October 2005 Stories

Claire Barker: Renaissance Woman

Claire Barker’s mother and father, Nancy and George Barker, encouraged her to follow her heart. That journey has taken her both back in time and forward into the future.

Barker, who graduated from Willamette University in 2004 with a bachelor of arts degree in religious studies and French, plucks the strings of a handcrafted lute. The ancient Renaissance music she plays is soft, complex and hauntingly beautiful. This impromptu concert in Salem is a rare treat. Barker, who has just completed a seven-month assignment teaching English in France, is back in the U.S. only for a few days. She soon begins a two-year master’s degree program in Renaissance studies in the ancient town of Tours, France.

Her fascination with all things medieval began when Barker came to Willamette. At first, the McMinnville High School honors graduate was sure she’d major in physics. “I was deadset on the sciences,” she says, smiling at the memory. Her words carry the lilt of a soft French accent. “I wanted to follow in my father’s footsteps and become a physician. After a year, I found I was much better at other things than chemistry.”

She opted instead for a double major in religious studies and French, something she’d been studying since high school. “I find the French language really attractive and I love using it to communicate with others. I’d studied a lot of French in high school and at Linfield, so I was able to finish my French major really quickly. I also found that religious studies just clicked for me.”

It was the lute, however, that transported her back in time and awakened her love for the Renaissance. “I’d been playing classical guitar on my own for years,” says Barker, as her fingers glide effortlessly across the small instrument’s 13 strings. With its short, thick neck and bulbous body, the lute resembles a munchkin’s guitar, yet delivers a surprisingly resonant sound. “John Doan, my music professor at Willamette, asked me to bring in music that I liked. When I brought in Renaissance music, he told me I was playing the wrong instrument.”

Doan, associate professor of guitar, collects historic musical instruments. He let Baker play one of his lutes, an instrument popular in medieval Europe. She instantly fell in love.

She began studying about the Renaissance. She took a class in Latin; one on the life and work of Leonardo Di Vinci. In her sophomore year, she studied in Paris. Her classes included the Reformation and the Renaissance and, of course, the lute. “In France, I looked up the French Lute Society and got the names of teachers and lute makers.”

She commissioned an artisan to build a lute just for her. “He’d only been making lutes for two years, so he was still affordable. He let me choose the woods for it. Since I have small hands, he made me a 57 centimeter lute rather than the standard 59.”

After growing up in McMinnville (population 26,000), she found the sprawling city of Paris a bit daunting. Her lute helped ease the transition. “With its 10 million people, I was terrified about going to Paris. It was really scary. But I quickly got involved with organizations like the French Lute Society and I just loved it. I came to realize what a wonderful city Paris is.”

In her senior year, Barker began searching for what she might do after graduation. Through Willamette’s French department, she learned about a teaching program administered by the French Education Ministry. “The French government encourages native English speakers to come to France and teach English.”

Fluent in French, Barker was quickly accepted into the program. She didn’t know where she’d be living and working until she arrived. As fate would have it, she was sent to Amboise, a small medieval French village. “Amboise is very beautiful and even has a castle. The view of the town from our house was amazing. In my front yard, there was a 350-year-old cedar tree and, at the end of my driveway, an 11th century church. Leonardo Di Vinci is buried in one of the chapels. Getting to move to a town where Di Vinci lived the last few years of his life and is buried is pretty incredible.”

Barker shared part of a house with Carolina, a Spanish language assistant from Costa Rica. Barker taught conversational English to small classes of high school students and adults 12 hours a week. “The teaching was baptism by fire. They just give you the classes and say ‘Go teach.’ My job was to keep students interested and encourage them to speak in English. One entire day, we debated the issue of medical marijuana. They liked learning from me because they said I speak like people they see in the movies.”

It was at Thanksgiving that Barker had her first serious bout of homesickness. “Nobody in France was celebrating Thanksgiving. There was this void of festivities that should be happening, but wasn’t. My friend, Corrina, and I decided to make our first ever turkey. We invited 22 people, all from different countries. They brought specialties from their own regions. Some American friends had thought ahead and brought canned yams and marshmallows and other traditional Thanksgiving foods. It was quite a feast.”

Her hardest moment, however, came with the death of a family friend during her second semester of teaching. “There was no way I could be home in time to support them. I could call and write, but it didn’t feel like it was enough. I also wanted to attend the service and grieve too, but it was impossible to get home. My school understood and gave me the day off. I slept the entire day.”

When Barker’s teaching assignment in France ended, she reapplied. However, the French government gives priority to new rather than returning teaching assistants. They told her she’d be an alternate, selected only if someone drops out of the program at the last minute. Undaunted, she began casting about for other options that would allow her to stay in France. She found the Center for Superior Studies of the Renaissance (CESR), in the 16th century city of Tours, France, and was accepted into a two-year master’s degree program in Renaissance studies.

“I’ll be studying Latin, paleography, history, religious beliefs and practices, politics, art history –– everything about the Renaissance. The courses are taught entirely in French, which is a little scary. It’s difficult enough getting a master’s degree in one’s own language; even more so in a second language.”

Once she completes her master’s degree, does Barker plans to teach about the Renaissance? Perhaps, but it may be in a non-traditional setting. “I’m thinking about going into tourism. In high school, I went on a couple of guided tours to France. This past year, I took middle school boys to Scotland for two weeks and a large group of high schoolers to England for a week. At the end of my stay, a French man I know brought a group of Oregonians to France and I traveled with them. It was great because we had this wonderful combined knowledge. He’s say ‘This was built in this century,’ and I’d say, ‘And if you go around this corner you can buy a delicious, inexpensive crepe.’ The two of us working together was great.”

She plucks out the last few notes on the lute. “My dream is to find a way to live in Oregon full time and travel regularly to France. I love France because it breathes history and, for now, I like living there. But the architecture of France can’t compare to the natural beauty we have right here in the Northwest.”

Two Willamette Alums Named Rotary Ambassadorial Scholars

Jerome Kim ’03, of Bellingham, Wash., and Marcus Thierren ’05, of Boise, Idaho, have been selected as Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholars. The prestigious $26,000 scholarships will enable Kim and Thierren to travel and study for a year in a foreign country. Kim, who will depart this December, will study in Mexico or Chile; Thierren, who leaves in February 2007, will be posted in Chile, Argentina or Uruguay.

The Rotary Foundation’s Ambassadorial Program, the oldest and largest such program in America, is designed to further international understanding and friendly relations among people of different countries. Kim and Thierren will serve as ambassadors of goodwill to the people of their host countries. In addition to pursuing studies at a university, the men will participate in Rotary service projects and give presentations about the United States and their home states to Rotary clubs and other groups in their host countries. When they return, they will share their experiences with Rotarians and others. Kim and Thierren join nearly 37,000 Rotary Ambassadors from around the world who have traveled and studied in more than 70 nations.

