For an hour a week, the students, who are generally first-timers, learn how to make their horses walk, trot, and canter. Class enrollment has been on the rise, hovering around 100 students per semester, leading Stanton to set a new class limit of 65.

To many of these students, horseback riding is a fun way to pick up an extra course credit. “It’s a nice way to relax,” says Elizabeth Klein ’02, who was enrolled in Advanced Horseback Riding last spring. The class gave Klein a break from her marketing courses and allowed her to return to a recreational sport she’s enjoyed since childhood. For others, the class is an opportunity to improve competitive equestrian skills. Elizabeth Kad ’03 took the class along with several Equestrian Club teammates to better prepare for competition. “I’ve ridden horses since the fourth grade, and I was really sad when I thought I wouldn’t have an opportunity to ride at college,” Kad says. “Then I heard about the SU Equestrian Club.”

Most people are unaware of the club, which welcomes SU and SUNY ESF students of all riding abilities. The club competes against such schools as Cazenovia College, Alfred University, St. Lawrence University, and Rochester Institute of Technology, and is divided into English and Western teams. Last year the SU English Team, exhibiting skills from walk-trot to jumping fences, ranked 4th among 11 area schools. The Western Team, displaying skills from walk-trot to open reining, ranked 3rd out of 7.

In the past, word of mouth and a few signs placed around campus were the only indications that the club existed. However, English Team captain Joanne Freyhof ’02 says the team made a concerted effort last year to spread the word about the club and it paid off. When she joined the club her freshman year, there were only 10 team members. In 2001-02, membership jumped to 38. “It’s great that more students know about the Equestrian Club now,” Freyhof says. “But many students are still really shocked to discover that SU even has a horseback riding program.”

—Melissa Dittmann

Can We Talk?

When Kiyomi Suzuki stares at a menu in an American restaurant, her stomach rumbles—not from hunger, but from fear. “American menus do not have pictures on them,” says Suzuki, a native of Japan. Like many other international campus members, Suzuki and her husband, Taro Suzuki, who is a graduate student at the School of Information Studies, arrived at SU with little experience reading, writing, and speaking English. As a result, tasks as simple as ordering at a restaurant or going through a grocery checkout line can be challenging.

To help such students learn American customs and vernacular English, the Lillian and Emanuel Slutzker Center for International Services created the English Conversation Program. Today, more than 80 international scholars, students, and their spouses participate in one of 20 conversation groups that help them bridge the cultural gap through informal discussions. “The groups expose international students to the culture of the United States and provide them with social and community connections beyond their academic affiliations,” says Patricia Burak G’96, director of the Slutzker Center.

Riet DeKleermaeker, a native of Holland and coordinator of the English Conversation Program, introduced the concept 15 years ago. She says the majority of participants are graduate students who know some English, but have difficulty understanding the language—especially American idioms and slang expressions in everyday conversation. By participating in group gatherings, the students improve their English through role playing, discussions of topics of mutual interest, and other activities. They also learn about such customs as tipping at a restaurant, ordering food from a menu, and celebrating such uniquely American holidays as Halloween and Thanksgiving.

Each group has a volunteer leader who assists the students during weekly meetings and organizes special events to showcase the students’ unique cultures while improving their English. Virginia Klink, a Syracuse community volunteer with the Center for International Services, has been a group leader for 10 years. Klink helps her group—made up of wives of international students—develop language skills at their gatherings. Occasionally, participants have informal get-togethers at each other’s homes. “Last year we met for lunches,” Klink says. “Each person prepared a dish from her own country.”

Such interactions benefit SU students, faculty members, and area residents who serve as group leaders. “The English Conversation Program focuses on more than just speaking English,” DeKleermaeker says. “It is truly a friendship program. Participating students turn to their volunteer group leaders with questions about daily life and survival skills in the United States, and depend on them for advice and support. Group leaders learn from the students, and the students learn about each other’s language, culture, and way of life. The program broadens the horizons for all those involved.”

