Shortly before Christmas in 1962, a letter arrived at the White House from Moscow. "Dear Mr. President," it began.

"It seems to me…that time has come now to put an end once and for all to nuclear tests, to draw a line through such tests."

The letter was signed, "Sincerely, N. Khrushchev." In this crucial piece of Cold War correspondence, the Soviet Premier indicated that his nation was willing to move toward a more stable relationship with the West.

Seven months later, President John F. Kennedy delivered the speech, "A Strategy of Peace," at American University. He called for a nuclear test ban treaty, which would suspend all atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.

WATCH: Videos of the 50th Anniversary of JFK's Speech at AU

Kennedy spoke loftily of peace, both securing and building it — "not merely peace in our time but peace for all time," he said. It was a clarion call to all nations to abandon nuclear strategies in favor of peace.

The speech, delivered at AU’s 49th Commencement on June 10, 1963, and written by Kennedy’s primary speechwriter, Ted Sorensen, is known as one of Kennedy’s finest orations. 

Fifty years later, the speech still resonates both for its unabashed desire for peace and its unequivocal condemnation of war.

The legacy of the speech is evident today in the country’s current nuclear policies and efforts to reduce the world’s nuclear stockpile.

A 'Bold' and 'Unusual' Speech

For 13 tense days in October 1962, the United States found itself at the brink of nuclear war. The Cuban Missile Crisis brought into sharp focus just how serious the threat was.

"The two leaders — Kennedy and Khrushchev — looked into the abyss and managed to avoid nuclear war," said School of International Service Dean James Goldgeier. "It was a pretty scary time."

After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy resolved to prevent something like that from happening again. A nuclear test ban treaty seemed a good place to start.

Kennedy revealed his agenda for the speech to few members of his administration for fear of a backlash. Striking a conciliatory tone with the Soviets would have been viewed as weak in many Washington quarters.

Once Kennedy had the idea for the speech, he needed a venue. He was not originally scheduled to be AU’s commencement speaker that year, recalled Anthony Morella, former dean of the Washington College of Law, who served as WCL Marshall in 1963. 

MORE: Recommended Books, Films On The JFK Era

Pauline Frederick, a groundbreaking journalist and AU alumna, was scheduled to speak, but graciously stepped aside, Morella said, when it was learned that Kennedy was interested in AU as a location.

After arriving on campus by helicopter from the White House, Kennedy spoke passionately for nearly 27 minutes about peace and the ways to achieve it. It was an "unusual" speech, said School of Communication Adjunct Professor Robert Lehrman.

"Usually in a speech, the writing isn’t that great. It’s just a series of great moments or memorable lines," Lehrman said, a former speechwriter.

Kennedy’s American University speech was more than just a series of memorable lines. The writing was crisp, it expressed a view that was insightful, and it was hugely influential, all qualities of an exceptional speech, Lehrman said.

The speech, which Kennedy and Sorenson finished reviewing and editing on a plane ride back from Hawaii that day, made use of a number of literary devices. It employed alliteration, antithesis, and repetition, none of which were common at the time in political speeches, Lehrman said.

While the literary devices used in the speech were unique, the message was what made it shine. Rather than demonizing the Soviets, he reminded Americans of what they endured during World War II. He encouraged the American public to feel some sense of empathy toward their enemy. And he implored the nation to move forward.

It was no wonder he kept the contents of the speech from all but his closest advisors.

"It was a bold move by Kennedy to give that speech," said School of Public Affairs Distinguished Professor James Thurber. "The hawks did not like the speech, but it showed great leadership to make the world a safer place."

School of Communications Professor Dotty Lynch remembers watching the speech as a young teenager.

"It put AU on the map," she said. "It made the school stand out as a place of leadership."

Kennedy’s Influence Today

The legacy of Kennedy’s speech at AU cannot be underestimated. The détente policy, developed during the Cold War to help ease tensions in U.S.-Soviet relations, was a direct outgrowth of the speech, Goldgeier said. That policy lasted until the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan in 1979.  

"There was generally a notion that even though the Soviets were our adversaries, we would reach out to them," Goldgeier said.

FACTS: Did You KNOW? JFK At AU By The Numbers

Over the years, the United States has continued to push for a worldwide reduction in nuclear arms. President Bill Clinton tried, albeit unsuccessfully to put a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty in place. It was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1996, but has yet to be fully ratified. The United States remains one of the few holdouts.

Still, President Barack Obama is taking nuclear arms reduction seriously. In 2010, he and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. In his latest State of the Union address, Obama spoke of nuclear disarmament.

"We will engage Russia to seek further reductions in our nuclear arsenals, and continue leading the global effort to secure nuclear materials that could fall into the wrong hands — because our ability to influence others depends on our willingness to lead," Obama said.

On May 23, Obama called on the nation to reexamine the fight against terrorism, outlining plans for tighter rules for drone strikes and renewed plans to close Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. 

"This war, like all wars, must end," Obama said. "That's what history advises. That's what our democracy demands."

MORE: How JFK's 1963 Speech Compares with Obama's Counter Terrorism Speech

A direct thread runs from Kennedy’s speech through Obama’s agenda for nuclear arms. While the U.S. still has enough nuclear weapons to cause major damage, the reductions in recent years have been steep. That takes real leadership, said Thurber, and it started with Kennedy.

"Despite what had transpired prior to the speech, Kennedy was still willing to reach out and work with the Soviets to reduce nuclear testing and weapon development and that’s important historically and it’s impressive," Thurber said. "This is all a part of the Kennedy legacy to reduce the number of weapons and increase peace in the world."

Originally published on March 5, 2013

Even when elbow-deep in musty archives in leaky basements, SOC assistant professor Wendy Melillo had a ton of fun researching her new book, How McGruff and the Crying Indian Changed America: A History of Iconic Ad Council Campaigns, out this September.

Her deep interest in public service advertising (PSA) campaigns led Melillo to write her new book, which details how some of the Ad Council’s PSAs became part of the national conversation and changed society. Adding to the campaigns referenced in the title, the book includes chapters on the council’s most famous characters such as Smokey the Bear and Rosie the Riveter.

“I want to analyze the organizations the public knows very little about,” Melillo said. “I was always fascinated by the Ad Council, and I wanted to know how it operated behind the scenes. I covered this organization for years, and I really thought I knew it, but I didn’t.”

Beginning as a propaganda arm of the Roosevelt administration in 1942, the book explores how the Ad Council evolved and took on issues of importance to America throughout the 20th century. It also discusses challenges to and influences on those campaigns by the media, government and business itself, all in the context of pivotal moments in U.S. history.

A former journalist, Melillo’s career as an investigator hasn’t stopped during her time at SOC. The former Washington Post writer and DC bureau chief for Adweek, never knew what little-known stories about an organization she might uncover when she opened dusty boxes full of old and fragile documents.

For this book, she fused her journalist’s investigative skills with a more methodical and time-intensive approach, cultivated in academia, for what she felt gave the strongest possible edge to the book’s research.

“It was only after spending time at six different archives around the country and exploring what the academic literature said did a clearer picture of the Ad Council emerge,” Melillo said. “Working journalists on deadline will look at what other mainstream publications have written about an organization, but they rarely have the time to do this more extensive type of research.”

Melillo’s background contributed to the clear and unabashed writing in the book. She wrote the book in journalistic-style so that it would be accessible to a wider audience, including younger generations fluent with the digital age. As a testament to the Ad Council’s rich history, Melillo felt it was vital to use the print medium as the book’s primary method of communication.

In the end, Melillo started with a good story. “You know it when you see it, she said. “I was looking for the stories that were paradoxical, or that sparked curiosity.” This curiosity led her to, in her words, “reach in and discover a mystery no one knew about.”

This year the College of Arts and Sciences was honored to feature as its commencement speaker Dr. Paul Farmer, internationally renowned global health advocate, medical anthropologist, cofounder of Partners In Health, and chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He also serves as U.N. Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Community-based Medicine and Lessons from Haiti. In this essay, Professor David Vine, who teaches in the College’s Department of Anthropology, describes Farmer’s lasting influence and inspiration to anthropologists.

Although Paul Farmer’s many accomplishments as a doctor sometimes obscure his training as a medical anthropologist, he is easily the most publically influential anthropologist since Margaret Mead and her mentor, the “founding father” of U.S. anthropology, Franz Boas. For more than two decades, Farmer has inspired a generation of anthropologists, from undergraduate and graduate students to faculty members (like me), among the thousands of others whose lives he has influenced. 

At the core of Farmer’s anthropology, as well as his skills as a doctor and public health worker, is his commitment to seeing the world from the perspective of the planet’s poorest. Unlike many doctors (and anthropologists for that matter), Farmer has lived for decades with his patients, first in Haiti and later in communities from Rwanda to impoverished neighborhoods in Boston. “It took me a relatively short time in Haiti,” Farmer writes of the beginnings of his career in his 2003 book Pathologies of Power, “to discover that I could never serve as a dispassionate reporter or chronicler of misery. I am only on the side of the destitute sick and have never sought to represent myself as some sort of neutral party.” 

