Awards to faculty – News

Dead clams talking: $337,000 grant supports clamshell-climate research

Doug Hubley — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 17:31:12 +0000

Professors Michael Retelle, at left, and William Ambrose on the island of Ingøya, Norway. (© Randall Hyman)

An oceanographer and a geologist at �ֲ��ý have received a National Science Foundation grant to create a 1,000-year record of changing sea and climate conditions in the Norwegian Arctic.

Professor of Biology William Ambrose and Professor of Geology Michael Retelle received $337,228 from the NSF for their three-year research project, which will analyze the natural record archived in clamshells over the course of a millennium to plot changes in sea temperature where the Barents and Norwegian seas meet.

The researchers hope that this history of water conditions, which will span two historic periods of significant, naturally occurring temperature shifts in addition to contemporary climate change, can provide insight into major ocean currents and other phenomena related to climate.

“We’re interested in what triggers rapid climate change, and changes in the ocean conditions and currents may be a key,” says Ambrose.

Arctica islandica, older and younger. (Dan Frost ’05)

Ambrose and Retelle are focusing on the ocean quahog or Iceland quahog, aka Arctica islandica, a mollusk found across the North Atlantic. This species, Ambrose explains, “is the longest-lived multicellular animal” — one specimen caught off Iceland was more than 500 years old — “and so we get a very long history of growth and environmental conditions embedded in the shell.”

Clams and other bivalves produce annual lines in their shells, similar to the rings in tree trunks, that can be used to measure growth and that closely reflect conditions, notably temperature, that prevailed during the course of a year. (Perhaps counterintuitively, warmer water results in slower growth and narrower growth lines in the quahogs Ambrose and Retelle are studying.)

In combination with other techniques such as carbon-dating, growth-line patterns from living and dead clams can be matched up and strung together into long chronologies. An Arctica chronology in Iceland dating back 1,357 years was created by a team including University of Iowa paleoclimatologist Alan Wanamaker, who is partnering with Ambrose and Retelle on the Norway project. Wanamaker has done similar work with clams from the Gulf of Maine.

Retelle and Ambrose are doing their field research on Ingøya and Rolvsøya, islands in Finnmark, Norway’s northernmost county. Not only are Arctica islandica abundant and easily harvested there, but also favorable to the research is the islands’ location relative to the Norwegian and Barents seas and to major currents including the Gulf Stream.

The shell of an ocean quahog in cross-section, showing growth lines. (William Locke/�ֲ��ý College)

The islands’ geology, too, favors this research. Ingøya and Rolvsøya were once covered with glaciers, Retelle explains, and at its greatest extent during the last glaciation, the weight of the ice depressed the earth’s crust below sea level. As the glaciers melted and retreated, the land surface rebounded, leaving a succession of former beaches that are progressively older with increasing elevation.

“We have this staircase of beaches that go down to the present sea level,” Retelle says. “We think that they might go back 6,000 years or more. We’re able to trace beaches from higher elevations, like 20 meters above sea level, down to modern sea level.

“And the beaches contain a really nice assortment of these clamshells.”

Ambrose and Retelle’s 1,000-year chronology will cover the Medieval Climate Optimum, a warm period that lasted from about 950 to 1250, and the Little Ice Age, which ran from 1550 to 1850.

These old beaches rebounded above sea level as melting glaciers retreated and released them from heavy ice. (Michael Retelle/�ֲ��ý College)

A fair amount is known about the climate during these periods from other sources and other regions, Retelle explains. But these clamshell records are valuable because they represent known climate events year by year. “If we can see those events in the annual record in the clams, then we can actually pin down the timing — and maybe causes — of climate change in the last millennium.”

And Arctica islandica‘s broad geographical range provides the potential for a portfolio of such chronologies that would clarify regional variation in the impacts of climatic phenomena. Wanamaker, says Retelle, “has worked with the same species everywhere from the Gulf of Maine up to Finnmark.”

The Ambrose-Retelle research team for this project consists of 10 scientists from the U.S., Norway and the Netherlands. �ֲ��ý students will take part in the research starting next year, the second year of the three-year effort.

The project will incorporate public educational programming in Iowa and in Maine — thanks in part to the efforts of �ֲ��ý graduate Dan Frost, a math teacher at Thornton Academy.