—Catrina Carrington

 

Todd Rubin

Constructing Memories
of 9/11

Every spring a committee of third-year architecture students organizes a symposium on a topic outside of the normal curriculum. This year as students were beginning to brainstorm ideas, world events chose the topic for them, when terrorists rammed two jetliners into the World Trade Center Towers, destroying an internationally recognized architectural landmark. Issues related to the attacks flooded the students’ minds: What is the future of skyscrapers? How can architecture convey meaning, and how does that meaning turn the structure into a target? What is an appropriate memorial to fill the space?

The students’ discussions led to the creation of the two-day symposium, “/ingMemoryConstruct/ingMemoryConstruct,” featuring Mary Miss, one of the leading environmental artists in the United States and a pioneer in architectural sculpture; and M. Christen Boyer, the William R. McKenan Jr. Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at Princeton University. “The committee decided to use the events of 9/11 as a vehicle for discussing the issue of memory and how we construct memory through the language of architecture,” says architecture professor Laura Auerbach, faculty advisor of the symposium. “We approached it as a contiguous loop of memory constructing and constructing memory.”

The 11-student committee drafted a proposal about memorials and constructing memories and asked both speakers to give a 20-minute response. Their comments initiated a public discourse at the symposium, which attracted students, faculty, and staff from many of SU’s schools and colleges. Following the nearly 3-hour gathering, attendees held an all-night charette, creating artistic panels in response to the ideas presented during the discussion. The panels were constructed from kits of materials that included a 12- by 18-inch sheet of plywood, nails, twine, cloth, paint, and images and photographs of the towers and ruins.

The 200 symposium participants reconvened the following day to hang their wooden panels on chains suspended from the two-story center of the School of Architecture’s rotunda area. “It was a huge success—more than we could have imagined,” says Paul Herbert ’04, a member of the symposium committee. “People asked questions and brought up a lot of issues. The professors’ and students’ reactions were amazing, and the speakers did a great job. We all learned from the experience.”

—Margaret Costello

Celebrating Crane’s Legacy

Although Stephen Crane only lived to age 29, he had an enormous impact on the literary world and is considered one of Syracuse University’s most noteworthy alumni. In 1891, Crane, who is best known for his Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage, attended SU, where he reportedly drafted his novel, Maggie, A Girl of the Streets. “Last year a trustee of the Delta Upsilon fraternity’s Dikai Educational Foundation told us they wanted to establish something to honor Stephen Crane, who had been a member of their Syracuse chapter during his enrollment at SU,” says Robert Gates, chair of the English department. "We decided that an annual lecture series, addressing some aspect of American literature and given by literary scholars of high stature, would be an appropriate tribute to Crane.”

After leaving SU, Crane began writing for newspapers in New York City, where he developed his skills as an observer of psychological and social reality. After he wrote The Red Badge of Courage which earned him international acclaim at age 24, he became a reporter in the American West and Mexico. Crane also covered the Greco-Turkish War and later settled in England, where he made friends with such famous writers as H.G. Wells and Henry James. Wells called Crane “beyond dispute, the best writer of our generation.” Crane later covered the Spanish-American War for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York Wordless. He lived the life of a penniless artist who became well known as a poet, journalist, social critic, and realist,” Gates says. “He was noted for being an ‘original’ in his field—a pioneer in prose realism, and to some degree in poetic free verse.”

Crane’s literary accomplishments were celebrated last November when the English department and the Dikai Educational Foundation co-sponsored the first installment of the Stephen Crane Memorial Lecture Series, given by Harvard professor Sacvan Bercovitch. “We were particularly happy to begin this annual lecture series with Bercovitch, who is probably the best known scholar in American literature and editor of the Cambridge History of American Literature,” Gates says. “He gave an insightful lecture on ‘What’s Funny About Huckleberry Finn?’”

