May 2002  

|  Dean's Message  |  Worthy of Note  |  Professional Productivity  

|  Student Activities and Awards  |  Alumni News  |  Calendar  |

|  CLA Awards Recipients  |  Fulbright Senior Specialist Grant  |

|  Editor Visits Comm School  |  Featured Graduates  |

Dear Colleagues,

As the academic year draws to a close, I hope that your busy schedules allow you some time to celebrate with your students and colleagues our many fine accomplishments of this year. On April 26 we held our College Awards Ceremony in the new Smith Center for Undergraduate Education. We were pleased that Provost Robert Bates was able to join us that afternoon and give us a few words of welcome. He spoke to the theme of promoting excellence in all that we do—our teaching, research and service to our university, profession and community. And he acknowledged the significant contributions of faculty, staff and students of the College of Liberal Arts to excellence in all of these areas. You will find in this issue of the Chronicle a complete listing of all of the college award winners, as well as a list of faculty and staff who are retiring and those who were recognized for 25 years of service or more. I hope that you will take the time to congratulate these fine colleagues upon their successes.

We look forward to graduation on May 11 on our Pullman campus. The College of Liberal Arts will be participating in the second ceremony, to begin at 11:30 a.m., with lineup at 11 a.m. All Liberal Arts faculty are welcome to participate in the graduation procession, dressed in regalia; I hope to see several of you there. Our commencement speaker will be state senator Maria Cantwell. This year’s banner bearer for the college will be Jerrie Sinclair of the Department of English. You will find a feature story about her on Page 6 of this issue.

Of course, amidst our celebrations, I know that we all remain concerned about our college budget for the upcoming year. President Rawlins and Provost Bates continue to work with our regents to secure a tuition increase of 16% for next year. Even with this increase, the maximum allowed by the legislature for residential students, we will have an overall budget shortfall. I have been assured that every effort will be made to preserve our academic programs as the budget is distributed for next year. It is anticipated that we will have preliminary estimates for next year’s operating budget by the end of May. I will be working closely with our department chairs to meet our top priority to fund instruction for all our scheduled classes.

I wish each of you the best as you prepare for the final weeks of the semester ahead. This will be our last issue of the Chronicle for this academic year. My best wishes for a productive summer, whatever your plans may be.

Barbara Couture
Dean, College of Liberal Arts

Heather Streets (History) is being honored with a $5,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant to write her research project Born Warriors: The Military, Martial Races, and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857-1914. According to John E. Kicza (Associate Dean, College of Liberal Arts), this is the first NEH grant awarded to a member of the History faculty since he won a similar grant in 1988.

The best university writing portfolios for fall 2001 were announced in March, and once again Liberal Arts majors have risen to the top. Congratulations to Laurie Kendall (English, WSU Vancouver), Anna McAllister (English), Sarah Hammond (Psychology) and Jeff Dunn (Philosophy) for their outstanding achievements in writing.

Christopher Lupke (Foreign Languages) has been named associate editor of the Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese. Based in Hong Kong, this prestigious journal is one of only two English language scholarly periodicals worldwide whose focus is modern Chinese literature and culture.

Tahira M. Probst (Psychology) was awarded the 2002 Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Research Award. The research award “recognizes the finest in empirical research in Human Resource Management” and will be presented to Probst at the 2002 SHRM national conference.

Ellen Gorsevski (English, Communication) has just completed the development of a new service learning course for DDP to be delivered online through WSU’s Bridge Web site to distance students. Students will be designing Web sites for nonprofit organizations that need but cannot afford Web design work. If you know of any nonprofit organizations that need a Web site, please contact Dr. Gorsevski at elleng@wsu.edu or 335-2644.

Jayanti Ray (Speech and Hearing Sciences) will present two papers on children’s metacognitive abilities at the IX International Congress for Study of Child Language and the Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders to be held at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in July.

David Demers (Communication) was cited in a San Francisco Chronicle story about media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The story points out that both sides in the conflict are accusing the U.S. news media of bias. Demers told the paper that historically media coverage has tended to favor the Israeli point of view. “It’s not a conspiracy by any means,” Demers said, “but what it boils down to is they (journalists) depend on government officials. And those government officials represent the administration, which tends to be pro-Israel.” Later in the story he added, ”The two sides in a conflict will always see the mainstream media as biased on the other side. When the conflict flares up, and especially when violence increases, both sides become more vociferous in their criticism of the mass media.”