Dan Frost ’05, left, and �ֲ��ý geologist Mike Retelle off the coast of Norway. (Julie Retelle/�ֲ��ý College)

A member of the �ֲ��ý class of 2005 who studied with Retelle, Farmington native Frost served as teacher-in-residence with the research team during its first session of field work last summer. “He was involved in every aspect” of the research, Retelle says. Frost will use material from the field in both his classes and in public lectures.

Ambrose is the principal investigator and Retelle is the co-principal investigator for the project, titled “Collaborative research: Exploring the role of oceanic and atmospheric forcing on Arctic marine climate from newly developed annual shell based records in coastal Norway.”

Award supports Kahan’s study of cultural influences on visual perception

Doug Hubley — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 20:04:05 +0000

Professor of Psychology Todd Kahan. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Todd Kahan, a �ֲ��ý psychology professor who studies how people process visual information, has received a prestigious award that will allow him to explore how cultural differences affect those processes.

A cognitive psychologist, Kahan this fall begins an academic-year sabbatical dedicated to the visual perception study. He has received a James McKeen Cattell Fund Fellowship that allows him to extend his sabbatical time to encompass research in both the United States and Australia.

In recent years, only two to four researchers annually have received the fellowship. Most recipients are affiliated with major research universities, not small liberal arts schools like �ֲ��ý.

Researchers once thought that because all humans have the same physical apparatus for eyesight, visual perception didn’t differ between individuals or across cultures. “But we now know that’s just not true,” says Kahan (pronounced kahn).

A growing body of research indicates that cultural or experiential differences cause disparities in visual processing. For instance, looking at the same series of images, people from East Asian cultures are more likely to spot changes in the background of a scene, where Westerners tend to notice changes in central objects.

Visual perception comprises a crossfire of cognitive processes that the brain harmonizes into the mental image of what we see. Color, motion, edges of shapes and other factors are processed in different areas of the brain — and the brain also seeks to relate the new information to what already lives in our memories, such as a lifetime of cultural experience.

Kahan’s research will focus on timing. “What really interests me is, where in the visual information processing stream does culture seem to exert its role?” Kahan says. “Is that happening only late in visual perception, after an object representation has been formed, or is it at the earliest stages of vision?”

Until recently, researchers haven’t been able to make much progress with that question. “It’s really difficult to try to figure out where in the visual processing stream this is happening,” says Kahan.

But he and his research partners have developed certain visual illusions, presented on computer screens to participants in his research, whose results can be correlated with specific phases of visual processing and may pertain to cultural experience.

During his sabbatical, Kahan will explore how well those illusions actually do correspond to cultural influences on visual perception. He will run comparative perception experiments, based on the illusions, using participants from different cultures — in this case the U.S. and Australia, where he will work with Paul Dux, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Queensland.

“Definitely, your life experiences do shape the way you attend to the world, and they do influence visual perception,” Kahan says. “But I think researchers have tended to stop there. Our group is the only group that I know of where we’re trying to pinpoint where in the visual processing stream this is occurring.”

Broadly speaking, Kahan’s research investigates the mechanisms of paying attention to, perceiving and remembering the incalculable amounts of visual information that life presents. “Attention, perception, memory and language are so highly interconnected they are often hard to disentangle,” Kahan says.

Kahan, who chairs the �ֲ��ý psychology department, joined the college in 2002. Among the topics he teaches are sensation and perception, cognitive psychology, the psychology of language, and cognition in insects, birds and mammals other than humans.

He earned a bachelor’s of science degree in psychology at Syracuse University and a doctorate in cognitive psychology at the University at Albany, State University of New York.

Atomic physicist Nathan Lundblad chosen by NASA for space station research

Doug Hubley — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 17:44:06 +0000

Nathan Lundblad, assistant professor of physics, studies atomic behavior at ultracold temperatures. (Chris Milliman for �ֲ��ý College)

When NASA sends its new Cold Atom Laboratory up to the International Space Station in 2016, �ֲ��ý physicist Nathan Lundblad will be watching it go with more than routine scientific interest.

An atomic physicist, Lundblad is one of just a handful of scientists chosen by NASA to perform research with the Cold Atom Laboratory, a refrigerator-sized apparatus designed to create the coldest known environment in the universe — one ten-billionth of a degree above absolute zero.

