The Write Stuff
Juniata Alumnus Creates First Draft of Alaskan History
by Bob Smith ’50
When Alaskans celebrated their 50th anniversary as a state this year, they invited me to Fairbanks to retell the story of how America’s final frontier became a state.
I was working at the time, 1955 to 1959, as the Washington correspondent for the two largest newspapers in Alaska-the Anchorage Daily Times and the Fairbanks News-Miner-what had hired me specifically to cover the debates in Congress over the thorny statehood issue. Never mind that I’d never been to Alaska, they told me, just keep an eye on the House and Senate for us. I had gone straight from Juniata to Washington, D.C. to become a political reporter.
Congress had been wrestling with the question of admitting the two non-contiguous territories, Alaska and Hawaii, for years, and proponents had always come up short of enough votes to quell a filibuster by its opponents. But now they had confidence their goal could be reached.
Having majored in history at Juniata, I jumped at the opportunity to cover a truly historic event, fulfilling the notion that newspaper reporters write the first draft of history. America had not admitted a new state since 1912 when Arizona became Number 48.
Statehood was a huge controversy in Alaska, where the residents were just as divided as Congress. Lobbying efforts for and against it were fierce, commercial interests fearing higher taxes, while others sought the right to vote. Polls indicated bringing Alaska into the Union was popular with a majority of Americans, which was reflected when the House passed the bill by a comfortable margin, 217 to 172. The Senate proved a higher hurdle because of the threat of a filibuster.
When the Senate passed it 64 to 20, my story blanketed the front page under the most magnificent headline of my journalistic career. In a typeface created from wooden letters 6 inches tall, it said simply: WE’RE IN.
My Fairbanks publisher arranged for the U.S. Air Force to deliver a bundle of that edition overnight to Washington, where I met the plane and distributed copies to every senator, as well as the White House. Later I was an eyewitness in the Oval Office when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the statehood proclamation with a flourish, then turned to the Alaskan dignitaries and said, “You’re in now.”
Heady times for a reporter just a few years out of college. I went on to cover stories such as John F. Kennedy’s campaign and Oregon Senator Wayne Morse’s record filibuster against an oil exploration bill, along with countless other regional stories affecting Alaska and later, when I moved to the Portland Oregonian, residents of Oregon.
When I arrived in Fairbanks this spring, as a writer in residence at the University of Alaska, I was surprised at the red-carpet treatment I got. I discovered that my story of that triumphant event had been memorialized: a framed copy hangs outside the governor’s office in the state Capitol at Juneau; a gold souvenir coin has been struck displaying the “We’re In” headline; and an enterprising T-shirt merchant provided the option of remembering it on your chest. You know you’ve made it when your work becomes a T-shirt.
The university’s oral historians interviewed me for two days. Local media found me good column material and a lively TV presence. When the university’s popular history professor, Terrence M. Cole, arranged for me to give a public lecture, I told the crowd that “I’m here not as a celebrity but as a curiosity, the last living reporter who covered statehood. It’s kind of like being the last living Confederate soldier’s widow.”
I was pleased nonetheless to recall in some detail the political forces that came together to bring Alaska into the union: the liberal Establishment thought it was time to give these territorial residents the right to vote; Democrats were sure Alaska would elect Democrats (so much for political predictions); the oil companies, having discovered that the Kenai Peninsula promised “black gold,” wanted to deal with a state rather than the federal government for leases; and many Republicans favored it, provided Hawaii came in also.
My audience in Alaska knew what statehood had done for them, but they were less aware of what it had done for America. The addition of four senators from the 49th and 50th states shifted the balance of power in the Senate away from the Southern opponents of racial integration. Five years after statehood was adopted, the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 was enacted, thanks to Alaska and Hawaii providing one more vote than needed to stop a 57-day-long filibuster by Southern senators such as James Eastland, Russell Long, Richard Russell and Strom Thurmond.
