Mamta Accapadi, her daugher Saaya and husband Jos will be spending a Semester at Sea this fall. (drawing by Nidhi Chanani)

As a college student, Mamta Accapadi always imagined traveling around the world with the Semester at Sea program, but timing and finances never worked in her favor.

When she became the Dean of Students at OSU, it seemed like the dream would never be a reality, but Accapadi wanted to find ways to give OSU students the opportunity to join the Semester at Sea program. So when she met a representative at a conference, she was eager to find out more. But what the representative said surprised her.

“She said, ‘Why don’t you apply?’” Accapadi recalled. In addition to students, staff and faculty members are recruited for each voyage. For Accapadi, the possibility of achieving her dream seemed remote, but without really believing she’d succeed, she sent in her application, figuring she’d be weeded out during the highly competitive process.

Instead, she got a phone call the following summer, was interviewed for the position of Dean of Students for the Fall 2011 trip, and was accepted. That unexpected turn of events had Accapadi scrambling to figure out exactly how to work this adventure into her life.

Luckily, her husband Jos, associate web director for Central Web Services at OSU, and their 3-year-old daughter Saaya were able to join her, and Vice Provost for Student Affairs Larry Roper worked with Accapadi to free her up from her duties at the university.

Starting Aug. 20, Accapadi will board ship in Boston with her fellow faculty and staff, and prepare for the arrival of around 500 undergraduate and graduate students. The ship will spend 110 days circumnavigating the globe as they stop in 10 different countries, spending time at each location in putting their education to use. The broad-based curriculum is interdisciplinary, and all has practical applications to their world travel, from political science to social studies.

Although the program does not provide the immersion of an in-country study abroad, it instead offers the students a chance to have a global comparative experience, for instance, learning about post-colonial feminism in class and then comparing women’s experiences on the ground in Ghana and Hawaii.

In addition to their course work, the students are also engaged in fieldwork throughout their journey. The program, which is based out of the University of Virginia, describes turning the world into an academic laboratory.

Accapadi is thrilled to experience the adventure alongside her students, and looks forward to docking in places around the world and introducing her daughter to a unique travel experience. In South Africa, the group will be joined by a very special visitor, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. They’ll also travel to Cuba, Morocco, India, Vietnam, China, Costa Rica and several other countries, a total of 10.

“It’s something I could have never imagined,” she said.

Accapadi will be chronicling her journey on a blog called “Accapadis at Sea”, available at: http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/accapadisatsea/

~ Theresa Hogue

Jill Parker of the College of Veterinary Medicine scans the course to see where a teammate's shot landed. (photo: Theresa Hogue)

Not far from the bustle of Third Street, the course seems a world apart, as the only sounds are the steady thwack of club against ball, and the gentle laughter of friends reuniting.

For the women who comprised the Marysville Ladies Club, the regular weekly gathering is a time to decompress from the stresses of academic life, to sharpen golf skills and to enjoy a bit of nature. It’s also a chance for women from across different disciplines to come together over a shared love of golf, without concerns about rank, college or background.

“You’re out here, and having lots of fun, and its nice and smells good,” said Mysti Weber, a senior research assistant with the College of Oceanography. “We’re outside, doing a little bit of exercise.”

Marching across the course with an OSU golf club cover prominently displayed, Weber spent a lot of time smiling, even when her shots didn’t quite land where she’d planned. She began golfing at age 19, but gave it up when family commitments got in the way. About a decade ago, she got re-interested in the sport, and took professional lessons to get herself back into the game.

Women faculty and staff gather weekly to play golf at Marysville.

“It’s a very hard game to master,” she said. “It’s a challenge.”

She said having a regular group to golf with has helped keep her immersed in the sport.

“You get to meet a lot of really nice people,” Weber said. “It’s a whole package thing that’s really fun. There’s no sense in doing it if it’s not fun.”

While Weber golfs on many different local courses, Marysville is the place she considers “home.” She’s had her best games there, and finds the course comforting and the staff understanding, even when she’s having a particularly poor performance.

Golfing is a good way to get exercise and release work stress. (photo: Theresa Hogue)

“They’re really patient,” she said.

