ChronicleThe BosTon College

ChronicledeCember 16, 2010 VOL. 19 nO. 8

Published by the Boston College Office of News & Public Affairs

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Gingerbread houses, Yule Logs, holiday cookies and fruit breads are all on the mouth-watering menu this month, thanks to the efforts of BC Dining Services and the talents of those in its bakery division.

Production at the bake shop — located behind the Eagle’s Nest in McElroy Commons — ensures that holiday treats are aplenty on campus during this celebratory season. Some are available in dining halls, others are made specially for catered events.

While a “normal” day means the production of some 220 dozen cookies — or 2,640 individual treats — at this time of year the volume is increased by about a third, according to BCDS Food and Beverage Associate Director Michael Kann.

That means a spike of some 70-80 dozen cookies per day, in addition to seasonal production of special fruit breads and other holiday baked goods. Crowd favorites reportedly include Linzer cookies, snowballs and decorated sugar cookies.

Gingerbread houses also are popular holiday classics. This year, Kann notes, 230 were assembled and available —complete with frosting and candy for custom decoration — for purchase by stu-dents. Another 120 of the confections were sold as kits.

Festive Bouche de Noel cakes — or Yule Logs — and specialty cookies also are made for catered functions.

“All of the holiday production makes for a cheery bake shop,” Kann says.

The BC Dining Services website is http://www.bc.edu/offices/din-ing

—Rosanne Pellegrini

By Melissa Beecher staff Writer

A new program established by the McGillycuddy-Logue Center for Undergraduate Global Stud-ies will provide a formal way for students to engage in concepts of community service and social justice throughout their years at Boston College.

The Global Service and Jus-tice Program blends local and international service experiences with research and coursework, a combination that fosters students’ intellectual growth and a greater awareness of the world, said Di-rector of International Programs Bernd Widdig.

“Boston College is at the fore-front of a movement that ad-dresses the larger question of what it means to have an international education,” said Widdig. “The program’s focus on service learn-ing, which is part of the larger Je-suit mission, is one important rea-son why so many students came to BC in the first place.”

Organized by the McGillycud-dy-Logue Center, the Global Ser-vice and Justice Program (GSJP) will “imbed and integrate an inter-national experience in the field of

service learning into a curriculum of preparation, experience and re-flection,” Widdig said.

This year, 20 freshmen were selected for the pilot class from an applicant pool of more than 75, a number that far exceeded organiz-ers’ expectations.

Beginning next semester, the freshmen will participate in a one-credit class on global service and social justice. In order to receive a GSJP certificate, students will be required to complete a second one-credit course their sophomore year while participating in a local community service placement, as well as a month-long international service experience their junior year and a capstone project during their senior year.

Students are also required to take two years of a language and participate in four courses relevant to international service and ex-plore a common theme, such as environmental justice, peace stud-ies, or global health.

Widdig said the center would utilize relationships within the Greater Boston community to place students at parishes and non-profits.

“Our goal is to make students

Program to Offer Global Studies in Service, Justice

Continued on page 5

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Dining Services Associate Director Michael Kann (top) and bakers Scott Young (right) and Maria Touloupakis (bottom) are hard at work making holiday treats for dining halls or special campus events.

Gingerbread Houses, Yule Logs or Christmas Cookies, BC’s Bakers Go Full Tilt This Time of Year

SWEETENING UP THE HOLIDAYS

STM’s prison ministry program

Ruth Chobit leaves BC after 48 years

Women’s soccer seeks more success

Photos by Caitlin Cunningham

Q&A: MARY CRONIN

Products That Play It SmartCarroll School of Management

Professor of Information Systems Mary Cronin has just published a new book, Smart Products, Smart-er Services, which looks at business strategies behind the technology em-bedded in smart phones, intelligent autos, and medical and energy de-vices. Cronin, who teaches courses on e-commerce to undergraduates and IT management for MBA students, is on the editorial board of the journal Electronic Markets.

What convinced you to write a book about smart products?

It’s part of the trajectory of the work I’ve been doing. I started writing about the Internet in the 1990s, starting with books for busi-ness readers on Internet strategies. In the past decade, I focused on mobile applications and wireless enterprise strategies. I teach in both areas. I was looking for a new tech-nology area that seemed likely to disrupt industry leaders and create new business opportunities. I got very interested in the emergence of ubiquitous wireless connectivity in combination with embedded intel-ligence in many of the products we

see these days.What is a “smart” product?This book defines smart prod-

ucts as network-connected con-sumer items with embedded microprocessors and software de-signed to manage various aspects of the product’s functionality. The smart parts of the smart products are microprocessors and micro con-trollers. The most widely known is the iPhone and others branded as smart phones. But there are e-readers, medical devices, wireless personal health and home health monitoring devices. Everything from cardio vascular monitors to glucose monitors to smart band aids to smart pills, which contain tiny chips able to communicate health information to a patch you wear on your body.

There are all sorts of areas and industries that are being impacted by this combination of embedded intelligence and wireless connectiv-ity. I saw this happening, I wanted to understand the technology, and I thought it was going to have a big impact on business strategy in

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The BosTon College

ChronicledeCember 16, 2010

DIrEctor of NEWS & PublIc AffAIrS

Jack DunnDEPuty DIrEctor of NEWS & PublIc AffAIrS

Patricia DelaneyEDItor

Sean SmithcoNtrIbutINg StAff

Melissa beecherEd Haywardreid oslin

rosanne PellegriniKathleen SullivanEileen Woodward

PHotogrAPHErS

gary gilbertlee Pellegrini

The Boston College Chronicle (USPS 009491), the internal newspaper for faculty and staff, is published biweekly from September to May by Boston College, with editorial offices at the Office of News & Public Affairs, 14 Mayflower Road, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 (617)552-3350. Distributed free to faculty and staff offices and other locations on campus. Periodicals postage paid at Boston, MA and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: send address changes to The Boston College Chronicle, Office of News & Public Affairs, 14 Mayflower Road, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467.

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Chronicle

AROUND CAMPUS

Present companySeniors Joe Tursi and Kevin

Schuster have found a way to pay it forward during the holidays.

Last year, the two won sec-ond place in the “Lights Off the Heights” house decoration compe-tition, sponsored by Office of the Dean for Student Development and the Off-Campus Council. With their $200 Target gift card prize, the housemates went to the Target in Watertown and bought dozens of toys they then dropped off at the US Marine Corps Toys for Tots location on Beacon Street.

“In the spirit of the season we went to Target and it was literally kids let loose in a toy shop,” said Tursi. “We had just done the holi-day decoration competition for fun and thought there were kids in real need who could use the prize more than any of us.”

This year, Tursi and Schuster found themselves with another $200 in Target gift cards after vol-unteering to take freshmen to Target during the first semester.

