“The pitches are located in the cracks between those heard when the piano’s keys are pressed,” Martin explained.

Composed for fellow UW Oshkosh music faculty member Jeri-Mae Astolfi’s new CD, Here (and there): Music for Piano and Electronics on the Innova Recordings label, the vivid work recalls “peaceful moments spent lying in the grass, gazing at cloud formations drifting above. “

For this collaboration, Martin created the composition using computer software. His work was funded by a UW Oshkosh Faculty Development Research Grant.

Astolfi, who performed the piece as part of the University’s elegant Musica Viva! fundraising event held in April, said the composition is fascinating to play because of the unique pitches and the challenge of intertwining the live piano with the recorded sounds emanating from speakers.

She must don an ear piece while performing in order to play accurately with the recorded track.

“The result is a totally different sound spectrum for the audience to experience,” Astolfi said.

Since it was composed in 2012, Astolfi has performed “Swirling Sky” throughout the nation, including at the 2012 National Conference of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States, the 2012 Third Practice Festival and the 2013 National Conference of the Society of Composers.

Hear “Swirling Sky.”

Late last fall, the five UW Oshkosh student storytellers presented their multimedia projects—in-depth stories that got to the heart of what it means to be in a war zone—through the second volume of War: Through Their Eyes, Warriors & Nurses project. Five veterans, who were either current students or alumni of the College of Nursing, were featured.

“This project made me a better storyteller,” said Morgan Counts, a senior studying journalism and economics from Oshkosh.

Counts and her peers worked on the podcasts and written elements in partnership with journalism instructor Grace Lim; the project was not graded, instead done on a volunteer basis.

“This project really opened my eyes to how personal stories can be,” said Noell Dickmann, a senior studying journalism from Jackson, Wis. “The overall experience made me grow and showed me that you always have to support our troops no matter what.”

War: Through Their Eyes, Warriors & Nurses was a collaborative project. Grace Lim coordinated Brian Ledwell, Shawn McAfee and John Beam to work with journalism students Amy Wasnidge ‘12, Brad Beck, Morgan Counts, Nate Cate and Noell Dickmann with additional help on music from Matt Muelling.

Lim, who watched her student writers grow, change and evolve through the months-long interviewing and writing process with countless drafts and rounds of edits, said she’s proud.

“These students signed up for something they weren’t graded on, and they thought it was a cool project,” Lim said. “Of all the student projects I’ve overseen, this was the most gratifying to date.”

The stories were unveiled publicly during Veterans Week at UW Oshkosh and—like all good stories do—will live on for a lifetime through the podcasts and a traditional print publication.

“I’m really proud of everyone who worked so hard on this project to tell the stories of our veterans. It’s cool seeing these types of stories go from an idea to a reality,” Dickmann said.

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.”