The Marysville Ladies Club has members of all skill levels, and is an official Oregon Golf Association Member Club. The women who join get an official USGA golf handicap index and play by the USGA Rules of Golf.

Tricia Maynard, an accountant with the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, is a newcomer to the sport. She took up golfing a few years ago, but didn’t get serious until friend SueAnn Bottoms in the College of Education told her about the Marysville Ladies Golf Club.

Maynard, who said she’s not really the athletic type, appreciates that golf is a sport that she can ease into, and now that she’s in the club, she sees her skills, if not her score, improving.

“My score’s not really improving much but I feel I’m hitting the ball better, so at some point it will all come together.”

She’s also meeting women from other departments that she said she would have never met on campus.

Jill Parker is an associate professor in the Department of Clinical Sciences with the College of Veterinary Medicine, and has been a member of the club for at least six years.

“I really feel like I learned to play golf by joining,” she said. And the welcoming atmosphere is conducive to learning without feeling self-conscious.

“It’s a fun group of women who are really nice,” she said. “If you’re a terrible shot that’s ok.”

An OSU alum, Cheryl Hatch is now a professional photographer, and likens golf to her passion for photography.

Mysti Weber and Tricia Maynard, both of OSU, walk the course at Marysville on a Thursday afternoon. (photo: Theresa Hogue)

“It’s visual, and it’s a feeling and intuitive game,” she said. And even though they’re playing the same course, it’s never boring.

“Every time is different, every day is different but it’s got a really good groove.”

There is a morning and evening group that meets at Marysville Golf Course each week through the end of September. New members are always welcome, and some members play through the fall and winter even though the group doesn’t have regular meetings at that time. The course is located at 2020 S.W. Allen.

For more information, contact Chi Meredith, current club champion and past president, at meredithchi2@gmail.com

Trysting Tree Golf Club, on the east side of Corvallis, is an affiliate of the OSU Foundation, and contributes back to OSU by contributing to a number of programs on campus. It is the home course for OSU women and men’s golf teams, and also has a number of men and women’s groups. For information call 752-3332.

~ Theresa Hogue

A Honduran villager performing maintenance on a gravity-flow water system, using techniques taught by OSU Professor Michael Campana. (contributed photo)

Campana, now a professor in geosciences at Oregon State University, was teaching a class at the University of New Mexico on the morning of Sept. 11, when he saw his wife standing at the back of the room. He knew something was wrong.

When class was over, Mary Campana told him that his sister Ann, 49, was on board the plane that had crashed into the Pentagon. Ann Campana Judge was the travel director for National Geographic Society, and was flying with a co-worker and with three middle school students and their teachers, on their way to a National Geographic field trip in California.

“It was their first time on a plane” Campana said of the children accompanying his sister on the flight.

Days after the attacks, Campana flew to Washington, D.C., for a memorial service for his sister and other victims of the attack. There was a makeshift memorial at the site of the crash, where Campana left his own gift, which included a bottle of Dewar’s Scotch and a pack of Marlboro Lights, his sister’s favorites. When he returned home, Campana began to consider how he could create a more lasting legacy in memory of Ann.

As a professor at UNM, Campana had traveled to impoverished countries, helping locals set up clean water systems that brought in fresh, safe water directly to villages, rather than having to transport it for miles. Using simple technology like gravity flow systems, and making sure that the operation and upkeep of the systems was in the hands of the people using the water source, Campana made a difference for little cost.

Ann’s love of travel and her dedication to education around the world tied in well with her brother’s work, so Campana decided to set up a foundation in her name that would fund organizations doing similar work in Central America. He had two goals in mind; create a foundation that distributed nearly 100 percent of its funds to the projects, and support organizations that didn’t simply sweep in, create a project and then leave.

“That’s not empowering the people, that’s making them further beholden on gringos,” he said.

The foundation started small, but seven years later, has distributed nearly $200,000 to projects across Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Panama and El Salvador. Because each project is relatively low cost, that money is able to support many different organizations with grants ranging from $5,000 to $12,000. The foundation recently funded a project in El Salvador with the OSU Engineers Without Borders group.

