discover 2012
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Every spring DISCOVER: Marquette University Research and Scholarship showcases some of the most interesting research happening on Marquette's campus. Learn more through the links below.TRANSCRIPT
DiscoverMARQUETTE UNIVERSITY RESEARCH AND SCHOLARSHIP 2012
The science of making friendsHelping teens with autism
Welcome to the 2012 edition of Discover magazine, highlighting some
of the exciting research and scholarship of Marquette University’s talented
faculty, ranging from fundamental work in individual disciplines to innovative,
and often interdisciplinary, approaches to solving some of the most critical
issues of our time.
Marquette has a strong tradition of scholarship in the humanities. Civil
War historian James Marten, winner of Marquette’s 2010 Haggerty Award for
Research Excellence, examines issues faced by Civil War veterans in his
most recent book, published during the sesquicentennial of the Civil War.
Margaret Urban Walker, recently recruited to Marquette as the Donald J.
Schuenke Chair in Philosophy, explores reparative justice and the social and
political conditions of moral accountability.
Marquette scientists are also making impressive advances in their fields,
including Chung Hoon Lee’s pioneering work in nanotechnology. Another
interdisciplinary strength at Marquette is in health-related research. Robert
Wheeler’s state-of-the-art research in basic neuroscience is providing a
better understanding of how neural regulation of emotion exerts control
over adaptive and maladaptive behavior, while Amy Van Hecke’s work with
autistic children and teens takes an innovative approach to evaluating the
impact of the PEERS intervention on the brain. Marianne Weiss, along with
her Marquette collaborators Kathleen Bobay and Olga Yakusheva, provides
insight into how factors such as nurse staffing and overtime hours affect
readmission rates and emergency room visits. Due to the work of these
scholars and others on campus, Marquette is well poised to take a leadership
role in the emerging regional consortium designed to improve health care
access and delivery through a focus on economics and innovation.
The featured scholars described above provide a glimpse of some of the
important work being done at Marquette today; additional short features
and the bookshelf section provide other great examples. I invite you to also
explore marquette.edu/research for more examples of Marquette research
and scholarship.
Dr. Jeanne M. Hossenlopp
Vice Provost for Research
DiscoverMARQUETTE UNIVERSITY RESEARCH AND SCHOLARSHIP 2012
2 The science of making friendsAn innovative program for teenagers with autism is changing lives —
and the brain.
6 Coming homeDr. James Marten explores the postwar lives of Civil War veterans in
his new book.
8 Architect of the infinitesimalDr. Chung Hoon Lee’s nanostructures are helping to electrify and
illuminate science’s tiniest frontier.
12 The tragedy of addictionDr. Robert Wheeler is trying to solve the mysteries of motivation in
cocaine addicts.
14 In search of justiceIn a world still plagued with war and political violence, what is the
role of reparative justice?
16 Go home, stay homeNew research examines the connection between nursing workload
and patients’ readmission rates.
IN BRIEF
18 Speak for yourself
19 Awake for genes
A new look for school counseling
20 Fighting pollution, one molecule at a time
The philosophy of art
21 The ethics of pinkwashing
What’s the value of a legal brief?
22 On a mission to improve refugee dental care
23 Poking holes in the golden parachute
Engineering safer roads
24 Marquette bookshelf
25 Research and scholarship at Marquette
Discover: Marquette University Research and Scholarship is published annually by the Office of Marketing and Communication.Editor: Nicole Sweeney Etter, [email protected]: Joan Holcomb, [email protected] Contributing writers: Jessie Bazan, April Beane, Andrew Brodzeller, Tim Cigelske, Stephen Filmanowicz, Becky Dubin Jenkins, Brigid Miller, Charles Nevsimal, Christopher Stolarski and Kate Venne Cover illustration: Stephanie Dalton Cowan Photography: Dan Johnson, Ben Smidt Stock images: iStockphoto.com, Jupiterimages.com, Stock Illustration Source
Discover2
Marquette University 3
Fifteen-year-old Nick Sansone, who has autism, has always struggled
to make and keep friends. But after the 14-week PEERS program at
Marquette, the Highland, Ind., teen started high school with a new set of
tools: how to start a conversation. How to exit gracefully when it’s not going
well. How to find his niche.
“Before I started doing this group, I didn’t have any friends and wasn’t
involved with anybody or anything at my school. But now, I have switched
schools and have been talking to kids there and slowly building friend-
ships,” says Nick, who is now active in his school’s book club, film society
and theatre program, even landing a small role in It’s a Wonderful Life.
Until now, most autism research has focused on what children with
autism can’t do. Dr. Amy Van Hecke, assistant professor of psychology at
Marquette, is setting out to show what autistic kids can do. First devel-
oped at UCLA, the research-based PEERS (Program for the Enrichment and
Education of Relational Skills) teaches autistic teens how to make friends.
Marquette’s PEERS program, the only one in the Midwest, has quickly
become a sought-after resource.
How an innovative program for teenagers with autism is changing lives — and the brain
By Nicole Sweeney Etter
The science of making friends
Illustration by Stephanie Dalton Cowan
Discover4
Students who participate show external
measures of progress, including more
friends and get-togethers and improved
social skills that help them navigate
the tricky social waters of middle and
high school.
But Van Hecke is the first to examine
whether the PEERS intervention changes
kids’ brains. And, indeed, it does. Using
electroencephalography to compare
teens’ brain activity before and after the
14-week program, she has seen signifi-
cant changes in the parietal-temporal
lobe, which is related to social behaviors,
and in the frontal lobe, the “executive,”
decision-making part of the brain.
“Even though autism is considered a
brain-based disorder, no intervention to
date, anywhere, for any age group, has
ever looked at dynamic change in the
autistic brain due to intervention,” Van
Hecke says.
The focus on what autistic kids can
do has never been more important.
“Autism rates are increasing at an expo-
nential rate. We went from 1 in 10,000
in the 1980s, and now we’re down to
1 in 110. The rate of increase is alarm-
ing, and the autism research community
is very focused on understanding why.
However, it’s also crucial to help people
with autism lead satisfying lives now,”
Van Hecke says.
Marquette’s PEERS program started
in fall 2010, and 35 students have gone
through it so far. Though Van Hecke is
still gathering more data — using kids on
the program’s waiting list as the control
group — she plans to present her early
findings at the International Meeting for
Autism Research in Toronto in May.
With funding from the Autism Society
of Southeast Wisconsin, Marquette is
able to offer PEERS to families for free.
Families from as far as Montana and
Pennsylvania have asked to participate,
and some drive for hours to attend
the weekly sessions.
Van Hecke first became interested
in autistic brain activity while studying
the neurological and physiological
responses in children with autism to
people they know and people they
don’t know.
“Much of the research is ‘They
don’t do this, and they don’t do that,
and they lack this.’ And what I’ve
seen is that children with autism will
do much more with someone who is
familiar to them,” she says. “It’s when we
bring this unfamiliar tester in the room
that they shut down.”
Sure enough, she found that autistic
children had the same neurological
responses as children without autism
when reading a story with their care-
giver — but their heart rate sped up in
the presence of the nonparent. “So really
the heart of autism is a mobilization or
a flight or fight response to unfamiliar
people. It’s not all people,” she says.
