
May 2005

Dean's Message

At this time of year, we are struck by the dual experience of “commencement.” As faculty and staff, we assist our students to develop and achieve in ways that allow them to “commence”—to begin their more independent professional and personal lives. Yet for us, these are more like endings. Certainly, we hear from our alumni—but it just isn’t the same. Each generation of students is succeeded by another; our opportunities to continue our support of students are always there. Yet we miss the particular people with whose lives we have engaged. I encourage you to let them know. They will appreciate your attendance at commencement itself, but they will deeply appreciate your kind words and encouragements for the next stage of their lives.

For me, there is a related feeling—a term as interim dean coming to a close, the return to General Studies with all the students on the horizon, and so very many opportunities this year to help staff and faculty achieve goals—as individuals and within programs—in preparation for next steps in the College of Liberal Arts. Just as at commencement for students, there are—at this moment of writing—a number of unknowns in our future. Money is not everything, but it facilitates so much of what we do that, at times, funding can seem to be an end in itself. To be sure, it is not. Administrators and organizational units, too, can be essential facilitators and synthesizers of the many parts of an operation that the individuals and focused efforts therein may be less likely to integrate. Please accept my reassurances to do my best in supporting the research, scholarship, teaching, and service that you produce and that are the primary bases for budgets, alignments, or administrative appointments and actions.

In opening the year, I expressed my thanks for your support of my selection as interim dean and my gratitude in advance for all that you would offer toward my success in that role. WHAT A YEAR!! Our guests have been of the highest order and our own scholarship at similar levels or realistically aspiring to be so, our teaching has increased significantly in quantity and in engagement, and our service has contributed to society locally to internationally. Of parallel importance, we have assisted the University in defining and clarifying elements of budget, planning, societal interaction, and creativity that will allow more effective participation of our institution in contributing to improving our world. Unable to think of anything further to be asked of us, I wish to close with words that, while often used, are here felt fully and in so many ways. Thank you!

With respect and affection for all that we are and can be,

Erich Lear, Interim Dean
College of Liberal Arts

Worthy of Note

Rachel Halverson (foreign languages and cultures), pictured at right with students, has been selected as a Fulbright scholar grantee to the Fulbright German Studies Seminar in Berlin, Leipzig, and Hamburg June 7–25. She has also received a grant from the Goethe-Institut to attend the Lehrerfortbildungsseminar “Bayern und Preußen” in Munich and Berlin October 9–29.

Gregory Hooks (sociology) has been named a Soros Senior Justice Fellow for 2005 (awarded by the Open Society Institute). His research will examine, compare, and contrast the economic impact of prisons and educational institutions on economically strapped rural communities. Hooks was a coauthor of an article entitled “The Prison Industry” (published in 2004 in Social Science Quarterly), which was coauthored by Tom Rotolo (sociology), Clay Mosher (sociology, WSU Vancouver), and Linda Lobao of The Ohio State University. This article and the project that he will undertake as a Soros Fellow question the assumption that prisons provide economic benefits to struggling rural economies. In addition to supporting his research, the fellowship provides funding for Hooks to visit and consult with citizens and policymakers in communities where a prison has been proposed. The first such consultation supported by the fellowship took Hooks to Laredo, Texas, on April 25, where he also appeared at a press conference.

Carol Ivory (fine arts) will participate in the opening ceremonies of the exhibition Adorning the World: Art of the Marquesas Islands at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 10. Ivory was the primary consultant for the exhibition. In conjunction with the exhibit’s opening, she will give public lectures on Marquesan art and culture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City. She will also accompany a group of fifteen Marquesan dignitaries, coming to the U.S. for the opening, to visits to the collections of Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and the Peabody Essex Institute in Salem, Massachusetts.

Steven Stehr (political science) will travel to Arlington, Virginia, in May and June to serve on the National Science Foundation’s grant proposal review team for the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation Research Program. This program funds multi-university research teams to improve the design and performance of the nation’s civil and mechanical infrastructure when subjected to earthquakes or tsunamis.

At the recent Pacific Northwest American Studies Association conference members of the Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies participated in a session organized by associate professor C. Richard King entitled “Race and Kids Culture.” Papers read included “America’s Sweetheart Meets an Around-the-Way Girl: Racial Commodification, the Urban Imaginary, and Playing the Exotic with Bratz Dolls,” Lisa Guerrero; “Young, Black (& Brown) and Don’t Give a F*ck: Virtual Gangstas as Children’s Culture in the Era of State Violence,” David J. Leonard; “Narrative Politics in Historical Fictions for Children,” John Streamas; “‘A Whole New World?’: Race and Racialization in Children’s Films Made by Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks,” Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo and Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo (philosophy); and “Commodity Racism and Kids Culture: Disney’s Orientalist Oeuvre and Politicized Consumption,” C. Richard King.

Lori Wiest (music) conducted the New Mexico All-State Treble Choir in Albuquerque in January. One hundred fifty young women from around the state of New Mexico were selected from live auditions to participate in the choir. Wiest organized and presided over the National Choral Conducting Awards, sponsored by the American Choral Directors Association and held in Los Angeles in February. Over 100 undergraduate and graduate students from across the country auditioned via videotape to be selected as the eight undergraduate and seven graduate student semi-finalists who participated at the conference.

The Solstice Wind Quintet, with School of Music and Theatre Arts director and pianist Gerald Berthiaume, presented concerts on April 7 and 8 at the Wenatchee Valley Museum and in the “Fridays at Four” concert series at Whitman College. Quintet members are music faculty Ann Yasinitsky, flute; Amari Barash, oboe; James Schoepflin, clarinet; Jennifer Scriggins, horn; and Ryan Hare, bassoon.

Romana Hillebrand (English) will be the May guest speaker for Spokane Authors and Self-Publishers. Her May 5 presentation will provide proper grammar and punctuation explanations that are easy to understand and remember. The Spokane Authors and Self-Publishers organization meets on the first Thursday of every month at the Old Country Buffet in Spokane. Each month, fifty to eighty-five members attend the lunch and presentation. This year, Hillebrand is once again reading nominations for the Idaho Book Award for 2005. Last year she read seventeen novels; this year she will read thirteen.