“We thought it would be a good start to buy some gifts for Toys for Tots this year,” said Tursi. “It was so rewarding last year, and really in the spirit of the Jesuit philosophy of ‘men and women for others.’ It’s something we try to do all year long, but is especially appropriate during

The BosTon College

Chronicle ONBe sure to check out the Boston College Chronicle YouTube channel

[www.youtube.com/bcchronicle] for video features on Boston College people, programs and events. New and upcoming videos include:

•Music at St. Mary’s: Members of the University Chorale at Boston College annually perform at St. Mary’s Chapel. Under conductor John Finney, the group features holiday favorites, including “Carol of the Bells.”

•Caroling by the BC Madrigal Singers: The Madrigal Singers of Bos-ton College [http://www.bc.edu/clubs/madrigal] provided a little caroling for the BC community in The Quad earlier this month.

•Fair Trade Holiday Sale: The Boston College Neighborhood Center and the Volunteer & Service Learning Center at Boston College sponsor the Fair Trade Holiday Sale, an effort among concerned administrators and faculty at BC to spread awareness of and access to fairly traded goods and crafts on our campus.

the holidays.”The “good start” has snowballed

with students donating money and gift cards to get more toys for the cause. A Facebook page has been created [http://on.fb.me/fDf-zhP] and word is quickly spreading throughout campus that the duo will be heading to Target next week for their holiday shopping spree.

“Friends of friends and room-mates are now getting involved. It’s really been surprising to see how many people are interested in mak-ing a donation,” said Tursi.

Schuster said the reality of the tough economy isn’t lost on college students.

“The toy drive is first and fore-most about the kids, but it is also about the parents,” said Schuster. “Every parent wants to be able to provide that Christmas morning moment — to see the joy and ex-citement on their kid’s face when he or she opens that gift. Unfortunate-ly, not every parent is in the financial situation to do so, so if this drive can provide even one of those moments then it is more than worth it.”

Donations will be accepted un-til Monday, Dec. 20. To donate or to get more information, e-mail joseph.tursi@bc.edu or kevin.schus-ter@bc.edu.

—MB

Boston College Chronicle is now available in “flipbook,” an easy-to-browse digital for-mat. If you would like to re-ceive Chronicle flipbook edi-tions, send e-mail to chroni-cle@bc.edu with “Subscribe flipbook” in the subject field, and include your name in the message.

Nearly 50 area foster children from ages 3 to 1� came to Bos-ton College’s Newton Campus on Dec. 4 for the annual “Christ-mas Buddies” party, sponsored by the University’s Office of Res-idential Life in conjunction with the Department of Children and Families. BC students and their young “buddies” played games, worked on holiday arts and crafts projects and serenaded residents of Cushing and Hardey halls with Christmas carols. The event concluded with a visit from Santa Claus and his elves.

BC BUDDIESPhotos by Sean Smith

Feeling at “Home”For many college students,

the question may not be so much where they call home but what they call home. That was the general idea behind “Home,” a collaborative ex-hibition created by a group of undergraduates and recently displayed in O’Connell House on Upper Campus.

The students, whose ma-jors included English, studio art, chemistry, communica-tion and art history, met once a week for two months during the fall to discuss their inter-pretations of “home” and how to present them visually.

“This theme was popular because home is something that is never stable during our collegiate life,” said exhibition co-organizer Stafford Sheehan ’11. “You reach a point when the constant moving becomes disorienting, and the home you return to longer feels as anchoring as it used to be. The show became a reflection of what home was, is, and will be — which doesn’t often happen while in college.”

Sheehan and fellow senior Devon Zimmerman produced an abstract representation of the memories of home and their lasting impact on

one’s life. Rich Hoyt ’12 recorded a 10-minute piece of poetry, layered over ambient music, that traced the evolution of the concept of home throughout one’s life, incorporat-ing biblical verses to draw atten-tion to the idolized status of home.

Sophomore Liz Moy placed landscapes, dinner scenes and text inside the silhouettes of colonial style houses — the paintings, noted Sheehan, “touched on a feeling of long-ing for nature coming out of a suburban background, as well as a somewhat satirical critique of cliché notions of family and home.”

According to Sheehan, the widely-accepted view that col-lege students tend to regard their childhood home largely as a place they’ve outgrown is overly simplistic.

“Our perception of home is forever changing as we pass through our collegiate years. Certainly at one point home did stand for restrictions and limits, yet this more youthful approach to home changes as one travels through college. Home no longer becomes four walls and a roof that traps you; rather, it becomes

something more fluid. Memories of holidays, music, conversations, and daydreams hold our nostalgia and the focus of our artwork, and not the walls that framed these events.”

—SS

Seniors Stafford Sheehan (top) and Devon Zim-merman with their piece “Memory,” created for this fall’s “Home” exhibition.

The BosTon College

ChronicledeCember 16, 2010 3

By Kathleen sullivan staff Writer

The Christmas songs may have been traditional but the location was not, as School of Theolo-gy and Ministry students joined nearly 100 other carolers Dec. 3 to provide holiday music at the Northeastern Correctional Cen-ter, a minimum security/pre-re-lease prison in Concord.

“It was a beautiful event,” said STM student Alyssa Adre-ani, about her first time attending the annual caroling event spon-sored by Concord Prison Out-reach. “There was a local string group and a choir from a Concord church that performed. About a half a dozen inmates sang and played instruments. There were songs in English and Spanish.

“After the event, inmates from the culinary program provided food and refreshments,” she add-ed.

Adreani and her classmates’ presence at the prison caroling event exemplifies the growth of STM’s Prison Ministry Initiative

(PMI), formed earlier this year by students, alumni, faculty and staff of STM and the Theology Department to offer pastoral care to the incarcerated. According to the PMI, there are more than two million men and women impris-oned in the United States, more than in any other country.

“Much of what drew me to prison ministry was the desire to reach out and simply be a loving, human presence to a population that has largely been told it is not worthy of anything, to be that presence that may enable an inmate to see him or herself as having worth and dignity and being worthy of God’s love,” said Adreani.

In October, PMI, along with STM, The Church in the 21st Century Center and Jesuit Prison Ministries Inc., sponsored a one-day conference called “‘You Visit-ed Me’: The Urgent Challenge of Prison Ministry” that drew some 200 students, prison chaplains and criminal justice professionals. Vice President for University Mis-sion and Ministry Jack Butler, SJ,

and Theology Associate Professor John McDargh were among the speakers.

In addition, STM offered a course this semester on Founda-tions in Prison Ministry, taught by George Williams, SJ, who was the chaplain at MCI-Concord. Students in the course were re-quired to complete two hours of prison ministry per week.

“It was a great course, one which further increased our awareness about the need for this ministry,”

said STM student Elke D’Haeyer, who goes to MCI-Framingham once a week to facilitate a prayer group and prepare women for the sacrament of Confirmation.

Adreani also ministers at MCI-Framingham, where she works with the inmates on public speak-ing skills. She added that STM students are involved in prison ministry at various other Mas-sachusetts correctional facilities, such as Shirley, Gardner, Bridge-water and Suffolk County.

