Oberlin Observer. 1996-09-27

              INSIDE
Faculty and Staff Notes 2 Marty Ackermann, Catalyst 2
Conservatory Faculty Meeting 2 Pat Day on Curricular Change 4
%e Volume 18, Number 3ObserverSeptember 27,1996
THE O B E R L I N COLLEGE FACULTY AND STAFF NEWSPAPER
Maggie Callahan demonstrates the new recycling bins in
the lobby of Wilder Hall.
Recycling at Oberlin Is Easier Than Ever
By Carol Ganzel
Can I recycle envelopes with
office paper? Can I recycle glossy
advertisements inserted in news¬
papers? The answers (yes and
no, respectively) to these and
other questions, unclear before,
are apparent in Oberlin
College's restructured recycling
program. The program is also
answering a basic question: Is
that a recycling bin or a trash
bin?
Since the College began a
recycling program six years ago
(see the September 13, 1990,
Observer), it has collected many
tons of office paper, newsprint,
bottles, and cans from residence
halls and offices. Many students
and employees have found the
program confusing, however. For
two years Julianne Donnelly '97
and other students in OPIRG
(Ohio Public Interest Research
Group) have been working to
improve it. They call their sub¬
group of OPIRG "Lorax" after
the Dr. Seuss book of that name.
Two events last spring gave
impetus to the students' cause.
First, recycling got a new cam¬
pus administrator: Cheryl
Wolfe, director of environmental
health and safety, took over
from the director of facilities-support
services when that posi¬
tion was abolished. (Wolfe's pre¬
decessor had handled recycling
before the facilities-support posi¬
tion was created.) Second, the
College's recycling pick-up con-
Continued on page 3
Stella's Stunners Stored on Disk As
HHMI Grant Furthers Science Study
If you've had a son or daughter in
the Oberlin High School in the past
few years, you're probably familiar
with Rudd Crawford's Stella's
Stunners. For those of you not so
blessed, here's the scoop: Stella's
Stunners are nonroutine problems
in mathematics: visual and symbolic
brain teasers and story problems.
The problems can be so challenging
(see "Here's a Sample from Stella")
that Crawford, a mathematics tea¬
cher in the high school and associate
professor in the College mathemat¬
ics department, insists that his stu¬
dents monitor not only their
thought processes but also their
feelings about the problems as they
work them out.
Thanks to a new four-year
grant from the Howard
Hughes Medical Institute
(HHMI), Crawford will be
more able than ever to stun
all his students with the spe¬
cial math problems. Over
the summer three students,
two from the high school
and one (Christy Ackley '98)
from the College, transferred
all 1300 of the puzzlers from
paper file cards to a comput¬
er database, where they can
be called up by mathematics topic
and solution strategy.
Crawford uses the story prob¬
lems in the newly launched inten¬
sive precalculus course in the
College, Mathematics 102. The
purpose of the problems, Crawford
says, is "to plunge students into per¬
plexing situations so that they can
practice figuring out what to do
when they don't know what to do."
The course addresses directly a
major intellectual barrier in access
to science: essential mathematical
problem-solving skills without which
student enrollment in college-level
science courses is not productive.
"Most students have great diffi¬
culty opening up and sharing their
often deeply negative feelings about
their efforts," Crawford says, "but
doing so is crucial in getting over
the fear of mathematics, which in
turn is essential to making pro¬
gress in understanding it and
enjoying the rush that comes from
cracking a difficult problem."
Crawford's undertaking is one of
many covered by the $600,000
institutional grant that Oberlin
College received from HHMI's
Here's a Sample from Stella
Aggie sells fresh eggs at the Oberlin farm¬
ers' market. Last Saturday she sold Mishal
half her eggs plus half an egg. Then she
sold Neela half of her remaining eggs plus
half an egg. Then she sold Sophy half of
her remaining eggs plus half an egg. Then
she sold the remaining 27 eggs to you.
How many eggs had she started with? See
the bottom of page 3 for the answer.
Undergraduate Biological Sciences
Education Program in August. The
Office of Sponsored Programs'
David Love, associate vice presi¬
dent for research and development,
and Barbara Fuchsman, federal-grants
officer, together with
Professor of Chemistry William
Fuchsman, wrote the proposal with
help from Daniel Gardner, special
assistant to the president for com-
Continued on page 3
Think One Person Can Change the World? They Do
Think One Person Can Change the World?
So Do We.
OBERLIN
The slogan appears on
Oberlin's famous poster.
Representing alumni who attended
Oberlin from before 1944 until
today, five panelists discussed on
the Saturday of Alumni Council
Weekend, September 21, what has
often been called Oberlin's slogan:
Think one person can change the
world? So do we.
Acting Dean of the College of
Arts and Sciences Clayton Koppes
moderated the panel, whose mem¬
bers were William Warren '48, Mary
Grace Heller Cope '56, Chuck
Spitulnik '73, Jackie Bradley '76,
and Peter Nicholson '90. Koppes
asked the panelists to keep in mind
four ideas that he said give "unity to
our history": intellectual serious¬
ness, artistic excellence, civic engage¬
ment, and a commitment to diversity.
Most panelists agreed that one
person could change the world—
even, as Cope noted, if the change
were a ripple touching an unknown
shore—and that Oberlin is where
that notion was strengthened, if not
planted, in their minds. Of the pan¬
elists, only Nicholson expressed
any discomfort with the theme, say¬
ing he thought more likely that it
"took a village" rather than an indi¬
vidual to achieve significant change.
Audience participation account¬
ed for the second half of the two-hour
event, and most of the speak¬
ers in the audience were Alumni
Council members who agreed with
the panelists and elaborated from
personal experience.
In his formal presentation
Warren said that many of the stu¬
dents of his era felt a responsibility
to make the world they knew—the
world of their parents and grand¬
parents—better. In their idea of
betterment, they did not entertain
ideas of revolution, he said. And
while people expended effort to
"make things egalitarian," men had
linen service and women had cur¬
fews. He also noted that Carl
Rowan '47 has spoken about the
lack of racial equality on the
Continued on page 3