In ‘Poetic Table of the Elements,’ students of Danny Long combine art and science, old and new

Who could refrain, that had a periodic poem to write, and in that poem, courage to make an element known (apologies to Shakespeare). 

From bottom left to right, Sara Nebreda Perez, Michael Gonzales, Gabe Raymondi, Julia Seko, Susan Guinn-Chipman and Arsen Bassenov work to typeset student poems by hand as part of Danny Long's class. At the top of the page, a poem is typeset; the text is backwards so that it will print correctly. Photos by Sarah Schleifer.

Students of Danny Long’s Radical Science Writing class (WRTG 3030) have the poem to write and the courage to make it happen, and the final project will be displayed on a giant Poetic Table of the Elements later this year in the ����Vlog�ƽ��’s Norlin Library. 

Long’s students are getting a hands-on lesson in attention to detail with their latest project in which they compose, typeset and hand-print 118 poems for the elements of the Periodic Table.

The goal of the poem itself is to “teach a little kernel of information” about each element, whether that be the etymology of its name, discovery or function. “My students write about so many different things and yet never have we even talked about the periodic table as a form of writing, as a way of communicating science,” Long explains, citing it as an “untapped resource.” 

With the help of Gregory Robl and Susan Guinn-Chipman of the Special Collections, Archives, and Preservation Department and Julia Seko of Scholarly Resource Development, students learned to handset and print the type using techniques that encourage “mindfulness,” as one of Long's students, Sara Nebreda Perez, observed. 

“So much of what we do on campus anymore is intangible, and so maybe there’s something about just getting to sit down and create things by hand,” Long says of this project, which requires the slow and deliberate setting of tiny metal letters—upside down and backwards—into “furniture” that holds it in place to be printed. 

These poem cards will be mounted onto a 5 ½-foot-tall x 10-foot-wide Poetic Table of the Elements and displayed at the University Libraries with the help of Andrew Violet of the Administration Department, with additional copies going to Special Collections and the staff and students involved. There are also plans to sell one copy to another institution through Vamp and Tramp booksellers. 

�վ���—50
By DiemMy Nguyen
Mix me with copper, you’ll surely get bronze.
Those so-called tin cans? Well, they are all cons.
I cry when I’m bent, but I am still strong.
Coat metals with me, and they will last long.

�Ѳ��Բ����Ա����—25
By Jason DesVeaux
Alone I am weak,
but with others I shine:
To bodies, bones, and metals
I am divine.

Long, an instructor in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric at CU ����Vlog�ƽ��, says he likes incorporating creative projects into his science-writing class and that students also respond well to his self-proclaimed “radical” syllabus. Past projects of his include children’s books to teach first graders math and science. 

Robl, who helps students set their type and print their poems, calls this project, which mixes science writing, poetry and traditional typesetting, “pretty radical on many levels for instruction for undergraduates” and, also, “just too cool.” 

Long says some unexpected benefits of this project were the in-depth discussions he had with his students about grammar and punctuation. Talking about everything from the rhetorical effects of different punctuation to sentence structure while “focusing in on a really small piece of writing” was a productive way to look analytically at these mechanisms and “get a lot of punch out of it.” 

He calls the Poetic Table assignment a good metaphor for the “radical” course name. The term “radical” is “often used to describe something that’s extreme, but it also comes from the Latin word meaning ‘root,’” Long says. In addition to describing something new and unusual, he notes, it also describes something old. 

He agrees that it’s an apt way of looking at his class, which examines “the history of scientific communication and plays around with old forms of communication in slightly new ways.” The Poetic Table combines an old example of scientific communication that’s been developing over several centuries with a contemporary poetic twist. 

“It’s been fun listening to the students explain to me why they wrote what they wrote.” Long quips that “usually it goes over my head because I’m not a scientist,” but says the amount of research and effort the students put into their poems is “encouraging and inspiring.”

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Applied mathematics initiative wins $1 million grant from U.S. Agency for International Development

Solving big problems sometimes involves crunching big data, and a ����Vlog�ƽ�� initiative has won a significant grant to help the developing world do just that.

The ����Vlog�ƽ��’s Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Statistical Analysis (LISA) 2020 project, which aims to build 20 statistical analysis laboratories in low and lower-middle income countries by 2020, has received a $1 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). 

In this 2002 photo, Eric Vance, now a professor of applied mathematics at CU ����Vlog�ƽ��, works with an unidentified African scientist. Photo courtesy of Eric Vance. At the top of the page is an image of a tea plantation in Tanzania. (iStockphoto)

Directed by Professor Eric Vance of applied mathematics, LISA is a statistical analysis lab at CU ����Vlog�ƽ�� that trains students to collaborate across disciplines to leverage statistics for high-impact research that betters the world. At CU ����Vlog�ƽ��, their research ranges from interpreting soil classifications to improve a farmer’s crop yield to better understanding the African diaspora by modeling the fall of a slave-trade empire. 

LISA 2020 builds on this mission and aims to train the next generation of statisticians and data scientists at local universities in low- and lower-middle-income countries, creating interdisciplinary collaborators to solve developmental challenges.

LISA 2020, Vance says, “is an example of how CU ����Vlog�ƽ�� can experiment locally and generate innovations to benefit humanity that can be adopted worldwide,” collaborating with those far outside of Colorado or the United States.

Currently,  is a network of 11 collaborating labs in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Brazil, all branching from LISA’s roots at CU ����Vlog�ƽ��. 

Two more laboratories are being established in India and Ghana because of this USAID grant. Efforts to establish more labs in Pakistan, India and Zimbabwe are also underway.  

With the LISA 2020 initiative, Vance hopes universities in the countries where new labs are being built will be able to “jump-start their own research endeavors” with access to statistics and data-science expertise.

Though data analysis is often employed in the private sector, it is also helpful in establishing data-driven policy interventions and interpreting research for scientists, engineers, health professionals and policymakers in nonprofit organizations. Coming up with local solutions to local problems is at the core of LISA 2020’s mission. 

Vance notes that LISA 2020 helps his graduate students with the opportunity to travel internationally while studying statistics. 

There are literally PhD scientists wandering the Saharan Desert, looking for statisticians to collaborate with.”

Vance conceived of the initiative while traveling the globe before entering graduate school. He was in the desert at the border of the Western Sahara territory and Mauritania, and he met a PhD biologist studying the Saharan desert fox. 

While waiting for their paperwork to be processed, the biologist realized Vance was a statistician and was overwhelmed with excitement. “He started describing his issues, wondering how he could best analyze his data…and so we started talking a little bit,” Vance recalls. But before they could adequately analyze data about the desert fox, Vance had to leave. 

Vance observes: “There are literally PhD scientists wandering the Saharan Desert, looking for statisticians to collaborate with.” The LISA 2020 project aims to pave those avenues of collaboration.

“Statistics, and the compiling of numbers of generations of data, can objectively tell us about what the world is like,” he says, adding: “And then, through the scientific process and the predictive capabilities of statistics, we can also evaluate options and paths for making the world into what we want it to become.” 

LISA 2020 is seeking funds to build the remaining laboratories and meet the initiative’s target of 20 labs by 2020. 

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