Dean's Message

Dear Colleagues,

By the time you receive this month’s edition of the Chronicle, your department chairs and program directors will have just returned from a two-day retreat with our university deans and executive officers focusing both on strategic planning and the budget challenges that face us. Our challenge together now is to animate the five-year plans that we have made at our department and college level, relating them specifically to the goals and objectives of the university strategic plan and finding ways to link our plans with similar efforts across the University. This effort to create linkages and opportunities for work across administrative units will be particularly important given the budget shortfall that is anticipated in the coming years.

The College of Liberal Arts is taking the lead on several important projects that create linkages and redirect resources to meet university objectives to offer the best undergraduate education and encourage world-class research and creative work in all our departments. The first is our joint effort with the Distance Degree Program to restructure the Humanities and Social Science Bachelor of General Studies as an on-line program that will: 1) significantly increase full-time faculty in Liberal Arts, 2) engage faculty in redeveloping undergraduate curricula to offer more instruction on-line for residential and distance students and 3) enhance the undergraduate curricular offerings and faculty support for all departments that contribute to the BGS. Critical to this important effort will be the position of director of General Studies, a faculty administrative position, parallel to the rank of associate dean, for which we are conducting an internal search now. We will be seeking your input in the months ahead as this project takes shape.

The college is moving forward to enhance research and creative work of our faculty as well. Last month, in this newsletter, we featured our ongoing work in planning the Plateau Center for American Indian Studies. This month, a lead article notes the magnificent gift to Liberal Arts and the Division of Governmental Studies and Services of unique research data sets that will be of tremendous value to social science researchers at WSU and other research institutions. Through our Meyer grant program, Departmental Innovation Award and College Fellow Award program, the college continues to provide seed money to encourage faculty research and creative work. Support from one of these grants led a team of scholars in Communication, Psychology and other fields to submit a multimillion dollar “Catalyzing the Future” proposal in the recent contest sponsored by the vice provost for research. I urge you to consider how your current projects might be supported through applying for our college seed grant opportunities.

As always, I am eager to hear from you about ways that we can better support your teaching and professional goals. Also if you have questions or concerns about the university and college strategic planning and goal setting, please let me know. I’d be delighted to talk with you personally or you may contact me by e-mail at the address below.

Best wishes for continued success in your teaching and scholarship.

Barbara Couture, Dean
College of Liberal Arts
bcouture@wsu.edu

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Worthy of Note

  Erica Austin (Communication) was asked to testify before the New York State Assembly’s Standing Committee on Alcoholism and Drug Use for a special hearing on “New Trends in Advertising and Marketing of Alcoholic Beverages,” held Oct. 22 in New York City.

  Roger Schlesinger (History) was quoted in an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “1492: The Year the World Changed.”

  Greg Yasinitsky (Music) was recently named Washington State Composer of the Year by the Washington State Music Teachers Association. The honor includes a commission to compose a new work to be premiered at the WSMTA conference next June. In November, Yasinitsky will travel to California to participate in the CD recording of his new composition “First Flight,” which was commissioned by the USAF Band of the Golden West. The recording will be made at Skywalker Sound, part of filmmaker George Lucas’ Marin County complex.

  Leonard Burns (Psychology) has been invited to be an associate editor of the journal Psychological Assessment.

  Charles Madison (Speech and Hearing Sciences, WSU Spokane) presented the keynote address at the International Symposium of Linguistics and Speech-Hearing Sciences at the National University of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Oct. 21-23.

  Gene Rosa (Sociology) and Richard York (PhD ’02, Sociology) gave the invited paper “Internal and External Sources of Impacts: A Comparative Analysis of the European Union with Other Nations” at the Australian National University and Australian Academy of Sciences, Canberra, Australia. York is now assistant professor of sociology at the University of Oregon.

  Otwin Marenin (Political Science) presented a paper, “A Work in Progress: Police Interagency Cooperation in Homeland Security,” at the Fourth Biennial International Conference on Policing in Central and Eastern Europe, organized jointly by the College of Police and Security Studies, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and the Scarman Centre, University of Leicester, England, held Sept. 12-14 in Ljubljana. The paper has been published as part of the proceedings from the conference.

