Baker professor urges listeners to take chance to be heroes

Biology professor Darcy Russell told a Baker University gathering that role models are like sewing patterns, which first provide guidance and then a jumping-off point for creativity.

Russell addressed a crowd Tuesday evening in the universitys Rice Auditorium in Baldwin City as a speaker in the Kopke Lecture Series. The speech was among the events surrounding the inauguration of Lynne Murray as Bakers 29th president, which will occur at 11 a.m. Thursday on the Baldwin City campus.

Russell is a Baker graduate and has been a biology professor at the school since 1998.

Her address was billed as a "last lecture," a recent tradition at Baker that has included among its speakers former President Pat Long and recently retired campus minister Ira DeSpain.

Russell, those attending were informed, has no intention of retiring anytime soon. The head of the Baker biology departments lecture on heroes and role models was intended to touch on themes she would share in her final class lecture.

Not surprisingly, her earliest role models were her parents, Russell said. Her mother was an excellent seamstress, who fascinated her as a child by making clothing from patterns. Her mothers creativity would not be limited to the patterns, and she would modify them with paper patterns of her own design, Russell said.

What I discovered from my mother is that role models are a jumping-off point for creativity, she said.

Her parents, both teachers, insisted she get as much education as possible. That brought her to Baker, where she met another role model in Diane Ordway, her chemical biology professor and the first female scientist she ever knew.

As for heroes, Russell cited her sister and the stranger who donated a kidney to her.

If you ever have a chance to be a hero, take it, she concluded.

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Baker professor urges listeners to take chance to be heroes