
April 2005

Dean's Message

Just prior to spring break, our college leadership relayed to you a message about the next phase in planning the 2005–06 budget. Across the University, deans and area directors are, as requested by central administration, reviewing how we might implement additional reductions of permanent budget (PBL) by 2.5% to 5%. While we are not certain that any part of this will come to pass, we do need to submit our version of this exercise.

President Rawlins and Provost Bates provided to President’s Cabinet a clear indication of the need to plan in this way: revenue shortfall at the state level will likely exceed $2 billion, and the need to offer competitive salaries strongly suggests internal funding of increases beyond what the state may fund. Thus, the PBL reductions could result from state-level reductions or could fund WSU’s internal priorities such as salary increases and selected program objectives.

Unfortunately for us, this exercise comes on top of our efforts this past fall to reduce our college’s expenditures by $1 million—5% of our total expenditures—to a level equal to our total of permanent and temporary resources. Because this second exercise would reduce PBL only, the possible additional reductions range from $443,000 to $886,000. Our chairs and directors have received instructions that provide flexibility in their recommendations and will forward their plans to us by April 15. I forwarded, as requested, a generalized plan to central administration on March 25 and will detail and amend that plan, based on departmental input, in our Budget Hearing with central in late April.

What good news, if any, do we have on the budget front? As we work through the spring round of faculty hires, special requests to central, and even a few requests for which we have dedicated funds in the college, we can rely on the recognition we have received for starting early to balance our budget. The central administration is aware of our efforts. Our provost in particular, during my regular meetings with him, notes that during fall 2004 we already planned for a reduction of $400,000 in temporary funding for 2005–06.

The pages of this Chronicle continue to document the important work of our college and the wide visibility that recognizes its value and quality. These days especially, we practice our own form of March Madness—so busy, trying to remain positive as we move students and ourselves to completion of so many projects. Thank you for sustaining your commitment to knowledge and education!

If you have questions about our budget, please do let me know and I will try to respond clearly and quickly.

With appreciation,

Erich Lear, Interim Dean
College of Liberal Arts

Worthy of Note

Welcome to Carol Kowalski, who is joining the College of Liberal Arts April 1 as associate director of development for major gifts. Carol will have her office at WSU West, where she has been the assistant director for corporate/foundation relations for the past five and a half years. Carol is a graduate of the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication and a Cougar to the core. She brings a wealth of experience to this position, not only from her time at WSU, but also from previous positions at Arizona State University and Oregon State University. For those who interviewed Carol, her professionalism, energy, and knowledge of Seattle made her the perfect choice for the position.

Congratulations to Linda Chesser (administrative manager/advisor, women’s studies), who has been honored with a President’s Employee Excellence Award. A WSU employee for twelve years, she is the only staff member for the growing Department of Women’s Studies, handling a variety of tasks and working side by side with faculty and students. “Linda’s the heart and soul of the women’s studies department,” says chair Noël Sturgeon.

The Theatre Arts Program has received three new Certificates of Achievement from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (Region VII). Kelsey Gunn (senior, theatre arts) was named an Irene Ryan finalist, for acting at the Ashland, Oregon, festival in February. Carrie Childs (senior, theatre arts) was awarded a Certificate of Merit for Stage Management and Phyllis Gooden-Young, senior faculty, was awarded a Certificate of Merit for Choreography, both for February’s Death and the King’s Horseman.

Sue Peabody (history) will give an invited lecture, “Slave Law in the Atlantic World: Beyond Tannenbaum,” at Harvard University’s Atlantic History Seminar workshop on “Atlantic Legalities” April 16.

Andrew Duff (anthropology) has received a $19,663 grant from the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration in support of his project titled “Households and Great Houses: Social Dynamics in Southern Chacoan Communities.”

The American Educational Research Association awarded Irenee R. Beattie (sociology) a research grant to support her project “Gendered Expectations and Attainment in High Poverty Schools: Do Family and School Contexts Help Girls More than Boys?” This research is in collaboration with Lyssa Thaden (Ph.D. candidate, sociology). Thaden and Beattie will also be presenting a related paper, “Planning Ahead: Race, Future Expectations, and Academic Coursework,” at the Pacific Sociological Association meetings in Portland in April.

John Streamas (comparative ethnic studies) presented his postdoctoral lecture on March 9 for the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Illinois, where he is in residence for the year on a postdoctoral fellowship. The title was “Frontier Prison: Triumphalism in Children’s Books about Wartime Japanese American Incarceration.”

Laurie Drapela (political science, criminal justice, WSU Vancouver) and Faith Lutze (political science, criminal justice) co-presented a paper entitled “Considering the Other Side of Prisoner Re-entry: An In-Depth Study of the Personal and Professional Attributes of Community Corrections Officers in Washington State” at the annual meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in Chicago.