“I’m ecstatic about this honor,” said Kim in an email interview from the Dominican Republic where’s he’s finishing a 27-month Peace Corps assignment. “This scholarship will enable me to study international business development for one year in an MBA program.”

Kim, who earned a bachelor of arts degree in economics and Spanish from Willamette, is no stranger to international travel and service. As an undergraduate, he studied abroad for a semester in Seville, Spain. During the summer between his junior and senior years, he traveled to South Korea to teach English. The past two years, he’s worked in youth programs, economic development and health education in the Dominican Republic.

His Willamette study abroad experience, Kim insisted, has steered his path. “Studying abroad in Spain really piqued my interest in international travel. John Uggen, a Spanish professor at Willamette, had been in the Peace Corps and his experiences really motivated me to join.”

Kim’s liberal arts education at Willamette has been key to his success in the Peace Corps and in his latest honor with the Rotary. “Willamette allows students to find their own interests and challenge themselves. The opportunities are there for those who choose to take advantage of them. Willamette taught me how to think, which is the most important aspect of a liberal arts education.”

Kim, who plans a career in corporate social responsibility and international business development, has embraced Willamette University’s motto, “not unto ourselves alone are we born,” as his life’s mission. “Service to others is incredible,” he said. “Regardless of its form – Peace Corps, Big Brother/Big Sister, or serving at soup kitchens – service to others is what I find the most rewarding.”

Thierren graduated in 2005 with a bachelor of arts degree in politics and economics. “When I first heard I’d won the Rotary, I felt a little overwhelmed,” he admitted. “It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a number of years. I know several Rotarians and they all encouraged me to apply.”

Like Kim, Thierren’s study abroad experience at Willamette piqued his interest in international politics and travel. “Willamette enabled me to study for a year in London. It also prepared me academically and taught me how to interact with people. All of my experiences at Willamette, including my responsibilities as president of my fraternity, have prepared me for this.”

In preparation for his Rotary adventure, Thierren is taking classes in Spanish. “I’m conversational in Spanish now, but my goal is to be fluent or nearly fluent by the time I leave. Having fluency in the language will make my experience that more valuable.”

Thierren, who hopes to go study law when he returns, aims for an international career. “It may be law or it may be business, but I know I want a career on the international level.”

Juwen Zhang

Examining folklore in the context of Chinese culture.

So what exactly is fengshui? And what is its function in American popular culture? Chinese folklorist and Willamette Chinese Professor Juwen Zhang recently published a translation of the earliest Chinese Book of Burial, which he says “textualizes and ritualizes” fengshui practice, the Chinese system that studies people’s relationships to the environment in which they live. But how could a book about burial rituals, written in the fourth century, influence how Americans arrange furniture in their homes? And why has an indigenous Chinese tradition flourished in the American mainstream?

“Fengshui becomes an agent for Chinese culture to be accepted by other cultures,” says Zhang, who spent his childhood in Ning Xia, an autonomous Muslim region of Northwest China. “It’s interesting to explore the roots of fengshui in ancient Chinese burial ritual.”

According to Zhang, fengshui has lasted several millennia because of its roots in fundamental Chinese beliefs. Zhang offers foot binding, a practice that disappeared after only 1,000 years, as a contrast to the fengshui phenomenon. “It (foot-binding) was mostly socio-economically driven,” he says, “so when policies changed, the tradition died.”

As the endowed chair of the Luce Junior Professorship of Chinese Language and Culture, Zhang is working to bridge Chinese folklore research with the broader body of Chinese studies – something that has never been done before. “Current studies on Chinese ethnicity pay little attention to folklore,” he says. “I hope to make it clear that ritual studies combine both Chinese ethnic studies and linguistic studies, as well as religious studies.”

Zhang has always been intensely interested in mythology and folklore. He attended Liaoning University in Northeast China and, because there was no folklore major, he concentrated on English and studied folk traditions independently. For 10 years following graduation, he taught English at Liaoning, and during this time he published his translations of an article, “The Concept of a Motif in Folklore,” and a book, Man and His Symbols, by Carl Jung. With increasing interest in people’s everyday life, he then decided to pursue folklore studies in graduate school. In the absence of folklore programs in China, he had to travel overseas.

At Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., Zhang began a liberal arts master’s degree program. But before earning his degree, he transferred to a doctoral program in folklore at the University of Pennsylvania. He taught Chinese language courses, and upon delivering his doctoral dissertation on Chinese-American funeral rituals in Philadelphia, he merged his rapidly developing interests in language and Chinese-American culture.

“Few folklorists were looking at Chinese-Americans,” Zhang recalls. “So I chose to start building this field – Chinese abroad folklore – and just recently my initiative to establish a section of Eastern Asia Folklore at the American Folklore Society was officially approved.”

Zhang credits ritual life for the unity and diversity within Chinese culture. And, he says, what is particularly interesting is how Chinese people in the United States continue to practice Chinese rituals in their own way. “It’s invented tradition,” Zhang says of the changes in Chinese traditions abroad.

A dedicated scholar, Zhang is producing a monograph, Rites of Passage in Chinese Societies: From Text to Practice and Interpretation, and an accompanying reader, Rites of Passage in Chinese Societies: A Reader. He hopes his work will contribute to an understanding of Chinese folklore and culture from their roots and improve communication with the Chinese people.

The time seems to be ripe for Zhang’s scholarship. “Chinese students at Willamette want to know how different they are from ‘real’ Chinese,” he says thoughtfully. “They want to better understand their roots.”

Zhang’s students, with or without Chinese background, ask questions about Chinese traditions, such as “authentic” cuisine. Folklore studies provide an academic space to explore these kinds of questions.

“In the folkloristic approach,” Zhang says, “the emphasis is on how common people, the majority, practice rituals. And the beliefs and practices of the common people in everyday life have fundamentally shaped the concept and meaning of being Chinese.”

So what exactly is the lifeline of Chinese-American rites of passage?

“Chinese food, kung fu, line-dancing clubs, births, weddings and funerals,” Zhang offers as a start. Then, invoking a class he teaches on Chinese culture, he adds that studying rites of passage “can greatly contribute to the understanding of not only one culture, but the commonality and communication of all human beings. This is something I want to do for the field, for the students and for my own sense of accomplishment.”

Nathan Sivers Boyce

Economics Professor Nathan Sivers Boyce believes he can trace the origins of his desire to teach back to the age of 6 or 7, when he read The Once and Future King for the first time with his father.