Clinical instructor Sally Johnston (Speech and Hearing Sciences) has written an article, in conjunction with the month of May’s “Better Speech & Hearing Month,” that will appear in three local newspapers: the Moscow-Pullman Daily News, Latah Eagle and Lewiston Tribune. She is also volunteering her time to participate in the Senior Health Fair in Moscow May 11.

Mortimer Adler advised that “books not discussed lose their value.” Literature teachers can help guard against this by promoting the joy of reading. This summer, Romana Hillebrand (English) will direct the first NIWP Literature Project. Participants will not only become aware of their own methods of understanding a text but also become familiar with other strategies that will help them help their students become thoughtful readers who have an increased capacity to enjoy, appreciate and evaluate complex literature. Participants will meet weekday afternoons July 8-19 on the University of Idaho campus.

Martha Cottam (Political Science) has been invited to join a distinguished group of guest lectures for the four-week Summer Institute in Political Psychology, organized jointly by the International Society of Political Psychology, the Mershon Center for International Security and the Departments of Political Science and Psychology at Ohio State University. She will present lectures on the role of emotions in political decision-making and actions.

Amanda Espinosa-Aguilar (English, WSU Tri-Cities) was invited to be a featured speaker at the 2002 Conference on College Composition and Communication in Chicago. Her presentation, “Where Have All the Scholars Gone 2?” discusses the advanced degree completion and the renewal, tenure and promotion experiences of academics of color. She will also present a paper this summer at the National Women’s Studies Association entitled “Radical Rhetoric: Anger, Activism and Change,” which examines the writings of Gloria Anzaldua.

Laurie Drapela (Political Science, Criminal Justice) presented a paper entitled “Beyond Columbine: Exploring the Relationship Between School Characteristics and Delinquency” at the annual meeting of the Pacific Sociological Association, held April 18-22 in Vancouver, B.C.

Gail Chermak (Speech and Hearing Sciences) will present an invited one-day workshop to the College of Health Related Professions, University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, this May on the “Management of auditory processing disorders.” In April she presented a workshop on “Differential diagnosis of auditory processing disorder” at the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists in Victoria, B.C.

Paul Whitney, John Hinson (both Psychology) and Tina Jameson (PhD candidate, Psychology) presented a poster entitled “Working memory and the development of somatic markers in judgment” at the ninth annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society in San Francisco, April 13-15.

Ana M. Rodríguez-Vivaldi (Foreign Languages) has been invited to participate in the 2002 Forum of the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association’s annual meeting in November. The topic for the forum will be “Aesthetic Pursuits of Desire: Image, Sound, Language,” and Rodríguez will speak on “Shaking the Soul, the Mind, and the Reader: Laura Esquivel and the Multimedia Novel.”

For the 2001-2003 academic years, Matthew Guterl (Comparative American Cultures) is on leave from WSU and a fellow at the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, Brown University. At Brown, he is working hard on a second book, under contract with Harvard University Press, with the preliminary title of A World Without Slaves: Race and Work in the Age of Emancipation.

Birgitta Ingemanson (Foreign Languages) spoke March 28 at a conference in Vladivostok, Russia, about how to use both facts and feelings in teaching, illustrating the theoretical remarks with a practical application of music and slides. “In the end I had the audience crying (about 200 of them), which was, of course, proof of my theory,” she says. Ingemanson was presented with a plaque of gratitude from the president of Far Eastern National University for “supporting participation in FENU-WSU exchange programs and devotion to strengthening international contacts between Russia and the USA.” Her trip was made possible in part by a mini-grant from the College of Liberal Arts.

Ann and Greg Yasinitsky (both Music) will travel to Helena, Mont., in May to act as adjudicators for the Western Montana State Music Festival. Also in May, Greg will perform with Ray Charles and the Spokane Symphony.

Camille Roman (English) has been invited to speak at the American Literature Association conference in Long Beach, Cal., May 30-June 2, and at the Center for Society and Ideas at the University of California, Riverside, June 3. She will discuss the forthcoming first volume, Traditions & Revolutions: American Poetry to 1900, in her co-edited three-volume The New Anthology of American Poetry from Rutgers University Press. Her subject will be the contributions of this first volume to a new understanding of Pacific Rim and borderlands cultures.

William Lipe (professor emeritus, Anthropology) was honored by a well-attended symposium at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The symposium featured seven papers discussing various aspects of Lipe’s career and was organized by Timothy Kohler (Anthropology) and Mark Varien, director of research at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Colorado.