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Lundblad, who studies atomic behavior at ultra-cold temperatures, is principal investigator for one of seven NASA research projects that will employ the new facility. Moreover, Lundblad is the only principal investigator representing an undergraduate liberal arts college in the CAL project. The seven projects will share a total of about $12.7 million over a four- to five-year period.

Nathan Lundblad: What NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory means for students

When Lundblad arrived at �ֲ��ý in 2009, he and his students established the first apparatus at �ֲ��ý for conducting this kind of research. �ֲ��ý and Amherst College are the only two undergraduate liberal arts colleges in the U.S. with such facilities.

When he first learned of the CAL opportunity, Lundblad saw his way to pursue research previously out of reach, so to speak. “The idea that I proposed to NASA has been popping around in my head for some years,” he says, “but it’s virtually impossible to do in the presence of gravity.”

News of the award sent Lundblad “absolutely over the moon with delight,” he says. “I’ll have a chance to do science that I couldn’t do otherwise. I’m excited for my students, that they’ll have opportunities to do research at this level. And it raises the profile of science at liberal arts colleges like �ֲ��ý to be able to participate in work like this.”

Nathan Lundblad: What NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory means for �ֲ��ý

At extreme low temperatures, the familiar physical attributes of classical mechanics are supplanted by the counterintuitive and seemingly weird behaviors of quantum mechanics — under which, for example, atomic particles can resemble waves as much as particles, and a given object can be in more than one place at the same time.

Lundblad works with Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). Named for the physicists who first postulated their existence in the 1920s, Satyendra Bose and Albert Einstein, these are ultracold clouds of gas whose atoms lose their individual characteristics and behave more like a unified wave.

Here on the planet, gravity curtails how cold an environment can be maintained in the vacuum chambers used to create BECs. Because gravity’s pull aboard the space station is so faint, the CAL will be able to reach temperatures lower than can be established in an earthly lab.

In collaboration with Courtney Lannert, a theoretical physicist at Smith and the University of Massachuetts Amherst, and David Aveline, an experimental physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Lundblad has proposed a set of experiments to observe properties of certain types of BECs that can’t be created in Earth’s gravitational field.

“I’m interested in studying how the rules of quantum mechanics apply to a BEC based on its shape, and certain shapes are really tough to make in gravity. I’m looking to make a BEC in the form of a shell or bubble, and then study how quantum mechanics applies to a system that is two-dimensional, but without a border, like the surface of the Earth.”

At �ֲ��ý, Lundblad will work with a postdoctoral researcher and with his students to design experiments for the CAL. That work is expected to begin this May and continue at �ֲ��ý through 2019.

In the Lundblad lab at �ֲ��ý, the apparatus for conjuring up a Bose-Einstein condensate occupies a large table covered with a mass of wires, tubing and hardware at whose heart is a vacuum chamber and a set of lasers. He and his students are accustomed to attending this machinery hands-on — a degree of control they’ll have to surrender with the CAL, which they will operate remotely, with just limited intervention by the space station astronauts.

“The astronauts aboard the ISS will be able to make small changes, but they are very busy up there. So in general the biggest challenge is running this apparatus remotely, and that’s totally different from how we do things on Earth.”

Danforth’s ‘Children of the Greek Civil War’ receives prestigious book prize

�ֲ��ý News — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 20:09:46 +0000

Dana Professor of Anthropology Loring Danforth. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Co-written by �ֲ��ý anthropologist Danny Danforth, the first comprehensive study of two children’s evacuation campaigns during the 1948 Greek Civil War has received the prestigious Edmund Keeley Book Prize.

Published in 2012 by the University of Chicago Press, Children of the Greek Civil War: Refugees and the Politics of Memory was co-written by Danforth, the Charles A. Dana Professor of History at �ֲ��ý, and Riki Van Boeschoten, associate professor of social anthropology and oral history at the University of Thessaly, Greece.

Based in Brunswick, Maine, the Modern Greek Studies Association awards the Keeley Book Prize to an academic book first published in English and dealing with modern Greece or a Hellenic theme. Children of the Greek Civil War shared this year’s first prize with The Balkan Prospect: Identity, Culture, and Politics in Greece after 1989 by Vangelis Calotychos.