Tim Kohler (anthropology) has been invited to give a paper at the University of Washington’s Quaternary Research Center in a workshop titled “Environmental Controls on the Collapse of Civilizations: Lessons for the 21st Century,” May 12–13 in Seattle. His paper is “Collapse in the Prehispanic Northern Southwest: Elements of an Explanation.”

Noël Sturgeon (women’s studies) was invited to be part of a panel honoring the twenty-fifth anniversary of Carolyn Merchant’s groundbreaking text in environmental and women’s history, ecofeminist theory, and feminist science studies, The Death of Nature, at the March 2005 meeting of the American Society of Environmental History. The panel presentation, including Merchant’s response, will be featured in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Environmental History.

Gene Rosa (sociology) with Richard York (Ph.D. ’02, sociology) and Thomas Dietz had their 2003 article in the American Sociological Review, “Footprints on the Earth: The Environmental Consequences of Modernity,” cited as a “fast breaking paper” by ISI Essential Science Indicators. Rosa has also been appointed to the editorial board of the Journal of Industrial Ecology.

Patricia Ericsson (English) recently chaired and presented on a panel, “Technology’s Role in Student Success: What Happens When Success and Access Is Decided by a Computer?” at the Conference on College Composition and Communication’s annual meeting in San Francisco. Ericsson’s presentation for the panel was entitled “It’s Adding Up: Why We Need to Pay Attention to the Numbers.” Ericsson was also the April 2005 module author and facilitator for the McGraw-Hill Teaching Composition listserv. Her module was entitled “Assessing the Electronic Assessment Machines” and discussion on the topic continued throughout April.

Don Dillman (sociology) recently presented an invited short course on the theory of visual design and layout of questionnaires to faculty and students at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. A seminar on the same topic will be presented at York University, Toronto, Canada, in early May.

Tamara Helm (fine arts) and Brenna Helm (B.F.A. ’97) were invited to show paintings in the twentieth annual Works from the Heart Contemporary Art Exhibition and Auction, held at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture at the Davenport Gallery in Spokane, Washington, during February 2005.

James Schoepflin (music) adjudicated clarinet competitors for the 2005 Washington State Music Educators State Solo Competition on April 30 in Ellensburg.

Michael Delahoyde (English) delivered the keynote address at the ninth annual Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference in Portland, “The Interpretive Implications of Identifying Oxford as Shakespeare.” It involved a reassessment of the apocrypha and an anti-Stratfordian update of the song “My Man.” Delahoyde was also invited to join the conference leaders’ editorial team about to publish a series of Shakespeare plays with the Oxfordian perspective. He will be in charge of an edition of Antony and Cleopatra.

Robert Bauman (history, WSU Tri-Cities) gave a presentation titled “Teaching Hanford History in the Classroom and in the Field” at the National Council on Public History annual meeting in Kansas City in April.

The eighth annual Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference presented a public forum entitled “Time and Identity in Film” April 1 in Moscow, Idaho, which included panelists Jon Hegglund (English), Andrew Light (NYU, philosophy), George Patsakos (University of Idaho, physics) and Hans Rosenwinkel (University of Idaho, journalism and mass media).

Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo (comparative ethnic studies) and Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo’s (philosophy) paper “‘The War on Terror’ and Domestic ‘Terrorism’: Same-Sex Marriage and U.S. State Discourse in the 2004 Election Year” was accepted for the national conference of the Association for Feminist Ethics and Social Theory (FEAST), to be held in Clearwater Beach, Florida, in October.

John Irby (communication) presented “Passion and Inclusion: It’s Easy to Incorporate Diversity into a Syllabus and Curriculum, It Just Takes Commitment” at the Broadcast Educators Association annual convention in Las Vegas April 21. Irby was awarded the 2005 Faculty Award for Distinguished Classroom Instruction in the Murrow School of Communication. Eight professors received nominations from faculty and/or students; this is Irby’s second win since the award was created in 2002. Irby has also been nominated for the Outstanding Educator Award, Newspaper Division, of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. The award is open to any journalism professor who is a full-time faculty member of a bachelor degree-granting institution of higher education in the United States. The nominee should demonstrate excellence in preparing journalism students with some demonstrated track record of achievement in advancing journalism education and career development.

In February, Barry Hewlett (anthropology, WSU Vancouver) gave two invited lectures. The first was “Culture, Biology, and Attachment in Central Africa and United States: An Integrated Evolutionary Approach” at the UCLA and Foundation for Psychocultural Research Conference “Four Dimensions of Childhood: Brain, Mind, Culture, and Time” in Los Angeles. The second, “Semes, Genes, and Evolutionary Cultural Anthropology,” was an invited keynote lecture for the joint annual meetings of the Society for Cross-Cultural Research and the Society for Anthropological Sciences in Santa Fe. At the anthropological sciences meetings, he also presented a paper (with his wife, Bonnie Hewlett), “Love, Sex, and Anger among Aka Foragers and Ngandu Farmers,” and at the cross-cultural meetings presented “Fathers in Forager, Farmer, and Pastoral Cultures.”

Paul Brians (English) presented “The Roots of Star Wars, or Why Princess Leia Fights Like a Girl,” at an English Department colloquium on April 5, and he will be presenting a version of the same talk at the Science Fiction Research Association national meeting, June 23–26 in Las Vegas. He has also been hired by the Seattle Grants for Artists Projects to review applications by creative writers and visual artists for support from this private nonprofit funding organization.

C. David Johnson (Ph.D. candidate, anthropology) and Timothy A. Kohler (anthropology) recently presented a poster entitled “Modeling Long-Term Human Ecology: Simulating Prehistoric Settlement in the Upland Southwest” at the seventieth annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, held in Salt Lake City. The poster and related items can be viewed on the “Village Project” Web site.

