{"id":50298,"date":"2011-10-31T16:42:58","date_gmt":"2011-10-31T16:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=50298"},"modified":"2018-10-01T13:15:07","modified_gmt":"2018-10-01T17:15:07","slug":"one-of-us-magazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2011\/10\/31\/one-of-us-magazine\/","title":{"rendered":"Defending their honors theses, young scholars undergo a final metamorphosis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018One of Us’<\/p>\n

By H. Jay Burns
\nPhotographs by Phyllis Graber Jensen<\/p>\n

As the Scandinavian voice rumbles from the speakerphone, geology honors candidate Keegan Runnals \u201911 leans forward to hear better.<\/p>\n

The voice belongs to Icelandic geophysicist P\u00e1ll Einarsson, the outside examiner for Runnals\u2019 thesis defense held this April morning in a Pettengill Hall seminar room. Einarsson, teleconferencing from the University of Iceland, is questioning the final slide of Runnals\u2019 brief public presentation. \u201cYou have this picture up, yah? With these arrows? And where do these arrows come from?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Before his geology honors defense starts, Keegan Runnals completes paperwork with politics professor Aslaug \u00c1sgeirsd\u00f3ttir, chair of the honors panel, while his adviser, Dyk Eusden \u201980, checks the video setup.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThe arrows show the spreading direction of the plates, from the Nuvel 1A model,\u201d replies a confident Runnals, who knows Einarsson from doing Bates-funded honors research in Iceland last summer.<\/p>\n

Maybe because Runnals\u2019 words needed to travel to Iceland, there was a lull before Einarsson asked a less geologic and more Socratic question. \u201cThe question really is, how do people find these spreading directions?\u201d<\/p>\n

With that, the gloves come off.<\/p>\n

Each year, a bit more than 10 percent of the senior class undertakes a yearlong honors thesis. Compared to the regular thesis (completed by 98 percent of seniors), the honors version requires greater mastery of the topic at hand, and it\u2019s more intense and ritualized.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no wiggle room on any deadlines. This year, the candidates had to turn in their black-bound tomes by 3 p.m. on March 25, and all candidates had to face one final test unique to the honors program: the oral examination, or defense, before a panel of scholars.<\/p>\n

While not as bedeviling as, say, \u201cWhat\u2019s the sound of one hand clapping,\u201d the panelists\u2019 probing questions effectively remove the training wheels and push the candidate away from certainty. Like this one posed to a biology major: \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you explain the significance of the statistically insignificant differences?\u201d<\/p>\n

This spring, Bates Magazine<\/em> visited three defenses.<\/p>\n

Runnals, of Wolfeboro, N.H., used extensive fieldwork in Iceland to theorize that faults and fissures found on the Reykjanes Peninsula are due mostly to volcanic eruptions rather than earthquakes.<\/p>\n

Andrew Beck \u201911 of Okemos, Mich., explained why the Romans were able to defeat Hannibal at the Battle of Zama just 14 years after Hannibal handed the Romans their heads at the Battle of Cannae.<\/p>\n

Carolynn Harris \u201911 of Weston, Conn., contributed to ongoing Bates research, funded by the National Science Foundation, that seeks to reconstruct prehistoric ecosystems in the Gulf of Maine in order to better understand current fisheries problems (\u201cBare Bones,\u201d Summer 2009).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Honors candidate Andrew Beck is sent to the chalkboard by his honors panel to illustrate one of his ideas about the Battle of Zama<\/p><\/div>\n

For most of the year, honors students lead a cloistered existence. Submitting the thesis begins a metamorphosis from private thinker to public scholar, from the \u201cintimate experience of working with a faculty adviser, to the external experience of defending your ideas to distinguished scholars,\u201d says Dean of the Faculty Pamela Baker \u201970.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how Beck felt. \u201cWhen I wrote my thesis, I felt like a student \u2014 working with my adviser, Margaret Imber, to learn the topic and structure my argument.\u201d Then everything changed for the defense. \u201cAnswering questions from scholars, I felt like a peer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bates honors program goes back to 1927, but the current form emerged in the 1970s during President Hedley Reynolds\u2019 ambitious tenure. By expanding the faculty, Reynolds gave professors time to dig deeper into their own academic research and time to guide students into more specialized honors work.<\/p>\n