  Steven Kale (History) commented on a panel entitled “Popular and Royal Representations” at the 30th annual conference of the Western Society for French History, held in Baltimore, Md., Oct. 2-5.

  Don Dillman (Sociology) received the 2002 Lester F. Ward Award for Outstanding Contributions to Applied Sociology at the annual meeting of the Society for Applied Sociology (SAS), held in Sacramento Oct. 17-20. Dillman was also the keynote speaker at the SAS meeting.

  Michael Morgan (Psychology, WSU Vancouver) and his graduate student Diane Lane (PhD candidate) presented a poster at the 10th World Congress on Pain in August entitled “Tolerance and Withdrawal Following Continuous Morphine Administration into the Ventrolateral PAG of the Rat.” They will also present a poster at the Neuroscience 2002 conference in November entitled “Evidence for Behavioral Tolerance with Repeated Microinjection of Morphine to the Ventrolateral PAG of the Rat.”

  Gene Rosa (Sociology) was an invited panel leader, rapporteur and section author for the conference “Biotechnology: Between Commerce and Civil Society” at the Kulterwissenschaftliches Institut (Center for Advance Cultural Studies), Essen, Germany. He was also appointed to the advisory board of the CIVIC (Consultative Institutions: Values and Information in a Changing Society) Network of the European Union.

  Jon Hasbrouck (Speech and Hearing Sciences, WSU Spokane) presented a one-day workshop, “Effective fluency management procedures for school-age stuttering children,” at the annual convention of the Wyoming Speech and Hearing Association, Jackson Hole, Wyo., on Oct. 3.

  Camille Roman (English) has been appointed as the official representative of the Elizabeth Bishop Society to the Association for the Study of American Women Writers. Among other duties, she is organizing a panel on the poet for the association’s next national conference in September 2003 in Dallas/Fort Worth.

  The Edward R. Murrow School of Communication journalism degree program and Student Publications partnered with the Washington Journalism Educators Association (WJEA) to put on News Day 2002, a day of classes and sessions for high school journalists held at Fairchild Air Force Base. Around 150 students from 10 regional high schools attended. Event coordinators included Communication faculty members Roberta Kelly and John Irby and Student Publications staff members Bob Hilliard and David Cuillier. College of Liberal Arts students helping included Communication majors Kevin German, Jon Naito, Cynthia Brown, Kari Sneva, Justin Lewis, Corrine Wolford, Heather Klemm, Dan Petchnick, Naomi Max, Rob Keenan, Brian McLean and Rachel Dutton.

  Buddy Levy (English) has placed a number of travel/adventure stories recently. In November, his story “World Renowned—Sun Valley” will appear in Horizon Air Magazine. He will also have two stories in Couloir Magazine, “Open Boundaries: Red Mountain” and “Open Boundaries: Schweitzer.” Couloir will also publish Levy’s story “Chugach Mountain Festival,” based on Levy’s visit to Valdez, Alaska, last April.

  Tahira Probst’s (Psychology, WSU Vancouver) recent research on the effects of job insecurity on worker safety was written up by Reuters news agency and picked up by ABC News. See http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Living/reuters20021009_274.html for the article.

  As co-convener of the Research Network on Gender, Politics, and the State (RNGS), Amy Mazur (Political Science) is coordinating the transposition of qualitative analyses of women’s policy agencies and women’s movements in 17 western democracies into a data set, slated for release in spring 2004. The project is financed by the National Science Foundation ($115,000 at WSU with Mazur as principal investigator, $250,000 at Florida Atlantic University) and the European Science Foundation ($53,000). There are three meetings for RNGS members to work on constructing the data set with external expert consultants. The first already took place at the American Political Science Association meetings in Boston on Aug. 27, the second will be at the University of Turin, Italy, Nov. 5-7, and the third at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands, June 12-14. Ashley Grosse (SESRC) is one of the four expert consultants working on the project, and Jason Giesler (PhD candidate, Political Science) is working full-time on the data set project as a graduate research assistant. For more on the RNGS project, go to www.rngs.org.