“I listened awestruck as Merlin changed Wart (the young King Arthur) into a badger, a fish and a hawk so that he might learn what he could from each form,” recalls Boyce. “Granted, at the time I was more excited by the possibility of my turning into a bear or some other animal than I was moved by Merlin’s revolutionary pedagogical techniques, but a seed was planted.”

Sivers Boyce has returned to this part of the book many times and found a vision that inspires him to be a teacher while providing him with some thoughts about how to be a good one.

Born and raised in Berea, Ky., Sivers Boyce’s interest in teaching was cultivated by his parents, who were both professors at Berea College. “I remember thinking, ‘I really like the college environment,’” he says. “That impression stayed with me.”

During his formative years, he also realized a deep connection to nature – in particular, the woods of central Kentucky. There was never a crystallizing experience that compelled him to study the environment, but he suspected that environmental economics eventually would become the focus of his research activities and his teaching.

As an undergraduate at Earlham College in the early 1990s, Sivers Boyce completed degrees in math and religion. He went on to attend graduate school at Stanford University’s Engineering Systems Department. He knew he didn’t want to be a mathematician, but he did want to use math to find solutions to the environmental policy problems that affected everyone.

Environmental problems – global warming, ozone depletion, ocean pollution – are often international in scope, and solutions require not only an international effort, but also an understanding of the global economy. “My work explores the economic forces that help determine the nature of international environmental agreements (IEAs),” says Sivers Boyce. “In particular, I analyze the role of international trade in determining the composition and effectiveness of an IEA.”

Sivers Boyce has been at Willamette since 2002, teaching Principles of Microeconomics, Econometrics and Environmental Economics. And he points out that the significance of economic analyses in environmental problems can be illustrated right on campus. Willamette University covers 71 acres of land, but about 20,000 acres are necessary to support its current consumption habits at an ongoing rate. This projection, called an “ecological footprint,” was developed by Sivers Boyce’s Environmental Economics class.

“Environmental issues seem like the binding constraints of our time,” says Sivers Boyce. “In economics, we can develop modeling tools and apply them to environmental problems.”

Sivers Boyce hopes that economics will enable students to apply and expand upon the set of tools they develop in various courses. He also expects that the knowledge of the economic side of real-world problems will help students develop a sense of civic responsibility and engagement in their immediate community.

“I try to share with students the process of identifying issues, and I push them to engage in that process for themselves,” says Sivers Boyce. “I really like our conversations and the challenges I’m presented with, especially working with students who don’t necessarily take for granted the importance or significance of economics.”

Sharon Rose

Sharon Rose wore gigantic sunglasses to hide her scorched eyebrows, and she covered the charred ends of her golden-blond hair with a patterned scarf. The propane oven in her trailer had blown, and the explosion had singed her scalp and brow. “The explosion really blew me out of my trailer!” Rose recalls. “I had to have my neighbor pour water over me and help put out the fire.”

She hoped the scarf and sunglasses would veil her unusually hairless appearance, at least for a few hours, until she completed an admissions interview for graduate school. A soil microbiologist was on his way to meet Rose at her trailer alongside the banks of Northern California’s Mad River.

“I never thought I’d get in,” says Rose, who today is a scientist and professor of microbiology at Willamette University. But the untimely interview in 1974 won Rose admittance to the doctoral program at Oregon State University (OSU).

The disaster turned out to be only a small bump in the road for Rose. In fact, it seems that she was born to be a woman in the field.

“I don’t know when I wasn’t interested in science,” Rose says of her lifelong love of fieldwork. “Even as a little kid, I loved science. There were no scientists in my family, so I suppose it was just an innate curiosity.”

While many other little girls were busy with dolls and dress-up clothes, Rose was examining rocks and bugs and saving money to buy her first microscope. After graduating from high school, she earned a bachelor’s degree in biology at California State College at Long Beach. She then earned her teaching certificate and, like many women of her generation, taught elementary school.

But Rose chose to teach science. For three years, she was the science resource teacher in a Southern California school district, where she was expected to enrich children’s experiences with science despite inadequate funding and a lack of materials. The job demanded a great deal of patience and innovation.

“On one occasion we made a gas,” Rose says. “I had the children combine aluminum and hydrochloric acid in glass jars, and we used the gas to fill balloons.” When the balloons filled slowly, disappointing the children, Rose increased the amount of acid. Neither Rose nor the children would ever forget the result: The glass jars exploded, and acid ripped through the carpet. The classroom truly transformed into a scientific laboratory.

In 1972, Rose decided to return to school for her master’s degree. She entered Humboldt State University in California with plans for a degree in forestry, but an unusual offer from a microbiologist changed her mind.

“He said I could study mushrooms if I did microbiology,” Rose recalls. “It was a two-year program. I thought it was so much fun, and I still was able to work in the forest.” Rose then became one of only two female microbiologists in the United States at the time.

Toward the end of her second year at Humboldt State, the chairman of the Microbiology Department at OSU visited Rose’s fire-damaged trailer. He offered Rose an outstanding research stipend to attend OSU and study the plant genus Ceanothus, small, nitrogen-fixing woody plants in the Western forests of North America. Rose leapt at the chance to study the genus, which includes the plant commonly known as the California lilac.

“I looked at the impact of these plants on conifer productivity throughout Oregon,” says Rose. “I found that mycorrhizal fungi on the roots of Ceanothus provide moisture, phosphate and nitrogen, which enriches the soil for conifers and therefore helps in the reforestation process.”

Rose’s study of Ceanothus ultimately yielded the discovery of three new mycorrhizal fungi in the genus Glomus, which she named Glomus halonatus, Glomus lacteus and Glomus scintillans. These microorganisms, which are too small to view with the naked eye, are a vital part of the forest ecosystem. After logging, burning or wildfire ravages an area of forest, Ceanothus grows until it is overtopped by trees. Its symbiotic relationship with conifers is essential.

“Most people aren’t aware that when they tread over the plant life in a recovering forest region, they’re trampling on tenuous connections,” Rose says.

In 1988, after finishing postdoctoral work at OSU and a four-year professorship at Colorado State University, Rose accepted a position at Willamette University. Her decision hinged largely on a desire to return to the Pacific Northwest. Moreover, she disliked feeling landlocked and was tired of the heavy snows that besieged Colorado each year. Her job at Willamette returned her to the Oregon country she knew intimately from her years of fieldwork at OSU.

“Then I was able to take students on field trips to the Oregon Coast to study tide pools,” Rose says. She smiles and adds, “On one of those trips, a student stuck his tongue on a sea anemone.”

Rose and her students have conducted various studies as part of Willamette’s Science Collaborative Research Program, which provides summer housing and a $3,450 research stipend to advanced students in biology, chemistry, exercise science, environmental science and physics. From collecting critters in Oregon estuaries to investigating the mysterious deaths of oak trees, Rose says she has “so many positive memories interacting with her students.”