But that fear of others can cause
problems as the child enters school and
becomes increasingly isolated. About half
of autistic kids have average or high IQs,
and it’s only their social interactions that
reveal that anything’s wrong, she says.
“You’ll say, ‘Oh, Johnny is interested
in video games, and you’re interested
in video games. What could you do if
you hung out together?’ And they’ll have
no idea. You have to make that leap
for them,” she says. “The shy kid will
still know what to do, but the action is
impaired. In autism, it’s both the knowing
and the action. They may want to make
friends, but they don’t understand how.”
Figure 1: Pre-intervention alpha EEG activity in
participants with autism. Red indicates more activity,
white indicates moderate to low activity and blue
shading indicates even lower activity. Activity shown is
in the alpha frequency band, which is inverse to overall
brain activity. This image depicts low activity
in temporal-parietal areas responsible for social
information processing.
Figure 2: Post-intervention alpha EEG activity.
White shading shows a decrease in alpha band
activity. This image shows increased neural activity
in temporal-parietal areas responsible for social
information processing.
Figure 3: Pre-intervention gamma EEG activity. Activity
shown is in the gamma frequency band. This image
depicts low-moderate activity in frontal areas responsible
for social decision-making.
Figure 4: Post-intervention gamma EEG activity. This
image shows increased neural activity in frontal areas
responsible for social decision-making.
Amy Van Hecke
Figure 3
Figure 1 Figure 2
Figure 4
Marquette University 5
But PEERS isn’t just about improving a
teen’s social life. Numerous studies have
shown the detrimental effect social
isolation can have on physical and
mental health, including increasing one’s
risk of depression, anxiety and suicide.
“Having at least one good relationship
— it’s quality, not quantity — is protec-
tive. And these kids who are isolated
— if we don’t ameliorate that, they’re
just continuing on a path of negative
outcomes. The areas of the brain that
respond to social stimulation may atrophy,
and once they atrophy, there’s not a lot
we can do,” she says.
Marquette’s program targets students
11–16 because Wisconsin only provides
intensive intervention until age 11, though
the program will expand to autistic young
adults this fall.
“We’re really trying to fill a gap in the
community,” says Van Hecke.
But puberty is also a critical intervention
point because preadolescent brains are
especially plastic, making it the perfect
time to forge new pathways.
For an hour and a half each week, the
teens meet with a trained facilitator while
their parents meet separately. PEERS
breaks down the social instincts that
many take for granted. For example, to
break into a circle of people talking, you
first eavesdrop to find a natural opening,
then wait for a pause before interjecting.
If the circle doesn’t let you in, you feign
an excuse and slip away.
“We all know what to do when things
get awkward. But kids with autism don’t,”
she says. “So we teach them how to get
out of a situation and keep their cool.”
Another session focuses on cliques
and crowds so that teens can figure
out which group they might fit in with
best. And there’s homework, too: Make
a phone call. Invite a classmate to hang
out. Parents are assigned to help their
kids find a new extracurricular that could
give them a fresh social platform.
Other autism research at MarquetteDr. Norah Johnson, assistant professor of nursing, is developing
interventions to decrease challenging behaviors and anxiety in children
with autism during health care encounters. She is testing an iPad
application to see if preparing families in advance can reduce parent and
child anxiety and speed up procedure time during X-rays.
Dr. Abir Bekhet, assistant professor of nursing, studies the effects
of positive cognitions, resourcefulness, and resilience in overcoming
stress and adversity in vulnerable populations. Bekhet, with funding from
the American Psychiatric Nurses Foundation, is working with Johnson to
examine how nurses can help promote the health and functioning of
caregivers of those with autism spectrum disorders.
Dr. Robert Scheidt, associate professor of biomedical engineering,
studies motor control in children with autism. His lab’s overall focus is on
how the brain uses sensory information to guide learning of movements
with the body. “Autistic children are an important population to study
because these children often have sensory deficits as well as motor
coordination deficits, and yet little is known of the etiology of these
deficits or their learning deficits in general,” he says. Doctoral student
Nicole Salowitz examined visuospatial processing differences between
children with autism and a control group, thought to be a significant
contributor to autistic children’s movement problems.
Wendy Krueger, clinical instructor with the Marquette University
Speech and Hearing Clinic, is incorporating music into speech-language
therapy sessions with young children with autism to see if it leads to a
significant increase in skills. An early pilot showed that music can be
used to calm or energize a child and keep him or her focused on therapy.
“Perhaps most exciting, however, has been the increased engagement,
awareness of others and verbal output that we have seen when
clinicians communicate with the child via singing rather than speaking,”
Krueger says.
One of the post-program measures is
how often the teens are invited out by
others. Data from UCLA’s program, which
has been around longer, shows that the
program’s influence lasts even three and
five years later.
“It’s like we’re teaching these kids to
fish socially … once they get that kick,
that boost, they’re on a different path,”
Van Hecke says.
For the Sansones, PEERS was worth
the four-hour round-trip drive every
week, even if Nick’s progress is slow
but steady.
“He definitely puts himself out there
more. He hasn’t made any great friends
yet, but he’s building a nice base of
acquaintances,” Michael Sansone says of
his son. “He likes school for the first time
in years, so that’s a big step, and we’re
confident friends will come in time.”²
F rom the decisive battle at Gettysburg to the bloody battle of Antietam,
America’s Civil War was filled with some of the most unforgettable clashes
in our country’s history. Northern and Southern soldiers alike entered each
new conflict with a strong sense of pride and commitment to the present strug-
gle. But what happened to these men after the final gunshots? Dr. James Marten,
Marquette professor and chair of the Department of History, explores the post-
war lives of these veterans in his new book, Sing Not War: The Lives of Union &
Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America.
By Jessie Bazan
Cominghome
Dr. James Marten explores the postwar lives of Civil War veterans
As a child growing up in South
Dakota, backyard games of “Army” and
Kurt Russell action movies sparked
Marten’s fascination with the Civil War
at a young age. The allure of America’s
deadliest internal struggle followed
Marten into adulthood and to Marquette,
where he has spent his time researching,
teaching and writing about everything
from the war’s effect on children to
displaced soldiers on the edges of
society. In his latest book, Sing Not War,
Marten examines the struggles Civil War
soldiers faced while reintegrating into
society after combat — a topic few
historians previously tackled.
“If they do fine, they’re not very
interesting to historians,” says Marten,
who received Marquette’s 2010 Lawrence
G. Haggerty Faculty Award for Research
Excellence. “We know about them. It’s
the other ones we don’t know much
about.” So Marten delved deeper into
the veterans’ lives.
Marten researched the book off and
on over 16 years. For firsthand accounts
and stories from veterans, he searched
out 19th-century veterans’ newspapers
like the American Tribune and the
Confederate Veteran. He found a particu-
larly unusual, if small, set of sources at
the Veterans Affairs hospital library
in Milwaukee.
“For some reason, left behind some-
where was a big ledger with disciplinary
actions against the men, health records
and a few other little things,” says Marten.
Inside these records, Marten found
stories of marginalized veterans stuck in
rambunctious group homes, away from
their families and former communities.
While only a small percentage of return-
ing soldiers ended up in homes, their
stories of rejection and struggle reflected
those of the larger veteran population.
Northern and Southern soldiers alike
faced tremendous obstacles as they tried
to acclimate to postwar life.