Out of this experience witnessing poverty and the sickness it inflicts, Farmer’s work is unflinchingly committed to social justice, global equity, and the idea that health care is a human right, beginning with what he calls “the most basic right . . . to survive.” Like his medicine, Farmer’s anthropology is thus an anthropology in service to the poor. Importantly, this does not mean an anthropology of the poor. Farmer is well aware that “writing of the plight of the oppressed is not a particularly effective way of assisting them.” After all, anything one might say is likely to be used against them. Instead, Farmer is interested in studying and exposing the “processes and forces that conspire” to constrain the agency of the poor and that cause poverty, disease, and suffering.  

This interest in the root causes of poverty and the diseases Farmer treats as a physician has led to one of Farmer’s greatest intellectual contributions—his analysis of “structural violence.” Drawing on the work of Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung, Farmer calls attention to powerful forms of everyday violence, like poverty, hunger, and poor health, that can be just as deadly as the violence of bullets and war but that tends to be caused by social forces, political and economic institutions, and the decisions of policymakers. In the paradigmatic example Farmer uses to explain structural violence, he shows how the root causes of a Haitian contracting HIV/AIDS are to be found not in personal irresponsibility but in the displacement of a village by a dam planned and funded by powerful actors in Washington, D.C.; by the impoverishment the dam created; and by the long-term impoverishment of Haiti through centuries of subjugation at the hands of the United States and European powers dating to the days of slavery.  

Despite this structural perspective, Farmer is by no means uninterested in the experience of individuals. To the contrary, his work as both an anthropologist and a physician revolves around the lives of individuals suffering amid powerful structural forces. Farmer’s anthropology is a holistic science involving many of the social and natural sciences: He combines an empathetic understanding of people’s lived experience and how people make meaning in their lives with a political, economic, and historical analysis of the large-scale forces that shape individual lives. Coupled with an appreciation for the biological vectors of disease causation, Farmer’s is a bio-sociocultural-political-economic-historical anthropology.  

As important as these unusual intellectual contributions have been, Farmer’s influence stems equally from his tireless commitment to creating positive social change and to using his anthropological and medical skills to help improve the lives of the poor. (When told he should spend more time with his wife and child in Paris, Farmer responded, “But I don’t have any patients there.”) Critically, for all the talk of “Saint Paul,” Farmer’s vision is not one of an outside savior delivering the poor from destitution. Instead, Farmer and Partners In Health, the organization he helped found with Ophelia Dahl (now its executive director) and Jim Yong Kim (now president of the World Bank), emphasize working in solidarity with those they serve; training Haitians and others to become doctors, nurses, and community health care workers; and building sustainable health care infrastructures designed to be part of public health care systems. 

In his 2003 biography of Farmer, Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder described some of the profound impact Partners in Health and its Haitian counterpart organization Zanmi Lasante have had in what is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere: 

Zanmi Lasante had built schools and houses and communal sanitation and water systems throughout its catchment area [in central Haiti]. It had vaccinated all the children, and had greatly reduced both local malnutrition and infant mortality. It had launched programs for women’s literacy and for the prevention of AIDS, and in its catchment area had reduced the rate of HIV transmission from mothers to babies to 4 percent—about half the current rate in the United States. A few years back, when Haiti had suffered an outbreak of typhoid resistant to the drugs usually used to treat it, Zanmi Lasante had imported an effective but expensive antibiotic, cleaned up the local water supplies, and stopped the outbreak throughout the central plateau. In Haiti, tuberculosis still killed more adults than any other disease, but no one in Zanmi Lasante’s catchment area had died from it since 1988.

A decade later, Partners in Health (PIH) has accomplished far more. PIH now serves some 2.4 million people in 12 countries, in settings that include post-genocide Rwanda, Peruvian slums, and Russia’s prisons. In devastated post-earthquake Haiti, PIH recently inaugurated a 300-bed, state-of-the-art, solar-powered university teaching hospital that represents the country’s largest post-earthquake reconstruction project.  

There is perhaps no better symbol of PIH’s and Farmer’s commitment to providing the highest quality health care to the poorest of the poor than a world-class university hospital in a part of Haiti that doesn’t even have a university. In building the hospital and throughout their work, PIH and Farmer reject conventional public health wisdom about what’s “possible” in the provision of health care in impoverished settings. They reject arguments that treatments available in wealthy countries like the United States aren’t “cost effective” in settings like Haiti. Guided by the radical idea that all human lives are equal, that PIH should provide the same quality of care to the poor that the wealthy want for their own family members, that health care is a human right, PIH and Farmer demand nothing less than a “preferential option for the poor.” 

“That goal is nothing less than the refashioning of our world into one in which no one starves, drinks impure water, lives in fear of the powerful and violent, or dies ill and unattended,” Farmer says in an National Public Radio “This I Believe” essay. 

“Of course such a world is a utopia,” Farmer continues, “and most of us know that we live in a dystopia. But all of us carry somewhere within us the belief that moving away from dystopia moves us towards something better and more humane. I still believe this.” 

Farmer and all those he has worked with at PIH have made many of us believe. Like his anthropological ancestors Mead and Boas, Farmer has inspired anthropologists and others like me in both our heads and our hearts. He has created an anthropology in service to the poor, the sick, and those on the underside of the globe’s inequities. And in the process, he has forced anthropologists to confront a question posed by Mexican anthropologist Rosalva Hernández Castillo that we should ask of all our disciplinary affiliations: In a world of tremendous inequality, in a world that is both “satisfying to us” and “utterly devastating to them,” in a world of such suffering, “¿Antropología para que?” 

What’s anthropology for?

Why do new constitutions further improve democracy in some nations but not in others? What is the nature of interest group involvement in the drafting, approval, and implementation of new constitutions? How do such constitutions impact the politics of “day to day” in democratizing nations?

These are the kinds of questions to be addressed "The Gap from Parchment to Practice: Ambivalent Effects of Constitutions in Democratizing Countries,” a conference sponsored by the Latin American Studies Association, the Mellon Foundation, the School of Public Affairs' Department of Government, and the School of International Service Comparative and Regional Studies program, on May 28 and 29th. Discussions will cover issues in new democracies including Colombia, Venezuala, Bolivia, Egypt, and other countries.

The conference, which is organized by AU faculty members Todd Eisenstadt (SPA), Carl LeVan (SIS), and Rob Albro (SIS), is open to the public.

Conference Schedule

Tuesday, May 29

School of International Service, Founder’s Room

Opening

9:15 - 9:30  Welcome from James Goldgeier, School of International Service and Barbara Romzek, School of Public Affairs

Theoretical and Empirical Questions I

9:30  “New Constitutions and Democracy: an Overview” -- Robert Albro, Todd Eisenstadt, Carl LeVan, American University

DISCUSSANTS: Joel Barkan, Center for Strategic and International Studies and Michael Coppedge, University of Notre Dame

Theoretical and Empirical Questions II
Moderated by Todd Eisenstadt, American University

10:30  “Can We Trust Legislators to Write Constitutions?” -- Zachary Elkins, University of Texas – Austin 

DISCUSSANT: Ernesto Calvo, University of Maryland

Theoretical and Empirical Questions III
Moderated by Carl LeVan, American University 

11:30  “Bringing Insights from Corporate Governance to the Study of Constitution Making” -- Jennifer Widner, Princeton University

DISCUSSANT: Jon Gould, American University

Cases and Regions I: Northern Andes
Moderated by Agustina Giraudy, American University

1:45  “Deepening Democracy via Constitutional Change? Contrasting Colombia and Venezuela” -- Ana Maria Bejarano, University of Toronto and Renata Segura, Social Science Research Council

DISCUSSANT: Matthew Taylor, American University 

2:45  “Venezuela: Between ta Bolivarian Constitution and the Authoritarian Populism of Hugo Chávez” -- Nelly Arenas, Central University of Venezuela

DISCUSSANT: Miriam Kornblith, National Endowment for Democracy

Cases and Regions II: African Cases
Moderated by Ryan Briggs, American University 

4:00  “Constitutional Legitimacy and the Dimensions of Participatory Constitution-Making” -- Devra Moehler and Eleanor Marchant, University of Pennsylvania

DISCUSSANT: Gina Lambright, George Washington University 

5:00  “Constitution-making and Democracy in Mali: The Unraveling of a Democratic Model” -- Susanna Wing, Haverford College

DISCUSSANT: Adrienne LeBas, American University 

Wednesday, May 29

School of International Service, Founder’s Room

Cases and Regions III: Bolivia’s Bold Experiment
Moderated by Jo-Marie Burt of George Mason University (invited)

9:15  “Constituent Power from Below in Bolivia? Implications of Rights-based Conflict in the New Constitutional Era” -- Robert Albro, American University

DISCUSSANT: Miguel Centellas, University of Mississippi

10:15  “Refounding ‘halfway’ in Bolivia: the Consolidation of a Hybrid Democracy after the Promulgation of the 2009 Plurinational Constitution” -- Diego Ayo, Universidad Católica de Bolivia

DISCUSSANT: Katie Kuhn, George Washington University 

Cases and Regions IV: Egypt and Middle East
Moderated by Diane Singerman, American University

11:15  “Bringing the Constitution Online: The Struggle over Egypt’s New Constitution” -- Ghazal Poshtkouhian Nadi and Tofigh Maboudi, American University

DISCUSSANT: Nathan Brown, George Washington University 

1:30  “Constitutionalizing Islam: Variations in Religion-State Relationships among Muslim Countries” -- Shaheen Mozaffar, Bridgewater State University

DISCUSSANT: Kristin Diwan, American University 

Conclusions
Moderated by Eric Hershberg, American University 

2:30-4:00  Roundtable: “Understanding the Ambiguous Impacts of New Constitutions on Democracy” -- Robert Albro, Todd Eisenstadt, Zackary Elkins, Carl LeVan, Jennifer Widner

Executive Women in Government (EWG) and American University’s Key Executive Leadership Programs have formed an exclusive higher education partnership. Key will assist EWG in developing leadership development training workshops taught by its faculty and will help plan programs and meetings for the group’s members.

