged students took turns reading aloud to the 30 or so people there. Each younger student was paired with a graduate student, who is working toward a master’s degree in Reading Education. For 13 weeks, they’ve spent time together exploring the world of reading and writing. Many of the elementary students had been reluctant readers, but you couldn’t tell from their smiling faces.

As she scanned the room, Scanlan’s eyes rested on the next reader, a boy named Tyler. Only 13 weeks earlier, Tyler avoiding reading. It was his least favorite part of the school day.

She looked at the third-grader, whose knees bounced up-down-up-down-up-down in anticipation for this next big step. He took his tutor by the hand, graduate student Lisa LeRoy, and together they faced the crowd.
Tyler opened his book, smiled and read the title: Looking at X-Rays. The boy looked up shyly, and turned the book so his audience could see the photographs showing X-ray pictures of a hand, a foot, and a mouthful of teeth. “Look at the hand.  Look at the foot. Look at the teeth.” He continued confidently to the last page.

As soon as he finished reading, he closed the book, grinning, soaking up the applause.

Scanlan looked on proudly. She caught LeRoy’s eye and they too exchanged smiles. They knew how big a feat that was for the young reader. He wasn’t required to read that night. None of the young students had to. He and the others all chose to. Scanlan flashed back to what Tyler said to his tutor as they wrapped up the semester. The boy exclaimed, “I love reading! I don’t have to be done, do I?”

Scanlan, an associate professor in the UW Oshkosh College of Education and Human Services, treasures such moments. “These are the rewards of teaching,” she said of that moment. “It just doesn’t get any better.”

Patricia Scanlan chats with a student and a graduate student tutor.

In this audio-only podcast, Patricia Scanlan talks about what attracted her to the field of teaching. Podcast produced by student features reporter Noell Dickmann.

The Principal’s Daughter

Scanlan grew up in Preston, Minn., a city of 1,500. The only child of two educators, one of whom became her high school principal, Scanlan spent much of her young life resisting the idea of becoming a teacher herself. “My reluctance to follow in my parents’ footsteps was more my attempt at ‘being my own person’ than it was anything else,” Scanlan said. “My mom and dad were fairly protective, and I wanted the freedom to do my own thing. However, I really had no idea what  ‘my own thing’ was.”

In junior high after reading a series of books, Clara Barton Student Nurse, Scanlan toyed with the idea of being a nurse–nursing and teaching were two popular options for college-bound girls at that time–but quickly abandoned that idea because of two reasons. “My gag reflex is pretty sensitive and I panic in situations that even hint of medical emergency,” she said, adding, “I was probably more drawn to Clara Barton’s love life than her work as a nurse.”

Scanlan credits her mother for instilling a lifelong love for reading. When she was in grade school, Scanlan had to read a minimum of 20 minutes every day during the summer. For young Scanlan, reading, prior to that summer, meant being placed in an average reading group, answering questions at the end of a story, and completing workbook pages. Nothing too exciting.

Something happened during that summer of reading. “The fact that what I was reading was supposed to make sense and communicate a message wasn’t something I learned until I discovered it on my own,” she said. “It was then that I found myself immersed in a book, unaware of the time and enjoying the story.”
As the principal’s daughter Scanlan felt, at times, as if she lived in a glass house. “It’s a small town, everyone knew the family, and I was the principal’s kid,” she said, adding that she was a student who was good at “doing school.”

Two high school teachers, however, forged her growing love for reading, and, in some ways, teaching.
Her English teacher, Mrs. Elsie Husom, assigned the students to read a book of their choice and then present it to the class. Scanlan and a friend read To Sir With Love by E.R. Braithwaite. Scanlan played the song of the same title sung by Lulu on a vinyl record. She and her partner used the music as an interlude between parts of the story that they acted out. Their presentation received raves from the class.