The PMI is a great source of connectedness, added D’Haeyer, who noted that “people who are involved in prison ministry work in isolation.”

Said Adreani, “When I reflect on prison ministry — especially the collective efforts of those in the STM community— this is the passage from Scripture that most often comes to mind: ‘As you did it to the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.’”

Contact Kathleen Sullivan at kathleen.sullivan@bc.edu

A national center based at the Graduate School of Social Work is providing support to programs that give veterans with disabilities more options for independent living.

The National Resource Cen-ter for Participant-Directed Ser-vices (NRCPDS), directed by GSSW Professor Kevin Mahoney, has contracted with the Veteran Health Administration (VHA) to work with Veterans Administra-tion medical centers in 28 states that have implemented or will be implementing participant-directed services for veterans. The contract spans four years for $1.5 million.

The agreement comes in the wake of a partnership formed in 2008 between the VHA and the US Administration on Aging’s Community Living Program to create the Veteran Directed Home and Community-Based Services (VD-HCBS) program. Through the program, veterans have more control over services provided in their homes to allow them to con-tinue to live independently in their communities. They can manage their own flexible spending bud-gets, decide for themselves what mix of goods and services can best meet their needs, hire and supervise their own workers — including family and friends — and purchase items or services that help them live more independently.

This “participant-directed” model is the focus of NRCPDS’ work. The center provides research, policy, training and assistance for

participant-directed programs, and runs a National Participant Net-work that works with these pro-grams to ensure they are designed and implemented with the needs and preferences of the individual at their core.

NRCPDS will offer a wide vari-ety of training and technical assis-tance to staff at VA medical centers that now, or plan to, offer VD-HCBS programs. Massachusetts is among 14 states where the VA is operating VD-HCBS programs, and the list also includes Connecti-cut, New York, Texas, Florida, Michigan and Washington. VHA plans to extend this program to all states in the coming years.

“We are proud to be a part of helping America’s Veterans main-tain their independence and pre-serve their quality of life,” said Mahoney.

The NRCPDS is home to the widely acclaimed Cash & Counsel-ing program, which works to im-prove support services for people with disabilities and the elderly and to develop inclusive communi-ties for both populations. Studies cited by C&C indicate that C&C programs do not cost substantially more than traditional personal care services via a state-contracted home care agency, and they improve de-livery of personal care services to participants, the majority of whom report significant improvement in their lives, a trend also found among primary caregivers.

—Office of News & Public Affairs

Reaching Out to a Hidden PopulationSchool of Theology and Ministry students see prison ministry as chance to be ‘loving presence’

As part of the School of Theology and Ministry Prison Ministry Initiative, students — including (L-R) Meg Felice, Courtney Callanan and Megan Chenaille, shown with STM Associate Dean Jacqueline Regan (at left) at a campus event — took part in caroling with inmates earlier this month. (Photo by Justin Knight)

GSSW-Based Center Now in Partnership With VA

BLESSING FROM THE CARDINAL

Cardinal Sean O’Malley, OFM Cap., archbishop of Boston, was principal celebrant for the recent blessing of the chapel at the new Blessed Peter Faber Jesuit Community. University President William P. Leahy, SJ, also was present at this signature event for the community, which opened this fall. Created through a partnership between Boston College and the USA Assistancy of the Society of Jesus, the community houses an interna-tional group of 75 Jesuits whose main apostolate is theological reflection, scholarship and research.

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The BosTon College

ChronicledeCember 16, 2010

By reid Oslin staff Writer

Any Boston College employee of the past five decades who has had a payroll glitch corrected, got-ten a flu shot at the University’s annual Health Fair, or taken part in one of BC’s community out-reach programs for Boston school-children is likely to know – and appreciate — Ruth Chobit.

The effervescent and efficient Chobit, assistant director for special projects in the Human Resources Service Center and formerly the University’s payroll manager, is retiring this month after 48 years at Boston College. Her nearly five decades at the Heights are filled with friendships and achievements, including the University’s 2000 Community Service Award for her many con-tributions to, and beyond, BC.

“It’s been a great 48 years,” Chobit says as she shows off her More Hall office, decorated with scores of BC-themed photographs and memorabilia that make it more like a living museum of the University’s history than a typical administrative workspace. “Over the years, I have gotten to do a lot of different things, which I have really enjoyed. But the best thing always was meeting people. I love people.”

“When I think about Ruth, I think about all the things that she has done to be such a positive and helpful member of the Boston College community,” says Vice President for Human Resources Leo Sullivan. “She has befriended so many people, visited so many folks who were sick, especially those who were in really difficult positions health-wise. There are so many times when Ruth has reached out and lent a sympa-thetic and helping hand.”

Chobit, who has twice sur-vived breast cancer, says she had been “contemplating retirement for a year or two,” noting that she underwent four surgeries to treat the cancer during the sum-mer of 2008. “But what really put me over the edge was losing my close friend Ellen Hominsky, who worked in the Residential Life Office for 35 years, who died of leukemia this past September. I told myself ‘Life is too short.’”

Ms. Hominsky was not just a friend and colleague to Chobit. The two headed up the Univer-sity’s Wellness Program for 15 years, bringing speakers and health resource professionals to events on campus to meet with cancer sur-vivors and employee friends and family members of survivors.

“Ruth was a guiding force be-hind those luncheons,” says Sul-livan. “This is something very important to people in our com-munity who have had illnesses.”

Chobit came to Boston Col-lege in June of 1963, two days after graduating from Brockton

High School. She hasn’t worked anywhere else since.

“I had a chance to go to work at the old Potvin Shoe Co. in Brockton for $40 for a 40-hour week,” Chobit recalls. “But my guidance counselor at Brockton High knew someone at BC and suggested that I apply here. I in-terviewed and they offered me a job in the treasurer’s office that paid $58 for a 33-and-three-quar-ter hour week.

“Gas was 32 cents a gallon. There couldn’t have been any-thing nicer,” she laughs.

She was assigned to work for former University Treasurer Thomas Fleming, SJ, a Jesuit priest who would marry Ruth and her husband Edward — who also worked at BC — four years later. “The entire treasurer’s of-fice was in Gasson 100,” Chobit says. “The payroll ‘office’ was a desk right under the stained glass window, and I think there were four people who handled all of the student accounts. People would have to come in and stand in line to pick up their paycheck every week.”

Chobit’s lasting memories from the Boston College of that era include praying in a packed St. Mary’s Chapel for President John F. Kennedy after hearing of his assassination, and the stu-dent strikes of the 1970s when undergrads demonstrated to re-move Army ROTC offices from the campus (“They weren’t letting anyone in the Main Gate when the protests were going on, but I got in because I was doing the paychecks!”).

