VCUarts Studio magazine

The 2020 issue of Studio, the annual magazine for VCUarts, featured stories and news about students, faculty and alumni from both the Richmond and Qatar campuses.

Stories highlighted how the school navigated a year of change, including the COVID-19 pandemic and a pivot to remote instruction; conversations about systemic racism; and how alumni and faculty members are tackling pressing social issues. Additional stories ranged from students who studied abroad to updates from alumni to one faculty member’s efforts to bring students’ creative thinking to the NASA patent office.

My role: I planned the issue’s content, drafted the majority of the copy, managed other writing staff, and coordinated with the design team on visual execution.

Barrier breakers

The ascension paths Rear Admiral Yvette M. Davids ’89, USN, and Rear Admiral Sara A. Joyner ’89, USN, followed to their wartime leadership positions were blocked when they graduated from the Naval Academy.

Women weren’t allowed in combat when Joyner and Davids were commissioned. Davids’ journey would see her needing special permission to be in a combat zone aboard BUNKER HILL in 1990 to commanding the vessel 20 years later. Joyner was the first female commanding officer of a fighter squadron.

It was groundbreakers like Joyner and Davids who paved the way for future generations to serve their country in combat. They followed in the trailblazing footsteps of alumni Lieutenant Commander Wesley A. Brown ’49, USN (Ret.), the Academy’s first Black graduate and the first class of female plebes who entered the Academy in 1976. Throughout its 175-year history, the Academy has commissioned leaders who forge new paths, break ground and smash through glass ceilings.

Feature originally appeared in the U.S. Naval Academy alumni magazine, Shipmate.

How to rise like a phoenix

There’s an old saying that success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. When things are going well, everyone wants to claim their place in the victory lane. But when life takes a turn, few are willing to own responsibility; instead, most people try to place the blame somewhere else and put the situation behind them as quickly as possible.

While no one wants to stand in front of a crowd and cop to a mistake or slog through a project they know isn’t going to end well, such challenges often provide the greatest lessons, if we take the time to truly process and reflect. But this often means leaning into the full roller coaster of emotions — from fear, loss, and shame to soul-searching and renewed passion.

Here, a few W. P. Carey School of Business alumni — success stories every one — lay bare their lowest moments and the insights they now see in the rearview mirror.

Feature originally appeared in the W. P. Carey School of Business alumni magazine.

Seeing the Forest and the Trees

How to do groundbreaking research in eight (not so) easy steps, with Margaret Metz, assistant professor of biology at Lewis & Clark College.

Conducting field research in the Amazon rainforest sounds enticing on its surface. Perhaps you imagine spending your days immersed in the constant hum of insects as you trek through lush vegetation. Or maybe you visualize standing at the foot of a towering waterfall as exotic birds soar overhead.

The reality, however, looks a little different.

An activist artist's quest for spectacular failure

Eric Millikin approaches his work with an outlandish, utopian vision. The activist artist begins with questions like, “If I were to make artwork that ended racism, what would that be? How could I do that?”

He knows failure is likely inevitable—but that’s precisely the point. In aiming to change the minds of 6 or 7 billion people, Millikin hopes he’ll convince a hundred to reconsider their ideas, beliefs and actions.

“If you fail at radical, you might end up somewhere incredible, whereas, if you fail at incremental, you’ll end up where you started,” he says. “I embrace that failure and aim as high as possible, so that my failure is as spectacular as possible and if there is any amount of residual success, it’s as big as possible.”

Profile on artist, activist and journalist Eric Millikin for VCUarts.

Craft and art history graduate students join forces for exhibition

As a fiber artist, Laura Boban often uses clothing and interior textiles—like sports jerseys, bed sheets, garden flags and pillows—to explore intersections between the home and sports, and blur familiar identifiers for femininity and masculinity. In one work, abstract figures constructed from effeminate fabrics convey images of hockey fights, while another stacks objects from home and sports to form a precarious, haphazard structure.

“I’m interested in domesticity and suburbia,” says Boban, who is an MFA candidate in the VCUarts Department of Craft/Material Studies. “I started thinking about sports as a metaphor for belong and the idea of a team. And most of the textiles are thrifted, so they had a life before in [someone’s] home.”

Last spring, Boban was preparing for her candidacy show when she got a message from Haley Clouser, a graduate student in the museum studies program in the Department of Art History. Clouser was about to graduate and wanted to gain more experience collaborating with artists.

Profile on Laura Boban and Haley Clouser for VCUarts.

Cataloging cool courses

Skim through the latest Naval Academy course catalog, and a few courses are bound to leap off the pages. Midshipmen are being introduced to cutting-edge technology and preparing for literal sea changes in how we navigate the globe. New majors and courses are evolving in response to military priorities, and to teach midshipmen how to contend with new arenas of warfare. 