The next lecture in the series is scheduled for November. Like the Raymond Carver Reading Series, which brings to campus poets and fiction writers from across the country, the Crane series supports the Academic Plan’s vision of expanding opportunities for intellectual discourse for students outside of the classroom. “The Crane lecture series will allow us to bring to Syracuse internationally known teachers and researchers in American literature who can enrich our academic programs and connect our students and faculty to the work of great scholars at other schools,” Gates says.

—Jonathan Hay and Christine Yackel

Teaching for Tomorrow

During the past few years, the School of Education has revamped its teacher preparation programs to meet more stringent state requirements that take effect in 2004. “The impetus for this change comes from the New York Board of Regents’ interest in promoting the highest possible standards for all students in the state,” says Gerald Mager, professor of teaching and leadership and a member of the New York State Professional Standards and Practices Board for Teaching. “Children are expected to achieve in ways we have not historically expected them to achieve, so we must have a teaching force that is prepared to help those learners.”

The new regulations in teacher education ensure that future educators are liberally educated, with core knowledge in a variety of arts and sciences fields and broad field experience in diverse environments. “The state changes did not catch us off guard,” says education professor Joseph Shedd, chair of Teaching and Leadership Programs, who oversees SU’s 29 teacher preparation programs. “In many respects, we were already doing the things they came along and defined.”

For example, SU’s Inclusive Elementary and Special Education Program was the first of its kind to prepare future educators to work with a wide range of children, including those with disabilities. Students in this program have seven to nine field experiences as part of their professional preparation. In other programs, the new state standards require an increase in the number of hours—to at least 100—in field experiences before student teaching. These experiences, too, must be in settings that are diverse in learner characteristics: with children who have disabilities, or are English language learners, economically disadvantaged, or ethnically diverse. “The state also helped us identify some areas that we need to work on,” Shedd says. “Those changes are under way.”

By May 2003, SU’s teacher preparation programs will train prospective teachers to incorporate technology into their classrooms, develop literacy skills in all subject areas, and effectively teach students from all cultural backgrounds. To help meet the goals, the School of Education acquired two federal grants totaling $1.7 million to improve the technology and computer training received by future teachers. “While teachers still need the qualities that were important 25 years ago, educators today must have more ways to reach a variety of students and help them learn academic content, social behaviors, self-reliance, and responsibility,” Mager says. “That is the kind of teacher we want to prepare and graduate from Syracuse University.”

—Margaret Costello

A Hip Idea

 Approximately a half-million Americans have hip or knee replacements each year, and that number is expected to rise significantly during the next two decades with the graying of baby boomers and the increase in average life expectancy. With a growth in demand for prosthetic joints, bioengineering professors Julie Hasenwinkel and Jeremy Gilbert have focused their research on simplifying the implantation process and improving the longevity of the devices. The duo, assisted by undergraduate and graduate students, are creating stronger, easier-to-use bone cement, a grout-like substance used to anchor the prosthesis into the bone during joint replacement surgery. “This is an opportunity to advance medicine and benefit people,” Hasenwinkel says.

Currently, bone cement is made by mixing a powder and liquid during the operation. This mixing process sometimes creates air pockets within the cement that can later cause a loosening of the prosthetic joint, Hasenwinkel says. “If we can develop a bone cement that lasts twice as long as the current state of the art, it will have a major impact on patients’ quality of life.”

Hasenwinkel and Gilbert, who heads the biomaterials group in the L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science, received $300,000 in funding from medical supplier Summit Medical Limited of Gloucestershire, United Kingdom, to devise an alternative premixed bone cement. The researchers and their student assistants created gel-like mixtures that were patented and may be on the market as early as 2004. Two gels are packaged in a cartridge that is then placed into a caulking gun-style device and mixed as it is extruded into the bone, Hasenwinkel explains.

Matt Mroczkowski ’01 began working with Hasenwinkel on the project as an undergraduate and has continued as a graduate student. Such experience exemplifies the Academic Plan’s desire to have students engage in research with faculty. “I’m working on something brand new,” Mroczkowski says. “It’s really relevant right now with so many people receiving hip and other orthopedic replacements. It’s great to think that someday our bone cement may be used in total joint replacement surgeries, and that I will have had a hand in the development.”