That in turn has led to widespread racial integration, the appointment and election of black citizens to high positions, and ultimately an African- American president.
When I finished my lecture, Professor Cole invited questions from the audience. A young man in the front row stood up and asked: “Mr. Smith, when you wrote these stories, how did you get them to the newspapers up here?”
“Some of them were sent in an air mail envelope, others by Western Union.”
I could see by his facial expression he was trying to visualize my “snail mail” options before the computer age. I forgot to tell him that I telephoned the really big stories when we were on deadline. He had one more question:
“Did you actually use a typewriter?”
“I actually did.”
It seems my first draft of history was written on a device that now belongs to history as well.
Joys in the Attic: Student Discovers Colonial Document
Cleaning out the attic is pretty low on the list of fun activities for most people, but at Juniata dedicated history or museum studies students can get credit for it. And if they are astute and observant, they might find a relatively rare colonial document hidden among the knick-knacks, artifacts and book stacks in the attic of the College art museum.
Cody Fulton ‘10, of Robesonia, Pa., spent the summer and fall semester organizing, categorizing and prioritizing a huge collection of College artifacts and paraphernalia as part of an internship to create exhibits for the Juniata History Room in the newly refurbished Founders Hall.
“There was a lot of stuff piled up there when I first went into the attic,” says Fulton, who hopes to work at a military museum or battlefield park upon graduation. “Some of the weird things include a couple of diplomas from Harvard, a drawing by (Juniata’s first professor) Jacob Zuck explaining how he’d like Founders to be laid out, and three sets of panties from a panty raid in the 1970s.”
Early in the fall, Fulton was taking apart a framed map of Huntingdon as part of a preservation project and discovered a folded document stuffed behind the frame. It turned out to be a legal deposition from 1784. “It refers to a skirmish between people from Connecticut–they called them ‘Yankyies’–and Pennsylvanians, where eight people were killed,” he says. “I couldn’t read it because the writing is pretty ornate.” Historians David Sowell and David Hsiung quickly identified that the document referred to 18th century incidents where Connecticut tried to claim territory in northeast Pennsylvania.
Although it wasn’t as thrilling as discovering a van Gogh or a copy of the Declaration of Independence in the attic, Fulton is going to research the skirmish and the names of the people mentioned in the document as part of an independent study project.
Rewriting the Curriculum
Students, Faculty Inject Relevancy in College Writing Seminar
by Sarah Ruggiero ‘10
Juniata’s fitness center is located down a wide corridor flanked by locker rooms. Students from every academic discipline take advantage of the gym equipment. However, how the students occupy themselves while working out varies.
Today, three female students run on the elliptical. From atop the machines’ rotating legs, each student stares blankly at televisions hung from the ceiling in view of the machines. In addition to watching one or more of three programs on different stations, all three women listen to separate genres of music from the iPods attached to their upper arms. Also, two women simultaneously page through novels, while the third combs through a volume of biology.
Multitasking while working out is one thing–but the challenge facing Juniata faculty in general and writing instructors in particular is that students attempt to write under similar conditions. “Today’s students are multitasking more than ever and it’s affecting their writing,” explains Carol Peters, director of the College Writing Seminar (CWS) and the Writing Center. “Students aren’t turning off distractions. They really think they can write when they are watching television or listening to music.”
The development of writing skills has long been a struggle for colleges. While teens spend hours typing on the computer, the writing they produce is not necessarily publishable. Instead of devouring literary classics such as Dickens and Chaucer, students are hardwired to technology. Students recognize the chatty style of the Internet over the formal prose of literature.
The College’s English department is combating this trend by including numerous writing-intensive courses throughout the curriculum, and through a revitalization of Juniata’s signature College Writing Seminar, an interdisciplinary freshman requirement focused on broadening English writing education and strengthening ties with the Juniata community. Students gain basic familiarity with the campus and learn how to function within its borders, all the while improving their writing skills by journaling about their experiences.
