Whitney Medo
For 33 years now, the UWSP English Department has been calling on all high school writers to join us here at the University for a day of recognition and encouragement. The workshop offers a venue in which high school juniors and seniors can submit a sample of their writing in one of several categories. The categories include: formal essays on an environmental or political topic, familiar essays, children’s literature, and poetry or fictional short stories. Each student must have a high school teacher as a sponsor. Students who submits their work will have it judged by an English professor with the possibility of winning a scholarship in their category. The College of Letters and Science has set aside a $5000 Enhancement grant that is split among the winners of the five categories as $1000 scholarships.
This year, Professor Patricia Gott and Professor Sarah
Pogell organized the Writer’s Workshop. On average, the pair will receive 75 to 100 pieces from Wisconsin juniors and seniors, but this year they received well over 400 submissions. The professors that review the submissions then accept and invite anywhere from 10 to 20 students per category. The workshop is organized not only to recognize excellence in our young writers and promote improvement in their writing but also to provide students with exposure to the writing programs UWSP has to offer. Directors Pogell and
Gott commented, “Our goal is to provide exposure to the English department and UWSP as a whole and also to recognize excellence in student writing.”
This year the workshop took place on November
29. Professor Pogell and
Professor Gott invited over a 100 students onto cam pus. The day opened with introductions from Chancellor Linda Bunnell and
Dean Lance Grahn. The students took advantage
Aysia Platte, winner in both fiction and poetry of workshop sessions in which their categories were discussed and examined in depth while their works were also critiqued by college professors. The students also enjoyed readings from poets Pablo Peschiera and fiction writer Ben Percy, professors in the English department, as well as a dance performance and class, and readings by UWSP students. The day wrapped up with the award ceremony. This year’s winners by category are: Aysia Platte from Ripon High School for fiction and poetry, Danielle Aldach from Lincoln High
School in children’s literature, Cristinia Barrer from
Pacelli High School for her formal essay, and Tracy
Haack from Clintonville High School for her informal essay. The winners will receive their scholarship upon their acceptance to UWSP.
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Page 2 To the Point
News Release, Eric Singsaas
In today’s world, petroleum-based products dominate the market place from gasoline to heating oil for homes and businesses to plastics. What if a process could be created to displace petroleum-based products, a process more environmentally friendly in which carcinogens are neither part of the process or final product?
Eric Singsaas at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens
Point (UWSP) is working on just such a process. As an associate professor of biology and forestry at UWSP,
Singsaas is researching a method to “create a bio-chemical pathway where terpenoids (ex. isoprene) could be used in the manufacture of noncarcinogenic products ranging from fuel for your automobile to rubber for your sneakers. To assist his research he has secured $25,139 from American Science and Technology of Wausau, a research and development firm based in Chicago.
“The ethanol process is as old as the fermentation of grains into alcohol,” said Singsaas.
“While many are viewing ethanol as the path to replace petroleum-based fuels, there is a better, more efficient and environmental way to create noncarcinogenic, nonpetroleum-based fuels and products. In a word…bacteria.” continued on page 3,
Singsaas Research
Professor Eric Singsaas
Whitney Medo
The Name of the Wind has been released in countries around the world. Above is the cover released in the UK.
~amazon.com.
even more acknowledgements ever since. Rothfuss won the Quill award for Science Fiction/Fantasy category and the foreign rights to the book have been sold in
19 countries, including England, Russia, Japan, Spain,
Germany, Italy, and France. Patrick noted, “We’re in negotiations for a graphic novel and a roll playing game based on the book.” There has also been talk of adapting the novel into a film.
The Name of the Wind is the first in a trilogy, which the author had completed just two months before graduating from UWSP. Rothfuss has dreams of taking the story further. “My world is bigger than this single story,” he said. “There are places on the map yet to be explored.
…Honestly, I think I could write stories in this world forever.” Along the lines of his future teaching, Patrick hopes to teach a course on speculative fiction or creative writing.
