But, as Tina-Marie Ranalli will tell you, there are exceptions. Ranalli, an assistant professor of French and German, has spent years poring over a little-known 700-year-old manuscript housed in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. What she has found there, she says, turns traditional depictions of the heroic warrior upside-down. For some classical heroes, as the title of one of Ranalli’s recent papers puts it, it paid “to be a lover, not a fighter.”

“I’m interested in how gender roles for men developed and evolved into the present day,” Ranalli said in her office last week. “We’re still fascinated by these ancient, epic stories. They are models of manhood that are still revered.”

Ranalli’s paper, which she presented at a conference on medieval studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland earlier this month, is based on her reading of a 14th-century codex known to scholars as manuscript 60. The manuscript presents medieval retellings of several classical epics. Ranalli argues that the texts in manuscript 60 veer away from the conventional glorification of the warrior as the ultimate model of manhood. The manuscript celebrates the Greek hero Aeneas, for example, not for courage in combat, but for having the good sense to avoid potentially fatal fights. Because he survives the Trojan Wars, the manuscript makes clear, Aeneas is able to father a line of future kings.

“This is a different model of manhood, the procreator model,” Ranalli said. “Instead of finding honor in putting your life on the line, now it’s honorable to preserve yourself and your progeny and fight only as a last resort. Previously, Aeneas had been seen as a coward who avoided the war. Now he is glorified.”

Ranalli said the texts in manuscript 60 likely were commissioned by a member of the French royal court of the 13th century, as an attempt to cement the court’s position of power. The stories were meant to lend legitimacy to the royal line by suggesting a link to the mythic past.

Ranalli began making annual pilgrimages to Paris to examine manuscript 60 in 2004, when she was still a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania. At first allowed to view the texts only on microfilm, she had to teach herself to decode the irregular medieval French script of the monks who set the stories on paper. Only after persistent pleas from Ranalli did librarians relent and allow her access to the manuscript itself.

“It was breathtaking,” she said of her first encounter with the illustrated manuscript. “The microfilm didn’t do it justice. There’s nothing like holding the actual manuscript in your hand.”

Ranalli’s research also inspired her to create a world literatures course at Elmhurst called The Hero’s Journey, which focuses on medieval national epics, including the Song of Roland, Beowulf and the Lay of the Nibelungs. A general education course for non–language majors, the course tracks the evolution of the male hero across millennia. Students read the stories in translation and analyze present-day film renditions of epics like Troy and Kingdom of Heaven.

“Professors always struggle with how to bring their research into the classroom. How can you make your students care about this stuff?” Ranalli said. “I’ve asked my students to think critically about these stories, and I’ve been so impressed with the way they have responded. It’s thrilling to me to be able to teach my scholarship to this extent.”

It was a rare respite for the senior biology major.

Since December, Aslam has spent most of his weekends on the road, logging enough air miles to make a seasoned business traveler proud. If last week was Dallas, next week must be Atlanta. And the week after next must be New York. Or is it Flint, Michigan?

Aslam’s dizzying travel calendar comes with his role as national coordinator of Young Muslims, a nationwide network of Islamic youth groups. Since he was elected to the post last year, Aslam has been busy hustling to conferences and making visits to local chapters of the group.

“There are always conference calls to schedule and emails to be returned, and the travel takes a toll,” he admitted. “But I’m passionate about Islam and about Young Muslims. We’re reaching out to young people that everyone else has neglected.”

Aslam has been a member of Young Muslims since he was a twelve-year-old growing up in Villa Park, where his family was active in their mosque. His introduction to the group came when he was invited to attend one of the local chapter’s summer retreats for high-school students.

“I thought it was insanely awesome. I mean, I got to hang out with the older kids,” Aslam remembered. “But later I saw that there was a real need in the community to reach people who had lost touch with their faith.”
The Villa Park chapter—in Young Muslim parlance, they’re called “neighbornets”—boasts about 120 members, all males. Young women may join a related group called Young Muslim Sisters. The group’s Saturday night meetings, Aslam said, are a mix of raucous dodgeball games, group discussions and prayer, with an occasional break for community service, like cleaning up parks or shoveling snow for neighbors.