“You’re worn out. Even if you didn’t
get wounded or didn’t miss a day, you’re
just not well quite often,” Marten says
of the men who spent their 20s at war
Discover6
instead of gaining ground at home, as
some successful businessmen did. “They
feel like they lost out on the best years.”
Along with the economic burdens and
emotional hardships, needy Northern
soldiers also faced a harsh social stigma
when they returned home. Unlike their
rural Southern counterparts, whose
poverty was accepted as the normal plight
of postwar adjustment, soldiers in the city-
driven North were often condemned for
their economic problems.
“In the North, as the century goes on,
veterans who can’t keep up and don’t
get a good job lapse into low-level
poverty, and they’re blamed for it. That’s
the American work ethic — if you’re
poor, it’s your fault,” explains Marten.
Southerners, on the other hand, had
a straightforward admiration for their
veterans. “In the South during the Civil
War, you were a soldier. It’s a less
complicated approach,” says Marten.
“They had the same problems going
on as Union soldiers, and economically,
it was much worse. The South was
devastated by the war … but they’re
perceived very differently.”
In the end, the Civil War was challenging
for all involved. Like today’s soldiers, many
of whom serve in National Guard or
Reserve units, Civil War soldiers came from
communities, and Marten sees similarities
between past and present veterans.
“If they had a bad day at battle, that
town had a bad day,” Marten says of Civil
War combat units, which were organized
by region. Today’s veterans have a
similar connection to their hometowns.
According to Marten, “The link between
the community and individual unit is
very close … because they are our
neighbors, bosses and teachers.”
So while more than a century has
passed since Civil War veterans returned
home, some of the themes of Sing Not War
are still relevant today. Says Marten, “I
hope I’ve captured ways in which soldiers
adapted or failed to adapt to peacetime
and the attitudes toward veterans of the
people who stayed behind.”²
Marquette University 7
Home Again: Circa-1866 lithograph by Fabronius; painted by Trevor McClurg. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Marquette University 9
ARCHITECT OF THE INFINITESIMAL
By Stephen Filmanowicz
Dr. Chung Hoon Lee’s nanostructures are helping to electrify and illuminate science’s tiniest frontier
Illustration by Christiane Beauregard
Discover10
something, it really helps to understand
it as a molecule. That’s the single build-
ing block.” Further fueling interest is
the awareness that tiny particles of
certain substances can prove particularly
sensitive to heat or electric and magnetic
fields, opening up exciting applications
for them in sensors, transistors or
other nanodevices.
Captivating as it is, nanoscale electronics
is not for the faint of heart. About a
half-dozen years ago, the only way to
electrify a tiny particle was to isolate it
within a massive ensemble, to spend
hours or even days searching for it with
a high-powered microscope and then
to perform the even harder task of
positioning electrodes just right to make
a connection. The difficulty level was off
the charts — like finding a snowflake on
a hockey rink and positioning a Zamboni
to touch it without crushing it. “It was
almost impossible,” says Lee. “And if you
were lucky enough to do it once, you
had to start all over again. It was very
difficult to replicate your work.”
Lee was among a few in the field who
began approaching the problem from the
opposite direction. If you could build a
nanostructure with tiny electrode arms,
you could use mists to drop desired
particles into place. Then you’d know
exactly where to look for them — right
in the gap between the
electrodes, ready to
be electrified.
Since coming to
Marquette in 2008
from California State
University at Fresno,
Lee has developed the ability to build
these very nanostructures out of metal-
coated silicon, tens of thousands of them,
on campus. It’s his contribution to an
effort involving collaborators at Cornell
University and Department of Defense
grant support.
In the past year, Lee has passed some
exciting milestones. He has bridged his
gap of between two to 10 nanometers
(about 1/10,000th the diameter of a
“THROUGH CREATIVITY AND DESIGN,
I’M ABLE TO MAKE SOMETHING LIKE
NO ONE ELSE HAS BEEN ABLE TO MAKE IT.”
Marquette assistant professor of
electrical and computer engineering Dr.
Chung Hoon Lee is going boldly where
few have gone before. But it’s not the
far reaches of interstellar space. In his
fourth-floor lab in Haggerty Hall, he and
student assistants explore the microscopic
frontier of molecular electronics, honing
their ability to apply electric current to
particles as small as a single molecule.
This corner of nanotechnology is
seeing a flurry of
research interest
these days — in part,
Lee says, because
oversized insights
tend to emerge
from the study of
substances in their smallest form. The
advances are akin to what occurred
when biologists began to understand
human cellular structure in the 19th century.
“You can try to understand the human
body as a single object or you can look
closer. ... You can see how liver cells
differ from heart cells and how they
function differently,” he explains. “The
same principle applies with nano-
technology. If you want to understand
Typical human hair
Nanogap
Marquette University 11
human hair) with zinc oxide molecules
that glow when electrified, creating one
of the world’s smallest LED light sources.
Tests at Cornell will soon determine
whether he also has been able to bridge
the gap with thin layers of graphene,
a lattice-like arrangement of carbon
atoms generating intense buzz in
nanotechnology circles.
But his biggest strides may be in
design and fabrication itself. Unlike
predecessors, Lee’s nanostructures have
arms that are suspended, rather than
resting on the base layer, or substrate.
Interference is avoided. Perhaps most
remarkable has been his resourcefulness.
Whereas pioneering peers created
somewhat similar nanostructures with
an etching process involving $5 million
electron-beam lithography equipment,
Lee didn’t have that luxury. So he
originated an approach involving an
everyday optical lithography exposer that
was manufactured before he was born
and was gathering dust in a New Jersey
laboratory before he snatched it up for
$7,000. The high-end electron-beam
equipment is a logical choice for tackling
precise work at the nanoscale. His old
warhorse, not so much.
“It’s like deciding not to drive a car
from Milwaukee to Madison but riding a
bike instead,” he explains. “But through
creativity and design, I’m able to make
something like no one else has been
able to make it. I’m really proud of that.
And the optical lithography equipment
is actually very common in industry. If
this proves useful, there will be no big
technical breakthrough required to
move from the design level to the
manufacturing level.”²
Other nanotechnology projects at Marquette
Dr. Chieu Tran, Pfletschinger-Habermann Professor of
Analytical Chemistry, is focused on gaining insight into
complex chemical and biochemical systems and processes,
as well as developing green methods to synthesize novel,
high-performance supramolecular composite materials for
use in water purification and chemical and biosensors.
Dr. Rajendra Rathore, professor of organic chemistry,
researches the design and synthesis of novel electroactive
molecular wires and organic materials that hold potential
for the construction of modern photovoltaic devices and for
applications in the emerging field of nanotechnology, as well
as in biomaterial applications.
Dr. Fabian Josse, professor of electrical and computer
engineering and director of the Microsensors Research
Laboratory, studies solid state sensors and microelectro-
mechanical systems devices for liquid-phase chemical and
biochemical sensor applications.
Dr. Jeanne Hossenlopp, professor of chemistry and vice
provost of research, studies factors that control the structure
and reactivity of layered metal hydroxides with nanodimen-
sional interlayer galleries, as well as the development and
characterization of these materials for chemical sensor, fire
retardancy and water quality applications.