  Charles Argersinger’s (Music) composition “Sonnets upon Music,” written originally for the rededication of the Kimbrough Music Building, will be performed Nov. 1-2 at Rhodes College in Memphis for the Society of Composers, Inc. Region IV conference.

  Michael Smith (Criminal Justice, WSU Spokane) recently received an applied research contract from the Spokane Police Department to assist them with their efforts to track and monitor police-citizen contacts for the purpose of identifying possible bias or racial profiling. The contract, which runs through July 2003, specifies three tasks: to work with the SPD to develop a list of data elements officers will collect each time they contact a citizen, to develop a methodology for the eventual analysis of police-citizen contact data once it is collected and to develop a criminal victimization survey of Spokane residents.

  Kevin Haas (Fine Arts) will exhibit as part of a group show at the University of Montana, Missoula, during November and December. He participated in the annual meeting of the Northwest Printmaking Council in Portland, Ore., Oct. 11-13.

  Ellen W. Gorsevski (English) was invited to participate as a panelist in a discussion forum on Robert Caisley’s production of “Front.” The Oct. 18 panel was presented by the University of Idaho Department of Theatre Arts’ “Page to Stage” program. “Front” received the 1996 Freedom Forum Peace Play Award. Gorsevski, whose research focuses on the rhetoric and communication of nonviolence and peace, was invited to contribute insights on the play’s representation of these issues.

  Michelle Kibby (Psychology) presented two ongoing projects utilizing fMRI technology at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society’s annual meeting in San Francisco. The posters were entitled “Are the Networks Involved in Semantic and Phonetic Short-Term Memory Common or Distinct?” and “Common and Distinct Neural Substrates Implicated in Basic Semantic and Phonetic Processing: An fMRI Study.”

  Anne Lincoln (PhD candidate, Sociology) and Michael P. Allen’s (Sociology) paper “Double Jeopardy in Hollywood: Age and Gender in the Careers of Film Actors, 1926-1999” was summarized in the Washington Post on Oct. 13. The research found that gender disparities in the careers of film stars were smallest in the 1930s, peaked mid-century and only recently are returning to more egalitarian levels. The paper, based on data collected for Lincoln’s master’s thesis, was presented in August at the 2002 American Sociological Association meetings in Chicago.

  Gail Chermak (Speech and Hearing Sciences) presented a workshop entitled “Management of Auditory Processing Disorders” Oct. 26 at the annual convention of the Washington Speech and Hearing Association.

  Nicholas Lovrich and Michael Gaffney of the Division of Governmental Studies and Services recently received a start-up grant in the amount of $154,000 from the National Marine Fisheries Service to create a Natural Resource Leadership Institute. The institute will work in conjunction with an anticipated joint WSU/UW Policy Consensus Center to provide applied research and training in leadership and problem solving skills to public agency and private sector groups engaged in the natural resource policy arena. The first formal event will be a November meeting of representatives of environmental groups, foundations, industry and the enforcement community. The institute will host a natural resource enforcement academy in March to provide problem solving and leadership training to natural resource enforcement professionals.

  Lori Wiest (Music) was invited to be a guest clinician in choral rehearsals of the North Dakota State University Madrigal Singers in Fargo and the Concordia College Chapel Choir and Women’s Choir in Moorhead, Minn., in October.

  “Retrieval inhibition in directed forgetting following severe closed-head injury,” by Maureen Schmitter-Edgecombe (Psychology), Matthew Wright (MA candidate, Psychology) and colleagues, and “Effects of age and divided attention on memory components of a conceptual task,” by Schmitter-Edgecombe and Ellen Woo (MA candidate, Psychology), will be presented at the 31st annual meeting of the International Neuropsychological Society.

  Michael Delahoyde (English) presented “Shakespeare and Visual Knowledge” at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association conference in Scottsdale, Ariz., and to classes at the local junior high school in October. He presented another paper titled “Dinophobia” at the RMMLA conference and held a workshop on business writing for staff at the University of Idaho.