The warring sides in the Greek Civil War evacuated 38,000 children from their homes in the mountains of northern Greece. The Greek Communist Party relocated half of them to orphanages in Eastern Europe, while their adversaries in the national government placed the rest in children’s homes elsewhere in Greece.

A point of contention throughout the Cold War, this controversial episode continues to fuel tensions between Greeks and Macedonians and within Greek society itself.

Marshaling archival records, oral histories and ethnographic fieldwork, Danforth and Van Boeschoten analyzed the evacuation process, the political conflict surrounding it, the children’s upbringings and their fates as adults cut off from their parents and their homeland.

They also give voice to seven refugee children who, as adults, recount their experiences and efforts to construct new lives in diaspora communities throughout the world. A much-needed corrective to previous historical accounts, Children of the Greek Civil War is also a searching examination of the enduring effects of displacement on the lives of refugee children.

“Danforth and Van Goeschoten grippingly tell the stories of thousands of Greek children relocated” during the war, writes K. Dubinsky for Choice Reviews Online. “Amid charges of communist baby snatching and fascist child manipulation, the book charts an astonishingly evenhanded and supremely well-researched course.

“Insisting that refugee children ought to occupy center stage in their own history, the authors support their argument with two chapters of testimony from the historical actors themselves remembering their own childhood experiences,” Dubinsky writes. “This innovative book ends with some insightful thinking about the production of historical memory. Highly recommended.”

Danforth has written three other books, all published by Princeton University Press: The Death Rituals of Rural Greece (with photographer Alexander Tsiaras; 1982); Firewalking and Religious Healing: The Anastenaria of Greece and the American Firewalking Movement (1989); and The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World (1997).

Harward Center for Community Partnerships awards recognize 18

�ֲ��ý News — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 20:09:28 +0000

Emily “Libby” Egan was one of four seniors to be honored by the Harward Center for outstanding community-engaged academic work. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College.

The seventh annual �ֲ��ý College Harward Center for Community Partnerships Awards recognized 18 individuals and organizations in a celebration at the Edmund S. Muskie Archives on May 8, 2013.

The Harward Center provides �ֲ��ý students, as well as staff and faculty, with opportunities in community-engaged research, volunteerism and environmental stewardship. Firmly rooted in the academic purpose of the College, the center is a focal point for connected learning that fuses academic discussion and community. In union with this mission, award recipients connect �ֲ��ý with the larger community through collaboration, research and service.

Here are the 2013 honorees:

• Susan Hayward, former president of the Stanton Bird Club, received the 2013 James and Sally Carignan Award for Career Achievement.
• Seniors Emily “Libby” Egan, Jordan Lupo, Erin O’Connor and Edward “Ted” Wells received the 2013 Harward Center Student Award for Outstanding Community-Engaged Academic Work.
• Destany Franklin ’14, Ellen Gawarkiewicz ’13, Juwon Song ’15 and Kimberly Sullivan ’13 received the Award for Outstanding Community Volunteerism and Student Leadership.
• Anita Charles, lecturer in education and director of secondary teacher education, was honored with the Faculty Award for Outstanding New Community Partnership Initiative.
• Professor of French and Francophone Studies Mary Rice-DeFosse received the Faculty Award for Sustained Commitment to Community Partnership.
• Head Men’s Soccer Coach Stewart Flaherty and Dining Services Production Supervisor Keith Pray were presented with the Staff Award for Community Volunteerism, Leadership or Engagement.
• Community Financial Literacy, a nonprofit that offers financial literacy courses and counseling to all refugees, immigrants, asylees and low-income individuals, received the Community Partner Award for Outstanding New Initiative.
• Sherry Russell, former director of the Downtown Education Collaborative, received the Community Partner Award for Sustained Commitment to Partnership.
• The �ֲ��ý Public Health Initiative was recognized with the Award for Outstanding Community Project/Partnership.
• Nick Bennett, staff scientist and Watershed Project director for the Natural Resources Council of Maine, received the �ֲ��ý-Morse Mountain Award for Environmental Stewardship.
• Dave Courtemanch of The Nature Conservancy’s Environmental Protection Program was presented with the �ֲ��ý-Morse Mountain Award for Environmental Lifetime Achievement.

Maine Campus Compact honors two for civic involvement

�ֲ��ý News — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:01:00 +0000

Professor of Sociology Emily Kane. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College.