The writing seminar began as a five-credit course in the fall of 1996. Initially, it spanned two semesters and functioned as English 101 and English 102. Three credit hours were dedicated to reading and writing, one credit dealt with computer literacy, titled Internet Access (IA) and one credit hour of CWS lab, or an orientation to campus life. Later, the IA portion was spun off as a separate one-credit class.
The current writing course is comprised of a faculty-run lecture class and a student-led lab. It develops the necessary reading, writing and analysis skills students will rely on for the next four years. The lecture portion of the class integrates effective communication concepts, introduces students to career planning objectives and familiarizes students to first-year student issues.
“CWS is rigorous and demanding,” says Sarah May Clarkson, director of academic support services. “Students learn to write here. It’s like riding a bike, practice, practice, practice.”
The student leader-run CWS lab portion acts in essence as an initial meeting place for freshmen. Professors feel that there is a continuity in weekly meetings with peers that provides freshmen with stability in a rapidly changing environment.
“CWS lab is the nuts and bolts class of Juniata,” says Dan Cook-Huffman, assistant dean of students. “Students make friends and learn about what’s happening on campus.”
Although faculty are very involved in the curriculum, CWS lab is handled solely by juniors and seniors. These peer advisors also facilitate a smooth transition into college life by staging weekly meetings around college and life issues. Discussion topics revolve around alcohol, sexual assault, college workloads, time management and various other topics relevant to living life independently.
Lab leaders are linked to a single writing class, usually around 15 freshmen. Student leaders work in conjunction with whichever teacher runs the class and present themselves as a mentor to students. The object is to establish a relationship with their students where the younger Juniatians can ask for help on any aspect of the College.
It was the lab portion that got the stiffest makeover. “We started from scratch in a way,” says Judy Katz, associate professor of English. “We rethought our roles as faculty members and the student lab assistant roles, along with reformulating our expectations.”
The restructure placed greater emphasis on more complex thinking. The faculty rewrote journal prompts (topics or questions for students to write about). While old prompts included writing about roommates or the dining hall, new topics more creatively address freshman issues. Lab groups this year incorporated prompts such as designing a (music) playlist for their lives or comparing themselves to any object in the grocery store. Topics of discussion were revamped to include more modern freshman year issues, such as the detriments associated with using Facebook. Also, two new Juniata Associate positions were created for students to act as liaisons between student lab leaders and faculty. (Juniata Associates are manager-level student employees with expanded responsibilities, a new College employment program.)
In the new CWS lab, students also gain experience while planning, writing and presenting a freshman capstone project. The capstone is a final class collaboration where students can display their refined skills in writing, communication and presentation. Lab groups have been known to write and design brochures for aspects of the College, create and construct Web sites devoted to authors they studied in class, or to write and produce films. The collaborative aspects of the capstone project encourage students to go outside of their comfort zones to be part of a team.
“Lab is all about group dynamic,” said Clarkson. “Throughout your life you will always be working in a group. How do you handle a bad group? That’s a huge life skill. If the group does work, why?”
The expanded role for lab leaders requires them to complete extensive training, attend frequent meetings with mentors, and to brief faculty members after the conclusion of each lab. Lab leaders also meet collectively once a week in an effort to ensure all the labs are unified in topic assignments and to critique classroom problems.
This year’s labs responded positively to the change. However, faculty members have had problems in the past with leaders slacking off on mentoring duties and time commitments.
“There are specific things we want students to learn in lab, like where to get help and tutoring,” says Cook-Huffman. “Students won’t learn these things if their lab meets for fifteen minutes every other week.”
Cook-Huffman explains that lab leaders are given a level of respect and trust on campus. However, leaders are still students and must respond to challenges. “Student leaders aren’t teachers, they aren’t trained in rhetoric,” says Cook- Huffman. Cook-Huffman emphasizes that lab leaders’ relationships with their faculty members are essential to successful labs.