Deemed as one of the best debut novels in thirty years,
The Name of the Wind has burst onto the fantasy fiction scene with many awards and acclaim from publishers and fellow fantasy authors. The author, Patrick Rothfuss, is a 2000 UWSP alumnus and has now claimed even more realty at UWSP as an associate lecturer in the
English department. His debut novel was released on
March 27, 2007. He and his novel have been rolling in
Despite the fact that this novel falls into the same genre as Harry Potter and his lot and the novel does in fact embrace the idea of an orphan as well as a school of magic, Rothfuss has added his own twist to the genre to transform this novel into one about legendry and heroism. In a review by Rob Bedford from sffworld.com
Rothfuss is seen, “Like a master chef; continued on page 3, Name of the Wind

Page 3
To the Point he adds ingredients, both subtle and powerful, to create a delicious stew of his own creation. When this creation is pared back down to its bare bones, it is essentially the chronicle of a legend, from his happy beginnings with his family as a troupe of traveling entertainers swiftly ended by a band of marauders, to his life on the streets then to his time in the University where he truly starts on his road to powerful, near mythical wizard.”
According to Singsaas, he has created in a UWSP laboratory a bacterium that makes isoprene. Isoprene, unlike petroleum, has no carcinogenic agents and is a colorless, volatile liquid often used to make synthetic rubber. In the future, Singsaas expects that bio-molecules produced from bacteria will be able to replace many products that are now made from petroleum.
For more on The Name of the Wind or Patrick himself, visit his website, patrickrothfuss.com.
For more information on Eric’s research, visit his websites at http://www.uwsp.edu/biology/faculty/esingsaa/ index.html
Linda Bunnell derful program that encourages young writers, many of whom we hope will one day be UWSP alums.
I too am a proud product of the Letters and Science academic tradition, albeit with a Texas flavor, hav ing earned a bachelor’s degree in English and graduate degrees in English literature.
A biomedical writing internship at the Marshfield Clin ic could become one of the region’s premier programs in this area. Professor of English John Coletta oversees the internship and believes the program is providing a boost to the Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation Of fice of Scientific Writing and Publications.
My academic roots mirror those of the superb faculty and staff here at
UWSP’s College of Letters and Science. I’m an advocate for a rich student curriculum with an emphasis on the liberal arts, letters and science, and where everything from Plato to Pluto can be openly discussed and debated within our classrooms.
By any measure this campus has always had a strong liberal arts tradition begun as a teacher’s college in
1894. But it wasn’t until 1951 when a faculty member in history, Warren Gard Jenkins, was chosen by campus
President William Hansen to be the college’s first dean.
Biology, not unlike the English Department, has and continues to be one of the many strong disciplines for both the college and the greater university. Many of its graduates go on to become doctors, nurses, or medical specialists. Eric Singsaas in biology is working on a process to displace petroleum-based products, a process more environmentally friendly in which carcinogens are neither part of the process or final product. Eric’s colleague, Eric Wild, is one of two UWSP faculty members named as prestigious Fulbright Scholars for
2007.
But enough of the past. A new generation of emerging faculty and students are today building a great future for L & S. Just last month I welcomed young writers and their teachers to the college’s Writer’s Workshop, now under the able leadership of Assistant Professors of English Patricia Gott and Sarah Pogell. This won-
Wild’s Fulbright Scholar grant will allow him to lecture and partake in research at the Pontificia Univer sidade Católica de Minas Gerais in Brazil during the
2007-2008 academic year. David Gibbs of computing and new media technologies has also been awarded a
Fulbright Scholar grant to lecture at the Malta College of Art, Science, and Technology on the island of Malta during the 2007-2008 academic year.

Page 4
Linda Bunnell
A process to liberate glucose from cellulose for the production of biofuel is being studied by Don Guay, assistant professor of paper science and engineering. Guay is also collaborating with Singsaas in biology on biofuel research, an interdisciplinary approach that is sure to bring positive results.
To the Point
Stevens Point. This four-year program will be administered jointly by the chemistry and biology departments.
So many bright and talented faculty are found throughout the college and on campus. Our students, the campus, community, and the state are better for the excellent work taking place here at UWSP’s College of Letters and Science.
Earlier this year the UW System Board of Regents authorized an undergraduate, bachelor of science degree program in biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-
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