Chamber Singers Become Ambassadors of Song in the Baltics
"Nellie" the Mummy Visits UW Medical Center
Preparing for a Business Career in the Middle East
Stairwells Become Artworks at John Hay Elementary
Teachers as Scholars Brings K-12 Educators to Campus
Statistics to Offer New Case-based Course Sequence
On the Web: Rain or Shine, Weather Forecasts are Online

Chamber Singers Become Ambassadors of Song in the Baltics
Know any Latvian folk songs? Neither did Geoffrey Boers, director of the School of Music’s Chamber Singers, until two years ago. That’s when the Chamber Singers were asked to prepare some Latvian music for a visiting Latvian delegation. The resulting concert eventually led to a tour of the Baltics that Boers’ students describe as “life changing.”

At the 1998 concert, the Chamber Singers performed three Latvian songs, the last of which was Put Vejini, the country’s unofficial national anthem, chosen as such in secret during Soviet times. “The audience started singing with us,” Boers recalls. “Then they asked us for an encore, but we didn’t have one prepared. So instead we came down and stood in the audience. The audience instinctively stood too, and we all sang the song together. It was a very moving experience.”

Boers and Guntis Smidchens, the Scandinavian studies lecturer who had organized the performance, began talking about further collaboration. Last year, they organized a Baltic concert at the UW; the next logical step was a tour. Boers began thinking about the music, while Smidchens put out feelers to his contacts in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. The result was a 10-day, six-concert tour in the Baltics in June 2000.

Despite the Chamber Singers’ experience with Latvian songs, Boers and Smidchens decided to take an entirely American program on the tour. “As popular as choral singing is in the Baltics,” explains Boers, “they are just beginning to learn American music and have developed a keen interest in it.”

	UW student Leah Berman, donning a Husky shirt and being raised off the ground, served as the "flag" for the UW Chamber singers during a processional that opened a song festival in Estonia.

In addition to the choir’s own concerts, the group sang with 12,500 choral singers from Finland and Estonia at a song festival in Estonia. “The festival began with an Olympic-style procession that aired on Russian national TV, with each choir carrying a flag,” recalls Boers. “Since we didn’t have one, we draped an oversized Husky T-shirt on our smallest choir member and placed her on the shoulders of our bass section. As our unofficial flag, they were a hit.”

The most memorable moment of the trip? Boers would have to pick the choir’s impromptu performance for a farmer in Latvia who had seen the group on television. While the choir was visiting a small cave to see its wall etchings, the farmer—who served as the cave’s caretaker—asked if they would sing for him. “So we gathered around him and sang Put Vejini—the same song we’d sung at our first concert in Seattle,’” recalls Boers. “As we began singing, he immediately put his face in his hands, dropped to his knees, and wept. None of us will ever forget that moment.”

“Nellie” the Mummy Visits UW Medical Center
When Nellie was rolled into UW Medical Center for a CT scan in late June, she didn’t look well. But that was to be expected. After all, she was more than 2,000 years old.

Television crews flock around Laura Phillips, left, collection manager of the Burke Museum, after "Nellie" the mummy was CT scanned at the UW Medical Center.

Nellie is a mummy that has been at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture for nearly a century, having been donated to the museum by UW regent Manson Backus in 1902, along with a non-related mummy case. Although Nellie has been a popular attraction, the Northwest environment—combined with less-than-perfect embalming techniques on this mummy—have taken their toll, prompting an effort to stabilize and conserve both the mummy and the case.

That’s where the CT scan comes in. Before the mummy could be treated, the conservator needed to better determine the extent of the mummy’s deterioration. The CT scan, under the direction of radiology professor Dr. Udo Schmiedl, was able to provide a clearer picture of Nellie’s physical condition.

What was already known: “Nellie” lived during the Ptolemaic period, 305-34 B.C., which concluded at the end of Cleopatra’s reign. She is thought to have belonged to a wealthy family because of the embalming materials and elaborate linen wrappings used to preserve her body. The six-foot-long mummy case is about 1,000 years older, coming from the XXI Dynasty (several hundred years after King Tut).

The mummy was probably in her early 20s at death rather than an adolescent, as was previously thought. The CT scan revealed that Nellie is missing all of her bones from the clavicle to the pelvis. A thin metal rod attaches her skull and legs, and her chest cavity is filled with foam and a small amount of chicken wire. Her skull, however, is in remarkably good condition, with most of her facial bones still intact.

Laura Phillips, the Burke’s archaeology collections manager, explains that some of the damage occurred in 1916 when Burke curator F.S. Hall examined the mummy. He removed a number of bones to study them, and partially removed some of the deteriorated linen wrappings covering the mummy’s back. He also removed several water lily bulbs, which symbolize immortality, from the mummy’s chest cavity.

