Mission Statement
It is the mission of the Virginia Tech
Research magazine to:
• report significant achievements in language that is
generally accessible;
• assist the reader in understanding higher
education's role in research, including the
opportunities provided to graduate and undergraduate
students;
• convey the crucial role university research plays
in society; and
• inform business, industry, and government agencies
about Virginia Tech's research capabilities and about
new technologies and scholarship created by university
faculty members and students.
Printed material appearing in the
Virginia Tech Research Magazine may be reprinted
provided the endorsement of a commercial product is not
stated or implied. Please credit the researchers
involved and Virginia Tech. Illustrations are
copyrighted.
In this issue, there is an article about research by
Edd Sewell, who looks for diversity
in comic strips in mainstream newspapers — and
doesn’t find much. Newspapers, like universities, seem
to have an Alphonse and Gastone approach to accepting
the voices of people who represent so-called minority
populations. After you, Alphonse. No, no. After you,
Gastone. As groups reach critical mass and represent
significant numbers of potential readers, then they are
increasingly allowed to have their voices seen on the
funny pages.
Newspapers are noble entities that we depend upon and
generally trust to tell us what is going on, from what we hope is a variety of perspectives. Journalists have been
known to risk all for the truth, such as Sandra Nyaira,
political editor of the only independent newspaper in
Zimbabwe, the Daily News. In a country with one of the
worst press freedom records in the world, she
investigates corruption of the government’s leaders.
Nyaira works under daily harassment and physical threat,
including bombings of the newspaper’s office.
However, it appears that the altruistic missions of
the news and opinion pages in many newspapers encounter
publishers’ most conservative instincts on the funny
pages.
Universities, too, are noble entities that we trust
to ask difficult questions and demonstrate leadership
and courage. Faculty members are granted a protection,
generally through tenure, to free them from the
constraints of politics and business so that they can do
their research and scholarship, expose problems and
conflicts, and teach freely from many perspectives. And
even where there is no such protection, university
faculty and students have been known to risk their lives
and careers for the right to speak freely. And
governments have been known to close universities and
sometimes even harm teachers and students in order to
operate without criticism.
But universities are also often slow to reflect the
world we serve. The community that surrounds our
university has many citizens who did not have the option
to attend Virginia Tech as recently as the mid 20th
century. And, while the university now has hundreds of
students and a good number of faculty members from many
countries and cultures, we still do not represent the
community in terms of enrollment and employment of
people from diverse backgrounds.
Research magazines at many universities share and
celebrate the works of our faculties. In this issue of
Virginia Tech Research, in addition to Edd Sewell’s
scholarship, we are proud to report that Virginia Tech
English professor Tom Gardner has received significant
support to look at how Emily
Dickinson has influenced modern writers with her
sensitive introspection about the moments of daily life;
that management professor Chris Neck is a role model for
energized
leadership; and that researchers from three colleges
are developing biomaterials
that will help us to heal and sensors to keep us safe.
And we celebrate the priorities of faculty members such
as engineering professor Anbo
Wang, who — while his research is extending the
world’s resources and protecting our quality of life —
is adamant that his first duty is to his students, to
assure that they have choices and opportunities once
denied to him by a totalitarian government.
Universities have much to be proud of. However, the
perspectives available at universities can be limited if
there is a lack of diversity among the peoples who
attend and those who teach and do research here. If the
people who hire and admit favor people who are most like
themselves and use the same old yardsticks to measure
potential, then universities too can find themselves
with limited voices singing from the same (funny)
page.
In a complex world, the lack of access to different
perspectives will only confine the potential creativity
of students who wish to be leaders. And university
researchers with a narrow range of life experiences will
be hard pressed to solve the old problems and ask new
questions.
As universities teach leaders and decision makers, we
need to lead the way through many more doors than is
presently the case. After you? No. We cannot continue to
wait for someone else to go through a door first.
