THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 2, 1995 TAG: 9503020043
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 121 lines
HELEN C. ROUNTREE'S formal title is professor of anthropology at Old Dominion University, but you can call her the galloping gourmet of the wild.
``I tried a bunch of live oak acorns last fall because the Indians here ate them,'' she told a class the other day. ``They have a woody flavor, but they also have a strong overtone of vinyl floor covering.''
Like local Indians, she also has savored the arrow arum, a thick tuber that grows in swampland. Dig it out, sun-dry it and eat hearty.
``It tastes like library paste, which I happen to like,'' she said.
In desert areas, you might have to settle for rodents. No details there from Rountree. ``There are certain techniques of eating rodents that I will not go into, not so soon after breakfast.''
She is usually not so reticent, and her frequent anecdotes and snippets on ancient life - whether they be food reviews, fashion tips or weather warnings - have attracted a stream of students to her classes. Word has gotten to Richmond, too.
Last Tuesday, Rountree was among 11 Virginia professors who received Outstanding Faculty Awards from the State Council of Higher Education. The only other local winner was Dr. Thomas R. Pellegrino, chairman of neurology at Eastern Virginia Medical School.
``I'm still surprised,'' Rountree, 50, said. ``In my way, I'm on the fringe.''
What makes Rountree a good teacher? Her glib tongue helps. So do the anecdotes.
``Whenever I can, I inject personal things or things I've actually seen. They'll never look at an oak tree the same way again.''
During a recent session of her class on Human Origins and Ways of Life, she reviewed ancient life on various terrains, from coniferous forest (``if you know what to gather, you've got it made; it's real rich living'') to the tundra (``it's so cold, there are no trees or grass'').
Local Indians were tougher than modern-day residents of Hampton Roads. ``They did not make tailored clothes; they had draped clothing,'' she told the students.
Of course, they used a few tricks to withstand the cold, like rubbing rancid bear oil all over their bodies. ``It takes you down another 10 degrees,'' Rountree said.
Stephanie Price, a sophomore in the class, said, ``She's very enthusiastic about what she teaches. I really like it when a teacher really knows what she's talking about. She's not just reading it; she's done hands-on experience.''
Rountree has spent her entire career at ODU, starting as an instructor in 1968. She has studied the Powhatan Indians just as long and has written three books on them.
Her next will focus on three Powhatans, including perhaps the most famous, Pocahontas. Rountree hopes to go beyond the generalities spoon-fed to schoolkids: ``She chased around after John Smith and went to England and croaked,'' she tells her class.
One thing is for sure, Rountree says. Pocahontas was broader and more muscular than she is usually pictured. ``Women were digging out plants and paddling canoes,'' she said. ``She was not going to look like a skinny fashion model.''
She likes to bring to class artifacts, like a Sioux porcupine-tail hairbrush. In a recent Human Origins class, the exhibit was something more modern to usher in her new ``fraud of the week'' segment.
It was an ad, published in the National Enquirer, for a cream that would supposedly increase the size of women's breasts. Rountree and her students dissected the fallacies.
The only natural ways to do the job, she said, are by working out - or getting fat. ``And frankly, my dears, a fair amount of the female bosom is fatty deposits.''
Tabloids must be the rage in academia. Pellegrino, the EVMS professor, also brought in a clipping for a recent class with second-year med students. The headline from the Weekly World News blared: ``Coma Woman Wakes After 75 Years.''
``This story,'' he deadpanned, ``doesn't usually happen in real life.''
Pellegrino, 49, says humor is key. ``They have a very long day,'' he said. ``To come here and do something as dull as dishwater wouldn't be good to them.''
Pellegrino has won the medical school's Sir William Osler Award for teaching excellence three times. Part of his success, he says, is simple: He loves his job. ``I like what I do and I find it interesting and fascinating, and I like interacting with students and getting them involved with the subject.''
At his lecture to the pathophysiology class, Pellegrino handed out a 20-page paper on ``altered consciousness'' and comas. He went over the most salient points - like the fact that a patient can't fall into a coma unless both his cerebral hemispheres are damaged. If only one is, ``you're not going to be as much fun in parties as you used to be, but you're arousable,'' he said.
Other facts he left for the students to get on their own. ``I don't see my job as imparting every piece of information into students' heads,'' Pellegrino said. ``My job is to help them understand what we're talking about.''
He also stresses ethics, even while making rounds at the hospital with students and residents. ``I don't call patients by their first names, and I don't let students do that,'' he said. And they're not males and females, either. Call them men and women.
``It humanizes them (the patients) a little. They're not sick things or subjects, but individual men and women.''
Rountree also hopes to point her students' moral compass in the right direction.
First, they need to know that Indians are still around. There are 1,000 Powhatan Indians today, many living in cities such as Richmond and Washington.
Second, they can pick up a few lessons on environmental awareness from the Indians.
``They weren't perfect ecologists, but they lived a lot closer to the land than we do. The men had to know what critters ate. The women were out gathering edible plants and had to have memories like computers to know what grows where.
``They knew every nook and cranny of all the lands that we drive through and scarcely see.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Lawrence Jackson, Staff
ODU's Helen C. Rountree...
Color photo by Richard L. Dunston, Staff
Thomas R. Pellegrino, chairman of Neurology at Eastern Virginia
Medical School...
by CNB