Dean's Message

The October 19–20 University Cabinet Retreat for deans, vice provosts, and vice presidents featured discussions of the University’s new operating and capital budgets, future emphases in student recruitment, the upcoming capital campaign, and strategies for recruiting a diverse faculty and staff. Each arena offers our college opportunities for focused participation. There are exciting days ahead in pursuit of strategic and academic plan goals!

Provost Bates’ allocations to liberal arts, based on deliberations by the University Council (formerly the Executive Budget Committee) and our presentations, include one-time funds to retire the college’s debt, funding for a significant number of permanent faculty positions and associated search and start-up costs, and additional one-time funding for other college priorities. With some details yet to come, this simple statement of budgetary facts resounds in our halls as confirmation of a job well done, a story effectively told, and a future whose framework attracts investment.

My deepest gratitude to everyone in our college—you have all made this possible! Congratulations!

Continued success and improvement in student recruitment, equity and diversity, and fundraising will derive from our consistent attention to defining ourselves for and delivering our best to our internal and external constituencies and partners. My hope is to create with you a single compelling message that places us at the forefront of the University’s identity. Our college’s portfolio integrates arts, communication, humanities, social sciences, and interdisciplinary fields whose actions focus on how people lead their lives, enrich and sustain their relationships and communities, and extend their successes to achieve local-to-global impact.

We could increase our effectiveness with students through greater emphasis on integrative thinking as well as critical thinking. Linking Freshman Focus courses in majors and the GER would establish early the centrality of liberal arts ideals to broadly effective cultural, economic, and scientific advances in all disciplines. We could attract and retain a more diverse faculty and staff by placing multilingual and multicultural skills among the required qualifications of positions across the institution. We could attract significantly increased public agency and private support for efforts that create new ideas as well as employ them in individual and societal development. We could increase our reach by partnering more inclusively within and outside our college and university.

I look forward to working with you as we complete revisions to our college mission, area plan, campaign statements, and concomitant budgetary and administrative strategies. Your individual and departmental contributions will inform our creation of a concise vision that marries feasibility to inspiration and aspiration. Thank you in advance for your contributions!

Erich Lear, Dean
College of Liberal Arts

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Worthy of Note

Welcome to Susan Cunnington, who joined the dean’s office last month as office assistant III. She replaces Sue K. Allen, who is now fiscal specialist for the college.

Aimee Phan’s (English) editorial concerning Hurricane Katrina’s impact on the Vietnamese American communities around New Orleans was published on September 16, 2005, in USA Today.

Amy Mazur (political science) was selected to be one of twelve experts for the Expert Group Meeting on “Equal Participation of Women and Men in Decision-making Processes, with Particular Emphasis on Political Participation and Leadership,” organized by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Division for the Advancement of Women, October 24–27 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Mazur was also selected to be a member of a review panel for a research grant funded by the French Ministry of Employment, “Production et Traitement de Discriminations: Nouvelles Approches.”

Jim Short (professor emeritus, sociology) served as a panel discussant on one hundred years of sociological criminology at the American Sociological Association meetings in Philadelphia in August, and will again in November at the American Society of Criminology meetings in Toronto for a panel on underused theoretical frameworks in the field.

Speech and hearing sciences faculty members Sandy Bassett, Gail Chermak, Ella Inglebret, Jeanne Johnson, Sally Johnston, Carla Jones, Chuck Madison, and Leslie Power will deliver twelve papers and instructional courses at the annual convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, to be held in San Diego November 18–20.

Robert Helm (fine arts) exhibited recent oil paintings at the Linda Hodges Gallery in Pioneer Square in Seattle during the month of October. His work was featured on the cover of the Seattle Gallery Exhibitions guide for October 2005.

The Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival has given out three meritorious achievement awards for the Theatre Program’s production of this year’s STAGE One. They went to playwrights Pat McSweeney (junior, communication) and Audrey Bensel (senior, theatre arts) and to theatre instructor Ben Gonzales (B.A. ’04, theatre arts) for his role as project coordinator.

William, James & Co. has published a 2006 daily boxed calendar based on Paul Brians’ (English) book Common Errors in English Usage.

Susan Dente Ross (communication, associate dean of liberal arts) presented a graduate lecture, “Class, Race, Gender, and Nation as Axes of Inequality: Blind Spots in Capitalist Media and Capitalist Democracies?” to graduate students and faculty at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, B.C., on October 14. On October 2 she presented her research, “Constructing Conflict: A Focused Review and New Directions Regarding the Role of the Media in War,” at the Global Fusion 2005 conference at the Ohio University in Athens. On October 8 Ross spoke to fifty alumni and other WSU supporters about “News, Nations, and War” at the new football Saturday Cougar Conversations program. In September she also attended training at the Foundation Center in New York City on private foundation and corporate development for scholarly research.

Camille Roman (English, American studies, women’s studies) gave a paper entitled “‘Ja Da,’ Dada, and ‘It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)’: Majors, Minors, Margins?” at the American Literature Association Symposium on Poetic Form, September 30 to October 1 in San Diego, California. She spoke with Robert von Hallberg, University of Chicago.