Ann Campana Judge and her brother Michael share a moment in the months before she was killed on Sept. 11. (contributed photo)

This June, Campana took a two-week trip to Honduras and Nicaragua to visit some of the sites funded by his foundation.

“It’s just astonishing how far $12,000 went,” he said. “I was extremely impressed.”

In addition to funding other organizations, Campana is anxious to do some more hands-on work in Central America, something he hasn’t had much of a chance to do since coming to OSU in 2006.

“I realized how much I missed working with local people,” he said. “It’s amazing how people who have a fraction of what I have are doing such great things.”

Bringing clean water directly to isolated villages doesn’t just improve the sanitation and health of the residents. Campana said it has a very direct impact onthe lives of women, who are typically taxed with carrying in water from outside sources, often taking up hours of each day.
By eliminating that task, young women are freed up to attend school, while older women used that “extra” time to tend crops of herbs and spices, which they can then sell outside the village, becoming economically independent often for the first time.

Campana has many more projects in his sights, from education programs to providing drills for villages to create their own wells. One day he’d like to bring OSU students to Central America, as well.

When Campana visits a new site, he can picture his sister alongside him. “Ann would be there, swinging a sledge hammer, with a Marlboro in her mouth,” he said. “She’d be out there.”

For more information on the Ann Campana Judge Foundation, see www. http://www.acjfoundation.org/

To read a blog post Campana wrote about the 9-11 Memorial, see http://aquadoc.typepad.com/aquablog/2009/01/a-trip-.html

To hear an interview with Campana, click here.

~ Theresa Hogue

But even after the ivy was removed, another obstacle presented itself. The bare front yard was steeply sloped, and needed a lot of ingenuity to become something attractive.

“I didn’t know anything about gardening,” Cohen said. But a lifelong educator who is now an associate professor with the College of Education at Oregon State University, Cohen was accustomed to tackling difficult problems in a very straightforward way. She began reading everything she could get her hands on about gardening, and taking advice from friends who knew what they were doing.

“I dreamed about plants,” she said, as she began immersing herself in the world of gardens.

She poured over garden catalogs, plotted her dreams on graph paper, and called old college buddies for suggestions. The best advice she received was that gardens are never complete – they’re always a work in progress.

“What a great idea! Nature takes its course,” she said. “Some things work and some don’t.”

Nora Cohen of the College of Education spends her free time in her garden, which is full of lilies, peonies, hostas and campanulas, including some OSU-colored flowers. She likes to bring bouquets from her yard to co-workers at OSU. (photos: Theresa Hogue)

What worked for her front yard was creating a series of tiers, lined with rocks, in a stair-step fashion, so that plants had a level space to grow. Then she began experimenting with plantings to see what thrived, and what got tossed out.

“I’m even allowing some spontaneous natives, like mulleins, to grow,” she said. “I think they’re very dramatic. If nature helps, and it has some attraction, why not? I’m learning to be really relaxed about it.”

Being relaxed isn’t easy, especially because Cohen’s yard seems to be a series of challenges. Just when she got the right mix of perennial flowers, thickets of hostas and lots of roses and peonies scattered about, the neighborhood deer moved in and made a Sunday brunch out of the yard.

And when a neighbor’s pine tree fell on their house this spring, and their own began leaning dangerously, they suddenly ended up with a bright and bare patch of yard where cool shade once dominated. This dramatic shift means what once worked on that side of the yard is no longer right for the space.

Despite the challenges, Cohen feels deeply connected to her yard. She also has a cutting garden on a farm she and her husband own in Fall Creek. Between the two gardens she’s able to harvest big bouquets for friends, family and co-workers during a large portion of the year.

In fact, after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Cohen turned to her garden for comfort, and found flowers helped her in ways that words couldn’t. She went to her farm and picked a large number of bouquets, and then went knocking on neighbors’ doors back in Corvallis, delivering bunches to everyone. It gave her and her neighbors a chance to connect, and even cry a little, after the events of the day.

“It’s become a tradition. Every Sept. 11 I pick 30 bouquets of dahlias and zinnias, whatever is available.”

