Faculty Focus
Warm Feelings for Cold Country
The first thing that catches your eye upon entering the office of Wisconsin native Dr. Kathleen Price in the Kinesiology Department is a curling stone.
The 44-pound, oval polished granite stone used in the game played on ice represents both her fondness for her northern childhood and her ability to adapt to the milder winters of San Angelo.
Price, though, knows a lot about adapting. As an exercise scientist, Price has found adaptive physical education to be the course she enjoys teaching the most. Adaptive focuses on the individual needs of children who have motor developmental delays such as from cerebral palsy.
Her journey to ASU and her specialization was a circuitous one. The Milwaukee native left the cold country and moved to Texas with her family when her father was transferred by his company to Houston. From there, she went to Baylor University where she played varsity volleyball and received undergraduate and master’s degrees in kinesiology.
After receiving her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Baylor, Price taught and coached in public school, first in Cleveland, Texas, next in the Arlington Independent School District and then in Mansfield.
“In the back of my mind, I didn’t see myself doing that when I was 40,” Price said. “When I was 28 years old, I went back to school at Texas Woman’s University, which is noted for its adaptive physical education. I was more interested in sports sciences – exercise science, biomechanics and exercise physiology.”
Price came to ASU while she was still working on the dissertation for her doctorate and that word, “adapt,” showed up again.
“When I first got here, Melanie Croy was department head and told me I needed to teach adaptive physical education” she said. “I had never taken a class in adaptive, but I hung around other graduate students who were doing that, so I had a pretty good idea about it.”
“I was also familiar with this area because my grandfather had his leg amputated when I was seven years old due to circulatory problems. I learned at an early age that life goes on and that a disability wasn’t something that had to stop you from living. My grandfather continued to drive, fish, and live life to the fullest.”
“It’s been neat for me,” Price said, “because I have been able to look at the exercise physiology and biomechanics side of why a person with cerebral palsy walks that way or looking at muscular dystrophy or mental retardation characteristics and what implication they have in terms of exercise or mechanics of walking.”
Price also teaches physical education for elementary school. She said they look at age, developmentally appropriate activities and classroom management techniques.
“I encourage my physical education students to make interdisciplinary connections, such as reinforcing math, science or language arts concepts while teaching physical education,” Price said. “If we scratch the classroom teachers’ backs, they may do that for us.”
As for curling, Price was a speed skater growing up but never played the game. Curling teams used the same ice rinks she did, and she would watch them sliding the big stones.
Years later, Price saw curling on television and it reminded her of home. Later she received the curling stone as a birthday present.
“I was enamored and very surprised,” Price said. “I had never touched one and was surprised at how heavy and expensive it was, about $200.”
“There probably aren’t too many people in San Angelo with a curling stone,” Price said. “When it was delivered, the poor guy for UPS pulled up with this box. I thought it was going to be a great doorstop.”
She said she sees the stone as much more than that, however.
“The whole idea behind curling is a lot like life,” Price said. “You look at the slippery destination toward a goal. Sometimes there are obstacles you have to overcome and sometimes you need your buddies to help you through.”
Curling isn’t the only evidence of Price’s love of the northland. She also is a diehard Green Bay Packers football fan and can be seen regularly wearing Packers jerseys.
“The Packers used to play half their games in Milwaukee and half in Green Bay,” Price said. “I went to games in Milwaukee, but it wasn’t until four years ago that I finally got to go to Lambeau Field in Green Bay. It was really neat and I’m going to go back again at Christmas.”
Price still misses the ice, the Packers and one additional cold feature of Wisconsin, frozen custard.
“They have some frozen custard now in Texas, but it’s not quite like it is in Wisconsin,” Price said. “When I go up there and get off the airplane, the first stop is the frozen custard stand.”
The next stop might be a curling arena unless a Packers game is about to start.
A Symphony of Numbers
With one foot in each of the diverse worlds of music and accounting, Dr. Norman Sunderman has been using his talents to benefit both ASU students and the San Angelo community for more than two decades.