“The idea is to make it such a positive environment that once you come, you will stay,” Aslam said. “It doesn’t help that society has such a negative view of Islam. So many people see Islam as strange or foreign and that’s the only representation they get.”

Aslam’s two-year term as national coordinator has brought big changes to his life. He has postponed plans to attend medical school—he has already been accepted at Western University in California—to devote himself to the job. The six hours or so he spends on Young Muslims business each day, he said, has eaten into his study time. And even with his graduation just weeks away, Aslam can’t help worrying about his coursework.

“I’m a little concerned about my developmental biology class,” he admitted. “It’s been a struggle to keep up with the reading. There are a lot of people asking for my time now.”

Taking on his leadership role in Young Muslims, he said, has turned out to be an education itself. He is learning to navigate the inevitable annoyances of business travel. He is learning how quickly an email in-box can fill up. He is learning, rapidly, to delegate parts of his administrative to-do list.

“I like that saying, ‘Don’t let your education get in the way of learning,’” he said. “My four years here have gone by really fast and it’s great to be graduating. But now it’s, ‘What’s next?’”

Ostrin is a white-bearded 72-year-old retired physician in a T-shirt that announces: “The truly educated never graduate.”

For Ostrin, Elmhurst College’s most persistent student, these have become words to live by.

Ever since he walked away from his former life as an emergency-room physician 13 years ago, Ostrin has been taking his place in Elmhurst classrooms alongside students less than a third his age. Like them, he enrolls in literature courses and philosophy courses and religion courses. He is the proud owner of a JayPass student identification card, which he will, unprompted, pull from his wallet to proves his student bona fides.

But Ostrin is not after a degree. He has enough of those, including a medical diploma from Heidelberg University. In Elmhurst’s classrooms, Ostrin will tell you, he has found something more ineffable, more profound.

“Elmhurst has taken me by the hand,” he said, walking through the Chapel after his Friday morning Shakespeare class. “And it has rehumanized me.”

Ostrin took his first Elmhurst College class during a hiatus from his duties at Glen Oaks Medical Center in Glendale Heights. The unrelenting pressures of his years in the emergency room had worn on Ostrin. He was, he said, burned out.

“I took a break to recharge my batteries,” Ostrin said. “But there was no juice left.”

A physician seeking to heal himself, Ostrin began making stained glass as a hobby. Introduced to the College by Elmhurst neighbors, he donated some of his early artistic efforts to the College’s Wellness Center, hoping his creations would provide stressed-out students with “an oasis for the eye.”

Ostrin was soon a regular presence on campus. When he asked to audit the Christian Ethics course taught by Paul Parker, professor of religious studies, Parker told Ostrin about a college program that allows people 60 and older to register for courses on a non-credit basis for a minimal fee. It was as if a chef had opened his kitchen to a hungry man.

“I couldn’t believe I had stumbled into such good luck,” Ostrin said. He began delving deep into the College’s course catalog, returning for more each term. He has liked some classes so much he has come back for second helpings. Has he ever wondered that, if he stays at it long enough, he could run out of courses to take?

“Don’t say that!” he cautioned, in mock horror.

Ostrin was so impressed with the teachers and students he met on campus that he wanted to thank them for welcoming him into their classrooms. So he began giving away his stained glass pieces as gifts. He gave them to professors whose work he admired. He donated them to offices and organizations, too. Whenever Ostrin ran across a dreary campus space in need of a touch of color, he would offer some of his art.

About eighty of Ostrin’s pieces now hang in the windows and on the walls of campus. A dozen or so enliven the Writing Center in the student union. The religious studies department offices in Old Main are filled with Ostrin pieces. A series of four pieces, in colors ranging from a fiery red to a cold blue, hang in the windows of the nursing simulation lab in Memorial Hall. The series is called “The Thermometer.” Another set of six, each representing one of the world’s religions, hangs in the entry to the Chapel. Ostrin calls it “The Sacred Six-Pack.”