Harry Silverstein (philosophy) presented “The Holocaust, Ethics, and the Film The Grey Zone” March 8 as part of WSU’s “Week of Remembrance: Commemorating the Sixtieth Anniversary of the Liberation of the Concentration Camps.” He also delivered a paper entitled “The Time of the Evil of Death” April 2 at a special panel on “Death and Dying” at the Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference.

The Blakemore Foundation has renewed Christopher Lupke’s (foreign languages and cultures) research and training grant for an additional summer. Lupke will spend two months this summer in Taiwan conducting research on the renowned Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien and working on specialized language training.

Marina Tolmacheva (associate dean of liberal arts, history) has been accepted to the faculty development workshop on “Russia in Asia,” to be held at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, in May. She also has been invited to contribute to Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: An Encyclopedia (to be produced by Brown Reference Group and published by Routledge). This year, Tolmacheva gave two invited lectures for the WSU International Students’ Council Forum Series: in March, she spoke on “Women in Islam,” and in the fall semester, on “Ramadan in History.”

Greg Hooks (sociology) and Clayton Mosher (sociology, WSU Vancouver) made a presentation and facilitated a discussion based on their forthcoming article in Social Forces titled “Outrages against Personal Dignity: Rationalizing Abuse and Torture in the War on Terror.” Their research focuses on the demonization and dehumanization of the “enemy” and instructions contained in U.S. Central Intelligence Agency training manuals. Both the article and the authors’ presentation examine the historical roots of torture by American military personnel and how such torture has spread in the current “war on terror.” The event was held at WSU Vancouver on April 8 and sponsored by the Center for Social and Environmental Justice. It was taped by a local public access television station for rebroadcast in the Vancouver area.

In April Greg Yasinitsky (music) performed with the Dave Glenn Big Band at Whitman College in Walla Walla. This band is an all-star group including Woody Herman alumni and others. The program included Yasinitsky’s composition “The Big T.” Yasinitsky’s new piece, “For the Uncommon Good,” will be premiered at the dedication of the Lincoln Middle School (LMS) reconstruction on May 4 at 10:00 a.m. The piece will be performed by the combined forces of the LMS Orchestra and Concert Band. Yasinitsky composed this new work as composer-in-residence at LMS. This residency is funded by the Commission Project of New York.

David Pietz (history) received an American Philosophical Society Franklin Research Grant to support his research on the history of water management on the North China Plain after 1949.

Photo: Stan Brown Stan Brown (theatre arts) has been hired by Idaho Repertory Theatre as a guest artist this season. He will be acting in The Underpants, adapted by Steve Martin, and Complete Works of Shakespeare...Abridged!

The WSU Concert Choir and Madrigal Singers, under the direction of Lori Wiest (music), performed in St. Petersburg, Russia, on an eight-day concert tour in March. The choirs were invited by the Russian minister of culture to perform in the first annual Youth Music Festival. The two ensembles performed in Sheremetev Palace, the Grand Philharmonic Hall, and at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, as well as a Baptist church in St. Petersburg. The Madrigal Singers were featured singing on a Russian television news program, which informed the public of the festival.

After being nominated by a student on the National Dean’s List, Susan Swan (general education) has again been selected for Who’s Who among America’s Teachers, becoming a multiple-year nominee among the top five percent of United States teachers.

As Susan Ross’ (communication) Fulbright grant draws to a close, she will organize and participate in “Toward an International Media(ted) Dialogue for Peace,” a plenary theme session May 29 at the International Communication Association conference in New York City, and “Mediating Global Peace and Security: Moving toward an International Journalism of Peace,” May 23 at the ATINER Media Conference in Athens, Greece. She is also a funded participant in “A Peace Journalism Curriculum: A Working Group” at the Toda Institute P.E.A.C.E. Research Conference, May 24–28 in Madrid, Spain. Ross also delivered an invited talk at “Peace Journalism in the Middle East,” University of Famagusta, North Cyprus, in conjunction with talks at Sapir Academic College, D.N. Hof Ashkelon, Israel and School of Media Studies, Tel Aviv, Israel, in April. She gave the invited talk “Media and Politics: The Role of American Media in War in Peace,” at the U.S. Embassy seminar “The Transformation of American Politics, Policy, and Society: 1960–2005” at Panteion University, Athens, Greece, April 14. Also in Athens Ross will deliver the invited talks “American Media and Middle East Violence,” to the School of Public Administration at Harokopion University on May 10, and “Peace, Politics, and the Press,” to the Hellenic American Union on June 13.

Members of the Psychology Infant Temperament Lab presented two posters at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development April 6–10. Julia Marmion (Ph.D. candidate, psychology), Maria Gartstein (psychology), David J. Bridgett (Ph.D. candidate, psychology), Heather Swanson (M.S. candidate, psychology), and Alison Bateman coauthored “The Relationship of Child Temperament Factors and Parental Depression to the Development of Externalizing Behavior Problems,” and Bridgett, Gartstein, and two colleagues coauthored “Parental Responses to Temperament Displays: Structure, Stability through Toddlerhood, and Relations with Big 3 Temperament Factors.”

Last semester the Italian language section received a donation of $100, which was used by the students of Italian 102 to prepare an Italian lunch March 31. The fresh “pesto” they prepared spread its aroma around Thompson Hall. The event was organized by Maria Serenella Previto (foreign languages and cultures).

Birgitta Ingemanson (foreign languages and cultures) has helped organize a large photo exhibit, which opened mid-April at the regional history museum in Vladivostok. It focuses on the everyday life of a well-known merchant family in 1890s–1920s Vladivostok, Otto and Natali’a Lindholm and their three daughters. Some of the photos come from the Lindholm descendants (in England), but most are from the Eleanor L. Pray Collection, which Ingemanson studies. Ingemanson chose the photos from the Pray albums, and Cecil Williams (technology coordinator, foreign languages and cultures) scanned them. She also wrote much of the more than 100-page catalog. After a stay of one month in Vladivostok, the Lindholm exhibit will go to another city in the Russian Far East, Nakhodka, for an additional month. The catalog is in both English and Russian, and Ingemanson’s work was immeasurably helped by her research partner in Vladivostok, Larisa V. Aleksandrovskaia.