A 22-year member of both the ASU Accounting, Economics and Finance Department and the San Angelo Symphony, Sunderman is as accomplished on the clarinet as he is behind the lectern.
In fact, this fall he received the 2008 Outstanding Accounting Educator Award for small colleges from the Texas Society of CPAs. Earlier in the spring, Angelo State students voted him the recipient of the 2007-08 “Rammy” Award as outstanding professor in the ASU College of Business.
“It has certainly been a good year,” said Sunderman, an Ohio native who started his career as a band and music instructor before making the move to accounting.
“There were more opportunities in accounting than there were in teaching clarinet,” Sunderman said. “Plus, I’ve always been a numbers person. Even way back a long time ago when I was a music major, I had to take 12 hours of science and/or math. I took trigonometry, Calculus I, Calculus II and Calculus III because I didn’t want to take any lab courses.”
So, after teaching music for two years in Ohio public schools, four years at Nebraska-Wesleyan University and 10 years at Texas A&M-Kingsville, Sunderman got his M.B.A. and M.P.A. and started teaching accounting at A&M-Kingsville. In 1987, he joined the ASU faculty and has since become a highly respected accounting professor.
Even though he changed his teaching field, the talented clarinetist never turned his back on music. He played with the Lincoln Symphony in the Nebraska and the Corpus Christi Symphony while at A&M-Kingsville. He then joined the San Angelo Symphony as soon as he arrived at ASU, though in recent years he has moved to part-time status.
“A two-and-a-half hour rehearsal on Friday and a four-and-a-half hour rehearsal on Saturday with a concert Saturday night was starting to be a strain,” Sunderman said. “I didn’t want to give it up completely, but I wanted less time. So, this will be my third year as substitute or auxiliary clarinet.”
As a musician, Sunderman has played in all types and sizes of venues in several different states. But, it was perhaps the smallest place he ever played that remains his favorite, the Art Gallery at Nebraska-Wesleyan.
“It only seated about 100 or 110 people,” Sunderman said. “We would be playing and there would be people sitting on the floor almost looking up your horn. It was really fun to have that intimacy. There was always a packed house and the audience really enjoyed it. So, it was the venue that was exciting, not really the location.”
Location, however, is why Sunderman and his wife of 44-years, Carolyn, have formed such a bond with ASU and San Angelo.
“The town has a symphony, an art gallery, movie theaters, shopping and medical facilities,” Sunderman said. “It’s big enough that you live pretty nicely here. It doesn’t have just 20,000 or 30,000 people. The living is pretty nice.”
The living has been nice enough to keep Sunderman around and to feed both of his passions, which are also embodied in his family. Carolyn is a retired music teacher and son, Kurt, is an investment banker in Chicago.
Carving Out a Niche
Dr. Judith Hakes discovered the avocation for which she is best known while trying to do her job.
The ASU Teacher Education professor took up woodcarving while struggling to manage an unruly bunch of fifth graders as an elementary teacher in Woodland Park, Colo.
“There was a batch of boys coming up and nobody had been able to handle them,” Hakes said. “We were studying northwest coast Indians and their totem poles, and I asked the boys what kind of activities they would like to do. They said they would like to carve totem poles.”
Hakes had to learn the craft on the fly to keep up with her charges, but woodcarving was a natural for Hakes, whose father was a cabinet maker in Michigan. The self-taught woodcarver took the craft she learned in that Colorado classroom and has stuck with it for more than 30 years.
Her best-known piece is the university mace carried by distinguished faculty members during graduation ceremonies. The mace was designed in 1995 by a committee of faculty, staff and students and constructed by Bobby Peiser, retired ASU campus security director.
Hakes’ job was to carve a Rambouillet ram, the columns of the Porter Henderson Library and the Twin Buttes, a landmark west of San Angelo, on oval mesquite inlays in the orb of the mace. When she received the mace from Peiser, he had already fashioned the orb and set in the three blank ovals.
