Dean's Message

Dear Colleagues,

This is the final edition of the College of Liberal Arts newsletter for academic year 2002–03.

I want to take this opportunity to thank all of our faculty, students and staff who have contributed to making the College of Liberal Arts and Washington State University a success this year. In particular, I wish to congratulate all of those students who will be graduating on May 10. Your hard work, persistence and dedication to the values of a liberal education have given your family, friends and teachers reason to be proud. We look forward to seeing you at the commencement ceremony at 8 a.m. Saturday, May 10!

And congratulations, too, to all in the college who have been recognized this year for their contributions in teaching, scholarship and service to the University in ceremonies held in our departments, the college and campus-wide. We have included in this issue a listing of all of our College of Liberal Arts winners, who were recognized at our College Awards Ceremony on April 30. I wish to thank all who attended the ceremony as well; it is important to recognize the good work of our colleagues, and I know that I speak for all our awardees in saying that we were very pleased to see a “standing room only” crowd at this annual event.

Before I close, I wish to say a few words about a matter that I know concerns you all, the status of our budget for the coming year. As you have been reading, the budget news from our state legislature does not at this time look good. You may have heard that university administrators have been asked to anticipate a budget cut that may go as deep as 5%. Our president and provost are in the midst of discussions with our regents and student representatives about a significant tuition increase next year; even with this increase, the permanent budget may well fall short of our need. I wish you to know that I have been in continuous conversation with our department chairs and program directors about our college strategic planning and our budget, as I will be throughout the summer. Together, we will do all that we can to protect the quality of our liberal arts programs.

In mid-May and early June I will meet with our Dean’s Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation, who will advise me on setting budget priorities, based on their review of our departments’ five-year plans. If we are asked to take a cut, our approach will be to take that cut in areas where permanent funding can be replaced by temporary funding; in short, we will preserve our top priority to keep funding in tenure-track faculty lines and maintain departmental operational budgets. Furthermore, we will not ask departments to take cuts from their budgets across the board; cuts, if necessary, will be taken from those budget lines that least affect our progress in strategic priorities.
I wish you to know that I appreciate your dedication, courage and commitment to our students and to your departments’ curricular programs. We are especially mindful that even in these difficult days for higher education in the United States, your professionalism and dedication to your field are transcending the challenges. Your accomplishments continue to be a source of pride for this college and for Washington State University. Thank you for that effort and best wishes for success as you prepare this summer for the coming year.

Barbara Couture, Dean
College of Liberal Arts

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Worthy of Note

 Please join the College of Liberal Arts in welcoming Sue Allen, who will greet dean’s office visitors as the office assistant II/receptionist beginning May 12.

 Dwayne Dehlbom, program assistant in the Department of History, received one of three WSU President’s Employee Excellence Awards for 2003.
     A WSU employee since just 2001, Dehlbom took ownership of his position and earned the respect and admiration of colleagues. “The go-to guy,” as he’s referred to, inherited a tumultuous advising system when he first arrived in the department and has since turned it into a model of efficiency and good order, one nominator said. He brings attention to potential problems and a well-thought-out solution with it.

 Amy Mazur (Political Science) was a Haven’s Center Visiting Scholar at the University of Wisconsin March 31–April 6. She gave a public lecture on the Women’s Policy Office Project and participated in the seminar on “The Varieties of Feminism.”

 April was National Poetry Month. Leonard Orr (English, WSU Tri-Cities) was a featured reader at the Barnes and Noble in Kennewick, Wash., on April 4. He had several poems performed by the Miracle Theatre Group in Portland at the spoken-word production Viva la Word! April 11–13, and he led two workshops for 8th- to 12th-grade poets at the Washington Poets Association Student Summit held at Central Washington University in Ellensburg on April 12.

 Lance T. LeLoup, Claudius O. and Mary W. Johnson Distinguished Professor of Political Science, presented a paper entitled “The Washington State Budget 2003” at the Western States Budget Roundtable at the Western Political Science Association annual meeting in Denver March 29. He will also be going to the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia in May for the second year of his Fulbright Senior Specialists grant.

 Carol Ivory (Fine Arts) will be in Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands in late May, lecturing onboard the freighter/passenger ship Aranui 3. In June, as vice president of the Pacific Arts Association, she will participate as a co-convener of the seventh PAA International Symposium in Christchurch, New Zealand, where she will also attend the international executive committee meetings.