“I’ve met such remarkable people here, and this is how I say thank you,” Ostrin said. “You know, in an emergency room, you see the world’s dirty underbelly. Overdoses. Shootings. But to be around these young people, it’s been a salvation.”

Every once in a while, one of Ostrin’s classes will touch on an area of his expertise. Reading Shakespeare’s description of Falstaff’s death in “Henry V” recently for a class taught by English professor Lance Wilcox, the retired physician marveled at the concise literary depiction of the symptoms of liver failure. But he hesitates to share his hard-won insights in class.

“It irks me when old people want to flaunt their erudition,” he said after class. “I’m just a guest here. I don’t want to do anything to ruin it.”

And there are still so many more classes to take.

“Don’t tell me about any search for the Fountain of Youth,” he said. “Dude, I’ve found it.”

It would have been an alarming discovery, if the bone hadn’t been plastic and if Dingraudo didn’t have good reason to believe it had been planted there by a couple of his professors.

Dingraudo, a first-year student from Elk Grove Village, was practicing his crime-solving skills as part of a field exercise for his Forensic Science class. He was one of 18 students from the class searching for evidence of foul play in and around the science center. Their professors, Michelle Applebee, an associate professor of chemistry, and Stacey Raimondi, an assistant professor of biology, had created three ersatz crime scenes, complete with yellow caution tape, for their students to investigate. Working in teams, the students were to sketch and photograph the scenes, collect and catalog evidence, analyze the evidence, and write a report summarizing their findings for a fictional prosecuting attorney.

“Hey, I’ll need an evidence bag here,” Dingraudo called to his teammates after discovering the bone fragment. He sounded a little like he was delivering a line from this week’s episode of “CSI: Elmhurst.” One of the lessons of the class, though, is that crime-scene investigations, as depicted on television, are often less than scientifically credible.

“Evidence isn’t processed and analyzed in three and a half minutes, like on TV,” Applebee said as she watched a group of students huddle over another bit of discovered evidence. “And the person working on the scene isn’t the same person working in the lab. Students say, ‘I want to do that job,’ but there really is no such job.”

As she spoke, her students were busy with sketch pads and tape measures, carefully documenting the scene of the crime. Already they had found a shovel, some cloth fibers and a suspicious footprint. Their next task: create a plaster cast of the print. If the objective was to be as thorough as professional investigators, the professors conceded that some corners had to be cut for practical reasons.

“You don’t get much DNA from plastic bones,” Raimondi admitted.

One of the aims of the class, being offered for the first time at Elmhurst this semester, is to introduce non-science majors to the chemistry and biology at the heart of so many criminal investigations. For a generation raised watching lab-coated cops solve crimes and deploy scientific jargon on their favorite TV police dramas, the class offers instant appeal.

“I watch way too many of those shows,” said Emily Baron, a junior from Cartersville, Georgia. “But I know they’re pretty fake.”

If there is one thing Applebee and Raimondi can appreciate about the recent spate of lab-coat TV police procedurals, it’s the way they have made heroes of scientists and the scientific process.

“They help build interest in science,” Applebee said. “They show that you can do things with science that are worthwhile.”

Applebee and Raimondi hope that the same can be said of their new class. It is one of the first in a newly developed species at Elmhurst called bidisciplinary courses. Co-taught by faculty from complementary disciplines, they focus on topics that straddle traditional academic boundaries. Raimondi, the biologist, and Applebee, a chemist, each defer to the other’s expertise, but also point their students toward links between the disciplines.

“There’s a fine line between disciplines and we want students to see how they go together,” Applebee said. “Most of the research that gets funded is not in one area or the other. You have to find the links. Everyone puts the disciplines in separate silos, but they don’t belong in silos.”