Faculty members hope the changes in the writing lab will help students feel that they want to write more, whether through journaling, blogging, or other options, and consequently enjoy lab more.
“Many students complained that it was a waste of time,” said Cook- Huffman. “Clearly what makes the most sense is to keep it practical.”
“I hated CWS lab,” said sophomore Jennifer Novak ‘12, of Rome, Pa. “It was a joke and a waste of my time. It was just the format of the lab. I felt like I was in elementary school again. I’m glad they’ve given the lab more structure that is relevant to freshmen.”
In the past, surveys were administered to freshmen at the completion of the writing course, usually during finals. The single survey, however, left no room to gauge improvement. This year, Academic Support Services surveys students in the middle of the semester and at the conclusion in the hope that the College will fine-tune CWS into a more userfriendly format.
Cook-Huffman agrees that those students who embrace the writing course at the College will surpass their expectations of success.
“What I love most is just seeing students succeed and watching students grow up, seeing each individual catch that spark and find themselves,” says Cook-Huffman.
Classical Gas Work
Juniata Chemist Finds Renewed Interest in Shale Research from ’70s to ’90s
In the beginning there was the rock. Encased inside the rock was an interesting substance that could provide heat and light. Later identified as natural gas, this substance was initially thought worthless. For decades oil drillers burned off excess gas, a byproduct of oil production, until someone figured out that natural gas could be a source of energy too. As gas became more valued as a product, energy companies in the 1950s and ’60s started to drill for gas deposits in black shale and in some cases they would hit gas, but almost always nothing would happen.
Actually, something was happening. There was gas escaping from fractures in the shale, but at levels that were undetectable to drillers. As it turned out, the Marcellus Shale, which potentially holds one of the largest natural gas deposits on earth, runs right through Pennsylvania (including Huntingdon). Back then, around 1960, though, the gas companies knew the shale held gas, they just didn’t know how to get the gas out of the shale effectively.
But we are getting ahead of our story.
Juniata’s role in researching what could be one of the largest energy deposits in North America starts in 1970 in the Columbus, Ohio boardroom of the Columbia Gas Corp. Sitting at the table is John Stauffer, president of Juniata College (1968-1975) and a Columbia board member, and he’s listening to a presentation on how company engineers can’t understand why some shale wells produce gas, but most don’t. Stauffer decides to bring the problem back to campus.
Enter Paul Schettler. At first, he didn’t know what was going on with the shale wells, either. Although his graduate research involved adsorption of gases into clay-like materials and he was a physical chemist, Schettler had spent most of his time in a college classroom, not running around on wildcat rigs wearing a hard hat. The closest he’d ever been to a big drill was the dentist’s office. But he had an idea of where to start to solve the gas company’s problem.
“The gas company’s petroleum engineers didn’t understand it at all,” says Schettler, who would spend more than 20 years working on various gas-related projects and receive more than $1.3 million in research grants from the U.S. Department of Energy, the Gas Research Institute, Terra Tek Corp. and Columbia Gas. “In a gas well, their instruments would measure that the permeability of the rock was zero (meaning no gas was flowing) but occasionally they would get (gas) flow.”
“I was much younger then than I am now, but I said right away that I could measure the permeability,” Schettler recalls, laughing. “So I set up some experiments and Columbia Gas started sending me samples.”
The central experiment Schettler devised involved putting shale samples under pressure using methane gas. He would pressurize the sample, then release the pressure while sealing the apparatus. If pressure rose in the sealed area, that meant the shale was permeable and natural gas could flow through it.
Like almost all scientists, Schettler took his results, published them, and subsequently was invited to present his research at a Department of Energy meeting in Washington, D.C. Since almost all scientists love listening to presentations, Schettler arrived early and settled in to listen to some DOE scientists. “I heard a group present research on the decline curve of shale natural gas wells the night before my talk and I realized what I was getting was a small permeability on the rock and what they were getting from their work was that these wells (if there was detectable gas flow) produced over 20 to 30 years,” he says. “I stayed up and rewrote my talk to relate my lab results to the flow of gas in these wells.”