Mark Stephan (political science, WSU Vancouver) co-organized a regional environmental justice conference, entitled “Environmental Justice: Action, Communities, and Topics (EJ-ACT),” on the Vancouver campus in late February. With seven panels, two keynote addresses, and 100 participants, the daylong event brought together academics, activists, students, community members, and public officials to talk about concerns of particular interest in the region. Topics included a focus on urban environmental health, pesticide exposure for farm workers, and toxic contamination of fish in tribal fisheries. The event was sponsored by numerous entities within the WSU system, including the Center for Social and Environmental Justice at WSU Vancouver, the Foley Institute, and WSU Vancouver’s College of Liberal Arts.

Camille Roman (English, American studies, women’s studies) will be speaking on a panel about “Anthologizing American Modern Poetry” at the American Literature Conference in Boston in late May. Her paper is entitled “‘Ja Da,’ DaDa, and ‘If It Ain’t Got That Swing’” and will discuss the historical synchronicity of modernist language experimentation in Asian-influenced popular song lyrics, Duke Ellington’s signature song of the swing era, and the high modernist literary movement of Dadaism.

Nada Elia (women’s studies) gave two presentations at Seattle University’s “(Re)Examining Race and Gender” conference March 4–5. The first, “And Freedom for Some,” examined the racialization of Arab-Americans throughout U.S. history. The second, “Nice Jeans, Where Did You Get Them?” was on combining activism with academics. Elia also led three workshops at the INCITE! Color of Violence conference in New Orleans March 12–14. The first was “Palestine 101: What the Media Doesn’t Think You Should Know.” The second was “We, Too, Are Your Sisters: Anti-Imperialist Coalition Building around Arab Women’s Issues.” The third was at the launching of the nationwide INCITE! anti-militarism campaign, which she is coordinating in her capacity as member of the Transnational Task Force on State Violence.

Gene Rosa (sociology) in May will give invited lectures at the London School of Economics, Kings College London, the University of Sussex, and East Anglia University on the human drivers of global climate change and on the role of risk in the stewardship of toxic and radioactive substances.

Ann Marie Yasinitsky (music) presented a master class in March for the Iris Ingram Flute Studio in Lake Stevens, Washington.

C. Richard King (comparative ethnic studies) presented “What Larry Bird Said: How White Supremacists Interpret the Black Athlete in the Contemporary U.S.” at the conference “From Jack Johnson to Marion Jones: Gains Made–Struggles Remain for African-Americans in Sport” in January. King also presented “Arguing over Images: Native American Mascots and Race in the Contemporary U.S.” at the Dialog on Diversity, Washington State University, March 1.

Ana M. Rodríguez-Vivaldi (foreign languages and cultures) will do a live interview of Puerto Rican playwright Roberto Ramos Perea on his experiences regarding the recent film adaptation of his play Revolución en el infierno. This will be a special presentation during the Latin American Theater Today conference to be held in Storrs, Connecticut, in April 2005.

Nicholas Lovrich and Steven Stehr (both political science) took part in the latest “Mission to Washington, D.C.” in February. These missions, which are jointly funded by the Office of Research and the colleges, are intended to put WSU faculty in touch with program officers at federal agencies that fund university research. The theme of this trip was “Security and Safety” research.

Greg Yasinitsky (music) was commissioned to compose an original work for jazz band for the University of Portland Jazz Festival and a work for orchestra to be premiered in May at the dedication of the new building at Lincoln Middle School (LMS) in Pullman. The latter will be composed as part of Yasinitsky’s residency at LMS, which is funded by the Commission Project of New York. Yasinitsky was also the guest conductor in March of the Honor Jazz Band at the Panorama Music Festival in Republic, Washington.

A paper coauthored by Leonard Burns (psychology) and Brent J. Oneal (Ph.D. candidate, psychology), “Tentative Suggestions for a Comprehensive Treatment Model for Adolescents with Sexual Behavior Problems and Recommendations for Measuring Change,” was presented at the annual meeting of the Washington State Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, held in Blaine, Washington, in February.

Mary Meares (communication) and six graduate students, Brooke Hempstead, Khalil Islam-Zwart, Jessie Quintero Johnson, Brian Lempke, Joy Scott, and Erin Tomson, presented a panel discussion on the “Challenges and Opportunities of Global Virtual Teams” at the International Globalization, Diversity, and Education Conference sponsored by the College of Education. Meares also presented a workshop on intercultural communication at Whatcom Community College for their Faculty/Staff Professional Development Day in February.

Masha Gartstein (psychology) gave a presentation on “The Impact of Maternal Childhood Abuse on Infant Temperament and Parenting” at the annual convention of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America in Seattle in March.

Amy Mazur (political science) will be presenting the paper “State Feminism, Women’s Movements, and the Boomerang Effect in France: The Emergence of a Gendered Republic?” at the European Consortium for Political Research meetings in Granada, Spain.