Teaching students about the fundamental vitality of microorganisms is what Rose enjoys most about teaching microbiology. “You can’t see them (microorganisms), but you can see their extraordinary impact,” she says.

During the spring of 2002, Rose embarked on a different kind of quest, one that moved her from the field and laboratory to the library archives.

Collaborating with College of Liberal Arts Dean Carol Long and philosophy Professor Deborah Loers, Rose taught a course at Willamette on the struggles and accomplishments of women naturalists of the 1800s. The course brought to light the deficiency of biographical information on female scientists in the Western United States. “I knew that there had to be women doing science in the West,” Rose says.

Between June 2002 and January 2004, Rose researched and organized an exhibit at Willamette’s Hallie Ford Museum of Art that brought together the life history and remarkable botanical sketches of Oregon naturalist Helen Gilkey. “I was amazed that nothing really had been written about her, and yet she had made all these wonderful sketches,” says Rose, who knows first-hand the challenges women scientists have faced.

Rose’s own life and career have been very much about breaking down old stereotypes. She is a woman who pursued a master’s degree in microbiology back when the Forestry Department buildings at Humboldt State didn’t have a women’s restroom. She proved in 1972 that she could operate a soil auger when her all-male colleagues didn’t think she should. And in 1969, when she couldn’t find a pair of women’s running shoes, she sported athletic shoes made for boys.

“Despite some challenges, I’ve had the chance to do a lot of unusual things,” Rose says. “I’ve had the chance to explore so many places in Oregon, so many places I never would have gone to. It’s been exhilarating.”

Ken Nolley

It’s been a long journey in film.

A fascination with film and a genuine love of teaching have kept English Professor Ken Nolley at Willamette, “with alarming regularity,” for nearly 40 years. He wears jeans, Birkenstocks, and a black and white tweed blazer, which he jazzes up with a small button that reads “eracism.” He has white-gray hair and a warm smile, and can be seen most any day dashing across campus with a manila file folder in his hand.

Behind his back, his students regard him as brilliant, admiring his tenacity for making sense of film and life. But Nolley doesn’t claim to “make sense” of all the films he experiences – or life, for that matter. What he craves, and what has compelled him to study cinema all these years, are encounters with films that “take the top of my head off, the films that are mind-boggling.”

When asked what sparked his interest in cinema, Nolley replies thoughtfully, “The most honest thing, I suppose, is to say that I grew up in a fundamentalist evangelical home where movies were wicked, something you just didn’t do.” Nolley left his home in Montana to attend Westmont College, a Christian liberal arts school in Santa Barbara, Calif. “I went into college a Republican fundamentalist Christian, but one thing Westmont did was encourage its students to examine their faith,” says Nolley. “Though I am sure this wasn’t their intent, I left after my freshman year having abandoned my conservative Christian roots.”

Fearful that film might corrupt good Christians, Westmont had its students sign “the code” until the early 1960s. It was a contract that prohibited the undersigned from watching movies, among other supposedly sinful activities. By Nolley’s junior year, the code had been modified to allow students to watch films. At that time, says Nolley, “movies became the most exciting things, in part because of their forbidden allure. They made me think things I’d never thought before.”

While Nolley finished his undergraduate studies, and even as he worked toward his master’s degree in American literature at the University of Virginia, movies were just his hobby. “In those days,” he says, “no one studied film.” He was offered his first teaching job at Willamette in 1967 and taught part-time as he earned his Ph.D. in 19th century literature from the University of Oregon. Upon completing his doctoral degree, he accepted a tenure-track position at Willamette.

A few years later, the English Department chair recognized Nolley’s intense interest in cinema and asked him teach a film course. The opportunity was delightful, but Nolley’s first reaction was, “I’ve got to see more films.” He began watching movies systematically, to the tune of 300 in one year. From there, his appetite for mind-boggling movies expanded and opened the door to an entirely new mode of scholarship, film studies – and Nolley found himself most captivated by documentary films.

“We have a particular, ongoing fascination with the problematic relationship between the cinematic image and life – life as we experience it, as well as life as it has been experienced by others in the past,” says Nolley. In any group discussion of film, whether it is a group of scholars and critics or a classroom of students, “we represent a fertile, and occasionally volatile, combination of different orientations. This mix means that any discussion of the relationship between the image and life is sure to be fueled by the variety of our various perspectives.”

In 1977, Nolley attended a film conference, one of the first of its kind, and there he watched a retrospective of films by Peter Watkins. Enthralled with Watkins’ The War Game (1966), Nolley began watching all of the award-winning filmmaker’s movies. Then, in 1979, he acquired a Graves Award, a grant that enables educators to experience something that will enhance their teaching. For Nolley, this extracurricular experience would be participation in the shooting of Peter Watkins’ latest film project, The Journey: A Film for Peace.

“I said, ‘Look, I’ve never actually worked on a film. But I’m not that interested in mainstream film. I want to work on an independent piece. I know Peter Watkins is working on something right now, and I’d really like to work with him,’” recalls Nolley.

Watkins’ film, The Journey, was a pioneering effort to make truly international cinema. The 14½-hour film, made between 1984 and 1987, was shot in the United States, Canada, Norway, Scotland, France, West Germany, Mozambique, Japan, Australia, Tahiti and Mexico. It looked at the nuclear arms race through the eyes of families, the survivors of bombings and indigenous communities. Although Nolley had met previously with Watkins in Stockholm and England, he joined him on the set of The Journey in the United States.

“The film never had the impact Watkins wanted,” says Nolley, “but it is a powerful study of documentary. Watkins wanted a film that makes you think without thinking for you, but its length doesn’t lend itself well to a mainstream audience.” Since participating in the production side of Watkins’ film, Nolley has edited the book, Peter Watkins’ The Journey: A Film in the Global Interest.

In addition to Watkins’ work, Nolley has written and communicated widely about the virtues and troubling complexities of documentary film across the history of cinema. From Nanook of the North (1922) to Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), his thoughtful critiques are food for thought among critics, scholars and his students. His ongoing engagement with film has borne a small film studies program within Willamette’s English Department, and soon, he says, “We may have a film studies major.”

Nolley suggests that cinema deserves as much attention as literature, and that perhaps its increasing presence in academia reflects our understanding that “the relationship between the cinematic image and the world we inhabit” is a significant one indeed. Many of Nolley’s students – whether or not they plan to study and produce films after college – have learned to look deeply at the images they find on screen and to never take for granted the field of representation. It’s not offbeat to say that these are lessons for real life.

Linda Heuser

Sociology professor understands what makes relationships tick.

