Once upon a time, I had it all figured out.

We were going to be busy and fulfilled.
And we were going to love it, because it would be simple.

And then I found out I didn’t love it.
Didn’t love it, because it wasn’t simple and I couldn’t do it.

I sought answers by looking outside my current lifestyle.
I dusted 2010 off my shoulders and welcomed 2011, leaving two days
later for northwest Haiti, one of the poorest places in the world.

They had friends, family, projects, jobs, schools, extra-curricular
activities. Just like us. But it sure looks different here.

I won’t forget the day I returned. I missed my family
and lacked sleep, but that wasn’t the reason my eyes were
dizzy with all that cluttered my home. It is too much,
too unnecessary to my happiness.

We have great gifts, opportunities here.
But I’ll choose the gift Haiti gave me—
simplicity.

The UW Oshkosh essay project—in collaboration with the national This I Believe public dialog about belief—invites the entire campus community of students, faculty, staff and alumni to participate. To learn more, visit uwosh.edu/go/believe

Hansen worked for 15 years as a creative-type, director, manager and consultant in strategic communication with high-tech and Fortune 500 companies. Today, she teaches courses in public relations, marketing, advertising and social media in the journalism department @uwoshkosh. But more importantly, she teaches her students to be creative and innovative through up-to-date, real-world tools like Twitter.

Preparing her students, whom she politely refers to as “colleagues,” to enter a high-tech and continuously changing job market has always been important to her. Not only does it encourage her to think outside of the box about classroom lessons, but it also teaches her and her students how to be creative in thinking and learning.

“To be competitive, they should know how to use Twitter and how it fits into public relations, advertising and other communication fields,” Hansen said.

And so, Hansen opens her classroom up to the Twittersphere quite regularly and encourages her students to participate in the online conversation—right from their classroom seats—via their mobile phones or computers. Screens at the front of the classroom even provide up-to-the-second lessons as students tweet about class or use the made-for-class hashtag.

Integrating Twitter into her lectures, Hansen said, changed many things. She said it teaches her students about the importance of being transparent in a public scenario, addresses the intimidation factor of using social media tools and encourages students to learn from each other and be creative.

The times—and teaching—are changing, Hansen said.

“The change is happening so fast that it’s really challenging for a traditional academic program to adjust,” she said. “I’m not just doing this for fun. Don’t get me wrong; it is fun, but I guess I’d rather take a chance and give my students the opportunity to experiment … part of using these tools is knowing how to manage yourself online.”

Learn more about Twitter in the classroom from Hansen’s students.

Cluppert ’10, of Markesan, is transforming a life-sized, fiberglass nutcracker into a vision of UW Oshkosh Titan pride in yellow and black.

“As a 2010 graduate of UW Oshkosh, with a bachelor of fine arts in art education and ceramics, my focus for this nutcracker is all about education,” Cluppert wrote in her proposal to Oshkosh’s Nutcrackers on the Town community art project.

UW Oshkosh Alumni Relations is sponsoring Cluppert’s nutcracker design, called “Titan Tools,” which involves a mosaic of “tools” that students at all levels of education need to be successful.

“For example, the keyboard pieces have numbers and letters on them. Teachers give students the opportunity to learn how to put these numbers and letters in order to eventually spell and compose great essays,” she said. “A keyboard also can be associated with the Internet and technology.”

Cluppert’s nutcracker, along with 49 other nutcracker creations, will be displayed around the Oshkosh area during the 2011 holiday season. Look for Titan Tools to appear on campus in front of Pollock Alumni House.

Watch a video of Cluppert transforming the nutcracker.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKd0icIGU9g

Click here to view the embedded video.

Check out the video of Cluppert picking up the nutcracker in Oshkosh last month.  Look for updates on Cluppert’s progress as the art project develops.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In Surface, the Earth’s ozone layer has disintegrated, flooding the planet with deadly radiation and forcing all of humanity into underground “radial shelters.” Completely self-contained, these safe-havens allow for the continuation of humankind. When the power supply of radial shelter 1364 fails, two characters must save their community by ascending to the desolate terrain above.

Students Trent Hilborn ’11, St. Paul, and Mark Mazur ’11, Green Bay, wrote, produced and directed the short film as part of a motion picture workshop in the radio-TV-film department. Surface was filmed over the course of two weekends, with several scenes shot in the basement of the University’s Dempsey Hall. The movie features a cast completely composed of UWO students. Even the idea for the movie came from a UWO experience.

“The initial idea grew out of a science class in which global warming was often discussed,” Hilborn said. “I imagined what the world would be like if the ozone layer completely broke down and where society would be as result of it.”

Fourteen drafts and six months later, Hilborn and classmate Mazur were filming. Surface had its world premier April 23 at Reeve Memorial Union. It has since been featured at film festivals across the United States, including the Venture Film Festival in Ventura, Calif., and the Midwest Sci-Fi Short Film Festival in Bloomington, Minn. It also was an official selection at the Student Academy Awards, an annual competition for college and university film students.

Hilborn credits communication Professor Doug Heil, who led the motion picture workshop, with providing guidance that refined the film’s script.

“We spent a lot of time working with Professor Heil to revise the script over and over and over to make it better and better,” Hilborn said. “Without Doug Heil, the film would not have been nearly as strong.”

“During the production of Surface, Mark and Trent impressed me with their attention to every facet of filmmaking,” Heil said. “Most students excel in a couple of areas, but Mark and Trent did it all: the direction, the cinematography, the performances, the editing and the sound design are all noteworthy.”