A second examination of the mummy occurred in 1962, when Kent Weeks—now a renowned Egyptologist (and recipient of the College’s 1999 Distinguished Achievement Award)— was a UW undergraduate. Weeks only conducted an exterior examination of Nellie and the mummy case and describes the mummy as “a fine example of poor preparation and mummification.” Phillips acknowledges that the mummy is currently in poor condition, adding that “it was likely in poor condition when it arrived in 1902, and the 1916 investigation may have exacerbated the condition, as did its public display.”

Linda Roundhill, owner of Arts and Antiquities Conservation in Woodinville, has begun the conservation of the mummy and mummy case. The conservation project was made possible by a group of friends of the Backus family who raised more than $27,000 for this effort. The conservation project also includes the construction of new environmentally appropriate storage and display cases for the mummy and mummy case.

Preparing for a Business Career in the Middle East
When UW graduate student Jeff McCarter headed to American University in Beirut (AUB) for the 2000-2001 academic year, he became one of few American graduate students to return to AUB—once a flourishing institution of higher education—after years of strife in Lebanon. His study abroad was made possible through the generosity of Paul Wineman, who has created a fellowship for UW students interested in pursuing careers in business in the Middle East. Wineman has given $14,500 this year toward this effort.

“Through this fellowship I want students to gain a foundation, both economic and social, in order to represent American companies doing business in the Middle East,” explains Wineman. “I had a similar experience 34 years ago, and it was invaluable. Now it’s payback time for me.”

	Paul Wineman

Wineman’s own interest in the Middle East developed after he graduated from the UW with a bachelor’s degree in communications. He was commissioned into the U.S. Army in 1958 and posted to Iran in 1960, where he first headed the Armed Forces Radio and Television Station in Teheran and later served as U.S. Army advisor to the Iranian army. By then he was hooked. Wineman left the army in 1965 to obtain a master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies from the American University in Beirut, to prepare him for business opportunities in the Middle East.

Wineman remained in the region for years, serving as General Manager of Television in Iran, contract supervisor of the Saudi Arabian television network, and finally regional director of United Aircraft International (later to become United Technologies Corp.). He finally left in 1983, when “the civil war in Beirut got so bad that it became impractical to stay on.” That was after he’d been in two airplane crashes, been on a hijacked plane, and been held hostage by the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

Back in Los Angeles, Wineman formed a consulting firm that advises the defense and aerospace industry on how to successfully market and win sales throughout the Middle East. Now, through the Wineman Fellowship, he’s also hoping to prepare the next generation of Americans doing business in the Middle East.

“The recipient will have to learn to negotiate with another culture and then to turn around and negotiate with American corporate culture,” says Wineman. “It’s a fine line to walk. This year of study abroad should give students a start in doing so.”

Stairwells Become Artworks at John Hay Elementary
If you climb the stairs at John Hay Elementary School in Seattle, expect to be distracted. The stairwell walls are covered with colorful tile murals created by students in the school, with guidance from students in the UW School of Art.

	Students at John Hay Elementary School prepare tiles for a mural, with guidance from UW students.

The UW students—three graduate artists-in-residence and three undergraduate interns—visited the school weekly for more than four months as part of an artist-in-residence program funded by the elementary school. They worked in pairs and met with every class once each week. “The school wanted to make sure that there was at least one tile from every child on the wall,” says Sarah Lindley, a graduate student in ceramics. “The point was to be all-inclusive.”

The theme for the 6" x 6" tiles was favorite books, with each child expected to create a tile representing his or her favorite. “We did a lot of preliminary drawing with the students to talk about how to come up with ideas, choose a composition, and possibly represent your favorite book without including the title,” says Lindley. “We did drawing, printmaking, and collaging, all in preparation.”

Although some children would “paint their tiles in five minutes no matter how hard you tried to keep them interested,” Lindley found those students to be the exception. “I was just amazed by the students we met,” she says. “They were all so bright and were, for the most part, able to focus really well. Elementary school age is so great for teaching about art. It is heartwarming to see how important art is to the kids and how much they are about learning about materials.”

One of the many Harry Potter tiles created.

When the tiles were completed, they were combined to create four 6' x 6' panels. The panels were then installed by graduate student Paul Metivier and parents from John Hay Elementary.

