October 2001   

Dear Colleagues,

Our lives together have changed dramatically since my message to you in September. We have much to reflect upon and much to face together as a community, not only in meeting the challenge of going forward with our daily lives, serving our students and developing our professional careers, but also in facing the daunting challenge of an uncertain future. I wish to thank all of you for the hard work that you have done to help our WSU community cope with the deep sorrow we all are experiencing following the events of Sept. 11. And, too, I wish to offer our help as you continue to talk with your students and each other about the tragedy and our nation’s response.

The College of Liberal Arts will continue to sponsor several events that address issues surrounding the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., beginning this month with the panel “How Should the U.S. Respond?” sponsored by the Foley Institute at noon on Oct. 4 (136 PE Building). Other events this month will be announced through our College faculty and staff list serve. Associate Dean John Kicza and Herb Delaney of Multicultural Student Services are coordinating these activities. If you have suggestions for additional sessions, please contact the Dean’s Office.

In addition to panels and discussions about the social, political and economic implications of these national events, we would also like to help with more immediate human concerns, such as how to talk with our students about their concerns for safety in our campus community and to build a community of trust and support so that we can work together over the difficult months ahead that face us all. If you have ideas about ways that we can work together to make our College community a more welcoming and secure environment for our students, faculty and staff, please contact me.

In the meanwhile, the College is continuing to move ahead on many of the hopeful projects that I informed you about last month. We will announce later this month progress on a joint effort to seek funding to support Native American Studies, involving our College and liberal arts colleges at the University of Idaho, Montana State University and Oregon State University. Also coming up this month is the second semiannual Authors’ Recognition Ceremony on Oct. 26 at 3:30 p.m. in our Anthropology Museum. Once again, this event will feature short presentations by our faculty on recently authored books, performances and art work, followed by commentary and collegiality. I hope to see many of you there.

Our College Dean’s Administrative Staff and faculty representatives meet with our College Advisory Council on Oct. 26. This group of 24 prominent leaders in government and industry state-wide are dedicated to assisting the College in student recruitment, public relations, and fund-raising. Several of our departments have taken the opportunity to connect their efforts with this board; most recently, our Psychology Department is conducting a survey of what businesses expect of our graduates with Psychology degrees, assisted by members of our Advisory Council. Your ideas for ways we might get our Council members involved to support your efforts are welcome.

Again, my best wishes to you as you continue your good work for the College and Washington State University.

Barbara Couture
Dean, College of Liberal Arts

The College of Liberal Arts is pleased to welcome Tammy Bowen-Baldwin, who has accepted the position of Academic Coordinator for the General Studies Program. Tammy will begin work full-time Oct. 15.

Steven Stehr (Political Science) received a National Science Foundation Quick-Response Research Grant Sept. 24 to do field research in New York City; he left for the East Coast the following day and returned Sept. 29. Stehr does research on community recovery from disasters. His research project in New York involves tracking the social processes of the ongoing victim identification effort. Typically victim identification is a relatively routine activity done though official channels. Owing to the enormity of the number of missing, however, many new processes have evolved in this instance.

Dave Demers (Communication) was quoted in a Sept. 19 USA Today article that examined reaction to Arab media coverage of the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Demers, executive director of the Center for Global Media Studies, told reporter David Lieberman that most Arab newspapers he surveyed condemned the attack and expressed sympathy for the victims and their families. ”A lot of Americans would not expect that.”

Rachel Halverson (Foreign Languages and Literatures) will present a paper, “Living Berlin: Autobiography and the City,” at the German Studies Association Conference in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 6.

On Sept. 7, Jeanne Johnson (Speech and Hearing Sciences) conducted an invited half-day workshop for speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists and physical therapists on the assessment of children needing augmentative communication. This was part of the Pediatric Seminar Series hosted by Shriners Children’s Hospital of Spokane.

Bill Condon (Writing Program), Diane Kelly-Riley (Writing Program), Dick Law (General Education), Gary Brown (CTLT) and Tom Henderson (CTLT) have been awarded a three-year, $378,675 Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) grant to continue their work on critical thinking. The grant will help disseminate WSU’s Critical Thinking Rubric throughout the General Education Program, and it will fund a statewide critical thinking initiative.