By now their students were gathering the last of the evidence from outside the science center. “We need to bag and tag,” one of them announced. Their work, however, was just beginning. Still ahead was time in the lab analyzing the evidence for clues that might point to a suspect.

“This week, they’re crime-scene investigators,” Raimondi said. “Next week, they become lab techs.”

So they talk to Thompson, Elmhurst’s major scholarships coordinator. He makes it his mission to help them win one of the big-money, high-prestige scholarships—maybe a Fulbright, maybe a Gilman—that can make their plans a reality.

“So many of the students that come to me are so impressive. They have that special spark,” Thompson said in a meeting room at the Center for Professional Excellence where he often meets with students. This is where he makes his pitch for them to apply for one of the twenty or so scholarships that are considered higher education’s biggest prizes. “I tell them, ‘There’s a time to be humble, and this ain’t it.’”

Elmhurst students are winning those big awards more frequently than ever. Thompson said Elmhurst students won as many Fulbright Scholarships, the highly prized awards that fund overseas study, in the last five years as they had in the previous 30. Last year, Libby Glass, a 2010 graduate, won a Fulbright Teaching Assistant award, to teach and study at a university in Panama.

“We’re trying to change the culture here, so that students feel they can compete,” Thompson said. “Our students are better than they think they are.”

Thompson has been at Elmhurst long enough to see the culture changing before his eyes. He taught Spanish at the College for thirty years, the last seven as chair of what was then the foreign language department. (It’s now called World Languages, Literatures and Cultures.) After Thompson retired five years ago, Larry Carroll, the director of the Center for Professional Excellence, asked him to help some of Elmhurst’s brightest students navigate the scholarship application process. His help was needed. The College was enrolling some of the most academically gifted classes in its history, which meant that there were more qualified candidates than ever for the biggest national scholarships. Part of Thompson’s job is to make sure those talented students get the recognition they deserve. He works with Mary Kay Mulvaney, director of the College’s Honors Program, and Wally Lagerwey, director of International Education, to steer students toward the most promising scholarships.

“As the quality of students has improved here, we have seen that our best can compete with the best anywhere,” Thompson said. “We encourage them to think about applying for these scholarships.”

One of the first things Thompson hands students is a menu of some of the most highly prized national scholarships, with all the relevant requirements and deadlines. Interested in a Gates Cambridge Scholarship, for graduate study at England’s second-oldest university? Or a Goldwater, for students in math, science or engineering? Or a William E. Simon Fellowship, for graduating seniors with plans to “strengthen civil society?” If so, see Thompson as soon as possible. He said he likes to start working with students when they are sophomores, so they have time to build the body of work and experiences–research, community service, international study—that will improve their chances of earning a scholarship.

A compelling personal story, and the willingness to tell it, helps, too. Thompson said his students produce draft after draft of their personal statements for applications. “Oh, the drafts they do,” he laughed, leaning back in his chair. Sometimes the challenge is getting students to talk about themselves and their lives in a way that will distinguish them from their competitors. Thompson is proud of success stories like Ashley Mothershead, a recently graduated student who grew up on a cattle ranch in Montana and hoped to study French overseas. When Thompson read the initial draft of her application essay for a Gilman Scholarship, he was surprised to find no mention of her unique upbringing or the transition she’d made from rural Montana to suburban Chicago.

“I told her, ‘You’re pretty interesting, why don’t you tell them about it?’” Thompson said. “If you don’t make yourself special to the reader, you’re going to end up in a pile with a hundred others.”

Mothershead took Thompson’s advice, was awarded a Gilman and ended up spending nine months studying in France.

Thompson has big plans of his own. An Elmhurst student has never won a Truman Scholarship, for students interested in government or public service, or a Mitchell Scholarship, which funds study in Ireland. Thompson would like to see his students change that. Do they have what it takes?

“Why not?” he asked. “You’re not going to win unless you apply.”

Geison was hired in August to launch the College’s newest varsity sport. But for now, he is a coach without a team, tasked with assembling a roster of athletes ready to take the field next March as the first Elmhurst College lacrosse squad. “I tell them they have an opportunity to come here and build a tradition.”