Tim Kohler (anthropology) will be a plenary speaker at the 2005 Chacmool Conference in Calgary, Alberta, November 10–13. He will present a paper entitled “How Agent-Based Simulation Creates a Frame of Reference for Understanding Cycles of Growth and Collapse in the Northern Southwest.”

Carol Ivory (fine arts) was an invited guest at the grand opening of the new DeYoung Museum in San Francisco in mid October. She also attended the Native American Art Studies Association meeting in Phoenix at the end of October.

A conference paper Dana Baker (political science, WSU Vancouver) wrote with Deanna Sharpe of the University of Missouri has been selected as the Outstanding Conference Paper sponsored by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards for their annual national conference in November. The title of the paper is “Financial Problems Associated with Having a Child with Autism: How Financial Advisers Can Help.”

The Department of Women’s Studies hosted a visiting scholar from South Korea for the month of October. Dr. Insun Seok is a professor of the School of Law at Ewha Women’s University in Seoul. She was here to study the intersection of women’s and environmental issues in the context of Korean constitutional law.

Sue Peabody (history, WSU Vancouver) will present her paper “Free Soil: Emergence and Development of an Atlantic Legal Principle” at the American Society for Legal History meeting, to be held November 10–12 in Cincinnati.

William Willard (professor emeritus, anthropology) is organizer of the panel “Plateau Peoples Interest Group: Enhancing Historical, Contemporary, and Topographical Boundaries of the Pacific Northwest Plateau” at the annual meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory, hosted by the School of American Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, November 16–20. In this panel, Willard will present the paper “Treaties, Gold, Land, Salmon, and Hunting Grounds: Restitution, Recognition, and Restoration through the Indian Claims Act,” and Benedict J. Colombi (Ph.D. candidate, anthropology) will present “The Nez Perce Tribe vs. Elite Directed Development in the Lower Snake River Watershed: The Struggle to Breach the Dams and Save the Salmon.”

Don A. Dillman (sociology) was an invited presenter at a European Science Association sponsored conference for identifying priority research issues and best practices in Web survey research, held in Dubrovnik, Croatia, September 26–28. He also presented a shortcourse on visual design and layout of self-administered questionnaires to faculty and students at the University of Missouri, Columbia, October 12–14.

Jon Hasbrouck (speech and hearing sciences, WSU Spokane) conducted an invited workshop entitled “The Role of the SLP in APD Evaluation and Treatment” for the Oregon Speech-Language and Hearing Association in Eugene, Oregon, on October 14.

Bryan Vila (criminal justice, WSU Spokane) participated in a research steering committee sponsored by the Health Effects Laboratory Division of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in Buffalo, New York, October 25–26. The committee advises NIOSH and the U.S. Department of Justice, which is cosponsoring the research, about a large-scale epidemiological study they are conducting to understand work-related mortality and morbidity among officers in the Buffalo Police Department.

Masha Gartstein (psychology) coauthored a paper, “A Cross-Cultural Study of Infant Temperament: Predicting Preschool Effortful Control,” presented at the biannual convention of the European Conference for Developmental Psychology in Tenerife, Spain, in August.

John G. Jones (anthropology) has been awarded $5,250 to research past landscapes at Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson. Stabilization efforts on the North Dependency at the site required excavations into what is commonly viewed as the front lawn of Monticello. A detailed examination of the sediments exposed in these excavations has revealed a complex history of site leveling and filling. A column of sediments has been collected, and Dr. Jones will examine the pollen and plant remains preserved in these materials, reconstructing the past vegetation on the hilltop from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century.

Marina Tolmacheva (history, associate dean of liberal arts) attended the annual meeting of the Central Eurasian Studies Society in Boston September 29 to October 2. Tolmacheva served as discussant for the panel “Travelogues on Central Asia and the Caucasus” and chaired the panel “Eurasian Monotheism: The Phenomenal, Controversial, and Popular.”

Shila Baksi (anthropology, general education) will present a paper entitled “Aging, Gendering, and Living Arrangements in Modernizing Rural India” at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association in Washington, D.C., in December.

Mimi Salamat (speech and hearing sciences, WSU Spokane) and co-principal investigator Linda Massey (food science and human nutrition) have been awarded $40,000 by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association/America’s Beef Producers to study the potential benefits of iron supplementation on cognition in iron deficient adolescent girls. They are actively recruiting subjects (contact salamat@wsu.edu).

Julie Kmec (sociology) has been invited to talk at the University of Wisconsin Department of Sociology Race and Ethnicity Brownbag on November 3. Her talk is entitled “Race-Matched Referrals and Job Turnover: A Test of the Social Enrichment Hypothesis.”

Otwin Marenin (political science, criminal justice) was invited to give a presentation to a graduate class at the Bobst Center for Peace and Justice, Princeton University, in early October. His occasional paper Restoring Policing Systems in Conflict Torn Nations: Process, Problems, Prospects, published by the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, Geneva, Switzerland, in 2005, was one of the texts for the class. Also participating in the discussion were the head of the Civilian Police Unit, Department of Peacekeeping Operations, the United Nations, New York; and the director of the Iraq Project at the United States Institute for Peace, Washington, D.C.

