alumni umn edu - About Campus

If rap artist Mos Def takes his place alongside Shakespeare in the pantheon of world poets some day, think of Hodges Glenn. Glenn, an African American and African studies major at the University, is working on establishing a new method of evaluating rap poetry that he hopes will broaden the conversation about the place of rap in the poetic tradition. He and 20 other 2006 McNair Scholars showcased their research at Coffman Union earlier this month.

The McNair Scholars Program aims to encourage first-generation college students who are underrepresented in graduate programs to develop the academic and research skills necessary to gain admission to and complete graduate study. Scholars receive a stipend of $3,000 and a nine-week summer research apprenticeship with a faculty mentor whose research interests match his or hers. The program is named after Ronald McNair, the African American astronaut who died in the 1986 Challenger space shuttle explosion. Funded by the United States Department of Education and operated by the Department of Postsecondary Teaching and Learning in the College of Education and Human Development, the program is in its 14th year at the University.

This year’s scholars came from a variety of fields—biochemistry, philosophy, Chicano studies, family studies, psychology, math, and Asian studies, to name a few—and delved into a diverse range of research topics, including indigenous social movements in Latin America; the influence of fire in the Big Woods of Minnesota; studies of yeast mitochondria; and whether virtue benefits the virtuous.

For the young scholars, the apprenticeship lays the groundwork for further study and successful careers. For the mentors, the experience is an opportunity to pass on knowledge and skills to aspiring scholars. “I’m incredibly lucky to have been paired with someone like Hodges, who has the interest and ambition and industriousness that he has,” says Glenn’s mentor, assistant visiting professor and writer Alexs Pate. “This program is really an optimal situation for the mentor and the student.”

The University of Minnesota has the largest certified organic acreage at any land grant university in the nation. So it’s fitting that a bumper crop of information about all things organic can be found at the U’s organic Web site, www.organicecology.umn.edu. Among the pickings: links to dozens of state and national sustainable agriculture organizations; information on how to become a certified organic producer in Minnesota; listings of upcoming workshops and conferences; a list of mentors available through the Minnesota Organic Farmers Information Exchange; a comprehensive summary of the organic projects and initiatives under way at the University of Minnesota; and maps showing county-by-county locations of certified organic farms and processing facilities in Minnesota, recently compiled by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.

Health News Checkup: The July–August issue of Minnesota highlighted HealthNewsReview.org, a Web site that helps journalists and consumers assess the accuracy and usefulness of health and medical news. University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communications Professor Gary Schwitzer has been named one of seven winners of a prestigious Knight-Batten Award for Innovations in Journalism for creating the Web site. Since its launch in April, HealthNewsReview.org has received more than 3 million hits and registered more than 1,200 users.

School of Nursing Pioneer Dies

Frances Mary McHie Rains (B.S. ’32), the first African American woman to graduate from the University of Minnesota School of Nursing, died in May in Long Beach, California, at age 95. When she initially applied for admission to the school of nursing in the late 1920s, Rains was turned down because she was black. But she persisted, sought the assistance of a Minnesota state senator and a Minneapolis businesswoman, and was eventually admitted. After graduation, Rains, a native of Minneapolis, continued to break barriers. She was the first African American employed by the Minneapolis General Hospital as a supervisor of the outpatient clinic; the first African American to work with the Visiting Nurses Association in New Orleans; and one of 12 nurses who broke the color barrier at Herman Kiefer Hospital in Detroit. She and her husband, Horace Rains, M.D., moved to California in the 1950s, and she became one of the first African Americans to teach at the school of nursing at the University of Southern California General Hospital in Los Angeles. In 1972, Rains left nursing and became a real estate broker. She remained active in civic and community affairs until her death.

Overheard on Campus

“Vulgar words had been avoided as a matter of course until our enlightened age made it clear that if the whole world knows a certain verb beginning with an f, it is silly for dictionary makers to ignore it.”
—University professor and linguist Anatoly Liberman, author of Word Origins . . . and How We Know Them, on the recording of words in the English vocabulary.

“At a time when the news media is trying to gain trust through transparency, to have a meeting closed to the media and the general public is unbelievable.”
—Jane Kirtley, University journalism professor and media ethics authority, on a media event held by CBS Evening News and affiliate WCCO featuring Katie Couric, who will become the first woman to be solo anchor of a network news program.

“I tell people that this is very pro-life research. I have patients who die now because there aren’t better treatments for them.”
—Dan Kaufman, assistant professor of medicine and stem cell researcher at the University, before the U.S. Senate voted to maintain restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.