Kari Plog '11

Some of the rowers told their moms about the crazy idea. Others opted to beg for forgiveness, especially once the news hit the papers.

After PLU rowed the Clipper to victory in the boat’s final race against the University of Puget Sound and Seattle Pacific on American Lake, UW wanted its piece of history back. It was returned home to hang from the rafters of UW’s shellhouse at its Seattle campus.

In exchange, PLU was offered another UW boat, the Loyal Shoudy, with one stipulation: the Lutes had to transport it.

At the time, men’s crew was coordinating all of their competitions and sleeping in churches and people’s homes on the road. They didn’t have extra money lying around to move a 60-foot shell.

So, like typical young adults who feel invincible, they said “let’s row.”

“When you’re 18 or 19 years old, you don’t realize potential consequences. We didn’t realize the hazard of it,” Jim Bartlett said. “I never let my parents know that I was participating in this.”

Bartlett, a junior-varsity coxswain called up for the rowdown, made it to Saltwater State Park where the group urged him to call it quits out of an abundance of caution.

“I dried off and was ready to go,” he said, acknowledging in hindsight that he likely was facing hypothermia. “They said I’d had enough.”

Eric Schneider ’70 said he respected his mother’s wishes and stayed home that day.

“My mom was adamant against it,” he said. “She had a premonition that I’d drown.”

Still, Schneider joined the reunion in June — an event organized by Jim Ojala ’69 that welcomed rowers who were in the Loyal Shoudy that day, as well as rowers who came before and after — and enjoyed reminiscing with his fellow oarsmen.

“I learned to row in the (Husky) Clipper,” he said. “We do everything together, this group.”

Schneider credits PLU with changing his life in many ways. Rowing was a big part of that meaningful change. “Crew gave me that stamina in life,” he said. “You just don’t quit.”

The camaraderie aboard the Rowdown Reunion boat this summer was palpable. “Last night, we got together and it was like no time had passed at all,” Norm Purvis ’70 said, looking around at the aged, yet familiar, faces.

The ceremonial cruise was the culmination of a full itinerary of events, including a tour of the Husky shellhouse and the historic one it replaced.

The yacht’s dark wood trimmings and plush cushions were a lot more comfortable than the conditions the rowdown crew faced 50 years prior along the same route. The men swapped war stories, political ideologies and reminisced about their rich lives — an encyclopedia of the good ol’ days.

The stories grew in scope as the wine and beer supply dwindled: “And they’re all true,” one of them quipped.

Lauralee Hagen, senior advancement officer at PLU, said the hoopla experienced on board that day wasn’t unusual for the rowers. Former crew members maintain one of the strongest bonds she’s seen among alumni groups. “This is one of our most dedicated affinity groups,” she said.

Doug Nelson ’90, a former rower and PLU coach who serves as president of the Lute Crew Alumni Association, said the connection rowers have in the boat during competition carries into life.

“You have to be doing exactly what all your boatmates are doing at the exact same time,” he said of competitions. “Some of my best friends to this day are people I rowed with.”

Many of the rowdown crew members vividly remember the exhaustion that followed their incredible experience 50 years ago.

The next day, Holmes — with blisters on his hands and backside — managed to roll out of bed for chapel (direct orders from his girlfriend at the time). “I fell asleep,” he said, laughing.

Pearson has pored over stories and photos with his grandchildren many times over. Despite the clear dangers they thwarted and the criticism they faced ahead of time, he makes no apologies.

“Call us young, foolish, stubborn, irresponsible,” he said, “but when you get out there and you do it, you won’t let your teammates down.”

That happy accident resulted in a vocational about-face, accelerated academic growth and a valuable relationship with a beloved professor.

“She’s helping me figure out what I want out of my education,” Estrada said of Gina Hames, associate professor of history. “It makes college less intimidating.”

Hames said the assignment was aimed at preparing first-year students for the rigorous academic journey ahead of them.

“I have them do a full-blown research project,” she said of her writing 101 students. “The 10-page paper prepares them for the next several years of college-level work.”

Students in her class read each other’s work and offer feedback throughout the semester. They also learn about library literacy and research methods from Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, an associate professor and teaching librarian at PLU, as well as attend mandatory meetings with Hames to make sure their projects are on track. “They learn to be critical readers,” Hames said. “It’s a lot for them to do.”

Estrada’s work ethic immediately shined through, Hames said. She didn’t just do the work, she did it with a positive attitude and a perpetual smile on her face.