Another teacher, Mr. Frank Jaszewski, who taught U.S. History, challenged her and the students to speak with authority on a current event issue. “I remember talking against the death penalty, and feeling quite brave about it,” she said. “I know Mr. Jaszewski was for the death penalty. I didn’t care. I respected Mr. J., and I trusted he would respect my ideas. I think I got an A, or maybe an A-, on the assignment.”

While those two teachers gave Scanlan positive learning experiences, she points to her parents as the ultimate paradigm for educators. “Despite my resistance, I think I am a teacher because of my parents,” she says. “Perhaps it’s a gift I inherited from them–maybe it’s even in my DNA.”

Learning to Teach

Scanlan left Preston to attend the College of St. Teresa in Winona, Minn., about an hour away from home. After earning her elementary teaching degree, she spent 12 years teaching in Catholic schools in central Minnesota. She earned her master’s in Curriculum and Instruction at St. Cloud State University and her Ph.D. at the University of Iowa. (It was at Iowa where she met future husband Michael Ford, then also a doctoral student in education. Ford is a Reading Education professor at UW Oshkosh. They are parents of Vladimer and Pavel, both 21.)

Scanlan’s first position as a teacher educator was at Mankato State University in Minnesota. After a couple of years, she went to UW–La Crosse where she taught for five years and earned tenure. Then in 1995, she joined the Reading Education faculty at UW Oshkosh where she earned tenure for the second time. Currently, Scanlan teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in reading education.

Scanlan with children from the reading program.

In this audio-only podcast, Patricia Scanlan explains why she teaches. Podcast produced by student features reporter Noell Dickmann.

The Fox Valley Writing Project

When Scanlan is not teaching future teachers, she is teaching and collaborating with teachers as the director of the Oshkosh-based Fox Valley Writing Project, which offers professional development for teachers of writing as well as leadership development for educators. This is done through summer seminars, radio broadcasts, outreach programs and meetings. The Writing Project, which is housed in the College of Education and Human Services, also hosts young writers programs.

The Fox Valley Writing Project began in 1986 as an affiliate of the National Writing Project, a collaborative network that empowers teachers to grow as writers, teachers and leaders. Nationwide, there are 200 such projects; the Oshkosh campus site is one of four in the state of Wisconsin.

Scanlan believes that the field of education is always in a state of change. To address such changes, teachers must be constantly learning, Scanlan said. Her position as the director fits in perfectly with this philosophy.

“I appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with the best K-12 teachers in the Valley,” she said. “My work is always new. It gives me ongoing opportunities to study teaching, to discuss professional reading, and to write about my own experiences and practice.”

Scanlan renews her passion for teaching each time she works with teachers at the Writing Project events. “That knowledge and teacher expertise is valued,” she said. “We have a lot to learn from each other whether we are elementary teachers, or whether we’re middle school teachers or whether we’re high school teachers.”

The centerpiece of the Writing Project work is the Invitational Summer Institute, a six-credit course in which teachers become part of a professional learning community, where they write every day, read professional literature, and inquires into their own practices. “Writing Project work is about problem-solving,” she said. “It’s about asking questions; it’s about inquiry.”

Through the Writing Project, teachers can solicit help from peers about teaching challenges or curriculum changes. “Teachers are asking how they can do something differently or do something better,” Scanlan said. “We’re always in the process of supporting one another and learning from one another.”

Growing Lifelong Readers

Once a week Scanlan and her Reading 410 students head to Webster Stanley Elementary School to participate in the Lighted School House Program, which matches future teachers with elementary students for an hour. During that time they read together and play word games. “Our goal for the elementary children is to have enjoyable, individualized reading and writing experiences that enable them to take on new learning,” Scanlan said. “Our goal for the college students is to provide them with the opportunity to apply their knowledge of assessing children’s literacy development and to use the results of those assessments to plan appropriate instruction.”

Program coordinator Kaytie Storms at Webster Stanley is a big fan of Scanlan and her students’ work with the kids. “They’re gaining the experience as future teachers and our students benefit because they get extra help with school that they can’t get during the school day,” Storms said.