Greg Yasinitsky, Meyer Distinguished Professor of Music, was honored with a 2004–2005 ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers) Plus Award for music composition. The awards are granted by an independent panel based on the unique prestige value of each writer’s catalog as well as recent performance activity. Yasinitsky has also been named by the Commission Project of New York to continue as composer in residence with the Lincoln Middle School Jazz Band in Pullman. In October, Yasinitsky presented a number of clinics for Idaho music educators in Idaho Falls, including an improvisation workshop, a new music reading session (featuring a number of Yasinitsky’s new jazz band pieces), and a saxophone clinic. Additionally, Yasinitsky’s piece “Meyer’s Point” was performed by music faculty members Ann Marie Yasinitsky (flute) and Karen Savage (piano) at the Region VIII Conference of the Society of Composers Incorporated at the University of Montana in Missoula.

Romana Hillebrand (English) will be presenting at the Young Authors’ Conference this November at Moscow Junior High School. Her presentation title is “Creative Sentence Patterns.” The sentence patterns she will present and have the students follow are those patterns that repeat words: anaphora, epistrophe, and symploce.

Leonard Burns (psychology) was recently elected a fellow in the Society of Clinical Psychology (Division 12 of the American Psychological Association).

Gail Chermak (speech and hearing sciences) will deliver an invited presentation on the diagnosis of central auditory processing disorders at the Mayo Clinic’s Sixteenth Annual Audiology Videoconference, November 5 in Rochester, Minnesota.

Robert Patterson (psychology) is coauthor of a paper, “Visual Suppression of Monocularly Presented Imagery against a Fused Background in Simulation and Training Environment,” accepted for presentation at the Society for Photo-electronic Instrumentation and Engineering conference in May 2006.

Gregory Hooks (sociology) became the Boeing Distinguished Professor of Environmental Sociology in August 2005. In this capacity, he is promoting the study of environmental sociology by colleagues and graduate students and pursuing his own research. The focus of his current environmental research continues to be the impact of militarism on the environment. He is continuing research into environmental injustice, with an emphasis on the disproportionate exposure to unexploded ordnance confronted by Native Americans. In collaboration with Chad Smith (Ph.D. ’05, sociology), Hooks has received funding from the National Science Foundation for a proposal entitled “A Quiet Environmental Crisis: The Toxic Legacy of Military and Civilian Activities Proposal.” Work on this two-year study began in August.

Marcel Wingate (professor emeritus, speech and hearing sciences) published a letter to the editor on stuttering in the August 2005 issue of Advance for Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists.

The Department of Women’s Studies hosted the second annual Northwest Women’s Studies Gathering at the WSU Vancouver campus. Around forty women’s studies faculty, administrators, and gradate students attended from a wide array of universities and community colleges in the Northwest region (which stretches from Alaska to Montana). Participants enthusiastically discussed supporting women’s studies majors, graduate study, curriculum development, and engaging with communities. Several collaborations were proposed between institutions, and plans were made for a third networking event to be held next fall, cohosted by WSU women’s studies and Eastern Washington University women’s studies at the Riverpoint Spokane campus.

Gerald Berthiaume (music) performed Lothar Kreck’s solo piano composition “Nimbus Moments” on October 15 for the Society of Composers, Inc. national conference at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro. The conference featured performances of works by ninety composers in a series of fourteen concerts. In December, Berthiaume will perform as guest soloist with the Washington–Idaho Symphony performing the Rachmaninoff Concerto No. 2 in concerts in Pullman and Lewiston.

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Professional Productivity

The Art of Protest: Culture and Activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the Streets of Seattle by T.V. Reed (American studies, English, associate dean of liberal arts) was recently published by the University of Minnesota Press.

Paul Brians (English) contributed the articles on postholocaust societies, nuclear war fiction, and Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed for The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and Wonders, edited by Gary Westfahl (Greenwood Press), published in September.

The Law of Journalism and Mass Communication (McGraw Hill), the undergraduate media law textbook Susan Dente Ross (communication, associate dean of liberal arts) has been working on for four years with Robert Trager and Joseph Russomanno, is in galleys and should be in classrooms in January 2006.

C. Richard King (comparative ethnic studies) has just published the book Media Images and Representations in the Contemporary Native American Issues series from Chelsea House Publishers.

Robert Bauman (history, WSU Tri-Cities) authored an article titled “Jim Crow in the Tri-Cities, 1943–1950” published in the summer 2005 issue of Pacific Northwest Quarterly.

An article written by Vilma Navarro-Daniels (foreign languages and cultures) has just been published in Theatron: The Journal on Theatre, Performance, and Theory. The article’s title is “Exilios interiores: La redifinición del encierro en Besos de lobo de Paloma Pedrero” (Inner Exiles: Redefinition of Confinement in Paloma Pedrero’s Besos de lobo). In her study, Navarro-Daniels proposes that Pedrero reverses the negative connotation that woman confinement has in Federico García Lorca’s plays, and redefines it by presenting a young woman that uses her self-confinement to explore and create her identity.

“Outrages against Personal Dignity: Rationalizing Abuse and Torture in the War on Terror” appeared in the June 2005 issue of Social Forces. In this paper, Gregory Hooks (sociology) and Clay Mosher (sociology, WSU Vancouver) examine the historical origins of prisoner abuse and torture by the United States. In addition, they present an explanation of this systematic abuse. In November, Hooks and Mosher will be presenting this research at the annual meetings of the Social Science History Association in Portland, Oregon.