“My greatest reward in teaching is my relationships with students,” says sociology Professor Linda Heuser. Her voice is soft, her smile maternal. “And my number one priority is trying to be the best professor I can be, knowing that I can never achieve that goal. I can only get better and better, because there is no such thing as perfection.”

Heuser is a self-described lover of people. Her own undergraduate education brought her to Willamette, where she had intended to major in chemistry. But soon she realized that she needed people, and that she could fulfill this need by exploring the field of sociology. Willamette professor emeritus James Bjorkquist was Heuser’s first sociology teacher and mentor in the discipline. “In his class, I learned, ‘Ah, this is where I need to be. I want to study people, to understand how they tick,’” she recalls.

With Bjorkquist’s encouragement, Heuser graduated from Willamette with a double major in sociology and anthropology. She went on to pursue a master’s degree in sociology at the University of Illinois, but she so desperately missed the West Coast that she transferred to the University of Oregon (UO) after one year. She again studied social interactions and behavior, but ironically felt isolated from people. “I had always thought of grad school as the ivory tower, but then I realized I needed something else,” she says.

After becoming a Ph.D. candidate, Heuser took leave from graduate school and moved to Seattle, where she accepted a job at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Institute. As project coordinator for the Epidemiological Research Unit, she studied a variety of public health matters, among them the relationship between substance abuse and certain cancers. She also studied the health effects of Agent Orange and the relationship between people’s illnesses and the proximity of their residences to high-power transmission lines.

During her seven years at the institute, Heuser was inspired to conduct research on women’s emotional reactions to breast cancer. This study, as the subject of her dissertation, was not only a scholarly interest. “After my own diagnosis with breast cancer, I had the sense that women dealt with illness in a much more healthy, constructive fashion than I thought was perceived by people in the medical profession,” says Heuser.

To examine the possible disjuncture between breast cancer victims’ emotional health and its perception by medical professionals, Heuser began interviewing women in the community, along with doctors and nurses at the institute. “But the interviews became too emotionally draining,” says Heuser, “so I decided to do content analysis in published articles, looking for emotional words used in descriptions.” In other words, Heuser studied how medical journals and popular periodicals depicted women’s emotional dealings with breast cancer.

After earning her Ph.D. at UO, Heuser decided, rather unexpectedly, to try her hand at teaching. She accepted her first teaching job at Northern Illinois University, but once again she found herself desperate to return to the West Coast. It just so happened that Willamette, her alma mater, was searching for a sociology professor, so in 1990 she returned to Oregon to teach sociology, a move she says was the best decision she’s made in her life.

At Willamette, Heuser has contributed to both the community and her students. For the past seven years, she has served on the board of directors at the Mid-Valley Women’s Crisis Service, an organization that offers refuge and support for women and children who survive domestic and sexual violence. And, as an extension to teaching, she has worked with the Non-Traditional Student Organization, Willamette’s service learning task force and the Tokyo International University of America Relations Committee.

This summer, Heuser will travel to Japan as one of six Willamette faculty members chosen to teach courses at Tokyo University’s School of Language Communication. “The purpose of our going there is to teach the students in English and provide them with the American style of teaching,” she says. “This is an invaluable learning experience for them and for me. I learn so much about Japan and my own culture, because my students offer a different lens for me to look at myself and the U.S.”

But even though Heuser is excited to teach abroad, she has a very strong sense of what keeps her at Willamette year after year. “What brought me to Willamette, and why I so enjoyed my experience here as a student, was the learning that took place in a small classroom setting,” says Heuser. “I really valued the student-professor relationship. My teachers had cared about me as their student.”

And over the years, Heuser has tried to reach out to her students with the same sensitivity and care that her most beloved professors showed her.

Senior sociology major Jenn Heidt says Heuser has been an “incredible mentor,” as well as someone who inspires students to think outside the box and examine the world. “She was the person who initially motivated me to pursue independent research,” says Heidt. “She really believes in her students, she has been a confidante in my life, and in her I have found comfort and a role model for success. It means so much to me that Linda is more than my professor. She is a friend that I hope to keep for a lifetime.”

Joe Bowersox

Not long after Vietnam War began, a little boy watched Pete Seeger strum a banjo and sing “the world will be a double” on a popular television program. The boy never forgot the way Seeger crooned about the world’s population explosion, and from his rural home amid the orchards and pasturelands of Oregon’s Cascade mountain range, he watched for himself as fields grew smaller and subdivisions stretched across the horizon.

This vivid impression of the Earth’s vulnerability to human progress remained with him through adulthood. Today, Willamette politics Professor Joe Bowersox teaches how public policy and environmental science are intertwined – how, for instance, a housing development is both a political and ecological event. “We can’t just be political science or biology majors,” he says. “To answer the environmental questions we face today, it’s necessary to inculcate both policy and scientific literacy,” he says. “These questions are broad and require an interdisciplinary approach.”

As an undergraduate at Oregon State University (OSU) in the early 1980s, Bowersox studied languages – German, Russian, French and Japanese – as well as history and political science. The study of language, of course, is not just about communication. It’s about culture, and meanings inscribed in both the present and the past. In the background of the nuclear freeze movement and the birth of Reagan-era politics, Bowersox traveled abroad. He saw the death of Germany’s Black Forest and the devastating effects of westernized agriculture in Morocco’s Atlas Plains. And in post-communist South Korea, he felt his throat burn from air pollution in Seoul.

At a time when the world was poised for nuclear war, Bowersox saw more than just the savage destruction of humanity. “I saw the destruction of the environment,” he recalls. “And my concern also probably had to do with the fact that I kept going home to the woods and the Cascades – all of these beautiful places would be the bystanders of a nuclear event.”

In 1988, Bowersox began his graduate education at the University of Wisconsin, where Aldo Leopold and John Muir were popular scholars. He entered graduate school intending to study political theory and public policy, but his heart took him back to the issues that were closest to home: the connections between environmental protection and public values.

“Notions of environmental political thought were new in the field of political science,” says Bowersox. “I dove into it. I had very supportive mentors, and so I became very focused on looking at legal structures, political legitimacy and policy implementation in the context of environmentalism.”

From 1990 to 1993, Bowersox completed his dissertation at OSU, where he also taught environmental policy at the College of Forestry. Upon receiving his Ph.D., he was offered a job at Willamette University. His appointment was part of a broader institutional effort to revitalize the environmental policy curriculum.

Bowersox points out that environmentalism not only raises ecological questions, but also ignites a broader discussion about who ought to govern. History has shown that an authoritarian response to environmental issues does not solve problems. But can democracy succeed?

“Yes,” insists Bowersox. “What we see (in the United States) is an immature democracy realizing its issues of governance are much more complex” than previously thought.