Future Navy and Marine Corps officers have long come to the Academy to hone their expertise in science, technology, engineering and math. In more recent years, critical languages such as Arabic and leadership-specific courses have gained prominence. But amidst the usual offerings lie a few unexpected surprises. Whether it’s a new spin on 400-year-old texts or the next generation of cyber sciences, these classes will make you want to hit the books again, no matter how long ago you graduated. Keep reading to see how Naval Academy professors are getting midshipmen out of their seats and into the field, challenging them to shake up their perspectives and preparing them for the future technical needs of the Navy and Marine Corps. 

Feature originally appeared in the U.S. Naval Academy alumni magazine, Shipmate.

arts + health

Imagine the last time you went to the doctor.

Maybe the environment—the smell of chemicals, the sounds of machines beeping—made you feel uncomfortable. Perhaps you had trouble describing your symptoms, as if no one could understand the sensations you knew to be true. Or, your physician interrupted you before you even had the chance.

Maybe you felt like the doctors and nurses saw you as an illness to be diagnosed, a problem to solve, rather than a person with passions, a cultural history, family and friends, life experiences—a human being with a story all your own.

This disconnect between patient and medical professionals is becoming a frequent point of conversation. In one recent study, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, researchers found that patients have 11 seconds to explain the reasons for their visit before physicians interrupt them.

But what if the arts could change the whole experience?

At VCUarts, faculty and students are leveraging the school’s position within a major research university—outfitted with a range of medical programs and a top-ranked hospital—to help people live happier and healthier lives.

Within VCUarts, 20 percent of faculty members actively engage in research collaborations, creative works, courses and programs related to health care. Research projects take creative approaches to managing pain, increasing empathy among health care professionals, and enhancing understanding of patient symptoms. Some projects benefit from the guidance of VCUarts’ inaugural physician-scientist in residence, Dr. John E. Nestler, as he deepens collaboration between the two campuses.

“Medicine and the arts deal with the same thing—the human condition,” Nestler says. “They seek to heal the body and heal the soul. The bringing together of art and medicine allows both artists and medical professionals to be better.”

Feature originally appeared in the VCUarts alumni magazine, Studio.

VoicingHan: Managing pain through avatar technology

When Semi Ryu performed Parting on Z—her work about a farewell between symbolic lovers: user and avatar—in London in 2013, something unexpected happened. She found herself sobbing in the middle of it.

That’s when, she says, she found her Han—a Korean concept where one feels extreme grief coupled with great hope.

Ryu, an associate professor of Kinetic Imaging, wondered if this same experience could be replicated in others. She worked with Tracey Gendron from VCU’s Department of Gerontology to develop VoicingElder, which used avatars and lip sync technology to help residents in an assisted living facility listen to their own stories. Ryu saw the practice as a way to improve quality of life and connect through storytelling.

“They enjoyed talking, but it was also community theater,” she says. “Everybody shared their stories together. And sometimes they just wanted to be an audience and watch somebody else talking.”

Lately, Ryu has been testing a new hypothesis: Can personal storytelling and virtual reality help terminally ill patients manage their pain and construct meaning for their lives?

Profile originally appeared on the VCUarts website.

In the studio: Chris Visions

How would you describe your aesthetic?

A lot of people have described it as kinetic and energetic. I want it to feel vibrant and lifelike. When someone sees my art, I want them to feel something or to wrestle with something.

I don’t want eye candy. Even with how expressive my work is, I’m still telling stories. It helps you settle into those more subtle moments, instead of everything being in your face.

How did you get your start?

I went up to New York Comic-Con a couple of times and put a portfolio in and didn’t hear anything. One time I sold my car to pay for the bus ticket to go. I talked to Neal Adams [known for his imagery of Batman and Green Arrow] and got him to critique my work; he totally trashed it the first couple of times. I talked to an editor who gave me an art test for American Vampire. He said it was very ambitious, and that was it. It was like that, over and over again.

Then, one time I went to the convention and didn’t bring a portfolio. I talked with a guy who was a fan. He said to send him some stuff and, long story short, my first real professional gig was doing a cover for Adventure Time. It propelled me and got me into my first book, Dead Letters.

Q&A with comic artist Chris Visions originally appeared in the VCUarts alumni magazine, Studio.

Medicine in motion

The problem started as many do, with a gap in the marketplace. To distribute medications to patients, hospitals typically choose between expensive robotic carts or basic plastic tubs on wheels that anyone could purchase at a home improvement store.

VCU Health hospitals use the latter, but the carts require workarounds to secure controlled substances and protect patients’ privacy. Two years ago, VCU’s hospital pharmacy staff saw an opportunity to improve the cart, but didn’t have the time to dedicate to research and development and, ultimately, design. They worked with a vendor who tried to adapt an existing product, but the end result failed when put to the test.