Leonard Burns (Psychology) and colleagues Marcela Moura and James Walsh presented two papers at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association this August in San Francisco: “Structural relations among inattention, hyperactivity/impulsivity, and oppositional defiant symptoms” and “Internal validity of the ADHD and ODD symptoms in Brazilian children.”

Gerald Berthiaume (Music) served as chair of the 2001 Washington State Music Teachers Association State Convention held at WSU in June. He also performed in three concerts during the convention, including a solo piano program featuring newly composed piano works by Charles Argersinger and Gregory Yasinitsky (both Music).
Berthiaume will also serve as master teacher for the Everett, Wash., Young Artist Master Series this fall and next spring.  In addition to master classes Berthiaume will present workshops on Domenico Scarlatti and Ludwig van Beethoven for teachers and students. Master classes will also be given both fall and spring in Olympia.

Marina Tolmacheva (History, Associate Dean of Liberal Arts) gave an invited paper titled “At the Round Table of Africanists” at the international conference “African Studies in the 20th Century: Time, Personalities, Interpretations.” The conference was held Sept. 13-14 in Moscow, Russia, and included scholars from the United States, Canada, Russia, Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, the Czech Republic and South Africa. Participants stopped conference proceedings for a minute of silence to commemorate the victims of Sept. 11 events.

Faculty in the Murrow School of Communication have elected Neal Robison associate director for undergraduate studies and Julie Andsager associate director for graduate studies. They are responsible for course scheduling, curriculum oversight, advising, and recruiting and retention for their respective areas.

Amy Mazur (Political Science) presented publicly the results of a report on Women’s Policy Offices in France on Sept. 27 at the Bureau of Women’s Rights in Paris. The report was conducted for the bureau from 1998-2000 under Mazur’s direction with the participation of Andrew Appleton (Political Science) and two other researchers.

During the annual meeting of the Pullman Chamber of Commerce Sept. 13, Glenn Johnson (Communication) received the Marshall A. Neill Community Service Award for 2001, an award that goes to an “outstanding individual in the community.” Johnson was recognized for his work with a number of agencies in the community.

Gail Chermak (Speech and Hearing Sciences) is presenting two invited workshops this month. She will address the management of auditory processing disorders at the Oregon Speech-Language-Hearing Association convention on Oct. 13, and the differential diagnosis of auditory processing disorders at the Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle on Oct. 20.

Jolanta Drzewiecka (Communication) visited the University of Cape Town, South Africa, in August. She presented a seminar, “Diaspora as a transnational site of exclusions and power struggles,” in the Graduate School in Humanities and Sociology Department Seminar Series. She also conducted talks on establishing a faculty and student exchange program between the UCT Institute for Intercultural Diversity Studies and the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Her visit was supported by a WSU International Programs Internationalization Grant.

Jayanti Ray’s (Speech and Hearing Sciences) manuscript “Functional outcomes of oromyo-functional therapy in children with cerebral palsy” has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Orofacial Myology. She has also been invited to speak at the annual convention of the International Association of Orofacial Myology, to be held in June 2002.

An article by Amy Wharton and Mary Blair-Loy (both Sociology) entitled “The ‘Overtime Culture’ in a Global Corporation: A Cross National Study of Finance Professionals’ Interest in Working Part-Time” is forthcoming in Work & Occupations.

Jolanta Drzewiecka’s (Communication) paper on “The Structural-Cultural Dialectic of Diasporic Politics,” co-authored with Rona Halualani, will be published in Communication Theory, a nationally ranked tier one communication journal.

Lisa Fournier (Psychology) and graduate student Stephanie Shorter published a paper together in the August issue of Perception & Psychophysics titled “Is Evidence for Late Selection Due to Automatic or Attentional Processing of Stimulus Identities?”

Carter Hay’s (Sociology) article “Parenting, Self-Control, and Delinquency: A Test of Self-Control Theory” was published in the August issue of Criminology.