On April 1–2 James F. Short Jr. (professor emeritus, sociology) will participate in an ethnography workshop and deliver a keynote talk at the Jerry Lee Criminology Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

The WSU Jazz Big Band, under the direction of Greg Yasinitsky (music), presented an invited performance in February at the All Northwest Music Educators Conference in Bellevue, Washington. The band performed with renowned guest artists Allen Vizzutti, trumpet, and Greta Matassa, vocals.

Gail Chermak (speech and hearing sciences) is copresenting one of the two featured sessions at the 2005 annual convention of the American Academy of Audiology, March 31–April 2, representing the academy’s new continuous learning initiative. This innovative format allows potential attendees to post questions on an electronic bulletin board prior to the convention to give presenters a better sense of potential attendees’ thinking on the topic and an opportunity to respond to these questions in their presentations at the convention. Following the convention, the same electronic means will be available for continuing dialogue and follow-up questions and guidance regarding implementing new clinical approaches.

Carol Ivory (fine arts) will attend the annual Pacific Arts Association–Europe chapter meeting in Berlin, Germany, in April in her role as president of the international organization. She has also been asked to give a docent training talk on Polynesian art at the De Young Museum in San Francisco.

Joey Reagan (communication) will be on leave 2005–2006 to write a book, Applied Research Methods for Mass Communicators, to be published by Marquette Books.

Professional Productivity

Laurie Drapela (political science, criminal justice, WSU Vancouver) has had an article, “Investigating the Effects of Family, Peer, and School Domains on Post-dropout Drug Use,” accepted for publication in Youth & Society.

Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson (sociology), with Justin Allen Berg (Ph.D. candidate, sociology) and Toni Sirotzki (M.A. candidate, sociology), has a forthcoming article titled “Relative Age in the Transition to Adulthood” in Advances in Life Course Research.

Andrew Duffin (history) has recently published “Remaking the Palouse: Farming, Capitalism, and Environmental Change, 1825–1914” in the fall 2004 edition of Pacific Northwest Quarterly. He has a second article, “Vanishing Earth: Soil Erosion in the Palouse, 1930–1945,” appearing in the spring 2005 edition of Agricultural History, and a third article, “A Long, Strange Yarn: Ken Kesey and the Pendleton Round-Up,” in the spring 2005 edition of Oregon Historical Quarterly.

Marina Tolmacheva (associate dean of liberal arts, history) published a memoir essay of the Russian North, “Leto v Komi” (A Summer in Komi), in Vestnik Sankt-Peterbugskogo universiteta 3(1) (St. Peterburg, Russia, 2004). Tolmacheva has been invited to contribute to the multivolume Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, to be published by E.J. Brill in Leiden, the Netherlands.

Brigit Farley’s (history, WSU Tri-Cities) chapter on the new independent Slovene state was recently published in Richard Frucht, ed., Eastern Europe: Introduction to the Peoples, Land, and Cultures (ABC-CLIO, January 2005). This is the first basic book to be published on Eastern Europe since the early l960s.

Two recent publications by Gene Rosa (sociology) are “Celebrating a Citation Classic—and More: Symposium on Charles Perrow’s Normal Accidents” in Organization and Environment and “Long-term Stewardship (LTS) and Risk Management: Analytic and Policy Challenges” in Research in Social Problems and Public Policy.

Fritz Blackwell (professor emeritus, history) published India: A Global Studies Handbook with ABC-CLIO, Inc. in spring 2004.

Camille Roman (English, American studies, women’s studies) is one of the editors of volume 2 (on “Modernisms: 1900–1950”) of The New Anthology of American Poetry published by Rutgers University Press in March. Research for the volume was supported by an American Cultural Diversity Grant in 2001 from WSU. George Kennedy, chair, and the Department of English provided much-needed and appreciated monies for permissions fees. Jason Miller (Ph.D. ’04, English) and Drew Piper (B.A. ’03, English) served as editorial assistants. Research assistants included Christy Kord (B.A. ’03, English) and Jingyu Wang (M.A. ’04, English), as well as graduate students Rajaa al Khalili and Keely Kuhlman.

Greg Yasinitsky’s (music) “Cruisin’ on Crestview” for jazz band has been published by Kendor Music.

C. Richard King and David J. Leonard (both comparative ethnic studies) recently published “Popular Culture and Ethnic Studies: Curricular and Pedagogic Reflections” in Popular Culture across the Disciplines, Ray Browne, ed. King also published “Apologies and Apologists: The Disavowal of Racism and the Abjuration of Anti-Racism in the Contemporary U.S.” in the online journal SIMILE: Studies in Media and Information Literacy Education 4(4).

Ella Inglebret (speech and hearing sciences) has had a manuscript, “Development and Evaluation of a Multimedia Curriculum Module Centered on the Oral Tradition,” accepted for publication by the Journal of American Indian Education.

An article by Lorine A. Hughes (Ph.D. ’03, sociology) and James F. Short Jr. (professor emeritus, sociology) entitled “Disputes Involving Youth Street Gang Members: Micro-social Contexts” was published in the February 2005 issue of Criminology.