BC’s financial operations were relocated to More Hall in the mid-1970s and Chobit took on more responsibility as the Univer-

sity community and BC’s admin-istrative operations went through a growth spurt. She was promoted to payroll manager, then assistant controller, and when the payroll office was merged with Human Resources a decade ago, Chobit was named to her present post.

In recent years, Chobit has streamlined the University’s an-nual Health Fair, developing a scheduled and orderly flu shot distribution system for employees, and bringing in health care and wellness professionals for the year-ly fall event. She was instrumental in setting up a system to simplify employees’ purchase and payment of home, auto and life insurance, and encouraged businesses such as BJ’s Wholesale Club to offer extra discounts and membership benefits to BC employees.

Chobit has also taken part in a number of community service activities, including the popu-lar “Read Aloud” program for children in neighborhood public schools and an initiative co-spon-sored by the City of Boston and the Private Industry Council that places Boston high school students in paid summer work positions on campus.

For the past four years, she has participated in the STEP program, which brings inner-city high school students on campus for a closer look at academic and college life.

“Anytime anybody needs any-thing, I am usually there to help out,” says Chobit, who plans to enjoy her retirement along with Edward at their home on Cape Cod. “There have been a lot of things over the years. But now, I can’t wait to get back walking along the beach.” Contact Reid Oslin at reid.oslin@bc.edu

‘The Best Thing Was Meeting People’After almost 50 years at BC, Ruth Chobit is set to walk on the beach

Ruth Chobit always has a treat, and some good advice, for visitors to her of-fice in More Hall. (Photo by Lee Pellegrini)

the future.You write about products hav-

ing minds of their own. What is the significance of that?

There is a trade-off in adding intelligence to products to make them able to be more predictive or more responsive or more able to anticipate and deal with certain situ-ations. Sometimes the manufacturer or system provider chooses to bake those functions into the product. Embedded intelligence can be used – for example in entertainment and media devices – to control product behavior. Often that is not neces-sarily in the interests of the owner of the product – such as to restrict copying or restrict use.

On the other hand, we’ve come a long way in auto safety because of embedded sensors and systems that warn the driver of collision dan-ger or changes in car performance. Another feature of embedded intel-ligence and network connectivity is the vendor can reach out to the product, as long as it is connected to the network, long after it has been bought and paid for and make changes to the product’s functional-ity. In some instances, that’s great. The consumer doesn’t have to up-date it to get the latest features.

In other instances, and there have been famous ones with the iPhone and the Kindle, it’s not so great because you didn’t want those changes to be made, but the vendor made them anyway. I look at the pros and cons of this as to how companies are using the capabilities of smart products to differentiate their service or to control consumer options. It’s a spectrum.

Explain the second half of the title, “smarter services.”

Delivering smarter services re-quires enabling and maintaining a smart product ecosystem that sup-ports and enhances the product over time. A well-known example is Apple. The iPhone breakthrough wasn’t just the design of the phone. The breakthrough was Apple’s eco-system where developers and content providers were eager to make more and more value-added content and services available for iPhones and other Apple devices. They were able to add value to the phone through its applications, through managing

the App Store and its content. That is one example of smarter services.

Do smart products and smarter services make us smarter people?

What we own is smarter than we often think. Sometimes smart prod-ucts are designed to be helpful to us and sometimes they are designed to monitor and control what we’re do-ing even when we don’t necessarily want that. I think consumers need to become smarter and be more proactive in finding out what the devices we use in our everyday lives are tracking and evaluate for our-selves whether we want that or not.

Do you ever get the sense there could be a rebellion against these consumer items?

I certainly do and in the book I talk about the pros and cons of control. I look at what controls are permission-based or consumer-endorsed and what controls are in a sense adversarial to consumers and prevent them from doing what they would otherwise want to do.

A very simplistic embedded intel-ligence is the barrier in ink cartridges to the interoperability with different kinds of printers. There’s a small code in the cartridges that prevents a Dell printer from using a generic cartridge. That barrier to generic ink cartridges is very important to the profit margin of printer manufacturers. It’s something that is primarily useful to the manu-facturer. That’s a classic example of a strategy to control the market and make more profit through embedded intelligence.

There have been backlashes against these technologies, but not to the ex-tent some consumer advocates expect-ed. As I branched out from consumer entertainment and mobile products to smart products in health care and automotive safety and to energy moni-toring, the benefits of smart products became clearer and more exciting.

In a sense, we’re transcending that moment where embedded intelligence was used mainly for consumer control. Today’s companies are looking at using smart products and services to create entirely new markets and types of ser-vices. That’s what’s so exciting. There is the potential for transforming busi-ness models and entire industry sectors when companies really take advantage of smart product capabilities.

—Ed Hayward

Continued from page 1Cronin on ‘Smart Products’

Prof. Mary Cronin (CSOM): “Consumers need to become smarter and be more pro-active in finding out what the devices we use in our everyday lives are tracking and evaluate for ourselves whether we want that or not.” (Photo by Lee Pellegrini)

The BosTon College

ChronicledeCember 16, 2010 5

i want to talk about gratitude. i want to talk about compassion. i want to talk about respect. how even the desperate deserve it.

how haitians sometimes greet each other with the two words, “honor” & “respect.” how we all should follow suit.

try every time you hear the word “victim,” you think “honor.” try every time you hear the tag “John doe,” you shout “respect!”

Because my people have names. Because my people have nerve. Because my people are your people in disguise.

Excerpt from “Quaking Conver-sation” by Lenelle Moïse [www.lenellemoise.com]

By sean sMith chrOnicle editOr

Journalism is supposedly the first draft of history, but when it comes to the Haiti earthquake of 2010, Assistant Professor of Romance Lan-guages and Literature Regine Jean-Charles only hopes the subsequent drafts are better than what she’s seen thus far.

The American-born daughter of Haitian immigrants who returned to their native country, Jean-Charles says media coverage in the aftermath of the devastating Jan. 12 earth-quake — which killed an estimated 230,000 people and left at least a million others homeless — has, however well-intentioned, helped reinforce longstanding negative ste-reotypes about Haiti.

Phrases like “the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere,” bun-dled with video images of destitute, helpless Haitians amidst rubble and shelters — or, more recently, coping with a cholera epidemic — form an all-too-familiar narrative that simpli-fies Haiti as little else but a socioeco-nomic wasteland, she says.

“To say Haiti is the poorest coun-try in this hemisphere is, obviously, not untrue,” says Jean-Charles. “But when it is repeated over and over, in words and images, it becomes the whole picture to the exclusion

of all else.”What’s often left out of this ac-

count are the voices of Haitians who can provide thoughtful context and balance to a seemingly unrelent-ing procession of despair, says Jean-Charles, whose recent research, writ-ing and teaching reflects her inter-est in post-earthquake perspectives. She contributed to a book of essays which train historical and cultural lenses on the earthquake’s impact, helps maintain a blog on Haitian life and culture [www.tandenou2.blogspot.com], and has dealt with earthquake-related issues in her classes on Haiti this fall.