Terrence Cook (Political Science) has completed two volumes of macropolitical empirical theory sketches. The first emerged one year ago as The Rise and Fall of Regimes: Toward Grand Theory of Politics (Peter Lang Publishers), and the new book out this month is titled Nested Political Coalitions: Nation, Regime, Program, Cabinet (Praeger Publishers). Shifting to policy analysis, he has begun working on a book titled Separation, Assimilation, Accommodation: Comparing Ethnic Minority Policy Strategies, offering a paper presentation on it Oct. 18 at the Pacific Northwest Political Science Association annual meeting in Coeur d’Alene.

Laurie Mercier (History, WSU Vancouver) has a new book out this month from the University of Illinois Press, Anaconda: Labor, Community, and Culture in Montana’s Smelter City.

Paul Kwon (Psychology) authored an article titled “Sociotropy and autonomy: Construct validity evidence using TAT narratives” in the August issue of Journal of Personality Assessment. This was co-authored with two Psychology graduate students, Duncan Campbell and Mark Williams.

Jim Short (professor emeritus, Sociology) wrote “Forward: Thinking About Risk and Uncertainty” for Gene Rosa (Sociology) et al.’s book Risk, Uncertainty, and Rational Action.

Rebecca Craft (Psychology) published “Effects of chronic morphine treatment on responding for intracranial stimulation in female vs. male rats” in Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology in May, co-authored with Erin Stoffel (PhD candidate) and Julie Stratmann (PhD ’01). Craft also had an article written with Scott Bernal (MS ‘00), “Sex differences in opioid antinociception: Kappa and ‘mixed action’ agonists,” printed in the August issue of Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

Brenna Helm (BFA ‘97) exhibited her paintings at the WSU Compton Union Gallery show entitled “Sweep of the Marshes” from Aug. 27 through Sept. 15.

Diana Kersey (MFA ‘97), ceramic sculptor, is featured at the Goldsberry Gallery in Houston, Texas, from Sept. 15 through Oct. 20.

Joel Wendland (PhD candidate, American Studies) presented a paper entitled “Becoming Working Class: Writing and Partisanship in Alexander Saxton’s Grand Crossing” at the Third Annual Hull House Conference, “Hull House Magazine and the Chicago Cultural Front, 1930-1945,” held Sept. 21.

Michael Brown (PhD candidate, History) interned for the Asian American Comparative Collection at the University of Idaho over the summer and has been awarded the Viola Vestal Fellowship for the 2001-2002 academic year. An early draft of his dissertation, “Race and Gender in the World of Victorio Velasco:  Dominance, Subordination, and Changes in Context,” has been accepted for a conference sponsored by the University of Utah to be held Oct. 26 and 27. He was recently hired as an adjunct professor at Lewis and Clark State College, where he will teach HIST 472, History of Modern Japan, for the fall semester.

Azfar Hussain’s (PhD candidate, English) translation from the classical Sanskrit play Sakuntala, reprinted in an anthology of literature last year in Singapore, will be reprinted in yet another anthology in October to be published by Diwa Scholastic Press Inc., Philippines.
      Hussain’s paper “The Ghost of Mathematics and the Body of Poetry: Towards a New Calculus of Criticism” has been accepted for presentation at the annual conference of the Society for Literature and Science, to be held Oct. 11-14 at the State University of New York, Buffalo. He will also be presenting his paper on “The Political Economy of Colonialism and Racism: Re-reading Cesaire, Fanon, and Memmi” at the interdisciplinary conference “Race in the Humanities,” to be held at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, Nov. 15-17.

Laurie Carlson (PhD candidate, History) has been named the Washington state coordinator for the National Council for History Education. She will be responsible for creating a state organization among history educators, as well as acting as a liaison between the national NCHE organization and Washington state history teachers. Carlson will participate in the NCHE conference Oct. 18-20 at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

Carol Ann Scally (PhD candidate, History) was awarded a Margaret Storrs Grierson Travel-to-Collections Grant for 2001-2002 by the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College to continue her dissertation research at that archive.

Washington State University has been selected by the Society for American Archaeology as one of eight colleges and universities to participate in a three-year project dedicated to renewing the undergraduate archaeology curriculum.