With the surge of technological development in the 20th century, man’s relationship with the environment became more complicated. Today, toxins in the environment and climate change are matters concerning scientists around the world – and politics guides the response to environmental problems. Bowersox says the biggest obstacle to redressing environmental wrongs is a dearth of scientific literacy in the policy-making process.

As an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, Bowersox spent the 2002-03 legislative session in Washington, D.C., working on forestry issues for U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). After helping to create a research agenda for the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, Bowersox embarked on a book project that chronicles the last 15 years of forestry and fire policy in the United States. This book, which he hopes to finish in the next year and a half, will be his third book dealing with the intersection of environmental issues and American politics. In the meantime, he will continue to share with his students a deep personal commitment and dedication to the environment.

“Part of the goal of a place like here is to produce thoughtful, critically aware and humble citizens,” he says. “Humility opens you up to listen to others and reminds you that you can’t know everything. There’s always something more to learn in life.”

Amadou Fofana: It’s a Small World, After All

When Amadou Fofana interviewed for a position with Willamette’s French Department, he realized, again, how small the world really is. Faculty members took the Senegal native to the Cascade Festival of Africa Films in Portland, where he ran into four friends, all returned Peace Corps volunteers who learned French or an African language from Fofana.

“Amadou was beloved as a teacher,” said Joyce Millen, an anthropology professor at Willamette. He was so effective that he was selected to train the trainers, and his knowledge of African languages, picked up on the streets, was extensive—Pulaar, Bamanankan, Mandinka, Wolof, Jaaxanke.

Fofana grew up in a rich mosaic of savannah and desert, on a continent where 2,500 ethnic groups speak 1,200 mutually unintelligible languages. His life began in a town so small it contained no school, and so the pattern of his life was set at an early age. If educational opportunities couldn’t come to him, he would go to them—and excel. Fofana, the son of a school teacher, went to live with his uncles to continue his schooling, moved again for high school, and earned a master’s in English at the very competitive University of Dakar. He was headed for a career as a translator until the Peace Corps came calling and a lifelong interest in languages derailed him. From 1993-97, he trained hundreds of Peace Corps volunteers to speak African languages, in three months.

Fofana came to America, and into a career in higher education, through the back door. In Africa, he had dreamed of going abroad, but his savings never added up; much of his money went to support his siblings and parents. Two visiting Rotary members were so impressed with Fofana’s dedication they offered him an assistantship at Michigan State University. Coming from a land of sun, “August in Michigan felt like winter,” he says. “I missed the sun. It took some training.” He completed his schooling at the University of Wisconsin in Madison on invitation from the National African Language Resource Center. The “how to” of language instruction fascinates him, inspiring him to write two grammar reference books for learners of Bamanankan and Pulaar. In the Peace Corps, volunteers learned on the fast track. “At Willamette,” he says, “I’ll be trying to see how far students can go in a semester!”

But Fofana’s classes won’t be all work and no fun. He believes in the power of film to provide social context. His passion for African films was sparked by Guelwaar, a film by Ousmane Sembene that weaves a complex tapestry of themes into a single story. “I fell in love with the man’s work,” he says.

Fofana and Millen hope to plant the seeds for a future African studies program at Willamette. In the meantime, they intend to host events that will make the world a little smaller, giving campus and the community a taste of Africa.

The African film “Guelwaar” is available for checkout in the Hatfield Library.

Willamette Writer Honored

Mary Ann Albright ’04 has been honored by the Northwest chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Albright has been a general assignment reporter and is now the higher education reporter for the Corvallis Gazette-Times. Her story, “Love Sees No Color,” which examined the experience of interracial couples in the Willamette Valley, won second place in the monitory reporting category for daily newspapers with a circulation of 25,000 or less.

At Willamette, Albright earned English department honors and was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, the nation's preeminent honor society for the liberal arts. She was recently honored at an awards banquet at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Lake Oswego.

“I feel honored to be recognized by my peers for excellence in journalism, especially since I’m such a young reporter and so new to the field,” says Albright, who competed against reporters from comparably sized newspapers in seven states.

She says her writing experience at Willamette University put her on the path to a journalism career. She wrote for The Collegian, the University’s student newspaper. Upon graduation, Albright worked as an intern for the Pulitzer prize-winning alternative newspaper, Willamette Week, before being hired at the Gazette-Times.

Albright says the key to award-winning stories is to keep your eyes open. “You have to be enterprising because you never know when you’ll find a potential story,” she says. “When I write, I try to anticipate questions that readers might have about a subject. I also try to localize national stories and find the broader impact in community stories.”

Megan Flora: The Skinny on Smoking

Megan Flora ’05 loved Ecuador. She didn’t love all the young people smoking. She decided to find out why they smoke – and do something about it.

Flora, a senior exercise science major, had traveled the summer before her junior year to Ecuador. She fell in love with the food, the music, the art and, most of all, the people. But she was disturbed by the prevalence of cigarette smoking.

“As a non-smoker, the prevalence of smoking in public places was really apparent to me,” she says. “If you go into an Internet café or other public place, you always end up sitting next to someone who’s smoking. I was especially struck by the number of young people in Ecuador who smoke.”

She was determined to find out how young Ecuadorians view cigarette smoking and why they smoke. To fund her research, she received a prestigious Carson Undergraduate Research Grant. The $3,000 stipend is designed to encourage students to pursue original research or areas of study outside the classroom.

“In the United States, statistically speaking, the more educated and affluent people are, the less they smoke,” she explains. “I wanted to see if that held true in Ecuador.”

She studied three groups of 50 university students: from a lower middle-class public school where tuition averages $165 per semester; from a middle-class private school where tuition averages $1,600 per semester; and from an elite, upper-class private school where tuition averages $4,000 per semester. “The groups’ education levels were similar – averaging 16 years – but their socio-economic levels were quite different,” she says. “I wanted to see if their motivations for smoking differed.”

She designed a survey of 30 questions to capture students’ demographic information and student views on smoking. She asked questions about when they started smoking; how long they’d smoked; and whether or not their friends were smokers. She also asked questions like “If someone of the opposite sex is a smoker, do you find that unattractive?” and open-ended essay questions like “Why do you smoke?”

She traveled to Quito, Ecuador, and spent two weeks surveying the students and another five weeks taking classes and traveling. At the upper-class school, the University of San Francisco, she arranged with university professors to visit classes to survey the students. The arrangements, conducted via email while Flora was still in the United States, were cumbersome and involved lots of red tape. “It was frustrating. Any type of research on campus has to receive the research institutional board’s approval, which takes months. The university professors were great about letting me come into their classes, but it was very hard to contact them.”