The coverage of post-earthquake Haiti has been aptly summarized by Haitian-Ameri-can author Ed-widge Danticat, according to Jean-Charles. “She said that Haitians are described as either ‘impoverished’ or ‘resilient,’ when in fact the best and truest descrip-tion is somewhere in between. And there are Haitians writing, produc-ing radio shows, and taking pho-tographs that offer more nuanced, complicated and human images of Haiti.”

Examples of Haitian-produced perspectives on the disaster include the book Haiti Parmi Les Vivants [Haiti Among the Living], which contains essays, poetry and eyewit-ness accounts, and “Haiti’s Hero,” a documentary about a doctor’s efforts to provide post-earthquake medi-cal care produced by Haitian film students. There also is a blog by Ca-rine Exantus [http://bit.ly/cuEuzK], a college student who now lives in a refugee camp with her family.

The media focus on interna-tional assistance to Haiti, especial-ly on-the-ground relief efforts from the US and else-where, fuels the perception of Haiti as an irre-trievably broken society, she adds: “If you read or watch most out-lets, you’d think Haitians are not doing anything.”

In fact, Jean-Charles only has to look within her family to know otherwise. Her father, a physi-cian, and her mother, a medi-cal professional, have both been active in provid-

ing health care to victims of the disaster. And there are other, broad-based responses to Haiti’s plight, she

notes, through indigenous organiza-tions like Fonkoze, which has been fighting Haitian poverty for years and was instrumental in reviving the nation’s currency system after the quake. Other promising ventures, such as a collaboration to bring mo-bile financial services to Haitians without bank accounts, tend to be less reported, she says.

Jean-Charles cites the book to which she contributed, Haiti Ris-ing: Haitian History, Culture and the Earthquake of 2010, as a fur-ther example of “other voices” tell-ing Haiti’s story. While not all the writers featured in the volume are of Haitian descent, all have con-siderable experience and insight on Haiti. They include former Haitian ambassador to the US Jean Casimir, Journal of Haitian Studies Associate Editor Legrace Benson, photogra-pher and filmmaker Leah Gordon,

Universite d’Etat d’Haiti literature professor Nadeve Menard and nov-elist Yanick Lehens.

Jean-Charles’ essay, “Shaken Ground, Strong Foundations: Honoring the Legacy of Haitian Feminism after the Earthquake,” looks at the historical contributions of women to Haitian society, and urges that the reconstruction address economic, social and educational in-equities that afflicted women before the January disaster.

“The best way to honor the legacy of our fallen Haitian feminist trail-blazers will be to rebuild in a way that includes gender equity,” she writes, “to reconstruct institutions that as-sist the development of women and girls, and to provide more educational opportunities for women and girls to become agents of transformation.”

Contact Sean Smith at sean.smith@bc.edu

aware of the reality of others, not only in other countries and cul-tures, but right here in Boston,” said Widdig. “This program also provides an opportunity for re-flection, along with an academic component, which will hopefully provide a more informed vision of their role in the world, locally and globally.”

Christopher Knoth ’14 said he felt like the program was tailor-made for him. In high school, Knoth often volunteered helping homeless populations in Cleveland, but also participated to a service trip to the Dominican Republic.

“From the first time I saw the flyer in a hallway advertising the program, I thought it was an amazing opportunity. The more I learned, the more I thought this is exactly the type of program I want-ed to be involved in during my years at BC,” said Knoth. “When I found out I was accepted, I was just so excited. I love learning different languages and different cultures, but also am deeply committed to service and social justice. It is such a great idea to have a program like this on campus.”

Contact Melissa Beecher at me-lissa.beecher@bc.edu

Continued from page 1

Clinical Asst. Prof. Donna Cullinan (CSON) at a recent planning meeting for the school’s medical missionary trip to Haiti: “You have to know and respect the culture. You have to know how they do things and make sure you do things their way, not your way.” (Photo by Lee Pellegrini)

Asst. Prof. Regine Jean-Charles (Romance Languages) contributed a chapter to a book that provides broader, and deeper, insights into Haiti.

Lee

Pelle

grin

iListening to Haiti’s ‘Other Voices’The world knows all about Haiti’s problems — but little else, says BC’s Jean-Charles

Global Service Justice Program to Debut

By Kathleen sullivan staff Writer

The Connell School of Nurs-ing’s medical mission to Haiti, scheduled for January, had to be postponed this week due to that country’s growing political unrest and a travel warning issued by the US State Department recom-mending against all non-essential travel to the Caribbean nation.

While the CSON faculty, stu-dents and alumnae who had been preparing for the trip all semes-ter are “heartbroken” by the turn of events, they are committed to bringing their nursing skills and medical aid to Haiti sometime during the spring semester, accord-ing to trip leader CSON Clinical Assistant Professor Donna Cul-linan.

When the CSON team does eventually arrive in Haiti, the plan is to set up a clinic in Leogane, about 20 miles outside of Port-au-Prince, where they will see about 300 to 400 patients a day. Ac-cording to Cullinan, common ail-ments the team will encounter are cholera, hypertension, acid reflux, scabies, diabetes, fungal infections, wounds and infestations.

For an aid trip to be successful, “you have to know and respect

the culture. You have to know how they do things and make sure you do things their way, not your way,” said Cullinan, who went to Haiti last February to aid victims of the catastrophic earthquake.

Cullinan, a certified family nurse practitioner, has a longstand-ing commitment to Haiti. For 10 years, under the aegis of the non-profit organization Circle of Hope, Cullinan has volunteered her time and nursing skills as part of a team providing medical care in Haiti.

Other members of the CSON-Haiti group are: Carroll Professor of Nursing Judith Vessey, alumnae Elizabeth Donahue ’05, MS ’10, and Kathryn Quinn MS ’10, grad-uate students Elizabeth Hodgman, Laura Kondrat, Caitlin Reisman and Kate Sortun, and seniors Myr-

iam Charles-Pierre, Emily Doyle, Katie D’Souza, Kellyn Freed, Bridget Igo, Erin Kane, Djerica Lamousnery, Lauren Szabo and Molly Rosenwasser.

Each one will bring three 50-pound suitcases filled with supplies such as pain relievers, vitamins, IV tubing and solution, toothbrushes, underwear, reading glasses, and antibiotics and other medicines.

Besides providing much-needed medical care, the trip also will give an economic boost to the village because the team will pay locals to act as translators, cooks and trans-porters. The CSON team also will visit the students and faculty at the FSIL School of Nursing.

The CSON students have been fundraising to support the venture, including organizing a successful

5K race on campus in November with the help of Student Programs Assistant Director Karl Bell.

“The support from the com-munity, alumni, and our peers has been absolutely amazing,” said Doyle. “At the 5K race, we had around 250 participants. We also collected donations at two tailgates during football season.