“She is a super hard worker,” Hames said. “I’m super impressed with her.”

And it’s easy to see why.

Estrada researched and analyzed information about the treatment and prevention of tuberculosis and HIV in children. Co-infection is a primary contributor of child mortality in sub-Saharan Africa. She outlined best practices for, and challenges of, diagnosing children facing the life-threatening, preventable conditions. Additionally, she addressed access to care sites and the resources needed to improve the public health outlook of children 5 years old and younger.

“We can see that money specifically directed to helping the sites is tied to overall progress,” Estrada wrote in her analysis. “Reducing the mortality rate will only be achieved if certain issues are addressed as soon as possible. Those issues include correct diagnosis, treatments that are timed and ordered correctly, and more funds being distributed to communities that are lacking.”

Estrada was pleasantly surprised when her paper was selected for the symposium. She said prepping for the presentation would have been intimidating without Hames’ steadfast guidance.

“We’re going to practice until it’s perfect,” Hames recalled saying, during multiple meetings before the conference.

Despite her unrelenting coaching, Estrada never uttered a complaint. “She was super excited to do it,” Hames said.

Hames says the mentorship she provides to Estrada, as well as other students, is the foundation of a lifelong bond. She looks forward to watching the continued growth from the passenger seat.

“She’s fearless,” Hames said. “She’s really coming into her own.”

That accelerated growth is what makes the job worth it, Hames added.

“It’s the icing,” she said, smiling. “This is why I do this.”

“What is more remarkable is that all four are women,” she said. “Economics remains a heavily male-dominated field, even at the undergraduate level.” (In 2016, Travis said, only 37 percent of undergraduate economics majors nationwide were women.)

In addition to her own personal connection as a regular commuter, Jessen said her topic easily resonated with voters at the time she pursued it.

She said Sound Transit 3, a ballot measure in the November 2016 election that proposed the expansion of the regional public transit system, was a hot-button issue that added even more intrigue to her already relevant research.

“I was very interested to find out that public transit is highly subsidized,”Jessen said. “I was interested in looking at the subsidy rate and how that affects the rider rate.”

*Data on rates from 2014

Jessen used statistical analysis to examine the relationship between public transportation subsidies and ridership. She acknowledges that she didn’t find a definite conclusion, and would benefit from more time and more advanced methods.

But the student-faculty research process gave her the confidence to take those next steps if she chooses to continue the research in the future. She learned how to pull data from national databases and learned how to troubleshoot errors while crunching numbers. She says Travis and Matt Davis, visiting assistant professor of economics, were key players in her growth as an academic.

“I definitely couldn’t have done it without them,” Jessen said. “It took a lot of hours just to get the data cleaned up and organized. We worked together to build this data set.”

Travis says she also learns a thing or two from her students through that mentorship model.

“The fun part is, when I go to teach capstone,” she said, “I don’t know what I’m going to learn.”

Still, Travis said, students gain two important skills through close collaboration with experienced faculty members: self direction and practical application.

“Nobody tells you the answers,” Travis said of self-guided research projects. She noted that the work helps students apply what they learn in the classroom to tangible, real-world opportunities. “A lot of students get jobs because of their economics capstones.”

The projects also help students learn more about what they hope to do post graduation.

“Research can rule out or expand possibilities,” Travis said.

“I have a lot of exposure to financial aid and how it all works,” said Christensen, a financial aid peer counselor at PLU. “I wanted to better understand what’s happening in the market.”

Christensen was curious why borrowers choose to default on their student loans. Nationally, she said, 28 percent of those borrowers default — meaning they haven’t made payments for at least 270 days — within the first five years of repayment.

To her surprise, Christensen’s research showed that there are some instances when defaulting may be the best option. She also found that there is some back and forth about whether people who default on their loans are punished too harshly.

Beyond her findings, Christensen learned a lot about independent study while pursuing her topic. Travis helped her fine-tune the research question and encouraged Christensen to pursue the national conference presentation.

“I applied the day before the deadline,” she said. After learning several months later that she was accepted to present in Memphis, she joked that she “kind of forgot about it.”

Christensen had completed smaller research projects for other classes, but this was the first time she authored a paper that was accepted for a large-scale presentation.

She said Travis’ guidance was key to the intimidating process, providing “a fresh set of eyes” and a meaningful support system. “It gives me a foundation for how to do research,” she said, “and how to do research effectively.”