Leonard Orr (English, WSU Tri-Cities) has published a book of poems titled Daytime Moon (FootHills Publishing, 2005). He also has an essay, “Modernism and the Issue of Periodization,” in the current issue of Comparative Literature and Culture 7(1).

Student Activities and Awards

Verena Theile (Ph.D. candidate, English) has been awarded a doctoral fellowship from the Dr. Günther Findel-Stiftung/Rolf und Ursula Schneider-Stiftung at Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, Germany. This is a three-month research fellowship in support of her dissertation project, “Representations of the Occult in Literature of the Renaissance.” Theile will be spending the summer of 2005 at the Renaissance Institute in Wolfenbüttel conducting research and tracing the translation and circulation history of early modern pamphlets dealing with beliefs in the occult.

Joe Huseby (M.A. candidate, political science) was accepted to Oslo University’s summer Peace Research Institute (Oslo, Norway). Only 18 out of 800 applicants were accepted, and Huseby is one of only two Americans in that 18.

Saxophonist Chris Siegmund (sophomore, music performance) performed as the college division Young Artist Winner with the Coeur d’ Alene Symphony in March. Siegmund is a student of Greg Yasinitsky (music).

Matthew Wiediger (M.S. candidate, psychology) will present a paper based on his master’s thesis titled “Does Response Type and Stimulus Duration Influence When Compatibility Interference Occurs” at the Vision Sciences Society conference held in Sarasota, Florida, in May. Wiediger and undergraduate Jennifer Nelson (psychology) are authors on a paper titled “Conjunction Benefits Can Occur for Dimensions within an Object But Not Between Objects,” which will be presented by Lisa Fournier (psychology) at the Vision Sciences Society conference. Nelson will present this paper at the WSU Psychology Undergraduate Symposium April 21.

Megan Schuyler (senior, communication), in collaboration with Rebecca Craft (psychology), recently completed an instructional DVD/video production entitled “Drugs and Behavior: From the Street to the Lab.” The forty-one-minute sequence, which includes description and demonstration of the behavioral effects of a variety of psychoactive drugs, is currently airing on Cable 8 and is also being used as a new teaching tool in Psych 265, Biopsychological Actions of Alcohol and Other Drugs, taught each spring by Dr. Craft.

Melissa Hussain (Ph.D. candidate, American studies) was interviewed on the WSU Extension television program “Service Learning and WSU Extension,” which aired live on February 25. She discussed the service learning project her English 101 class participated in last fall, which involved students becoming pen pals with elementary school students from underprivileged backgrounds in Clarkston, Washington. An archived videostream of the program can be viewed at http://caheinfo.wsu.edu/video/stream.html.

Nola Swanson (M.A. candidate, music) was recently selected as the recipient of the Terry Jordan Memorial Award for Organ Study. The scholarship is given in memory of Moscow organist Terry Jordan and is awarded by the Moscow–Pullman chapter of the American Guild of Organists. Swanson is a student of Jill Schneider (music). She will be performing in the memorial recital at Moscow Methodist Church at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, April 3.

Washington State University’s student chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) has received a $1,000 grant for a discussion/workshop on “Weblog Ethics: Traditional Journalism and the Blogosphere” and a mock hearing it will present, “Writing about Racism.” Both are being scheduled for the Murrow Symposium. SPJ student chapter president Andrew Morozov (M.A. candidate, communication) applied for the grant.

Daniela Hugelshofer (Ph.D. candidate, psychology) has received an award from the American Psychological Society as a winner of its RiSE-UP (Research on Socially and Economically Underrepresented Populations) research competition. She will present her research in a special symposium in the upcoming annual conference in Los Angeles in May.

Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival Results
Washington State University received the lion’s share of awards on “College Day,” February 24, at the 2005 Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival held at the University of Idaho. Outstanding College Instrumental Soloist award winners include Matt Reid (senior, advertising), trumpet; David Snider (M.A. candidate, music), bass; and Kristin DuChateau (M.S. candidate, civil and environmental engineering), piano. Snider was also selected as the Instrumental Creative Composition Competition winner. Additionally, the WSU Jazz Big Band, under the direction of Greg Yasinitsky (music), was selected as the runner-up in the Guest College Band division.

Alumni News

Jason Miller (Ph.D. ’04, English) has accepted a full-time, tenure-track faculty position with the rank of assistant professor at North Carolina State University. Home to over 29,000 students, it is North Carolina’s largest university. His duties will include teaching both undergraduate and graduate courses in American literature and teacher education.

John Hausdoerffer (Ph.D. ’04, American studies) has accepted a tenure-track position in environmental studies and philosophy at Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado.

Martha Laronal (M.A. ’01, speech and hearing sciences) has been appointed jointly by the Office of the Governor and the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction for Washington State to serve on the Early Learning and Development Benchmarks Bias and Fairness Input and Review Team.