 Clinical Associate Professor Carla Jones and Clinical Instructor Sally Johnston (both Speech and Hearing Sciences) were awarded a $15,599 Undergraduate Teaching and Learning Improvement Grant from the Office of the Provost to implement their proposal to foster a clinical computing culture.

 Robert E. Ackerman (Anthropology) has been invited to participate in two international symposia dealing with the theme of early maritime adaptations by peoples coming into the New World from Asia. He will present “Early Maritime Cultures in the North Pacific Region” in the symposium “On the Prehistoric Cultural Ecology of the Northern Pacific Rim” at the Fifth World Archaeology Congress in Washington, D.C., June 21–26. The second paper, “Early Maritime Adaptations Along the Alaska Coastal Platform,” will be delivered in the symposium “Comparative Perspectives on the Development of Circumpolar Marine Adaptations” at the 51st International Congress of Americanists in Santiago, Chile, July 14–18.
     Ackerman has also been invited to participate in the International Archaeological Conference, “From Century to Century,” to be held in Vladivostok, Russia, Sept. 17–25 in honor of the 95th anniversary of academician A. P. Okladnikov, pioneer archaeologist of Siberia, and in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Far Eastern Archaeological Section in Vladivostok. He will present “Alaskan Core and Blade Industries,” which will explore the relationships between Alaskan and Far Eastern Upper Paleolithic assemblages.
     Travel awards from the College of Liberal Arts will support in part the costs of attending the meetings in Chile and Russia.

 Gail Chermak (Speech and Hearing Sciences) will present two invited sessions on diagnosis and management of auditory processing disorders at the annual convention of the Louisiana Speech-Language-Hearing Association on June 6.

 On April 17 Marina Tolmacheva and Robert Staab (both History) discussed “The Downfall of the Hussein Regime in Iraq” at a noontime forum in the CUB. The forum was part of the ongoing weekly series “America at War” sponsored by the Office of the Provost, Student Affairs and the College of Liberal Arts.
     Thomas Preston (Political Science) was invited speaker for the preceding forum in the series, entitled “National Security, International Relations and U.S. Military Planning and Performance: Lessons-to-Date from Iraq.”

 Michelle Forsyth (Fine Arts) has a current exhibition in Toronto, Canada, at Mercer Union called “Push Play,” which features the work of four artists that explore how the time based motion of video and the stillness of the painted surface inform and inspire each other. This exhibition is a part of the Images Festival in Toronto. Forsyth will also be included in an exhibition scheduled from July to August at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture entitled “Northwest Contemporary/Figuration.”

 Marcel Wingate (professor emeritus, Speech and Hearing Sciences) is being retained as special consultant for litigation brought against the University of Iowa, and the State of Iowa, relative to stuttering research conducted by a renowned speech pathologist in 1939.

 Mark Stephan (Political Science, Criminal Justice) and two colleagues at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, have been awarded $300,000 from the National Science Foundation. The three-year grant is for research in the area of environmental policy and is entitled “Information Disclosure and Environmental Decision Making.”

 From April 25–27, the WSU Jazz Big Band, directed by Greg Yasinitsky (Music), traveled to Greeley, Colo., to perform at the University of Northern Colorado Jazz Festival. The Jazz Big Band recently earned first-place honors at the 2003 Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival.

 Joe Pergola, Larry Gibson, Dan Holbrook and Joseph Keim Campbell (all Philosophy) coached an Ethics Bowl team of undergraduate Philosophy students, and Pergola and Gibson took the team to the 2003 Northwest Regional Ethics Bowl hosted by the University of Montana, where they competed against college teams from all over the Northwest in using ethical theory and moral reasoning to address contemporary ethics case studies.

 Mimi Salamat (Speech and Hearing Sciences) presented a refereed paper on auditory evoked potentials (P300) during an auditory continuous performance task in adults with attention deficit disorder at the annual convention of the American Auditory Society, held in Scottsdale, Ariz., March 13–15. She will present another refereed paper on P300 at the annual conference of the International Evoked Response Audiometry Study Group, to be held in the Canary Islands, Spain, June 8–12.

 Chris Watts (Fine Arts) continues at Spokane Falls Community College through May 3 with an exhibition of his paintings and constructions entitled “Number Structures, Marks to Sounds.”

 LeRoy Ashby (History) will receive a Faculty Excellence Award from the students of the Naval ROTC battalion at Washington State University and the University of Idaho.