An article titled “Achieving Usability in Establishment Surveys through the Application of Visual Design Principles” by Don Dillman (sociology), Arina Gertseva (Ph.D. candidate, sociology) and Taj Mahon-Haft (M.A. candidate, sociology) appeared in the twentieth anniversary edition of the Journal of Official Statistics.

ConNotas, Journal of Criticism and Literary Theory, published by the Universidad de Sonora, México, has accepted an article written by Eloy González (foreign languages and cultures) entitled “La articulación de la narrativa en Las Sergas de Esplandián” (The Articulation of the Narrative in The Exploits of Esplandian). Exploits is a sixteenth-century novel from Spain.

Robert Patterson (psychology) is coauthor of “Altitude Control in Simulated Flight Using 3D Objects and Terrain Texture,” in press with the Journal of the Society for Information Display.

Laurie Drapela (political science, criminal justice, WSU Vancouver), Joseph N. McRee (University of Portland), and Janet Gebelt (Westfield State College) have had an article, entitled “Male Pubertal Development, Choice of Friends, and Initiation of Smoking Behavior,” accepted for publication in the Journal of Youth & Adolescence.

Peter Chilson’s (English) short story “Toumani Ogun” will appear in the literary journal The Long Story in March 2006.

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Student Activities and Awards

James Eberlein (junior, German) has been selected by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for the DAAD Young Ambassadors Program. For the program’s inaugural year of 2005–06, DAAD selected fifteen students from the U.S. and Canada to help demonstrate to their peers what makes Germany such a unique and attractive destination for study abroad. Ambassadors are responsible for organizing at least one event per semester on their campuses to promote study in Germany and will collaborate with their universities’ study abroad offices and other German institutions in their areas to inform their fellow students of educational and research opportunities in Germany.

Jean Sumner (Ph.D. candidate, psychology) was awarded second place (cash prize) at the eighth annual Pharmacology/Toxicology Student Research Presentation Day August 18 for her platform presentation “Time Course of the Modulatory Effects of Testosterone on Reproductive Indices, Nociception, and Morphine Antinociception in Male Rats.”

Benedict J. Colombi (Ph.D. candidate, anthropology) is chair of the session “Power, Marginalized Voices, and Environmental Justice,” in which he is presenting a paper, “The Nez Perce Tribe vs. Elite Directed Development in the Lower Snake River Watershed: The Struggle to Breach the Dams and Save the Salmon,” at the annual meeting for the American Anthropology Association, to be held in Washington, D.C., November 30 through December 4.

Melissa Hussain (Ph.D. candidate, American studies) presented her paper entitled “Homeland (In)Security: Reading Postcolonial Theory in the Post-September-11 World” at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association annual conference, held in Coeur d’Alene in October. Also, Hussain’s article “Revolutionary Women Writers of Central America: Poetics, Praxis, and Politics” was published in the online journal Meghbarta: A Forum for Activism 6(4).

In October, the WSU Jazz Big Band, under the direction of Greg Yasinitsky (music), presented clinics and performed as the guest band at the Moses Lake Jazz Festival.

Allyson Wolf (Ph.D. candidate, American studies) is the recipient of the Viola Vestal Coulter Foundation Inc. Fellowship for demonstrated financial need, high academic achievement, and active community involvement. She was also invited to present her paper “Race as a Fashion Accessory: Generation Ethnically Ambiguous and ‘America’s Next Top Model’” at the second annual GRACe conference, “The Politics of Movement,” in Vancouver, Washington. As editor of Re-Visions Magazine, she has also secured full funding to bring performance artist damali ayo to WSU. Funding has been made possible by the Puffin Foundation, the Department of Women’s Studies, the American Studies Program, and VPLAC, and ayo will be included in VPLAC’s thematic program of “Art of Confrontation” for the 2006–2007 academic year.

On October 15, Melinda Chiprés (M.A. candidate, foreign languages and cultures) gave a presentation titled “Creating Language Learning Communities: Content-Specific Foreign Language Conversation Courses: ‘Spanish for Health Professionals’” at the 2005 Washington Association of Foreign Language Teachers Conference, held at the Ridpath Hotel in Spokane, Washington. Alexsandro Garza (M.A. candidate, foreign languages and cultures) presented at the same conference on a module on art that he designed for conversation classes he has been teaching at WSU. The presentation sparked good conversation between the audience and raised some academic questions.

Erin Mae Clark (M.A. candidate, English) gave a paper entitled “Windy City Memories: A Raisin in the Sun and the Memory of Lynching” at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association conference October 20–22 at Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. This paper was based on a project from Camille Roman’s (English) graduate seminar in the spring 2005.

WSU Vancouver students Thomas Duffy (senior, humanities) and Michelle Winkler (senior, English) had their junior writing portfolios chosen as two of the best for spring 2005.

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Alumni News

Katherine Aiken (Ph.D. ’80, history), professor of history and associate dean of the College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences at the University of Idaho, had her book Idaho’s Bunker Hill: The Rise and Fall of a Great Mining Company published in 2005 by the University of Oklahoma Press.