  WSU was well represented at the 42nd annual Western History Association conference in Colorado Springs Oct. 16-19. History faculty Sue Armitage and Paul Hirt chaired and commented on sessions, and Katrine Barber (PhD ’99, American Studies), Jerry Garcia (PhD ’99, History), Kevin Marsh (PhD ’02, History), Suzanne Julin (PhD ’01, History) and Mark Fiege (MA, History) gave papers.

  At the Northwest Conference on Philosophy, held in Portland, Ore., Oct. 25-26, Joseph Pergola (Philosophy) presented his paper “Transforming Impartiality: Reconfiguring the Emotions in Political/Moral Deliberation”; Joseph Keim Campbell (Philosophy) presented his paper “More Beta Blues” and provided comments on the paper “Preference Holism and Causal Structure” by Till Grüne (London School of Economics); Larry Gibson (Philosophy) commented on “The Reflexivity of Expressions and Emotional Insight” by Chad Emerson Hickox (U. of Portland); and David Shier (Philosophy) commented on “The Semantics of Cross-Numerical Identity” by Paul Hovda (Reed College).

  A joint project between WSU and the Spokesman-Review, directed by John Irby (Communication), and the project’s resulting booklet on reaching Generation Y newspaper readers are covered in the fall issue of the APME (Associated Press Managing Editors) News.

  Tim Kohler (Anthropology) has been invited to be the speaker in January for the Jacob Marschak Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Mathematics in the Behavioral Sciences at UCLA on “Using Agent-Based Simulation to Investigate Prehistoric Societies.” The Marschak Colloquium provides a monthly forum for interaction among faculty, students and visitors interested in the applications of mathematics and statistics in the behavioral sciences. The colloquium sponsors presentations by leading experts in diverse fields, including faculty members from UCLA, other University of California campuses and other universities or research institutes. Kohler will give a related talk at UC-Irvine while he is in the area.

  Michelle Forsyth (Fine Arts) gave a lecture entitled “Color: Theory and Practice” at the fall meeting of the Inland Northwest Section of the U.S. Institute of Theater Technicians. The meeting was held at the University of Idaho Oct. 12.

  Susan Chan (Music) performed a piano recital in mid-September for the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series held in the Cultural Center of Chicago. The recital was broadcast live on the local radio and TV stations as well as the Internet. In early October, she was guest pianist at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, where she taught a piano master class and performed a recital. On the same trip, she presented a workshop and a piano recital at Agnus Dei Lutheran Church in Gig Harbor, sponsored by the Gig Harbor chapter of Washington State Music Teachers Association. The workshop was entitled “Preparation for Successful Performance.” In late October, she performed a recital as part of the Camerata Musica Series in Richland. The last two recitals included a multimedia performance of Chopin’s “Twenty-Four Preludes, Op. 28,” which involved a slide show of paintings on PowerPoint.

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Professional Productivity

  Travis Pratt’s (Political Science, Criminal Justice) article “Meta-Analysis and Its Discontents: Treatment Destruction Techniques Revisited” was recently published in the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation. He also co-authored an article entitled “Social Support and Homicide: A Cross-National Test of an Emerging Criminological Theory,” scheduled for publication in the November/December issue of the Journal of Criminal Justice.

  Maureen Schmitter-Edgecombe (Psychology) and Ellen Woo (MA candidate, Psychology) have an article in press with Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition entitled “Effects of age and divided attention on memory components derived from the category exemplar generation test.”

  Gene Rosa and James F. Short, Jr. (both Sociology) had their chapter “Publics, Organizations, and Institutions: The Importance of Context in Siting Controversies” accepted for publication in the volume Contesting Local Environments from Earthscan Press.

  Gregory Yasinitsky (Music) recently completed a jazz band arrangement of Dizzy Gillespie’s composition “Dizzy Atmosphere” at the request of Warner Brothers Publications.

  Jeannette Mageo’s (Anthropology) article “Towards a Multidimensional Model of the Self” appears in the fall 2002 issue of the Journal of Anthropological Research, and her article “Myth, Cultural Identity, and Ethnopolitics: Samoa and the Tongan ‘Empire’” will be published in the winter issue.