Each participating institution will design or revise two undergraduate courses to incorporate a set of principles and guidelines developed earlier by an SAA task force on curriculum. The principles include stewardship, diversity, social relevance, ethics and values, critical skills, communication and real-world problem solving. The goal is to develop a curriculum that will better equip archaeology students—and the discipline of archaeology—for the problems and prospects of the 21st century.

WSU’s contribution will be a course in archaeological field methods, to be taught by William Andrefsky (Anthropology), and one in the archaeological history of the Pacific Northwest, to be taught by Mary Collins (Anthropology).

WSU and Pennsylvania State University are the two public research universities selected; the other participants, which represent a variety of educational contexts, include Boston University, University of South Florida, Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, Hamline University, Albion College and Mesa Community College. William Lipe of the Department of Anthropology will head the WSU effort on behalf of the department’s program in archaeology.

The project as a whole will result in 16 redesigned courses. Each will be taught and evaluated twice at the home institution before all the course designs are published and made available to archaeology faculty nationwide. The SAA estimates that the “renewed” curriculum has the potential to impact 30,000 anthropology majors nationwide, nearly all of whom take one or more archaeology courses as part of their major. In addition, approximately 500,000 students take undergraduate anthropology courses as electives each year, many of which are focused on archaeology.

Funding for the project is provided by the National Science Foundation.

The Center for Columbia River History recently completed a three-and-a-half year Web project detailing the history of eight Columbia Basin communities, now available online at www.ccrh.org.

With a $350,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education, professors and students from Washington State University’s Pullman and Vancouver campuses and Portland State University developed the comprehensive Web site from concept to creation.
“It was a process of collaborative research and development to create a rich bank of primary source material available on the Web,” said Laurie Mercier (History, WSU Vancouver), associate director of CCRH and director of the Columbia Communities Project.

Each of the selected communities’ histories contains an overview, maps, photo archive, oral histories and links to different primary resources such as government documents, newspaper articles, reminiscences and correspondence.

Each history also includes curriculum questions as a resource for teachers and students in history. Mercier has visited a number of local schools to talk with students and teachers in history classes about the Web site and the connection of local and regional history to U.S. history.

The histories can be found on the CCRH Web site under “Community Histories.” The CCRH is a consortium of the Washington State Historical Society, WSU Vancouver and PSU to promote the study of Columbia Basin history.

Four of the five University writing portfolios deemed most outstanding for the spring 2001 semester were submitted by Liberal Arts majors. The students to be honored at an awards ceremony later this month include Christopher Beck (General Humanities), Holley Goss (Sociology), Sadie Hayes (English) and Shayna Hutchens (History).

Dr. Robert C. Solomon, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin, will deliver this year’s Potter Memorial Lecture on “Nietzsche’s Fatalism” Oct. 11 at 7:30 p.m. in Bryan Hall Auditorium.

Nietzsche is often taught along with the “Existentialists” because he is so adamantly an “individual” and an early advocate of “self making,” but Nietzsche also subscribes to a number of harsh doctrines that might be described as “fatalism,” even a kind of “biological determinism.” Fatalism, strictly understood, means that nothing could be other than it is, but Nietzsche’s slogan “Become who you are!” would seem to suggest that we are, nevertheless, authors of our own success (or failure).

Solomon will speak to this apparent dichotomy in Nietzsche’s thought in moving us toward a more integrated understanding of what that most wily and provocative of philosophers meant.

Also, on Oct. 12 at 4 p.m. in the CUB Junior Ballroom, Solomon will deliver the keynote address for the 53rd Annual Northwest Conference on Philosophy. His topic will be “On the Passivity of the Passions,” and the general public is welcome to attend.

Solomon received his BA in molecular biology at the University of Pennsylvania and his MA and PhD in philosophy and psychology at the University of Michigan. He has authored 16 books, including the recent What Nietzsche Really Said (with Kathleen Higgins, 2000) and Building Trust (2001). His published works include over 150 articles, as well as four textbooks in philosophy and a series of edited anthologies.