Dr. James Gardinier, associate professor of chemistry,
examines ways to manipulate electron or energy flow in
supramolecular assemblies with the purpose of designing
new molecular wires, fluorescent dyes and/or light-
harvesting antennae.
Dr. Krassimira Hristova, assistant professor of biological
sciences, specializes in molecular and environmental
microbiology to develop nanoparticle-based molecular
assays for environmental monitoring and to study
nanoparticles’ toxicity to bacteria, yeast and plants.
Discover12
The tragedy of addiction Dr. Robert Wheeler is trying to solve the mysteries of motivation in cocaine addicts
By Christopher Stolarski
Marquette University 13
The tragedy of addiction F or the most part, human motivation is intuitive. From
the anxiety of a looming deadline to the enticement
of a cash bonus, positive and negative scenarios are
powerful and obvious motivators that dictate how
we respond to a given situation. Behaviorists, like the noted B.F.
Skinner, have long studied the ways in which positive reinforce-
ment affects human behavior and cognition.
Dr. Robert Wheeler, an assistant professor of biomedical
sciences at Marquette, is interested in negative affective states,
those “bad feelings,” which he posits impact life the most.
And his research has uncovered a counterintuitive relationship
between positive and negative reinforcement in cocaine addicts.
“Positive reinforcement is the best way for us to learn. However,
the negative has a profound influence on life,” Wheeler says. “But
we don’t have a good neuroscientific understanding of it.”
Wheeler focuses his research on what he calls “the tragedy
of addiction,” a disease marked by a cycle of abstinence and
relapse. The relapse, he says, is normal human behavior; how-
ever, it’s also the most tragic part of the disease.
“As addicts use more and more, they stop doing things they
enjoy,” Wheeler says. “They are pushed in one direction at the
exclusion of everything else they used to love.”
This study of reward-seeking behavior, known as “hedonics,”
is helpful in understanding the behavior of those addicted to
cocaine and other narcotics. More important, he says, it can
help unravel the intricate neurological circuitries and chemical
signals that cause these behaviors. And better understanding the
neurophysiology of addiction could lead to improved clinical
treatment options.
To measure hedonics, Wheeler turned to the same subject
that Skinner did: the rat. As a baseline, he first examined how
the animals reacted to something they enjoy — in this case,
Kool-Aid. The saccharine-infused water garnered positive facial
expressions and mouth movements, which Wheeler says are
relatively universal among mammals. On the other hand,
giving the rats quinine, a bitter liquid, resulted in decidedly
unfavorable expressions.
Needing more than mere facial reactions, Wheeler also
measured fluctuations in dopamine, a key neurotransmitter
in the brain responsible for a wide variety of behavioral and
cognitive functions, including reward and motivation. Using a
technique known as fast-scan cyclic voltammetry, Wheeler was
able to measure dopamine concentrations, in real time, in one
of the brain’s reward centers known as the nucleus accumbens.
Not surprisingly, the rats’ dopamine levels spiked significantly
immediately after the Kool-Aid treat. Turning back to addiction,
Wheeler then wondered: How would the animals react to the
Kool-Aid when paired with an infusion of cocaine?
Taking a prompt from the Pavlovian playbook, Wheeler
taught the rats that they would receive cocaine (something they
enjoy) immediately after the Kool-Aid (something else they
enjoy). Over time, the rats’ dopamine levels measured incredibly
low after the administration of the sugary drink. Further, they
showed decreased reward sensitivity and displayed visually
aversive behaviors, such as negative facial expressions.
The rats were also given a differently flavored, but similarly
sweet, concoction, which resulted in increased dopamine and
favorable behaviors. Only the Kool-Aid, which they now associated
with cocaine, caused a negative reaction.
“It seems counterintuitive, but essentially the cocaine changes
the way the rats feel about the Kool-Aid,” Wheeler says. “What
they once loved, they now have no taste for.”
Wheeler’s findings, published in 2011 in Biological
Psychiatry, counter previous research contending that a stimulus
associated with cocaine causes an increase in dopamine and a
pleasurable feeling in rats, suggesting that the positive feelings
promoted drug seeking. “This is important for recognizing and
hopefully avoiding the complex psychological forces that cause
relapse in cocaine addicts,” Wheeler notes.
But the significance of his work extends beyond combating
addiction. Associations are environmental influences that
infiltrate everyone’s lives, and Wheeler suggests that negative
emotional influences promote other undesired behaviors, such
as compulsive overeating and gambling. “We examine decreased
dopamine release, reward insensitivity, and drug-seeking behav-
iors as a way to understand how our environment changes our
emotional state and our behavior,” he says. “The next step will
be figuring out what we can do about it.”
Wheeler adds, “The true value of this work, we hope, is
that it contributes to a more complete understanding of the
human condition.”²
Discover14
At the outset of the American Civil
War, 4 million Africans, denied of any
personal freedom and liberties, toiled in
fields picking cash crops for plantation
owners. By the end of World War II,
6 million Jews in Europe were system-
atically murdered in gas chambers and
concentration camps. In 1994, in just 100
days, roughly 500,000 Rwandans were
killed and countless women were the
victims of brutal rape.
In such cases, where torture and
brutality were systematically carried out,
is justice possible? What does it look
like, and how is it achieved? Dr. Margaret
Urban Walker, the Donald J. Schuenke
Chair of Philosophy at Marquette and
author of Moral Repair: Reconstructing
Moral Relations After Wrongdoing, has
made it her life’s work to better understand
what justice means and how to achieve
it. “All through history, when it was over,
it was just over,” Walker reflects. “We
cannot just turn the page. Instead, we
need to look at issues and rebuild trust
and hope.”
Walker says the past 50 years have
brought a historical shift in our under-
standing of justice, a time in which
international systems of norms for the
basic protection and recognition of
individuals have taken hold. Germany’s
payments to Jewish survivors of the
Holocaust started what has become a
growing international emphasis on the
human right to individual reparation. As
a moral philosopher, these developments
allow Walker to not only think about
the nature of moral rules and shared
norms but to witness how human beings
progress morally and come to new
convictions and understandings.
The author of several books, Walker
has also taken an active role to help
define and articulate this new concept
of justice. Twice she has worked with
As significant as this progress is,
it is an ongoing and difficult process.
Victims and offenders must be prepared
and open to face past transgressions,
and in some cases, one or both sides
might not be ready. Walker points to the
failure of the Japanese government to
properly acknowledge that thousands of
women, mostly Korean, were coerced
or kidnapped into sexual enslavement
international teams of human rights
scholars and practitioners with the
International Center for Transitional
Justice. The first project was to help
make reparations after political violence
and repression more sensitive and just to
both genders. The second project was a
study of how various measures — such
as criminal trials, truth commissions and
memorial sites — actually work. Walker
IN SEARCH OF JUSTICEfocused on how truth commissions
function and can be effective.
“It has been an extraordinary and
exciting experience both to learn from
scholars and practitioners worldwide
and to contribute to one of the most
remarkable phenomena of our times —
the systematic pursuit of justice in the
aftermath of massive political violence,”
she says.
This progress has moved the idea of
justice from exclusively one of retribution,
which focuses on punishment of the
offender, to one that includes reparation.
This form of justice is meant to help
release victims from the disgrace,
dishonor and contempt of the wrong
they’ve witnessed or endured, while
offenders or countries admit to and
apologize for the crimes committed.
