
April 2006

Dean's Message

We have now received the numerous departmental reports due March 1. Please accept the thanks of everyone here at the Dean’s Office for your efforts in preparing the reports and for the noteworthy accomplishments that fill their pages! About one year from now, we will have completed a draft of the college’s five-year plan for 2007–2012. Your departmental work plus university-level planning will inform our drafting process. One essential aspect of the college plan will be integration of the details of budget and instructional delivery with the important issues we address as a college.

Following Provost Bates’ late fall semester appointment of the Implementation Team for Realignment of the College of Liberal Arts, the team met during this spring term and provided a draft report for your review on March 30, 2006. CLA Leadership had a chance to offer initial feedback prior to this distribution. While April will be frantic as we accelerate toward commencement on May 6, we hope you will find the recommendations relevant and effective and that you will take the opportunity to offer your thoughts on the draft report. Thank you in advance for your input!!

As discussions of our campaign planning continue, those who have heard our plans find the three elements—the Public Academy, Living the Murrow Legacy, and the Integrated Arts Initiative—to have strong potential for significant donor support. The most frequent questions we are asked focus on the meaning of the term “integrated arts.” The aspects of integrating the arts in the educational experience of students, and of serving our community and broader constituencies as a regional arts hub, are fairly clear to people. Less obvious is the essential role of creativity in the development of local-to-global leaders. Creativity can be present in all fields, but there is a stream of thought that is important to my personal approach to our role as a college that I would like to share with you and about which I seek your response.

Universities, in my experience, have defined for students what the students need to know, in both general education and the major. This is essential, but valuing what the student brings to the endeavor is also essential. Rather than saying “this is what you should know,” we could ask “what do you wish to know or who do you wish to become?” and follow with “if that is what you wish to know or who you wish to become, we advise you to learn the following.”

Related to this sequence of statements is the premise that to be successful as an artist requires talent, and that in some ways—since talent is supposedly innate—the arts can not be taught. Interestingly, the “talent” supposition can be made for many fields of study: talented in math, talented in relating to people, and so forth. In any event, the fundamental assumption is that the student has a talent that simplifies the learning process—and perhaps steps past the learning process directly to creating—in the respective field.

The “Self and Society” learning goal designed by the President’s Teaching Academy draws on these two related streams. The “integrated arts” initiative—while focused on the arts as disciplines—also seeks to ensure that we value what is inside each student and draw it out. Thus, what we offer is “artist-ic” in process. The “critical” thinking we have come to prize integrates with what the student brings to process. Then we can have an expectation: that the student acts, creates, and contributes as a result of critical and integrative thinking.

Food for thought, I hope. What do you think?

Regards,

Erich Lear, Dean
College of Liberal Arts

Worthy of Note

Congratulations to DeeDee Torgeson (administrative manager, philosophy), one of five university staff members honored with a 2006 WSU President’s Employee Excellence Award. The sole office professional in the Department of Philosophy, Torgeson was cited for her ability to manage a wide range of office responsibilities with compassion and integrity and for taking the initiative in updating the department’s fiscal procedures using electronic technologies.

Craig Parks (psychology) won the WSU Mentor of the Year Award for 2006 in the Research Faculty category. Parks had been nominated for the award by four graduate students.

Yolanda Flores Niemann (comparative ethnic studies) has been named as an American Council of Education fellow for the 2006–07 academic year. The program is designed to develop academic leadership by allowing ACE fellows to spend an academic year working closely with a college or university president at a host institution. Thirty-eight fellows, who are nominated by the presidents or chancellors of their universities, were selected nationwide.

Two Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Meritorious Achievement Awards have been awarded for the Theatre Program’s February production of Dragonwings. Rita Styer (professional worker, theatre arts) earned a Certificate of Merit for costume design, and Joseph Vales (senior, English with theatre arts minor) earned a Certificate of Merit for sound design.

The reading, short talk, and Q&A Buddy Levy (English) did last month at Elliott Bay Books in Seattle in support of his new book, American Legend, was filmed for C-SPAN’s Book TV.

John Weiss (music) presented an interest session at the Washington Music Educators Association state conference in Yakima on February 19. The session, “Vocal Health in the Choral Rehearsal: Common Ground for Singers, Voice Teachers, and Choral Conductors,” discussed some of the most recent research by voice physiologists and speech pathologists and suggested ways this research can be implemented in the choral rehearsal, resulting in improved choral tone and less vocal fatigue. This same research was presented at the Northwest American Choral Directors Association convention in Portland, Oregon, March 17. On March 22 and 23, Weiss served as an adjudicator/clinician for the Eastern Washington Music Educators Association Large Group Choral Festival at University High School in Spokane.