At each tutoring session, which is held at the school’s library, Scanlan spends her time circulating among the clusters. At one table, Scanlan watched her student work with the younger child as they took turns reading aloud. After the younger student rushed through her section, Scanlan smiled and said, “Try it again. Take your time.”

UW Oshkosh student Jill Berens sat with a kindergartner reading I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen. After Berens and the young girl finished reading, they practiced writing sentences using the words they read in the book and then wrote the sentences on paper hats. Scanlan approved, saying, “Jill was still teaching her, but she was using a fun activity to do so.”

Scanlan works next to an elementary student and her gradute student tutor.

In this audio-only podcast, Patricia Scanlan tells what she hopes students take away from her classes. Podcast produced by student features reporter Noell Dickmann.

Scanlan’s own teaching experience spanned grade-school kids to adult professionals, however she believes teaching is teaching regardless of the student’s age. “Teaching means, first of all, knowing the students–both what they can do and what they are on the brink of learning–and then providing them the support that is needed to take on new learning,” she said, adding that support can come in the form of resources, the modeling/demonstrations, the coaching, the assignments, etc. “The thing that’s especially exciting about teaching adults who are tutoring children, however, is that it’s possible to observe a parallel learning process. The adult learns and that results in the child’s learning. It’s simply amazing.”

Growing Lifelong Learners

As an educator Scanlan wishes the same thing of all of her students. “I want my students to leave my courses with the sense of the importance of literacy in their own lives, and also with the knowledge that they are lifelong learners,” she said. “Once we allow ourselves to stop learning, we inevitably lose our effectiveness as teachers.”

Student Tyler Demeny has put many of Scanlan’s lessons into his teaching practice. “Dr. Scanlan has also taught me the importance of being an approachable teacher,” said Demeny, who is both a general education and a special education major. “She has taught me the importance of talking to and listening to students and showing them I value their feedback, concerns and input.”

Scanlan is heartened when she hears student feedback like that. While she encourages her students, who are new teachers, to be confident in their newly learned skills, she also suggests they temper their confidence with a dash of humility. “I want them to recognize that they still have a lot to learn, and to know that’s OK,” Scanlan said. “Good teachers ask questions, and they are always seeking to do what’s best for kids. That means teachers need to be learners. It doesn’t stop with the baccalaureate degree.”

Student Assistant Features Editor Noell Dickmann also contributed to this report.

The following is the description of his presentation:

This presentation will journey through daily life in some of Nicaragua’s most marginalized communities to show how poverty magnifies the negative impacts of ecological degradation there. Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and ranks among the world’s ten most vulnerable countries to climate change. The narrative nonfiction and photographs shared in this presentation portray a Managua squatter settlement on the shore of one of the world’s most polluted large lakes, as well as a peasant farming community increasingly undermined by years of extreme weather. By documenting how these communities in Nicaragua are affected by pollution and climate change, these essays reveal how ecological degradation and economic inequality gradually and cumulatively combine to make survival increasingly difficult not only for low-income Nicaraguans, but for many of the world’s poor.

 AUDIO-ONLY PODCAST

The following are essays by Dr. Haynes about his Nicaragua experiences. His students from his ES 390: Special Topics: Telling True Stories of Community Development in Nicaragua course also produced a magazine of essays and photos called Building Bridges Between Nicaragua & Wisconsin. The entire magazine is available in PDF format.