Recently as part of this collaboration, Key worked with EWG’s board to develop the certificate program for the EWG Annual Summit, held earlier this month.

EWG focuses on preparing, promoting, supporting, and mentoring women for senior leadership positions in the federal government. Key’s mission is to create a participative and rigorous learning environment where students choose to transform themselves from good managers to extraordinary leaders.

"Executive Women in Government is delighted to be working with Key to provide executive leadership training and related programming for our members," said EWG President Reta Jo Lewis.

"With women making up only a third of the Senior Executive Service, the time is appropriate to form an exclusive higher education partnership with EWG, a respected and relevant organization," stated Robert Tobias, director of Key. "EWG’s advocacy of and commitment to women in leadership positions aligns closely with our commitment to leadership development. As a result, it is befitting that Key is partnering with EWG to achieve the common goal of preparing great leaders for public service. Women play an indispensable role in the public service workforce, and Key is eager to share our leadership resources and expertise to develop a new community of women executives serving as public sector leaders.”

About EWG

Founded in 1974, Executive Women in Government (EWG) is an organization of women executives who serve in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the federal government. The mission of EWG is to prepare, promote, support, and mentor women for senior leadership positions in the federal government; build a powerful network to share experiences, enhance professional relationships, and increase understanding among women executives in the federal government; and to motivate women leaders in the federal government to contribute to effective succession planning by creating a mentoring culture within their sphere of influence. To further these goals, EWG holds meetings with opinion leaders in politics, public policy and the arts in order to educate, inspire and motivate women leaders. The organization also holds an annual conference featuring speakers and topics of benefit to senior-level professionals and uses a website to keep its members informed. In addition, it maintains affiliations with a number of other organizations with similar goals in order to better serve its members and advance common goals.

About Key

The Key Executive Leadership Programs has transformed good managers into extraordinary leaders for more than 35 years. Aligned with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Executive Core Qualifications (ECQs), the Key Executive Leadership MPA and Certificate prepare mid-career professionals at the level of GS-13 and above (or NGO equivalent) to become effective, top-quality team and executive leaders. Key programs are housed in American University’s School of Public Affairs. Ranked among the top schools of its kind, the School of Public Affairs (SPA) offers education in the fields of political science, public administration, public policy, organization development, and justice.

Ryan Englekirk knows about umpires. After all, he used to be one. Maybe that’s why the PhD candidate in AU’s History Department is sympathetic to their plight. 

After leaving umpiring, he returned to school in 2007 and earned his BA in history from AU in 2009. Due to his love of public history and the admiration and respect he had for his faculty mentors, he decided to continue his education and was accepted into the PhD program. During all that time, though, Englekirk’s interest in baseball never waned. He maintained friendships with other umpires he had learned from and worked beside for years at the semi-pro and youth levels. 

And for years he has been gathering information and oral histories on umpiring. He hopes his paper, "'Kill the Ump!': The Growth and Decline of the Major League Umpire’s Waistline 1970–2012," will generate conversation around umpire’s health and safety. He presented the paper at this year’s Robyn Rafferty Mathias Student Research Conference and walked away with the Professional Presentations Prize, which will cover his expenses at a professional peer reviewed national conference at which he is presenting the paper. 

"There is a lack of literature in the field," says Englekirk. "Most scholars have ignored the umpires."

His paper, part of a larger project to examine the ways the profession is changing, looks at training and labor conditions for umpires over the past three decades. 

Downsizing Umps 

One of the most obvious ways umpires have changed is pretty basic: they’ve gotten smaller.  

Englekirk believes the death of John McSherry from a heart attack on opening day 1996 shocked baseball to the point where it allowed the era of the large umpire to go by the wayside. This in turn changed how umpires settled physical disputes on the field and challenged previous notions of masculinity within the professional umpire community. 

In addition, social media, money, the web, and modernization of the game are changing the way we think about baseball and the roles umpires have in the game. "Now the Internet has allowed you to follow all the games and has opened the world to see umpire mistakes," he says. Umpires today are under more pressure from fans and the media. The enhanced coverage from social networks lets fans see their mistakes and often leads to increased ridicule of their profession. After all, any call is easy to make when you can look at it in slow motion, from 10 different angles, and rewind it 100 times. On the other hand, as Englekirk points out, "umpires have three-eighths of a second from the time the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand to when it hits the catcher’s glove to make a call." Englekirk hopes this paper will go beyond the "stereotype of the blind, obese idiot who needs a phone book to make the right call: These are people, this is a serious profession, and [umpires] take their profession very seriously," he says. 

Digging for Sources 

With so little academic information out there on the profession of umpiring, Englekirk had to put in a lot of effort to gather sources. 

"I draw upon interviews with minor and major league umpires, memoirs, newspapers, archival film, memoirs, and some journalistic works," he says. Drawing upon his personal experience and networks, Englekirk brings his readers a unique take on umpiring. "My biggest challenge has been finding where umpiring fits within the larger scholarly historical debate."

The former umpire says that although the history of umpiring is not his academic specialty (his dissertation is about the influence of the free-speech movement on the rights of high school students in the 1970s and 1980s), researching the topic has sharpened his focus as a historian. "Engaging myself in this subject has made me realize why I came back to school," he says. 

And he hopes it will open people’s eyes to the umpiring profession so that the next time they see an umpire "kick a call" they will have a little sympathy for the men in blue.

Artists never decide to be an artist because of the money. The “starving artist” motif is an accurate, if overused, stereotype. However, some artists are lucky enough to find someone who shares their passion and can afford to fund that passion. 

Such is the case for Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi MFA ‘11. The decorated D.C.-area painter, who has returned to AU as a professional lecturer, found her patron recently. 

Ilchi immigrated to the United States from Iran at the age of 18 and found culture shock and isolation in her new environment. “The language barrier was very difficult,” Ilchi says, “but it drove me more towards visual arts, and that enabled me to express myself freely. Art made me feel understood! In retrospect, despite its difficulties and bitterness, being separated from my motherland made me more curious and aware of my cultural heritage.” 

Her work illustrates this connection with her native culture. Her previous body of work portrays surreal images of women with long, wild hair. This depiction, Ilchi says, is a reference to herself and her issues as an Iranian immigrant. 

“The use of disproportionately long hair is a statement on the notion of freedom in relation to the oppressive and mandated use of head coverings for women in Iran,” she explains. “These female figures are central to my work since they portray a narrative of defiance in a cultural confrontation with tradition. They evoke a sense of resilience and that is a true reflection of how many Iranian women fight the daily battles.” 

Since her graduation from AU, Ilchi has received the support of many local collectors. She recently met Blake Kimbrough, the man who would be her most recent patron and collector, when Contemporary Wing’s Lauren Gentile introduced him to her work. He immediately fell in love with her use of Islamic themes and her use of abstract colors. Kimbrough explains his attraction to Ilchi’s art: “Since my academic pursuits dealt with the Near East and I am a Baha’i, a religion that comes from Persia, I have always been fascinated with how contemporary artists of Persian heritage express themselves given the oppression they may feel and their government’s attitude towards Western modernity. Since typically what is appreciated and celebrated in the arts is the concept of innovation, how would Persians abroad or at home interpret or respond to the desire to innovate or sensationalize in a global market place? I find Ilchi’s approach nuanced and compelling.” 

Ilchi’s and Kimbrough’s first conversation revolved around a work that he later purchased. Ilchi saw right away that he had a deep understanding of her culture and her inspirations as an artist. 

“Even though this is a new friendship, because of our backgrounds, I have a sense that this relationship will continue to grow,” she muses. “We are already planning a studio visit in the near future to have a deeper dialogue about my work. My paintings are hybrids of the two cultures with a fusion of Eastern and Western visual languages. The result is a paradoxical sense of chaos and order, which I think is one of the reasons that draws Blake to my work.” 

Hedieh Ilchi is currently participating in a group show, Social Construction, which opened April 10 and runs through June 9 at the Arlington Arts Center. She will have a solo exhibit, A leaf from my rose garden, curated by Steven Matijcio, at the Southern Center for Contemporary art in Winston-Salem, NC. Later this summer, she will show at Scope Art Fair in Basel, Switzerland.

Ilchi has received multiple awards, including The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards Semi-Finalist, The Bethesda Painting Awards Finalist, and The eighth annual Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize semifinalist. 

She will also participate in Nostalgia Structures at the Brentwood Arts Exchange, Brentwood, Maryland, in mid-July. For more information on Ilchi, and to see examples of her current work, visit her website.

College of Arts and Sciences’ alum Kathy Patalsky has always had a passion for food. Majoring in health promotion management, she went on to graduate from American University in 2005.