 Gene Rosa (Sociology) was a committee co-author of two reports of the National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences, “One Step at a Time: The Staged Development of Geological Repositories for High-Level Radioactive Waste” and “Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan.”

 Carla Jones (Speech and Hearing Sciences) presented a workshop on visual strategies for behavior management to childhood educators and daycare workers at the Spring Child Care Conference sponsored by the Whitman/Asotin Child Care and Resource Referral at the Hawthorne Inn in Pullman.

 Brenda Bowser (Anthropology) organized and chaired the opening session of the 68th Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archaeology (SAA). The session, entitled “Thinking and Drinking Beer: Archaeological Perspectives,” was held in Milwaukee on April 9 and attended by approximately 1,000 archaeologists. The speakers presented a breadth of perspectives on the material culture of beer, engaging research on the social, political, economic and historic contexts in which beer has been produced, distributed and consumed throughout the world. In the session, Bowser also presented related aspects of her own research in a paper entitled “The Perceptive Potter: Beer Bowls and Political Action in the Ecuadorian Amazon.” She organized the session at the invitation of the SAA program committee.

 Robert Patterson (Psychology) received a Summer Faculty Fellow Award with funding from the Air Force for the second summer in a row. He is doing generic research with flight simulators.

 Bob Bauman (History, WSU Tri-Cities) will be chairing a session titled “Remembering the Corps of Discovery: Diversity, National Identity, and Cultural Memory” at the National Council on Public History conference in Houston. He also will be presenting a paper at that session titled “Remembering the Corps of Discovery: One Historian’s Experience on a Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council.”

 Glenn Johnson (Communication) was presented with the Community Recognition Award by the Northeast Washington Association of School Administrators at a luncheon meeting April 17 in Spokane. He was nominated for the award by Pullman School Superintendent Tom Rockefeller.

 Andrew Duff (Anthropology) was awarded $19,699 by the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Exploration and Research to support archaeological field work in west-central New Mexico this summer. Duff presented a paper, “Becoming Central: Social Processes in the Emergence of Zuni,” at the recent Society for American Archaeology meetings in Milwaukee with Gregson Schachner, a colleague from Arizona State University. They also presented a poster, “Exploring Chaco’s Southern Frontier: Survey of the Cox Ranch Community,” that had two junior authors, Matthew Landt and David Satterwhite (both MA candidates, Anthropology).

 Jack Dollhausen’s (Fine Arts) touring exhibition entitled “Jack Dollhausen: A 30 Year Start” is showing at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane through June 22.

 Thomas Preston (Political Science) received a Faculty Excellence Award from the students of the Naval ROTC battalion at the University of Idaho and WSU, the 2003 Faculty Appreciation Award for Outstanding Political Science Professor from the WSU chapter of Pi Sigma Alpha, the national political science honor society, and the 2003 Faculty Appreciation Award for Outstanding Political Science Professor from the Graduate Students in Political Science & Criminal Justice.

 Amy Mooney (Fine Arts) chaired a panel, “Passing in Self Portraiture,” at the College Art Association conference and also presented a paper, “Signing Singular, Sliding, and Multiple Identities.” The same paper was also presented in the Art Talk lecture series at Columbia College, Chicago.

 Joseph Keim Campbell (Philosophy) and his former student Jason Turner (BA ’02, Philosophy) presented their co-authored paper, “More Beta Blues,” at the spring 2003 meeting of the American Philosophical Association in San Francisco.

 Lori Wiest (Music) served as adjudicator/clinician at Solo/Small Ensemble and Choral Festivals in Asotin, Wash., and Great Falls, Mont., and at the Washington All-State Solo/Small Ensemble Festival in Ellensburg.

 Nicolas Kiessling (professor emeritus, English) received a two-month fellowship for study at the William Andrews Clark Library in 2003 and a Fulbright grant to teach in Casablanca in 2003–2004. In October, he will deliver a lecture at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, to the Friends of the Bodleian Library.

 Lori Wiest (Music) and Rachel Halverson (Foreign Languages) have received an Information Visit Grant from the German Academic Exchange (DAAD) for their study abroad trip “From Music History to Cultural Reality: Professional Musicians in Germany.” The grant provides a daily stipend for each of the student participants and the faculty. From May 12 to May 27, they will be traveling with a group of WSU students of Music to Frankfurt, Ludwigshafen, Munich, Nuremburg, Bayreuth, Leipzig and Mainz, visiting with American musicians who live and work professionally in Germany, touring performance facilities and attending concerts and opera performances.