The Lake at the Bottom of the Bottom

By Douglas Haynes

It's 8 a.m. in The Bottom, and the sun already feels like a flashlight in my eyes. A guardabarranco, Nicaragua's national bird, flicks its two-pronged tail feathers on the jury-rigged power line behind Edda Montes's house of scrap wood, sheet metal, and concrete blocks. The sun glints off the bird's iridescent blues and oranges. It has a panoramic view of Lake Xolotlán: high enough to see the pale-green water stretch toward dusky mountains but too low to see the deltas of drainage ditches pocked with plastic bottles and unpaired shoes just below the knoll Edda's house sits on…

A Peaceful Nicaraguan Election Brings a Mandate for Sandinista Social Programs

By Douglas Haynes  

At 3 a.m. on election day in Nicaragua, an elderly woman emerged from the dark streets of Managua’s Barrio La Primavera and planted a plastic chair in front of the Alfonso Cortés elementary school, then went home to take a shower. She wanted to be the first to vote when the polls there opened at 7 a.m. Two men walking slowly with canes arrived just after her, saying, “The Sandinistas are here to vote first…”

Storms Without Names

Climate Change Wreaking Havoc in Central America

By Douglas Haynes

“It’s worth it to come up here to drink a cafecito and meditate on the world, maybe write a poem,” Evenor Malespín told me on top of San Pedro de Carazo, Nicaragua’s highest hill. “Or even eat a carne asada.” Malespín has three bony, chestnut-colored milk cows, but subsistence farmers such as him can rarely afford to eat beef…

‘Friends of Nicaragua’ share cultural journey

By Emily Miels

A group of UW Oshkosh students sold coffee outside of Reeve Memorial Union on Wednesday to raise money for the non-profit “Compas de Nicaragua” and raise awareness about the hardships and poverty in Nicaragua…

Study Abroad Photos by Liz Granberg.

To access the host organization in Nicaragua, The Compas de Nicaragua, website:

Leaving Dinosaur Prints

Like any budding artist, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh senior Ryan Steiskal had always hoped his artwork would someday gain widespread attention, but he never expected it would happen within the course of his college career.

A fortuitous encounter with a professor resulted in Steiskal’s artwork being featured on the Discovery Channel website, MSNBC and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

While on campus over summer, Steiskal ran into art professor Gail Panske and showed her some of the pieces he’d been working on. Little did he know, Panske knew another professor who was looking for an art student to create dinosaur illustrations for a paleontological study on dinosaur behavior. 

Panske recommended Steiskal to Dr. Joseph Peterson, assistant professor in the geology department. Peterson could have gone to a professional dinosaur artist, or paleo-artist, but he wanted this art project to be a learning experience, not just another gig for the illustrator. “I wanted someone who would learn from the science, and then put those facts into their work,” Peterson said. 

When creating dinosaur illustrations, or paleo-art, paleo-artists rely on what is known to science to frame their reconstructions, and then they add their own touches to bring the animals to life, Peterson said. But he felt for this particular dinosaur, the pachycephalosaurus, which had only been known to science through fossils, the artist should be someone who didn’t have any previous experience.

Steiskal started the project not with pen and paper, but with a camera. He studied fossils and casts and took many pictures of them, then used his imagination to fill in the blanks, he said. “It feels like you’re almost working for a CSI,” Steiskal said.

Two pachycephalosaurs hitting heads, created by Ryan Steiskal.

The first illustration of two pachycephalosaurs crashing into each others’ heads was finished over the span of a few days. Peterson was blown away at how well the artwork demonstrated the results of his study.

When he got the image, Peterson immediately contacted his co-author, student Collin Dischler, who is a senior studying geology at UW Oshkosh, and said, “Ryan did it.THIS is how pachycephalosaurs used their heads!”

As a professional in the paleontology field, Peterson has high hopes for Steiskal’s work. “My hope is that this will give Ryan and his talents the attention they deserve, and that the work he is producing for us will be the image scientists see when they think of dinosaurs such as pachycephalosaurs,” Peterson said.

The illustration was shown at the UW Oshkosh Dean’s Symposium in September, where Peterson was a featured speaker, and showcased in Raleigh, N.C., where Peterson’s study was featured Oct. 17 at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP).

Next it will be submitted for peer-review and publication to the scientific journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica and last - but certainly not least - the Discovery Channel, which features a story and the artwork on its news website, Discovery News.

Peterson said The Discovery News article has been picked up by a variety of other news outlets worldwide, including MSNBC and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and Steiskal's artwork is featured in all versions of the article.