Laura Beidleman (B.A. ’05, communication) has been accepted into the executive training program with Ruder Finn in New York City.

Ann Porter (M.F.A. ’02) is assistant professor of art at Black Hills Community College in Rapid City, South Dakota, teaching foundation and sculpture courses. She was featured in the exhibit Strange Beasts, featuring leading regional contemporary artists, at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane July 1 through August 31, 2005.

Sami (O’Neill) Styer (M.A. ’91, speech and hearing sciences) has been named chief of audiology at the Puget Sound Veterans Administration Medical Center. The Puget Sound VA has divisions in Seattle and Tacoma.

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Professor Val Limburg Passes

Val E. Limburg, professor emeritus in the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication, passed away October 11 in Pullman. He was sixty-seven.

During his thirty-five-year career at WSU, Limburg taught a wide range of broadcast courses and was instrumental in developing the school’s focus on ethics. His book Electronic Media Ethics was published in 1994 and was translated into Italian in 1996. Shortly after his retirement in 2002, Limburg was given an award in Special Recognition for Distinguished Contributions to Teaching and the Practice of Ethics at WSU by the University’s Ethics Interest Group.

“Val was not only a great faculty member, but a great person. In many ways he helped instill the moral legacy (at the Murrow school),” said Alexis Tan, director of the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication.

“Val was the embodiment of what we aspire to be—as educators, as human beings, as professionals, as mentors—and we’re all going to have to shine a little brighter in his absence,” said Susan Ross (communication, associate dean of liberal arts).

The ethics award was only one of many earned by Limburg in his illustrious career. He was named State Broadcaster of the Year by the Washington State Association of Broadcasters in 1997 and was recognized for lifetime achievement with the Silver Circle Award from the Seattle Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, also in 1997.

A native of Ogden, Utah, Limburg began his collegiate career at Weber State University. In an article written about Limburg in the 1991 Chinook, he said he was interested in drama and debate at Weber State and had planned to attend law school. But after transferring to Brigham Young University, he changed his academic focus to communications and broadcasting. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from BYU, then attended the University of Illinois, where he earned a doctoral degree.

Limburg came to WSU as an assistant professor in communication in 1967. In an article in WSU Today, Limburg traced the development of his classroom style back to the mid 1970s. At that time his department, especially the introductory course (Com 101), was growing rapidly.

Limburg recalled, “Some faculty members tried a low-key lecture approach, but it didn’t work at all. I was asked to give it a try and soon found that, in order to keep the attention of what had grown to be over 500 students in Bryan Auditorium, I needed some techniques so that the information penetrated the brain pan.

“I used all the tricks of public speaking: I spoke loudly and with great enthusiasm. I would sometimes gesticulate wildly. I used frames of reference with which I knew the students were familiar...to help the students become media literate. Eventually I incorporated audio and videotapes, slides, and other demonstrations into the lectures.”

During his career at WSU, along with teaching thousands of communication students in broadcasting, media law, and ethics, Limburg served on a long list of academic committees. He chaired the Faculty Senate from 1996–97. He frequently gave presentations on ethical and journalistic issues to academic groups and service organizations.

Limburg was secretary/treasurer of the Washington State Association of Broadcasters for more than two decades, chaired the History Division of the Broadcast Education Association from 1993–94, and regularly served as a judge for competitions sponsored by the Broadcast Education Association and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications.

He also gave countless hours of community service in Pullman Kiwanis and as chaplain for Pullman Regional Hospital.

In what might be seen as a fitting conclusion to a career that reflected the journalistic ideals of the namesake of the Murrow School of Communication, Limburg wrote the article “Where Have You Gone, Edward R. Murrow?” in the fall 2005 issue of Washington State Magazine. It can be read online at http://wsm.wsu.edu/.

Limburg is survived by his wife of forty-four years, Janet, five children, eighteen grandchildren, and three siblings.

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Music Festival Guest Composer Named

Ellsworth Milburn, professor emeritus of composition and theory, Shepherd School of Music, Rice University, has been selected as the featured composer for the 2006 Festival of Contemporary Art Music at WSU.

Established by Charles Argersinger (music) seventeen years ago, the Festival of Contemporary Art Music is a celebration of contemporary classical music showcasing original, new compositions by students, faculty, and a visiting composer.

As a composer, Milburn has received four grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and commissions or performances from the Houston Symphony, the Concord and Lark string quartets, and the Da Camera Society. Milburn’s music has been described by critics as craggy, colorful, romantic, aggressive, searing, sweetly poignant, overwhelming, thrilling, powerful, wickedly funny, eloquent, brilliant, raging, and engaging.

The 2006 Festival of Contemporary Art Music is part of the College of Liberal Arts Season, which incorporates high-visibility, world-class events centered on diversity, social justice, peace and security, the arts, and media. The spring CLA Season also includes the Edward R. Murrow Symposium in April.

All Festival of Contemporary Art Music performances are free and open to the public. Details about individual performances and related events may be found on the Web site at http://libarts.wsu.edu/artmusic/.

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Gender Research Conference a Success

On Saturday, October 15, the College of Liberal Arts at WSU Vancouver and the faculty/graduate student research group Gendering Research Across the Campuses (GRACe) cosponsored the second annual Gender Research Conference, “The Politics of Movement,” on the WSU Vancouver campus.