She has planted fruit trees along the parking strip in front of her house so that passersby can enjoy fruit as they walk. The fruit from the trees and shrubs on her farm she uses to make into jam, which she often gives away as gifts. She’s made enough that she now sells the jam to co-workers, and uses the proceeds to donate to the Linn-Benton Food Share. She was able to make $400 last year for the food bank.

And in addition to the bounty she shares with friends, there’s the satisfaction of stepping back and just watching the garden through all its phases.

“There’s just always something magic.”

~ Theresa Hogue

Jan Michael Looking Wolf Reibach found the Native flute sped his recovery from a stroke. (photo: Encore Photography)

Sitting on a recliner in his comfortable home in McMinnville, Native American flutist and Oregon State University music instructor Jan Michael Looking Wolf Reibach contemplates a career that includes 12 albums, two DVDs, and more than 23 award nominations.

“Awards are nice, but they don’t really mean anything,” he says, reaching out his colorfully tattooed arm to stroke the head of his dog, a miniature Chihuahua.

“What I enjoy is living every day, teaching, playing music and enjoying a clean glass of water. That is what life is about.”

Little did he know that in an hour from that moment, he would receive an e-mail where he was asked to perform at the Native American Music Awards, or Nammys, where he was named Flutist of the Year on Oct. 4. And on Sept. 6, he was named Flutist of the Year by the Indian Summer Music Awards.

It was just another honor in a musical career and life that almost was stopped short.

More than a decade ago, Reibach was a highly successful salesman in Portland who thought he had the world at his feet. He said at that time, he rarely thought about how his actions affected others.

“All I thought about was money, and how to get more of it,” he said. “I was living for things.”

Then Reibach started to get tremendous pains in his head. Eventually, he was rushed to the emergency room where he was diagnosed with a rare blood condition called Protein Enzyme C (and S) Deficiency. The condition caused Reibach to have a severe stroke and doctors gave him little chance of survival.

Miraculously, Reibach fully recovered and decided to return to the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde community where his father was raised. Soon after, he picked up the Native flute and found that it had tremendous healing power.

“I rediscovered music, and really began to understand the importance of my community, my wife, and my son,” he said.

Now, Reibach is one of the most respected Native flute players in the world. He plays sold-out concerts to thousands of fans. And he continues to evolve as a musician. His most recent album, “The Looking Wolf Project” blends hard rock with Native flute.

Reibach uses his gifts of storytelling and musicianship to make every concert a teaching experience. It was this ability to translate Native music that led OSU’s Kurt Peters, an associate professor in Ethnic Studies, to talk with Reibach about teaching.

Jan Michael Looking Wolf Reibach with some of the awards and albums on the wall of his living room. (photo: Angela Yeager)

“Jan was already teaching classes to adults and younger students at the reservation,” Peters said. “He jumped at the chance to teach at OSU.”

They took the idea to Marlan Carlson, head of the OSU Department of Music, and he was enthusiastic about the idea of starting the University’s first Native music class.

“With his unerring musical instincts, his sense for historical authenticity, and his passion for sharing the music of his ancestors, Jan Michael Looking Wolf has led untold numbers of us into a whole new dimension of the human experience,” Carlson said.

Reibach started teaching Native flute in 2005. The class filled up right away, and has remained full every term that Reibach has taught it. He now also teaches a second class on the history of Native music.

“I think it speaks to his creativity and his interest in teaching and his students that his classes do so well,” Peters said.

Every student who takes Native flute receives a handmade instrument to keep. In addition, Reibach said he uses the classes as a way to break down misperceptions about Native Americans.

“Most of my students are non native,” he said. “A lot of the class is about defeating stereotypes of Native Americans, letting them know we are thriving, and that we are a diverse people.”

Students are enthusiastic about the class and rave about Reibach’s hands-on teaching style. Clarissa Bertha, a graduate student and office coordinator for OSU’s Native American Collaborative Institute, said the class changed her life.

“I thought my graduate school experience was going to be all work and studying,” she said. “Taking the Native flute class, I was able to get more in touch with myself and my emotions. I learned to relax and let things happen naturally.”

Bertha said she never thought she could play a musical instrument. She even made a bet with Reibach.