Peterson’s research has also been featured in Nature News, Scientific American and others.

Jennifer Viegas, the reporter for Discovery News who wrote the article featuring Steiskal’s artwork, was impressed with the drawings . “The image has a unique 3D quality to it, given the angles of the dinosaurs' bodies,” Viegas said. “That makes it even more compelling.”

Steiskal had no idea his drawings would garner such attention and is gratified to have had the opportunity to showcase his skills.  “I feel like I’m transitioning from the art student to a professional,” Steiskal said.

Two pachycephalosaurs hitting hips, created by Ryan Steiskal

To access the article on Discovery News, please click this link:

http://news.discovery.com/animals/dome-headed-dinosaurs-121017.html

To access the article on MSNBC, please click this link:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49464238/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/dome-headed-dinos-battled-their-heads/

To access the article on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s website, please click this link:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/10/19/3614136.htm

Rifle in hand, gaze unwavering, Greg Gibbons marches in formation for a Veterans Day ceremony, held at the Winnebago County Courthouse. As he marches, his hands, strong and sure, grip the rifle, much as he did 40 years ago when he was a Navy Hospital Corpsman with the Marines. Left. Left. Left, right, left.

Gibbons knows the routine. He is among the newest members of the United Veteran Honor Guard, a unit made up of area veterans that is called to perform military honors to the passing of fellow U.S. veterans or ceremonies such as the one at the courthouse. Since retiring in 2010 from Mercy Medical Center in Oshkosh as a nurse, Gibbons has performed more than a dozen such ceremonies in Winnebago County.

Each ceremony is different, yet the same. Each soldier that he helps honor had once been a vital patriotic American fighting for the country’s freedoms.

Although it has been more than four decades since Gibbons, now 64, had boots on the ground in Vietnam, he can still recall the distinct odor of swamp, sweat and fear.

To download the entire story, please download this PDF.

War: Through Their Eyes, Vol. 2, Warriors & Nurses, a student/faculty multimedia project that focuses on the veterans in the College of Nursing at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Warriors & Nurses are the stories of the students and alumni who have seen war in the jungles of Vietnam to the deserts in the Middle East, and yet have found their way into a field of healing.

To read the entire 80-page book, please download this PDF. Warning, it is a large file.

Most of her co-workers at Mercy Medical Center in Oshkosh, Wis. know of her military background, but they don’t know the nitty-gritty details. They don’t know about the extreme heat under the unforgiving sun. They don’t know about the desert sand and how it gets into everything. Everything. They don’t know about the monotony of patrolling the tower, carrying an M16, and staring for hours into the darkness of the night. They also don’t know about the fear, the fear of an unseen enemy plotting a mortar attack. They just don’t know.

But some of her patients do. Every once in a while, Dixie Berres, a third-shift nurse on the cardiac floor, would come across a fellow veteran. Within minutes, patient and health care worker become quick fans of each other, for they know. They know what each had done for the good of the country.

To read the entire story, please download this PDF.

War: Through Their Eyes, Vol. 2, Warriors & Nurses, a student/faculty multimedia project that focuses on the veterans in the College of Nursing at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Warriors & Nurses are the stories of the students and alumni who have seen war in the jungles of Vietnam to the deserts in the Middle East, and yet have found their way into a field of healing.

To read the entire 80-page book, please download this PDF. Warning, it is a large file.

Denise Parrish smiles broadly as her son Zach pulls up, towing a trailer with a sleek black Polaris snowmobile. Her son had just purchased the vehicle and wanted to show it off.

“Does it go fast?” Parrish asks, almost rhetorically.

Zach, 20, grins. “Not too fast.”

They look at each other and chuckle. Parrish’s heart aches just a bit. As a mother, she just wants what all mothers want, to keep their children safe. Young men and snowmobiles… As a nurse of 15 years at Mercy Medical Center in Oshkosh, Wis., Parrish knows that every winter, eager young snowmobilers will find their way to the emergency room.

