12/19/2005		Alum returns to exhibit wood, stone sculptures
12/13/2005		Student presents research for two honors theses
12/12/2005		OT students present afghan to Clare House

John Hertzler, a 1964 graduate of Elizabethtown College, will exhibit sculptures of wood and stone at his alma mater from Jan. 16 through Feb. 24 in Lyet Gallery, Leffler Chapel and Performance Center. An artist’s reception is scheduled from 6 to 8 p.m. on Jan. 27.

Both the exhibit, which is curated by Lisa Hollinger Bedenbaugh, and the reception are open to the public free of charge. Hours for Lyet Gallery are 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends.

Raised on a dairy farm in Elizabethtown, Hertzler graduated from Elizabethtown College in 1964 with a major in English. After spending time serving in the Vietnam War, he returned to the United States and settled in New York City, where he worked as a taxi cab driver and sculpted in his spare time.

In 1977, Hertzler returned to Lancaster County to work the family dairy farm. In 2000, he began to sculpt in earnest and completed his first body of work for exhibition in 2004 at Lynden Gallery in Elizabethtown. His latest work includes some larger work in wood, as well as some smaller stone pieces. “It just feels good to be sculpting again,” he said.

Hertzler’s work has been exhibited at the Doshi Gallery and the Pennsylvania State Museum in Harrisburg; Hagerstown Art Museum in Hagerstown, Md; and Messiah College.

A double mathematics education and physics major at Elizabethtown College, Michelle Doll has had a very busy academic schedule throughout her college career. This semester, however, has been particularly challenging for the York resident, as she’s been working on research for honors theses in both majors.

Doll has had to complete – for each discipline – independent research that culminated into a thesis and oral presentation to faculty and students. Her mathematics thesis focused on knot theory, a field that looks at anything that can be considered a cyclic permutation, like “just drawing a set of points and connecting them back to the beginning,” she said.

Doll conducted her research on the human knot game, a popular get-to-know-you icebreaker. “The human knot game is mathematical, but you don’t need a math background to understand it,” she said. “In the game, you reach into a circle of people and connect arms. You then have to untangle yourself to try to form a circle, but it isn’t always possible because of the many types of knots that can be formed.”

Doll used the computer program Solid Edge, a three-dimensional cad drafting program, to create a person. She then studied the possible movements of the human body to illustrate the number of possible combinations of people – and subsequent knots – for the game. “Using the model I created, you could show every single possible combination of people in the knot game. You could also study how many people are needed to create each knot.”

Doll’s research for her physics thesis also involved the use of Solid Edge. Working in the College’s biomechanics lab, she has created a model that may help validate carpal tunnel insurance claims. “People have claimed to get carpal tunnel from the sudden force applied to the wrist in a car accident,” she said. “There isn’t a reliable way to validate those claims at this time. I made a model in Solid Edge to find the force applied to the wrist.”

Doll is currently working with physics and engineering department chair Kurt DeGoede to gather data to validate the model. “If it works, we would have a way to estimate the force applied to the wrist given certain parameters from the accident,” she said. “The model would generate an approximate magnitude for the force that is applied to the wrist. There is no set measurement for the force to cause carpal tunnel, but it will be a much more reliable method to consider current insurance claims.”

Doll hopes to complete her physics research before summer. As usual, she has a busy spring schedule ahead of her that includes student teaching at her alma mater, Dallastown Area High School.

Elizabethtown College occupational therapy students recently presented an afghan they had knitted and crocheted to Jennifer Powell, executive director of Lancaster’s Clare House, a homeless shelter for women and children. The afghan will be presented to a homeless woman and her two children as a holiday gift from the students. The project was part of a national program, “Warm Up America,” which promotes making and giving handmade afghans to needy communities.

The afghan was made by 40 first-year occupational therapy students in a course titled Basic Concepts in Occupation, taught by Assistant Professor of Occupational Therapy Linda Leimbach. Others who helped in the construction of the quilt were Chris Achenbach, fieldwork coordinator, Nancy Carlson, associate professor of occupational therapy and chair of the department, and seniors Kelly Johnson of Nazareth and Kate Brodbeck of York.