Reparative justice, according to Walker,
helps exemplify and establish mutual
accountability as moral partners in a
shared future. Reparative justice can take
many forms, including public apologies,
monetary or material amends, creation of
memorials, the exhumation and proper
reburial of human remains, and access to
medical services.
in Japanese Army brothels during World
War II or the Lakota Sioux’s refusal to
accept a monetary settlement from the
U.S. government for the theft of the
Black Hills.
Though it can be disheartening to
think about continued transgressions
worldwide, Walker thinks incredible
strides have been made in recent genera-
tions and that there is hope for a better
future. “Through all the history of the
world, most human beings have had to
hope for luck or mercy rather than justice
when they have been terribly wronged,”
she says. “But now there is a glimmer of
hope that some justice, however small
and undependable, is within reach. That
is, humanly, incredibly moving.”²
By Andrew Brodzeller
IN SEARCH OF JUSTICE
In a world still plagued with war and political
violence, what is the role of reparative
justice?
Illustration by Paul Schulenburg Stock Illustration Source
Discover16
Go home, stay home!How nurses can help reduce the rotating door of hospital readmissions
By Charles Nevsimal
Marquette University 17Marquette University 17
A trip to the hospital is rarely
a pleasant experience — all
jokes about hospital food
notwithstanding. There’s the
stress of undergoing a procedure, however
major or minor it may be, the talk about
risks involved and hypothetical worst-
case scenarios. There’s the pain of the
procedure itself, the pain of recovery, of
rehabilitation — and then there’s the bill.
All things considered, however, the
cost a patient incurs is minimal compared
with the overall cost of admission. And
when it comes to the cost of readmission?
Generally, those costs can be avoided —
certainly not all the time, but some of the
time — with greater nurse/patient interac-
tion and better discharge teaching.
Such was the hunch, anyway, of an
interdisciplinary team of researchers at
Marquette that included Drs. Marianne
Weiss, Olga Yakusheva and Kathleen
Bobay. The three joined forces in 2008 for
a study that looked at 16 nursing units in
four Midwestern hospitals and included
information collected firsthand from 1,892
medical/surgical patients.
“Our research was something we
could do together but not alone,” says
Weiss who, along with Bobay, is an
associate professor in the College of
Nursing. Yakusheva is an assistant
professor of economics in the College of
Business Administration (currently doing a
post-doc at Yale School of Public Health).
The team collected data from electronic
hospital data systems and from patients
themselves, looking at staffing data as
it related to registered nurses and the
quality of discharge teaching patients
received. They also researched readmission
data within hospital databases.
What did they find? They found their
hunch to be dead-on.
“When nurse staffing is higher,” says
Yakusheva, “patients feel the quality of
care they receive is better and thus feel
more prepared at the time they leave
the hospital. Additionally, having fewer
overtime nursing hours leads to a drop in
emergency room visits after discharge.”
According to their findings, just 45
minutes of extra nursing care per patient
per day can reduce the patient readmis-
sion rate by 44 percent. That 45-minute
increase in non-overtime nursing care
could also save the 16 nursing units in
the study more than $11 million a year.
So why aren’t hospitals doing back
flips over these findings?
The problem is health care’s current
payment methodologies. They don’t
provide any advantage for hospitals to
increase the number of nurses per shift.
Further, payer savings from reduced
readmissions aren’t applied to offset the
costs of increased staffing.
“Here’s the dilemma with what we
found,” says Weiss. “Essentially, if you
increase staffing a little bit, readmissions
decrease. That’s what the data shows.
The problem is hospitals accrue the cost
of staffing, but they don’t see the benefit
on the readmission side. The payers see
the greater benefit. So it’s an
interesting dance to figure
out how you make those upstream changes
when there’s no benefit to doing so.”
Though some health care reform leg-
islation does change the payment model
to incentivize preventing readmissions,
it’s not an overnight process.
Nevertheless, Weiss and her team have
made three recommendations based on
their findings: 1.) Keep staffing levels
more stable and avoid understaffing;
2.) Implement a standardized protocol for
assessing the quality of discharge teaching
and a patient’s readiness for discharge;
3.) Support the transition in health care
financing at the national level toward the
bundling of payments for hospital and
post-discharge care and incentivizing of
appropriate staffing levels to achieve the
best possible patient outcomes.
“I think what our research does more
than anything,” says Weiss, “is highlight
what we already know about nurses.
Namely, that RNs make a difference. The
number of total hours an RN spends in
direct contact with a patient every day
makes a difference.”²
Drs. Kathleen Bobay, Olga Yakusheva and Marianne Weiss
Discover18
Marquette Research IN BRIEF
SPEAK FOR YOURSELF
Speech language pathologists often give clients with severe speech
disorders alternative communication tools — in other words, machines
that do the talking for them. But Dr. Jeff Berry, a Marquette assistant
professor of speech pathology and audiology, thinks we can do better. He
wants to help survivors of traumatic brain injuries regain their own voice.
“A lot of this arose from working with people who have severe
motor speech disorders who were just dissatisfied with the idea of using,
for example, a speech-generating device for the rest of their lives,”
says Berry, who directs Marquette’s Speech and Swallowing Lab in the
College of Health Sciences.
Berry thinks the path to better rehabilitation could start with a
portable electromagnetic tracking system called the Wave. Last year,
he published the first accuracy study with the Wave in the Journal of
Speech, Language and Hearing Research and, with help from Marquette
engineering students, designed software that makes the commercial
device even more useful. “It’s the only software in the world that I’m
aware of that takes movements of the tongue, lips and jaw and converts them into real-time
speech,” he explains. “We can take somebody who is unable to consistently and reliably
produce voicing on their own but can move their mouth and, essentially, when they
move their mouth, the system will provide the voice.”
Most speech synthesis devices are text-to-speech systems in which the user types
what he or she wants to say. But Berry’s innovation is more than just another way to
create a robotic voice that speaks for you. “We want to be able to understand and trigger
in people with motor disabilities some of the preserved reflexive abilities of the motor
system in order to use that reflexive response to modify their speech,” he says. “By
changing how the acoustics are occurring in real time, we can trick you into modifying
how you’re articulating.”
That could mean tricking people into pronouncing a vowel a different way or, in the
case of people with severe motor speech disorders, adjusting tongue height to achieve
the correct sound.
Berry’s speech synthesis software is critical because, until now, researchers could
only manipulate acoustics for healthy speakers who could produce a high-quality
acoustic signal. Now involuntary adaptations can be studied in survivors of traumatic
brain injuries.
But first, Berry, who has funding from the American Speech and Hearing Foundation,
is refining the technology. After developing a baseline using healthy young adults, he
expanded the study to survivors of traumatic brain injury and stroke and presented the
results at the Conference of Motor Speech in February.
“It’s a technically challenging line of research and a conceptually challenging line of
research,” he says, “but we’re making good progress.” — NSE
“By changing how the acoustics are occurring in real time, we can trick you into modifying how you’re articulating.”
Marquette University 19
AWAKE FOR GENES
Your body is a clock. It knows inherently when to wake and when to rest independent
of zeitgebers, the scientific term for external cues (sunrise, sunset, your 6 a.m. wakeup
call). It has its own cycle. It’s called circadian rhythm.