As with many American University students, her original intent was to use her degree in policy, but with the encouragement of her husband, who recognized her passion for photography, cooking, and writing, she went into business for herself and started a food blog.

“It took a good two years to realize my blog had a chance to be successful,” says Patalsky. “In the past year and a half I have seen my number of fans and traffic skyrocket.”

Today, Patalsky’s Healthy. Happy. Life. has become a very successful blog which, as of February 2013, receives more than 1,800,000 page views every 30 days. Her blog is a collection of recipes, articles, and fun photos all centered on vegan diet and health.

“Most of my readers aren’t even vegan. I make my recipes appeal to everyone and, although my fan base is mostly women, there are guys who shared a lot of enthusiasm.”

The popularity of Patalsky’s blog follows today’s growing health awareness, a trend she hopes will continue.

“People are getting excited about their health and diet,” says Patalsky.

This interest in vegan and healthy eating is not just limited to Americans, either. “My blog has gained a lot of international traffic,” says Patalsky.

The success of the past two years has surprised her. When Patalsky first started blogging, she had no real experience and no idea it would ever be so successful.

Patalsky’s enthusiasm for photography and food shows in her blog. Each recipe on her blog is accompanied by a photo. And while blogging has become popular in recent years, she remembers that when she first started there were few bloggers to draw inspiration from. This meant she needed to show a lot of creativity and commitment.

When asked about any fears or worries she had about going into business for herself she was quick to answer: “I just kind of went for it and started writing.”

Patalsky did no advertising campaigns to promote her blog; rather, through word of mouth and through hard work and many hours spent in the kitchen she has grown her blog to what it is today.

Patalsky hopes her recipes will inspire people and get them into the kitchen. She brings a lot of energy and enthusiasm to her blog, posting numerous photos. She adds that although her work is centered on cooking and writing, her background in nutrition is essential to her work. It allows her to add layers of knowledge to what she is writing, and it validates her recipes. Her real hope for the blog is that it will encourage and inform people on the importance of eating healthful food and living an active life.

Her passion for vegan recipes is not only for health reasons but because of her “passionate love of animals.”  She worked at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo all through her college years at AU.

In addition to her blog, Patalsky also writes for other websites such as Babble.com, and she has launched a second website, FindingVegan.com that has become very successful. Patalsky is the author of 365 Vegan Smoothies, which will be published by Penguin Group/Avery on June 4.

Aspiring human rights attorney Christina Fetterhoff sat in the courtroom in Guatemala City amazed by the dedication and legal wisdom of the prosecution team.

Members of the Ixil Maya community filled the seats around her. Fetterhoff, a second year law student, felt as if their presence was facing down the men on trial for genocide and crimes against humanity.

Fetterhoff was part of a team of students and staff sent to Guatemala in April by American University Washington College of Law’s Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law to observe and report from the trial.

"I feel doubly lucky to have had this opportunity to watch history while having an amazing group supporting us along the way," Fetterhoff said.

Guatemala’s former head of state, José Efraín Ríos Montt, and former chief of military intelligence José Mauricio Rodríguez Sanchez, were on trial for the forced displacement and systematic massacre of the country’s Ixil Mayan population in 1982 and 1983.  

This was the first time a former head of state appeared before a national court on charges of genocide. The international human rights community hopes that it will serve as a turning point for holding leaders accountable for international crimes.

Supporting Practical Human Rights Work

For three days Fetterhoff and Ali Beydoun, director of the law school’s UNROW Human Rights Impact Litigation Clinic, observed the trial, live tweeting in English and Spanish (via @hrbrief and @UNROWclinic), taking photographs, and providing longer-form analysis of each day’s proceedings.

Back in Washington, the staff of the Human Rights Brief, the Center’s student-run publication with a readership of more than 4,000 practitioners in 132 countries, provided support to the team in Guatemala. Students spent late nights posting, writing, and translating updates for the Brief’s online arm, hrbrief.org.

Hadar Harris, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, said American University Washington College of Law was the only U.S. law school to send a delegation to the trial. The delegation helped to encourage and preserve a fair trial and due process, she said.

"The Ixil Mayan people have been waiting for justice for more than 30 years but there are strong forces from within the country who do not want the trial to proceed," Harris said. "I believe that our team is playing a small but important role in helping to ensure accountability in Guatemala, expand understanding of the trial internationally, and create a cadre of engaged students who understand the issues involved."

Justice Will Prevail

Beydoun, a human rights attorney, first learned about the situation in Guatemala as a 16-year-old activist.

"It was amazing to watch the trial, to see people from all over the world in attendance, and to see the Guatemalan establishment of criminal procedure in a local court," Beydoun said.

Fetterhoff found it difficult to hear accounts of exhumations of mass graves in the Quiche region presented as evidence of the atrocities committed. She was particularly moved by the lists of victims projected by prosecution witnesses on a large screen in the auditorium. These lists had been populated by eyewitness accounts and forensic evidence over 20 years.

"There were maybe 350 to 400 seats in the auditorium where the trial was taking place, but the Ixil community took up more than a quarter of the seats most days," Fetterhoff said.

Although the law school’s experts believed the court had been nearing a verdict, the trial was suspended on April 19 by a preliminary court judge who had handled the case in its pretrial stage, been recused, and was recently ruled competent by the high court. She ordered that the case return to the pretrial hearings.

"It was mass confusion," Beydoun said. "What we were really seeing was this battle—not between two separate branches of government, but the different levels of the court within the same branch."

After a 12-day suspension, Guatemala’s highest court, the Constitutional Court, allowed the proceedings to continue. On May 10, Rios Montt was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity.

"The Rios Montt conviction, obviously, was the outcome the international human rights community was hoping for," said Fetterhoff, who was pleased with the court’s decision, but hesitant to celebrate.

Less than two weeks after the conviction, the Constitutional Court reversed the decision due to procedural complaints filed by the defense.

Although the proceedings will now be forced to return to the trial phase amid other legal challenges, Fetterhoff remains optimistic that justice will prevail.

"Public testimony of over 100 people about what happened to them and their loved ones in the early 1980s is an amazing judicial feat in a country still struggling with reconciliation," Fetterhoff said.

Distinguished Professor David H. Rosenbloom recently testified in front of the Committee with Task Force on Government Performance. The hearing examined effective strategies for government reorganization, focusing on reducing fragmentation, overlap, and duplication and achieving cost savings. In addition to Rosenbloom others testifying included Gene L. Dodaro, Comptroller General of the United States, Government Accountability Office; John P. Holdren, Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President; Delaware State Senator Nicole Poore.

At its invitation, I testified before the Task Force on Government Performance of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Budget on May 16 (program attached). The title of the hearing was “Silo Busting: Effective Strategies for Government Reorganization.” During the Q&A my point that the Inspectors General and the Government Accountability Office are largely retrospective, offering correctives for waste, fraud, and abuse, gained acceptance. In the testimony and Q&A I offered the idea that each major agency should have a Chief Productivity Officer who would be forward looking with respect to continuous innovation, organizational process reengineering, the application of new knowledge to managerial technique and technology as warranted, and the integration intra-agency programs, including those promoting democratic-constitutionalism such as freedom of information. I distinguished the Chief Productivity Officer from Chief Operating Officers and Performance Improvement Offices under the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act (2010) on the basis that the COO and PIO are likely to be focused on implementing agency strategic plans and developing performance reports, as required by the statute. I believe the testimony and Q&A went quite well.

The Senate Committee Task Force’s invitation was based on the impact that one of my books, Building a Legislative Centered Public Administration: Congress and the Administrative State, 1946-1999 (University of Alabama Press, 2000), had on a member of the Budget Committee staff. The research for the book was first presented as “1946: Framing a Lasting Congressional Response to the Administrative State," in the John Joseph Boyne Distinguished Lecture Series, University of Alabama (Maxwell Air Force Base), Montgomery, AL, September 14-17, 1998. In addition to being the source of my testimony, as requested by the Committee on the Budget Task Force, it has been cited in several Congressional Research Service reports, which has led to a few media interviews, including one with USA Today.

To me it is interesting is that this basic piece of qualitative historical scholarship on Congress’ 1946 framework for treating federal agencies as its adjuncts for legislative functions such as rulemaking, regulating their use of delegated legislative authority, and supervising them, as embodied in the Administrative Procedure Act, the Legislative Reorganization Act, and the Employment Act, among other measures, is having an impact on Congressional Research Service reports and U.S. senators. The research involved turning more than 16,000 pages of the Congressional Record for 1946 and part of 1945. The book was neither written on a contemporary policy topic nor externally or internally funded or supported by a course buy-out or release. It received the 2001 National Academy of Public Administration Brownlow Book Award, arguably the most prestigious such award in the field of public administration (nominated by now AU President Kerwin), deals with a large, fundamental question—“what is Congress’ role in the federal administrative state”—and is written in language that English-speaking policymakers and researchers with knowledge of American national government can readily understand.

Among the senators present for all or part of the hearing were Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Chris Coons (D-DE), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Patty Murray (D-WA), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Mark Warner (D-VA), and Roger Wicker (R-MS).

For many students at American University, studying abroad is an integral part of their undergraduate experience. This past semester, I had an opportunity that less than 1% of undergraduate students have during their college careers – an internship abroad.