Professional Productivity

Carol Ivory (fine arts) is second author for the catalog Adorning the World: Art of the Marquesas Islands, published this spring by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press. She contributed an essay, “Art and Aesthetics in the Marquesas Islands,” and cowrote descriptions for seventy-six objects with the Met’s curator, and primary author, Eric Kjellgren. The catalog accompanies the exhibit of the same name that opens in May at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo’s (comparative ethnic studies) paper “U.S. Congressional Rhetoric and the Invisibility of Coloniality: The Case of Puerto Rico’s Political Status” was accepted for publication in Centro Journal.

Bill Condon and Patty Ericsson (both English) have each coauthored an essay in The Outcomes Book: Debate and Consensus after the WPA Outcomes Statement, newly released from Utah State University Press. Condon, writing with four coauthors, helps contextualize the Outcomes Statement, which he helped develop. Ericsson, writing with Cynthia Selfe in “Expanding Our Understanding of Composing Outcomes,” critiques the Outcome Statement developers’ decision not to include a separate “technology plank.” Ericsson also authored a chapter titled “Celebrating through Interrogation: Considering the Outcome Statement through Theoretical Lenses.” Her article “Raising the Standards for Standards: A Call for Definitions” appears in the April 2005 issue of English Education.

Buddy Levy’s (English) article “From the Garden to the Forest: The Story of a Successful Writers Group” was just published in the May/June 2005 issue of Poets & Writers magazine.

David Nice (political science) recently completed revisions for the ninth edition of Politics and Policy in States and Communities, coauthored with John Harrigan, to be published by Longman. He is currently working on articles dealing with regional, high-speed passenger rail initiatives and dealing with state and local government efforts to protect homeland security.

Barry Hewlett’s (anthropology, WSU Vancouver) article “Weaning and Parent–Offspring Conflict in Bofi Foragers and Farmers,” with Hillary Fouts (Ph.D. ’02, anthropology) and Michael Lamb (Cambridge), was published in the February issue of Current Anthropology. Hewlett and the same colleagues also published a brief note, “Infant Crying in Hunter–Gatherer Cultures,” in the December 2004 issue of Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Leonard Burns (psychology) and colleagues James Walsh (University of Montana), Rapson Gomez, and Nina Hafetz (both University of Ballarat) published a paper in the April issue of the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology titled “A Multitrait–Multisource Confirmatory Factor Analytic Approach to the Construct Validity of ADHD and ODD Rating Scales with Malaysian Children.”

Harry Silverstein (philosophy) has published “Creation and Abortion: A Reply to Hall” in the Journal of Social Philosophy 35(4).

Clare Wilkinson-Weber’s (anthropology, WSU Vancouver) article “Tailoring Expectations: How Film Costume Becomes the Audience’s Clothes” will be published in a special issue of South Asian Popular Culture on “Bollywood Audiences” in October 2005.

Susan Ross’ (communication) coauthored article “Testing a Political Economic Theory of the Media: How Were Steel Tariffs Covered?” is in press with Social Science Quarterly, while her book with Robert Trager and Joe Russomanno, The Law of Journalism and Mass Communication, is set for release in January 2006 with McGraw-Hill. “Frame Shifts and Catastrophic Events: The Attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and New York Times’ Portrayals of Arafat and Sharon,” coauthored with Philemon Bantimaroudis, has been accepted for publication in Mass Communication & Society.

Jeff Joireman (psychology) is coeditor of Understanding Behavior in the Context of Time: Theory, Research, and Application, due out in June from Lawrence Erlbaum. He has also authored a chapter in this book titled “Environmental Problems as Social Dilemmas: The Temporal Dimension.”

C. David Johnson (Ph.D. candidate, anthropology), Timothy A. Kohler (anthropology), and Jason Cowan (M.A. candidate, anthropology) recently published an invited article entitled “Modeling Historical Ecology, Thinking about Contemporary Systems” as part of an “In Focus” section in the current issue of American Anthropologist. The article discusses results of an agent-based model designed to investigate how long-term harvesting of firewood by prehistoric households in the southwestern U.S. impacted the environment. The authors suggest that the use of similarly designed models is applicable to a variety of resource conservation issues for the twenty-first century and beyond.

Student Activities and Awards

Daniela Rumpf (M.F.A. candidate, ceramics) has been selected to participate in One Night Stand: A 24-Hour Arts Festival, organized by The Other Place (TOP) Theatre Cooperative of Moscow, Idaho. All selected artists are making artwork inspired by a poem by Robert Wrigley. All pieces will be auctioned off at the event as a fund raiser for TOP.

May Takeuchi (Ph.D. candidate, sociology), together with her coauthors Louis N. Gray (sociology) and Alex Takeuchi (Ph.D. ’99, sociology), presented a paper entitled “Reduction of Inequality in Dyads: The Role of Environmental Reinforcement” at the seventy-sixth annual meeting of the Pacific Sociological Association (PSA) in Portland, Oregon, on April 8. May also received a PSA Endowment Committee Travel Award for this presentation.

Melissa Hussain (Ph.D. candidate, American studies) presented her paper entitled “The World Bank on Steroids: Stocks, Jocks, and War Hawks” at the Pacific Northwest American Studies Association conference held at Portland State University in April.

Jaqueline Almdale (M.A. candidate, American studies), academic advisor for WSU’s Distance Degree Programs, was nominated by a current DDP student for and was chosen WSU’s Outstanding Advisor of the Year for 2004–2005. Almdale was also nominated by a recent DDP graduate and chosen for inclusion in Who’s Who among America’s Teachers. Nominations for this honor are only accepted from student nominees included in the National Dean’s List.