Alex Kuo (Comparative American Cultures, English) has recently learned that his book Lipstick, for which he will receive the American Book Award this month, will be released in hardcover. On a recent trip to Hong Kong he got numerous requests for interviews, from TIME, the New York Times, Voice Of America, the Wall Street Journal and others.

Francis Ho (Fine Arts), while on sabbatical, is exhibiting work and lecturing in Tokyo at Nihon University College of Art from April 20-May 20.

Susan Chan (Music) served as adjudicator for Music Teachers National Association piano auditions in Vancouver, Wash., in March. In the same month, she was also guest adjudicator at the Vancouver (B.C.) Music Festival.
     In April, Chan performed a piano recital and taught two masterclasses at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, N.J. On the same trip, she performed a recital at Peace College in Raleigh, N.C., as an exchange with Ray Kilburn, a former piano faculty member there who visited WSU in November. Her performance was favorably reviewed on Classical Voice North Carolina, one of the two online concert review Web sites in the U.S.: “Chan is an artist not to be missed on her next visit, which we hope will be soon. You should go out of your way to hear her.” At the end of April, she performed a lunchtime recital at Sherman Clay, Steinway dealer in Seattle, and delivered a PowerPoint presentation on music service learning at Grossmont College, San Diego.

Carla Jones (Speech and Hearing Sciences) will present a lecture titled “Language Development: Concerns and Encourage- ment” at the annual Early Childhood Educators Spring Mini-Conference April 20. The conference is cosponsored by Whitman County and Asotin County Child Care Resource and Referral, Whitman County Health Department and Palouse Area Association for the Education of Young Children.

Carol Ivory (Fine Arts) has been awarded a 2002 International Programs mini-grant for travel to the Pacific Arts Association Executive Committee meeting in Dresden, Germany, in the fall. This May, Carol will be in Tahiti and the Marquesas, lecturing for the eighth time on the freighter-cruise ship Aranui. In June, she has been invited to Peabody Essex Museum and Institute in Salem, Mass., as a consultant on the reinstallation of their Pacific collections.

Leonard Burns’ (Psychology) chapter “Revision of the Padua Inventory of obsessive compul-sivity disorder symptoms” will appear in Diagnosis of Anxiety: Basic Principles and Procedures.

William Lipe (professor emeritus, Anthropology) authored the chapter “Public Benefits of Archaeological Research” in the book Public Benefits of Archaeology, published in April by the University Press of Florida and edited by Barbara Little of the National Park Service.

Mary Blair-Loy’s (Sociology) book Competing Devotions: Career and Family Among Women Financial Executives has been accepted for publication by Harvard University Press.

David Demers (Communication) is editing a book of articles from Global Media News, a newsletter he edits. The book, titled Global Media News Reader, will be published this summer.

David Nice (Political Science) recently signed a contract to do a new edition of Politics and Policy in States and Communities with John Harrigan, to be published by Addison Wesley Longman.

Frances McSweeney (Psychology) will publish “Common processes may contribute to extinction and habituation” in the Journal of General Psychology and “The Matching Law illustrates the influence of the Harvard Pigeon Laboratory” in the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.

Greg Yasinitsky’s (Music) new pieces “Hells Canyon” for concert band, “Just the Spot” for jazz choir, “Packin’ Heat” for jazz band and others will be premiered by ensembles from Clarkston High School under the direction of Fred Dole at the new Clarkston HS Performing Arts Center. These recent pieces were composed as part of a residency for Yasinitsky sponsored by the Commission Project of New York, a national organization which places composers in the public schools. Yasinitsky has also recently published “The Blue Bridge” for jazz band.

Tahira Probst (Psychology, WSU Vancouver) has written chapters for several books newly released or currently in press. “Job Insecurity: Exploring a New Threat to Employee Safety” appears in Psychology of Workplace Safety; “The Psychometrics of Translation: An Evaluation of Measurement Equivalence Across Languages” in Adapting Educational and Psychological Tests for Cross-Cultural Assessment; and “The Impact of Job Insecurity on Employee Work Attitudes, Job Adaptation, and Organizational Withdrawal Behaviors” in The Psychology of Work: Theoretically Based Empirical Research.

Jim Short’s (professor emeritus, Sociology) chapter titled “Unwinding: Reflections on a Career” appears in Lessons of Criminology, edited by Gilbert Geis and Mary Dodge and published by Anderson Publishing Co.

