Willamette Stories

‘It’s About Connections’

Singing opera is a bit like playing tight end says football player Josh Lee, who does both with grace.

“There’s a total focus,” he says. “In music, you concentrate on how you’ll hit a note, rather than how you’ll hit a player from the other team. You might be nervous, but you’ve worked out all the details in the practice room, so when you perform you don’t have to think about it — it just flows.

“The same technique happens on the football field. You’ve already put in your time and effort so you don’t have to worry about the next step — just where you’re headed.”

Right now, Lee is headed for a teaching career, working on a Master of Arts in Teaching through Willamette’s one-year graduate program. He’s hoping to conduct choral music, teach math and coach football. “The combination could shatter some paradigms,” he smiles. “I think music is an extremely important part of education, especially today, when so much of what we value as a society is communicated through music.”

Lee didn’t get a good dose of classical music until he got to Willamette. In between football practice, the Willamette Jazz Singers, Male Ensemble Willamette, and a student a cappella group called Headband, he signed up for Chamber Choir and started voice lessons, where he was introduced to composers like Bach and Handel.

“One of the things that attracted me to classical music was the difficulty,” Lee says. “And there’s just a lot of classical music that’s really beautiful. ‘Beautiful’ means different things to different people in different settings, but it comes down to how it makes you feel. Opera focuses on communicating a depth of feeling through music. There is a lot of mental and emotional engagement.”

Lee has been engaged with music since boyhood. At home the family sang before bedtime. He found folk hymns and rock music in church, and at Christmas his father recorded singing cards. During high school he fit musical theatre and choir into his football schedule.

When Lee left home for the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, he formed an a cappella group, which practiced in between mechanical engineering classes and glider training. “A glider is like an airplane without an engine,” Lee says. “You fly behind the plane, and gravity is the only thing that moves you when they cut you loose.”

It seems Lee landed in a good place. On break from the academy, he spent a semester at Willamette, where he shifted from mechanical engineering to music, and decided to stay.

“Now the doors have opened here to pursue music teaching,” he says. The career may also enable him to use summers off to perform at summer opera festivals.

“I want to do something where I can see a difference,” says Lee, who sees a common thread to running football plays, singing arias and teaching students. “For me, it’s all about people. If you don’t do something as a means to love people, it’s meaningless.

“I love football, but if there wasn’t a team and the camaraderie and shared goal, I wouldn’t enjoy it. And I could perform an aria better than I’ve ever performed in my life, but if it’s just about being the best performer, I’ve missed the point.

“It’s more about treating everyone as children of God, who have dignity and worth and need to be loved. It’s about connections.”

Teaching as a Political Act

History Professor Bill Smaldone is a man of mirth, but there’s one thing he’s completely serious about: Teaching. “I regard teaching as a highly political act,” Smaldone says.

“That’s not to say you should inculcate your political perspective, but you should pass on a critical curiosity about the world. Creating an educated citizenry is one of the most fundamental things you can do to create a vibrant political life in America. If we have knowledge, we operate from a place of strength; if not, other people will run the world for us.”

Smaldone has had a lot of practice helping run his small neighborhood of the world. He served as president of the Salem City Council, where his biggest concern was not his next academic publication, but constituents who couldn’t afford heat in the winter and infrastructure that needed an infusion of cash. He now chairs the Southeast Salem Neighborhood Association, which promotes neighborhood parks and public safety, reminds older folks about Meals on Wheels, and mediates with developers.

Smaldone also chaired the Socialist Party of Oregon in 1996, the year the party ran a full slate of candidates, and served on the central committee of the Pacific Green Party of Oregon after the two parties merged with a common platform of social justice and restoration of the environment.

“To be a socialist you have to be an optimist at heart,” Smaldone says. “I believe we are equipped with the ability to feel compassion for each other. Socialism is based on cooperation, emphasizing not only the individual but also the community. If there are crass differences between social classes, it can lead to the rise of violent political extremism.”

Smaldone’s community engagement informs his most recent book, Confronting Hitler: German Social Democrats in Defense of the Weimer Republic, 1929–1933. The book is set at a moment of historical significance. The most significant depression in world history had ransacked global economies, and in Germany 6 million were unemployed amidst widespread business failures. The bankrupt economy provided fertile ground for Adolf Hitler’s violent ideology to take root.

“Americans know a lot about the bad guys of World War II,” Smaldone says. His book recognizes Germany’s Social Democrats — including politicians, trade unionists and women’s movement leaders — who resisted the rise of the Nazis, and examines their defeat from the perspective of individuals enmeshed in political struggle.