Noam Chomsky to Deliver Potter Lecture

Noam Chomsky, MIT professor of linguistics and philosophy, has accepted the invitation of the Department of Philosophy at Washington State University to give the department’s 2005 Potter Memorial Lecture, Friday, April 22, at 3:30 p.m. in the Beasley Performing Arts Coliseum. His talk will be titled “Imminent Crises: Responsibilities and Opportunities.”

“Chomsky’s appearance at Washington State University provides a rare opportunity for faculty, students, and residents of the Palouse,” said David Shier, chair of the philosophy department. “Noam Chomsky is one of the most respected scholars of our age,” Shier said.

“For almost 50 years Noam Chomsky has been the most influential and best known American linguist,” added Lynn Gordon (English), coordinator of WSU’s linguistics program. “His work has revolutionized linguistic theory,” Gordon said.

Chomsky, a native of Philadelphia, received his Ph.D. in linguistics in 1955 from the University of Pennsylvania. He joined the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1955 and in 1961 was appointed full professor. In 1976 he was appointed institute professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. “Though his research has been primarily in syntactic theory,” said Gordon, “Chomsky’s work has more broadly affected modern views of cognition, serving as a basis for research on a wide range of topics in human mental development and activity. The fact that many people refer to much of modern linguistic theory and research as ‘Chomskyan’ illustrates the breadth of his influence.”

Chomsky’s influence has also been felt in the areas of political philosophy and public affairs, and he has authored numerous books and articles which analyze U.S. foreign policy over the past 50 years. Business Week magazine says of Chomsky’s political writing, “Reading Chomsky is like standing in a wind tunnel. With relentless logic, he bids us to listen closely to what our leaders tell us—and to discern what they are leaving out. ... Agree with him or not, we lose out by not listening.”

Chomsky has lectured at many universities here and abroad and is the recipient of numerous honorary degrees and awards. He has written and lectured widely on linguistics, philosophy, intellectual history, contemporary issues, international affairs, and U.S. foreign policy. His most recent books are A New Generation Draws the Line; New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind; Rogue States; 9-11; Understanding Power; On Nature and Language; Pirates and Emperors, Old and New; Chomsky on Democracy and Education; Middle East Illusions; and Hegemony or Survival.

During the years 1951 to 1955, Chomsky was a junior fellow of the Harvard University Society of Fellows. The major theoretical viewpoints of his doctoral dissertation appeared in the monograph Syntactic Structure, 1957. This formed part of a more extensive work, The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory, circulated in mimeograph in 1955 and published in 1975.

The Potter lecture brings an internationally known philosopher to Washington State University each year. Recent Potter lecturers have included Simon Blackburn, Julia Annas, Lucius Outlaw, Robert Solomon, and Andrew Light.

Approved for Professional Leave

Fall 2005: Robert Ackerman (anthropology), Timothy Kohler (anthropology), Rachel Halverson (foreign languages and cultures), Roger Schlesinger (history), David Turnbull (music), Paul Strand (psychology, WSU Tri-Cities)

Spring 2006: John Bodley (anthropology), Joan Grenier-Winther (foreign languages and cultures), Candice Goucher (history, director of liberal arts, WSU Vancouver), Edward Weber (political science, director of the Foley Institute), John W. Wright (psychology)

Academic Year 2005–2006: Joey Reagan (communication), Erica Austin (communication), Camille Roman (English), Peter Chilson (English), Debbie Lee (English), Barbara Monroe (English), Desiree Hellegers (English, WSU Vancouver), David Nice (political science), Terrence Cook (political science), David Brody (criminal justice, WSU Spokane), Bob Patterson (psychology)

08/01/05–07/31/06: Debbie Brudie (finance/budget manager, psychology)

Tenure and Promotion

Effective August 16, 2005

Promoted to Regents Professor
LeRoy Ashby (history)

Promoted to Professor
Rebecca M. Craft (psychology)
Zheng-min Dong (foreign languages and cultures)
Michael M. Morgan (psychology, WSU Vancouver)
Craig D. Parks (psychology)
Bruce E. Pinkleton (communication)
Patricia M. Sias (communication)

Granted Tenure
Donna M. Campbell (English)

Granted Tenure and Promoted to Associate Professor
Barbara J. Monroe (English)
Heather Streets (history)
Paul R. Thiers (political science, WSU Vancouver)
Nella Van Dyke (sociology)

Effective July 1, 2005

Promoted to Clinical Associate Professor (nontenure-track)
Jeffrey Nye (speech and hearing sciences, WSU Spokane)

Scholar and poet Ruth Slonim (professor emeritus, English) died February 16, 2005, in Moscow, Idaho, at the age of 87.

A Recollection of Ruth Slonim
by Virginia Hyde

Ruth Slonim was well-known as a teacher (thirty-six years in our English Department) and a poet who was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She studied poetry with Czeslaw Milosz and personally knew great writers of her time, including Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Louise Bogan, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, and W. H. Auden. She had shared a program with the likes of Stephen Spender and spoke at Cambridge University and Trinity–Dublin about poetry. She was a founding consultant for the liberal arts at Puerto Rico’s leading university.