Over eighty people attended, including faculty, graduate students, undergraduates, staff, and the general public. Keynote speaker Grace Chang, author of Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the Global Economy, gave a very well-received talk titled “Redefining Agency: Feminist, Anti-Imperialist, Anti-Racist Responses to Trafficking.”

Panel subjects included War and Women across Continents; Historical Perspectives on the Politics of Movement; Reconsidering Women’s Work in Global Contexts: From Survival to Activism; Spheres of Sexualities; and Violence, Hyper-Masculinities, and Militarism. A number of interesting research posters were also presented on topics ranging from processes of decolonization to responses to rape.

Those who organized the event were the GRACe conference task force of Luz Maria Gordillo (history, WSU Vancouver), Candice Goucher (history, WSU Vancouver), Paula Groves Price (education), Linda Heidenreich (women’s studies), Lombuso Khoza (apparel, merchandising, design, and textiles), and Pavithra Narayanan (English, WSU Vancouver); GRACe cofacilitators Noël Sturgeon (women’s studies) and Amy Mazur (political science); and GRACe coordinator Heather Ebba Maib (B.A. ’05, women’s studies).

For more information visit http://libarts.wsu.edu/grace/.

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Andrefsky Elected to Lead National Archaeological Organization

William Andrefsky Jr., professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology, has been elected president of the Register of Professional Archaeologists (RPA). Andrefsky will serve for two years as president-elect (2006, 2007) and two years as president (2008, 2009).

“I see it as a service to the profession, and I’m pleased that colleagues around the country feel confident in my leadership abilities to elect me to the office,” said Andrefsky.

Sponsored and endorsed by the Society for American Archaeology (SAA), the Society for Historical Archaeology, the Archaeological Institute of America, and the American Anthropological Association, the RPA is the national level organization for professional certification for practicing archaeologists in the United States.

The RPA provides the only enforceable archaeological code of conduct and standards of research performance. It works with sponsoring organizations, indigenous peoples, and the public to ensure that archaeologists provide ethical and sound statements about common heritage and that the archaeological record is properly treated and protected. The RPA also certifies and lists field schools that meet professional standards and deals with grievances in both domestic and international cases.

“Dr. Andrefsky’s election confirms his impact and the leadership of WSU’s anthropology department in research and practice in the field of archaeology,” said Erich Lear, dean, College of Liberal Arts. “We are fortunate to count him among our colleagues who balance technical processes with social and cultural advancements through history and now.”

Andrefsky said his election is a plus for his department. “This is just another signal to the faculty that individuals in our program are recognized national leaders in our various sub-areas,” said Andrefsky. “Bill Lipe was elected president of the SAA in the early 1990s. Tim Kohler just finished a four-year term as editor of American Antiquity. Our program has national recognition and the faculty in our program gain some element of prestige as contributing members of our department,” Andrefsky said.

More about the RPA may be found at http://www.rpanet.org/.

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A New Look for the General Studies and Advising Center

The fall semester has brought changes to the College of Liberal Arts General Studies and Advising Center. A new staff member and a new location enhance the capability of the program to offer students quality advising, support, and instruction as they pursue bachelor’s degrees in the Washington State University College of Liberal Arts.

Tom Whitacre leads the General Studies Program as the director. Anna Chow continues her tenure as an advisor and instructor for General Studies 400. Doug Juneau lends expertise as the front office assistant and computer guru. Carla Michaelsen joined the staff in August and serves half-time as an advisor for students working on degrees in social sciences or humanities. Mark Moreno has left the program, after several years, in order to pursue a Ph.D. program full-time.

The General Studies and Advising Center recently moved from Smith Gym to a new, permanent location. The center is now housed in Murrow East 106, at the heart of the WSU campus. The new location should be more convenient for students and will offer a cohesive presence within the College of Liberal Arts. Tom, Anna, Doug, and Carla invite all to stop by for a visit and to learn more about the College of Liberal Arts General Studies and Advising Center.

For more information, call 509-335-8731 or visit their Web site at http://libarts.wsu.edu/genstudies/.

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Stowell Datasets Put to Work

Nicholas P. Lovrich, Claudius O. and Mary W. Johnson Distinguished Professor in Political Science and director of the Division of Governmental Studies and Services, gave an invited address at Boise State University (BSU) on September 27. Lovrich was invited by the departments of criminal justice administration, political science, and public policy and administration, and his expenses and honorarium were provided for by the Office of the President. Lovrich’s address was entitled “Sustaining Public Safety and a High Quality of Life in American Cities: Two Key Questions—What Factors Lead to the Adoption of City Sustainability Programs and Policies? and What are the Prospects for Boise in this Regard?” Approximately 200 people attended the invited address, including students, faculty, and representatives of the BSU administration.

Lovrich presented findings from a student-engaged graduate research seminar, co-instructed with Bill Budd (environmental science and regional planning) in spring 2005, involving a study of twenty-eight U.S. cities exploring the theories of Richard Florida (“creative class”), Robert Putnam (“social capital”), and Daniel Elazar (“political culture”) with Leigh Stowell and Company datasets featuring psychographic data collected in most U.S. and Canadian major media markets over the period 1989–2002. These datasets were gifted to the WSU College of Liberal Arts during the last fund-raising campaign, and were valued at the time of the original gift at $10.4 million by the WSU Foundation.