Kazumi Kondoh (Ph.D. candidate, sociology) gave an invited presentation to the Social Network Theory and Methods Workshop organized and sponsored by Global Carbon Project in Tsukuba, Japan, where she presented her preliminary findings from her research on the citizen’s role in mitigating urban heat island effect. Global Carbon Project is an internationally collaborated environmental research program under the umbrella of the Earth System Science Partnership.

Maria Monserud (Ph.D. candidate, sociology) received the James F. Short Jr. Award for outstanding research by a graduate student in sociology. Her paper was titled “Impact of the Child–Parent Relationship on Affectual Solidarity between Grandchildren and Grandparents: The Perspective of Young Adults.” This is a very prestigious award, not only because the competition is very keen, but because Jim Short (professor emeritus, sociology), one of the most preeminent sociologists, lends his name to it.

The Inland Empire Undergraduate English Conference, sponsored by Gonzaga University’s Office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences and Department of English, was held on the Gonzaga campus April 9–10. WSU English majors presenting include Deborah Green (senior), presenting “A New Historical Approach to Pham and Nguyen,” and Rachel Neff (junior), presenting “Mexican Women Contrary to the Culture,” both in the American literature category. Jamie Swenson (senior) presented “A Jungian Analysis of Galway Kinnell” in an open panel, and Mike Czapary (senior) presented “Milton’s Views on Religion and Government” in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English literature category.

Kerensa Allison (Ph.D. candidate, anthropology) has received the Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship from Arizona State University Andes and Amazon Field School 2005, which is held in Ecuador. Adam Boyette (M.A. candidate, anthropology) and Shane Macfarlan (Ph.D. candidate, anthropology) also received this fellowship.

Jen Scott (M.F.A. candidate) had two photographs accepted into the Plano Art Association’s 2005 National Juried Exhibition. The show will run from May 3 to June 3.

On April 16, the University of Montana hosted the third annual Northwest Regional Ethics Bowl, a competition similar to the Knowledge Bowl. Ten teams competed from across the Northwest. WSU’s team, the Gadflies, composed entirely of philosophy majors—Tristan Bullington (junior), Pip Cawley (senior), Laura Nash (sophomore), and Paul Szumlas (senior)—entered the semi-finals after winning their first two rounds and narrowly losing their third. The Gadflies lost by four points in the semi-finals to the Justice League, a team from the University of Washington that went on to win the event. The Gadflies were coached by Daniel Holbrook (philosophy) and Paul Zimmerman (M.A. candidate, philosophy).

Pamela Kaye Wright (Ph.D. candidate, English), who is teaching English literature at Texas A&M, Kingsville, presented her paper “Lawrence’s Language of the Body: New Insights” at the twenty-second annual Twentieth-Century Literature Conference at the University of Louisville in February. It was part of her dissertation on D.H. Lawrence’s philosophy of the body in relation to disability studies, which she is writing for her degree at WSU (Virginia Hyde, director). Wright also chaired her session.

Raelynn Wheeler (junior, psychology) has been awarded a highly competitive (300+ applicants) NSF Research Internship for this summer to study organizational behavior. She was also awarded a psychology undergraduate research grant from the Department of Psychology at WSU.

Rosemary Briseño (Ph.D. candidate, English) presented a paper titled “Mestiza Consciousness Re-Defined: A Borderland of Our Own?” at the twelfth annual Humanities Conference, “(dis)junctions 2005: Theory Reloaded,” on April 9. The conference was hosted by the University of California, Riverside.

Alumni News

Mathias Bergmann (Ph.D.’04, history) has accepted a tenure-track position at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia. He will teach colonial and revolutionary America, colonial Latin America, and western civilization courses.

Erin L. Cassetto’s (M.F.A. ’04) sculpture “Figure 4” took first place in the Dogwood Festival Juried Art Show. Cassetto’s work was featured in the Lewiston Morning Tribune and on the KLEW TV 3 evening news April 1. Her charcoal and oil on board drawing “Foothold, Climbing the Lewiston Grade” was also on display in this show, which ran April 1–23 at the Lewis–Clark State College Center for Arts and History in Lewiston, Idaho. Cassetto also had work on display in downtown Clarkston, Washington, during the annual Art Walk in April.

Carolyn Sawyer (B.A. ’84, communication) was named WSU alumna Woman of Distinction in March. She is employed by ABC News, where she refers to herself as “the other Sawyer, not blond, not white, not Diane…” but is, nevertheless, a successful media woman in her own right. Sawyer was profiled in the book Children of the Dream, by Audrey Edwards and Craig K. Polite. She is regarded as a visionary in the field of communication and as a strategist for cutting-edge public relations. As an undergraduate at WSU, she cofounded the Black Women’s Caucus, which has since grown to be a significant form of support for women at WSU, where she is widely regarded as a role model and an inspiration.

Brian MacMillan (B.A. ’04, communication) is performing with the improvisational comedy group Unexpected Productions in Seattle. MacMillan was involved with the WSU improv group Nuthouse for four years as an undergraduate and now works for a marketing agency.

2005 College of Liberal Arts Awards

William F. Mullen Excellence in Teaching Award
Samantha Swindell (psychology)
L. Keating Johnson (music), in remembrance

Outstanding Staff Award
Laurie Heustis (program support supervisor, foreign languages and cultures)
Jackie Beckman (finance/budget coordinator, liberal arts)

Distinguished Faculty Award
Gregory Yasinitsky (music)

Distinguished Friends and Alumni Award
Trevor Bond (WSU Libraries)

College Fellows Award
Cornell Clayton (political science)

Dean’s Distinguished Contribution Award
Mary Collins (anthropology, Plateau Center)

Edward R. Meyer Distinguished Professorship
Gregory Yasinitsky (music)
Lance T. LeLoup (political science)

Service as Chair/Director
Roger Schlesinger (history)
Tim Kohler (anthropology)
Rory Ong (American studies)
Jeanne Johnson (speech and hearing sciences)

25 Years of Service to WSU
Andrea Chosch-Pittenger (program coordinator, theatre arts)
John E. Kicza (history)

30 Years of Service to WSU
Alexander Hammond (English)
Alice Spitzer (Asia Program, WSU Libraries)
Marcel Wingate (speech and hearing sciences)
John W. Wright (psychology)