Maine Campus Compact will honor two members of the �ֲ��ý College community, a member of the sociology faculty and a senior from Brunswick, for their commitment to public involvement.

A consortium of Maine schools dedicated to advancing the civic mission of higher education, MCC will present the Donald Harward Award for Faculty Service-Learning Excellence to Professor of Sociology Emily Kane of Auburn. Kane, who structures much of her coursework around community-engaged research, is one of three faculty members at Maine schools to receive this year’s award.

Kimberly Sullivan ’13. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College.

Kimberly Sullivan, a senior psychology major who co-founded the Tree Street Youth Center, a youth outreach program in Lewiston, is among six students at Maine colleges honored with the Heart and Soul Award, recognizing exemplary civic engagement.

Kane, Sullivan and the other recipients will receive their awards in an April 30 ceremony in the Hall of Flags at the Maine State House, in Augusta.

Read about Emily Kane’s community-engaged curriculum.

Read about Kimberly Sullivan and Tree Street Youth Center.

Multimedia: Cultural collisions drive Kroepsch honoree

Victoria Stanton — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 18:37:46 +0000

For anthropologist Loring Danforth, national sports team mascots and Barbie dolls are as valid for classroom discussion as native Amazonian tribes and Greek death rituals.

Loring Danforth, professor of anthropology, is this year’s Kroepsch Award recipient. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College.

Asking students to examine their own cultural investments and engage with one another is part of getting them to think like anthropologists, says Danforth, Charles A. Dana Professor of Anthropology.

When students begin to see the cultural underpinnings of their hobbies and beliefs, “that’s the most fun.”

At the same time, he says, “you get students who are insulted, offended, troubled. That can be really agonizing to work through, but it means you’re hitting on something really important and interesting.”

Danforth’s ability to work through these sometimes-visceral discussions has earned him a devoted following of students throughout his more-than 30 years of teaching at �ֲ��ý.

This year, he received the college’s Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching, established in 1985 by a gift from Robert Kroepsch ’33.

Watch a brief video about Loring Danforth. Produced by Phyllis Graber Jensen.

Danforth will give the Kroepsch Lecture on his experience leading 16 �ֲ��ý students on a Short Term trip to Saudi Arabia last May.

His lecture, titled “#�ֲ��ý2Saudi,” takes place at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, March 21, in Room 201 of the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections, 70 Campus Ave.

The lecture is open to the public at no cost. Refreshments will be served at 4:15 p.m. For more information, please call 207-786-6066.

Proposed and coordinated by Saudi native Leena Nasser ’12, Danforth’s student at the time, the excursion introduced the class to Saudi culture and included meetings with a range of activists, professionals and everyday citizens.

Leading the trip proved to be as much a learning experience for Danforth as his students.

“I was being an anthropologist myself, just taking notes furiously,” he says. At the same time, he recognized that he was “modeling for the students asking questions, doing interviews and taking notes.”

The cultural exchange did not always go smoothly. Danforth recalls an incident in which one of his non-Muslim students attempted to pick up a copy of the Q’uran, an act widely regarded as taboo in the Muslim world.

Danforth used the incident as a teaching opportunity, engaging their Saudi hosts in a debate about how non-Muslims interact with Islam’s sacred text.

Steven Kemper, chair of the �ֲ��ý anthropology department, says Danforth “brought to this department a notion that anthropology, the content of the discipline, is a moral endeavor…that it is a way of treating people and caring about people.”

Danforth puts the writing on the wall for his students. Photograph by Ryan Donnell.

Nasser agrees. She says, “There is a lot of diversity” among students at �ֲ��ý, “but not many classes utilize this diversity and perspective in the classroom like Professor Danforth.”

Reflecting on her experience in Danforth’s courses, Claire Jakimetz ’08 of Litchfield, Conn., says, “Every class was a dialogue — a safe, supportive environment to pose questions, dissect puzzles and offer our own explanations.”

Almost a year later, a few students from the Saudi trip continue to meet with Danforth to discuss ways they can use their experience to dispel myths about Saudi Arabia and Muslim culture more broadly.

Together, they have contributed essays and op-eds on the subject. Danforth is contemplating writing a book based on his “furious” notes and observations.

It’s an example of how �ֲ��ý is the “perfect balance of teaching and scholarship,” he says. “And you need to do both really well and really seriously.”