—Margaret Costello

Dietary Intervention

Mike Prinzo

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher says the nation’s obesity epidemic has become so serious that it may soon overtake tobacco as the leading cause of preventable deaths in the United States. To help reverse this trend, Syracuse University is playing a key role in a 10-state research project designed to improve the eating habits of economically disadvantaged 18- to 24-year-olds. “Previous studies have shown a need for intervention when it comes to the food-choice habits of economically disadvantaged young adults,” says Tanya Horacek, a professor of nutrition and hospitality management in the College of Human Services and Health Professions. “On average, young adults aren’t eating healthy, but they are at a transition time in their lives where we can still reach them and help them make positive changes.”

The project’s primary objectives are to increase fruit and vegetable intake by young adults, determine the effectiveness of specifically tailored intervention, and make recommendations for community-based practitioners. The $2 million, 4-year study will be led by the University of Wisconsin and funded by the US Department of Agriculture. SU is among nine subcontractor universities involved in the study.

As a subcontractor, SU will work with research subjects in New York State. The project will be conducted in several stages, starting with pilot testing of intervention newsletters. Horacek, the New York team’s research leader, will select 200 research subjects for the study. Half of them—the subject group—will receive intervention materials throughout the study, while the other half will be a control group.

Horacek says study participants will be assessed for their dietary intake and “stage of change”—that is, their willingness to examine and alter their diets. The subject group will receive a series of specially tailored newsletters for six months. At the and of the study, the subjects’ dietary intakes will be reassessed, and motivational strategies that led to positive changes will be identified. “Using such newsletters to promote healthier diets is not a new idea,” Horacek says. “But tailoring those newsletters to economically disadvantaged young adults is relatively unique in the United States, particularly on such a large scale.”

—Nicci Brown and Christine Yackel

Connecting Businesses Online

For mainstream America, electronic commerce generally means surfing online and clicking on shopping-cart icons to make purchases. But this business-to-consumer market is relatively small compared with one emerging from the shadows of digital commerce—transactions that occur between businesses, says School of Information Studies professor Rolf Wigand, director of the Center for Digital Commerce. “On the business-to-business side, purchases are seven to eight times larger than on the consumer side,” he says.

With the growth of online business-to-business activity comes a new area of digital commerce called the electronic trading network (ETN), where large companies create an online network of potential suppliers. Think of it as a customized, private online auction site, such as eBay, for businesses. Right now about a dozen ETN companies in the United States specialize in linking buyers and sellers, ensuring that transactions between the parties flow smoothly and securely across the web.

Seeing a need for more information about the ETN field, 10 School of Information Studies graduate students, in conjunction with the Giga Information Group of Cambridge, Massachusetts, conducted extensive interviews with top officers at ETN companies and issued a 35-page report, “An Analysis of the Emerging Trading Network Market.” The report summarizes the market’s general characteristics and examines the services provided by each company, focusing on such areas as pricing, flexibility, scalability, connections to deep-pocketed parent companies, and future positioning in the market.

The project also established a mutually beneficial relationship between Syracuse University and Giga. Thanks to the efforts of Wigand and Giga research director Ken Vollmer G’98, students have access to databases and information for research, and can forge contacts with potential employers. In exchange, the University provides its research and expertise to Giga, which uses the reports to advise clients. The collaboration also opens the door for Giga analysts and information studies professors to share their expertise. “It’s a symbiotic relationship,” Wigand says. “We’re very happy with it.” The partnership also reflects SU’s Academic Plan priority of ensuring greater student success through enhanced research experiences and community-based learning opportunities.

Doctoral student Jane Siow G’02, who served as senior project director, says she’s grateful for the real-world experience she received with a leading IT firm. “Student involvement in such projects is an essential part of graduate-level education,” Siow says. “The exposure to industry perspectives is useful and helps balance what we learn in classes and in our academic projects.”