Reynolds and his deans added outside examiners to the honors process, which had an ulterior motive, recalls Reynolds Professor of History John Cole. \u201cTo create a first-class institution, Bates needed a first-class reputation in graduate programs,\u201d he says. \u201cThe initial goal was to bring in outside examiners from graduate schools to see our best students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most Bates honors panels comprise three members: two Bates professors and the outside examiner, a scholar who either travels to Bates or beams in via teleconference. Either way, the outside examiner adds spice to what feels like a one-act play.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

University of Virginia history professor J.E. Lendon listens intently as Beck explains an idea about Hannibal\u2019s defeat at Zama.<\/p><\/div>\n

Such star power was in play for Andrew Beck\u2019s thesis defense, held in the classical and medieval studies lounge in Pettengill Hall a day after Runnals\u2019 session. Initially, the gathering feels casual until panelist Cole looks around and says, \u201cLet\u2019s deregularize these chairs.\u201d The curtain has opened.<\/p>\n

For his analysis of Cannae and Zama, Beck drew upon the book Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity,<\/em> a highly praised analysis by University of Virginia history professor J.E. Lendon.<\/p>\n

As the panel positions itself in the lounge, filling up on coffee and cookies, suddenly there\u2019s J.E. Lendon himself at the door. It\u2019s like the Annie Hall<\/em> scene where Woody Allen pulls Marshall McLuhan into the conversation so McLuhan can tell the guy, \u201cYou know nothing of my work!\u201d<\/p>\n

But at Bates, Lendon has been invited into the scene not to bury Beck but to challenge him and, after Beck answers the challenge, to praise him.<\/p>\n

As the defense begins, most of the verbal parrying is between Lendon and Beck. A photographer circles the room as they talk about the trustworthiness of ancient sources; whether the Carthaginian interest in commerce influenced their military culture; and whether Beck makes a misstep by introducing the oft-quoted Chinese military theorist Sun Tzu.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy did you use Sun Tzu?\u201d Lendon finally asks, point-blank. \u201cCertainly there other equally boring observants of war,\u201d he adds, noting that he thinks Sun Tzu\u2019s insights can be \u201cpretty feeble.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beck replies, \u201cI was trying to make a point about battlefield principles in an interesting way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lendon, who, like other examiners, is paid $200 plus expenses, afterward grants that Beck\u2019s citing of Sun Tzu is sound. Lendon says that, generally, one\u2019s argument is improved by introducing a variety of ideas from outside the specific topic at hand. \u201cBut the proof is in the pudding,\u201d he says. \u201cIs what you bring in helpful?\u201d<\/p>\n

In Beck\u2019s case, the answer is yes. \u201cThe level of discourse was very high,\u201d Lendon says, \u201cthe sort of discussion I would have in a graduate seminar.\u201d And that\u2019s really the point of the enterprise, he adds. \u201cAt the culmination of an education, we treat the students as one of us, even for a brief period. Sometimes it\u2019s a disaster, and sometimes it works incredibly well, as it did here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beck is now in Baton Rouge, La., on the City Year program, mentoring in local schools and participating in education-related projects.<\/p>\n

Over in Carnegie Science Hall, Carolynn Harris\u2019 defense is dizzying. Ostensibly biology, her work is rampantly interdisciplinary, also including geology, archeology, and history.<\/p>\n

With multiple disciplines involved, Harris\u2019 honors panel grows like a Senate inquiry. Official adviser Will Ambrose, professor of<\/p>\n

biology, is joined by geology professor Bev Johnson, who worked closely with Harris on aspects of her research dealing with isotopic analysis of ancient fish bones.<\/p>\n

\u201cNavigating between the two of us has been hard enough,\u201d Ambrose quips early on.<\/p>\n

Harris\u2019 thesis investigates ancient ecosystems by comparing the eating habits of various fishes, historic and current. That\u2019s done by looking at carbon and nitrogen isotopes in their bones: ancient bones selected by Harris from prehistoric sites on Penobscot Bay, and current samples taken from fish purchased at a Portland fish market and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Andrew Beck ’11 is now in Baton Rouge, La., on the City Year program, mentoring in local schools and participating in education-related projects.<\/p><\/div>\n