She shakes away those thoughts and musters enough enthusiasm for Zach’s newest purchase. She replaces the muted dread with gratitude. She is thankful that Zach can look forward to zooming across the frozen lakes in Wisconsin and hanging out with friends and family.

She is grateful that her son’s 21st year will be nothing like hers—when she was a new mother and a Specialist in the U.S. Army, deployed to a foreign country to fight in a war that she barely understood.

To read the entire story, please download this PDF.

War: Through Their Eyes, Vol. 2, Warriors & Nurses, a student/faculty multimedia project that focuses on the veterans in the College of Nursing at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Warriors & Nurses are the stories of the students and alumni who have seen war in the jungles of Vietnam to the deserts in the Middle East, and yet have found their way into a field of healing.

To read the entire 80-page book, please download this PDF. Warning, it is a large file.

Two mugs filled, froth dangerously close to the rim. He slides the two beers down the bar. “I’ll have another, on the rocks,” a customer says. He prepares another drink, cheerfully chatting with one of the regulars. The Rembrandts’ “I’ll Be There for You,” is playing in the background. It doesn’t matter that John Ackerman used to know all the words. He’s not thinking about singing. The song takes him away from the bar, away from the city of Oshkosh, Wis., and takes him back four years to the Middle East. To a Humvee on a dirt road. Ackerman was deployed in Iraq from February 2007 to April 2008. He is currently a nursing student at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, but it’s simple reminders like this that take him back to a time of triumph and tragedy.

Hearing this song now makes him miss those times. Miss the rush rolling out the gate into a day full of raids, gunfire and the unexpected. It’s difficult to fathom why Ackerman would miss such things. The date was Feb. 14, 2007 when Ackerman took his first step onto Iraqi soil. As he unloaded his gear on the tarmac of Baghdad International Airport, a rocket slammed into a FOB (forward operating base) nearby. Ackerman watched the trail of smoke, exhaust, or whatever, seep into the sky. Boom. Five minutes later, half a mile away, 50-caliber trace rounds skipped off the ground, into the air. Deep, sustained fire. Clink, clink, clink, clink. Ackerman’s battalion was mortared four, maybe five times that night. Welcome to Iraq. Only 14 months, two days left, not that Ackerman was counting.

To read the entire story, please download this PDF.

War: Through Their Eyes, Vol. 2, Warriors & Nurses, a student/faculty multimedia project that focuses on the veterans in the College of Nursing at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Warriors & Nurses are the stories of the students and alumni who have seen war in the jungles of Vietnam to the deserts in the Middle East, and yet have found their way into a field of healing.

To read the entire 80-page book, please download this PDF. Warning, it is a large file.

Will Anderson, 27, sports the uniform of most third-year nursing students—hospital scrubs. He carries with him a sand-colored military issued backpack crammed with back-breaking textbooks. When other students grumble about lugging the bulky textbooks from class to class, Anderson smiles quietly. He knows how good he has it now, because not so long ago, he patrolled the Afghan desert lugging loads of combat gear on his back.

I weighed everything on me once. I’m not a very big guy. If I was out on the ground with my large bag in the truck it would be somewhere around 100 or 110 pounds, which literally doubled my weight.

In the bag, I’d have my vest, my eye protection, my weapon or two—my 9mm and my M16. All of that with the body armor was about 60 pounds. I carried one pack of medical supplies that usually stayed in our truck. I carried things like multiple liters of fluid in case someone was bleeding out, extra tourniquets, a hand suction device, different breathing apparatuses, and various drugs.

To read the entire story, please download this PDF.

War: Through Their Eyes, Vol. 2, Warriors & Nurses, a student/faculty multimedia project that focuses on the veterans in the College of Nursing at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Warriors & Nurses are the stories of the students and alumni who have seen war in the jungles of Vietnam to the deserts in the Middle East, and yet have found their way into a field of healing.