 On April 14, Jon Hasbrouck (Speech and Hearing Sciences) presented a lecture on the use of telepractice in speech-language pathology to an audience of hospital administrators, physicians, nurses and therapists at the Inland Northwest Medical Informatics Symposium, held at the Davenport Hotel in Spokane. His presentation focused on the model being developed by St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute (in Spokane) in providing rehabilitation services to 43 affiliated hospitals in the Inland Northwest.

 Jeff Joireman (Psychology) recently gave a talk at the University of Missouri, Columbia, entitled “Individual Differences in the Consideration of Future Consequences Across Four Domains.”

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Professional Productivity

 Monica Johnson’s (Sociology) article co-authored with Sabrina Oesterle and Jeylan Mortimer, entitled “Volunteerism During the Transition to Adulthood: A Life Course Perspective,” has been accepted for publication in Social Forces.

 Marina Tolmacheva (History) has published a co-authored book in Arabic and Russian, Arabic Sources of the 13–14th Centuries for the Ethnography and History of Africa South of the Sahara (Moscow, 2002). She contributed the introduction and three chapters to this volume of edited texts and translations.

 Lillian A. Ackerman (Anthropology) has written a chapter in the revised edition of the book Women in Pacific Northwest History, edited by Karen J. Blair and published by the University of Washington, 2001. Also, she wrote Chapter 3 in Many Faces of Gender, edited by Lisa Frink, Rita S. Shepard and Gregory A. Reinhardt, University Press of Colorado, 2002. Her book A Necessary Balance: Gender and Power Among Indians of the Columbia Plateau was published in April by the University of Oklahoma Press.

 Travis Pratt (Political Science, Criminal Justice) co-authored the article “Cognitive Ability and Delinquent Behavior Among Inner-City Youth: A Life-Course Analysis of Main, Mediating, and Interaction Effects,” scheduled to appear in the June issue of the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology.

 Lydia Gerber’s (History) book, Of Voskamp’s “heathen practices” and Wilhelm’s “superior China”: The reports of German protestant missionaries from the German Lease Kiautschou, 1898-1914, offers the first detailed account of German Protestant missionary work and missionary reporting in the German Lease “Kiaochow” in Shandong province.
     Richard Wilhelm, who later became famous as a sinologist, was head of the Weimar Mission. He was living next door to the superintendent of the Berlin Mission, Carl Johannes Voskamp, who was well known among contemporaries for the dramatic style of his missionary publications. This book examines why these missionaries and their coworkers presented quite different, at times opposing views of China to their German constituencies.
     Gerber was born in Hamburg and studied sinology and religious sciences at Hamburg University and at Shandong University.

 Leonard Orr, director of Liberal Arts programs at WSU Tri-Cities and professor of English, has recently published in the Continuum Contemporaries series Don DeLillo’s “White Noise”: A Reader’s Guide.

 Gene Rosa (Sociology), with Richard York (PhD ’02, Sociology), now an assistant professor at the University of Oregon, and Thomas Dietz of Michigan State, published “Footprints on the Earth: The Environmental Consequences of Modernity” in the American Sociological Review, the leading journal in sociology. Rosa and James F. Short, Jr. (professor emeritus, Sociology) published “Some Principles for Siting Controversies Decisions: Lessons from the U.S. Experience with High-Level Nuclear Waste” in the Journal of Risk Research.

 Nicolas Kiessling (professor emeritus, English) published The Library of Anthony Wood in December 2002 with the Oxford Bibliographical Society.

 Bob Bauman’s (History, WSU Tri-Cities) review of Michele Gerber’s revised edition of On the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site will be published in the May 2003 issue of Society and Natural Resources.

 Armand L. Mauss (professor emeritus, Sociology) recently published All Abraham’s Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage (University of Illinois Press, 2003), which will be the topic of a special “author-meets-critics” panel at the October 2003 conference of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion in Norfolk, Va.

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Student Activities and Awards

 Michael Russell (PhD candidate, History) was invited to be the guest speaker at the Holocaust Remembrance Week luncheon at Fairchild Air Force Base on April 29. His multimedia presentation, “Modern Representations of the Holocaust,” covered current scholarly debates, imagery provided by museums and death camp memorials, historical errors committed by Hollywood and the use of the Internet by Holocaust denialists.

