Dreamtime and Reality in Tehran
During a layover in the Minneapolis International Airport, Debra Bruch went shawl shopping, just in case.
She was on her first trip to Tehran. To comply with the edict that women cover their heads, the shawl seemed like good insurance.
Bruch, an associate professor of theatre in Michigan Tech's Department of Visual and Performing Arts, was invited to have her paper on the Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime published as part of the International Seminar on Drama and Religion, sponsored by the University of Tehran. The conference reflects the Iranian academic community's effort to engage in global intellectual life. Halfway around the world, it was right up her alley; Bruch edits the Journal of Religion and Theatre and has chaired the Association for Theatre in Higher Education's focus group on the topic.
During the flight to Tehran, she met an Iranian-born American, who counseled that she should definitely wear that shawl. However, when the plane landed, Bruch found herself grappling with the fabric. "Then three Iranian women took it from me and just showed me how to put it on," says Bruch. "Those people are wonderful."
Thus went her entire voyage, seesawing between the oppression of Islamic law and the friendliness of the Iranian people.
She was particularly impressed with Iran's theater, which is alive and well and not vastly different from that in the US. "I was surprised, because of my own prejudice, to learn that Iran has a long history of theater, but not a long history of theater scholarship," says Bruch.
The Iranian faculty, who were trying to jump-start their theater scholarship program to the international community, gave a positive reception to the papers by Bruch and the nine other foreign invitees who attended the conference. Not everyone was so sanguine. "The people who got angry with us foreigners weren't the academics, they were the media," particularly those backing the ruling class of Islamic clerics.
Bruch, who had wondered whether theater in Iran was viewed as a tool to promote religious beliefs, quickly had the matter clarified. "At the conference, somebody said it would be blasphemous to consider religion and art separately."
Everywhere she went, Bruch was treated with warmth and hospitality. But the strain of being a woman under sharia law-remaining covered up, being allowed in public only if escorted by a man-took its toll, as did the hostility toward the concept of an independent art of the theater.
"It was a wonderful and difficult experience," Bruch says. Her friends and family had tried to discourage her from going, citing potential dangers: in Iran, women, including foreigners, can be flogged for baring their heads in public. "But I went because at some point you have to say no to fear and care more about connecting with humanity.
"That's what theater is about, and that's what these people at the University of Tehran were trying to demonstrate: that they want to be connected."
Bruch says she didn't go to Tehran simply as an expert in the relationship between religion and theater.
"I wanted to represent Michigan Tech and my profession," she says. But most of all, "I went as an act of peace."
Forestry PhD Program Ranked Fourth in the US
Michigan Tech’s forestry doctoral program is among the top ten in the nation, according to Academic Analytics. The School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science ranked fourth in the US based on scholarly productivity, a measure of research activity. Academic Analytics developed the rankings by analyzing 2005 data on faculty publications.
“We’re very pleased with the results” said David Reed, provost and vice president for research. “However, I’m not completely surprised. The forestry faculty are exceptionally productive, and they deserve this recognition.” Unlike other ranking organizations, such as US News & World Report, which rely heavily on a graduate programs’ reputation, this index is based solely on measurable criteria.
“We have worked very hard to create an intense and exciting scholarly atmosphere that significantly influences all our educational programs,” said Margaret Gale, dean of the School. “But most of all, we have a very creative group of faculty, staff, and student scholars, and we are extremely proud that their scholarly efforts are being recognized nationally.”
The productivity index ranks 7,294 individual doctoral programs in 104 disciplines at 354 institutions. It also ranks institutions in broader categories, such as the humanities and biological sciences, as well as institutions as a whole. Yale University was first in the forestry category, with Michigan State University the only other Michigan school in the top ten, ranking sixth.
For more information on the Academic Analytics Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index, visit www.academicanalytics.com.
Workin’ on the Railroad
In his overalls and red kerchief, Mike Hill ’64 looks every inch the railroad man as he tells his 140-year-old stories.
Hill is a tourist guide at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento. His specialty is America’s first transcontinental railroad, built between Sacramento and Omaha and ceremonially completed in 1869 at Utah’s Promontory Point.
Hill comes by his avocation honestly. After earning a BS in Business Administration, he followed his father and his brother, Tech alum Gerald Hill, west to California. After a two-year stint with Kaiser Steel, he took a summer job with Western Pacific and parlayed it into a twenty-three-year career. “I was a conductor, a yardmaster, I was in charge of about 250 guys . . . I did almost everything,” he says.
He left Western Pacific more than fifteen years ago, but he still had the railroad in his blood. After twelve weeks of training, he qualified as a volunteer at the museum. These days, he can often be found in the Sierra Scene room, which is devoted to America’s inaugural effort to build a railroad that would link both sides of the continent.
The room includes the Governor Stanford, which was the first locomotive to work on the transcontinental railroad in 1863, and a variety of other exhibits.
“I love the history of the transcontinental railroad,” says Hill, “so I did a lot of research on my own.” For instance, mountain snows can dwarf Upper Peninsula blizzards, so the railroad built thirty-seven miles of wooden snowsheds over the tracks, he explains. They worked great, except when the wood-fired locomotives burned them down, or when snow pushed them over.