“BC has always felt like a big family and it certainly felt that way those two Saturday mornings, gen-erous donations and genuine well wishes from everyone. It makes you feel good, like you have a built in support system that stretches world-wide.”

“I’m so thankful for the sup-port we have received. [CSON] Dean Susan Gennaro has given us so much encouragement and sup-port,” said Cullinan, who also ex-pressed gratitude for the financial and logistical assistance provided by the CSON Dean’s Office and the Volunteer and Service Learn-ing Center.

Despite the problems in Haiti, Doyle said that Cullinan has helped them focus on the hope and good-ness of the Haiti people. “[She] always tells us about the kindness of the people we will meet, how generous they are and the way they will invite us into their lives. It is nice to hear so much about the passion and pride of the Haitians and their wide open hearts.”

Contact Kathleen Sullivan at kathleen.sullivan@bc.edu

Despite Setback, CSON Hopeful on Haiti Trip

�

The BosTon College

ChronicledeCember 16, 2010

By reid Oslin staff Writer

Although the Boston College women’s soccer team’s first visit to the NCAA tournament champi-onship rounds earlier this month ended with a 2-0 loss to top-ranked Stanford, there could be future “Final Four” opportunities in store for the Eagles.

“We hope to be back in the College Cup finals again next year,” says head coach Alison Foley, who has piloted her teams to 10 NCAA tournament appear-ances in 14 seasons at Boston Col-lege. “When you get to the Final Four, you sometimes wonder, ‘Do we really belong?’ Now, we walk away and know that’s the place we should be. We do belong.”

Foley says she has a nucleus of talented players and a highly-rated incoming freshman class to back up her prediction of future success.

On-field accomplishments were not always apparent when Foley took over as the Eagles’ head coach in the fall of 1996. “In my first game, we lost to Connecticut 5-0. UConn was a powerhouse and I think it was 4-0 after 20 minutes,” she recalls. “I was think-ing, ‘Oh my God, we are so far

In addition to the Boston College wom-en’s soccer team appearance in the “Final Four” championship event and No. 3 na-tional ranking, a number of other BC fall sports teams enjoyed the “thrill of victory” in their recent seasons:

•Coach Frank Spaziani’s Eagle football team won five consecutive games to close out the 2010 regular-season campaign and qualify for BC’s 12th consecutive bowl game invitation. Boston College will play No. 13 Nevada in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl on Jan. 9 in San Francisco. The game will be televised nationally by ESPN.

•Linebacker Luke Kuechly ’13 was se-lected to the American Football Coach-es Association’s First Team All-America squad, one of few sophomores to be so honored. Kuechly led the nation in tackles with 171.

•Coach Ed Kelly’s men’s soccer team finished with a 10-5-5 record and earned a spot in the NCAA championship tourney.

away.’“Over time, our focus has been

that our soccer program should replicate Boston College’s reputa-tion as a fantastic academic in-stitution,” Foley says. “We try to dig our heels in deep and do the very best that we can in recruiting and getting those top kids in the Northeast to come here.”

A look at this year’s roster shows

that 18 of the team’s 24 play-ers are from New England, New York and New Jersey. “Northeast kids have gotten better club train-ing,” Foley explains. “They have always been the hard workers, but as soon as the youth programs and clubs made commitments to better coaching and training, the level of soccer has really started to increase. At one time, to get the best players, you had to go to California or the Southeast, places where they played year-round and had really good coaching. But

now, Region I – the Northeast – has really picked it up.

“In my mind,” Foley says, “BC was built on blue-collar work and intensity. Now, can we get the kids who are more cultured, soc-cer-wise, who have a little more finesse, a little more technique?”

Foley says she prefers to keep her recruiting more local than many schools that look for players from all over the world. “You can build a great program by going overseas and getting a couple of 20-year-olds and have them come for a year or two,” she says. “But what we try to do as a staff is to get really good people right out of high school. We want to build a program with a sense of belong-ing – people who will be proud to be here for four years. They understand our philosophy. They know they are here to play soccer and someday, maybe to win a national championship for Boston College. That’s everybody’s goal,” she says.

“But, you also need to do well in school, you need to take care of each other, you need to be a really good citizen here, you need to understand that you represent something bigger than yourself and that you really wear the BC uniform 24 hours a day.

“When you have that type of culture,” she says, “then you have a program.”

Foley’s coaching philosophy is The Bookshelf

Career Center Associate Director Janet Cos-ta Bates [http://www.janetcostabates.com] is the author of a new children’s book, Seaside Dream. The book is about a young girl named Cora seeking a birthday present for her grand-mother, who is homesick for her native Cape Verde Islands.

In A Loss of Innocence?: Television and Irish Society, 1960-72 [http://bit.ly/hoYhg6], Ad-junct Associate Professor of History Robert Sav-age explores how television helped facilitate a process of modernization that slowly transformed Irish society during the 1960s. Television intro-duced into Irish homes an unrelenting popular culture that helped undermine the conserva-tive political, cultural and social consensus that dominated Ireland.

Since the mid-1960s, the war on crime has reshaped public attitudes about state authority, criminal behavior and the responsibilities of citizenship. In Learning to Live with Crime: American Crime Narrative in the Neoconservative Turn [http://bit.ly/icjFsw], Profes-sor of English Christopher P. Wilson examines how this war on crime has made its way into cultural representation and public consciousness, as Ameri-cans have been urged to regard crime as a risk of modern living and accept aggressive approaches to policing, private security and punishment. At its most scandalous, his study suggests, contemporary law enforcement has even come to mimic crime’s own operations.The above entries are excerpted from the “BC Bookmarks” blog, which includes notes on recent books by current Boston College faculty, administrators and staff. For more information, visit the blog at http://bcbookshelf.wordpress.com/.

not lost on her student-athletes. Team co-captain Hannah Cer-rone, a senior from Wappingers Falls, NY, says that good team chemistry is a major reason for the team’s success. “We can honestly say that everyone on our team is friends with one another,” says Cerrone, a communication major. “We enjoy practice, we enjoy be-ing with each other off the field, and we enjoy playing with each other on the field.

“Our coach has everything to do with this,” Cerrone adds. “She doesn’t just look for good players, she looks for a certain type of person. It is so much easier to do well when you are having fun out there.”

In spite of the semifinal round loss to Stanford, Cerrone says that the Final Four atmosphere of the NCAA tournament will remain her favorite soccer experience. “In our heads, we appreciated being there,” she says. “But we wanted the whole thing. Unfortunately, Stanford got the better of us.

“When we went to the Final Four, we told ourselves that our only regret would be if we did not play to our potential or if we held some-thing back,” Cerrone says. “I think everyone walked off that field know-ing that we gave everything that we had. Unfortunately, we didn’t get it – but maybe next year, or in years to come, we will.”

Contact Reid Olsin at reid.oslin@bc.edu

The team was ranked as high as No. 5 during the season.

