August 2006 Stories

Andrew Duncan: From Legos to Molecules

Andrew Duncan knew he wanted to be a chemist before he even understood what it meant. Duncan looked up to his grandfather, who was a chemist working for DuPont, so as a child he decided he also would be a chemist.

Of course, there also was his obsession with Legos. “The type of chemistry that I do is synthetic, essentially building molecules,” Duncan says. “As a kid I liked building with Legos, so maybe there was a connection.”

He still describes what he does as “playing with very small Legos,” but Duncan’s work has come much further than what he imagined as a child. Duncan is joining Willamette’s chemistry department this fall as an assistant professor, and he’s not coming in quietly — he is a recipient of a $30,000 unrestricted research grant from The Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation. The Faculty Start-Up Award helps new faculty at primarily undergraduate institutions initiate their independent research programs in chemistry-related fields.

Duncan is one of only seven faculty members nationwide to receive the grant. The award helps Duncan clear a hurdle he wasn’t sure he could accomplish this early in his career: getting his research funded. “I already had some experience teaching,” he says, referring to his two years as a visiting professor at other colleges. “But I’ve never had to get a completely independent research grant funded. That was one of the things I worried about the most starting this part of my career — will I be able to get anyone to give me any money?”

Other chemistry faculty members are happy for Duncan, according to department chairperson Chuck Williamson, and also are excited that the grant could fund instruments that could be used by several researchers. But the honor means more than that, Williamson says. “Just the fact that Willamette was able to hire someone who won this award speaks well of the University and the chemistry department, too,” he says. “There were only seven of these awarded across the country, so that means we’re in good stead.”

Duncan received his bachelor of arts degree in chemistry from Middlebury College and his PhD in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. His two areas of interest are organic and organometallic chemistry. The first refers to the study of compounds primarily composed of carbon; the second examines compounds that contain a bond between a carbon atom and a metal atom.

He has five years to spend his Faculty Start-Up Award, and the stated topic of his research sounds a bit complex: “A series of sugar-derived heterocycles will be synthesized and used as organocatalysts for the kinetic resolution of carbinols.” When asked to put his work into layman’s terms, Duncan responds by holding up his hands to examine them — they both seem identical, he says, but rather than being exactly the same, they are mirror images. Many molecules have a similar mirror-image relationship, and to synthesize a compound as only its left- or right-handed form is a significant challenge, he says.

Duncan’s research is relevant to the synthesis of pharmaceuticals, where molecular “handedness” plays an important role in the interactions of therapeutic compounds with DNA and enzymes in the body. Administering a mixture of left- and right-handed forms of a drug is unsafe, he says, and can lead to serious negative side effects. “We’re trying to find a more efficient, faster, cheaper, easier way to create single-handed forms of drug molecules,” he says.

Duncan is excited about the possibilities for his research grant — at the very least, he’ll be able to buy basic supplies for the next five years, he says. And now that he is an established chemist, his reasons for being in the field are a bit more complex than his initial plan to follow his grandfather’s footsteps. “I find molecular events intrinsically interesting,” he says. “I’m interested in the transformations of molecules — taking two compounds, putting them in the same flask and watching how they react.”

Warren Binford: Improving the World for Children

Warren Binford prefers stories as examples. Ask her to explain why she has taken particular paths in her life, and she typically responds with a story. But when asked for the reason behind her biggest passion — protecting children — she at first seems to be at a loss for an anecdote.

“I wish I had a good story for you,” the Willamette University assistant professor of law says. “Children are just so full of innocence and hope. Unfortunately, through the experiences that many of our children have, their purity is exploited. I really just want to do everything I can to protect them so that young souls aren’t corrupted.”

She may struggle to come up with a story on the spot, but one only needs to look at Binford’s life to find a plethora of poignant tales that have shaped who she is today: a self-appointed advocate for vulnerable youths. For students struggling to survive in inner-city Los Angeles schools. For children targeted by land mines in Croatia. For Salem youths dealing with painful custody battles.

The way Binford ended up at Willamette to direct the Clinical Law Program is a story in itself. But it’s best to start at the beginning.

Into the City
It’s Christmastime, and a young Binford is riding in a large yellow school bus from her elementary school in the San Fernando Valley to inner-city Los Angeles. The neighborhood is grimy, and the children there are of races that Binford isn’t used to seeing at her private school. Her school is sponsoring this trip to deliver donated Christmas presents to those who can’t afford them. The children on the street, many the same age as Binford, line up to take gifts from those who live just a few miles away. “It seemed so wrong to me,” she says of the memory. “I could see that injustice early on.”

