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Home > Featured Stories > Community of Scholars > December 2008 > Red Means GoRed Means Go
Jeff is an inspiration to faculty and students alike and epitomizes the 'Red Means Go' spirit of NC State. No obstacle will prevent him from reaching his own goals or from clearing the path for those who follow.
NC State physics professor Dr. Stephen Reynolds
Jeff Olander is a senior at NC State, double-majoring in physics and mathematics.
By Dave Pond, Web Communication
Courage, perseverance and determination – traits displayed by some of the best and brightest students NC State has to offer, and characteristics truly displayed by Jeff Olander ('09), winner of the university's recent Red Means Go contest and the recipient of a $1,000 NC State Bookstores gift card.
Although Olander lives with a spinal muscular atrophy, he refuses to let the degenerative muscular disease label him, nor hinder his dreams, goals and learning experiences.
"While Jeff has been physically bound to a wheelchair since birth, nothing has limited his spirit or his desire to excel," said NC State physics professor Dr. Stephen Reynolds, who nominated Olander for the award. "Jeff does not see challenges as obstacles – he looks forward to them, using his abilities to meet them head-on."
A 4.0 student, Olander double-majors in physics and mathematics and has been inducted to Phi Beta Kappa, the nation's premier academic honor society, as a sign of his achievements in the classroom. He has taken a number of optional physics honors course outside of his degree requirements, and plans to pursue graduate work in physics next fall.
"I was originally a math major, but when I took my required elective in physics, I loved it so much that I knew I had to make physics a part of my future," Olander said. "Physics has that special application to it where you can answer questions about the universe, and NC State professors like Dr. Reynolds do a great job in getting us to a place where we have the opportunity to help answer all of the great questions that are out there.
"It's an abstract science, but it's also concrete, as we're trying to move into a deeper understanding of the world," he said. "There is that built-in motivation to really try to comprehend the universe."
Last semester, Olander was the only student to serve on the NC State's Universal Design for Learning team, which assists university leaders in designing coursework accessible to all students, with no need for adaptation or specialized design.
"We talked about a number of different strategies and what other universities had done," he said. "We wanted to address the different learning needs of students and make sure our classes remain available to everyone – at a lot of other places, it was all talk and no action."
To that end, Olander had an idea to incorporate infrared technology into the physics classroom to capture professors' whiteboard notes and make them downloadable for student use. Although physics notations have proven too complex at this point to mimic in the capture process, Olander sees a future for use in a liberal-arts setting bereft of subscripts, superscripts and mathematical equations.
"The idea was that if we could download all of Dr. Reynolds' lecture notes and put them on his website, students would have an extra, alternative format to use," Olander said. "In essence, that's what universal design and learning is all about."
"It's a bit of an extra challenge for me, as it takes me a little longer to do daily activities," he said. "I took it to prove to myself that I could do it, but I also like being involved with teaching, even if it's not directly.
"You learn so much by how the subject matter is taught – it's not all by the book – and as a student, you can appreciate it so much more when you have great professors like I do," he said. "In taking on the test grading position, I wanted to see how students thought, and how they approached problems.
"There is so much you can learn about people by how they handle problems, and you want to do your best to help facilitate their learning."
So what does Red Means Go mean to the student who best embodies it?
"It's all about individuals taking initiative and having NC State as a resource to succeed in that initiative," Olander said. "NC State is a campus that appreciates individuals who go the extra mile when they find something that they really enjoy doing and are passionate about.
"When you want to do something, there are resources, educators and their experience available to you – all you have to do is ask."
In addition to his graduate-school preparations, Olander plans to continue to work on creative solutions for those with learning and mental disabilities, as well as physical disabilities – all in the effort to make an NC State education more accessible to all students.
"Jeff is an inspiration to faculty and students alike and epitomizes the 'Red Means Go' spirit of NC State," Reynolds said. "No obstacle will prevent him from reaching his own goals or from clearing the path for those who follow."