David Whitlock, president of Leigh Stowell and Co., continues to make annual gifts of new datasets at the end of each year of market studies. The College of Liberal Arts and the WSU Libraries have been collaborating since the original gift to make these datasets available to WSU students and faculty for student-engaged research of the type featured in the BSU invited address through a Web-accessed digital archive. Generous contributions to this work have been made by the Office of the Provost, WSU Spokane, the Thomas S. Foley Institute, the Center to Bridge the Digital Divide, the Environmental Science and Regional Planning Program, the Department of Political Science, and the Criminal Justice Program.

The Budd/Lovrich seminar represented a beta-testing of the WSU Libraries’ prototype digital archive and a demonstration project of how an interdisciplinary group of ten graduate students in political science and environmental science could work directly with two faculty members to make use of the Stowell datasets for conducting original research. The Lovrich address was derived from one of the seminar papers prepared by Barbara Chamberlain (Ph.D. candidate, political science; director of community and public affairs, WSU Spokane). The “digital archive” of Stowell datasets is scheduled to be made available for campus-wide use in 2006. After the public presentation, Lovrich met in small groups with BSU graduate students and faculty members, where he shared in depth the potential of the Stowell datasets and illustrated the variety of applications that have been made of the datasets in disciplines other than political science. Several graduate students with whom Lovrich met indicated their intentions to apply for doctoral studies at WSU in the areas of political science and criminal justice.

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Student-Produced “Face to Face” on UPN Station

“Face to Face,” the student-produced magazine television show focusing on all that is Cougar, is now airing its second season. The program airs on KQUP–TV (Spokane/Pullman) at 7:30 a.m. on the first and third Sundays of each month and is available for other UPN stations to use as well (check your local listings if outside the Pullman area). October’s show included a quick look at Pullman’s National Lentil Festival, beating depression, meeting a walk-on Cougar football player who made his dreams come true by making the team, and digging up a few haunts on campus that have ghost stories. November’s episode will include an interview with Kenji Kitatani (communication) about his Cougar connection and his successful rise in the corporate world with Sony. The show will also take a look at a drunk driving fatality drill/re-enactment at Tekoa High School, the struggles of being a student and a parent, the women’s basketball team and their unsung training team, and WSU students’ participation in the 2005 Solar Decathlon.

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Advance Screening of Edward R. Murrow Movie

Casey Murrow, son of the late Edward R. Murrow (B.A. ’30, speech), is interviewed by KSTW–Seattle. Casey Murrow and Milo Radulovich, a central figure in Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s red scare campaign of the 1950s, were in Seattle October 11 for an advanced screening of Good Night, and Good Luck, a film directed by George Clooney that chronicles the real-life conflict between television newsman Edward R. Murrow and McCarthy and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. WSU’s Edward R. Murrow School of Communication sponsored the event.

To view the movie trailer or learn more about Edward R. Murrow’s legacy at WSU, visit http://murrow.wsu.edu/.

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Authors’ Recognition Reception Planned for November 15

On Tuesday, November 15, the College of Liberal Arts will celebrate the scholarly and artistic achievements of its faculty during the Authors’ Recognition Reception. The reception will be held in the Honors Hall Lounge from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m.

Authors to be featured include Lance T. LeLoup (political science) with Parties, Rules, and the Evolution of Congressional Budgeting (Ohio State University Press, 2005), to be discussed by Cornell Clayton (political science); William Hamlin (English) with Tragedy and Scepticism in Shakespeare’s England (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), to be discussed by George Kennedy (English); and John Irby (communication) with Kill the Editor: The Often Bizarre Relationship with Readers (American Book Publishing, 2004), to be discussed by Butch Alford (publisher, Lewiston Morning Tribune; owner, Moscow–Pullman Daily News).

Ann Christenson (fine arts) will also present pictures and information about her piece Momently, commissioned by the University of California, Berkeley. Carol Ivory (fine arts) will introduce the artist.

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A Legacy from “Sol” Webb

A series of public lectures with photographic slides and CDs by Loran Olsen, professor emeritus of music and Native American studies, with reminiscences by members of the Webb and Halfmoon families. Supported by Idaho Humanities Council.

Nez Perce songs and stories from one family’s oral history are featured in this series of public lectures, drawn from recordings made in 1972 by ninety-year-old Charles “Sol” Webb in Thorn Hollow, Oregon. This valuable collection supplies texts, translations, names, dates, places, commentary, and corroboration from written sources.

Free to the public, the first lectures of the series will be given:

• Tuesday, November 8
  Tamástslikt Cultural Institute, Pendleton, Oregon, 4:00 p.m.
• Thursday, November 10
  Idaho Historical Society, Boise, Idaho, 7:30 p.m.
• Saturday, November 12
  Nez Perce National Historical Park, Spalding, Idaho, 2:00 p.m.

For further information, please contact Loran Olsen at 360-452-0703.

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Events Consider American Indian Perspectives of Sacagawea, Lewis & Clark

Faculty members in the Department of History have finalized plans for the next presentations of the series "Sacagawea/Sacajawea and the Lewis and Clark Expedition: American Indian Perspectives."