To read the entire 80-page book, please download this PDF. Warning, this is a large file.

scaling mt. trashmore

On this day, James Feldman and his students will 
climb atop Winnebago County’s tallest peak. It isn’t too windy; it’s also not too hot. The students may not appreciate those weather details yet, but Feldman knows, they soon will.

On this day, Feldman is teaching his students a lesson that cannot be replicated in the classroom. He has taken his Campus Sustainability class to the Winnebago County Landfill. “There is no more tangible way to understand the problems that we have with waste management, and the problems that we have with over-consumption than by standing at the top of highest point of Winnebago County,” says Feldman, an associate professor of Environmental Studies and History at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. “This is the tangible place to experience what it means to consume like an American.”

Dr. James Feldman with students at the base of the Winnebago County Landfill.

At the base of the landfill, the students pile into two vans to follow a waste management worker in a pickup truck up and up the mountain of trash, which measures about 135 feet high or as tall as a 12-story building. When they get to the peak, the students, usually a chatty bunch, stand silent, taking in the sight before them—trash and more trash. The lunar-like landscape made up of monochromatic specks of brown stretches across the horizon. Flocks of seagulls search for food among giant bulldozers compressing the ever-growing amount of waste.
Students’ reactions vary from those who turn green, repulsed and unable to stand the stench to those who are excited to how trash is converted into methane gas. But the overall message is clear: The residents of Winnebago County produce a lot of trash.
“Standing on a mountain of trash and seeing all the junk that’s there and smelling the junk, it’s such a powerful experience,” Feldman says. “It’s really an instructive way to spend a class period.”
Since 2004, Feldman has been teaching students to think critically about complex problems that face the world. He is a charter member of the Campus Sustainability Council and co-author of the Campus Sustainability Plan, a comprehensive plan to guide the University’s sustainability initiatives. He is also a 2011 Edward M. Penson Distinguished Teaching Award winner and the author of A Storied Wilderness: The Rewilding the Apostle Islands, which was released in spring 
of 2011. For the school year 2011-2012, Feldman is 
on sabbatical, conducting research on his next 
project—the history and sustainability of radioactive waste management.

History and the Great Outdoors

Born to an attorney and a social worker, Feldman always had an affinity for history and nature. He never lacked ideas for grade school essays because he could always find something to write about relating to either topic. His love for the good earth and all her stories was further cemented when he went to Camp Nebagamon in Northern Wisconsin as a youth. “We would go canoeing and hiking,” he recalls. “I just loved those kinds of trips.”

In this podcast, Dr. James Feldman talks about his book titled "A Storied Wilderness: The Rewilding the Apostle Islands." Produced by Jay Vickery.

While majoring in history at Amherst College in Massachusetts, Feldman returned to Camp Nebagamon every summer as a wilderness trip leader. It was that point he realized he could turn his passion for nature and history into a career. Feldman went to graduate school and earned his master’s degree in history at Utah State. After being awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 1996, he spent 15 months in New Zealand studying environmental history and politics of the island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. His work not only dealt with environmental policy but historical questions as to how a treaty from1840 (Treaty of Waitangi) still affects New Zealand’s indigenous people today. It was in New Zealand that Feldman discovered how he could turn his interest in nature and history into social action. “The work that I did there really convinced me that there was a way to make historical research applicable to modern issues,” says Feldman, who earned his doctorate in American history from UW-Madison.

Lessons from the Past

Students, Feldman says, must study what has transpired to understand what is happening now to the environment. “Students come into the classroom assuming that history is history and doesn’t matter today,” he says.
The students soon learn how wrong their perceptions are. “We are today still wrestling with the same kinds of issues that people wrestled with 20, 50, 80 or 100 or 200 years ago,” Feldman says, adding that in his Environmental History class he challenges his students to look at landscape and cities from a historical perspective. “Why are cities set up the way that they are? Why are streets laid out the way they are?”
Critical examination on the students’ part may lead them to think about how to address current environmental issues. Kaci Worth, an environmental studies major with a minor in history, credits Feldman for making her aware about how the way she lives her life could have great consequences. “Jim stresses the importance of being an involved citizen and makes you think about how your actions impact the world in ways more complex and far-reaching than one would originally imagine,” she says.