—Margaret Costello

Rewriting the Book on National Security

College of Law professor William Banks wrote the book on national security, literally. He and co-authors Steve Dycus, Arthur Berney, and Peter Raven-Hansen were putting the finishing touches on the third edition of their leading textbook, National Security Law, when the September 11 attacks occurred. “We had to tear the book up,” Banks says. “The world changed on 9/11, and so did the subject area I’m studying.”

To address the numerous legal issues that surfaced in the wake of September 11, Banks and his co-authors made significant revisions to the text. The book, scheduled for publication in June, is used by approximately 100 law schools in the United States and is described by FBI officials as the “only reliable source of national security law information and analysis.”

The terrorist attacks also caused Banks to rethink his responsibilities as an educator and take his lessons beyond the classroom. In addition to teaching SU law students, he has shared his knowledge on counterterrorism and national security with dozens of national and international news agencies. He also made numerous public speeches on campus and in the community. “The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon caused horrific harm and raised difficult questions about our national security,” Banks says.

Through his teaching and public speeches, Banks describes the complexities of defending the privacy and rights of individuals, or even groups of people, while federal intelligence agencies are being accused of failing to detect or intercept terrorist plans. “That balancing formula has become more complex since 9/11 burned into all our retinas just how grave the consequences of terrorist acts can be,” Banks says.

He also encourages people to clearly define what terrorism means. In the revised textbook, for example, Banks and his co-authors offer some definitions and describe their repercussions. “It’s a question that makes us squirm,” he says. “It’s the old adage: One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Terrorism has many definitions.”

Tied into the problem of defining terrorism is the process by which the country labels a person or a group as terrorist. “Care must be taken to provide individualized consideration to those who may be suspected of being affiliated with a terrorist organization,” Banks says. “Otherwise we lose sight of our fundamental guarantee of fairness for each person.”

—Margaret Costello

A Design for the Future

The new School of Management building will establish an impressive gateway to the Syracuse University campus. The design of the 150,000-square-foot facility, to be constructed on the corner of Marshall Street and University Avenue, has been entrusted to the Manhattan-based firm of Fox & Fowle Architects. “The proposed site is ideal because it is at the ‘front door’ to the SU campus and expands the University to the north, integrating it with the city’s existing urban context,” says Bruce S. Fowle ’60, senior principal of Fox & Fowle and a 2001 Arents Pioneer Medalist. “It is a great honor to be selected to design such a challenging and preeminent project. We are extremely excited to help create this important addition to the campus.”

Fox & Fowle, an award-winning architectural firm with an international reputation for excellence, is well known for designing environmentally sensitive buildings in urban settings. Some of the firm’s most prominent projects include the Condé Nast Building and the American Craft Museum in New York City, and the Bausch and Lomb headquarters in Rochester, New York.

Fowle says his overall goal for the project is to raise the School of Management’s international profile by setting new benchmarks for functionality and architectural character. The building, scheduled for completion in 2004, will feature next-generation networked classrooms; student meeting rooms to support team-based learning; an investment research lab; dedicated areas for executive education programs; “incubator space” for entrepreneurial start-ups; a 200-seat auditorium; common spaces; and ample room to accommodate growth of academic programs and student services.

The project, which received a $3 million grant from New York State to foster economic development in conjunction with the local business community, is part of the University’s academic space plan. The plan aims to add 350,000 to 400,000 square feet of academic space and renovate nearly 350,000 square feet of existing space on campus. The building’s proposed features are intended to reflect the school’s commitment to student learning and development; build a vital management community of students, faculty, staff, alumni, and business leaders; strengthen the school’s overarching theme of entrepreneurship; and maintain competitiveness with other major business schools. “Fox & Fowle will design a building that will strengthen our standing as a world-class business school by allowing us to deliver nationally prominent programs,” says School of Management Dean George R. Burman. “Our students will be the primary beneficiaries.”