 Lin Xu (MFA candidate, ceramics) was named Outstanding Woman in Graduate Studies by the Association for Faculty Women.

 Matthew J. Landt (MA candidate, Anthropology) presented “Investigations of Human Gnawing on Small Mammal Bones by Contemporary Bofi Foragers, Central African Republic” at the 68th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Milwaukee. Landt also received a spring 2003 GPSA Travel Grant and Registration Grant and was named GPSA Senator of the Year.

 Lyssa Merry (PhD candidate, Sociology) has been funded by the Association for Institutional Research to attend its Summer Data Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., in June. The institute provides access to and training in analysis of postsecondary education databases of the National Science Foundation and National Center for Educational Statistics. There will also be policy seminars with leading national policy researchers.

 An article by Phillip Vannini (PhD candidate, Sociology) titled “Burn Signifiers Burn! Saddam’s Body and the Neo-Materialism of the Iraqi War” was published in CTheory: An International Journal of Theory, Culture, and Technology.

 Laurie Winn Carlson’s (PhD candidate, History) new book, Seduced by the West: Jefferson’s America and the Lure of the Land Beyond the Mississippi, has just been published by Ivan R. Dee, Chicago. She examines the Lewis and Clark Expedition from a larger view, looking at the efforts to explore and obtain the West, including John Ledyard’s ill-fated Siberian trek, General Wilkinson and Aaron Burr’s plots, and several other attempts to wrest the West from Spain. The book received a very positive pre-release review from Publisher’s Weekly in March.

 WSU Madrigal Singers, under the direction of Lori Wiest (Music), performed in Spokane at Ferris, Shadle Park, University, Lewis and Clark, and East Valley High Schools and at Post Falls High School as part of their musical and recruiting tour.

 The Association for Women in Communications had a successful fundraiser on Mom’s Weekend. The fundraiser, an annual event, raised $400, which members will use to offset costs of such events as job shadow days and to help send members to the national AWC convention.

 Ryan Jesperson (undergraduate, Music) has been selected to receive an Undergraduate Scholar Award from the Faculty Association for Scholarship and Research/Sigma Xi. These awards recognize outstanding scholarship by undergraduate students. This is the second time Jesperson has won this award. He studies composition with Charles Argersinger and Gregory Yasinitsky (both Music).

 The seminar paper Michael Brown (PhD candidate, History) wrote in Noriko Kawamura’s (History) American history seminar was this year’s first place winner among graduate students in the arts and humanities division of the Wiley Research Exposition competition.

 Diane Curewitz (PhD candidate, Anthropology) presented “Aggregation, Fuel Depletion, and Ceramic Technology at Tyuonyi, New Mexico” at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Milwaukee. She also has a publication coming out in May in the Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, vol. 23, no. 2 (2001), published by the Malki Museum, Banning, Calif. The article is titled “High Elevation Land-Use on the Northern Wasatch Plateau, Manti-La Sal National Forest, Utah.”

 Julie Neuffer (PhD candidate, History) published a book review of Sarah Barringer-Gordon’s book The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill, 2002) in the winter 2002/2003 issue of Pacific Northwest Quarterly. This year Neuffer is working as a visiting professor of American religion at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma. She will be teaching songwriting this summer at Western States College of the Performing Arts in Gooding, Idaho. She will also be performing with her bandmates at the Schubert Theatre in Gooding to raise money for the college. She is currently serving on the advisory board of the school.

 Leslie Holt (MFA candidate, painting) will open at The Works Gallery in San Jose, Calif., during August in an exhibit entitled “Popular.”

 Courtney Comeau (senior, Psychology), president of Psi Chi (honorary society) and president of Chi Omega sorority, received the President’s Award for Excellence in Leadership.

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Alumni News

  Cristofer Davenport (BA ‘02, Theatre Arts) has been accepted into The Actors Studio Drama School.

 Ron Medina (MFA ‘98) has been appointed assistant professor in the art department of Laramie County Community College in Cheyenne, Wyo., where he will be in charge of all two-dimensional art instruction at the college. Medina has taught art as an adjunct professor for the University of Idaho and WSU during the past four years.

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2003 New Faculty Seed Grants

Of the 26 proposals reviewed, seven were from College of Liberal Arts faculty and all seven are included in the 12 funded proposals.

