In This Section:
Connecticut's road warrior - Lisa Aultman-Hall, engineering
Exploring hip-hop in an academic way - Jeffrey Ogbar, history

Research works to ease the daily jam on the highways

Photo: Peter Morenus

Lisa Aultman-Hall, director of UConn's Connecticut Transportation Institute.

Lisa Aultman-Hall likes to cycle to work but says Connecticut roads could be more bike-friendly.

Fortunately for biking enthusiasts in the state, she is in a position to do something about it. As director of the Connecticut Transportation Institute in the UConn School of Engineering, Aultman-Hall oversees an organization dedicated to improving a transportation system that is often fraught with challenges. Upon joining the UConn faculty in 2001, Aultman-Hall was surprised by the nature of transportation issues in Connecticut.

"We have diverse transportation problems here, considering how small the state is," she says. "Congested freeways, heavy loads on small highways, and a lack of bicycle lanes and sidewalks are only some of the challenges."

To understand the nature and extent of everything from bicycle safety to how people plan and undertake short trips throughout the state, Aultman-Hall and her colleagues collect data using such tools as global positioning satellite receivers and written surveys. As researchers add to the body of knowledge about how people bike and drive, engineers can plan better, safer and more varied transportation models and lead to informed public policy decisions, she says.

Aultman-Hall has been particularly successful in attracting funding for her research on traffic safety for specific drivers and circumstances, freight transportation planning, and traffic behavior. In each of her research areas, she has been prolific with articles in peer-reviewed journals, conference papers, technical reports and conference presentations.

"I think we're on the brink of realizing as a society that much of what we want in terms of quality time and quality of life relates to transportation," she says. "Many of our frustrations relate to transportation. The demands we make on our systems are certainly going to change. People love automobiles and love owning lots of land. That thinking is going to have to change if we're to succeed in developing transportation alternatives.

"In America we have an almost complete dependence on the automobile, which makes our transportation system very vulnerable," she says. "Educating people about this limitation and seeking ways to diversify our transportation system are very important."

Aultman-Hall invests considerable effort in educating audiences both inside and outside the University. She is active with the Transportation Research Board, part of the National Academy of Sciences, and chairs its Committee on Bicycle Transportation. She also participates in the American Society of Civil Engineers' Committee on Human Powered Transportation and has served on several state and national transportation advisory groups.

In the classroom, Aultman-Hall emphasizes two-way communication with students.

"Their ideas and feedback help me to say better, more relevant things so I can give them a solid grounding in research fundamentals and help them understand the real-world applications of the science," she says.

And what does she think of the Segway™, the latest human transporter?

"It's a clever vehicle that belongs on the road in a bike lane, not on a sidewalk. Speed is the issue. Nevertheless, it's an excellent vehicle with promise," she says.
— Scott Brinckerhoff

Professor teaches there is more to hip-hop than just a good rhyme

Photo: Peter Morenus

Jeffrey Ogbar, assistant professor of history, combines music, sociology and history in his class "Hip-Hop, Politics and Youth Culture in America".

Most students would be hard pressed to find a professor who could say he or she personally recalled the time and place of significant events that are the subject of a course they teach.

However, students in UConn history professor Jeffrey Ogbar's class on the evolution of hip-hop hear lectures peppered with memories from a professor who has seen the music genre grow into a force that permeates the air waves, influences fashion and adds words such as "jiggy" (meaning to be cool or with it) to the dictionary.

In Hip-Hop, Politics and Youth Culture in America, Ogbar reminisces about attending a concert by rap pioneers Run-D.M.C. when he was a teenager growing up in Los Angeles, known by his nickname, "Speed," and trying his hand at being a rapper.

As hip-hop matured, so did Ogbar as he went on to college and eventually earned his doctorate in history. Today he is one of a growing number of scholars whose passion is now taught as history to a new generation.

Ogbar began teaching his hip-hop class in 1998 as a small discussion course for freshmen. It soon became a favorite, and two years later he created a regular class that quickly reaches its full capacity.

"The people who were raised as part of the hip-hop generation are now in a position to intellectually gauge it like never before," Ogbar says. "Being from the hip-hop generation, my classes have certain nuances that others can't offer."

With Atlanta-duo Outkast topping this year's Grammy awards, hip-hop remains on a musical journey from discovery to mainstream acceptance, inching closer to dominating popular music, Ogbar says.

"It's a fundamental trajectory that we see with jazz and rock and roll," he says. "It bubbles up in marginal sections of the black community, it's attacked for being crude and eventually finds its way into American pop music."

Today, hip-hop beats are heard in commercials even as Cookie Monster scratches records on a turntable. Rapping giants such as Jay-Z are retiring and hip-hop slang such as "dis" and "bling, bling," has become a familiar lexicon to many, signaling the music genre's age and staying power.

In Ogbar's course it isn't enough for students to recognize a good lyric, known as a "dope rhyme." They have to understand what makes the music so powerful. Even the most avid hip-hop heads are challenged by course work that requires them to study how Marxism, gentrification, poetry and other ideas and art forms have influenced the music genre that sprung from urban neighborhoods. Students pen their own lyrics and write research papers on how hip-hop is related to political and social events.

"Most students don't expect considerable academic rigor," Ogbar says. "The question for them is how can you explore hip-hop in an academic way? Hip-hop is pregnant with possibilities."
— Peyton Woodson Cooper