35 Years of Service to WSU
John Bodley (anthropology)
Edwin P. Garretson (history)
Randall Kleinhesselink (psychology, WSU Vancouver)
Richard Law (English)
Charles Madison (speech and hearing sciences, WSU Spokane)

2004–2005 Retirees
Jack Dollhausen (fine arts)
Thomas Faulkner (English)
Virginia Hyde (English)
W. Neal Robison (communication)
H. James Schoepflin (music)
Patrick Siler (fine arts)
Barbara Sitko (English)

WSU Conference Yields Book

The first faculty conference held as part of the Peace and Security Research Partnership with International Christian University (ICU) last fall has become a book, Toward a Peaceable Future: Redefining Peace, Security, and Kyosei from a Multidisciplinary Perspective, published by the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service through WSU Press. Yoichiro Murakami and Shin Chiba from ICU and Noriko Kawamura (history) edited the book. Faculty members from the College of Liberal Arts who contributed chapters are Martha Cottam, Edward P. Weber, Steven Stehr (all political science), Otwin Marenin (criminal justice), Craig D. Parks (psychology), Asako Stone (Ph.D. candidate, psychology), Gregory Hooks, Eugene A. Rosa (both sociology), Michael Myers (philosophy), Mary M. Meares (communication), Noël Sturgeon (women’s studies), T.V. Reed (American studies), and Kawamura.

Representing the Department of Psychology at the Western Psychological Association Conference, Portland, Oregon, April 15–17

David J. Bridgett (Ph.D. candidate), Jeremy Canfield (senior), Kyra Davies (senior), Catherine Yonge (junior), Julia Marmion (Ph.D. candidate), Marina Salinas (senior), Heather Swanson (M.S. candidate), Elisa Millard (senior), Jennifer Self (M.S. candidate), Brian Hunter (M.S. candidate), Marci Danielson (senior), Maria A. Gartstein, Charles Axtell (senior), and Kara Knowles (junior), “Infant Temperament Predictors of Preschool ADHD Symptoms: A Four Year Follow-up.
Danielson, Millard, Canfield, Bridgett, Hunter, Swanson, Salinas, Davies, Marmion, Self, Yonge, Gartstein, Axtell, and Knowles, “Contributors to Parenting Stress: Examination of Child and Parent Factors.”
Swanson, Davies, Salinas, Self, Hunter, Danielson, Marmion, Millard, Canfield, Bridgett, Yonge, Gartstein, Axtell, and Knowles, “Predicting Preschool Internalizing Symptoms from Infant Temperament and Parenting Stress.”
Self, Salinas, Hunter, Swanson, Canfield, Danielson, Marmion, Millard, Bridgett, Davies, Yonge, Gartstein, Axtell, and Knowles, “Predicting Child Aggression from Infant and Parent Temperament Characteristics.”
Marmion, Danielson, Millard, Bridgett, Canfield, Davies, Swanson, Salinas, Hunter, Self, Yonge, Gartstein, Axtell, and Knowles, “The Relationship of Early Temperament and Parent Factors to the Later Development of Oppositional Defiant Disorder Symptoms.”
Celestina Barbosa-Leiker (M.S. candidate) and Jeff Joireman, “A Novel Knowledge Sharing Paradigm.”
Daniel Balliet (Ph.D. candidate), Joireman, et al., “Ego Depletion, Future Orientation, and Preference for Certain vs. Probablistic Outcomes.”
Blythe Duell (Ph.D. candidate), Joireman, and Jennifer McDonald (Ph.D. candidate), “Mortality Salience, Gender, and Unsafe Sex.”
Alishia Huntoon (Ph.D. candidate) and Raelynn Wheeler (junior), “Values of a Socially Responsible Individual.”
Huntoon and Nick Larson (senior), “Norms, Gender, and Cooperation in a Public Goods Dilemma.”
Dana Lindemann (Ph.D. ’03), Colin Harbke (Ph.D. candidate, WSU Vancouver), and Huntoon, “Can Condom Packaging Instructions Effectively Teach Condom Use Skills?”
Huntoon, Lindemann, and Harbke, “Does Observer Sex Influence Performance on a Condom Skills Demonstration?”
Harbke, Lindemann, and Thomas Brigham, “Can Condom Use Skills Be Accurately Measured by Self-Efficacy?”
Crystal Zander (senior), Lindemann, and Harbke, “Condom Use Skills and Practices among Non-Traditional College Students.”

DGSS Project Nominated for Extension Award

The WSU Extension administration has nominated a Division of Governmental Studies and Services (DGSS) project, the Natural Resources Leadership Academy (NRLA), for the Western Extension Directors’ Award of Excellence.

According to the nomination submitted, the NRLA “represents a prime example of the benefits of a university-wide extension made possible by the co-sponsorship of the unit by the College of Liberal Arts and WSU Extension. NRLA was designed and developed as a research-based, multi-disciplinary collaborative leadership development program designed to offer community-based problem-solving training services to natural resource agency personnel.”
Four liberal arts faculty are involved in the NRLA: Nicholas Lovrich, Michael Gaffney, Edward Weber (all political science), and Michael Salvador (communication). Two articles arising from NRLA work, listed below, are currently in press; a third is being revised for resubmission.

Lovrich, N., M. Gaffney, E. Weber, R.M. Bireley, D. Matthews and B. Bjork. “Inter-agency Collaborative Approaches to Endangered Species Act Compliance and Salmon Recovery in the Pacific Northwest.” International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior.

Weber, E., N. Lovrich and M. Gaffney. “Collaboration, Enforcement, and Endangered Species: A Framework for Assessing Collaborative Problem Solving Capacity.” Society and Natural Resources.

William R. Wiley Research Exposition Results

Graduate students across the University recently shared their scholarship in the 2005 Wiley Exposition. Congratulations to those listed here, the top placers from liberal arts programs.