Fast forward about 15 years, when Binford is teaching junior high in South Central Los Angeles. The inner city is where she feels she can make the most difference; she later goes on to teach in similar areas in Boston and London. “I always planned to be a lawyer, but I wanted to do some community service first,” she says. “I thought working with kids in the community near where I grew up was a good way to do that.”

Teaching in South Central L.A. was like being in a war zone, where gang members constantly were on the prowl, classroom windows were riddled with bullet holes, and she made sure to leave the area before nightfall when the real terror began. The experience affected Binford so dramatically that she became a bit overwhelmed, almost discouraged, as she continued her community service. But she didn’t lose sight of her goal, and she enrolled in Harvard Law School.

Children of War
While in law school, Binford took time off to work with another group of children, those traumatized by war in the former Yugoslavia. Binford uses the word “genocide” to describe what she witnessed, where Serbs targeted children in Bosnia and Croatia, placing land mines in fields and even attaching explosives to toys. “They were trying to displace families by showing them that their homes are not safe for their kids,” she says.

In an essay Binford wrote last year, she told another of her stories, one of a 6-year-old girl she met in the children’s hospital in Zagreb, Croatia. The girl had been gang raped by Serbian solders after watching them rape and murder several of her family members. “There was nothing wrong with her, physically. … Yet she was dead. She had been brutally killed spiritually and emotionally, and she lay in the hospital bed like a limp rag doll.”

Leading at Willamette
After law school, Binford joined a large corporate law firm in California, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, where she specialized in commercial litigation and transactions. But after eight years of representing Fortune 500 companies, the pull of doing something more personally meaningful — again for children — drew her to Willamette. She came to the law school in 2005 as director of the Clinical Law Program.

The program helps students find externships and allows them to provide supervised legal assistance for non-profits and people who are economically disadvantaged. Family law, consumer fraud and other personal civil law matters are among the cases the program takes on. Since she arrived, Binford has focused on making the program more rigorous by implementing tougher standards for students. Instead of serving as junior associates, the students now act as the lead attorneys, handling all aspects of their cases.

A peek into the Clinical Law Program’s lobby reveals foam blocks and toy farm animals on the floor. The toys are for the program’s clients, many of whom are children in foster care or protective custody, or parents wanting to move on from troubled pasts.

Continuing Her Work
Binford never stops pondering what more she could take on. Her latest cause is supporting U.S. ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The treaty was created in 1989, and every country has ratified it except Somalia and the U.S. The convention is like a “Bill of Rights” for children — saying that states should do what they can to ensure children have family, food and a safe place to live, among other rights.

Some provisions in the convention might make it more controversial for ratification, Binford admits, including an item that says children younger than 18 who commit crimes should not receive capital punishment or life imprisonment. But as with all her other projects, Binford can’t ignore the young souls who need her help. Her passion is evident in the spitfire way she talks about the treaty.

“It’s very shameful that we haven’t ratified it yet. These are pretty fundamental rights set forth in the convention,” she says. “I think the United States is probably the most blessed nation in the world, and because of all the blessings we have, it’s important that we take a leadership role in the moral issues we face in society.”

Faith and Art On Display in the Columbia River Gorge

Railroad executive Sam Hill left behind two monuments in the Columbia River Gorge. The Historic Columbia River Highway, on the Oregon side, was the first scenic highway in the United States. And on the Washington side, the castle-like Maryhill Museum of Art stands guard over the stark beauty of wind-scoured hills.

The museum will host a landmark exhibition of historic and contemporary Orthodox Christian icons from August 6 to November 15. Sacred Presence: The Eternal Tradition of Orthodox Icons is curated by Willamette art historian Ann Nicgorski.

She hasn’t caught her breath since a year and a half ago, when she began preparations for the exhibition. That effort came on top of Nicgorski’s regular schedule, which would exhaust the average marathon runner. She served as associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts, teaches art history, delivers community lectures and conference presentations, publishes book chapters and academic and popular press articles, curates exhibits for the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, serves as president of the Salem Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, and is helping coordinate an international conference. That doesn’t include the most important activities — raising her four-year-old daughter and walking her dogs in Minto-Brown Park.

The tall windows in Nicgorski’s brick-lined office let in a quiet radiance, offsetting the hectic pace. Trees filter the light as it plays over stacked art books and paper. On her desk are slides of the icons she has come to love.

“Icons were created as aids to prayer,” Nicgorski says. “They are representations of the sacred persons and scenes that originated in early Christian and Byzantine times, and are intended to open a window into heavenly realms.” Over the centuries, many people have used icons as intermediaries, hoping to communicate with the divine.

