Score one for science.
Brandy Todd, assistant director for administration at the UO Oregon Center for Optics, was named 2013 Eugene Slug Queen Aug. 9, joining the celebrated ranks of unofficial ambassadors who champion causes during a one-year “rain” over this quirky city we call home.
“I’m very pleased and honored,” Todd said recently, green eye shadow still gracing her face from the competition. “It’s a wonderful and irreverent cadre to be invited into.”
As Professor Doctor Mildred Slugwak Dresselhaus – now you can add “Queen” to that title – Todd over the next year will draw a community’s attention to a cause near and dear to her heart: science education for youth, especially girls.
Todd is the director of the university’s Science Program to Inspire Creativity and Excellence or SPICE, an informal science outreach program targeting middle school-aged girls. The goals of the program are to encourage more girls to pursue science education and careers, to increase the number of low-income, first-generation college attenders and to contribute to a generation of scientifically literate citizens.
Named for Mildred Spiewak Dresselhaus, an emerita physics professor at MIT and “queen of carbon science,” Todd’s alter ego will show up at events throughout the year, promoting science and other causes while decked out in a costume that features a plastic white lab coat and a wig of neon green.
Todd joins a long list of Queens who were crowned while at the university: Debbie Williamson, public relations and marketing coordinator for the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, took the crown in 2011 as Queen Holly GoSlugly. Leigh Ann Jasheway, an adjunct instructor in the School of Journalism and Communication, was 2007 SLUG Queen Glorious Gastropause, and 2006 Queen Slugretha Latifah Uleafa Gastropodia Jackson (TK McDonald) was office manager for the UO Philosophy Department. Laura Minnick was a graduate student when she became Queen Carmen Slugana in 1999.
This year’s competition even boasted two candidates from the university: Todd was joined in the contest by candidate Gloria Slimem – also known as Shannon Rose, executive assistant and constituency manager for the Alumni Association.
During the talent show portion of the event, Todd’s minions – a dozen or so SPICE alums and other kids – created fireballs with butane soap bubbles (everything was closely supervised). She also “bribed” the Old Queens with ice cream made from liquid nitrogen; her show was called “Fire and Ice Cream,” and it was set to music from the movie, “Weird Science.”
Todd’s social calendar is quickly filling up: Todd – or is that Dresselhaus? – will attend SPICE workshops from 1-3 p.m. today (Aug. 13) at the Springfield Library; Thinkersmith's Traveling Circuits Open House for tech companies at 6 p.m. Aug. 14 at the Broadway Commerce Center at Broadway and Willamette streets; the Eugene Celebration human and pet parades Aug. 24-25; and the UO Science Open House, Sept. 25.
Dresselhaus – or is that Todd? – expects to be very busy this next year, but it’s a “good” busy, she said.
Being crowned Queen “reinforces the notion that there is a positive sentiment toward science and people want to engage in it more,” Todd said. “And that’s what I’m going to do.”
- by Matt Cooper, UO Office of Strategic Communications