As she enters a University of Washington graduate program for higher education administration, Christensen offers advice to undergraduate students who are considering conducting similar research: “Don’t be intimidated. When you break it down, you’re taking skills you already have and applying them to something tangible.”

Travis and Chair of Economics Norris Peterson both helped Haselwood along the way, primarily with econometrics — a fancy word used to describe the application of statistical techniques on economic data. Haselwood said the independent instruction she received from both faculty members was crucial.

“I feel like it’s something you wouldn’t get at bigger universities,” she said. “It really builds a valuable relationship you can take with you after college.”

“People weren’t afraid to be critical,” she said. “That was not something I had experience with. It was difficult at first.”

Domini confided in Travis for emotional support before, during and after the experience. “She helped me realize that just because people are curious and have questions, doesn’t meant that what I’m doing is invalid,” she said. “It was really good to know that I had a support system.”

Despite the intimidation she felt at times, Domini appreciates the opportunity to share her research with others and the confidence she built with Travis’ help.

“She has worked with me and now she believes in my ability to work on my own,” Domini said. “It’s like I can do accelerated learning with her that I wouldn’t be able to get anywhere else.”

Jessen agreed. Not only did the experience expand her opportunities, as Travis stressed, but it expanded her academic borders.

“It makes you realize that there are really talented people from all kinds of disciplines all over the country,” Jessen said. “It exposes you to the bigger world outside of PLU.”

Hours earlier, a man tangled up in a missing-person investigation and a child-custody battle blew up his home with his children inside. The homicide-suicide committed by Josh Powell remains one of the area’s most horrific crimes, forcing sleepy Graham, Washington, into the national spotlight.

Despite the emotional turmoil surrounding the devastation, that firefighter — himself a father of two sons — rose to the call of duty. He was tasked with removing the bodies of the two young boys, similar in age to his own, from the charred remains of the home.

“As we have all grown up in today’s society, we have all learned and been socialized to think that first responders are the ones who are supposed to rescue us when circumstances arise,” Landon Packard ’17 wrote in his research paper about the emotional labor experienced by first responders. “Yet, we haven’t been socialized to understand the guilt and heartbreak that comes with the job.”

That firefighter and 13 other interview subjects opened up to Packard about experiences that are often difficult for them to discuss, even with their loved ones. The collection of testimonials comprised the sociology capstone project that Packard says is personal.

“The interviews took place in a variety of places, from quiet living rooms to different coffee shops,” he wrote in his analysis. The interviews were between 35 and 60 minutes, depending on the comfort level of each participant. “Some participants were very upfront and willing to talk, whereas other participants were more reserved.”

Three themes were consistent across all interviews, Packard found. All of the subjects used gallows humor as a way of coping, all of them experienced deep sympathy when tragedy struck children and their families, and all of them experienced a culture of “learning as you go” to cope with emotional strain.

“First responders have other lives outside of work. I think people sometimes forget that,” Packard said. “When these people are home, they have other struggles they are dealing with. They have to carry their problems with them to work and take on others’ emotional struggles.”

The recent graduate said it was tough managing his own emotions through the process. Still, he said it helped him learn how to be a better interviewer, especially in the context of sociology research.

“When a person is in a vulnerable state, you learn how to just let them talk,” he said. “That was what I had to learn.”

Following much vocational reflection, Packard decided a career in first response or law enforcement would be an ideal post-graduate plan. He enrolled in a course about deviance in fall 2016, taught by Professor of Sociology Joanna Gregson. That student-faculty relationship developed into valuable mentorship for the budding sociologist.

Gregson said Packard’s capstone research elevated his aptitude for conducting interviews.

“Landon blossomed as a qualitative interviewer,” Gregson said. “As much as he hated the process of transcribing, he had a knack for drawing out his participants, making them feel comfortable, and eliciting heartfelt and sometimes painful stories.”

Gregson stressed that Packard’s growth is indicative of the learning-by-doing model that’s key in student-faculty research opportunities at PLU.

“I could tell stories all day long about challenges I’ve encountered while collecting data or the thrill of developing an analytical hunch, but until students experience it themselves, it is just that: stories,” she said. “When they immerse themselves in the project — from conception of the project to collection and analysis of data, and presentation of findings — they take ownership of their learning.”

As for Packard’s research itself, Gregson said it’s meaningful work that addresses a scarcely studied angle of emotional management for first responders.

Anna Leon-Guerrero, chair of sociology and another mentor for Packard, said she watched her student’s confidence grow throughout the research process.