Kim Christen (comparative ethnic studies) was invited to be part of the “Rights and Property in a Digital Era” panel at the “Informatics Goes Global” conference at Indiana University March 3–5, where she presented a paper titled “Changing the Default: Taking Aboriginal Systems of Accountability Seriously.” Christen has also been awarded a School of American Research Ethel-Jane Westfeldt Bunting Fellowship for summer 2006.

Paul Brians (English) spoke on “Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and the Dystopian Tradition” in Enterprise, Oregon, on February 21 as part of an NEA-funded “Big Read” project, in which several towns in this area of rural Oregon engaged in a community reading and discussion project. Brians also spoke to two area high school classes. The talk is now available at online at http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/science_fiction/451.htm.

T.V. Reed (associate dean of liberal arts, American studies, English) has been elected to a three-year term, through June 2009, on the National Council of the American Studies Association.

Don Dillman (sociology) made an invited presentation on “Designing Mixed-Mode Surveys” in Washington, D.C., on March 14 to a plenary session of FED-CASIC 2006, an annual conference of federal agency professions involved in computer-assisted survey information collection.

Robert Bauman (history, WSU Tri-Cities) gave a public lecture titled “Jim Crow in the Tri-Cities in the 1940s” based on his research recently published in the Pacific Northwest Quarterly. The lecture was covered by all three local network news stations as well as the Tri-City Herald, which produced a front-page story about Bauman’s lecture, and Northwest Public Radio aired a story on segregation in the Tri-Cities based on Bauman’s research. In addition, Bauman’s article “Jim Crow in the Tri-Cities, 1943–1950” received the Charles Gates Award from the Washington State Historical Society for the best article to appear in the Pacific Northwest Quarterly in 2005.

Bill Condon (English, Writing Programs) recently delivered an address, “Identifying, Assigning, Evaluating, and Assessing What We Value: Critical Thinking and Writing Across the Curriculum,” to faculty at Universidad de las Americas a Puebla. He also conducted five workshops for UDLA faculty over a three-day period.

A poster by John M. Ruiz (psychology), James Hutchinson (Ph.D. candidate, psychology), Heidi Hamann (psychology), Jennifer M. Nelson (senior, psychology), Kimberly Lanni, Jennifer Stevenson (Ph.D. candidate, psychology), and Joni Howard (M.S. candidate, psychology), titled “Experience and Recollection: Neuroticism Moderates Subsequent Perceptions of Stress but not Cardiovascular Reactivity at Time of Task,” was presented at the annual scientific meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society, held in Denver in March. Papers presented at the same meeting included “Anger-Out, but not Anger-In or Severity of Depressive Symptoms, Is Associated with Markers of Inflammation in Healthy Young Adults,” by Bruce Wright (psychology), Tim Freson (Health and Wellness Services), and Stevenson, and “Metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular fitness,” by Freson, Stevenson, and Wright.

Ella Inglebret (speech and hearing sciences) delivered an invited presentation on evidence-based practice to speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, and physical therapists at the “Mentoring Future Clinicians” conference held at WSU Spokane February 24–25. The conference was organized by Jon Hasbrouck and Leslie Power (both speech and hearing sciences, WSU Spokane), who also presented a session on a new approach to documenting students’ mastery of knowledge and clinical skills.

Gail Chermak (speech and hearing sciences) gave an invited presentation on intervention for (central) auditory processing disorder at the IV Pan American Congress of Audiology/XIII International Symposium on Audiological Medicine, March 22 in Mexico City.

Jazz Northwest, the WSU faculty ensemble, was featured in March at the Auburn Jazz Festival. The members of the group—Greg Yasinitsky, Horace-Alexander Young, David Turnbull, Charles Argersinger, David Jarvis, and David Snider (all music)—presented clinics and workshops during the day and performed as headliners for the evening concert.