“I had no room for error,” Hakes said. “I carved right on the orb. I didn’t have a vice to hold it, so I did the carving in my lap. One of the insets was the ram and I was comfortable with that because I’ve carved a lot of rams.”
She said the Twin Buttes image was more challenging because of the limited space and it had a Concho Pearl to be inset to represent the moon.
“Nobody wanted to set the pearl into the wood, so I did it,” Hakes said. “I make a lot of jewelry, so that part didn’t bother me, but the carving had to be exactly right.”
Hakes said she likes to work with walnut, cherry and maple, but she has carved exotic woods like ebony and rosewood. She said ebony is a dense wood and difficult to carve, but even wood she likes can be difficult, like the wood in a violin she carved.
“My violin has a fiddle back with a curl in the hard maple,” Hakes said. “It will humble you. It is not easy. Sometimes you get a burl or highly figured wood with grain that goes every which way.”
A significant portion of Hakes’ woodworking involved musical instruments. A violin, one of four she has carved, has a ram’s head instead of a scroll design which typically sits on the end of a violin. The pegs used to tune the strings are in the shape of leaves and bigger leaf shapes are etched into the body of the violin.
Besides her four violins, Hakes also plans to add a mesquite harp to her collection of works, which already has three harps. In addition, she has built hammered dulcimers, which are made with strings stretched over a trapezoidal wood frame. Small mallet hammers strike the strings to sound notes.
Hakes’ interest in musical instruments comes from her original plan to major in music at the University of Michigan.
“Piano was my first instrument,” Hakes said. “I played the clarinet, the saxophone, a little violin, banjo, the hammered dulcimer and the accordion.”
Hakes has performed publicly at such events as the Toenail Trail Days at Christoval and graduate banquets at ASU.
“I play music for my own enjoyment and for anyone who will listen,” she said.
A shortage of money diverted Hakes from a career in music and put her on a path to teaching. She transferred to a junior college, then to the University of Northern Colorado where she received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education. She taught school and then completed her education with a doctorate from the University of Colorado in Boulder.
Hakes taught in Farmington, N.M., and worked in Albuquerque with Native Americans. When the grants that paid her salary ended, Hakes decided to return to teaching in 1985.
“The first announcement I received from the placement center in Boulder was from ASU,” Hakes said. “This city and campus felt just like home. It didn’t take me long to accept the position. I was glad to get to a small university where the people still cared and were serious about what they were doing. ASU has retained that after all these years.”
ASU also has afforded Hakes the opportunity to travel with its emphasis on international study and travel, she said.
“I wouldn’t be the person I am without that travel,” Hakes said. “I hope we keep doing that and expand those programs. Our students are going to benefit many times over – to have your way paid to go overseas and study is a fantastic opportunity.”
Shirley Eoff: Past Perfect
Shirley Eoff never really liked history until an excellent college professor opened her mind to the infinite permutations of the field. As a result, she found not only a career but also a passion.
Today, as a professor of history at Angelo State University, Eoff is sharing her passion about the discipline with a new generation of students. That passion comes through in her classroom, helping her to be named a finalist for ASU’s 2008 Teaching Excellence Award.
“History is more than names, dates, great men and wars,” Eoff said. “Rather, it is the collective story of how people lived and thought and the consequences of the choices they made. That allowed me to find in history the one field that could encompass my eclectic interests in everything from politics to literature.”
She aims to involve her students in history and, although she is a specialist in British history, she identifies local history projects her students can undertake. In the process, they are not only learning how to conduct original research but also serving the community.
“Using local resources,” she said, “I can provide first-hand training in methodology that reinforces classroom work and lets students become apprentice historians rather than just study historical topics.”
For instance, she assigned one graduate class in contemporary American history to explore the San Angelo polio epidemic of 1949. The graduate students conducted oral history interviews with doctors and survivors from the epidemic. Three of the students went on to present, as she described it, “an exceptionally well-received panel” at the annual meeting of the West Texas Historical Association.
The class’s work, which she shared with University of Texas history professor David Oshinsky, was cited in the acknowledgements of Oshinsky’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work, Polio: An American Story.