•BC field hockey, coached by Ainslee Lamb, posted a 12-7 record and ended the season as the No. 13 team in the nation.

•Coach Randy Thomas’ women’s cross-country team finished 19th in the NCAA Championships, with Caroline King ’11 earning All-America honors.

•The men’s golf team, under the direction of Coach Trevor Drum, won the fall ECAC Championship Tournament with sophomore Luke Feehan shooting the lowest first round score among 49 competitors.

•BC’s sailing team won the Intercollegiate Sailing Association’s Match Race National Championship in waters off Kings Point, NY, in November. Taylor Canfield ’11, Danny Bloomstine ’11, Ryan Mullins ’13, Briana Provancha ’11 and Tyler Sinks ’11 proved to be the winning crew combination for Coach Greg Wilkinson.

—Reid Oslin

Coach Is Building BC Women’s Soccer for More Success

Women’s Soccer Coach Alison Foley says the program’s focus has been to “rep-licate Boston College’s reputation as a fantastic academic institution. We try to dig our heels in deep and do the very best that we can in recruiting and getting those top kids in the Northeast to come here.” (Photo by Lee Pellegrini)

Another Good Harvest for Fall Sports

Mark Herzlich (94) — named as a finalist this week for the College Football Rudy Award — will suit up one last time for the Eagles Jan. 9 in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl. (Photo by John Quackenbos)

‘We do belong’

The BosTon College

ChronicledeCember 16, 2010 7

NOTA BENEJOB

LISTINGS

BC BRIEFING

WELCOME ADDITIONS

Assistant Professor of Political Science david Hopkins is the co-author of Presidential Elections: Strategies and Struc-tures of American Politics (2011). Hopkins’ research and teaching interests include American political parties and elections, the US Congress, voting be-havior, public opinion and research methods, and he has been published in American Politics Research. Hopkins, who earned his PhD from the Univer-sity of California, Berkeley, is currently working studying the causes and consequences of increased geographic polarization in American elections.

Connell School of Nursing Clinical Instructor rosemary byrne holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Connell School, and has been connected with CSON since the 1990s through the joint Por Cris-to/BC Community Health Immersion Program. Byrne spent her career in international nursing and administration in Ecuador and Nicaragua. Most recently a family nurse practitioner and clinical director at Atreva Health Care, an inner city fam-ily practice for underserved populations in Boston,

Byrne pursues research on care for underserved populations, par-ticularly the Hispanic community.

Assistant Professor of History Arissa Oh is a gradu-ate of Yale and earned her PhD from the University of Chicago in 2008. She specializes in 20th-century United States history, immigration and race, Asian American history and Cold War social policy. She is currently working on a project that examines the origins of the practice of Korean and international adoption. Oh has been published in Women’s Stud-ies Quarterly.

Graduate School of Social Work Assistant Pro-fessor Jessica black earned her PhD from Stanford University, where she worked as a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research at Stanford’s School of Medi-cine. Black worked as a project manager for a longitudinal study of kindergartners with high risk for developing reading disabilities. Her research interests include achievement motivation, dyslexia

and special education, child and adolescent development and edu-cational neuroscience.

—Melissa BeecherPhotos by Lee Pellegrini

“Welcome Additions,” an occasional feature, profiles new faculty mem-bers at Boston College.

The Im-Possibility of Interreligious Dialogue, by Associate Professor and Chairperson of Theology Catherine Cor-nille has won the Frederick J. Streng Award for Excellence from the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies, given annually to a book that “makes make an important contribution to issues relevant to the context of Buddhist-Christian dialogue.”

Associate Professor of English Andrew Sofer received the inaugural American Society for Theatre Research Essay Prize for his article “How To Do Things With Demons: Conjuring Performatives in Doctor Faustus,” which appeared in Theatre Journal. The honor, presented at the society’s awards ceremo-ny in Seattle, recognizes the best refereed essay published by a scholar who is at least seven years beyond earning his or her doctorate. The award committee praised Sofer for “rigorous and insightful interweav-ing of theatre and literary history, performance and critical theory, and cultural and textual analysis,” and called his essay “a model of elegant scholarly inquiry.”

Two graduate students in the Sociology Department recently won notable awards: Autumn Green was the inaugural recipient of the Patsy Mink Legacy Award, honoring an individual whose work advances social justice, presented by the Patsy Takemoto Mink Education Foun-dation, established in memory of the first woman of color elected to the US House of Representatives. Green plans to use the award stipend for research expenses for her dissertation, “Surviving and Striving: Sup-porting Low Income Mothers in Pursuit of Higher Education”; emily dubois earned first prize in the Rachel Tanur Memorial Prize for Visual Sociology, a contest designed to encourage students to incorporate vi-sual analysis in their study and understanding of social phenomena.

Associate Vice President for Annual Giving matthew eynon was selected for the Carol and Stephen Hebert Award by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education District 1.

The following are among the most recent positions posted by the De-partment of Human Resources. For more information on employment opportunities at Boston College, see http://www.bc.edu/offices/hr:

marketing and Communications manager, Athletic Association, Flynn recreation Complex

Supervisor, Outdoor recreation, Athletic Association, Flynn rec-reation Complex

Financial Analyst, Auxiliary Ser-vices

Associate director for Career Services / employer relations, Career Center

Administrative Assistant, Carroll Graduate School of mgmt, Ca-reer Services

Program Analyst, Center for Home and Community Life

Associate director, Special Gifts, development, Annual Giving

Assistant director, Parents’ Fundraising, development, Cap-ital Giving

Associate or Senior Associate director, development, Capital Giving

NEWSMAKERSEconomics Associate Professor robert murphy discussed the di-rection of housing values in the Boston market and the potential for the return of inflation in light of new stimulus efforts with the Boston Herald and Reuters.

Director of Undergraduate Ad-mission John L. mahoney ap-peared on the WBZ-AM program “Nightside with Dan Rea” to dis-cuss college admission.

Carroll School of Management Finance Professor edward Kane discussed with the New York Times how details released by the Federal Reserve on the recipients of bailout largesse reveal how lit-tle actually was given to troubled homeowners whose houses are threatened with foreclosure.

Director of American Studies Prof. Carlo rotella (English) wrote in the Boston Globe on the recently released film “The Fighter” and its portrayal of Lowell.

Boisi Center on Religion and American Public Life Associate Director erik Owens wrote in The Huffington Post about a cru-cial period upcoming for Africa.

PUBLICATIONSDirector of Undergraduate Ad-mission John L. mahoney pub-lished “Thoughts in Troubled Times” in the Journal of College Admission.

HONORS/ APPOINTMENTSThe Jewish Studies Program at Boston College selected Prof. John michalczyk (Fine Arts) for its 2010 Distinguished Schol-arship Award and Prof. nancy netzer (Fine Arts) for the 20110 Distinguished Service Award.