“He told me he had never met anyone that he couldn’t teach to play the Native flute,” she said. “So I made him a bet that I would be his first that wouldn’t be able to learn to play the Native flute and he assured me that this would be the first instrument I would learn to play and master. I am happy to say I lost the bet.”

Reibach said he is now taking time off from recording any albums to focus on his teaching. He said the class and his students continue to inspire him. Peters said the result can be seen around campus.

“He always looks for new ways to be creative. I can’t think of a better type of instructor to have here at OSU,” Peters said. “I just see more and more students walking around campus with a Jan Michael flute sticking out of their backpacks. It just thrills me.”

~by Angela Yeager

Listen to “Inward” from Unity

Jeff Hino showcases his old National steel guitar. (photo: Bob Crum)

It was a cathartic moment in 1991 when Jeff Hino walked into a Seattle music store and saw it hanging there on the wall.  Possibly from Blind Boy Fuller, an original great blues-man from the 1930s and 40s, the 1934 National steel guitar with two bullet holes through it was “like an old friend,” recalls Hino.  “It spoke to me with its gutsy, soulful sound that carries the blues right to your heart.”

And if you listen to the music of Jeff Hino, learning technology leader with Extension Experiment Station Communications, and his musical partner Dave Plaehn, who graduated from OSU with a Ph.D. in math, you’ll find that the old slide guitar blends right in with their unique style of blues.

“We bring our own identity to old blues songs,” said Hino.  “We create our own experiences based on the greats like Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and Bukka White before us.”

“Jeff is good at improvising,” said Plaehn. “He’s one of the best slide players in the state.”

In their first homespun CD “On Your Bond,” Hino reflects that it felt right to be their flagship.  “It’s about trust and helping each other.  It is spiritual,” he said.  The CD earned critical acclaim with its mix of rural and urban blues and simple acoustic approach.

In their latest release, “Can’t Get My Rest,” they featured more original songs, more musicians and added color from additional instruments such as drums that they didn’t have on their first CD.  The sound ranges from country blues to pop blues to R&B.

Like most kids, Hino recalls, he was attracted to music in middle school.  He started with an electric guitar and played in the equivalent of a “garage band” in high school.  By his senior year, “we were the best rock band in Taiwan,” said Hino.

When he moved to Arizona to attend college, Hino experienced a big shift from rock to Americana, country and bluegrass.  He sold is guitar for a banjo, and when he played, “It resonated with the sense of being American,” recalled Hino.

By the mid-70s, Hino was attracted to Corvallis because of the folk music scene.  He moved to play banjo and dobro (a resonator slide guitar) for the Highwater String Band.  By the late ‘80s, he became interested in acoustic blues.

“The release of the Robert Johnson CD was really a milestone for me,” said Hino.  “It was inspiring to hear original artists from the ‘30s like that.”

Jeff Hino and Dave Plaehn have been performing acoustic blues since 1990. Their next local performance is on Nov. 22, 8:30 p.m., at Big River Restaurant, Corvallis. (photo: Bob Crum)

Then, in 1990, he joined Plaehn, a singer/songwriter and harmonica player.  “People enjoy the interplay of Dave’s harmonica and my steel guitar.  The energy and fusion of blues, country, etc., is the heart of what we do.”

With a master’s degree in educational media and experience as a library media specialist, Hino went from substitute teaching when he moved to Corvallis to working for the College of Forestry as a hands-on media specialist.  From his start at OSU in 1984, he eventually rose to COF media center director in 2002. Recently, he joined the EESC to help them use technology to better communicate Extension information across Oregon.

“My job, and my music, feed my creative side each in different ways,” said Hino. “In my job, I bring new ideas on how to deliver information using new methods.

“Music is a social outlet for me. It is incredibly rewarding being with other people in a variety of musical spaces.”

On a recent trip, he carried a ukulele on his back as he visited the Karen tribe in the hills of Thailand.  “I played an elephant folk song and some blues in the jungles of Thailand and they started playing (Eric) Clapton!”

“Music is just this incredible shared experience for everyone,” said Hino.  “It is a voice through which you can speak with anyone, and they can appreciate it. It is a wonderful feeling.”

(Not playing? Right-click here to download the MP4)