—Christine Yackel

Understanding the European Union

The European Union (EU)—15 countries that have joined forces to enhance political, financial, and social cooperation—represents an economic force in the world, with a one-currency system and complex trade treaties and agricultural policies. “Even in Europe, few people really understand the intricacies of the European Union,” says political science professor Craig Parsons. “It’s something like a loose federal government, but it’s also like an international organization.”

The EU’s administrative European Commission has funded 15 centers in the United States, including one at the Maxwell School’s Global Affairs Institute, to advance research, education, and public awareness of the organization and to strengthen transatlantic relations. The Maxwell European Union Center was established with a $500,000 three-year grant from the commission. “Creating the center is part of the European Union’s attempt to educate Americans about the EU,” says Parsons, the center’s director. “The American program is a smaller, transatlantic complement to massive programs in Europe that try to familiarize citizens with these poorly understood institutions.”

Building on international areas in which the school is already an academic leader, the Maxwell EU Center focuses on four core issues: European security and peacekeeping; transatlantic trade; comparative social policy and inequality; and public administration. The center is assembling a “virtual college” of European specialists at more than 100 universities in the area, connected by an electronic network and through conferences and smaller meetings. European universities and scholars will also be linked to the network.

"The center will greatly enhance our European expertise through both its direct activities and the networks connecting the 15 EU centers and European institutions,” says Margaret Hermann, the Gerald B. and Daphna Cramer Professor of Global Affairs and director of the Global Affairs Institute.

—Cynthia Moritz

  New Media Territory

Consider the benefits of going on a family vacation with a downloadable interactive tour guide in your car that describes the best attractions and restaurants for each of your destinations and provides a history of the towns you pass. Back home, imagine accessing a databank for a favorite documentary, ordering an extended version of the film with never-before-seen footage, and having it sent to the cable box in your living room.

Students enrolled in a new interdisciplinary master’s degree program at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications will learn to turn such ideas into realities. The program focuses on training new media professionals to manage online newspapers, create enhanced DVDs, and be involved in other information distribution projects. This July, the first students will enroll in the new media master’s program, a joint venture between Newhouse and the School of Information Studies. The students will be challenged to identify untapped information markets and to find opportunities that take communications where it’s never gone before. “I want students in this program to generate new ideas and produce them,” says program director Stephen Masiclat, professor of visual and interactive communications at Newhouse. “I want them to be equally comfortable walking into jobs with Onstar, PBS, General Motors, or the L.A. Times online site and saying, ‘Not only do I know how to do this, I know how we can do this better.’”

To accomplish these goals, students will take most of their 36 credit hours at Newhouse, developing writing and new media communications skills. The remaining credit hours will be devoted to information studies courses that focus on technical aspects of organizing and accessing databanks. This cross-disciplinary approach encourages creative thinking and enhances the collaborative design process, a key component of the Academic Plan. Masiclat believes the program will attract students from a wide range of backgrounds, their diversity helping break down disciplinary boundaries that stifle imagination. “The Newhouse School is about journalistic content and seeing the possibilities for that content,” he says. “But nothing can happen unless you have a system-level expert, and the School of Information Studies is full of them. The most successful ventures have been the result of teamwork, and I believe that together we can invent the really good stuff.”

—Margaret Costello

Enhancing Instructional Design

Since coming to Syracuse University in December, Professor Jerry Klein has balanced his time between two schools to fill a newly created role. Klein heads an effort to strengthen a collaboration between the School of Education’s Instructional Design, Development, and Evaluation (IDD&E) Program and Syrtis, a University College-associated business that provides technology-oriented education and training services to such organizations as Excellus, upstate New York’s largest health insurance company, and NetGen Learning Systems. Syrtis’s recent projects include designing an interactive CD-based certification course for real estate professionals and creating a video-based training course taught through teleconferencing. “All of us at Syrtis are excited to work with Professor Klein,” says Stuart A. Williams, Syrtis director. “We look forward to his support and the opportunity for him to apply the best of the academic world to our clients’ concerns for effective workforce education.”