  An article by John Hinson, Paul Whitney (both Psychology) and Tina Jameson (PhD candidate, Psychology), “Impulsive decision making and working memory,” is in press with the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition. The three have another article in press with Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience, entitled “Somatic markers, working memory, and decision making.”

  Peter Chilson’s (English) essay “Guilt and Malaria: A Memoir” (Ascent, fall 2001) has been named a notable essay of 2001 in Houghton Mifflin’s new edition of Best American Travel Writing.

  David Nice (Political Science) recently published two books with McGraw-Hill, The Presidency and The Presidency: Classic and Contemporary Readings (both with Jeffrey Cohen).

  Leonard Burns (Psychology) and Marcela Moura (PhD ’01, Psychology), along with colleagues Rapson Gomez (University of Ballarat, Australia) and Jim Walsh (University of Montana), recently had a paper accepted in Psychological Assessment. The title of the paper is “Trait, Source, and Error Variance in the ADHD Symptoms in Australian and Brazilian Children: A Multitrait-Multisource Confirmatory Factor Analytic Approach to the Construct Validity of ADHD Rating Scales.” The editor of the journal, Steve Haynes, has also asked three individuals to write comment articles on the paper.

  Gail Chermak (Speech and Hearing Sciences) served as guest editor and contributor to a special issue of Seminars in Hearing on management of auditory processing disorders, published in October.

  Paul Bolls’ (Communication) article “I Can Hear You but Can I See You? The Use of Visual Cognition During Exposure to High-Imagery Radio Advertisements” appeared in the October issue of Communication Research.

  An article co-authored by Jeffrey Joireman (Psychology), “Perceived rationality, morality, and power of social choice as a function of interdependence structure and social value orientation,” is in press with the European Journal of Social Psychology.

  An article by Robert E. Ackerman (Anthropology), entitled “Spein Mountain: A Mesa Complex in Southwestern Alaska,” will be published in the journal Arctic Anthropology in December. The article is an expansion of a paper presented at the symposium “Between Two Worlds: Late Pleistocene Cultural and Technological Diversity in Eastern Beringia,” 64th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Chicago, 1999.

  Paula Coomer’s (English) essay “The Good Red Road” has been accepted for publication in the literary journal Ascent. The essay will also appear in a scheduled University of Idaho Press anthology of essays exploring the theme of fire, edited by Mary Clearman Blew.

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Student Activities and Awards

  Congratulations to the authors of the top undergraduate writing portfolios for spring 2002, including Liberal Arts majors Stacie Eder (Psychology), Michele Candela (Social Sciences, DDP) and Heather Mayeaux (Social Sciences, DDP).

  Jeff Crane’s (PhD candidate, History) article “Protesting Monuments to Progress: A Comparative Study of Protests Against Four Dams, 1838-1955” appears in the fall issue of the Oregon Historical Quarterly. Crane looks at 19th- and 20th-century protests against dams in Washington, Maine and Utah: three built, one not built and one actually torn down a few years ago. It is an interesting comparative analysis of resource development and social protest as it has evolved over more than a century.

  Two students of Michelle Kibby (Psychology) presented posters at the Washington State Psychological Association on Sept. 27 based upon ongoing research in Kibby’s lab. Jill Fancher (MA candidate) presented a poster entitled “Relationships of Cerebellar Structures and Measures of Intelligence.” Rochelle Markanen (BS ’02) presented “Development of the Cerebellum in Children Ages 8 to 11.” Markanen won first place in a poster competition tailored to undergraduates.

  Michael Egan (PhD candidate, History) has been invited to participate in the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis Seminar on Industrial Environments. His paper, “Guarding the Public: Nuclear Democracy and the Rise of the Science Information Movement,” will be presented on Feb. 4.

  Laurie Carlson (PhD candidate, History) co-authored a Washington state history textbook for secondary students, Washington in the Pacific Northwest (Gibbs Smith Publisher), which is being adopted this year in several school districts.