When she first arrived in Quito, she wondered if she’d taken on more than she could handle. “I showed up and wasn’t sure where to go, who to talk with and whether what I was doing was culturally acceptable or not. Although I can get by, I’m not fluent in Spanish. I struggled with the language, wishing I could express myself better.”

She surveyed five classes at the University of San Francisco through pre-arranged appointments. At the next two schools, she took a less formal approach. “I knew a couple of students at the schools and they took me around. “I approached students in courtyards and other public places, explained what I was doing and asked them to fill out the surveys.”

Flora was amazed at how receptive the Ecuadorian students were to her. “The students were really interested in what I was doing. I didn’t expect them to be so open to me and the survey. I asked personal questions about their habits, beliefs and attitudes, yet every student I approached was willing to participate. They were also really patient with my Spanish and I was able to have conversations with several of them.”

She was also surprised by the survey results. More than half the students she surveyed identified themselves as smokers – 53 percent in the upper class, 54 percent in the lower class and a whopping 61 percent of the middle class said they’d smoked 1 to 20 cigarettes in the previous 30 days.

While all the groups had a preponderance of smokers, they differed by socio-economic class in why they smoke. “In the upper classes in Ecuador, smoking is considered very fashionable. The students from the elite university smoke to be in style, to look good. For the middle class students, smoking is definitely associated with socializing. They smoke with their friends. One of these students said, “I smoke to have good conversation.” The lower class students seem to use cigarettes to cope, to get through the day. They said they smoke to relax, to cope with stress.”

As part of her senior thesis, she’s creating an anti-smoking campaign targeted to each group’s smoking motivations. “I’d tailor the anti-smoking message to the upper class on the fashion idea. The bad breath and smelling clothes that go with smoking are never in style. For the lower class, I’d focus on the negative effects of smoking on the body, especially later in life. Since the middle class associates smoking with friends and socializing, I might do something like the yellow anti-cancer bracelets that would say something like, ‘Give hope not cancer to your friends.’”

One of the best parts of Flora’s Ecuadorian adventure has been getting clear about her career direction. “I want to go into public relations with an emphasis on health,” says Flora, who plans to attend graduate school next year at Colorado State. “Smoking is a health issue and finding out about the people affected by it and designing a campaign to address the issue is a public relations challenge. My Carson project has been the perfect bridge between the two.”

Caitlin Letts: Painting the Birds

Senior biology major, Caitlin Letts ’05 studied study birds. She ended up discovering a passion for paint.

“I’d worked on a number of research projects for professors and I wanted to do an independent project,” says the Beaverton science student who is minoring in studio art. “I was interested in a project that combined science and art. I thought the Carson Grant would be just the right thing.”

The $3,000 Carson Undergraduate Research Grants are designed to encourage independent research or study outside the classroom setting. Letts wanted to document the bird species in Portland’s Washington Park and create a field guide filled with her original paintings.

“In mid-May and throughout the summer, I went at Dawn to Washington Park several days a week. I bird watched, recorded all the species I saw and took notes on their behaviors. I also photographed them. I ended up recording 39 different species.”

Letts says she observed plenty of species common to the Northwest, including hawks, herons and several different types of woodpeckers and hummingbirds. “I didn’t see any birds that are really unusual for the area and I wasn’t looking for that. Because I’m fairly new to bird watching, I did see lots of species that were new for me.”

She was surprised at how many migratory birds use Washington Park as a layover. “There were more birds like warblers who migrate than I expected to find.”

She also discovered the ins and outs of Washington Park, an area she thought she knew. “I’d worked at the zoo, so I’m familiar with the park. But I bought a trail map and found there were all kinds of places I’d never been before.”

Once she compiled a long list of species and hundreds of photographs to work from, she set about the task of painting each bird species. Using acrylic paint, she created 45 original bird paintings. “I used my own reference images from my visits to the park. For a few species that were particularly hard to photograph, I used images I found on Google. It was different painting from my own photographs because I had observed the bird’s behavior when I took the photograph. I knew how it moved and what it did.”

She wrote descriptions of the birds to go with the paintings and included information on park attractions, the Children’s Museum, the Zoo and the Arboretum. She also wrote a list of tips on bird watching.

She laid it all out in Photoshop and designed her 35-page guidebook, which she’s having quick-printed. She plans to distribute her field guide through the Audubon Society and gift shops in the Portland area.

Letts says her Carson project has led her to re-discover art. “I’ve been focused on science for the past several years. I found I really liked locking myself away in my studio and painting. The Carson project has given me more confidence in my writing and in my artwork. I’d like to switch gears and focus on artwork as a career.”

Sustainable Learning

The fall air is crisp as 16 Willamette University undergraduates tumble out of the vans. They’re here to see “Zena,” a unique 2,000 acre sustainable forest in the Enola Hills 15 miles west of Salem.

“What’s the difference between sustainable and non-sustainable forestry?” asks Sarah Deumling, the woman who’s been caretaking this mixed forest of Douglas fir, maples, oaks and other native species for the past 10 years. The middle-aged Deumling, strong and lean from daily physical work in these woods, is dressed in jeans, a sweater and boots. She carries a razor-sharp, 18-inch machete.

“No clear cuts,” offers one student.

The students gathered around Deumling on this autumn morning are all members of the Sustainability Seminar, a class co-taught by Karan Arabas, an associate professor of environmental science, and Joe Bowersox, an associate professor of politics. The students have learned their lessons well. They know the sustainability lingo. They can talk about the theoretical underpinnings of ecology. Today, they’ve come to Zena Forest see what sustainability looks like in the real world.

“It’s important to bring students out here so they can see what we’re talking about in class,” says Arabas. “It’s obvious that not all of our natural resources are renewable and many of them aren’t being used in sustainable ways. It’s important for students to start thinking about these issues.”

Bowersox agrees. “A student can endlessly read about sustainable forest practices, but until they see it and talk to folks like Sarah who are dedicated to actually doing it, they just don’t get it.”

“What else is different between sustainable and nonsustainable forests?” Deumling prods the group.

“Low-impact forestry,” calls out a student. “No big machines going across the land ripping out small plants and destroying the soil.”

Deumling smiles and nods. “That’s two of the ‘c’s’ of non sustainable forests – clear cuts and compaction. What are the impediments to having both a sustainable yield and biodiversity on the site?”

“You probably have to be more selective in the biodiversity and ecology of the site,” offers Jean-Jacque Tetu, a senior environmental science major. “You probably can’t have as big a yield every season.”

“Can you have both?” she challenges.

“In a perfect world,” says Tetu.

It’s that perfect world that Deumling and her son Rueben, a 1994 Willamette University economics/environmental science graduate, are trying to create here in the Zena Forest.