While not quite the “Eureka moment” that Edwin Drake felt when his Titusville, Pa. oil well came in, everybody at the meeting knew the physical chemist from Juniata was onto something.
Back on Campus
Schettler created a grant proposal in 1976 to follow up on his presentation and submitted it to the National Science Foundation. “I got a call from the NSF telling me, ‘We cannot fund your proposal, DOE won’t let us. DOE will contact you.’” Schettler recalls. “The energy department funded our proposal and pretty soon we had core samples of shale coming to the lab from all over–New York, Ohio, West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Pennsylvania.”
By the late 1970s, Schettler was deeply immersed in gas research. He was taking teams of students on drill sites and Rick Parmely, then a Juniata lab manager and now a scientist with Restek, a State College firm specializing in chromatography, was overseeing the rock sample tests arriving weekly.
For fans of “ancient history,” Schettler used a computer to calculate and analyze his tests. With the aid of Dale Wampler, then a professor of computer science, Schettler wrote software (Wampler did the hardware) for his instrument analysis. Since this was about 30 years ago, they didn’t use a laptop or even a desktop. They used a Data General “minicomputer,” which was small for its time, but still was about the size of a window air conditioner.
In addition to Juniata’s permeability studies, Columbia Gas sought ways to make drilling more predictable. According to Schettler, teams of 10 to 20 people would staff a drill site at a cost of about $100,000 a day. “They didn’t have any way of measuring how much gas flowed through the rock,” Schettler explains. “The method they had been using was lowering a microphone into the drill hole to see if they could hear hissing.”
Once more the decidedly younger Schettler said he could do something about that and set out to design flow meters for use in detecting natural gas flow. In fall 1981 he went on sabbatical and tried to figure out instruments that could measure gas flow “down hole” or deep in the depths of a test well. Collaborating with Juniata biologist Todd Gustafson (”he can build anything,” Schettler says), the two tinkerers came up with two prototypes.
The first flow meter was “basically a hot wire” called a thermistor, according to Gustafson. When gas flows around a wire that is electrified, it cools the wire and changes its resistance. “This instrument, as it was lowered, could tell us where the gas was entering the well bore within about a foot,” Schettler says.
The second prototype was a tubular instrument with a fan at the bottom. Injected with hydrogen sulfide, the instrument would release a continuous stream of hydrogen sulfide and as the fan pushed the gas upward, the instrument could measure the dilution levels of other gases present in the drill hole. “We could calibrate that and get a pretty accurate reading on what the concentration of gas was.”
Columbia Gas received two patents on the instruments. The two gauges solved a major problem for Columbia Gas–determining if a well would be a major producer. Unfortunately these scientific breakthroughs caused a major problem for Schettler and Juniata.
The Power of Gas
Although Schettler and many students had been able to use the gas research as an amazing experiential resource, once the flow meters came into use, they changed the game from research to business. “I’d get a call and they would want me and my flow meters to be down in West Virginia by 4 p.m. and I’d tell them ‘I’m giving a final!’” Schettler recalls with a laugh. “They’d say ‘So what.’ I had to decide at that point whether I was going to go into the gas business or if I was going to teach.”
Which explains why Juniata’s would-be gas magnate is driving a decades-old Volvo instead of a gleaming Mercedes, BMW or whatever gas millionaires drive. “I was tired,” he says emphatically. “It was laborious and once we had all the techniques in place all the students were doing was analysis.” Schettler explains that the students who worked on the project received lots of analytical experience, but it did not translate well for graduate school or for the energy industry. “It was a lot of work, but it was better done by petroleum engineers, and energy companies are not going to hire chemists to do what geologists and petroleum engineers are suited for. Still, at the time we were the only academic institution in the country that was doing this kind of work.”