She stressed that all students who conduct scholarly research face similar challenges that she and her colleagues have faced in academia.

“Faculty (members) support student learning and success by sharing our own passion for sociology,” Leon-Guerrero said. “Their capstone highs and lows are no different than what we’ve experienced in our own scholarship.”

Leon-Guerrero noted that one theme within Packard’s findings surprised her. “His subjects reported that they were never formally trained on how to manage their emotional labor,” she said. “Landon was critical about the lack of preparation and training for emotion management and questioned the long-term effects on first responders.”

Despite the difficult conversations he had with his interview subjects, Packard intends to pursue a career in emergency response. “It hasn’t turned me away from it at all,” he said. “If anything, it’s made me more interested.”

He said his calling has expanded as a result of his research — to not only help the people he’ll save in the future, but to help fellow first responders.

“It is now time for us to rescue the rescuers,” he said.

“It made me realize that I could combine global studies and Holocaust and genocide studies and really have an impact,” said Mahr, who is majoring in the former and minoring in the latter. “I really got into that mindset for the rest of my time at PLU.”

That mindset resulted in a research project that helped her grow as a student, an academic and a human being. Her conclusions urge society to confront uncomfortable truths about 20th-century medical studies conducted at the expense of marginalized populations, and the subsequent findings of those studies that are, in some cases, used and cited in contemporary research.

Mahr analyzed how and why medical providers repeatedly and deliberately harmed people in the name of medical science by conducting non-consensual experiments on their subjects. Those ambitious professionals, she says, argued that the ends justified the means — that the harms were necessary to foster a greater good.

Within her research, Mahr examined three case studies of unethical human experiments: torture of Jews in Nazi concentration camps, the Tuskegee study of untreated syphilis in rural black men, and the coerced research and medical discrimination of LGBTQ individuals.

Mahr argues that the systems in place, which have evolved over time to protect patients, continue to be violated in a dangerous trend.

“This is not an isolated reality,” she said during a campus presentation of her findings at the inaugural Undergraduate Research Symposium in April. “We use a lot of this research today.”

Mahr said one key factor, among many she discusses in the paper summarizing her work, is the lack of enforcement mechanisms. From the Hippocratic Oath taken by medical professionals to the Nuremberg Code that underscores full and informed consent in medical studies, Mahr says all rely on the honor system and the goodwill of authority figures. Failures and loopholes in protections are evident, she stressed, and actively aware citizens are the key to preventing future violations.

“Trusting blindly that this system will prevent medical abuse keeps us from looking actively at the harm that’s done,” Mahr said in her presentation. “My research led me to believe that we need to be more actively aware. We always need to be on the lookout for violations of consent. It’s about testing these systems of power.”

In all the case studies Mahr examined, Kraig said, the people aiding in the corrupt treatment believed they were doing the right thing. “If it’s doing real harm it might come in a package that says ‘I’m doing real good,’” Kraig said.

For example, one of the most cited medical studies Mahr examined was the Dachau Hypothermia Experiments, which took place at the first Nazi concentration camp opened in Germany. The victims were submerged in vats of icy water, naked and outdoors in freezing temperatures, only to be rapidly reheated with scalding water, among other horrifying trials. Many prisoners were killed in the attempt to learn how best to prevent and treat hypothermia in German soldiers.

Kraig said the torture resulted in the discovery that it’s better to warm hypothermia patients as fast as possible, rather than heating them up gradually as medical professionals previously thought.

“That became, and still is, the best method for preventing death,” Kraig said. She added that Mahr’s research forces people to confront the uncomfortable truth that better treatment for hypothermia patients today is the result of great harm, and even death, to many who came before them. “That’s the complexity Sophia wants people to engage.”

While Kraig helped Mahr academically and emotionally, the professor admits she learned from the process, too. The pair shared reading materials with one another, resulting in new discoveries traveling both ways.

“We had a very common foundation of knowledge to share. It’s 100 percent co-learning,” Kraig said. “These projects start with the student.”

Now, with about a year left at the university, Mahr feels better prepared for her next steps. She recently completed a Minneapolis-based internship with a refugee resettlement and immigration program and is figuring out how she can continue to aid refugees amid ever-growing crises around the world.

“I know in my heart that I want to help with refugee migration,” she said. “This research is not my finale, it’s a building block.”

In the meantime, she will continue to urge her peers to think critically about the topic she’s grown so passionate about, no matter how uncomfortable.

“This is not just something to think about for history,” she said. “This is something to think about for the future.”