The Lincoln Middle School Jazz Band, under the direction of Joe Covill, presented the premiere of “Livin’ Large,” composed especially for the group by Meyer Distinguished Professor of Music Greg Yasinitsky, at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival held at the University of Idaho in February. The piece was composed as part of a residency for Yasinitsky funded by the Commission Project of New York. The LMS Jazz Band, which also performed Yasinitsky’s “Sao Paulo,” was named runner-up in the Middle School Division of the festival.

The WSU Madrigal Singers, directed by Lori Wiest (music), performed concerts at Eastmont High School in Wenatchee, Omak Performing Arts Center, North Thurston High School in Olympia, Kelso Performing Arts Center, and Kelso High School during their annual recruitment and performance tour March 13–15. They also presented a masterclass for Omak and Oroville High School choirs. Wiest also served as an adjudicator and clinician at the North Idaho Solo and Small Ensemble Festival in Post Falls on March 18.

Hiromi Ono (sociology) and Miyuki Vamadevan (Ph.D. candidate, sociology) will present papers at the Social Science Research Council conference on “Fertility Decline and Balancing Work and Family Life” in May and at the Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast conference in June. The former is held as part of the conference at the University of Chicago Sloan Center for Parents, Children, and Work entitled “Why Workplace Flexibility Matters: A Global Perspective.”

David Shier (philosophy) presented comments at the American Philosophical Association’s meeting in Portland, Oregon, in March. He was also recently appointed by the American Philosophical Association to a three-year term on its Committee for the Defense of Professional Rights.

Leonard Orr (English, WSU Tri-Cities) will present a paper on “Post-Memory and Postmodern: The Value of Teaching Experimental Holocaust Fiction” at a special meeting of the Association of Holocaust Organizations on “Teaching the Holocaust to Future Generations,” to be held at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, Israel, June 26–29. Orr is also one of thirty scholars selected for the international seminar on “Teaching the Shoah and Antisemitism,” sponsored by the International School for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel, July 2–19.

The following four posters will be presented at the annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society in San Francisco this month: “Severe Closed-Head Injury and Feeling-of-Knowing in Episodic Memory,” by Jonathan Anderson and Maureen Schmitter-Edgecombe (both psychology); “Investigation of Articulatory Suppression and Response Set Interval in Task Switching,” by Michelle Kayne-Langill (M.S. candidate, psychology) and Schmitter-Edgecombe; “Time Estimation Following Closed Head Injury,” by Alicia Rueda (M.S. candidate, psychology), Schmitter-Edgecombe, and Michelle Nugen (B.S. ’05, psychology); and “Activity-Based Prospective Memory Following Closed-Head Injury,” by Shital Pavawalla (Ph.D. candidate, psychology) and Schmitter-Edgecombe.

Peter Chilson (English) will give a paper entitled “The Mali–Burkina Faso Border: An African Solution to Inherited Colonial Frontiers” at the International Boundaries Research Unit conference in April in Durham, England.

Birgitta Ingemanson (foreign languages and cultures) has been invited to serve as the discussant at the first presentation of the new book by Rock Brynner, Empire and Odyssey: The Brynners in Far East Russia and Beyond, at the Kennan Institute in Washington, D.C., in April. Mr. Brynner’s grandfather and father (Yul Brynner, the actor) were born in Vladivostok, the city whose cultural history Ingemanson researches and writes about. The Kennan Institute is part of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, which is connected with the Smithsonian Institution.

In March Jeff Joireman (psychology) presented “A Social Dilemma Analysis of Knowledge Sharing,” an invited colloquium talk, at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, India.

Andrea Mason (English) presented on a panel titled “Improving through Improv: Exercises for Creative Writing” at the Associated Writing Programs Conference in Austin, Texas.

The Thomas S. Foley Institute held a forum on “Free Speech and Political Correctness on Campus” on March 6. “Don’t Say That!” was introduced by Raul Sanchez (director, Center for Human Rights), who began the forum with a discussion of the WSU administration’s responses to recent events on campus involving controversial speech. Free speech experts Donald Downs (University of Wisconsin), David French (Alliance Defense Fund), and John Wilson (author/editor) then debated the degree to which political correctness on college campuses has had a chilling effect on speech as well as the best strategies for preserving free speech and academic freedom. The event was held in Kimbrough Hall.