What favorite books are represented most in the mural? There are the classics—Charlotte’s Web, The Little Prince—and some sophisticated fare such as Shakespeare (which some of the children had recently studied in school). But the big winner was the Harry Potter series. “That was definitely a big one—all of the Harry Potter books,” says Lindley. “There are a lot of Harry Potter tiles on the wall.”

Teachers as Scholars Brings K-12 Educators to Campus
The Odyssey. Beowulf. Pop music and culture. John Singer Sargent. K-12 teachers have had few opportunities to discuss these topics in depth with their colleagues—until now. The Teachers as Scholars project provides a place and a format for such conversations.

Teachers as Scholars is a national program for K-12 educators that began five years ago at Harvard University. The Puget Sound Program is sponsored jointly by the UW’s Simpson Center for the Humanities and Seattle Arts and Lectures.

Small content-based seminars led by UW faculty are the centerpiece of the program. “Although professional development is a well-established enterprise in schools, it often focuses almost exclusively on teaching strategies or curriculum reform,” explains Margit Dementi, associate director of the Simpson Center. “Teachers as Scholars allows teachers and administrators to become students again and to immerse themselves in scholarly issues, regardless of the grade level they teach or their area of expertise.”

Most seminars consist of two four-hour sessions, scheduled one or two weeks apart. Topics for the 2000-2001 year include: The Odyssey; Contemporary Women Writers; More Than Watching: Big Brother Today; John Singer Sargent; Love as Theatre: The Drama of Shakespeare’s Sonnets; Information, Anxiety, and the K-12 Classroom; Pop Music/Culture; Beowulf: Medieval Heroes and Monsters in the Modern World; What is China?; and The Information Democracy.

The program provides “a gift of time,” comments one participant. “TIme to reflect, discuss, and struggle with issues that are exciting and challenging.” For more information, contact the Simpson Center for the Humanities at (206) 543-3920.

Statistics to Offer New Case-based Course Sequence
For many undergraduates, statistics courses are one more hurdle they’d prefer to avoid. The Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences (CSSS) plans to change that with its new three-part sequence of introductory courses.

“In many introductory statistics courses across the country, the excitement, usefulness, and pervasiveness of probabilistic and statistical reasoning is never brought to the fore,” says Mark Handcock, professor of statistics and sociology. CSSS’s redesigned sequence emphasizes how statistics are used in practice, using actual cases. The focus is first on data collection and then statistical analysis.

“In most statistics courses, we take the data at face value, ignoring the way in which the collection process influences the product we work with,” explains Martina Morris, professor of statistics and sociology, who is teaching the first course, Evaluation of Evidence (CSSS 320). “This often lulls students into thinking that there is no distinction between data and reality. In fact, the link between the two is anything but simple, and these issues lie at the heart of teaching quantitative literacy. Our aim is to help students understand what kinds of questions they should ask about the data before analyzing it.”

The introductory course will be followed by a two-quarter sequence built around a set of cases, each representing a research question that requires interactive quantitative reasoning to arrive at a defensible conclusion. Topics such as racial imbalance in public schools, changes in wage inequality, and condom use and the prevention of AIDS will be explored.

“This is a very exciting opportunity to rethink the way we approach quanti-tative training, and we have been looking forward to working with students this way,” say Morris and Handcock. “The CSSS is a great catalyst, and its interdisciplinary nature makes the case-based approach a natural choice.”

On the Web: Rain or Shine, Weather Forecasts are Online
It’s a Northwest preoccupation: the weather. Fortunately the UW Department of Atmospheric Sciences has a website to satisfy even the most obsessive weather watcher’s need for data. The site offers the basics, of course—local forecasts, national weather data—but if you’ve got time to explore, there’s a lot more information available.

The department’s main site for weather information is http://www.atmos.washington.edu/data/. Click on “Local Forecasts” and you’ll find Washington state weather forecasts, by region, presented in simple text by the National Weather Service. Or click on “Local Weather Data” and choose from literally dozens of options, including: “Washington State Weather Roundup” with weather data from 45 Northwest locations; Cascade mountain pass weather reports; Washington State Ferry observations; and archived Northwest surface observations going back to July 1996. There are maps, graphs, and charts for everything from pressure to wind speed to precipitation. And for out-of-towners missing their favorite Northwest haunts, there are links to real-time weather videos from UW’s Red Square, Seattle’s Elliott Bay, Western Washington University in Bellingham, and other locations.

Cliff Mass, professor of atmospheric sciences, notes that undergraduates have been heavily involved in building and updating the website. He says it can get more than 100,000 hits a day “when the weather gets interesting” in the Northwest. Which begs the question, “When isn’t the weather interesting here?” You’ll have to check the archives to answer that one.

[Autumn 2000 - Table of Contents]