Deumling moves through the forest, sure-footed on the uneven ground, pausing briefly to whack an invasive blackberry with a single swing of her machete. She crosses a dirt logging road, leading the students into a stand of scrawny Douglas firs growing so close together that the students have to duck and dodge branches to squeeze in. It feels creepy, like entering the haunted forest in the Wizard of Oz.

“This is an industrial forest,” says Deumling, pointing with her machete. “All the trees are the same height so no sunlight reaches the forest floor. Water can’t soak in because the soil is hardpan. Without light and water, there’s no under story to put organic matter into the soil. The soil was sprayed with chemicals during the first three years of the little Doug firs’ lives, which allows the trees to survive without competition. But it doesn’t bode well for future nutrients in the soil.”

The students cross the skid road, moving into the dappled shade of Zena. Sixty-foot maples share the space with Douglas firs that vary in height from three to 80 feet. Here and there, dead or dying snags stand like scarecrows. Tender new maples and firs sprout up along side elderberries, chitums and other native species. Ferns, trailing blackberry, native grasses and poison oak, scarlet with the blush of fall, compete for space on the forest floor. On the edges of the stand, where there’s more sunlight, oak trees thrive. It’s a dizzying compendium of life; a far cry from the industrial tree farm across the road.

“What do you see on the ground?” asks Deumling.

“Litter and duff,” offers Ingrid King, a senior environmental studies major.

“Hmmm, good industry words,” muses Deumling. “We’ve got little maple trees, little firs, chitum trees, elderberry. There are middle sized trees; a mixture of species. This is pretty much what a Northwest forest that hasn’t been messed with looks like.”

Rueben, who looks a bit like Grizzly Adams with his shoulder-length reddish hair and full, frizzy beard, steps forward. “The timber industry would cut all this down and replant only Douglas fir and they’d use only part of the wood here.”

Deumling nods in agreement. “The maple and oak would just be pulp wood or they’d burn it in piles,” she says sadly. She points out a stately fir with a four-foot circumference. “They can’t use this beautiful tree; it’s not merchantable. Almost all the big mills in Oregon have set their mills to the smaller industrial trees on their land. And they use every crumb of their trees and sell the products in large quantities at places like Home Depot.”

“Isn’t it better to use the scraps rather than throwing them away?” a student from the back of the group asks.

“The wood products they’re selling are bad,” says Rueben with fervor. He should know. He’s been restoring an 1860s house down the road that was built with tight grain Douglas fir that is as strong and beautiful as it was when it was cut more than 100 years ago. “Particle board and oriented strand board (OSB) are glued. No body knows how long the glue will hold up. If the timber industry can sell their particle board and OSB for a lot of money, there’s very little incentive for them to use higher quality woods.”

The quality of wood, says Rueben, is getting worse every year. “The plywood today is more warped and weighs less than plywood even 10 years ago,” says the woodworker who makes all his own furniture. “A 2x4 in a lumberyard might have two or four or six growth rings to the inch. In the 1950’s, that same board would have 40 or 50 growth rings to an inch.”

Despite the fact that the trees Deumling and her son grow are of higher quality, they don’t fetch more money than the small industrial trees grown by the timber industry. When the costs of logging, limbing and transporting her trees to the mill are factored in, one of her towering giants will pay Deumling a little more than $100. She won’t get rich with Zena Forest.

“When you look at the forestry practices that dominate in the Northwest, sustainable forestry is exceptionally hard and economically quite risky,” explains Bowersox. “It takes the passion and tenacity of someone like Sarah to make a place like Zena Forest a going and thriving concern.”

As the students follow Deumling through the woods, she lops off the head of a thistle here, a wild cherry there, a blackberry or two with a swift chop of the machete. She refuses to use chemicals to control invasive plants, knowing that they kill more than just the plants she doesn’t want.

“Do you spend most of your time cutting back invasive species?” asks Darrell McGie, a politics and environmental science major.

“Yes,” she says smiling. “And I happen to be quirky enough that I enjoy it. I get satisfaction out of finding those little trees and freeing them from invasive species like the Himalayan blackberries. I always say if it weren’t for the invasive species, I could sit on my porch and drink beer all day and watch the trees grow.”

McGie, who plans to work in alternative fuels when he graduates this spring, says he’s interested in sustainability because of the impact on future generations. “Whether it’s a tree, a mineral or any type of resource, it’s got to be available to future generations too,” he says. “We’ve got to have continuity and longevity.”

Deumling stops at a section of the forest where selective logging has created large holes in the forest canopy, allowing in sunlight. In the area Sarah has tended with the machete, tiny maples and fir push up through the plants on the forest floor. Fifty yards away, in a section she hasn’t worked, a mountain of blackberries – and not much else – thrives.

“Of course, we want to keep opening up the forest because we want those new generations of trees and plants to keep coming,” she says. “The places I keep after with manual labor do wonderfully well.”

As we make our way to down to the skid road, Jean-Jacque Tetu, who will soon be teaching environmental science with his wife on a two-year Peace Corps assignment in Africa, says sustainability is a familiar theme for him. “I grew up in a rural area on Lopez Island,” he explains. “My family built our own house out of our own logs, so the ethic of living off the land without modifying it too much is something I understand. The only way we’re going to make it in the future is to change our ways and be sustainable.”

Matthias James, a junior majoring in biology and chemistry, says he hopes to go into medicine, but sees the value in the Zena Forest. “This place is incredibly beautiful,” he says. “Once you change places like this, you can’t go back.”

Deumling hops onto her four wheeler and guns up a steep hill to the farmhouse she and her son have built on a hill above the forest she tends. The university vans follow behind, straining to scale the gravel climb.

Once the students are settled on Deumling’s small deck overlooking a sweeping valley view, she pulls out a thick piece of oak that’s been milled into flooring. “This is our dream,” she says, holding up the board.

She explains to the students that, in the near future, the 2,000 acres that make up Zena Forest won’t exist, at least in its present form. Deumling and her son manage the land, but they don’t own it. One of the land owners died recently and taxes have forced the family to put the forest up for sale. A local environmental land trust has expressed interest in part of it. Sarah and Rueben are buying 160 acres that they’ll manage with their existing 40 acres.

“Our idea is to create high quality hardwood flooring and other specialty products,” she says. “We plan to build a solar/wood fired kiln. We don’t have a lot of sun in the winter, but we have a lot of wood scraps, so we think that’ll be a good combination.”

She passes around the chunk of flooring. Although it’s only a foot square, it’s incredibly heavy and dense with a fine grain.

“If people begin to think that local is good, the hardwood possibilities are endless here,” she says, almost breathlessly. “It’s a dream, but in five to 10 years, we can tell you how it’s working.”