Working in the college\u2019s Environmental Geochemistry Laboratory, Harris scoured the bones with a Dremel tool and bathed them in hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide. She then measured the bones\u2019 isotopes using a stable isotope mass spectrometer, one of the few such machines in Maine designed to analyze modern and ancient organic matter.<\/p>\n

Her findings support ongoing Bates research, led by Johnson, that tells us something rather surprising about Maine\u2019s ancient fish habitats and fish populations: They began to change well before Europeans arrived along Maine\u2019s coastline.<\/p>\n

Native peoples \u00a0caused some changes by fishing, but the reasons for other important habitat changes remain unknown, such as the decline in eelgrass beds.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd some jerk is always going to challenge you.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The multiple disciplines present at Harris\u2019 defense means whiplash questions. A professor reminds Harris to distinguish between \u201cfish\u201d and \u201cfishes.\u201d Another wants to know how climate change affects sculpin distribution in Penobscot Bay, and why she used the Maquoit Bay environment in Brunswick as one baseline. And, for goodness sake, why didn\u2019t she include clams in her research, too?<\/p>\n

Challenging the candidate has a larger purpose, explains outside examiner Kelton McMahon \u201905, a biology postdoc with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who also had the Ambrose-Johnson advising team for his honors work.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will always have to make certain assumptions about your work,\u201d he tells her during a brief lull. \u201cAnd some jerk is always going to challenge you.\u201d<\/p>\n

When challenged, the educated liberal arts graduate needs to be able to move beyond easy assumption but stop at the precipice of speciousness. \u201cYou have to be completely honest about the limits of your equations or variables or assumptions,\u201d McMahon explains. \u201cBe confident \u2014 but also be able to explain how your interpretations might have to change.\u201d<\/p>\n

McMahon also talks about being a public scholar. He shares a story about going through customs in Los Angeles and meeting the R&B singer Ciara. She asks the usual question: what McMahon does for a living. \u201cI had two minutes to make my research understandable.\u201d (He is finding ways to learn the location of fish habitats merely by measuring isotopes in their bodies.)<\/p>\n

A scholar should be able to explain his or her work to the public, McMahon says, whether in an elevator or going through customs, \u201cin a way that answers their question, \u2018Why should I care?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

After fielding all the questions, Harris, who is working with a marine laboratory this summer, takes a breath and announces, unprompted, that despite all the assumptions she\u2019s had to make, \u201cI stand by my conclusions.\u201d The group laughs in appreciation. \u201cWe\u2019ve all been there!\u201d says biologist Ronald Barry.<\/p>\n

During Runnals\u2019 defense, Einarsson\u2019s accented voice offers more and more questions about those arrows and the tectonic plate movements they represent. How do we know about the plate movements? What is the origin of measurements? Is it from GPS or magnetic anomalies? Then geologist John Creasy takes over, asking Runnals if he\u2019s thought about how his theories would apply to faults and fissures on the ocean floor.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on the experience a few months later, Runnals says it was all good.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re writing a yearlong thesis, it\u2019s hard to think about every single aspect of your project in depth,\u201d he explains. \u201cSo it\u2019s good to know what the experts find important that you didn\u2019t give much thought to.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was all good for a couple other reasons.<\/p>\n

After leaving the room so the panel could vote (\u201cHonors\u201d or \u201cNo Honors\u201d), Runnals and his adviser, Dyk Eusden \u201980, return to learn that he\u2019s been granted honors, as did all candidates in 2011.<\/p>\n

Runnals then asks his own question of Einarsson. \u201cIs there enough material here to maybe produce a paper?\u201d Yes, replies Einarsson. \u201cThis can be made into quite a substantial paper.\u201d The answer brings the first smile from Runnals of the session, plus a quiet \u201cWow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Runnals\u2019 second question asks if Einarsson is willing to work with him on the paper. Again, the geophysicist says yes. And that\u2019s where Runnals is right now, in Iceland, working with Einarsson on the manuscript.<\/p>\n

And a scholar is born.<\/p>\n