All events will feature performances by Dakota historian and performer Dr. Jeanne Eder as Sacagawea, the Shoshone woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark expedition. Eder, a Dakota Sioux, received her Ph.D. in American history and public history from Washington State University in 2000. Eder was one of the first American Indian members of the National Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council and a member of the Montana Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Committee.

Presentations will be held at the following times and locations:

• Tuesday, November 15, 2005 • 7:00 p.m. • Tacoma, WA
  Washington State History Museum, 1911 Pacific Avenue
  888-238-4373
• Wednesday, November 16, 2005 • 7:00 p.m. • Seattle, WA
  Seattle Public Library, Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave.
  In the Microsoft Auditorium, Level 1
  206-386-4636
• Thursday, November 17, 2005 • 7:00 p.m. • Spokane, WA
  Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, 2316 W. 1st Avenue
  509-363-5330

Additional tribal perspectives will be provided by commentators at each event. Bill Iyall, vice chairman of the Cowlitz Tribe and chairman of the Tribal Council, will serve as commentator of the Washington State Historical Society presentation. “My image of Sacagawea is that of an American Indian woman of strong will and great strength of character, just like my memory of my grandmother,” said Iyall. “I hope the presentation yields greater understanding of women’s roles in Indian life,” he said.

Commentator for the Seattle Public Library event is Charlene Krise, director of the Museum, Library, and Resource Center of the Squaxin Tribe.

Michael Holloman (M.F.A. ’93), director of the Center for Plateau Cultural Studies, Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, will serve as commentator for the Spokane event. Holloman’s observations will focus on Sacajawea and York, William Clark’s African American servant. “I would like to reflect on the probable reasons for two secondary historical characters’ continued relevance and intrigue,” Holloman said.

The history department at Washington State University began the series “Sacagawea/Sacajawea and the Lewis and Clark Expedition: American Indian Perspectives” in 2003 to mark the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition. The series is intended to ensure residents of the Northwest have access to American Indian perspectives of the historic events associated with the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Directions to these venues and information about the concluding event of the “American Indian Perspectives” series, to be held in spring 2006 on the Pullman campus, may be found at http://libarts.wsu.edu/lewisandclark/.

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Marching Band Showcased in Seattle

The largest drumline in Cougar Marching Band history played center stage at Qwest Field October 23 when the Seattle Seahawks took on the Dallas Cowboys. Washington State University was one of three Pac-10 schools invited to take part in the Seattle Seahawks’ first annual “Blue Thunder Cup” Showcase. Drumlines from Oregon State and the University of Washington also performed. More info.

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Mark Your Calendars

December 14 the college will host the second annual CLA
Holiday Party in the CUB Cascade Rooms from 3:00–5:30 p.m.
Drop in when you are able! We will also be taking this opportunity to say thank you and farewell to long-time associate dean Marina Tolmacheva.

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Call for Proposals: College of Liberal Arts Awards

Departmental Innovation Award

The College of Liberal Arts is pleased to announce the annual competition for the Departmental Innovation Award. This $5,000 award will be given to the liberal arts department or academic program that submits a promising plan for departmental innovation and for specific use of the award funds. Innovation plans should not exceed two pages and should be submitted to Paul Whitney, Interim Associate Dean for Research, College of Liberal Arts, PO Box 642630, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-2630 by December 9, 2005.

The successful innovation plan will meet one or more of these criteria:

1. Enhance the stature of the department or program;
2. Relate to the University’s central missions of providing the best undergraduate education and/or promoting world-class scholarship, research, or performance in the arts;
3. Improve departmental productivity through increasing recruitment of outstanding students, advancing faculty performance in teaching and research, and/or creating an environment of shared commitment to excellence.

The award may be used for operations or as a salary and benefits supplement and must be expended within two years of the date of the award. The department/program winner will be announced in January.

College Fellows Award

The College of Liberal Arts is pleased to announce the annual College Fellows Award. This award, of $2,000 a year for two years, will be presented to a tenured or tenure-track faculty member in the college who submits a successful proposal describing an ongoing academic, scholarly, artistic, or teaching project that he/she plans to complete or make substantial progress on over a two-year period. The intent of the award is: first, to provide recognition to faculty members who are pursuing substantive projects involving original research, scholarship, or creative effort and/or the improvement of teaching; and, second, to engage our faculty in public discussion of such work. A successful proposal will meet these criteria:

1. Describe the scholarly/artistic/pedagogical impact of an ongoing project, noting how this project has developed from the proposer’s previous study and effort and how this work has added to advancement of a field, has influenced artistic performance, or enhanced good practices in teaching; and
2. Demonstrate how the candidate’s ongoing work will lead to a public presentation, whether that be a publication in a journal of general interest, a public lecture, or a public exhibition, demonstration, or performance.

Proposals should not exceed two pages and should be submitted to Paul Whitney, Interim Associate Dean for Research, College of Liberal Arts, PO Box 642630, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-2630 by January 27, 2005. The application should be accompanied by a department or program endorsement. The funding may be used for supplies, research or creative activities support, or as a salary and benefits supplement. The award will be announced at the annual College Awards Ceremony, with funding commencing the subsequent fall term.

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