Assoc. Prof. donald Fishman (Communication) received the 2010 Phifer Award for Distin-guished Scholarship in Parliamen-tary Procedure from the Commis-

sion on American Parliamentary Practice at the National Commu-nication Association Convention in San Francisco.

Assoc. Prof. rosanna demarco (CSON) was presented with the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care Excellence in HIV Preven-tion Award in recognition of her significant and outstanding con-tributions to the prevention of the spread of HIV infection.

TIME AND A HALFProf. Zhijie Xiao (Economics) or-ganized and chaired a session of the 2010 Tsinghua Econometrics Conference in Beijing and also presented “The Role of Distribu-tional Information in Financial Markets” and “Semiparametric Panel Model for Climate Change

in the United Kingdom” at the SET 2010 Conference in Singa-pore.

Prof. dwayne e. Carpenter (Romance Languages) presented “Tales from the Script: Attitudes toward Conversos in Recently Discovered and Translated Po-lemical Texts from Spain” at the History Department Colloquium at Duke University.

Part-time faculty member Fang Lu (Slavic and Eastern Languages) chaired the panel “Transnational

Flows of Chinese culture and lit-erature” and presented “Re-pre-sentation of Chinese Women for Western Readers in Lin Yutang’s Translations, Adaptations, and Rewritings” at the Annual Meet-ing of the New England Associa-tion for Asian Studies.

Prof. margaret Kenney (Math-ematics) presented Making Alge-bra Meaningful and Engaging at the Annual Fall Conference of the Association of Teachers of Math-ematics in New England. Asst. Prof. Charles Gallagher, SJ (History), presented “An Un-easy Patriotism: US Government Surveillance of Roman Catholics Prior to World War II” at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London School of Advanced Study, and “Islam, the Vatican, and Terrorism: Historical Perspectives on Transnational Re-ligions” at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland.

Nominations are being sought for the 2010 Dr. Donald Brown Award, which honors a senior who, throughout his or her undergraduate career, has made extraordinary contributions to the greater AHANA community at BC in the areas of leadership, service, and academic development.

The award is named for Donald Brown, who served as director of the Office of AHANA Student Programs from 1979-2005.

Nomination forms, which are available at http://bit.ly/frZ-tWg, must be submitted by tomorrow, Dec. 17, to Joyce Wang at wangbf@bc.edu.

Boston College offices will be closed for the Christmas and New Year’s holidays from Dec. 24-31, and re-open Monday, Jan. 3.Boston College Chronicle will return to publication on Jan. 20.

Nominations for Dr. Brown Award Are Due Tomorrow

8

The BosTon College

ChronicledeCember 16, 2010

By ed hayWard

staff Writer

Saturdays in the fall may be made for college football, but they’re not too bad when it comes to chemis-try, either, says Assistant Professor of Chemistry Dunwei Wang.

Prior to Eagles home games, Wang and students from his lab in the Merkert Chemistry Center set up shop at Fanfest, the pre-game celebration in the Flynn Recreation Complex for students, parents, alumni and fans.

Next to the bouncy house, Wang uses a radio-controlled car to catch the attention of the children attend-ing Fanfest. They learn that the car doesn’t rely on batteries for power, but uses clean, environmentally friendly hydrogen as a power source.

“Football games are a big deal at Boston College,” said Wang, a na-tive of China who admits he’s still learning the American game. “We thought it was a great chance to show people what kind of scientific re-search is taking place at Boston Col-lege and to reach out to children and let them know that they don’t have to be intimidated by science. Science can be fun and they can enjoy learn-

ing about it.”Searching for new sources of clean

energy is a big part of the research that Wang conducts in his lab. He has used nanotechnology to engineer “nanonets,” tiny, highly-conductive web-like structures that show prom-ise as a new platform for a number of clean energy applications, including extracting hydrogen from water and building better lithium ion batteries.

While the nanonets are not on display, water-splitting is exactly what kids get a chance to do at the lab’s Fanfest station. It starts with fueling the car. Visitors press a small water-filled hand pump, generating the energy to separate – or split – hydrogen from oxygen. When the water within the pump is split, the hydrogen gas is stored in a small pouch. This fuel tank is placed in the car and it’s off to the races.

Children run the car through a course set up on the floor of the Plex basketball courts. Wang’s students time the racers and the top finisher gets to pick from a couple of solar-powered toys as prizes.

At a table, lamps are used to power toys that get their energy from solar panels. In addition to being pretty cool to look at, the devices

offer Wang the chance to talk about how solar power and other clean energy solutions work. Wang says children – and adults – have great curiosity about the subjects. Most of-ten, they’ve heard about solar power and hydrogen-powered engines, but they don’t know the science behind the technologies that have advanced furthest in efforts to reduce depen-dence on fossil fuels.

“The kids ask a lot of questions and the adults ask a lot of questions too,” said Wang. “That’s exactly what we want to happen.”

Wang hopes to spark an interest in science, just as he was inspired as a child by articles he read about advances in superconductivity. Hav-ing grown up on a farm in rural China with no electricity, he was fascinated by the early breakthroughs and the idea that new materials could conduct electricity with zero energy-draining resistance.

Finding sustainable solutions to global energy problems motivates his work.

“I enjoy the prosperity that devel-opment has offered us, but I do not like the prospect of what we have done to Mother Nature through this development,” said Wang. “That is

a key motivation to develop clean technology, which we can enjoy and which will not devastate our envi-ronment.”

The message is one young Eagles fans are keen to understand.

“I like science, it’s my favorite subject,” said 12-year-old Angelina,

who visited the clean energy display during a recent football game. “I don’t really know what hydrogen is, but I know about solar power. It would be great not to use gasoline and use the sun instead.”

Contact Ed Hayward at ed.hayward@bc.edu

Asst. Prof. Dunwei Wang (Chemistry), right, and senior Stafford Sheehan, a student in Wang’s lab, talk with a youthful BC football fan as he operates a hydrogen-powered toy car at a recent Fanfest.

Ed

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Making Science a Fan-tastic ExperienceProfessor uses BC football game days to boost interest in chemistry

BC SCENES

The Boston College calendar was full of holiday-related events during the past two weeks: Above left, Lee Calamis Mita ‘99 (at left) watched as Laura Thomson Colleran ‘97 took a photo of her husband Matt Colleran ‘99 and their daughter, Riley, at the Alumni Association family event, “Winter Wonderland,” on Dec. 11; above right, freshmen Jazmine Estrada (left) and Katie Woodward perused the Fair Trade Holiday Sale (see a video about the sale at http://bit.ly/ekBzWE) on Dec. 9 in Corcoran Commons, which was also the setting on Dec. � for the annual “Breaking the Barriers Ball,” at left; right, the Office of Residential Life welcomed area foster children for its “Christmas Buddies” program (more photos from this event on page �).

Lee PellegriniChristopher Huang

Sean Smith

AT THE HEIGHTS, HOLIDAY SOUNDS AND SIGHTS

Frank Curran