Fine and Performing Arts
Aleks Sternfeld-Dunn (M.A. candidate, music) took first place in the Fine and Performing Arts section. He studies composition with Greg Yasinitsky (music). Nola Swanson (M.A. candidate, music) received second place; Swanson studies piano with Margaret Brink (music). In third place was Zachary Mazur (M.F.A. candidate). Emily Sternfeld-Dunn (M.A. candidate, music) took fourth place; she studies piano with Dan Immel (music).

Humanities, Social and Political Sciences
Maria Monserud (Ph.D. candidate, sociology) won first place for the poster presentation of the paper “Impact of the Child-Parent Relationship on Affectual Solidarity between Grandchildren and Grandparents: The Perspective of Young Adults.” Second place was shared by Ming-Kuo Wu (Ph.D. candidate, anthropology) and Benedict J. Colombi (Ph.D. candidate, anthropology). Third place went to Aaron Wright (M.A. candidate, anthropology), Susan Ellis (Ph.D. candidate, anthropology) and Colin Quinn (M.A. candidate, anthropology) shared fourth, and Kevin Wright (M.A. candidate, sociology) placed fifth.

Communications, English, and Education
Sudeshna Roy (Ph.D. candidate, communication) took first, Purba Das (M.A. candidate, communication) tied for second, and Tara Jones (M.A. candidate, criminal justice) placed fourth.

2005 President’s Award Recipients

Kari Asai (sophomore, fine arts)
John Asher (senior, communication)
L. Morgan Beidleman (senior, communication)
Brandon Brackett (senior, history education)
Douglas Bryant (senior, criminal justice)
Eric Carr (junior, history)
Casey Christman (senior, communication)
Amy Colton (senior, communication)
Mike Conery (junior, political science)
David Cox (senior, communication)
Jason Crittenden (sophomore, political science)
Robert Easterly (senior, communication)
Christine Eder (Ph.D. candidate, political science/public administration)
Charlene Hansen (senior, communication)
Christina Hardy (junior, political science)
Michael Hart (B.A. ’04, social studies/secondary education)
Brady Horenstein (senior, political science)
Nina Kim (junior, women’s studies and comparative ethnic studies)
Sean Kinney (senior, German and accounting)
Carly Knoll (senior, speech and hearing sciences)
Nate Kuester (senior, communication)
Nicholas Larson (senior, psychology)
Sarah Lasky (senior, communication)
Noelle Wing-Yun Lee (M.A. candidate, speech and hearing sciences)
Bradley Liebrecht (senior, history education)
Danielle Lively (M.A. candidate, political science)
Kalin McNamara (senior, psychology)
Joyce Mealey (senior, communication)
Clint Meeds (junior, general studies)
Holly Menino (senior, communications)
Ericka Morales (senior, anthropology and sociology)
Andrew Morozov (M.A. candidate, communication)
Christopher Nguyen (freshman, communication)
Teresa Noble (senior, political science)
Laura Prante (senior, communication)
Kathryn Rosenthal (senior, communication)
William Scheele (senior, history)
Rita Silva (senior, Spanish teaching)
Kristin Simmler (senior, political science and communication)
Monica Tejeda (junior, political science)
Brea Thompson (senior, communication)

2005 Big Ten Seniors Named

Ten Washington State University students were named the 2005 “Big Ten Seniors” award winners April 14 in a ceremony at the Lewis Alumni Centre.

Big Ten Seniors honors are given to a male senior and a female senior from five categories that include academics, athletics, campus involvement, community service and visual and performing arts.

This year’s winners are Brian Drake and Catherine Schuck, academics; Daniel Brevick and Kimberly Welch (psychology), athletics; Robert Easterly (communication) and Michelle Fargher, campus involvement; Clark Bishop and Allison Binder, community service; and Kurtis Cantley and Holly Robinette (music), visual and performing arts.

The Big Ten Seniors awards were campus tradition from the 1930s to 1980s. To preserve the traditions of WSU and honor its outstanding graduates, the Student Alumni Connection (SAC) reinstated the award in spring 2004. Students are nominated and selected by a committee of WSU professionals and scholars. Award recipients receive a medallion and a certificate of recognition from SAC.

Wendell Jim to Speak at Liberal Arts Commencement

Wendell Jim, commencement speaker for the College of Liberal Arts, is a WSU education graduate. As a student, he was president of Ku Ah Mah, the Associated Students of WSU’s American Indian student organization. In 1981, he received a Native American Student of the Year award from the National Indian Education Association honoring his leadership in cultural education programs.

An Indian education issues and rights advocate, Jim is helping develop government-to-government collaboration models, interagency partnerships and legislation pertaining to tribal sovereignty, treaty rights, and education. Representing the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation, he is a member of the WSU Native American Advisory Board to WSU’s president. One of the board’s priority recommendations to the president was to establish a Plateau Center for American Indian Studies at Washington State University. The center will foster collaborative partnerships with American Indian communities to further interdisciplinary research and scholarship, curriculum development, access to WSU resources, and expanded educational opportunities for American Indians.

The commencement ceremony for liberal arts graduates will be held Saturday, May 7, at 11:30 a.m. in Beasley Performing Arts Coliseum.

College Selects Commencement Highlight Students, Banner Carrier

The College of Liberal Arts at Washington State University has announced its 2005 highlight students and spring commencement banner carrier. Selection as a highlight student or banner carrier requires nomination of the student by their academic unit. The college makes selections based on letters of recommendation and consideration of the ways in which the students have contributed to the University, their community, and the lives of others. Each of the highlight students will be mentioned by President Rawlins at liberal arts commencement Saturday, May 7, at 11:30 a.m. in Beasley Performing Arts Coliseum.

