Students from CAS's Fermentation Science program took 4th place nationwide at the U.S. Open College Beer Championship in July, along with taking the gold medal in the head-to-head competition of the German Kölsch category. EMU also earned a gold medal for their Pumpkin Pie beer and a silver medal for their Milk Stout. The winning teams were:

• Electric Lawnmower (Kölsch-style ale), a clean, crisp, and refreshing traditional German ale, was brewed by Alex Crombie, Donte Bankhead, Keith Camac, Mason Fretz, Lena Timko, August Heath, and Quintin Steers.

• Pumpkin of Doubt (Pumpkin Pie ale), a taste of fall, was brewed with nine pounds of freshly roasted pumpkin and just the right balance of warm baking spices by Keith Camac, August Heath, and Lena Timko.

• Cowabunga! (Milk Stout), a rich, roasty, full-bodied, and low-alcohol stout brewed with lactose was made by Alex Crombie, Justin Burke, and Mason Fretz.

All of the beers were designed and produced as a part of the Fermented Beverage Production course (FERM 425) and supervised and submitted by Prof. Cory Emal. In addition, Prof. Emal was recently featured in two segments on WDIV, highlighting the awards and the Fermentation Science program and EMU facilities.

Dr. Carla Damiano, Professor of German in the Department of World Languages, has been selected to serve as a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Research Ambassador for the 2022/2023 academic year. This academic year, the Research Ambassador program is honoring ten individuals who have conducted a long-term research project in Germany at the doctoral level or above. Mid August, the 2022/23 Research Ambassadors participated in a two-day seminar addressing the latest developments in German higher education and research and the many generous funding programs available to North American scientists and academics interested in conducting research in Germany or initiating collaborative projects with German colleagues. They have now returned to their respective campuses, where they will serve as liaisons for DAAD in the US and Canada to promote research opportunities in Germany among their colleagues, peers and students. Dr. Damiano will not only be promoting research in Germany, but will also be representing Eastern Michigan University on a professional level.

Research that studies the sensation in the oral cavity is the subject of a grant awarded to Joseph Breza, associate professor of neuroscience at Eastern Michigan University, and Robin Krimm, professor of anatomy and neurobiology at the University of Louisville. The National Institutes on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders awarded the $2,074,256 ($462,468 year one) grant to conduct a five-year-long study on the sense of touch and how it interacts with the sense of taste.

Somatosensation is the sense of touch, temperature, and chemesthesis, which is the sensation of spices and menthol in the oral cavity. Scientists have studied various aspects of somatosensation, including the development of the human somatosensory system.

Over the years, Breza has worked with psychology, biology, and chemistry faculty members. He has co-authored five peer-reviewed articles with colleague Thomas Mast, an associate professor of neurobiology at Eastern, and with several EMU undergraduate and graduate students. In addition to working with Krimm, Breza is conducting the study with an interdisciplinary team of students in a customized lab space on EMU's campus, which is aligned with EMU's strategic mission to deliver high-performing academic programs and quality research.

Three significant gifts to the College from Professor Emerita of History Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur, Ph.D., have been announced by the Eastern Michigan University Foundation. Professor Upshur's gifts include an Endowment for the Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur Center for Civic Education in the amount of $500,000; $200,000 for the Expendable Fund for the Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur Center for Civic Education; and $300,000 for the Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur Endowment for Supporting Language Study Abroad ("Upshur Flight Fund").

Professor Upshur's generosity commemorates her 35 years of distinguished teaching and scholarship at EMU as well as her strong commitment to international education and scholarly breadth -- encompassing Chinese history, political science, anthropology, art, and Mesoamerican culture.