For her Honors Program classes in America history, she has teams of students research and write substantive papers on the historic buildings in downtown San Angelo. Using materials in the West Texas Collection, ASU’s regional historical archive, the students examine the origins and uses of those buildings over the years.
Far from an idle classroom exercise, this student research is shared with local historical preservation agencies for use in developing grant proposals, preservation plans and publicity materials for the city. As a result of their work, visitors to downtown San Angelo now find colorful banners hanging from adjacent light poles to highlight several historic structures.
“Most of the students really take pride in the work they have done and it links them to the community in a unique and special way,” Eoff said.
In many ways, history is about connecting the links in a never-ending chain between the past and the present.
“There is always something new to discover, some new question to ask, some new way of looking at things,” Eoff said. “I have a short attention span, so I need that dynamism and I need the human dimension to really connect with materials. The combination of continuity and change intrigues me, and I like that historians deal in shades of gray rather than black-and-white explanations. How can anyone not be fascinated and moved by those pieces of the past that people left behind to help us understand their lives, their triumphs and their tragedies?”
Her fascination with history began at Howard Payne University, where she graduated summa cum laude. Eoff went on to earn a master’s degree from Hardin-Simmons University and a Ph.D. in history from Texas Tech University, where she served four years as a history instructor. She joined the ASU history faculty in 1981 and has worked her way up the academic ranks to full professor.
Whether studying American or British history, her primary teaching interests are in modern social and diplomatic areas. Even so, she does extensive work in San Angelo and West Texas history. Her contributions to area history earned her election earlier this year as president of the West Texas Historical Association.
History lessons, in Eoff’s passionate view, extend far beyond the classroom.
“I truly believe that studying history is excellent preparation for virtually any field and for life itself. Beyond the obvious value of helping us understand the complexities of the world we live in, it provides essential reference points to help us make sound judgments on contemporary events.”
“The essence of historical study is examining, analyzing and interpreting evidence and using that evidence to craft a logical and persuasive argument,” she said. “I can’t think of any aspect of life or any career that couldn’t benefit from those critical skills.”
Roger Zarnowski:
Math is Music to His Ears
Growing up in the small farming community of Halstead, Kan., Roger Zarnowski quickly learned that he was different from all of his five siblings.
First off, they were all girls. Secondly, while they were his piano teacher mom’s prize pupils, the musical gene in his DNA was apparently dormant. One of his sisters is a guitar/piano teacher and several of the others still play piano regularly, but Roger found his life’s harmony first in physics and then mathematics.
Now a professor of mathematics at ASU, Dr. Zarnowski can look back and better appreciate that early musical education.
“I tried doing that for a few years and didn’t do so well at it,” Zarnowski said. “But, there are some interesting relationships between music and mathematics. One of my sisters and I get into conversations sometimes about her music and my math and how they relate to each other.”
“There are a lot of interesting mathematical relationships among the notes used in different musical scales,” he added. “From that it gets into digital music and how synthesizers work, things like that.”
An ASU faculty member since 1991, Zarnowski was a finalist for the 2008 Teaching Excellence Award. He came to Angelo State from the University of Oklahoma because of ASU’s emphasis on teaching and student research.
“Getting to work on research projects with some of the really bright students we get here is a neat experience,” Zarnowski said. “I’ve been able to explore some areas that were curiosities to me, get some students involved and look into some new things. It helps keep the mind going. There is no shortage of cool things to do.”
Currently, Zarnowski teaches mainly calculus and differential equations. He is also studying the recently developed mathematics involved in image processing for digital cameras and hopes to offer an introductory class on this new topic and its role in today’s technology. When he is not crunching numbers he gets as far away from walls, bookshelves and computers as he can for outdoor activities like running, biking and visiting state parks.
Zarnowski holds a bachelor’s degree in physics and a master’s degree in mathematics from Wichita State University and his Ph.D. in mathematics from Indiana University. He and his wife, Becky, have a son, Adam, who is a government major at ASU.