Culture was her whole life, and the truest form of culture—a kind that comprehended the world’s sorrows and needs as well as rewards and achievements. Nobody I have known in academe has had a sharper sense of ethical concerns, including the rights of African Americans and Native Americans and the needs of those who suffer from prejudice, violence, or war anywhere in the world. For holiday gifts to friends, she would contribute to UNICEF, Doctors without Borders, Quaker world charities, and other well-defined services. Less well-known were her private contributions to students, former colleagues, and others whose needs she knew and addressed with great tact and generosity. She came from a family whose tradition was to render public service (her father was a well-known pro bono attorney for many public-service causes), and she never forgot it.

She was a national officer of leading scholastic organizations, like the honorary Phi Kappa Phi, that award significant national graduate scholarships. For many years, Ruth hosted and organized a series of poetry programs in the Department of English here at Washington State University, often presenting visiting literary celebrities to the university community. Not infrequently, she helped to fund such events from her own pocket, for she believed that the sharing of art is one of life’s supreme opportunities. She was an excellent observer of the literary scene and a good critic.

Her own poetry is animated by a sense of humanity, international vision and yet focus upon individuals, and by wit, humor, and a certain irony. At the Holland New Library, the Ruth Slonim Poetry Corner was dedicated to her in view of her poetic accomplishments, long dedicated service to the University, and the warm esteem in which she was held by students.

She was entirely approachable, yet she made one know what it is like to be in touch with a singular creative talent and one who knew her own mind. Interestingly enough, she had once helped to award me a national scholarship that allowed me to continue my higher education at the University of Wisconsin, and this was long before we ever knew each other. In fact, I knew nothing about it until recent years, after our paths had long since crossed in person. It was my good fortune to know her as her colleague, neighbor, and friend. It is of course always a fearsome thing to know a real writer, and I sometimes wondered if she might someday encapsulate my foibles in a neat quatrain! But as far as I know, she never did!

The Department of English has planned a celebration of Ruth Slonim’s life and work, April 13 from 3:00–5:00 p.m. in the Bundy Reading Room, Avery Hall. There will be some readings of her poetry and the poetry of others, as well as music provided by the School of Music. A reception will follow. All people interested in attending are cordially invited.

College Grant Recipients for Spring 2005

Edward R. Meyer Grant Development Award: Kim Lloyd (sociology)

Initiation/Completion Grants: Michelle Forsyth (fine arts), Melissa Goodman-Elgar (anthropology), Kevin Haas (fine arts), David Leonard (comparative ethnic studies), Laurie Mercier (history, WSU Vancouver), Samantha Stengel-Göetz (fine arts)

In February a contingent of WSU staff, including Barbara Aston (assistant to the provost/tribal liaison), Wyandot of Oklahoma; Rodney Cawston, Colville; Mary Collins (anthropology); Roberta Paul (ICN), Nez Perce; and Ron Pond (director, Plateau Center), Umatilla; Native American Advisory Board (NAAB) to the President member Wendell Jim, Warm Springs; and Michael Holloman (M.F.A. ’93), Colville, of the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane traveled to Washington, D.C., in support of the Plateau Center for American Indian Studies at Washington State University. The trip included meetings with staff and tours of exhibits and collections work areas at the new Museum of the American Indian and hill visits with members of Washington State’s congressional delegation. The hill visits, in which NAAB member Sam Penney, Nez Perce, also participated, included a special thanks to Senator Patty Murray, who supported the recent appropriation of $248,000 to support the Plateau Center. This grant will allow the Plateau Center to coordinate increased tribal access to WSU’s educational services and other resources through information technology, as well as to continue working with the local tribes to improve the teaching about and for American Indians at WSU.

School Project Goes Beyond Classroom Walls

Thirty students in John Irby’s (communication) public affairs reporting course invited community members to take a seat at a roundtable to discuss credibility issues surrounding a Palouse controversy.

Newspaper coverage of Moscow’s Christ Church over a lengthy period of time revealed a divided community, and the March 31 roundtable was planned in an effort to gain a better understanding of the various perspectives. The session included discussion on the fairness and quality of newspaper coverage.

While the session focused on a local concern, students in Journalism 425 are studying about national trends on media credibility. The roundtable is part of a National Credibility Roundtable Project sponsored by the Associated Press Managing Editors. University journalism programs were first included in the project this year, and WSU was one of only six programs that were invited to participate.

While the roundtable included about fifteen participants, students and representatives of the Moscow–Pullman Daily News, the public will be able to review the session when it is presented by students at the Edward R. Murrow Symposium on April 13. Students will explain the roundtable project, what the class did, what students learned, and how others can benefit from such projects.