In Nicgorski’s case, the gold-leafed images with their jewel-like colors have been communicating with her since her Catholic childhood, when she grew up “in the shadow of the golden dome” at Notre Dame, where her dad is a professor.

Nicgorski graduated from college as a Great Books major, but after a stint as a student intern at Notre Dame’s Snite Museum of Art, she switched to art history in graduate school. “I became fascinated with the way the intellectual history of the Western world is reflected in art,” she says. She lived in Greece for a few years, excavating the site of Mochlos on Crete while writing her PhD thesis. “I was headed for museum work but fell in love with teaching as well,” she says. It was during this time in Greece that her interest in Orthodox and comparative Christian iconography was born.

Nicgorski teaches a wide canvas of art history, from cave paintings to medieval art, as well as Christian iconography up to the present day. She even uses Mel Gibson’s movie, “The Passion of the Christ,” as a starting point for student discussion about the controversies in how artists have portrayed the crucifixion over the centuries.

There are those who believe icons work miracles — that Madonna figures cry and Christ figures bleed — and Nicgorski is awaiting the opening of the exhibit with a sense of the miraculous, too. It’s finally coming together, making the transition from her desk to the Maryhill Museum. As her elaborate preparations unfold in the galleries overlooking the Columbia River Gorge, she hopes it will be a sacred experience for both art lovers and the spiritually minded.

Images that Tell Stories
The Sacred Presence exhibition includes traditional styles and rural folk art, as well as modern icons by contemporary iconographers from the Pacific Northwest, California and Alaska. Several large, elaborate pieces have been restored for the exhibition. Most pieces are from Russia, and date as early as the 17th century.

Older icons are rare, with few having survived the Iconoclastic Period of the 8th and 9th centuries, when emperors labeled them idolatrous and had them destroyed. Fortunately, many people appreciated the role they played in teaching Christian narratives to a largely illiterate populace, and sought to preserve the “Bible of the Illiterate.”

“The use of icons is still a bit controversial,” Nicgorski says. “Some Christian denominations revere icons, while others find them curious or suspicious or even idolatrous.”

According to Orthodox believers, icons transcend the earthly realm. Thus, figures don’t cast shadows and are often depicted against a luminous gold-leaf background that removes them from this world. The flattened, stylized human forms were typically painted in jewel-like pigments on wooden panels, with the brilliant blues coming from ground lapis lazuli stone. Many are in the form of cast metal, mosaic, relief sculpture or glass painting. Beginning in the 17th century, some Russian icons were portrayed with three-dimensional “Renaissance style” modeling.

Most older icons were not signed, but painted by anonymous clerics and monks who considered iconography a spiritua l— not an artistic — activity. Later pieces are often ascribed to individuals. “By the hand of [the iconographer’s name]” indicates the belief that God is guiding their hand.

Many icons are believed to have worked miracles, especially in Russia. Today, they are primarily displayed in Orthodox — but also in some Catholic and Anglican — churches, where visitors show devotion in the form of prayers and lit candles.

Unusual Collection Attracts Thousands
The Maryhill Museum has a history as interesting as its collections. Samuel Hill, a wealthy railroad executive and investor, wanted to establish a utopian Quaker community in the Gorge, but few families wanted to brave settling where the wind blew 12 months of the year and rain was almost non-existent. So Hill embarked on a worldwide mission to promote peaceful trade and devoted himself to the construction of an imposing home near present-day Goldendale, Wash. Builders didn’t use wood in the structure; instead, they erected steel beams and poured concrete. Hill also built the first road in Washington — in 1909 — to his remote home, which was converted to an art museum. He named the museum after his daughter Mary.

In 1926, Hill invited Queen Marie of Romania to dedicate his still unfinished museum. Queen Marie — granddaughter of Russian Tsar Alexander II — felt deep gratitude toward Hill, who had generously aided Romania after World War I. When the queen ventured to the then-remote Pacific Northwest to dedicate the museum, she brought 15 crates of artwork and artifacts with her, including royal regalia, gilt furniture and numerous Russian Orthodox icons, many with semi-precious stones.

The permanent collection, acquired over decades, is as eclectic as the architecture. It features Queen Marie’s royal regalia and icons, a Native American collection, American classical realism paintings, Rodin sculptures, photos by Edward Weston, world-renowned 1946 French fashion mannequins and stage sets, historical chess sets and European paintings.

The museum sees more than 8,000 visitors a month.