{"id":13454,"date":"2022-04-28T15:15:17","date_gmt":"2022-04-28T15:15:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.golive.clarku.edu\/news\/2022\/04\/28\/goddard-library-hosts-a-celebration-of-clark-faculty-research-and-creativity\/"},"modified":"2025-05-19T09:32:00","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T13:32:00","slug":"clark-professors-share-what-sparked-their-passions-during-lightning-round-talks","status":"publish","type":"story","link":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/2022\/04\/28\/clark-professors-share-what-sparked-their-passions-during-lightning-round-talks\/","title":{"rendered":"Goddard Library hosts a celebration of Clark faculty research and creativity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n

Event offered an opportunity for faculty to recall their inspirations<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

From mushrooms to matters of class difference, lost symphonies to three-eyed worms, Clark University faculty shared a taste of their research at a recent event meant to inspire creativity — and driven by brevity.<\/p>\n

Professors discussed why they chose their fields and why their work is important during Light in Springtime<\/a> on March 30, sponsored by Dean of Faculty Esther Jones and hosted by the staff of the Goddard Library<\/a>. Participants were challenged to explain their passions in “lightning” talks of just three minutes.<\/p>\n Professor Néva Meyer\n

Néva Meyer<\/a>, professor of biology<\/a>, said she has always been fascinated by animals and their development, and researches how the brains of humans and other species are related. She intrigued the group with a story about making a three-lobe brain.<\/p>\n

An undergraduate student took a molecule that would prevent a human brain from forming and put it on the larvae of the annelid worm Capitella teleta, she said. Usually, the species has two brain lobes. But with the molecule, a three-lobe annelid brain with a third eye formed.<\/p>\n

“His very first question to me when he did this experiment was, ‘Professor, should they have three eyes?’” she said. “That’s the kind of stuff we do in my lab.”<\/p>\n

Professor Benjamin Korstvedt<\/a>, chair of Visual and Performing Arts<\/a> and director of the Music Program<\/a>, explained his 30-year project to explore<\/a> one corner of the musicological world: Austrian composer Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4.<\/p>\n

The symphony has a complex compositional history, Korstvedt said. Bruckner composed three distinct versions over 15 years in the late 1800s. Unfortunately, he said, the ways that 20th-century scholars approached Bruckner’s works were “extraordinarily problematic in the fact that they sowed the seeds of a great deal of misunderstanding and fake news, which persists even to this day. … Therefore, a key part of my project has been to counter and overturn these myths.”<\/p>\n

Most recently, Korstvedt has been working with Arizona-based MusicaNova Orchestra, which will premiere a version of the symphony in May.<\/p>\n

Deborah Merrill<\/a>, professor of sociology<\/a>, said her undergraduate years at Bowdoin College<\/a> helped her make sense of the experience of being a working-class student navigating her way through an elite school.<\/p>\n

“The sociology courses I took, especially the introductory course, really helped me to form the language and vocabulary, to get the theoretical underpinnings and perspective to understand my experience — and why I was so different from my friends who went sailing all summer, who had gone to boarding schools, who had eight AP courses. It actually saved my sanity a great deal.”<\/p>\n

During her first semester, Merrill took a philosophy course taught by Bowdoin’s president and was stunned to be in a classroom with the college’s leader. It would have never dawned on her to challenge or debate the president, something one of her friends did, Merrill recalled.<\/p>\n

“I gradually learned, though, that this had to do with our class differences. She had grown up in a family where learning those kinds of verbal skills was just a part of parenting. That was not my parents’ idea of parenting,” she recalled.<\/p>\n

Merrill is currently researching the sociology of mental illness, particularly why African Americans have lower rates of depression than people in other demographic groups.<\/p>\n

\"professor
Professor David Hibbett<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

David Hibbett<\/a>, professor of biology<\/a> and a mycologist<\/a>, injected humor in his presentation, pulling up an online review from a student that, while largely positive, ended on an unimpressed note: “Too bad he studies mushrooms for a living.”<\/p>\n

Unfazed, and taking a cue from late-night television host David Letterman, Hibbett offered the top 10 reasons to study mushrooms: Their benefit to the pharmaceutical industry, ethanol fermentation, biodiversity, and their role in the carbon cycle all made the list.<\/p>\n

“The attraction for me was primarily aesthetic,” Hibbett said of his fascination with mushrooms. “I just thought these things were gorgeous and interesting and that’s why I got into it.<\/p>\n

“Mushrooms are cool,” he added with a laugh.<\/p>\n

Other speakers at the Light in Springtime event included Atefeh Yazdanparast Ardestani<\/a>, School of Management<\/a>; Laurie Ross<\/a>, Department of International Development, Community, and Environment<\/a>; Carmen Ocón<\/a>, education<\/a>; Donald Spratt<\/a>, chemistry and biochemistry<\/a>; Christopher Davey<\/a>, Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies<\/a>; Wayne Gray<\/a>, economics<\/a>, Allison Fong<\/a>, languages, literature, and culture<\/a>; and John Rogan<\/a>, geography<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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