“To have a community of people who are good scholars and care about teaching has been a blessing.”

Danforth’s lecture is co-sponsored by the Kroepsch Award Selection Committee, the college division chairs, Information & Library Services and the Dean of the Faculty’s Office.

Video: Kroepsch teaching award winner Vecsey inspires and demands

Phyllis Graber Jensen — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 20:06:56 +0000

Katalin Vecsey enjoys figuring out characters in plays and shares a basic tenet with actors: “You must love your character.” A demanding teacher and exacting voice coach, Vecsey inspires love and devotion in her students.

Learn more about Vecsey, senior lecturer in theater and winner of the 2012 Ruth M. and Robert H. Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching, by watching a short video. The award exemplifies the �ֲ��ý principle of extraordinary academics backed by constructive support.

Actress Streep’s skill with voices is topic of Kroepsch Lecture

�ֲ��ý News — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 13:36:55 +0000

Senior Lecturer in Theater Kati Vecsey.

Katalin Vecsey, an expert in theatrical uses of voice and speech, offers a talk at �ֲ��ý titled “The Different Voices of Meryl Streep” at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, April 12, in the Keck Classroom (G52), Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk).

Sponsored by the Office of the Dean of the Faculty, the Kroepsch Lecture is open to the public at no cost. Refreshment service starts at 4:15. For more information, please call 207-786-6066.

Senior lecturer in theater at �ֲ��ý, Vecsey received the 2012 �ֲ��ý award for excellence in teaching, the Kroepsch Award. �ֲ��ý students and recent graduates nominate faculty for the Kroepsch, and a committee of previous recipients selects the honoree.

Vecsey is expert in both the anatomy and the aesthetics of speech in performance. In addition to teaching courses exploring voice, speech and gender, she works with students in every �ֲ��ý theatrical production and also directs plays.

Streep, who has won three Academy Awards and been nominated for many more, is one of the best actors of our time. Her use of voice, including her facility with diverse accents, is often cited.

“I am going to use her to explain what I do as a voice coach,” says Vecsey, “and how important voice is in establishing a character.”

For instance, in last year’s biopic “The Iron Lady,” for which Streep won her third Academy Award, the actress even captured the before-and-after speaking styles of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who took elocution lessons early in her career to learn to speak with more authority.

For her Oscar-winning performance in 1982’s “Sophia’s Choice,” in which Streep portrays a Polish immigrant, she “spent three months learning the Polish language,” says Vecsey.

“She then rehearsed her Polish accent in English in order to capture the natural rhythms of speech. She spoke all day in her new accent, so much that her own child did not recognize her voice. She also picked up some German.

“It’s a tremendous amount of work.”

But a convincing voice, of course, is only one part of constructing a character, Vecsey says. “Streep works very hard to find the character and it really shows. She is one of those actors who can do anything because she has the empathy to become the character, but doesn’t judge the character.

“That’s something I try to teach my students: It doesn’t matter who you play, you cannot judge the characters you are portraying. You have to accept them and find something that you love about them — otherwise people will not believe you on stage.”

A native of Budapest, Hungary, Vecsey was that nation’s first voice and speech teacher to be trained at the Hungarian Academy of Drama and Film (now the University of Drama and Film), completing her training in 1991. She came to �ֲ��ý in 1996 and was promoted from lecturer to senior lecturer in 2011. Vecsey lives in Lewiston with her husband, John Painter, and their son, Kelen.

�ֲ��ý students, recent grads honor voice and speech teacher with Kroepsch Award

Doug Hubley — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:39:00 +0000

Senior lecturer in theater Katalin Vecsey. (Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen)

Exemplifying the �ֲ��ý College principle of extraordinary academics backed by constructive support, Katalin Vecsey has received the college’s 2012 Ruth M. and Robert H. Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Vecsey lives in Lewiston with her husband, John Painter, and their son, Kelen. A senior lecturer in theater, she is expert in both the mechanics of the voice and the aesthetics of speech in performance.

In addition to teaching courses exploring voice, speech and gender, Vecsey works with students in every �ֲ��ý theatrical production and also directs plays, including a forthcoming production of Alan Ball’s Five Women Wearing the Same Dress March 16-18.

�ֲ��ý students and recent graduates nominate faculty for the Kroepsch Award, and a committee of previous faculty Kroepsch recipients selects the honoree.