  The master’s thesis of Mike McDonell (PhD candidate, Psychology), a graduate student of Dennis Dyck (Psychology, WSU Spokane), was accepted for publication by the journal Family Process. It is entitled “Burden in Schizophrenia Caregivers: Impact of Awareness of Patient Suicidality and Family Psycho-education.”

  Mike Russell (PhD candidate, History) is attending several workshops chaired by major Holocaust historians at the seventh annual “Lessons and Legacies” Holocaust Education Conference in Minneapolis Oct. 31-Nov. 4.

  Michael Neville (Philosophy) helped found and serves as the advisor for the newly-formed Debate and Competitive Speech Club. The club sent members to its first tournament at Pacific Lutheran University Oct. 11-12. Debaters Erik Nielsen (Philosophy) and Jason Drewrey (Sociology) advanced to the semi-finals before being eliminated, and Elizabeth Lechnar (English/Education) took third in Extemporaneous Speaking, Novice Division. The other debaters from the club tied with their opponents, with the whole group making a very impressive showing for the first time out on the college circuit. The group is coached by graduate students Amanda Hale-Wisener and Bryan Hunt (both Communication) and Jeffrey Johnson (History).

  Lin Xu (MFA candidate) will exhibit two works, “Untitled Cup” and “Cup #3,” in a show entitled “Cup: The Intimate Object 2002” held at Charlie Cummings Clay Studio Gallery in Fort Wayne, Ind., from Nov. 23 through Dec. 21.

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Alumni News

  John Mann’s (PhD ’01, History) article “Reins, Trains, and Automobiles: The West Downtown Spokane Historic Transportation Corridor” appeared in the recently published fall 2001 issue of the Society for Commercial Archeology Journal. The article was initially a conference paper given at the PNW conference in Portland with two other students from Janice Rutherford’s seminar.

  Karen Kaiser’s (MFA ‘01) mixed media installation entitled “Playing Field” opened at North Idaho College in Coeur d’Alene with a gallery walk and slide show followed by a reception Oct. 1. The show ran through Oct. 30.

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Calendar

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New Group Focuses on Gender Research

Gendering Research Across the Campuses (GRACe) is a new group on campus that brings together faculty at WSU who are actively involved with gender scholarship to discuss current issues in their research. It was initiated by Noël Sturgeon (Women’s Studies) and Amy Mazur (Political Science) and is sponsored by the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service and the Department of Women’s Studies. This semester, the group is examining epistemological issues in gender research. Heather Streets (Asia Program), Julie Kmec (Sociology) and Tracy Skaer (Pharmacy) will speak at the next luncheon colloquium Dec. 5. If you are a faculty member who works regularly on gender research and would like to participate, please contact Holly Tate (htate@wsu.edu) of the Foley Institute for more information.

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WSU Heads Harvest of Hope Project

Yolanda Flores Niemann (Comparative American Cultures) and Al Jamison (Student Affairs) have been awarded a $7,680,000 grant for their Washington State University Harvest of Hope project, a five-year project funded by the U.S. Department of Education GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs) program.

The program is designed to significantly increase the number of students prepared to enter and succeed in postsecondary education. The project will serve middle and high school students in seven rural school districts along Washington state’s agricultural migrant crescent in the lower southeast quadrant of the state, an area of significant poverty, isolation, high unemployment and few role models for higher educational achievement.

Project objectives are to 1) improve and accelerate students’ academic achievement so they are prepared to enter and succeed in postsecondary education; 2) educate students and their parents about postsecondary education and help them learn to plan to participate in educational opportunities; 3) improve the motivation and capacity of teachers to help diverse and economically deprived students achieve high learning standards; and 4) build a strategic alliance of partners to build capacity to sustain project efforts significantly beyond the grant period.

The project is designed to insure achievement of long-term and systemic effects that will transform the relationship between served communities, Washington State University and the project partners. These partners include the WSU College of Education, Cooperative Extension, Multicultural Student Services and Summer Programs, seven school districts, two community colleges, several non-profit organizations, a family orchard and a state agency that works with migrant students. Niemann will serve as director of this extensive project.