“The circadian system actually starts deep inside your brain,” says Dr. Stephen Munroe,
a professor of biological sciences whose current research plays in the circadian arena.
“There’s a particular visual pathway that conducts light to a small region near the hypo-
thalamus. Here rests something that seems to be a master clock. This master clock triggers
the hypothalamus, which in turn signals the pituitary gland to help coordinate all the
clocks in your body.”
But Munroe isn’t so much interested in circadian rhythm, per se, as he is interested in
a very specific gene that affects circadian rhythms: Rev-erbα, a regulatory receptor protein
that shows dramatic daily variations in the liver of many mammals. Hence his rather
unusual research subjects: the cells of a small opossum, a rat kangaroo and the platypus,
a unique egg-laying mammal found only in Australia.
“We were stunned to discover,” says Munroe, “that in our hands we can see what is
approximately a 250-fold difference between Rev-erbα at its peak time and at its lowest.”
In other words, it varies widely, ranging from less than 1 percent to 100 percent at its
maximum — every day. Such range is thought to exist in humans as well, though we
typically function during the day, while opossums and rats are nocturnal.
When Rev-erbα gene was first discovered, it was found to overlap the gene for a variant
form of the receptor protein that binds thyroid hormone. And it was the idea of the
overlap between two genes encoded on different strands of DNA that originally inspired
Munroe and guided his early research using antisense RNA to probe requirements for
mRNA splicing. In fact, it’s what guides his research today.
“There are important questions here,” Munroe says. “We don’t really understand how
splicing is regulated. And now we know the vast majority of genes in complex organisms
(i.e., humans) undergo splicing. We also now know both strands of DNA are often copied
into RNA, but only one strand codes for a given protein. How this affects gene activity
and the expression of proteins is another important question.”
Though it won’t explain what makes one either
a morning person or a night owl, Munroe’s
research involving the sequence elements
within the thyroid hormone gene
that controls splicing will help us
understand alternative splicing and
how gene regulation is controlled
in a broad sense. It’s research that
occasionally disrupts Munroe’s own
circadian rhythm (he has been
known to return to his lab while
the rest of the Marquette campus
sleeps — at 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. —
to conduct a circadian collection on
rats with a couple of eager students).
Because for Munroe, it’s research
important enough to lose
sleep over. — CN
A NEW LOOK FOR SCHOOL COUNSELING
Debates about educational achievement
gaps often focus on the roles of teachers,
administrators and even politicians.
What can get overlooked is the importance
of a comprehensive school counseling
program, according to Dr. Alan Burkard,
chair of Marquette’s Department of Counselor
Education and Counseling Psychology.
Burkard also serves as president of the
American School Counselors Association.
“School counseling has changed,” Burkard
says. “Today’s counselors are taking a close
look at the data of what schools need and
creating programs with accountability to
promote student achievement.”
Burkard says this new model of school
counseling is a departure from what many
associate from experience, which is often a
primary focus on the mental health of students.
“In the past, school counselors focused on
topic areas that they enjoyed,” Burkard says.
“The problem was they didn’t have data to
prove that this is what schools always needed.”
Current programs first require an inves-
tigation of a particular school’s challenges,
then work to narrow achievement gaps from
a multitude of angles. Some areas that call
for attention include preventing bullying and
violence, providing expertise for career and
post-secondary questions, building relationships
with families, and reinforcing positive behaviors
to increase attendance.
Results of research from Burkard and others
indicate that fully implemented comprehensive
school counseling programs reduce truancy
and suspensions, increase graduation rates,
and boost performance rates on state math
and reading exams compared with high
schools without similar services.
“You have to show that you’re having an
impact because of your program,” Burkard
says. “That’s how we know school counseling
is important to attain academic and personal
success for all students.” — TC
Marquette Research IN BRIEF
Discover20
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
For thousands of years, Chinese art remained uniquely untouched by Western
influences. Now Dr. Curtis Carter, a Marquette professor of philosophy and expert in
aesthetics, is studying how the East and West have influenced each other.
“After Mao, there was more of an opening of ideas,” Carter explains. “By the 1980s,
Chinese artists began to explore a wider range of Western-influenced modern and
contemporary art including a form of pop art inspired by, but different from, Western
pop art. At that time, China had no commercial culture, so its pop artists used art as a
critique of Western pop art and their own Chinese political culture.”
Carter has had ample opportunity to examine the evolution of Chinese art up
close. Last fall, he was invited by leaders in the Chinese art world to speak at several
events in Beijing. He was one of three Americans to present at the National Academy
of Painting’s 30th Anniversary Symposium at the National Museum. While in Beijing,
he spoke at the Sunshine International Museum, for which he is an honorary curator,
during the opening ceremonies for an exhibition of contemporary Chinese artists.
Carter also gave a lecture to graduate students at Beijing Normal University.
And last summer, he hosted a first-of-its-kind East Meets West conference between
Western and Eastern philosophers and artists at Marquette. The conference’s goal was
to build a bridge between Western aesthetics and art and Chinese aesthetics and art.
It’s a fascinating time to study Chinese art, says Carter. Although all Western influences
were cut off during the cultural revolution, there is now more freedom for artists to
explore almost any subject except for the critique of the government.
“Artists in China are trying to assess how their current practices are related to
traditional Chinese art and culture,” Carter says. “Contemporary ink and brush
paintings are part of this effort. The latest movement is to find ways to reinsert
‘Chineseness’ into the practices of contemporary art while also maintaining their
place in the international global art world.”
Understanding Chinese art is even more important in today’s global society, he says.
“As Americans expand political and economic engagements with Chinese colleagues,
it is essential to comprehend the role art and philosophy have held in Chinese society
throughout its history and continues to hold today,” says Carter. “Philosophy and art
are at the roots of cultural understanding.” — KV
FIGHTING POLLUTION, ONE MOLECULE AT A TIME
In a lot of ways, for Dr. Adam Fiedler, the job
of a chemist is tantamount to that of a cabinet-
maker. The nature of craft is essential. Attention
to detail is pivotal. And the end product is a
molecule that may have never before existed.
“The whole idea that we can make molecules
that have never been made
before,” Fiedler says, “that’s
what interests me about
chemistry. The process
of designing, constructing
and analyzing.”
And those tiny molecules
could have a big impact. Fiedler,
an assistant professor of chemistry, studies the
role certain molecules called metalloenzymes
play in naturally breaking down environmental
pollutants. The work won him a Faculty Early
Career Development Award — and five-year
grant — from the National Science Foundation.
About 40 percent of all the enzymes in our
body are metalloenzymes — enzymes that
require a metal ion to perform their biological
function. For example, when we breathe in
dioxygen (O2) molecules, they bind to the iron
center in hemoglobin proteins, which transport
dioxygen to all the cells that need it. Other
metalloenzymes use O2 to carry out oxidations
within metabolic pathways. Fiedler studies a
class of iron-containing enzymes called dioxy-
genases, which incorporate both atoms of O2
into the product of the reaction.
“We’re trying to understand at a very funda-
mental, atomic level how specific iron-containing
enzymes operate,” says Fiedler. “We want to
know how these enzymes work in certain
bacteria to help degrade common pollutants like
PCBs, dioxins and aromatic hydrocarbons.”
His findings may ultimately prove useful in
practical applications down the road.