Geison is persuasive, but he knows there is a hole in his recruiting pitch. One of the challenges of trying to build a lacrosse program from scratch is that so many other lacrosse coaches are trying to do the very same thing at the very same time. This year alone, at least a dozen colleges will begin fielding NCCA Division III lacrosse teams for the first time.

“There are a lot of coaches out there making that ‘You can start something new’ speech,” Geison says.

Lacrosse’s popularity is surging, transforming it from a regional sport into a national phenomenon. More and more high schools and colleges across the country are fielding teams. If you think of lacrosse as a game played by preppy frat boys at a handful of East Coast schools, you haven’t been paying attention to the game’s changing demographics. Geison will be happy to educate you. His history lesson begins in the St. Lawrence River valley of the 17th century, where Jesuit missionaries first noted native tribes playing a ritually significant and sometimes violent game that some tribes called “little brother of war.” The Europeans called it lacrosse.

“It’s funny. Lacrosse is the oldest game on the continent, and it was invented by people who were marginalized and oppressed,” Geison says. “But now people think lacrosse is a new game played by rich kids.”

Geison knows better. He grew up in lacrosse-crazy Baltimore, where high-school championship games are followed with a Friday Night Lights-like intensity. In the last decade or so, the game has spread from its East Coast roots to take up residence in locations—like Chicago—where a lacrosse stick might have once drawn puzzled stares. Now it’s not unusual to see lacrosse goals alongside soccer nets in suburban parks. Lacrosse is often called the fastest-growing team sport in the country. In the Chicago area, Geison says, the number of high school teams has doubled in the last four years.

One of Geison’s first stops on the lengthy recruiting odyssey he undertook last fall was the meeting of the Illinois High School Lacrosse Association, where he introduced himself—and Elmhurst—to the assembled coaches. Not long ago, the local level of play lagged far behind eastern lacrosse bastions like Long Island and Maryland. But that’s changing, Geison says. Chicago-area players now dot the rosters of national college lacrosse powers like Syracuse and the University of Virginia. Geison’s first team will include some local talent, but he has been recruiting nationwide. He has received commitments from student-athletes in California, in Maryland and points between.

Geison, who came to Elmhurst from Pennsylvania’s DeSales University, sells his recruits not only on the budding lacrosse program, but on the quality of an Elmhurst education, the beauty of the campus and the career opportunities made possible by the College’s proximity to Chicago. “We have a lot to offer.”

It will be months before some of those recruits arrive on campus. It will be even longer before the team’s first season gets underway next spring. Walking across Langhorst Field, Geison sounds like it can’t happen soon enough.

“For twenty-five years now, spring has meant lacrosse season for me,” he says. “This is strange. There is nothing like getting out on the field and working with the guys.”

“Look at the attention to detail,” Schultz, an associate professor in the department of geography and geosciences, proudly told a visitor who asked about the map last week. “Look at the shading. It’s the kind of work you don’t see anymore.”

The map, created by cartographer David Imus, is a throwback to an artisanal tradition of painstakingly plotted maps that treat the smallest details—elevations, forestation, the density of urban areas—with great care. Schultz is not the only one who has taken note. One reviewer called Imus’ map “masterful … the greatest paper map of the United States you’ll ever see,” and it won last year’s “Best of Show” award at the competition of the Cartography and Geographic Society.

There is just one problem with the map. Fewer and fewer people have any idea how to read it, or any map.

“Geographic literacy is a huge problem,” Schultz said. Even basic geographic skills like using scale to calculate distance have atrophied. The numbers back Schultz up. A 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress survey showed that only a quarter of students in 4th, 8th and 12th grades scored at “proficient” levels in geography.