Before joining SU, Klein was a senior instructional designer with Telecommunications Research Associations in St. Mary’s, Kansas. He also worked for nearly two decades at Bell Laboratories, which is now part of Lucent Technologies. For his work with Syrtis, Klein shares his instructional design expertise, acts as a project consultant, and helps develop technology-based education programs for clients. “IDD&E benefits from our work like a lab would,” Klein says. “You try out the ideas in the real world as the research comes along. It’s a neat collaborative effort.”

On the academic front, Klein organizes projects, independent studies, fieldwork, and internships for IDD&E graduate students. He also mentors students who intern at Syrtis or other companies. “Professor Klein fosters valuable opportunities for students to apply instructional technology concepts to real-world settings like businesses, government agencies, higher education institutions, K-12 schools, and nonprofit agencies,” says IDD&E professor Philip L. Doughty.

Frank Choltco-Devlin, a graduate student enrolled in Klein’s Instructional Product Development course, has been working with Hand Held Products (HHP), a firm that develops image-based data-collection systems and is affiliated with Welch Allyn, an international company based in Central New York. He’s developing competency models for the company by defining the knowledge and skills that HHP project managers need. “The project fits well with my goal of working in private industry as an instructional designer, or in the area of human performance technology,” Choltco-Devlin says. “I’m able to put what I’ve learned in the classroom to work in the field. It’s very exciting to ‘go live’ while working with the group at HHP and Professor Klein.”

—Melissa Dittmann

The Light Stuff

Stage lighting can capture the fleeting essence of a capricious mood or instantly transport an audience to a different time and place. But how does a fledgling lighting designer learn to harness the illusive nature of light and shadow? At SU, drama students master the art of lighting design with the help of a revolutionary new tool called the Lightbox, a 6-foot-7-inch high model that simulates stage lighting. “The Lightbox gives students a unique opportunity to preview their design ideas in a scale model before transforming them into an end product,” says drama professor Alex Koziara. “This experimentation encourages students to be more creative and less anxious about jumping into a full-scale production.”

Koziara collaborated with lighting designer Charles Kirby ’92 to create the Lightbox model, which was underwritten by a $25,000 Vision Fund grant. The Lightbox casing is made of extruded aluminum that readily replicates the specifications of any stage space in half-inch scale. The fiber-optic lighting system features accurate beam spreads and computerized digital controls and directly correlates to full-scale instrumentation found in most modern theaters. This gives student designers a roadmap for plotting lighting positions, selecting gel colors, controlling intensity, and devising circuit and dimmer layouts. Koziara says this hands-on approach is more realistic than computer-aided design because its three-dimensional form allows students to see how light plays off different shapes and materials. “The Lightbox allows students to begin designing at a younger age and to mount main stage productions as undergraduates,” he says. “They’ll be better prepared to work in professional theater after graduation.”

The Lightbox was put to the test this spring for the drama department’s productions of Caprice and Man of La Mancha. Julia Rusthoven ’02 constructed a scale model of her set design for Caprice to correspond with the specifications of the Arthur Storch Theater. She then used the Lightbox to help bring the director’s vision to life. “The concept for the show was very colorful, and light can have a dramatic effect on the colors of the set and costumes,” she says. “The lighting designer played with color in the Lightbox and discussed his selections with the director before hanging the show, making the whole process much less of a gamble.”

Koziara believes the Lightbox has interdisciplinary applications far beyond the footlights. Its use not only reinforces the Academic Plan’s initiative to integrate theory and practice for students, but also creates opportunities for collaborative design. The School of Art and Design’s Foundation Program, for instance, is interested in using this innovative teaching tool to show students how light interacts with various forms, and the Environmental Design (Interiors) Program may use it for space analysis.

“The School of Architecture and museum studies are also viable places to explore use of the Lightbox,” Koziara says. “Theatrical design shares so many skills with other design disciplines here on campus that the possibilities for integrating the Lightbox into the curriculum are boundless. That’s the beauty of SU.”

—Christine Yackel