“By designing and synthesizing certain
complexes that mimic the function of these metal-
loenzymes, we’re getting to the bottom of how
these dioxygenases truly work,” he says. — CN
Carter, left, at an art museum in China.
Marquette University 21
But not all pink products — which signify
breast cancer awareness — carry an
equal benefit.
Specifically, Berg’s research critically
analyzed the marketing ethics of Mike’s
Hard Pink Lemonade and KitchenAid Cook
for the Cure. Berg’s methods applied a test
that measures the marketing campaign’s
fulfillment of truthfulness, authenticity,
respect, equity and social responsibility.
“The persuasive communication used in
these campaigns fail to meet the five prin-
ciples of the test,” Berg says. “We argue that
consumers are particularly vulnerable.”
In one example, Mike’s Hard Lemonade
failed to disclose on its packaging that its
donation to the Breast Cancer Awareness
Foundation was not tied in any way to
consumer purchase or action — which may
have encouraged fewer sales.
“Their message is deceptive because the
packaging does not explicitly state that the
WHAT’S THE VALUE IN A LEGAL BRIEF?
donation is not tied to product sales,”
Berg says.
Unfortunately, most charities are reluc-
tant to speak up against a business that
donates money to them, Berg says. As a
result, she recommends that communication
practitioners and industry leaders should
take a stand for universal standards for
cause-related marketing.
And in the meantime? Consumers
should be wary.
“Think before you pink,” she says. — TC
As a practicing attorney, Chad Oldfather
often wondered how fully judges engaged
with the briefs he submitted on behalf of
his clients.
Now a professor at Marquette University
Law School, Oldfather has devoted much of
his scholarly attention to exploring just how
focused on input from litigants judges should
be. Most recently, he used computational
methods to assess whether decisions issued
by the court actually reflected the briefs sub-
mitted by the litigants in a particular case.
“Legal scholarship has historically taken
on faith that judicial opinions accurately
reflect the facts of the cases they discuss
because there was no alternative,” he
continues. “This work can help us assess
whether that is true.” It might also help
inform practicing attorneys about whether
certain features of briefs tend to resonate
more with the court.
In developing his methodology,
Oldfather and his research partners, who
include University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
computer science professor Dr. Joseph
Bockhorst, employed three ways of analyz-
ing a group of cases decided by the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Two
of the analyses involved computational
methods, which allowed researchers to
“read” large numbers of documents in a
short period of time. The first, in effect,
treated the briefs and opinion in each case
as a collection of words and assessed the
overlap among them. The second measured
the overlap in authorities cited, such as
statutes and prior cases, in the opinions
and briefs. The third used a structured
reading of the three documents, includ-
ing a series of human judgments about the
extent to which the opinions responded to
the briefs.
What he found in the preliminary data
is, first, enough of a correlation between
the computational and human assessments
to support the conclusion that the compu-
tational methods are getting at what they
are intended to measure. There was also
a “relatively surprising lack of correspon-
dence between opinions and briefs,” says
Oldfather — suggesting that judges weren’t
strongly influenced by the briefs that
attorneys labored over. As the methodol-
ogy becomes more sophisticated, it has the
potential to provide payoffs to academics
and practitioners alike.
“We are trying to develop another way
of assessing how courts behave, which may
in turn be useful for assessing if they’re
behaving as we want them to, and thinking
about how we might respond if they are
not,” concludes Oldfather. — BOM
THE ETHICS OF PINKWASHING: Is pink the new black?
From shoes to fried chicken and cars
to toasters, consumers may notice more
product packaging increasingly turning
shades of pink. The hue has less to do with
fashion than with marketers aligning with
breast cancer awareness. But is this always
a good thing?
Dr. Kati Tusinski Berg, assistant professor
of public relations, found in her research
that some brands may be engaging in
a process known as “pinkwashing,” or
marketing that has more to do with the
business bottom line than giving back.
“Some companies take advantage of
consumers’ concern about breast cancer,”
Berg says. “In reality, they’re profiting from
marketing pink products while donating
little or nothing to the cause.”
Berg noted a dramatic increase in the
last decade for cause-related marketing,
which attempts to gain customers by tying
purchases of goods or services to charity.
Discover22
IN BRIEFMarquette Research IN BRIEF
ON A MISSION TO IMPROVE REFUGEE DENTAL CARE
When Dr. Toni Roucka first arrived at
the Tanzanian refugee camp, she found
a 1920s dental chair in the corner of a
dark room. There was no running water,
no dental X-ray equipment and very little
space to set up instruments. The floor was
a muddy mess.
More than 50,000 refugees living in the
Mtabila and Nyarugusu camps in the Kigoma
region of Tanzania receive dental treatment
— primarily tooth extractions — in these
conditions, typically delivered by health care
providers with no formal dental training.
“When you look at the big picture —
food, safety, shelter — dental care is a low
priority, but it is a quality of life issue,” says
Roucka, an assistant professor of general
dentistry in Marquette’s School of Dentistry
whose research on refugee dental care was
published last year in the International
Dental Journal.
Improving dental care for underserved
populations is a passion for Roucka. She
first traveled to Tanzania with three other
dentists in 2007 to establish small dental
clinics at the refugee camps and to provide
a two-week training course in emergency
dental care and health promotion to 12
refugee health care workers.
Through lectures and clinical training,
the dentists taught refugee workers how
to do basic exams and triage procedures,
administer anesthesia, manage infections,
and prioritize treatments while also stress-
ing the importance of patient management
and oral health education.
This model for providing access to
dental care in refugee camps is the first of
its kind, according to Roucka.
The focus of the trip was training.
Roucka’s research looked at whether this
kind of training was self-sustaining, portable
and repeatable. She returned to the camps
in 2008 to evaluate the progress of the
health care workers since the first training
and to provide a two-week refresher
course. In 2009, she returned once more to
evaluate the program’s success.
“The biggest concern we had was that
many patients might return to the dental
clinic with post-operative complications
after treatment,” she says. “What we found
was the students followed our instructions
to the T.”
In fact, of the nearly 2,000 patient visits
recorded at the clinics from November 2007
to August 2009, fewer than one percent
returned with pain, swelling or bleeding —
proving to Roucka that the model works.
Next, she hopes to return to Tanzania to
monitor the long-term progress of the pro-
gram and then introduce it with a camp
population in another cultural environment.
She will also continue to provide care
in the Dominican Republic and other
nations through Compassionate Dental
Care International, a nonprofit agency she
founded in 2005 to deliver dental care to
those in need. — ALB
Tanzanian refugees receive dental education from a camp health care worker.
Marquette University 23
POKING HOLES IN THE GOLDEN PARACHUTE
Protesters in the so-called Occupy Wall
Street movement took to the streets of
lower Manhattan in 2011, in part to lambast
corporate CEOs for purported greed. Their
argument: These chief executives are
overpaid, blessed with “golden parachute”
clauses and devoid of transparency.
Dr. Qianhua “Q” Ling, assistant professor
of accounting at Marquette, has been study-
ing the interplay among CEO severance
packages, salary and transparency. And her
findings could help shape how corporate
boards approach these compensation and
governance issues.