Student Kyle Sandmire was so taken by Feldman’s History of the American Wilderness class that he plans to attend graduate school to further his environmental studies. “From Dr. Feldman’s class I learned how to critically analyze historical texts as well as finding connections between wilderness conservation efforts in the past as well present,” he says. “Dr. Feldman inspired me to always take a deeper look into any written claim to best develop my own opinion.”

Going Green: Dr. James Feldman has helped UW Oshkosh become a leader in sustainability.

Feldman thrives on that kind of student feedback. “One of the most exciting things about being a teacher is when you can see that your students are having that kind of A-ha! moment where they are getting it, where they are starting to look at things in a new way because of the things they are learning,” he says. “When I think about what I want my students to take out of my classes, it’s less about specific names and dates and places and much more about the big picture. There are huge problems out there that need to be solved—global warming, industrial agriculture, over-consumption and 
so on.”

Quite simply, Feldman would like his students to think critically, to see relationships among complicated issues. “If we can teach our students to think about how their own behavior and the behavior of their communities, their states, and their countries are fitting into the bigger picture, then we have started down the path toward change, change that will really make a difference,” he says. “We have started down the path toward sustainability.”

More than Being Green

For Feldman, sustainability means a lot more than simply being green or caring about nature. “Being sustainable means recognizing the interconnections between our environmental, social, and economic systems,” he says. “You don’t go to college to learn prescriptive behavior like ‘you should recycle more’ or ‘you should buy organic food.’ Sustainability needs to mean something more. To be sustainable, we need to learn to act in ways that are not just environmental responsible, but also in ways that make our communities socially just and economically secure.”

Trash and More Trashl: Dr. James Feldman near a pile of trash that will soon be put into the landfill.

To that end, Feldman has been a driving force in helping the University be as sustainable as possible. Since 2008, he has co-led three Winnebago Sustainability Projects, which are faculty development workshops to coach colleagues on infusing the concept of sustainability in their courses.

In April 2011, The Princeton Review listed 
UW Oshkosh, for the second year in a row, in its “Guide to 311 Green Colleges,” a spotlight of colleges and universities in the United States and Canada “that demonstrate a strong commitment to sustainability in their academic offerings, campus infrastructure, activities, and career preparation.”
“I think there is no question we are the leader in 
the UW System,” Feldman says of the University’s sustainability initiatives. “I think we are one of the leaders in the country in the sense of the kind of school that 
we are.”
Though Feldman is passionate about sustainability, he is quick to point out his own shortcomings. “It’s easy to walk around and see examples of unsustainable behavior and bad behavior relative to the environment,” he says, adding, “but I have too many things that I have to change about myself for me to start getting judgmental about anybody else.”
One thing Feldman has to contend with is his commute to Oshkosh from his home in Madison where he lives with his wife Chris Taylor, who is an Assemblywoman for the 48th district, and their two young sons, Sam and Ben. “I have a long drive to work and emit carbon to go teach about global warming,” he says wryly. “Until I become perfect, I’m going to keep my soapbox pretty small.”

Raising Hope

Feldman knows he risks leaving his students feeling powerless when confronted with society’s environmental ills. “These are stories about how we have taken this beautiful natural world and just driven it into the ground,” he says. “That’s a bear to teach, and it’s a bear to learn and you can see the students sometimes just getting beaten down.”
Feldman, however, helps his students combat that bleakness with ideas for social action. “I always like to end my classes with at least some discussion about what you can do or what needs to change,” he says.
Feldman, too, is doing his part to make the world a better sustainable place every time he steps into a classroom. “I have a chance to make a difference and 
the most direct way that I feel like I can do that is through my teaching.”

Student reporters Hannah Becker and Nate Cate also contributed to this report.

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