The painting "White on White: Stone Mountain" by alum Tylonn Sawyer (BFA '01) was acquired by the Detroit Institute of Arts last fall and is now on display in the African American art galleries. Completed in 2019, the painting focuses on the Stone Mountain monument in Atlanta that depicts the leaders of the Confederacy. In the painting, Tylonn depicts Black men dressed in white suits who seem to toss and turn due to the anxiety that the monument arouses in them. "White on White: Stone Mountain" was acquired with funds from the Founders Junior Council African American Art Acquisition Fund and is part of the FJC's multi-year pledge to help the museum acquire more African American art for its collection.

Sawyer recently spoke at EMU as a participant in the panel discussion Harold Neal and Detroit African American Artists: 1945 through the Black Arts Movement, in October 2021.

After playing the Temptations' Melvin Franklin in two hit Broadway shows, CAS alumnus Jawan Jackson (Communications '11) has assumed bass duties in the group, stepping into the spot once held by the late Franklin for decades. Jackson has been immersed in the Temptations' world since 2012, when he won the role of Franklin in Berry Gordy's "Motown: The Musical." From 2017 to 2021, he played the late bass singer in the Temptations musical "Ain't Too Proud."

"I got a lot of love for being Melvin," said Jackson. "Now I get to be my actual self, bringing my own artistry to the Temptations. I'll be carrying Melvin's essence with me, of course, but I get to be Jawan."

The 2022-23 McAndless Professor is Dr. Petra Kuppers, an internationally recognized scholar, performer, and creative writer whose work is both interdisciplinary and community-engaged. She is a professor of English and Women's and Gender Studies and the Anita Gonzalez Collegiate Professor of Performance Studies and Disability Culture at the University of Michigan, where she also holds appointments in Art and Design and Theatre. She is also the director of the Olimpias, an international disability performance collective. In 2021, she was the recipient of the New York Public Library's Dance Divisions dance research fellowship, for which she created dances that bridge the archive and public performance.

A leading scholar of disability performance, Dr. Kuppers has published seven monographs. Her latest book, Eco Soma: Pain and Joy in Speculative Performance Encounters (University of Minnesota Press, 2022), brings together her scholarly interests in ecocriticism, speculative fiction and performance, community performance, and disability culture. She has also published two books of poetry, one collaboratively written book of poetry, two chapbooks, and a collective of short stories. Her research articles have appeared in numerous peer-reviewed performance, disability, and feminist studies journals. She has been active in the digital humanities for many years, creating anti-archives of performance events and collectives of writings and artwork from performance projects.

The following events with Dr. Kuppers will be free, open to the public, and fully accessible:

• Alternative Knowledge Tour of the EMU Campus: Tour participants will investigate how human beings perceive the world in different ways. 5:30-8:00 pm, Tuesday, October 4, 2022.

• Audio Description Workshop: Kuppers will lead students and community members in a workshop exploring creative ways to audio describe visual images for the benefit of visually disabled people and everyone else. 2:00-3:15 pm, Thursday, November 10, 2022, on Zoom.

• Disability Histories: Arts-Based Methods, Archives and Futures: In this talk, Petra Kuppers will take audiences into her search for disabled dance ancestors at the New York Public Library Dance Archives. She looks for disabled and mad people in the archive, for the ways that labels like handicapped, disabled, crip, psych, and mad travel and intertwine, shift and change in library cataloguing systems, in the words of people describing one another, and describing themselves. She also looks at stigma, and why some disabled dance artists are not part of this disability history: sometimes because they personally chose not to, sometimes because others (families, publicists, librarians) chose on their behalf. Through video and images, Kuppers will introduce audiences to a range of international disabled dance artists. She also will share innovative and creative arts-based methods with which contemporary artists/activists embrace their lineage(s), widen the archive, and engage in embodied transmissions of knowledge. Ultimately, Kuppers argues for the value of opening up our understanding of 'archives,' 'history,' and 'knowledge' for all of us, no matter what our heritage(s) are: we can look to the past and re-shape it, in order to create more accessible futures for us all. 6:00-7:30 pm, January 31, 2023 in the Student Center Ballroom.

• Creative Writing Workshop: 5:30-7:30 pm, February 7, 2023.