In fact, the very geography classes that would prepare grade school and high school students for college courses like the ones Schultz teaches have become hard to find. Budget cuts and reordered curricular priorities have killed them off. And, Schultz said, the problem isn’t limited to the United States. He was asked to represent the U.S. in a panel discussion on the state of geography around the world at last month’s Association of American Geographers conference. The consensus from the 27 countries represented at the conference: Geography, as a discipline, has lost its way.

“Ask people what they think geography is about and they’ll talk about memorizing state capitals,” Schultz said. He and other geographers would rather people thought of their field as a science—one that offers students a better grasp of spatial concepts, quantitative methods and ways to apply technology. Some think a name change is needed. Schultz would like to refer to the discipline as “geospatial technologies.” The National Geographic Society has proposed “geographical sciences.”

Whatever it’s called, geography has been utterly transformed by technology in the last decade or so. Thanks to GPS and GIS applications, maps are more ubiquitous than at any other time in human history. Just consider how many aps on your smartphone have to do with telling you where you are, where your friends are, and how close all of you are to the nearest consumer product. Yet the numbers of people living in geographic ignorance continue to climb.

For all the cartographic wonders that technology has made possible, it may also have bred a kind of geographic complacency. Why do I need to know geography, the occasional student will ask Schultz, if my GPS will tell me where to go?

Part of the answer is that geography is not only about navigating the world, but also understanding it. Next year, for example, Schultz is co-teaching a new Ocean Studies course for non-science majors with Merrillee Guenther, an assistant professor in Elmhurst’s biology department. The class straddles the line between geography and science, borrowing methods from both worlds to introduce students to questions about rising sea levels, species diversity and the affects of human activity on ocean life. Among the class assignments: Using spreadsheets and other quantitative tools to create current and wave models.

At the recent Association of American Geographers conference, Schultz presented a paper on the new class as a model of how to link geography and the natural sciences. Schultz said it was part of the effort to re-think the teaching of geography.

Can Schultz help map out the future of his field?

“We’re at a crossroads right now,” he said. “Geography is not what it used to be. Classes like this that link to other disciplines can be the answer to bring it back.”

Nelson, a senior from Ithaca, New York, confesses to an oversized interest in American politics. “I love elections,” she said in the Founders Lounge of the Frick Center on the final Friday before spring break. So as some of her classmates made their early exit from campus, Nelson staked out a spot and settled in. The presidential primary campaign was coming to Elmhurst. Spring break could wait.

Nelson was there to hear New Jersey Governor Chris Christie make his pitch for Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney at a Romney campaign rally. Christie’s appearance at the College was part of a perfect storm of campaign events that had consumed the Chicago area on Friday. Romney, Rick Santorum and President Barack Obama all had come to the city or suburbs to raise money or rally supporters. For fans of politics it made for a kind of political March Madness. Nelson wanted a courtside seat.

“This is what our political process is all about,” she said as the lounge filled with Romney supporters. “In primaries you really get the intimacy, the questions being asked. It’s pure democracy.

“I’m not a Romney supporter, but this is important.”

On most Friday afternoons, the Founders Lounge is a place to find students doing what college students do—studying, talking, texting, sprawling on couches for a quick nap, refueling with coffee and Diet Coke.

But for Christie’s visit, the lounge had been transformed. Overnight it had become a stage set for a political rally. Bright lights went up, TV news cameras appeared, campaign banners were unfurled. Volunteers worked the room, passing out Romney stickers. Security milled about. And in front of the Frick Center, a few Romney supporters hawked campaign buttons: “Annoy a liberal—work hard and be happy” and “Hot chicks love Republicans.”

Nelson’s political science professors had urged her and her classmates to check out the rally. Not that Nelson needed much convincing. She wanted to hear more about Romney’s positions on health care. She wanted to see Christie, his emissary to Elmhurst. And, she said, she just likes a good campaign rally.

She had been in Grant Park in 2008 for the massive celebration that followed Obama’s victory. “You could feel the history, feel the energy. You knew that this was something completely new and different,” she said.

Nelson knows that most students don’t match her enthusiasm for electoral politics. Students at the Romney rally were easily outnumbered by local Romney supporters from off-campus.