With the London Internship Program through AU, students spend half the semester taking classes with the Foundation for International Education (FIE), and then the second half of the semester interning with an organization in the UK. FIE coordinates these placements, using students’ written personal statements, interest surveys and their resume to match them with a suitable organization.

My internship placement was with UK-based organization Microfinance Without Borders, under Dr. Phyllis SantaMaria, Founder Director of Microfinance Without Borders. Microfinance Without Borders is an organization dedicated to developing seminars and workshops to educate people about microfinance. These seminars teach both students and professionals practical ways they can get involved in developing financial infrastructure for the world’s poor.

As the Microfinance Without Borders Communications Specialist, I focused on external outreach. This included writing blog posts, editing contact databases, and attending networking events on behaf of Microfinance Without Borders to further advertise our programs.

One of my most memorable experiences as an intern abroad was attending a conference at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Headquarters in London. The conference, called “Mobile Money in the EBRD Region”, featured a series of presentations and panel discussions on mobile money and microfinance in Eastern Europe. Panelists discussed how the world can use mobile phones to reach those who do not have access to formal financial institutions, giving them the power to transfer, withdraw and deposit money more quickly and efficiently.

Going to such a conference was a taste of the global perspective I had envisioned when I decided to go abroad. I walked away with the incredible sense that the world is getting smaller and that courageous, innovative individuals are able to spark positive social change.

My internship with Microfinance Without Borders allowed me to experience what a profession in global communications is like, while also introducing me to an entirely new field. Microfinance and social enterprise have quickly become subjects close to my heart, and I hope to do more with them later on in my professional career.

Interning abroad is a remarkable experience. I not only learned about the British corporate culture, but I also had the opportunity to compare the role of a communications professional in the UK versus the US. Now THAT is something to put on a resume.

Addressing the 590 graduates of the College of Arts and Sciences at this year’s commencement ceremony on May 11, Dr. Paul Farmer did what he has done his whole life: surprise and inspire people.

The surprise for many hearing the MacArthur Foundation “genius” award winner and internationally renowned public health advocate was that he avoided the traditional platitudes about graduates embarking on a new chapter in their lives. Instead, he told a “tale of two cities”: Boston and Mirebalais, which is in central Haiti.

“If anyone embodies the American University ideal of active citizenship it is Paul Farmer,” said Peter Starr, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “He has devoted his entire career to helping people in some of the poorest places in the world get the kind of health care they not only need but deserve.”

Farmer is chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He also serves as U.N. Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Community-based Medicine and Lessons from Haiti.

He is perhaps best known as the cofounder of Partners In Health, an international nonprofit organization whose main goals are “to bring the benefits of modern medical science to those most in need of them and to serve as an antidote to despair.” He received an honorary doctor of science degree at commencement.

Tale of Two Cities

In his tale of two cities, Farmer started with Boston, home to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, social where Farmer is chief of the Division of Global Health Equity. In nearby Cambridge is Harvard Medical School, where he teaches and started his medical studies 30 years ago.

In Boston, after two bombs exploded near the finish line of the city’s marathon, Farmer noted, a safety net of world-class hospitals and highly trained physicians and caregivers sprang into action. Three people died and more than 260 were injured. But not a single patient who reached the hospital alive died, even though many had suffered massive trauma. Doctors began operating on the injured within half an hour of the blast.

The system worked.

Compare that with Mirebalais, one of the poorest places in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. That’s where Farmer has chosen to live and to help the people who need his help the most.

Farmer first visited Mirebalais in 1983, after he had graduated from Duke and was about to enter Harvard Medical School. In the first few years of conducting health surveys in Haiti, he recounted, he’d lost three close fellow workers in ways that would have been unimaginable in Boston. One died of misdiagnosed cerebral malaria, another from typhoid fever complicated by an ileal perforation, and a third of sepsis caused by infection just days after giving birth to a boy. Her death could have been avoided by the kind of hygiene practiced routinely in hospitals in places like Boston.

Farmer’s conclusion was a fitting charge to the Class of 2013.

“Martin Luther King was right when he told us the year before his death by martyrdom that anyone can be great because everyone can serve. All of us can serve by helping to build or support the safety nets our species needs.” Not everyone can survive devastating disease or disasters, he said. “But how many survive serious illness or injury depends heavily on what sort of safety net we build for all those who share our neighborhoods, cities, states, nations, planet.”

When WAMU 88.5 began its life in the early 1960's as American University’s public radio station, it was a scrappy 4,000-watt operation outfitted with equipment from donations and military surplus stores.

The small outfit still managed to cover big moments, including the United Nations debate on Cuban missiles live, President John F. Kennedy's 1963 speech at AU, and the March on Washington.

Over the years, the station has grown to 50,000 watts and today reaches an estimated 805,000 listeners a week as the only NPR affiliate in Washington, D.C.

WAMU is now the metro area’s most listened to station, according to Arbitron, the radio industry’s primary data collection service.

Of people listening to radio in the region, more tune in to 88.5 FM than any other station, including talk, sports, and commercial music stations like WTOP and Hot 99.5, WAMU’s closest competitors.

But achieving the top spot in the D.C. market didn’t happen overnight, said Caryn Mathes, general manager of WAMU.

"It was the culmination of a lot of years of investment," she said. "We put together a strategic plan and asked how can we be relevant and significant."

Washington, D.C., is the seventh largest radio market, but WAMU is number one nationwide in average quarter hour listenership and number two for the share in average quarter hour, according to the Fall 2012 Arbitron survey. A Corporation for Public Broadcasting survey about public radio stations’ quantitative worth showed that WAMU’s impact was "huge," Mathes said.  

"WAMU's success over the past eight years has quite frankly been stunning," said David Taylor, President Neil Kerwin’s chief of staff who oversees WAMU.

In the first seven years of Mathes’ tenure, the station invested $7 million in new content and $500,000 to build out the digital department. She says they are now starting to see the payoff of that investment.

In the digital age, radio stations can no longer only provide terrestrial services. A revamped website, as well as a variety of podcasts, a robust streaming service, and on-demand archives have helped meet listeners where they are.

It’s not just about building up WAMU’s digital services, though. Mathes, who has been the station’s GM for eight years, thinks the station’s success is due in large part to its positioning as a community resource.

Not only does WAMU provide regular traffic and weather updates — utility services that listeners rely on — but that station has also invested resources in its local reporting. When Mathes came on board in 2005, WAMU had only five reporters in its newsroom. 

Now, there are 25 covering Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., politics, the environment, coastal affairs, and the federal government, among other beats. The station will also move this summer to a seven-story building, located at 4401 Connecticut Ave., NW, offering WAMU 88.5 more than twice its current operating space.

"One of the bedrock things we try to do is support lifelong learning and make the local to global connection," Mathes said. "We want to cover federal Washington and neighborhood Washington."

To that end, WAMU recently instituted a Public Insight Network, which encourages locals to share stories and knowledge about particular areas. So far, more than 2,000 people have registered and their contributions have led to more than 50 stories.  

WAMU also relies on a Community Council, an advisory board made up of a diverse group of people from the station’s coverage area. The council advises the station on programming and helps select a topic for the station to pursue in depth. This year, they decided to focus on the Affordable Care Act and its implications around the D.C. metro area.

WAMU would not be where it is today — the third largest public radio station in the country — without its anchor shows. The Diane Rehm Show and The Kojo Nnamdi Show have been on the air nearly a combined 50 years. NPR and Sirius XM Radio syndicate both shows. NPR Worldwide also broadcasts Rehm’s show. In this year's Washington City Paper Best of D.C. poll, Nnamdi is the readers choice for best radio personality and WAMU is the best radio station.

"We want to continue to be a national syndicator," Mathes said.

To that end, they’ve created Animal House, a show about animal science, pet behavior, and wildlife conservation. The show is broadcast on 30 stations. They recently piloted another show called The Big Fix — a forum for listeners to offer ideas on how to solve the country’s domestic issues. Mathes said they’re hoping to find funding to make that show a regular offering.

More people listening to the syndicated shows potentially means more donors, which is critical since the station is largely listener supported. While hundreds of thousands of people listen to WAMU every week, only about 52,000 are members. This is troubling to Mathes.

"The monetization model still isn’t figured out. Some people still feel that they don’t have to pay for our services," she said.

Still, annual giving keeps going up. That’s a good thing for WAMU, but it’s also a good thing for AU. The better the station does, the more people are exposed to AU’s name when they hear the station ID, "WAMU 88.5 American University radio. Where the mind is our medium."

"When WAMU is strong, thriving, and influential, that represents an extension of AU's role in the nation's capital and beyond," Taylor said. "So it is important for that rapport to be very strong and mutually supportive."

Mathes recalls meeting a listener once who encouraged her child to apply to AU because she was an avid Rehm listener.

"It’s a way to get our name out there and a way to get AU’s name out there," Mathes said of the station’s national and international reach. "It’s a huge advantage for the university to have a public radio station."

Like many young graduates, Taylor Saia, BSBA '13, will be moving over the summer. But unlike his classmates, he'll be moving halfway around the world.

Saia will begin a nine-month Fulbright scholarship to teach English and begin a community music project in Indonesia in August.

"The anticipation is a bit nerve-wracking, but that's part of the experience," he said. "I can't wait to go."