Buddy Levy (English) traveled to Valdez, Alaska, April 12-15 to research and write about the Chugach Mountain Festival and World Free Skiing Championships. The event took place in and around Valdez, and Levy has contracts to write articles for Skiing, Couloir, Alaska and Places magazines, all national publications.

Kevin Haas’ (Fine Arts) work is featured in a group exhibit at the Lorinda Knight Gallery in Spokane through June 6.

Freshman trumpet major Matt Reid has just learned that he has made the finals of the International Trumpet Guild world competition in Manchester, England, in July. This is an extraordinary accomplishment for an undergraduate and another confirmation of international level achievement by WSU’s Music students.

The Association for Women in Communications, a student organization in the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication, held its annual silent auction on Mom’s Weekend and netted about $1,000. This is the only fundraising activity the group holds each year. Members solicited auction items from their families, local businesses, faculty and friends.

Marcia Gossard (PhD candidate, Sociology) received an American Association for the Advancement of Science/American Sociological Association Mass Media Science and Engineering Summer Fellowship. The focus of the program is to enhance coverage of science-related issues in the media in order to improve public understanding of science and technology. Fellows work during the summer as reporters, researchers and productions assistants in mass media organizations nationwide. Gossard will spend 10 weeks in New York City this summer working with journalists at Newsweek.

Andrew Duffin (PhD candidate, History) won the Thomas S. Foley Institute Summer Fellow Program award for $1,000.

May Takeuchi (PhD candidate, Sociology) and Alexander Takeuchi (PhD ‘99, Sociology) of the University of North Alabama presented a paper, “Two Strategies in Parenting: Application of Cost Equalization Principle,” at the 44th annual meeting of the Western Social Science Association in Albuquerque, N.M. on April 11. The paper was part of an ongoing research project in collaboration with Louis N. Gray (Sociology), which is funded by a grant from the Elder Peace Research Endowment, College of Liberal Arts.

Senior Jen Leahy (Liberal Arts) represented Washington State University at the annual student symposium hosted by the Center for the Study of the Presidency, a non-partisan think tank devoted to studying the presidency. Leahy, sponsored by the Thomas Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service, was one of approximately 300 students from across the U.S. at the three-day Washington, D.C., symposium entitled “Presidential Leadership and Civility in a Time of War.”

Victor Unda (undergraduate, Sociology) received ACIA IP mini-grant support for travel to complete his interviews of the Teniente State Mining Company participants in Chile.

Melissa Tennyson (MA candidate, English) presented her paper “Race and Political Economy in the Works of Audre Lorde” at the “Problem of Race” conference at Harvard University in April. She also presented her paper “Foreshadowings of a Third-Space Black Womanist Liberation Theology in the Poetry of Phillis Wheatley” at the Pacific Northwest American Studies Association conference in Spokane in April, while her paper called “Recovering Julia de Burgos’s Poetics, Politics, and Praxis” has been accepted for presentation at the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies—Pacific Northwest FOCO conference in May.

Jenna Ross (PhD candidate, History) received the Annaley Naegle Redd Award from the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University. The grant goes to a student doing research on women in the American West and is intended for research support.

Phillip Vannini’s (PhD candidate, Sociology) manuscript “Will you marry me? Spectacle and consumption in the ritual of marriage proposals” is being published in the Journal of Popular Culture.

Carol Scally (PhD candidate, History) is preparing an article for Alcohol and Temperance in Modern History: An International Encyclopedia (anticipated publication in 2003). She presented a paper at the 2002 annual meeting of the Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies held at the University of Georgia in April entitled “Varieties of Religious Experiences: Protestant Missionaries in Restoration Spain.”

Chenyang Xiao (PhD candidate, Sociology) received one of 25 Graduate Student Travel Awards for travel during the summer 2002, granted by the Graduate School.

This year’s undergraduate paper sessions of the Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference, held April 5-7, were deemed great successes. Papers were delivered by students from four Northwest institutions, including Philosophy/Pre-law major Meggan Payne from WSU. Undergraduates Brent Nichols (Philosophy), Marki Stewart (Political Science/Pre-law) and Jafar Fallahi (Philosophy) served as paper commentators for these sessions.