Beyond the Shale: New Life
The funding for Schettler’s literally ground-breaking research ran out in 1994. In addition to the fact the project was not a perfect fit for undergraduate researchers, the gas industry lost interest in recovering natural gas from shale. Energy prices were down and the costs of getting the gas outweighed the 1990s gas prices.
That was before the summer of 2006, when gasoline prices spiked over $4 a gallon. Shortly thereafter, natural gas costs began to shoot upward as well, in some part because domestic gas supply was dropping. All of a sudden, getting natural gas out of solid rock was looking pretty good.
Natural gas in shale exists in fractures within the rock. In the Marcellus Shale, the rock fractures run vertically and are poorly connected. When Schettler spent his free time on drill sites, the wells were drilled vertically. Nowadays, drillers can turn the wellbore to horizontal, making it much easier to penetrate rock fractures. On top of that, water can be introduced into sealed sections of the well, producing a pressure high enough to fracture surrounding rock. Add higher natural gas prices into the equation and Juniata’s original research is looking pretty important.
Schlumberger-Doll Corp., a major services provider in the oil industry, agreed, asking Schettler to travel to its Boston headquarters early in 2009 to give a seminar on his work.
So, is “Schetts” ready to don the hard hat and revisit gas wells in the wilds of Pennsylvania? Well, no. “I’m a person who goes to bed at night with a problem on my mind and then I wake up with a solution. Sometimes I wake up awfully tired,” he says. “Am I ready to do this again at age 72? I don’t think so.”
But he wouldn’t mind if someone else picked up the drill, so to speak.
Laser Focus: Chemist Tests Out Forensic Instruments
Normally, college science classes confine themselves to using proven analytical instruments–like spectrometers, chromatographs, various microscopes–but a Juniata chemist will spend the next 18 months or so testing three different laser-based spectrometers with possible uses in analysis of hazardous materials and criminal forensics.
“We are helping to refine the user requirements for these instruments and have our students get hands-on experience using them,” says Richard Hark, professor of chemistry, whose lab was chosen to participate in a congressionally funded project with A-3 Technologies, an Aberdeen, Md.- based company near the Army Research Laboratory.
Hark and two undergraduate student researchers will test three different versions of a Laser Induced Breakdown Spectrometer, commonly called a LIBS, in chemistry circles. A LIBS instrument uses a laser to atomize a sample of material. The bright spark formed is then analyzed according to its unique light signatures.
The three instruments to be tested include the MINI-ST(TM), which uses laser technology to analyze materials at distances up to 30 meters.
Another LIBS instrument is a portable, self-contained unit that uses battery power and is designed for use in the field. The instrument is contained in a waterproof, briefcase-like case and uses a small chamber to analyze material.
The RT-100 is a much larger, completely contained laser system that can be moved easily (in areas such as a building or laboratory) but is not designed to be portable in the field.
Hark will test all three instruments for either applicability for use in forensic analysis or as tools to help first responders determine if unknown substances are hazardous materials.
“We look forward to gaining valuable feedback on the performance of these instruments for these important applications,” says Rick Russo, president of A3 Technologies, LLC.
Juniata Student’s Geodesic Dome in the NY Times
See the NY Times article.
Happy Holidays from Juniata!
In celebration of the holiday season, we made a little movie that combines some of the best of our Juniata traditions and the beauty of our campus.
I hope you enjoy it, and that you and yours have a wonderful and mirth-filled holiday season.
Sincerely,
Tom Kepple
In Memoriam
On occasion, we’ll post a memory of a loved one sent to us by one of our alumni.
If you’d like to submit one, add it to the comment section.
JC Would Like To Say Thanks!
Please read our student thank you notes to understand the real impact such gifts have.
What are you thankful for this season?
Tell us in the comments!
Founders Hall Dedication Photos
Like one of these better than the actual cover? Tell us which one in the comments!
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