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Departments and the Integrated Web Appearance Effort

FYI: Gary Lindsey, the college public relations/communications coordinator, and Melissa Alles, the college Web coordinator, have begun the review procedure of college Web sites with a team from Integrated Marketing. The review includes department sites. Very serious concerns are emerging regarding sites which fail to meet federal mandates regarding accessibility. If your department Web site is under your jurisdiction and you are uncertain whether you will meet accessibility requirements or basic design requirements (font style, file size maximums, etc.), contact Melissa Alles for a consultation (mpalles@wsu.edu, 335-6874).

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Gift of Unique Data to Enable World-Class Research at Washington State University

Social scientists say it would cost millions of dollars to replicate data sets donated to Washington State University by Leigh Stowell, former president of Leigh Stowell and Company, a Seattle based proprietary market research firm. In the eyes of social scientists the information donated this summer is a priceless research resource that will allow WSU students, faculty and researchers to develop and test a number of key hypotheses about social and political change in North America over the last decade.

“There are literally hundreds of research topic possibilities,” according to Nicholas Lovrich (Political Science), who was instrumental in acquiring the gift and has worked with the company’s data sets in the past. The data gathered by Leigh Stowell and Company provide demographic information about most major metropolitan markets in the United States and Canada including Seattle, Spokane and Vancouver. In addition, the data include valuable psychographic information responses to questions about attitudes and values — which will help social researchers determine the cultural assets, values and lifestyle perspectives of distinct regions and demographic groups.

The data donated to Washington State come from years of market specific research by Leigh Stowell and Company, covering the decade of the 1990’s and beyond to give researchers a perfect slice of life from North America’s key metropolitan areas.

Lovrich and others at Washington State see the data being used across the University, including research possibilities of great importance to the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service such as attitudes about crime and public safety, gender equity, fairness, bridging gender and racial differences and assessing the consequences of Internet use.

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WSU Jazz Festival to Feature Jon Pugh Nov. 6

On Wednesday, Nov. 6, the 2002 Washington State University Jazz Festival will be presented in the Kimbrough Music Building on the WSU campus. The highlight of the festival will be a gala concert from 12-12:45 p.m. in Bryan Hall Theatre featuring guest cornetist Jon Pugh and the award-winning WSU Jazz Big Band, directed by Greg Yasinitsky (Music). Also featured will be WSU jazz faculty members Charles Argersinger, piano; Horace-Alexander Young, saxophone; Geof Bradfield, saxophone; David Turnbull, trumpet; and David Jarvis, percussion.

WSU’s special guest for the festival is the fabulous jazz cornetist Jon Pugh. Pugh is a tremendous improviser who is best known for his long association with saxophonist Don Lanphere. Pugh performs widely and is featured on several acclaimed CDs.
The program for the gala concert will include Yasinitsky’s arrangement of Irving Berlin’s “Blue Skies” and “They Say It’s Wonderful” along with his original compositions “Blue Note” and “Inside Passage.” The band will also perform “Movin’ On,” by Los Angeles composer Bill Liston.

The festival will also feature school groups from throughout the Northwest performing in Kimbrough Concert Hall from 7:40-11:40 a.m. and from 2-5:40 p.m. Pugh and WSU faculty members will also present clinics throughout the day. All of these events, including the gala concert at noon, are open to the public without charge.

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Departmental Innovation Award Plans Due Dec. 6

The College of Liberal Arts invites proposals for the second annual Departmental Innovation Award. This award, in the amount of $5,000, is given to a Liberal Arts department or academic program that submits a promising plan for departmental innovation and for specific use of the award funds. Innovation plans should not exceed two pages and should be submitted to the Dean’s Office by Dec. 6. The department/program winner will be announced in January.

It’s all on-line...
For full details on this and other upcoming college awards, see the CLA faculty and staff page at http://libarts.wsu.edu/college/faculty-staff/. Click on “Documents and Forms” for everything you need on paper, from grant applications to letters of offer, from college award guidelines and nomination forms to tenure and promotion policies.

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