In a paper slated to be published
in 2012 by the Journal of Accounting,
Auditing and Finance, Ling examines the
association between pre-negotiated (or ex
ante) severance agreements and the timely
disclosure of bad news to governing boards
and shareholders. She looked at “single-
trigger” and “double-trigger” severance
packages. According to Ling, the former
entitles a CEO to compensation if employment
is terminated without cause or the CEO
ENGINEERING SAFER ROADS
There are more than 11,000 miles of state roads in Wisconsin,
and Dr. Alex Drakopoulos has studied all of them.
It’s all part of the research the associate professor of civil,
construction and environmental engineering has guided during his
19-plus years at Marquette, hoping his findings help federal and
state transportation agencies implement safety changes for roads.
His latest work includes a federal grant to analyze the effect of
trucks on congestion.
“A truck accelerates much slower than a passenger car. So as the
speeds drop when you have congestion — perhaps it’s a work zone
or peak-hour traffic — you’re going to have the trucks create a lot
of gaps ahead of them,” he says. “This certainly is going to impact
congestion.”
And when there’s congestion, there’s driver frustration. When
there’s driver frustration, there are accidents. Drakopoulos hopes his
data will provide new information about how to make congested
highways that carry a lot of trucks operate more safely and efficiently.
Drakopoulos also conducted research on the national standards
that govern traffic signal indications and road markings. Results
from this research, with additional findings from other investigators,
are now included in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices,
a publication that sets nationwide standards for traffic agencies.
Another one of his projects was the first U.S. installation of
special pavement markings that were used in Japan to slow down
drivers before dangerous turns. These markings, installed by
special permission from the Federal Highway Administration
at a Milwaukee freeway location, are now widely used across
the country.
Even though he says his research “focuses on things that people
don’t ordinarily notice on a daily basis” — a blinking red light
bulb in a traffic signal or lines etched on the pavement surface, for
instance — he knows small findings can mean big change.
“If you have the chance to improve policy because of your findings,
it is a great help to people who need it,” Drakopoulos says. — BDJ
resigns with good reason. The double-
trigger, or golden parachute, package occurs
within a certain period of time after the sale
or acquisition of a company. The executive
receives compensation for the same reasons
outlined above.
“Those ‘causes’ or ‘reasons’ are different
from company to company and often
poorly defined,” Ling says. “The perception,
and often the reality, is the CEO benefits
greatly from these agreements.”
Ling’s research found that CEOs who
have single-trigger severance packages
are more prone to conservative financial
reporting and they tend to disclose bad
news sooner. From the boards’ perspective,
Ling says, this is the silver lining of having a
severance agreement. “This association
remains positive in the CEO’s last year of
tenure where performance is poor,” she
adds. “And the association is stronger among
CEOs with a highly variable pay structure.”
Ling suggests that if boards want to
capitalize on the impact severance agree-
ments have on the early disclosure of bad
news, they should
pair a single-
trigger severance
agreement with a
highly variable CEO
pay structure.
In view of the very
public criticisms of
CEO compensa-
tion, severance
and transparency,
these findings highlight
important strategies that corporate boards
can use to more ethically guide their
organizations, Ling says.
“Quite simply,” she says, “I’m interested
in how governance affects information and
how information affects decisions.”
Ling’s next project is no exception.
She’s now examining the link between
chief executive compensation and
financial performance of nonprofit
human services organizations. — CS
Discover24
MARQUETTE BOOKSHELFLooking for new reading material? Check out some of the latest works written and edited by Marquette faculty.
Global Perspectives on Re-entryBy Dr. Richard Jones, associate professor of
social and cultural sciences
An international perspective on the
challenges facing ex-prisoners as they
attempt to return to society after serving
time in prison.
Enlightened Monks: The German Benedictines 1740–1803By Dr. Ulrich Lehner, assistant professor
of theology
Addresses the social, cultural, philosophical
and theological challenges the German
Benedictines faced between 1740 and 1803
and how the Enlightenment influenced the
self-understanding and lifestyle of those
religious communities.
The Creolizing Subject: Race, Reason and the Politics of PurityBy Dr. Michael Monahan, associate professor
of philosophy
A philosophical study of race and the
challenges it offers, arguing that race should
be understood as an ambiguous and
indeterminate process of social negotiation.
Censored on Final ApproachBy Phyllis Ravel, artistic associate professor
of performing arts
A play chronicling four Women Air Service
Pilots who gather to reminisce about their
challenges and successes during World
War II.
The Eighteenth-Century NovelEdited by Dr. Albert J. Rivero, professor of
English, and George Justice
Contains 10 critical essays and 10 book
reviews spanning the 18th century, including
Aubin, Defoe, Edgeworth and Austen.
Confronting the Climate Crisis — Catholic Theological PerspectivesEdited by Dr. Jame Schaefer, associate
professor of theology
A collection of essays by members of the
Catholic Theological Society of America’s
Interest Group on Global Warming that
demonstrate ways to approach the climate
crisis from a Catholic, theological perspective.
Imagination and the Contemporary NovelBy Dr. John Su, associate professor of English
An examination of the preoccupation with
the imagination among literary authors in
contemporary Anglophone literature and a
restatement of what the imagination is and
what it means for contemporary culture.
Abuse of Power: How Cold War Surveillance and Secrecy Policy Shaped the Response to 9/11By Dr. Alan Theoharis, professor emeritus
of history
Describes the U.S. government’s secret
activities and policies during periods of
“unprecedented crisis,” recounting how
presidents and FBI officials exploited
concerns about foreign-based internal
security threats.
American BoyBy Larry Watson, visiting professor of English
A novel about a young man coming of age
in Willow Falls, Minn., during the 1960s.
Right Here I See My Own Books: The Woman’s Building Library at the World’s Columbian ExpositionBy Dr. Sarah Wadsworth, associate professor
of English, and Wayne A. Wiegand
Examines the progress, content and
significance of this historic first effort to
assemble a comprehensive library of
women’s texts.
Marquette University 25
• Infiscalyear2011,Marquettefacultyreceived$26.5millionin
award dollars for research, instruction and other projects.
• MarquettecontinuestoplayacriticalroleintheClinicaland
Translational Science Institute of Southeastern Wisconsin, a
collaborative effort between eight major institutions that is
supported by a $20 million grant from the National Institutes
of Health.
• Theuniversitysupportsresearchthroughseveralprograms:
three-year Way Klingler fellowships, sabbaticals for junior
faculty and the Lawrence G. Haggerty Faculty Award for
Research Excellence.
• Marquettefacultyeditanumberofscholarlyjournals,fromthe
Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy to the
International Journal of Systematic Theology.
• TheDepartmentofSpecialCollectionsandUniversity
Archives houses more than 17,000 cubic feet of archival
material and 11,000 volumes, including approximately
7,000 titles in the rare book collection. The J.R.R. Tolkien
Collection features many of the author’s original manu-
scripts, including The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
• Marquettehasmorethan20academiccentersandinstitutes
that foster research in the areas of end-of-life care, ethics,
neuroscience, rehabilitation engineering, transnational justice,
water quality, sports law and other areas.
For more, go to marquette.edu/research.
RESEARCH AND SCHOLARSHIP AT MARQUETTE
Office of the ProvostZilber Hall, Suite 448
P.O. Box 1881Milwaukee, WI 53201-1881
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MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY RESEARCH AND SCHOLARSHIP 2012Discover