“Something like this really needs to be designed from the ground up,” said Shanaka Wijesinghe, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacotherapy and Outcomes Sciences in the School of Pharmacy.

That’s why, when Wijesinghe walked into pharmacy operations manager Michelle Harrison’s office last summer, searching for a project to bring to VCU’s da Vinci Center, Harrison was all ears.

Wijesinghe has been involved with the da Vinci Center — a collaboration of VCU’s schools of the Arts and Business, and colleges of Engineering and Humanities and Sciences that advances student innovation — for years as a mentor, and had been looking for more opportunities to leverage the in-house creative resource to address challenges on the MCV Campus.

“In a sense, we are like Google,” Wijesinghe said. “For every challenge, we also have the ability to generate the solution. It’s just a matter of bridging the campuses and getting people talking to each other.”

Feature originally appeared on the Virginia Commonwealth University home page.

Home is where your friend is

It’s not often I get to write about myself, but in R-Home magazine’s Last Word column, I had the chance to tell the story of how I’ve been following my best friend from city to city.

It’s been more than 15 years since I lived in my childhood home in a small Virginia town at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains. But I can still picture the route to Kamala’s house.

Take a left out of my driveway, and another left onto the main road. Drive a few miles and turn right onto Independence Boulevard. Go to the end, take a left, go under the bridge, take the next right, and I’m there.

It’s a route I’ve traveled countless times in the past 30-plus years.

Kamala loves to tell the story of how we met in a bathtub at the public library when we were both 3 years old. Filled with cushions and soft toys, the white claw-foot tub had been converted into a reading nook. That’s where we ended up next to each other during story time one summer day, our moms probably nearby chasing our younger brothers.

The New Rules of Food

What’s for dinner? Decades ago, it was an easier question to answer. But today, we’re confronted with seemingly endless choices: for the diet we follow, the food we buy, where we buy it, and how we cook it.

Each choice hints at deeper questions: We might be able to eat everything our hearts, minds, and stomachs desire, but should we? If we’re lucky enough to have endless choices, what is our responsibility to ensure others—in the neighboring community or across the globe—have the same? And how do we extend that access in a way that sustains and respects local food practices?

Feature originally appeared in the Macalester College alumni magazine, Macalester Today.

A night at the opera

When the curtain rises over the Sonia Vlahcevic Concert Hall at the start of “The Pirates of Penzance,” it’s easy to become absorbed in the story of Frederic as he celebrates his 21st birthday and the end of his apprenticeship to a band of pirates. You’re probably not thinking about how, just moments ago, the singers were backstage warming up their vocal cords while a violinist practiced that tricky phrase one last time.

As you watch Major-General Stanley’s wards dance across the stage, you don’t imagine that hours earlier Melanie Kohn Day, director and producer of Virginia Commonwealth University Opera, was surrounded by curling irons and wigs as the pirates flipped through stuffed costume racks, and the crew checked lights and ensured all the show’s props were in place.

You’re definitely not thinking about how these students didn’t just have to learn the music and movements to arrive at this performance, but also skills that transcend it, such as audition techniques, a variety of accents and how to file taxes as a professional opera singer. You might not realize that you are looking at the company with the longest-running tradition of full-scale opera productions in Virginia.

You’d be forgiven for these oversights because, after all, that’s the point. You’re here to enjoy a show. But the months-long preparation by this team of opera professionals and undergraduates balancing work and school and life? It’s worth taking note.

A photo essay capturing the semester-long process of putting together an opera. Originally appeared on the VCU home page.

The new rules of retail

For more than a century, the idea that the customer is always right has driven retailers who want to demonstrate a commitment to customer satisfaction above all else. The execution, however, has evolved with the times. Today, companies want to communicate with you on your terms. They want to recommend products that match your interests that you didn’t even know you wanted. They need to maintain an extensive inventory of colors and sizes, all ready to be shipped to your doorstep within two days and returned in-store at your convenience weeks later.

Many experts say these shifts in retail can be attributed to the rise of Amazon. When the e-commerce marketplace introduced free two-day shipping, flexible returns, and product recommendations, it upended consumer expectations. Suddenly, retailers had to dramatically rethink their business.

Now, augmented reality is entering the picture. Consumers can use their phones to visualize furniture in their homes or shop the outfits of passersby on the street. A focus on omnichannel engagement is also dominating, as consumers expect a seamless experience as they migrate from digital to physical and back again. They want to research products and compare costs online, enter a store to touch and feel and test, place an order through an app, and pay their bills via text message.

The end result is that retailers are no longer solely in competition with other brands in their category. Instead, every company is a technology company competing to launch the most innovative customer engagement tactics — or, at the very least, keep up.