• Laurie A. Drapela (Political Science, WSU Vancouver), $7,381: “The Effects of Community Corrections Officers Demographic Characteristics, Educational Background, and Punishment Orientation on Probation Violation Sanctions: A Proposal for Research”
• Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson (Sociology), $9,466: “Work Values and Inequality: Building a Model of Structured Labor Market Experience and Social Psychology”
• Jeff Joireman (Psychology), $8,633: “Aggression and the Consideration of Future Consequences”
• Michelle Y. Kibby (Psychology), $9,000: “Verbal Short-Term Memory, Phonological Processing and Their Relationship to Brain Structure in Children with Dyslexia”
• Julie Kmec (Sociology), $9,000: “Pacific Northwest Employer Survey: A Pilot Investigation of Hospitals”
• Mark Konty (Sociology), $8,000: “Guns and Crime: Using NIBRS to Determine the Relationship Between Firearms and Crime”
• David Pietz (History), $8,844: “Floods, Drought and Pollution: Managing the Huai River in Communist China 1949-1999”
  

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College Recognizes Outstanding Graduates

Outstanding graduating seniors in the College of Liberal Arts will be honored this year with a new annual tradition. A brunch honoring outstanding seniors will be held May 9, the day before spring commencement.

In previous years, only one graduating senior was honored as part of the CLA Awards Ceremony, an event that rewards faculty and staff achievement and recognizes years of service at the University.

“It just made sense that if each department and school had an outstanding student that they should be recognized,” said Kay Glaser, of the Liberal Arts Development and Alumni Relations Office and the person who created and organized the brunch. “All of the students are very excited about it,” Glaser said. “They all have family coming; some have asked to bring more than parents and spouses.”

Chairs and faculty members select the graduating senior who will represent their area. The college defines “outstanding graduating senior” as one who has excelled in academic performance and in service to the school or department and the university community.

College of Liberal Arts outstanding graduating seniors for 2003 are Mary Conran (Anthropology), Elizabeth Peña (Comparative Ethnic Studies), Nicholas Allard (Communication), Jordana Ross (Criminal Justice), Anna McAllister (English), Daniel Alley (Fine Arts), Marthe Schroeder (Foreign Languages and Cultures), Shelly Gilcrest (General Studies), Diane Warner (History), Sarah Wilson and Sophia Tegart (Music and Theatre Arts), Todd Trembley (Philosophy), Amanda Ulrich (Political Science), Jeremiah Brown (Psychology), Stephany Mitchell (Sociology), Amy Williams (Speech and Hearing Sciences) and Leah Nathan (Women’s Studies).

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College of Liberal Arts Award Recipients

William F. Mullen Excellence in Teaching Award
Thomas Preston (Political Science)

Outstanding Staff Award
Annette Bednar (program coordinator, Anthropology)

Distinguished Faculty Award
Nicholas Lovrich (Political Science)

Distinguished Friends and Alumni Award
James F. Short, Jr. (professor emeritus, Sociology)

College Fellows Award
Peter Chilson (English)

Dean’s Distinguished Contribution Award
Robert Nofsinger (Communication)

Service as Chair/Director
Chris Watts (Fine Arts)
H. James Schoepflin (Music and Theatre Arts)
John Hinson (Psychology)

25 Years of Service
Timothy Kohler (Anthropology)
Joan Burbick (English)
Susan Armitage (History)
Eugene Rosa (Sociology)

30 Years of Service
Patrick Siler (Fine Arts)

35 Years of Service
Paul Brians (English)
Douglas Hughes (English)
Richard Hume (History)
Roger Schlesinger (History)

Retirees
Peter Mehringer (Anthropology)
Nelly Zamora (English)

Honorary CLA Retiree
Marty Mullen

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Seminar Provides Training for Natural Resource Professionals

Fifty natural resource professionals from throughout the western United States took part in the first Leadership Development Seminar for the Pacific Northwest Natural Resources Leadership Academy (PNNRLA) April 22–24 in Seattle.

The academy was created by the Division of Governmental Studies & Services (DGSS) and Cooperative Extension, engaged in a one-year contractual agreement with the Office of Law Enforcement of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries, U.S. Department of Commerce, to develop a comprehensive, leadership-based training program for state and federal natural resource professionals. The goal of the academy is to ensure the sustainable management of natural resources within the region and to enhance community development by emphasizing community oriented resource protection strategies.