For the Kroepsch Lecture, Vecsey offers the talk The Different Voices of Meryl Streep at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, April 12, in the Keck Classroom, Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk). For more information, please call 207-786-6066.

“Kati inspires and demands exceptional effort from her students in a way that is purely passionate and from a place of true caring and respect,” says Michelle Schloss, a senior from Farmington, Conn. A theater minor, Schloss is executive director of the Robinson Players, �ֲ��ý’ student theater company, which Vecsey advises.

“Students know that when they work with Kati, she will change not only the way they approach the world of theater, but also how they operate in the world at large,” says Schloss.

“Students adore her. Students respect her. They work hard because she works hard,” says Travis Jones, a junior from Ithaca, N.Y., double-majoring in theater and in visual art and culture.

A native of Budapest, Hungary, Vecsey was that nation’s first voice and speech teacher to be trained at the Hungarian Academy of Drama and Film (now the University of Drama and Film), completing her training in 1991. She came to �ֲ��ý in 1996 and was promoted from lecturer to senior lecturer in 2011.

Lecturer Katalin Vecsey (standing, second from left) teaches her voice and speech course on the stage of Schaeffer Theatre. (Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen)

Unusual in academic theater programs, Vecsey’s role as director of voice and speech encompasses both the physiology and the expressive potential of the voice. Attending every rehearsal of every production and also working one-on-one, she helps student actors develop characterizations that support the director’s vision for a play.

First, she says, “I ask them to write a character biography. They truly have to figure out who they are on stage, and lend their own body to that character. Voice is a personality issue — so if you know who you are on stage, that biography is the first step to find the character’s voice.”

Science enters the picture when it comes to using the voice properly, in terms of both achieving a desired effect and avoiding vocal injury. Noticing one student performer with vocal trouble, Vecsey urged her to see a doctor, which ultimately led to a diagnosis of nodules that required surgery.

“It was important to point that out so she didn’t damage her voice further. She came back after the surgery and was able to do more voice work — and she ended up as a music major, singing in a rock band.”

As for her approach to teaching at �ֲ��ý, Vecsey shares a philosophy with renowned stage director and theater teacher Anne Bogart. “You cannot create results, you can only create an environment where something might happen,” Vecsey says. “The most important principle is to create an environment where it’s safe for the students to learn and experiment.”

“She’s my mentor and I feel comfortable going to her for all different kinds of advice,” says senior theater major Jennifer Flanagan of Sherborn, Mass. “She helped me decide what classes to take, get through my stressful thesis process, prepare for outside theater auditions — and she has listened to me debate what I want to do after college and where I want to go.

“She gives ‘answers’ to your problems in such a way that you end up answering them for yourself.”

With Dana Professor of Theater Martin Andrucki, Vecsey co-leads the Short Term course “Central European Theater and Film,” which brings �ֲ��ý students to Budapest and Prague.

In addition to writing many papers and journal articles, Vecsey wrote, directed and presented the instructional Voice Workout Video for Professional Voice Users (In Hungarian) in 2000. She is also an independent voice consultant with a specialty in working with male-to-female transsexuals.

Vecsey received her doctorate in developmental and educational psychology at Eötvös Lóránd University, Budapest, and the equivalent of master’s and bachelor’s degrees in speech and language pathology and special education at Bárczi Gusztáv College, also in Budapest. She is frequently invited back to Bárczi Gusztáv College to teach master classes.

Awards to faculty – News

Dead clams talking: $337,000 grant supports clamshell-climate research

Award supports Kahan’s study of cultural influences on visual perception

Atomic physicist Nathan Lundblad chosen by NASA for space station research

Nathan Lundblad: What NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory means for students

Nathan Lundblad: What NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory means for �ֲ���ý

Danforth’s ‘Children of the Greek Civil War’ receives prestigious book prize

Harward Center for Community Partnerships awards recognize 18

Maine Campus Compact honors two for civic involvement

Multimedia: Cultural collisions drive Kroepsch honoree

Watch a brief video about Loring Danforth. Produced by Phyllis Graber Jensen.

Video: Kroepsch teaching award winner Vecsey inspires and demands

Actress Streep’s skill with voices is topic of Kroepsch Lecture

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�ֲ��ý students, recent grads honor voice and speech teacher with Kroepsch Award