Business to Backpacking

Saia, who is currently a marketing intern at the National Geographic Society, has always enjoyed traveling; he spent his junior year abroad in France at the SKEMA Business School, located just outside Nice. It was this experience, he said, that inspired him to find a way to continue exploring other cultures.

"Fulbright gives you the opportunity to get off the beaten path, and that really excited me," Saia said. "Southeast Asia drew me in; it's just so culturally diverse."

Indonesia's more than 300 ethnic groups and more than 700 native languages are sure to keep Saia on his toes—but he's looking forward to the challenge.

"I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos and using Rosetta Stone to get the hang of some basic phrases," he said.

Saia's program will begin with a three-week course in basic Bahasa, the official language of Indonesia, and Indonesia culture before he moves to his yet-to-be-determined provided housing.

"[Scholars] are provided with a place to live, but that's the only guarantee," Saia said. "I could be assigned to a hut or a palace, it's just part of the adventure."

Forging His Own Trail

Saia, who is specializing in marketing at Kogod, will be the first to admit he is far from the typical business student. "I've definitely done my own thing," said Saia, who is also a member of the AU a cappella group On a Sensual Note. "But at the same time, Kogod has definitely helped me prepare for Indonesia."

He credits the faculty and overall diversity for encouraging his creativity during the past four years.

"The incredible exposure I got to internationalism while at Kogod only made me more interested in traveling," he said. "I definitely wouldn't have been accepted by Fulbright without the encouragement and recommendations I received from my professors."

Saia encourages other students to follow their own interests.

"It sounds cliché but the best advice I can give is to take risks," he said. "Find a way to make what you're passionate about fit in with school and a career, not the other way around."

While Curtis Burrill may have a seat at AU as assistant director of Student Activities for Fraternity & Sorority Life, he’s just landed a new chair off campus. Well, a co-chair.

As recently elected co-chair of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators’ (NASPA) Fraternity and Sorority Life Knowledge Community, Burrill will guide 1,700 colleagues from institutions across the country.

NASPA, a national organization of student affairs administrators in higher education, promotes the advancement of its more than 13,000 members in the student affairs profession. One way NASPA supports its members is through 27 knowledge communities, one of which Burrill now leads.

“It’s really all about creating knowledge [and] providing opportunities for our members to find resources for specific communities, subject matters that pertain to student affairs,” he says. “Trying to get people engaged and connected is really the point of the knowledge community just as much as building that knowledge around the specific topic area.”

After spending the past two years as a regional representative in his knowledge community, Burrill will serve the next three years – one as co-chair elect and two in the post – organizing and engaging members of institutions ranging from places like Penn State to Kennesaw State Universities. He will officially take over as Co-Chair at the 2014 NASPA National Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.

At its core, the work is all about enriching fraternities and sororities as a whole by collaborating on successes, short-comings, and trends.

“[We’re] trying to get an understanding of what our communities look like in different places. Obviously, every school is different, but overall there is a fraternal movement, and we really try to support it,” he says. “We have an association of fraternity and sorority advisors that we partner with, trying just to have the dialogue about the fraternal movement and how to progress it in a way that’s positive and in line with our organizations.”

Other knowledge communities exist around topics such as LGBT issues, assessment, and indigenous peoples, and Burrill is certain to collaborate with them. Still, his new post and its duties are right in his wheelhouse, right where his heart is.

“My work in fraternity and sorority life and advising is where my passion is in student affairs,” he says. “I just want to make sure that we’re furthering our work and making sure that I can help push the work we’re doing forward and maintain our relevancy on our campuses, making sure we’re doing the right research and providing the right information for campus professional as well as our colleagues in the different national organizations that we partner with.”

Not only will he be helping others further their campus communities, he’ll also be bettering AU with each step as co-chair, whether in examining new research, organizing an annual national Greek Life conference, or just learning through conversation with the scores of NASPA members now looking to his leadership.

“It will definitely help me to be much more engaged with the current research and trends,” he says. “It will help our community also. We’ve been growing dramatically over these last few years. Bringing up our current trends and needs and bouncing them off of my colleagues is really great.”

With a Greek letter population at AU of more than 1,200 students that’s expanded by 40% over the past five years, Burrill is all ears when working with organizations like the Association of Fraternity & Sorority Advisors and the American College Personnel Association.

For him, improving is all about connections.

“It’s really important to build those relationships and bring that knowledge together so that we can all benefit from it. When we’re working in our little silos, a lot of us forget that there are others who could benefit from what we’re doing,” he says.

A five-year member of the AU community and six-year professional in the field, Burrill has dedicated a lot of time to promoting fraternity and sorority life as part of the university experience. Still, this new move, this new chair, is something he’s more than happy to take on.

Just like the students at AU, he’s ready to serve where he can best make an impact.

“It’s going to be a great experience. I’m excited for it,” he says. “It’s going to be some good challenges and opportunities for me to give back to the community.”

Samantha Amberg, CAS ’13, is one of few American University students to have worked in an operating room as an undergraduate.

Amberg, a biology major in the College of Arts and Sciences, found out about an internship opportunity at DaVinci Plastic Surgery during her junior year and couldn’t pass it up.

Though most of her time at DaVinci was spent tracking supply inventories and maintaining medical records, for Amberg, watching and assisting with surgeries was the most valuable part of her experience.

During operations, she prepared surgical tools and materials, scribed and kept track of the time, and served as a general assistant for physicians—tasks most medical students don’t get to do until their second or third year of medical school.

Amberg quickly learned that a day in the operating room can be quite stressful, typically starting at 6 a.m. and ending at 5 p.m.

"Being in the operating room is like running a very stressful marathon," Amberg said. "The first few times I assisted with surgery, it was a deer-in-headlights situation. But I learned quickly and eventually was able to be of greater help to the team, while also learning how to deal with this crazy schedule."

American University is known for fostering an environment that promotes active internships like Amberg’s. The class of 2012 set a new school record, with 88 percent of students completing at least one internship before graduation. 

Like Amberg, they’re not all interning in fields like politics, international service, and communications—traditional strengths of AU. They’re interning in all corners and sectors of Washington, D.C.

"Internships help [students in smaller programs] achieve professional goals in the same manner as any other student by adding specific skills and accomplishments that supplement in the classroom experience," said Sue Gordon, director of career development in the Career Center.

When Maria Schneider, CAS ’13, tells people she majors in American Studies, the first questions she has to answer are "What’s that?" and "What do you want to do with that?"

Luckily, Schneider has a response for both questions. Throughout her coursework, she has focused on education reform, specializing in programs for disadvantaged youth. To supplement her studies, she currently interns at City Kids Wilderness Project, a nonprofit that focuses on outdoor education and leadership for D.C. middle and high school students.

As part of her internship, Schneider organizes weekend retreats that focus on topics like diversity and social justice with the students.

"Most people don’t even think of something like this as a possibility for an internship," Schneider said. "I think it’s important that students know that there are opportunities in D.C. to satisfy every possible interest."

Schneider’s work with City Kids reminds her every day why she is pursuing a career in the education field. Her internship has also helped her land a job teaching middle school Spanish in New Orleans through Teach for America following graduation in May.

"Through internships, students hone their skills and capabilities to build a strong resume and become a more competitive job applicant," Gordon said.

Swathi Nuli, CAS/SPA ’14, is taking advantage of another D.C. institution—the National Institutes of Health. Like Amberg, she interns in the science field, but their internships and long-term goals couldn’t be more different.

Nuli, a pre-med student majoring in psychology and justice/law, interns at NIH’s Institute of Allergens and Infectious Diseases. At NIH, Nuli helps proofread manuscripts from around the world, creates visuals for scientific publications, and assists with HIV research.

"My job [at NIH] has been one of the most influential opportunities I have had as a pre-medical student at AU," Nuli said. "I think a lot of political science and School of International Service majors at AU come to D.C. to work with the top politicians in the world, and I feel similarly fortunate to be working with the top scientists."

Nuli said that her NIH experience inspired her to bring a chapter of Phi Delta Epsilon, an international medical fraternity, to AU. She points to engaging and helpful mentors as the most important resource for pre-med students. 

Nuli will be extending her HIV work by volunteering in South Africa this summer and said she hopes to stay in this field for the long run.

Amberg, on the other hand, decided to pursue a new field after her time with the plastic surgeons. After interacting with patients and hearing their individual stories, Amberg discovered that her true passion is in psychology. She is grateful for her internship experience and the fact that it gave her a clearer vision of her future goals.

"My time at DaVinci has given me so much more than another bullet on my resume," Amberg said. "I’ve gained plenty of practical skills, but my most valuable takeaways are intangible: how to behave in a professional environment, how to interact with clients, and how much I can accomplish if I push myself."

One day, Stephen Casey was sitting at his kitchen table while his teenaged daughter and her 11 friends sat in a different room, chatting away and using their cellphones.

“I was thinking that there’s no way, with the way that we think about communication, that we’ll keep up with that generation,” the mathematics and statistics professor said. “Because what happens is that they talk in these incredibly rapid bursts of communication. It is also rich, multilayered communication.” 

Casey said this “art” of allowing information to be communicated electronically is called signal processing. 

“I was sitting at the kitchen table, in essence hiding. I was the adult in charge at this time, and I was trying to let them do their thing and just trying to remain invisible,” he added, “while thinking about this signal processing innovation.”  