“The moment you got your Starbucks app and realized you could order your drink from your phone, you didn’t just go, ‘This is incredible. Other coffee places should be like this,’” says Eddie Davila, who teaches supply chain management. “You thought, ‘Wait a second, every place should be like this.’ At that point, Starbucks made McDonald’s, Chipotle, and your doctor’s office look old and slow.”

These shifts are great for consumers — but what about future CEOs, data analysts, and marketing execs? How can today’s students stay nimble when the landscape could look entirely different by the time they graduate?

Feature originally appeared in the W. P. Carey School of Business alumni magazine.

The crucial element

While many climate change discussions focus on reducing our dependence on fossil fuels like oil and natural gas, there’s another, quieter challenge lurking: The Earth is running out of phosphorus.

The resource is set to peak, meaning the demand will outweigh the supply, by 2040. That’s a full 10 years before the world is expected to see a shortage of fossil fuels.

Why does phosphorus matter? The mineral is a key component of fertilizers, batteries, animal feed, and food preservatives. A phosphorus shortage would lead to a decline in plant growth and reduce the food supply for the earth’s 7.5 billion people. There is also an established connection between high phosphate levels in the body and many neurological diseases.

Unlike fossil fuels, phosphorus has no substitute—no solar or wind energy to replace it. There is no manufactured, synthetic version. It is not renewable. When it’s gone, it’s gone.

Could Louis Kuo, professor of chemistry, be the one to find the solution?

Profile originally appeared in the Lewis & Clark alumni magazine, The Chronicle.

Captain Wendy Lawrence

On 26 July 2005, Wendy Lawrence suited up and boarded the space shuttle Discovery at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. She and her six fellow crew members were headed for the International Space Station. 

They had spent a year and a half training and preparing for this mission. It was the first since 1 February 2003, when the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry, killing all seven crew members aboard—colleagues that Lawrence had known and worked with. 

Since the accident, NASA had been researching and implementing improvements. Lawrence and her colleagues on the STS-114 mission were continuing that research by testing safety procedures and repair techniques. Lawrence flew the space station’s robotic arm during two of the mission’s three spacewalks, and flew it again to install a work platform on the space station. 

“Usually, when you’re assigned a mission, you know exactly what you’re going to do at the start of your training flow,” Lawrence said. “This wasn’t the case for us. We had to come up with new ways of doing things once we were up in space. We were figuring things out as we went.” 

In spite of the uncertainty, the mission was successful. Nearly 14 days and 5.8 million miles later, the crew landed at Edwards, having revived U.S. space exploration after unimaginable loss. 

Feature originally appeared in the U.S. Naval Academy alumni magazine, Shipmate.

Change of scenery

After 13 years living in the Westham neighborhood near the University of Richmond, Ellen and Larry Campbell found themselves spending less and less time at home. Their sons had grown up and moved to Chicago and Long Beach, California, and Ellen and Larry were traveling more.

Upon returning from one of their trips, they stepped onto their front porch and surveyed the yardwork that awaited them.

“We like to travel,” Larry says. “But every time we’d come back, we’d spend weeks getting the place shaped back up again.”

Larry set out to mow the grass, and Ellen got ready to trim the trees — and then they stopped. “We just looked at each other,” Ellen says, “and asked, ‘What are we doing?’”

Feature originally appeared in R-Home magazine.

True stories

When Denison launched its narrative journalism concentration, it was building on a long history of giving students tools to report and comment on the news. I contributed to a series of profiles showing the variety of student storytellers, asking them to share the highs and lows of learning their craft, the people and stories that inspire them, and what drives them to tell the unexpected, engaging, and sometimes downright thrilling stories from campus and beyond.

Listening to the deaf community

When Richard Costes, BA ’06, talks about his first day at a school for deaf children, he describes a room filled with young children crying, trying desperately to be understood, while he sat in a corner playing alone. On his second day, he walked up to his teacher and asked, “Will you play with me?”

The teacher scooped him up, marched down the hall and into the administrator’s office and called his parents. When they arrived, the teacher said, “This child can speak. He is too smart to be here with all of these other deaf kids.”

That one sentence, suggesting that deaf people weren’t smart, stuck with him.

Mr. Costes was born deaf, but grew up in a hearing environment. He told himself he wasn’t deaf. He refused to learn sign language—an attitude that was supported by his school, which prioritized speech. He also declined any assistance in the classroom and his grades often suffered as a result.

“That’s a lot of self-loathing for a big part of your identity,” he says. “It wasn’t until college, when I took an ASL (American Sign Language) class—because I thought it would be easy—that I realized how wrong I was.”

Feature originally appeared in Kent State Magazine.