In addition to immersing himself in his favorite subject, Hill enjoys meeting people just like himself: railroad nuts. “We get a lot of people from Japan, Australia, and Europe, who travel here just to see the railroad museum,” he says. “It’s world famous.”
If you visit, check out the Sierra Scene. There’s a good chance Hill could be there. “I’m on my way to logging three thousand hours of volunteer time.”
For more on the California State Railroad Museum, visit www.csrmf.org.
Faculty Intramural Hockey Team Completes 21st Season
Sewer Rats Finish 5-1 in Men’s Class C League
Ice hockey may not be the first thing you think of when you hear the term “Sewer Rats.”
For those involved with Michigan Tech intramurals, the two are synonymous.
The Sewer Rats is a team mostly comprised of Tech faculty and staff that plays in the Men’s Class C Intramural League against students one-half their age. According to Tech’s Director of Intramurals Dennis Hagenbuch, the team has been around a long time. “They’ve had a team in the hockey league every year since I’ve been at Tech,” he said. “It’s really impressive how much they get into it.”
Team manager Bob Baillod, a professor in the civil and environmental engineering department, believes his squad began playing in the intramural league in 1986.
The roster is impressive—although probably not for hockey talent. Baillod calls his team “ultra-novice,” and most of them have no other organized playing experience. They’re impressive because of their academic talent. The list of PhDs and titles is seemingly endless. Among the players on the roster are the chair of the civil and environmental engineering department Neil Hutzler, newly appointed dean of the College of Engineering Tim Schulz, and head of the Air Force ROTC department Terrence Sunnarborg.
So what makes this year’s edition of the Sewer Rats special? Besides having a trio of forwards dubbed the “Bicentennial Right Wing” because their combined age is around 200, the answer is success. The squad finished undefeated in the regular season, skating past opponents with an average winning margin of four goals. Joel Tuoriniemi, a lecturer in the School of Business and Economics, was the team’s leading scorer, and Walt Milligan, the University’s chief information officer, served as the team’s goaltender.
With the 5-0 record heading into the playoffs, the Sewer Rats came short of their goal of winning their first intramural championship in twenty-one years of trying. They were knocked off in their first playoff game, losing by a score of 5-4 in a semifinal contest.
Hagenbuch recalls that this may not have been their most successful season. “They’ve made it to the championship game a couple of times.”
Regardless of the outcome, the Sewer Rats and their opponents (nearly all students), are there to have a good time.
“We want to win a championship, but our main goal is to have fun,” said Baillod. “The students get a kick out of playing against a bunch of old guys.”
How about the future? “We’ll keep playing as long as we can, although a couple of us are pondering retirement,” he said. “Two or three of us have been involved from the beginning. Several guys got too good to remain on the team.”
In case you’re still wondering about the relationship between Sewer Rats and hockey, the name came about because many of the team’s original members were from the environmental engineering department instructing water management and wastewater classes.
The Michigan Tech intramural program conducts leagues and tournaments for both men and women in numerous sports. Michigan Tech students, faculty, staff, and employees’ spouses are eligible to participate. For more information, visit www.exsci.mtu.edu/im.
It’s Like Teaching on Isle Royale, But More Remote
Nikki and Steve ’06 Lishinski had trouble landing a job with their newfound teaching degrees. So, they ended up in the middle of the Bering Sea, closer to Siberia than Alaska. The joke must be that, if you can survive Houghton (both were raised here), then you can survive anywhere.
“Pretty much,” Nikki says. “Within two weeks of finding out about the jobs, we were up there.” And up there is the Pribilof Islands of St. Paul and St. George, where Nikki teaches first grade and Steve teaches, well, everything: carpentry, US history, seventh- and eighth-grade social sciences, and communications for grades seven through twelve. With a total population of 460 people and many more reindeer and seals, he’s got to be flexible.
“It’s considered bush Alaska,” Steve says, “and the Aleut culture is very accepting, very friendly to us; they have been great.” The teachers have formed a second family, too, holding an “orphan’s dinner” during holidays for those without family around.
Family is important to the Aleut culture, Steve says. Everything closes at lunchtime so the families can eat together. The Aleut children are also very curious, interested in where Nikki and Steve come from, and, when they heard that the Lishinskis left their husky-like dog, Benny, at home, they became enthralled. (Dogs aren’t allowed on the island because parvovirus could infect the native seal population.)
Nikki’s dad, Don Williams, director of Tech’s counseling services, sent bracelets to Alaska with the Tech Huskies mascot on them. The children thought the Husky was Benny, so “Benny bracelets” were born. “They all wear them,” Nikki says.
The bracelets, and the Lishinskis, have given Tech a positive presence on this remote tundra island of forty square miles that gets little snow and relatively moderate temperatures. (The Summer Youth Program folks are also making connections with the schoolchildren.)
Proof, perhaps, that Huskies truly are welcome anywhere.