What resulted from that day was an idea that led to a $145,537 award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research for a three-year project called “New Techniques in Time Frequency Analysis: Adaptive Band, Ultra Band and Multi-Rate Signal Processing,” which led to an invention that now has a pending patent. 

“My invention is to take blocks of the signal and project that into what is called frequency space,” he said. “The method that I invented is called the projection method.” 

Casey already has two provisional patents for this method and said he is currently under review for a full patent.  

When he applied for the Air Force Office of Scientific Research award, he described all the different ways his method could provide solutions for the different problems the Air Force works on.  

“One is a very interesting phenomenon called ultra wide band communication,” Casey said. “This came about because of high-level radar and sonar signal processing, which obviously the Air Force is interested in.” 

Casey explained ultra wide band communication through a civilian use, referring to the earthquake that shook the Washington, D.C., area in the late summer of 2011. 

“We noticed that the first thing to go down was cellphone networks,” he said. “So the projection method actually solves the post-earthquake communication problem. Because if we communicated with our cellphones via ultra wide ban communication and used the projection method, we could layer the communications in hierarchy so that the low-level communication would get through.”  

Casey said text messages would go through first, followed by voice messages, then followed by video uploads or Facebook statuses about where a person was when the earthquake happened. The projection method is also energy efficient, Casey said, because when there is less complicated communication, it operates more efficiently and at lower energy levels. In the three years that Casey has to work on his idea with the award money, he said he will continue to write papers and think about a few other ideas that branch off of his projection method.

“I am amazed at how useful and how interesting mathematics is,” he said. “Even though I’ve been teaching for 25 years, I still feel like a student. I’m just very excited and enthused by the wonderful collection of things I get to work on, and I am thankful for having the opportunity to teach the great students we have in the AU Mathematics and Statistics Department.”

Presenting a semester's worth of work in front of your professor and classmates is stressful enough, but add in a real client and it's a different ball game entirely. That's exactly what students faced in Assistant Professor Cristel Russell's Advertising and Promotion Campaigns class.

The Concept

Student teams worked with one of two clients—the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) or media start-up SocialRadar—to develop a strategic campaign designed to meet the client's needs.

"I think it was a really great experience for the students to work with real clients on a real campaign. There's so much more to learn than what can just be read in textbooks," said Russell.

For SocialRadar, teams worked to develop a traditional launch campaign of a new smartphone app. But for CSPI, the challenge was to develop a campaign to encourage consumers to demand less marketing of unhealthy foods aimed at children.

Working on the same project throughout the semester gave students the opportunity to tie together principles learned across the marketing curriculum, according to Russell. Despite seeming like apples and oranges on the surface, marketing an idea versus a traditional product required the same steps in the end.

"Some of the students struggled a bit in the beginning…but once they realized the same principles applied, you could really see the lights in their eyes as they started coming up with ideas."

More Than Homework

From the student perspective, they were able to take away even more from Russell's class—now they have tangible evidence of their abilities.

"It was incredible to have a real client and do real work, not just deal in hypotheticals," said Kristianna George, BSBA '13. "It's been really helpful when I've applied to jobs because I have this project to hand over and say 'Here, I did this,' and it's exactly what I gave [my client.]"

Working with real clients also allowed students to overcome difficulties that may not be covered in a textbook.

"We definitely had struggles, but really learned what the [campaign presentation] process can really be like," said Kurtis Gobencion, BSBA '13. "There was more pressure because we had a real client, our materials had to be professional, we couldn't just say 'Good enough.'"

Professional Quality

Students may have been producing the work, but the final campaigns presented were anything but student quality, according to the clients.

"Everything I saw was top-notch," said Michael Chasen, CAS '94, and CEO of SocialRadar. "I couldn't have gotten better results going to an outside contractor."

Chasen, who has worked with several schools in the area, enjoys engaging with his alma mater and hopes to continue to work with Kogod in the future.

"I found the students to be very entrepreneurial. It was obvious they inherently understood the online media world, and they really stood out among schools I've worked with."

Lindsay Vickroy, nutrition policy coordinator for CSPI, echoed Chasen's positive experience.

"It was obvious to me that the students were very committed to the project and worked diligently to provide us with a product that would work," she said. "I know it wasn't easy to develop a campaign to market an idea instead of a product, but they really rose to the challenge."

Not so long ago half of humanity was all but invisible in history books. Bit characters in male narratives of wars and diplomacy, the best women could hope for were cameos, the occasional “woman worthies” who somehow transcended the limitations of the fair sex.

The odd chapter on Joan of Arc or Marie Curie notwithstanding, women have never been content to be written out of the narrative. They’ve been writing women’s histories all along. 

How those histories have grown in sophistication to the field’s more nuanced transnational approach is, in part, the subject of 10 essays collected in AU history professors Pamela S. Nadell and Kate Haulman’s new book, Making Women’s Histories: Beyond National Perspectives. 

In Making Women’s Histories, which Nadell and Haulman coedited, the perspective ranges from the experiences of women in Tsarist Russia and the British empire in Egypt and India to Qing dynasty China and the 1960s-era United States. 

In her essay “Women’s Past and the Currents of U.S. History,” essay contributor Kathy Peiss of the University of Pennsylvania cuts to the chase on what many women historians consider the political role of women’s history. 

“When I began work as a women’s historian,” Peiss writes, “we all promised each other a revolution. If the original goal was to write women into history, we have made amazing progress—from exclusion to inclusion, from private to public, from attention to ‘women worthies’ to an extraordinary exploration of women from many different origins and all walks of life, in the United States and around the world . . . Now, women’s history and gender analysis are shaping the comparative, transnational, and international histories that are beginning to revise anew how we understand the . . . past.” 

Women’s history’s often explicitly politically engaged mission, coeditor Nadell maintains, makes it no different from other kinds of history—African American history, say, or her own field of Jewish history. Nor are all women’s historians writing today “engaged in the same kind of political project,” she says. 

Women’s history now enjoys much more public awareness. But progress hasn’t always been linear. Take the growing popularity of Women’s History Month. 

Nadell’s coeditor, AU history professor Haulman, is at best ambivalent about the annual recognition of women’s accomplishments.

“I’m not a huge fan of Women’s History Month,” Haulman says. “It had utility for its time. But every month is Women’s History Month. Women’s history is everywhere. Segmenting it into its particular month can have a marginalizing effect.” 

And that old heroine, the woman worthy, has hardly faded away. News of the first woman this, or the first woman that, is a TV and newspaper staple. 

“I just got something today, the first female rabbi chaplain in the U.S. Air Force,” Nadell says. 

Even so, she agrees that women worthies can serve a positive purpose. 

“For somebody not trained as a historian, they’re manageable, they’re understandable,” she says. “They’re an individual life within your particular capacity to understand. The kind of more theoretical and sophisticated work we do in terms of women’s history isn’t always so accessible. So I understand the reason for it.” 

An important benefit of women’s history coming to the forefront is its effect on historians in general. It’s no longer acceptable to pretend that half the human race doesn’t exist, says Nadell. 

The book is dedicated to the memory of Robert Griffith, who was responsible for the spring 2008 AU conference on women’s and gender history from which the idea for the book was born. 

Nadell and Haulman write in the book’s acknowledgments, “[T]hat this book is now in your hands is due in part to the efforts and encouragement of our colleague, friend, and then department chair, the late Professor Robert Griffith. When a fund created in the 1890s for the ‘education of young women alone,’ unexpectedly fell into his lap, Bob, with his characteristic grand vision, imagined a series of projects which would advance the field of women’s and gender history . . . American University’s Clendenen Fund for Women’s and Gender History was born.” 

Asked which of the book’s essays they liked best, Nadell and Haulman both smile. 

“We love all of our children equally,” Haulman says. 

Making Women’s Histories: Beyond National Perspectives (NYU: 2013) contains essays written by Arianne Chernock (Boston University), Anna Clark (University of Minnesota), Barbara Engel (University of Colorado–Boulder), Jocelyn Olcott (Duke), Kathy Peiss (University of Pennsylvania), Lisa Pollard (University of North Carolina–Wilmington), Claire Robertson (Ohio State), Mytheli Sreenivas (Ohio State), Ulrike Strasser (University of California–Irvine), Heidi Tinsman (University of California–Irvine), and Cristina Zaccarini (Adelphi). Nadell and Haulman wrote the book’s introduction.

People say they live and breathe art, but three AU master of fine arts alumni and one current student really do—they opened an art exhibit in the living room of their Columbia Heights row house.

Delicious Spectacle is an experimental gallery space where artists can show their work and meet other artists, according to Sam Scharf, MFA ’12 and one of the founding members of the exhibit.  

Scharf said his fellow housemates—who include Victoria Greising MFA ’11, Camden Place MFA ’12, Dan Perkins MFA ’13, and Megan Meuller (a 2008 Virginia Commonwealth University BFA grad)—decided to host a different art show at Delicious Spectacle each month.  

“I thought it might be a nice way to show work that might not be getting shown,” he said. “It’s nice to have a space where artists can feel free to kind of explore, and maybe try something they can’t do in a traditional white-wall space.” 

Since its opening, Delicious Spectacle has hosted more than 20 different artists, some of them AU students or alumni. The founders do not show their own art on principle.  