Instructors for the three days of training included Nicholas P. Lovrich (Political Science; director of DGSS), Michael J. Gaffney (PhD candidate, Political Science; assistant director of DGSS) and Edward P. Weber (Political Science; director of the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service), with faculty and staff from departments within the WSU College of Agriculture and Home Economics, WSU Cooperative Extension and other Western universities, as well as Dayna R. Matthews, West Coast Endangered Specis Act enforcement coordinator for NOAA Fisheries, Office of Law Enforcement, and Russ Cahill, Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission.

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Three Students Featured at Commencement

Two highlight students and the college flag bearer will share the spotlight at the commencement ceremony for the College of Liberal Arts May 10, but they share other things as well. All are first-generation college graduates with connections to the Department of Women’s Studies.

Highlight student Tahjanae Northcutt is a native of Los Angeles, where she was a straight-A high school student. She double majored in biology and women’s studies. Northcutt has been a full-time student while holding down a job and being a single mother to a three-year-old son with special health needs. “I take one day at time and just do it and don’t look back,” she says. Northcutt sees a world of difference between the woman she is today and the young, big city girl who came to campus from L.A. “I find myself more analytical, I’ll take any topic and dig in to it. I’m more objective in my views. Critical thinking…. I didn’t even know what it was until I came here and took courses in women’s studies.” Northcutt plans to pursue her master’s in women’s studies and then attend medical school at the University of California, Los Angeles, to become an ob-gyn.

Elizabeth Peña, the second liberal arts highlight student, was born and raised in Puerto Rico and moved to Lynnwood, Wash., her senior year in high school. Washington and Pullman were a drastic change for a young girl from Puerto Rico, but Peña now says, “I’ve made so many friends here and have so many ties to the community. It’s really been a wonderful place to be.” Peña has done a tremendous amount of volunteer work for the Pullman chapter of the National Organization for Women and organized the Palouse Women’s Art Festival in April. She will graduate with degrees in English, women’s studies and comparative ethnic studies.

Melissa Scammahorn will carry the college banner during commencement. Scammahorn was born and raised in Cashmere, Wash. Though a good student in high school, she says she never thought of herself as a potential college graduate or scholar until she came to WSU. “I wasn’t on the college track in high school,” Scammahorn says. “I love being a student now and am actually kind of sad to graduate. I’m looking forward to graduate school.” After a year off, Scammahorn is hoping to get her master’s in women’s studies with an emphasis on health services for women. At WSU, Scammahorn was involved with GLBTA, the ASWSU Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Allies awareness group, and with Freshman Seminar, which helps new students acclimate and excel in the university environment.

Liberal arts graduates will walk in the 8 a.m. ceremony at Beasley Coliseum on the Pullman campus May 10.

KOMO Anchor Kathi Goertzen to Speak at Liberal Arts Commencement Ceremony

Washington State University graduate Kathi Goertzen is an award-winning news anchor for KOMO-TV, the ABC television affiliate in Seattle.

She came to WSU from Seattle and joined KOMO-TV following her graduation in 1980, when she completed a degree in communication with highest honors.

Early in her professional career, Goertzen was the legislative reporter in Olympia, then became news anchor for KOMO-TV weekend news in 1982. Currently she is co-anchor of the 5 p.m., 6:30 p.m. and 11 p.m. weekday editions of KOMO 4 News. She is also a reporter for KOMO-TV newscasts and hosts several locally produced programs. While a student at WSU, she worked for KWSU, the campus National Public Radio station, and completed an internship with KREM-TV in Spokane.

Goertzen has earned a number of awards for excellence in broadcast journalism at KOMO. Her honors include a National Education Reporting Award for her news series “High School Life,” a piece that also earned first place in the Washington Press Association (WPA) competition. “Mission to Mexico” won 10 awards, including two Emmy Awards, two United Press International Awards and awards from WPA and the regional chapter of Sigma Delta Chi. One journalistic career highlight was her documentary reporting on breast cancer and breast cancer prevention, “Why Me?” The “Why Me?/Getting in Touch” campaign also received the Northwest’s first national Emmy for Community Service.

Goertzen served on the Washington State University Foundation Board of Trustees from 1994 to 2000 and is now a Washington State University Foundation Trustee Ambassador. She received a Foundation Outstanding Service Award in 1996 as a member of the Foundation’s strategic communication committee.

In 1999, she received a Washington State University Alumni Achievement Award honoring her “outstanding leadership and service to her profession, continued loyalty and support to her alma mater and her great Cougar Pride.”

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