Photo: Robyn Brown Academic excellence is a tradition of banner carrier Robyn Brown (senior, music). She was valedictorian at North Central High School in Spokane before attending WSU and maintaining a perfect 4.0 GPA. Robyn grew up around music, starting piano lessons in second grade and picking up clarinet in the fifth grade. Her father, Bob Brown, is a music teacher at Salk Middle School in Spokane. Her mother, Cathy Brown, is a second grade teacher at East Farms Elementary in Spokane and principal cellist for the Gonzaga Symphony Orchestra. Brown is a member of the WSU Symphony Orchestra, Wind Symphony, Opera Orchestra, and chamber music trios and quartets, member of the Washington–Idaho Symphony, and soloist with the Spokane Symphony Orchestra. Brown has won numerous scholarships including Washington State’s Distinguished Presidential Scholarship.

Photo: Ericka Morales A McNair Scholar, Ericka Morales (senior, sociology and anthropology) is the oldest of five children and the first in her family to attend college. A graduate of MarVista High School in Imperial Beach, California, she attended community college in Port Angeles before transferring to WSU. During her time at WSU she served as a multicultural student mentor, a tutor at the Student Advising and Learning Center, president of the Sociology Club, secretary of Mujeres Unidas, lab assistant for the Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures, and technical assistant to the Department of Anthropology. Morales volunteered at the Pullman Food Bank, was a peer counselor at the Achievers Scholar Camp, and participated in Crop Walk and Helping Hands programs. Morales intends to do advanced degree work and hopes to work in Latin America as a cultural anthropologist conducting research on multicultural issues.

Photo: Pip Cawley Patricia “Pip” Cawley (senior, philosophy and political science) intends to get her master’s and perhaps her Ph.D. in philosophy before moving to Northern Ireland to work in the human rights arena, an interest which was sparked by a study abroad program to Ireland.

“Washington State University is an amazing place,” said Cawley. “I would definitely recommend it.” During her days at Auburn High School, Cawley was involved with the Auburn Performing Arts Center and continued her involvement with theatre at WSU. She has logged more than 1,000 hours of volunteer time doing a variety of tasks related to theatre production. Cawley has twice received the University Achievement Award, was a Phi Beta Kappa Scholarship winner, and was on the President’s Honor Roll every semester and a member of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars since 2001. She also volunteered at the Palouse Regional Crisis Hotline and as an airport rescue firefighter for the Pullman–Moscow Regional Airport. Cawley has also been an active member of the Visual, Performing, and Literary Arts Committee.

Photo: Robin O'Flinn Robin Whitson O’Flinn (senior, social sciences), a 38-year-old mother of four, completed her B.A. through Distance Degree Programs. O’Flinn and her husband, Sean Patrick O’Flinn, moved to Yakima from Valley Springs, California, thirteen years ago to be near family as Robin recovered from a devastating head injury that left her legally blind. At the time the couple had two children, Donna O’Flinn, now 15, and Sean Patrick O’Flinn II, now 14. Twins Monika and Mason are 8.

“My husband and my father were great support,” O’Flinn said of her adjustment to blindness. “My father is the one who challenged me and gave me the strength to keep going,” she said. “He made it pretty clear that I had two choices: I could let blindness ruin my life, or I could fight back. I wanted to make him proud.”

In Yakima, O’Flinn took classes to learn basic skills such as cooking food and matching clothes. She completed studies at Yakima Valley Community College, where she was commencement speaker. Besides completing her undergraduate work at WSU she has served as president of the DDP Student Association and worked part-time at the WSU training center in Yakima. O’Flinn’s career goal is basic. “I just want to get back into the workforce,” she said.

Photo: Susanne Freitag Susanne Freitag is a nontraditional student in fine arts. “She is an exceptional student on all levels,” said Carol Ivory, chair of the Department of Fine Arts and Freitag’s nominator for highlight student honors. “Her maturity, both personal and intellectual, makes her a significant role model for the younger undergraduates.”

Freitag, originally from Nuremburg, Germany, is a single mom with three daughters and a six-month-old grandchild. Her two oldest daughters are also graduates of WSU. Her eldest, Ruby Duffner, graduated with a degree in agricultural science in 2002. Daughter Rebecca Voss studied German and graduated with a B.A. in foreign languages and cultures last December. Her youngest daughter, Shawna Voss, is a senior at Pullman High School. Following commencement, Freitag will travel to Germany to work on art projects and plans to enroll in graduate school next year. She hopes to be a working artist who also teaches at a university.

Outstanding Graduating Seniors Honored

Academic units in the College of Liberal Arts at Washington State University have announced their 2005 Outstanding Graduating Senior honorees. Many of the students have exceptional grade point averages and are on the President’s List of academic achievers, but all have contributed in some way to their academic unit, the University, and the community.

In a tradition begun by the college two years ago, students will receive a medal and be officially recognized at a brunch attended by parents and a faculty member from the student’s academic unit. This year’s event will be held May 6.

“We are extremely proud of the Outstanding Graduating Seniors program and especially gratified to see the list of accomplishments of this year’s honorees,” said Erich Lear (interim dean of liberal arts). “We have students with double majors, one student with a 4.0 GPA, and several others near that. However, it’s important to remember that these students were not nominated for academic achievement alone. Many also raised the bar on involvement. Most of these students took part in service learning activities which benefited the campus and community.”

The Outstanding Graduating Seniors in the College of Liberal Arts are:

Trista Ropp (anthropology)
Megan Shalane Schuyler (communication—broadcast management)
Mikhael De Los Santos (comparative ethnic studies)
Samantha McClusky (criminal justice)
Tara Lynn Murphy (digital technology and culture)
James Swenson (English)
Susanne Freitag (fine arts)
Patty Lynn Martin (foreign languages and cultures—Spanish)
Colleen Gibbons (general studies)
Kathryn Dooley (history)
Robyn Brown (music)
Patricia Cawley (philosophy, with a double major in political science)
Bo Howell (political science)
Patricia Mary Hoelzle (psychology)
Ericka D. Morales (sociology, with a double major in anthropology)
Abigail Sudbery (speech and hearing sciences)
Kevin Harland (theatre arts)
Molly Green (women’s studies)

“Across our college and the University, there are commonalities among high achieving students,” said Lear. “They generally have close relationships with faculty.”