“It’s true that individuals can play a critical role in shaping history, but people don’t act in isolation. Germany’s Social Democrats wanted to build a world that you and I could be comfortable in, one based on social justice and democracy, but they operated in volatile social circumstances they couldn’t control. Their failure helped unleash World War II and the later Cold War.

“Democratic socialist movements in the 20th century had revolutionary goals, but aimed to get there through democratic means. They sought to implement change, not through the barrel of a gun, but through peaceful measures. They were run over because politicians on the other side were willing to cast aside democratic rules and resort to brutal tactics. Their failure raises fundamental questions about how to effect change within democracies.”

The messy, gray areas of history are what intrigue Smaldone. “In my high school American history was taught as a march toward consensus,” he says. “I became more interested in European history because it was presented as chaotic.

“The next step won’t always be better. History does not move in a straight line. That’s why we have a responsibility to be engaged in politics, to change the trajectory.”

When Smaldone was making choices about what to do with his life, he sought a profession that “wouldn’t compartmentalize my life.” The overlapping political acts of teaching, research and community engagement have given him a life of great satisfaction.

“Historians have an archaic, medieval kind of job,” Smaldone says. “We’re an old fashioned guild. We don’t punch a clock, and the danger isn’t that we work too little, but that we work too much.” That suits Bill Smaldone just fine.

Elections: More than Just Politics

The class of 23 students in Eaton Hall jotted notes as Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury outlined the state’s unique vote-by-mail system.

“Oregon is still the only state where 100 percent of our elections use vote by mail,” he told them. “It isn’t that complicated; it’s really just absentee voting on a larger scale. It boosts confidence in the state’s electoral system. Elections are the way the public grants government the power to govern, and when the public loses confidence in the election system, the public loses confidence in the legitimacy of the government itself.”

It was the first of many lessons for students this fall in a new course, “Elections 2008.” As the country heads toward the November election, the students will hear from mathematicians, a historian, political scientists, a computer scientist and the dean of Willamette’s MBA program.

What’s going on here? Math, business and science professors teaching about politics?

Definitely, says Peter Otto, who teaches mathematics and organized the class with assistance from Politics Professor Richard Ellis. He says there’s no better way to explore all the facets of an election than to invite people from multiple disciplines to lead the discussion. Otto got the idea from a similar class held at his previous university during the 2004 election.

“A couple of my colleagues there in the math department participated, and that was one of the parts that appealed to me,” he says. “I think this is a great way to educate the community about the upcoming election, but it’s also an opportunity to have an interdisciplinary activity that involves different parts of the campus. We’re across the street from the state Capitol, so Willamette seems like a perfect venue for this class.”

During the semester, mathematicians will reveal the math behind voting theory, a politics professor will talk about women running for office, the dean of the Atkinson Graduate School of Management will address campaign finance, and a computer science professor will demystify electronic voting machines. Also on the agenda: the founder of the Pacific Green Party of Oregon discussing voter reform, a history professor analyzing election systems in other countries, and three state representative candidates giving a first-hand account of the campaign process.

The interdisciplinary nature of the discussion also is reflected among the students, whose majors include economics, international studies, anthropology, art, history, rhetoric and media studies, politics, French and Spanish. Their diverse backgrounds led them to ask Bradbury a wide array of questions, including whether he thought vote by mail could be implemented nationwide.

“I think it could work,” he said. “I think it fits with 20th century lifestyles, and those lifestyles are the same in Pennsylvania as they are in Portland.”

Otto invites anyone on campus interested in the election to sit in on his class. “Elections 2008” meets Wednesdays, 4–5:30 p.m., in Eaton 209. View the entire speaker schedule.

Willamette Welcomes New Class

Scottish bagpipes played and the campus Mill Stream was lit with floating candles as 542 new undergraduate students celebrated the beginning of their Willamette experience August 29.

The new class, which includes 51 transfer students, comes from 25 states and 12 countries, and 57 percent are women. Twelve percent are the first in their families to attend college, and 15 percent are multicultural or international students. They will represent Willamette well. Their median high school GPA was 3.77, with a median SAT score of 1850.