Grant Supports Innovative Software Development

Sandia National Laboratory and WSU Tri-Cities have been awarded a ‘seedling grant’ by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop new software capable of inferring the interior spatial plans of buildings from exterior building characteristics, construction techniques and materials, and social/cultural space syntax measures (reflecting social/cultural norms and practices in space usage). There are wide applications for such rapid inferential capability for unknown buildings, including intelligence gathering, military planning, and disaster rescue. The grant gives investigators six months to develop and demonstrate ‘proof-of-principle’ of advanced research concepts. The team will research the usefulness of combining architectural and social/environmental psychology data to create field-worthy software-based decision/design assistants that can infer and automatically generate and upgrade likely interior layouts and environmental conditions within unknown buildings, given new and evolving information. The amount of the grant to WSU Tri-Cities is currently about $100,000. Extensions of the grant beyond the ‘seedling’ period are possible. The principal investigator for WSU is James A. Wise (psychology, adjunct professor of ES/RP).

Authors’ Recognition Reception

The spring reception honoring the achievements of liberal arts faculty was held Wednesday, March 30, in the Honors Hall Lounge.

Featured art:

Works by Gene Rosa (sociology)—some of his creations may be viewed online

Featured books:

Author: Edward P. Weber (political science)
Book: Bringing Society Back In: Grassroots Ecosystem Management, Accountability, and Sustainable Communities (MIT Press, 2003)
Discussant: Craig Parks (psychology)

Author: Robert McCoy (history)
Book: Chief Joseph, Yellow Wolf, and the Creation of Nez Perce History in the Pacific Northwest (Routledge, 2004)
Discussant: Ron Pond (Plateau Center for American Indian Studies)

Author: J. Mitchell Pickerill (political science)
Book: Constitutional Deliberation in Congress: The Impact of Judicial Review in a Separated System (Duke UP, 2004)
Discussant: Elizabeth Blanks Hindman (communication)

Featured performance:

Theatre students presented a scene from Tales of the Lost Formicans by Constance Congdon, directed by Terry Converse (theatre arts).
Discussant: Laurilyn Harris (theatre arts)

Dr. Joseph Labat, retired professor of French, passed away in November. Colleague Marie Glynn kindly shared her memories of him, offering greater insight into Dr. Labat’s character and legacy.

Joseph Labat was capable of engaging people—students, friends, colleagues—on a very deep level. He had an uncanny knack for creating community in the undergraduate classroom. During the regular school year, he organized theatre productions; in summer sessions, he led float trips down the Clearwater River.

With graduate students and colleagues he was extraordinarily generous with his time, his immense library, his excellent cooking skills, and his superb wine cellar. The numbers of former students who remained in touch with him until his untimely death attest the deep passion he had for their personal development. Many went on to earn M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in French.

Joseph Labat was World Class. Face to Face. and we shall miss him.

—Marie Glynn, Assistant Professor of General Education

Public Affairs Lecture Series at WSU Vancouver

Civic Engagement in the United States—Revival or Decline?
Views from the National, State, and Local Levels

Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Student Services (SS) Building, Room 110
WSU Vancouver Campus

Schedule of Events

9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.: “Making Your Voices Heard: An Interactive Exercise in Citizen Involvement.”
1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.: “A View from the Governor’s Mansion.” Panel discussion with former Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber and former Washington Governor Mike Lowry.
2:00 p.m to 3:00 p.m.: “Is Democracy on the Decline? Current Challenges to Citizen Involvement.” Presented by Making Democracy Work, a local, citizen-based, nongovernmental organization dedicated to enhancing civic engagement.
3:15 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.: “A View from the County.” Panel discussion with Clark County Commissioners Betty Sue Morris and Steve Stuart.
4:00 p.m. to 4:45 p.m.: “A View from the City.” Panel discussion with Vancouver Mayor Royce Pollard and Camas Mayor Paul Dennis.

Please join us later in the evening for the keynote address presented by Governor Howard Dean at Skyview High School. All events at WSU Vancouver prior to the keynote address are free and open to the public and tickets are not required. Parking permits are required to park on campus at WSU Vancouver and are available from the vending machine in the blue lot or from the cafeteria.

The keynote address, “Civic Engagement and Democracy in the 21st Century,” by Howard Dean, DNC chairman and former governor of Vermont, will take place following these events at 7:30 p.m. at Skyview High School. Tickets are available for $11.00 at TicketsWest. There will be a free LIVE telecast at WSU Pullman in FSHN T-101, 7:30 p.m.

The Anthropology Graduate Organization Visiting Scholar – Dr. Diane E. King (Ph.D. ’00, anthropology)

The Anthropology Graduate Organization (AGO), with funding from GPSA, Campus Involvement, the Department of Anthropology, and the Anthropology Club, is proud to announce the first AGO visiting scholar, Dr. Diane E. King. Dr. King’s research focuses on the displacement and migration of Kurdish populations in northern Iraq since 1995. She is currently an assistant professor at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon. Dr. King will present her research and experiences in a public lecture, titled “Thick Logistics: Reflections on Field Work in the Kurdish Borderlands,” in the Todd Auditorium on Wednesday, April 13, from 5:00–7:00 p.m. While providing an outlet for her research, AGO also hopes that this event will enhance public education on issues significant at the global scale.