The Department of Psychology has awarded its first Undergraduate Research Initiative Grants. The recipients will receive a $500 stipend in the fall semester and will conduct research during the upcoming academic year. Their projects will be completed by next spring and their research findings will be presented at the 2003 Undergraduate Research Symposium in April. This year’s recipients are: Vanessa Lancaster, faculty mentor Paul Kwon; Nick Redding, faculty mentor Paula Williams; Summer Sweet, faculty mentor Paul Whitney; Jeremiah Brown, faculty mentor Fran McSweeney; Jennifer Grazian, faculty mentor Michael Morgan; Kristine Enkerud, faculty mentor Carla Chandler; and Elizabeth Matthaei, faculty mentor Rebecca Craft.

Native American alumna Gertrude Marcellay (BA ’88, Speech and Hearing Sciences) was recently appointed by the governor to serve on the Board of Trustees for Centralia College.

Student Art on Display at WSU Vancouver
For the fourth year, colorful and creative images created by students in Fine Arts and Electronic Media and Culture classes are on display in Washington State University Vancouver’s Student Services building gallery now through May 20. The exhibit features photography and digital collage.

Groundbreaking and Murrow Award May 23
The Edward R. Murrow School of Communication marks another milestone on the way to becoming one of the most technologically advanced study and research facilities in the world. On Thursday, May 23, students, faculty, alumni and special guests will break ground on a $12.7 million, 24,000+ square foot red brick and glass addition, which will be completed in fall 2003. The new facility will house research and teaching labs, a digital TV news studio, faculty offices and a 172-seat classroom auditorium.
     The groundbreaking coincides with the appearance of Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent, to accept the Edward R. Murrow 2002 Award for Distinguished Achievement in Broadcast Journalism. The presentation of Amanpour’s award will be made in a public ceremony at 7:30 p.m. in Bryan Hall Auditorium. Following the presentation Ms. Amanpour will make an acceptance speech and answer questions from the audience.

The College of Liberal Arts Awards Ceremony was held Friday, April 26, in the beautiful new Samuel H. Smith Center for Undergraduate Education. Provost Robert Bates spoke preceding the presentation of awards. This year’s award recipients were as follows:

The Council for the International Exchange of Scholars notified Lance LeLoup (Political Science) April 18 of a prestigious grant award, the Fulbright Senior Specialist award.

The grant calls for three visits of two weeks each to Slovenia and will further enable LeLoup to continue his work with the University of Ljubliana. For the last three summers, WSU’s Department of Political Science has hosted five to seven students from the University of Ljubliana to work on their theses in Pullman.

LeLoup will be working with faculty and students in political science and American studies at the University of Ljubliana and will be hosted by Professor Bogomil Ferfila. His work will also include giving a series of lectures, working with individual students, participating in a thesis defense, reviewing curriculum, participating with faculty in the Slovenian Political Science Association meeting and consulting on various aspects of their programs.

LeLoup has worked with the Slovenian people since 1995 when he served as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Budapest at the Economics University. Since that time, he has published several articles on budgeting in Slovenia and Hungary and the Slovenian parliament.

Chris Peck, Belo Distinguished Chair of Journalism at Southern Methodist University, meets with members of the Daily Evergreen staff. Peck, former long-time editor of the Spokesman-Review, visited the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication the week of April 8 as part of a professional-in-residence program. Peck was one of four editors from the Spokesman-Review who each spent a week at WSU in a partnership to study Generation Y and its media habits. The program was made possible by a grant from the Kinght Foundation, awarded by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. John Irby (Communication) applied for the grant — one of 10 awarded across the country — and directed the program.

Jerrie Sinclair, administrative manager in the Department of English, will be the banner bearer for the College of Liberal Arts at this May’s commencement ceremony. Jerrie began post-secondary education in 1970 at Lewis-Clark State College. After joining the staff here at Washington State University, she began in 1997 to take credits for her WSU degree, one course at a time, while working full time. Jerrie carries a 3.97 GPA and this May, 30 years after beginning her degree, she will be the first student to graduate with a bachelor of arts from the new creative writing option in English.

Sallie “Tomie” Burke is a returning student whose achievements will be highlighted at commencement. In 1992, she founded Parents of Bipolar Children and began the BPParent Listserv. Since that time, Parents of Bipolar Children has merged with the Child & Adolescent Bipolar Foundation, a national, not-for-profit organization of families raising children diagnosed with (or at risk for) early-onset bipolar disorder. After 10 years of work on the WSU classified staff and a heart attack in the spring of 2000, Tomie made a decision to return to full-time undergraduate study as a major in English. Tomie’s current GPA is 3.94 and she plans to continue her studies in the M.A. program in American Studies at WSU and ultimately to attain the Ph.D.