“You know there’s going to be good work up,” Scharf said. “It’s new, contemporary, and innovative. We try to focus on that to come through.”  

The Washington Post has featured the exhibit space twice, bringing a flood of people into the house for exhibit opening parties. Between 100 and 150 people came to the opening of the first exhibit, but the past couple shows were jammed with 200 to 250 people. There was literally no room to move in the two exhibit rooms.  

“I’m happy that people are there,” Scharf said. “Yeah, some of them are there to get free drinks, but at least they’re surrounded by art.”  

Scharf said house art exhibits are relatively new to the D.C. area.  

“It is a house, and we can still show really good work,” he said. 

The housemates all have their own assignments when it comes to Delicious Spectacle. They divvy up who will curate the different exhibits, as well as who will promote the shows, construct and deconstruct the exhibit space, and buy drinks for the opening and closing parties.  

“There’s a lot of effort and energy being put into it, and we’re not getting paid for it,” Scharf said. “The best thing is that it’s possible.” So what is the spectacle, and why is it delicious? 

“A spectacle is a concept that has to do with the larger system that we live in,” he said. The group originally wanted to do an art critique blog and was talking about spectacles in art late one night.  

“We were talking about how delicious it is, how we just wanted to soak this up,” he said. “It is very tasty in a way.”  

Delicious Spectacle’s next opening is May 24, when the work of artist Matt Rich will be presented.

Students have often reported that the temperatures in the library can be very cool in summer and very warm in winter. The library and university are addressing this situation with a summer construction project to upgrade the HVAC (heating, ventilation, and cooling) system in the Bender building. AU’s Facilities Management office will work to improve temperature consistency and to save energy.

Library users may be slightly affected by the construction, which will be done overnight and began Monday, May 13. The work is expected to last for eight weeks and will begin on the library’s third floor and continue downward floor-by-floor. The areas, which may experience uncomfortably warm or cool temperatures, will be cordoned off. This will also protect visitors from any materials that may have been dislodged from the ceilings during the process. Books located in these areas may be retrieved by visiting the Borrowing Desk on the first floor.

Library staff members are taking all measures to ensure this project affects visitors as little as possible. Please contact the Information Desk in the lobby with any questions or comments at 202-885-3232.

Joe Bohannon grew up on environmental films.

“I would travel from Antarctica to outer space – all from my seat in the theater. I would get woozy from the aerial shots, but I also fell in love with film and filmmaking,” he recalls.

Now, as a grad student in the School of Communication (SOC), Bohannon, 41, is making his childhood dream a reality.

“This is the next chapter in my career evolution and my personal journey,” said the MFA student.

Bohannon works as an operations manager and producer for NBC News in Washington – a gig that not only informs his work in the classroom, but allows him the flexibility to juggle classes and extracurricular activities.

“I wanted to continue to work while I learned,” said Bohannon, who’s been with the network since 1993, covering everything from the Emmys to the White House. “I wanted to learn the theory, while still refining my skills. You can always learn how to light things or do audio a little better.”

The Fairfax, Va., resident has also honed his skills through SOC’s Center for Environmental Filmmaking (CEF). Along with CEF director Chris Palmer, Bohannon has shot a documentary on the Chesapeake River for Maryland Public TV; mingled with alligators in the Florida Everglades; and shot atop glaciers in the Alaskan wilderness.

“I experienced things I never would’ve imagined – things I couldn’t have learned just sitting in a classroom,” says Bohannon, who also traveled to five states to help a classmate shoot a documentary about parrots, A Place to Land. He served as director of cinematography and sound technician on the film, which won a Student Academy Award.

And while he says it’s tricky to juggle school and work – “it’s difficult to wear so many hats when you’re just one person” – Bohannon wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.

“Being able to go to untouched areas of the world to practice your craft is just amazing.”

Before he was one of the 30 coaches at the pinnacle of professional basketball, Ed Tapscott '80 led AU to one of its biggest basketball wins.  

Tapscott, now  head coach of the NBA's Washington Wizards, was on the sideline 26 years ago when his unheralded Eagles shocked the college basketball world by taking down the mighty Georgetown Hoyas.  

Despite coming off back-to-back 20-win seasons, AU was a prohibitive underdog to a Georgetown team ranked fifth in the nation and stocked with future NBA all-stars. Those Hoyas teams didn't just beat their opponents, they scared them into submission. But AU refused to be intimidated.  

"We knew we could play with them," says Gordon Austin, who scored some huge buckets for AU that night. "Coach Tapscott treated it like it was a normal game. He made the point to respect them, but not to fear them. We started off playing very well, and they were not. They were playing right into our hands, shooting long jumpers—and we were getting all the rebounds."  

AU took a double-digit lead into the locker room, but Georgetown mounted an expected second-half comeback that AU scrambled to hold off. When the final buzzer sounded, the scoreboard read American 62, Georgetown 61. 

 "I was happy to see that clock wind down to zero, that's for sure," says Tapscott, who went on to a long and distinguished career as an NBA executive before taking over the Wizards head coaching job earlier this season. "It was a wonderful moment for our program. I think it gave us some sense of appreciation at AU that basketball could play a significant role on campus."

This is a ghost story that starts with a fishing net that gets loose from its moorings. It drifts in the ocean, entangling sea turtles, trapping seals, snagging fish that act as bait to lure other fish, which are trapped in their turn. Or maybe it damages a fragile coral reef.

Fortunately, that's not the end of the story. Science has its ghostbusters, and they're in pursuit of these derelict nets known as ghost nets, along with the wildlife-killing garbage dumped at sea by freighters and fishing fleets.

The ghostbusters are people like marine biologist and AU environmental science professor Kiho Kim, who goes after marine debris as a member of the Ocean Studies Board of the National Research Council. Their weapons are data, meetings, long hours analyzing research, and ultimately, a national report and testimony to Congress on the changes needed in marine policy and regulations.

The sight of marine debris is familiar to Kim, who spots it whenever he dives around the coral reefs that are the focus of his research. "Every time I go diving, I come back up with a pocket full of weights and lines," he says.

Some of it washes into the sea. A plastic bottle chucked into a clump of water weeds by a Georgetown fisherman can end up in a sea turtle's belly. "Plastic can lacerate intestines. Animals can choke, or their intestines can be blocked up so they can't eat any more," Kim says.

On weekend cleanups at a seemingly pristine Georgetown park he's led AU students to do what they can, in practical ways, to stop trash on the shoreline from washing into the seas.

 But the debris problem, particularly in the ocean, is too big to eliminate with weekend actions. That's why Kim and his colleagues have spent almost two years examining the situation and, in the end, proposing specific solutions.

The National Research Council is, in essence, the research arm of the federal government. Its Ocean Studies Board includes experts in a variety of areas, such as lawyers who looked at regulations, along with some leading marine biologists—including Kim.

The council's report called for the United States and the international maritime community to adopt a goal of zero discharge of waste, a goal that could be closer to reality thanks to a series of policy and regulation changes recommended by Kim and his colleagues.

And that could make a real impact in saving the seas from the specter of wildlife-killing debris.

Adapted from the article "Report to Congress: Tackling Marine Debris," American magazine, Winter/December 2008.

 The Dead Sea is dying.

With each passing year the sea's depth drops by 1.2 meters, almost 4 feet, yet Gidon Bromberg refuses to consider its demise inevitable. His goal: the ecosystem will be restored, and it will be done by Jews, Christians, and Muslims working in concert.

In a part of the world with no shortage of problems, the environment often takes a back seat. It has a champion, however, in Bromberg, WCL/LLM '94. Working from a blueprint he developed at AU, he has devoted his life to restoring the Jordan River valley.

"There is no place on the planet similar to the Dead Sea," Bromberg says from his office in Tel Aviv, Israel, where he runs the organization EcoPeace. Stunningly beautiful, the Jordan valley has desert, mountains, green oases, and a heritage 12,000 years old. "For all three religions the river has a high importance, and yet we've completely destroyed it."

The sea's main water source is the Jordan River, today in a great state of peril. Littered with sewage, agricultural runoff, and pilfered of its water primarily for use in farming by Israel, Jordan, and Syria, the river's diversion is directly responsible for 70 percent of the Dead Sea's water level decline. The rest stems from mineral mining.

The Dead Sea was 80 kilometers long a half-century ago, about 50 miles. Today, it's only 31 miles long and shrinking fast.

Bromberg's Washington College of Law thesis on the environmental implications of the Middle East peace process intrigued many people around Washington, leading to a conference on the topic in Egypt and the founding of EcoPeace.

Today, its 38 staff members and hundreds of volunteers work in offices in Tel Aviv, Bethlehem in the Palestinian West Bank, and Amman, Jordan, lobbying governments to adopt environmentally favorable policies and trying to stimulate public awareness of the ecosystems at the grassroots level.

"He's committed to bringing Palestinians, Jordanians, and Israelis together to see how they can cooperate," says Nader Al-Khateeb, EcoPeace's Palestinian director. "He's a citizen of this region and cares for its future."

Like the obstacles to peace, the prospects of rejuvenating the Jordan River and the Dead Sea are daunting, yet Bromberg is convinced both can be achieved.

"The environment is a great impetus for peace building," he says. "What we do in our work is turn things around and look at how we could all benefit if we cooperate."

Adapted from the article "Saving the Dead Sea," American magazine, spring 2007.