International students make up 39 percent of Atkinsons’ Early Career MBA Class. They come from Bangladesh, India, China, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Peru, Japan and elsewhere. The 76 new students have the highest GMAT scores of any incoming class in the business school’s history. The MBA for Professionals Program will see approximately 40 new students — half in Portland and half in Salem. More than half of the new Law Class comes from outside Oregon. A diverse group, the 161 J.D. candidates speak 14 languages and represent 42 undergraduate majors. The School of Education will see 91 new students, with 71 attending full-time.

A Great Year for Politics

Melissa Buis Michaux knows you’re not supposed to talk about politics in public, but the politics professor is often too curious to stay away from the topic. She strikes up conversations about social issues and elections with cab drivers and airport strangers, and has engaged in a years-long conversation with her students.

“She ended our American Politics class with such an inspiring final lecture,” says former student Tyler Reich ’06, “that I asked when she was going to run for office. I want to vote for her.” Michaux was his most challenging and inspiring professor. “She makes politics relevant.”

“I suppose philosophers would disagree,” Michaux says, “but I believe politics is the place where you can ask the most important questions. Some people think that ideas aren’t important, that politics and parties are corrupt, but if you take a long view, parties are an important vehicle for democracy. At their best, they present voters with meaningful choices and connect citizens to their government. The health of our democracy depends on the mobilization of its citizens, so it’s heartening to see more and more young people tuning in.”

A self-admitted political junkie, Michaux began a life of campaigning and caring when she was in fifth grade. When her teacher stood to lose a job, she wrote a letter to the county commissioner protesting cuts in the school budget. “I got a nice letter back thanking me and informing me that the budget would go forward as planned,” she smiles.

“It’s funny that I should be into politics. Both my parents were politically agnostic, and in 1980 when I asked my grandparents if they were voting for Reagan or Carter, they told me it was none of my business.”

Michaux has done a lot to plant seeds of political activism at Willamette, especially among women. Last year she sponsored a local chapter of the Women Under Forty Political Action Committee (WUFPAC), an organization that encourages young women to run for office. “Women seem reticent to run for office,” she says. “Men seem to need less encouragement, even though studies show that when women run they raise as much money as men and win as many races. It’s important to promote the idea that politics isn’t a male domain. More of my female students express interest in nonprofit work, but politics is where you actually get to effect change. Politics is all about deciding how we allocate resources.”

Michaux also teaches “Parties, Elections and Campaigns” and directs Willamette’s legislative internship program. “We have an army of students at the capitol across the street. Students often volunteer as an intern the first year, and by the second or third year they’re running the office as chief of staff.” Reich says it’s pretty intimidating when students first walk up the big steps to the Capitol, but Michaux gives insider tips and teaches how government really works. “She tells us the things our boss won’t tell us, but will love it if we know,” he says.

Michaux isn’t just on top of political strategies. She’s a policy wonk, especially when it comes to welfare reform. She completed graduate studies in Boston, a city where homelessness and poverty are all too visible. “There were a lot of simplistic debates about a complex, hot-button issue, and people were ideologically polarized. The rhetoric in the mid-1990s was about blaming the poor for social ills, and full of misinformation about how people end up on welfare. What seemed to be missing was any sense that the poor are like the rest of society, or that welfare programs primarily benefit single and divorced women with children.”

Michaux wanted to come to Oregon because the state was one of the early leaders in welfare innovation, and she visited welfare offices from the Columbia Gorge to Medford, seeking solutions with her research. “States are laboratories of democracy,” she says. “In its best iteration, welfare must promote economic independence through work while providing support for child and health care.”

Michaux also wrote “Making Mommies: Feminist Responses to Parenting Manuals” with history Professor Leslie Dunlap. Intended for a volume on feminism and popular culture, the chapter documents how feminism and the rise of intensive parenting have influenced parenting manuals since the 1950s. Manuals are now heavily prescriptive, Michaux says, even advocating that fathers monitor what their wives are eating while pregnant. In an effort to quell anxiety, the manuals actually produce more anxiety by placing all the responsibility for children’s well being on parents, especially mothers, without challenging the political and social conditions that structure parenting choices.

As Michaux wrote “Making Mommies,” two blonde girls smiled from a frame on her desk. Her daughters’ hand-painted art decorates her office, along with a “Women Vote” poster and a certificate from her students: Most Likely to Teach Two 300-Level Courses with Morning Sickness OR Run for Office. This year she’ll juggle chairing the Politics Department and the Women and Gender Studies Program.

But it will be okay. “I love being able to talk and read about politics for a living,” Michaux says. “People always say, ‘This is a great year for politics,’ but they’ve been saying that since I started teaching. It’s always a great year for politics.”