Abstract: Dr. King first traveled to the Kurdish region of Iraq in 1995 while a Ph.D. student in the Department of Anthropology at WSU. She has since studied several topics through the lens of Kurdish life, including migration, identity, kinship, and gender. Her field research has yielded the “thick description” and rich cultural immersion typical of field work in cultural anthropology, but this has not come without “thick logistics,” such as waiting for weeks for borders to open, traversing war zones, and living under the constant threat of violence. In her AGO-sponsored talk, King will describe her experiences as well as present some of her photography of Kurdish life in four countries.

Representing the Department of Anthropology at the upcoming meetings of the Society for Applied Anthropology, Santa Fe, New Mexico, April 5–10.

In the symposium “The Power of Scale: Elite-Directed Development in the Commercial World,” chaired by Benedict J. Colombi (Ph.D. candidate) and Christa M. Herrygers (M.A. candidate)

John H. Bodley, “The Rich Tribal World: Scale and Power Perspectives on Cultural Valuation”
Benedict J. Colombi (Ph.D. candidate), “The Nez Perce Tribe vs. Elite-Directed Development on the Lower Snake River: The Struggle to Breach the Dams and Save the Salmon
Christa Herrygers (M.A. candidate), “Structural Violence, Health and the Chad/Cameroon Oil Pipeline”
Matthew Wannamaker (M.A. candidate), “Wal-Mart World: A Network Analysis of the World’s Largest Corporation and Its Influences”
Brad Wazaney (Ph.D. student), “Domestic Scale Corporate Policy in Contrast to Corporate Practices in the Commercial World: Considering the Jicarilla Apache Tribe’s Model as a Successful Alternative”
William Willard (professor emeritus), “The Incorporation of Indigenous Colorado River Communities into the Bureau of Reclamation Matrix”
Troy Wilson (Ph.D. student), “The Impacts of Scale Changes in the Evolution of the Washington State Apple Industry”

Representing the Department of Anthropology at the fifty-eighth annual meeting of the Northwest Anthropological Conference, Spokane, Washington, March 16–19.

In the symposium “The 21st Century: Development, Elites, and Local People,” chaired by Benedict J. Colombi, Troy M. Wilson (both Ph.D. candidates)

Benedict J. Colombi (Ph.D. candidate), “The Nez Perce Tribe vs. Elite-Directed Development on the Lower Snake River: The Struggle to Breach the Dams and Save the Salmon”
Kerensa DeFord (Ph.D. candidate), “A Power and Scale Perspective of Conservation Efforts in Tena, Ecuador”
Christa Herrygers (M.A. candidate), “Structural Violence, Health, and the Chad/Cameroon Oil Pipeline”
Brad Wazaney (M.A. candidate), “Domestic Scale Corporate Policy in Contrast to Corporate Practices in the Commercial World: Considering the Jicarilla Apache Tribe’s Model as a Successful Alternative”
William Willard (professor emeritus), “The Incorporation of Indigenous Colorado River Communities into the Bureau of Reclamation Matrix”
Troy Wilson (Ph.D. candidate), “The Impacts of Scale Changes in the Evolution of the Washington State Apple Industry”

In separate sessions:

Ian Buvit (Ph.D. candidate), “Deep Holes or Shallow Depressions: Housepit Construction and Fluvial Hydrology on the Columbia Plateau”
Tiffany Tuttle (M.A. candidate), “Golden Fleece: Art, Innovation, and Cultural Preservation in Kyrgyzstan”
Ming-kuo Wu (Ph.D. candidate), “Jataka Tale Altruistic Acts as Depicted in the Mogao Caves of Dunhuang”
Erin Dunbar (senior, anthropology, WSU Vancouver), “An Archaeological Investigation of a Cooper Shop at Fort Vancouver”
Brandon Chapman (Ph.D. candidate), “Population, Paths and Production: The Three ‘Ps’ Influencing Community and Cultural Transitions in Northern Peru from the Late Lithic Period through the Early Horizon”
Susan Ellis (Ph.D. candidate), “The Decline of Cultural Landscapes”
Jennifer L. Keeling (M.A. candidate), “A Tale of Cheno-Ams and Artemesia: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Pollen Studies at Chalk Basin on the Owyhee River, Southeastern Oregon”
Aaron Wright (M.A. candidate), “Temperature Trends and Their Role in the Adoption of Domesticated Plants in the Northern San Juan Basin”
Beth Horton (Ph.D. candidate), “Filling the Gap: Pollen Studies at a Late Archaic/Transitional Period Camp Occupation (1600–1400 BP) in Central New York”
Vanessa Ross (M.A. candidate), “Reaping Empty Harvests: Changing Landscapes of North-Central Idaho”