This page will introduce you to the Institute for Digital Diversity projects team. The fifteen graduate students and faculty members whose brief intellectual biographies you will find below form the core of the civic engagement aspect of the IDD's work.
Working both individually and in collaboration, they are the workforce behind our efforts to develop culturally relevant World Wide Web resources with underserved communities in and beyond the state of Washington. Our goal is to work with underrepresented communities (low income, immigrant, Native tribes, ethnic/racial minorities) to create web-delivered materials that will enhance the cultural and economic health of their members. In all of our work, the first principle is that partnerships begin with listening, in this case by listening intently to how communities define their own needs and listening for those openings where we can assist their efforts to make the web a more useful tool for their constituencies.
| Professor Kim Christen has worked in Tennant Creek, N.T. Australia for over a decade with the Warumungu community on a number of digital projects, including a digital archive using indigenous protocols to drive the search and access functions. The next phase of her work involves transferring the archive's capabilities into an open source, non-commercial software package that can be adopted and customized by other indigenous communities, starting with tribes in the Northwest, to preserve their cultural materials in culturally appropriate ways. A sample of Christen's innovative work can be found in the online journal Vectors. |  |
 |
Professor Patricia Ericsson directs the Digital Technology and Culture program at WSU, and works on the cultural impact of technology, especially computers in the teaching of writing. She works with Frank King in teaching American Studies 475: Digital Diversity, and she is creating an online anthology for use in AmSt 475 and similar courses about issues of diversity in online environments. |
| Frank King is interested in Black cultural studies and in the prison industrial complex. His digital diversity work engages with the juvenile detention center in Spokane. Frank is working to create a set of online, culturally relevant resources for use by Black, Latino and other youth from disadvantaged backgrounds to help them make successful transitions from detention to economic opportunities in the outside world. |  |
 |
Professor Barbara Monroe is the author of Crossing the Digital Divide: Race, Writing, and Technology in the Classroom. She has just completed a new book, Plateau Indian Ways with Words, that will have a major impact on the teaching of writing to American Indians. Barbara is also working with team member Shawn LameBull on a documentary film on the Yakama Indian nation of south central Washington. |
| Shawn LameBull (Yakama) is interested in the social impact of computer games, especially gaming communities, and in Native studies. His digital diversity work includes digitizing historical and contemporary cultural materials for his tribe, and working with Professor Monroe on a documentary film about the Yakama nation and the impact of tribal-based rhetorics on student learning processes. |  |  |
Sompathana Phitsanoukanh is working with Lao communities in the coastal Pacific Northwest. Three NW cities contain large populations of Laotian refugees. She is documenting how they have adapted their cultural traditions to their new homes and transferred heritage to the second generation. Her digital diversity project will entail creating online resources for youth in these communities, as well as a online site (with Professor Marian Sciachitano) on representations of Asians and Asian Americans in film. |
| Marc Robinson is interested in Black student cultural politics, from the 1960s to the present, and in other aspects of Black culture. He is assisting Professor Christen on her indigenous DVD template project, and working with the Plateau Center for American Indian Studies on their project of creating an extensive digital archive for and about the various plateau tribes and confederations. In all this work a key goal is to respect each tribe's cultural guidelines regarding who has access to various dimensions of the archives. |  |
 |
Keven Shipman (Shoalwater Bay Tribe) is interested in current and historical representations of American Indians and in cultural preservation. He will be working with two tribes. One project, with his own Shoalwater Bay Tribe, revolves around increasing the tribe’s capacity to build its educational services, including education department worker skills, information on educational opportunities, and support of tribal members seeking education. The second project, with the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, will focus on the tribes’ History Department, creating online tribal history resources for grade 9-12 schools. |
| Professor Judy Meuth is interested in the social impact of science and technologies, especially with regard to gender and race, and in American Indian cultures and education. In collaboration with the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation (CCT), she recently completed a project promoting the academic success of Native American girls and boys in science, math, and technology (Project PRISM, NSF, $886,505, with Sandy Cooper). She is currently planning an extension of this work with the Tribes and two school districts. Meuth's digital diversity work will focus on tribal culture and language recovery/preservation and teaching projects using the web, videos, and other tools. |  |
 |
Hala Abu-Taleb, from Jordan, is interested in comparative representations of Arab-Muslim women in US and Middle Eastern media. Her digital diversity project entails working with young Arab-Muslim women in the Northwest to create online resources that counter stereotypes, create more complex and accurate representations, and promote greater economic and cultural opportunities for members of their community. |
| Ali Abdul-Aziz is researching Black popular culture, and comparative US and post-Apartheid South African politics. His digital diversity work includes studying state and national policies in the area of new media and cultural diversity. He is developing new rhetorical approaches to these issues that he hopes will lead to better understanding of the cultural dimensions of the digital divides. |  |
 |
Xuan Trong Nguyen is working on her digital dissertation that will be the first comprehensive study of Vietnamese in Seattle. Her digital diversity projects also involve the Vietnamese immigrant and Vietnamese American communities of Seattle. She is working with a community group seeking to provide parents in Seattle schools with opportunities to access online information in Vietnamese about their child's progress in school. And she is working on an interactive website offering cultural and economic resources for Vietnamese immigrant and Vietnamese American youth. |
| Professor T.V. Reed coordinates the Institute for Digital Diversity, and co-founded its predecessor, the digital diversity project, with the late Michelle Kendrick. Reed has long taught American Studies 475: Digital Diversity, and is working on "Webs of Meaning: Understanding Digital Cultures," a textbook for use in this and similar courses on the social impact of the web other new media. In addition to the textbook, he will be working with Professor Patricia Ericsson in editing a companion online anthology. |  |
 | Jody Pepion (Blackfeet) works in Native studies and women's studies, especially on issues dealing with the empowerment of Native women. Her digital diversity work focuses on making WSU courses and research materials avaiable via distance delivery to students in Blackfeet tribal college. |
Life is good at WSU.
Secondary content can be almost anything. If you are not using this region delete all the content that is in between the div tags with the id ="additional".
A unique richness of students, faculty, location, activities, and organizations creates a full, lively student life at the University. This section gives you the insider's view on student life and a sampling of the opportunities here.
"Glimpses." Students talk about life at WSU
These brief posts are written by WSU students to give you a personal look through their window on campus life.