“I’d say there’s a small group of us on campus that are passionate about politics. But most don’t get involved,” Nelson said. “It’s symptomatic of something larger about our generation. We get excited about doing community service and feel-good stuff. But with the political system, we feel disenfranchised.”

The rally for Romney wasn’t the first opportunity for Elmhurst students to see the political process at close range. Illinois Governor Pat Quinn and State Senator Bill Bradley had debated on campus during their gubernatorial election contest in 2010. Brett Peto, a first-year from Roselle who had claimed a seat by lounge’s fireplace to hear Christie speak, regretted missing the governor’s debate. So he didn’t want to miss Christie. “I figured it would be another four years before we could see this kind of thing again,” he said.

By the time Christie made his appearance, every seat in the lounge had been taken. Romney supporters and the merely curious were standing along walls and in aisles. Nelson scanned the rows of seats for other students.

“I know there is a real mix of views on campus because we have great debates in class,” she said. “We can have conversations and not hate each other. My best friends are the people who fight with me in class.”

“I was hoping I would see more students here,” she said. “This is an opportunity to learn.”

For more on Christie’s Elmhurst appearance, check out the coverage from the Newark Star-Ledger. Or see our slideshow.

Quinn, a senior from Elmhurst, was one of 24 nursing students who had spent Tuesday morning in Memorial Hall helping victims of the zombie flu. Some of his patients displayed such gruesome symptoms—deathly pallor, eyes ringed in deep purple, the occasional facial scab—that it would have been easy to forget that these zombies were really students from the College’s Mill Theatre in costumes and cosmetics, and that their zombie flu symptoms were invented as a role-playing lesson for future nurses in how to handle real-life epidemics.

Like the other nursing students, Quinn seemed to take the waves of walking dead in stride.

“The zombies are just the fun part,” he said outside a Memorial Hall classroom where faculty and students were reviewing the morning’s simulation drill. “Simulations are a great way to learn. You make decisions, learn from your mistakes and it helps you prepare.”

The zombie flu simulation was partly inspired by the Zombie Preparedness program of the Centers for Disease Control, which made headlines last year by capitalizing on America’s pop-culture fascination with zombies (consider AMC’s “The Walking Dead” and the popular Jane Austen parody Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) to teach health and disaster-preparedness lessons. Kari Congenie, the nursing lab coordinator in Elmhurst’s Deicke Center for Nursing Education, thought a similar approach might work with the College’s nursing students. Two graduate students, Michele Naber and Juliane Jagielka, took on the challenge of organizing the zombie flu simulation drill as a project in their master’s degree program in nursing education.

They created characters and case histories for the theater students portraying the zombies. The challenge for the actors was not only to present telltale symptoms—they ranged from persistent coughing to hallucinations to the classically zombie-like “arm stiffness”—for the nursing students to diagnose. The actors also worked at conveying some of the panic and distress that nurses likely would encounter in actual emergencies.

The nursing students worked in teams, setting up a triage system to direct each patient to the appropriate care. They read symptoms, gathered health histories, asked about medications and made decisions about what kinds of care, if any, each patient needed.

Even the zombies were impressed with how smoothly the operation worked.

“They really kept their calm,” said Jenna Kolesari, a junior from Rockford who had just emerged from her zombie makeup to talk about the exercise. “Our improv training is to keep raising the stakes, but no matter what we did the nurses were really professional.”

The zombie flu simulation was the first of its kind at Elmhurst. But apart from the zombies roaming the corridors of Memorial Hall, the exercise wasn’t much different from the kinds of simulations that are a staple of nursing education.

“In simulations, the patient is the instructor,” said Associate Professor Terry Johnson. “This gives us a way to teach how to handle a mass epidemic situation in a safe environment.”

Johnson called the exercise a success, but she warned that the zombie flu crisis may not be over. She said zombies likely will descend once more on Memorial Hall, for a second simulation exercise in May.