Posters presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Behavioral Medicine in March included “Causal Attributions about Lung Cancer,” by Heidi Hamann (psychology), Jennifer McDonald (Ph.D. candidate, psychology), and Lisa Howell (M.S. candidate, psychology); “Communication about Cancer Screening among Siblings Tested for BRCA1/2 Mutations,” by Hamann, McDonald, Timothy Smith, Ken R. Smith, Robert Croyle, and Jeffrey R. Botkin; and “Psychological Factors Association with Student Recreation Center Use,” by John M. Ruiz (psychology), Hamann, James Hutchinson (Ph.D. candidate, psychology), McDonald, Jennifer M. Nelson (senior, psychology), Jennifer Stevenson (Ph.D. candidate, psychology), Kimberly Lanni, and Joni Howard (M.S. candidate, psychology).

Michael Hanly (English) gave a paper dealing with “Images of Muslims in Medieval Christian Reformist Texts” at the conference of the Medieval Association of the Pacific, held in Salt Lake City in March.

Ann Christenson (fine arts) exhibited ceramic sculpture at the Talisman Gallery, Portland, Oregon, in connection with the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) conference. Fine arts undergraduate students Matt Boland, Marc Wallace, and Issei Watanabe exhibited ceramic sculpture at the NCECA 2006 Regional Student Juried Exhibition at Portland Community College. Christenson also exhibited ceramic sculpture in the invitational exhibition Hot Flashes at the Garrison Art Center, Garrison, New York.

Tamara Helm (fine arts) and Brenna Helm-Manwaring (B.F.A. ’97) exhibited in the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture invitational, twenty-first annual Works from the Heart Contemporary Art Exhibition and Auction in Spokane, and in the invitational Art Benefit Exhibition and Auction held by the Prichard Art Gallery, University of Idaho.

Travis Pratt (criminal justice) coauthored three papers that were presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, including “The Effect of Concealed Carry Laws on Crime Rates,” with Roy Cowan (Ph.D. candidate, criminal justice) and Matt Makarios (M.A. ’05, criminal justice); “Specifying the Accuracy of Police Officers’ Perceptions of Motorists’ Race: Implications for Racial Profiling Research,” with Mitchell Pickerill (political science) and Clayton Mosher (sociology, WSU Vancouver); and “Gender and Crime in Turkey: Testing Freda Adler’s Theory of Crime,” with Arif Akgul (Ph.D. candidate, criminal justice). Pratt also presented “Race, the Perception of Racial Profiling, and Citizens’ Satisfaction with the Police” with Nicholas Lovrich and Michael Gaffney (both political science), at the annual meeting of the Western Society of Criminology. Pratt accepted an invitation to join the editorial board for the journal Criminal Justice Policy Review. He also agreed to continue to serve on the editorial boards for the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Justice Quarterly, and the Journal of Crime and Justice for another term.

Lori Wiest and Julie Wieck (both music) were invited to present a workshop at the Washington Music Educators Conference in Yakima on February 19. The presentation addressed vocal repertoire for solo and small ensemble competitions and featured performances by WSU music students Brent LiaBraaten, Matthew Collins, Christopher Wang, Christopher Akers, Rebecca Elshaw, Rachel Waniata, and Lacey Perry.

Patricia Freitag Ericsson (English) was one of six scholars facilitating a workshop on machine scoring at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in March in Chicago.

Papers presented at the 2006 APA/NIOSH Work, Stress, and Health Conference, held in Miami in March, included “Organizational Injury Rate Under-reporting: The Moderating Effect of Organizational Safety Climate,” by Ty Brubaker (B.S. ’00, psychology), Anthony Barsotti, and Tahira Probst (psychology, WSU Vancouver); “Physiological Responses to Layoff Threats and Suggested Coping Methods,” by Probst and Bradley W. Tierney; and “An Evaluation of SOLVE: Addressing Psychosocial Problems at Work,” by Probst, David Gold, and Joannah Caborn.

Faculty in Print

LeRoy Ashby (history) has published With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture since 1830 (University Press of Kentucky, 2006).

Steven Stehr (political science) had an article published in the March 2006 edition of Urban Affairs Review titled “The Political Economy of Disaster Assistance.” This article attempts to place the disaster assistance and relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina in a broader context.

Clayton Mosher (sociology, WSU Vancouver) and Dretha Phillips published an article titled “The Dynamics of a Prison-Based Therapeutic Community for Women Offenders: Retention, Completion, and Outcomes” in the March 2006 edition of The Prison Journal. Mosher and Eric Jensen also have an article titled “Adult Drug Courts: The Judicial Origins, Evaluations of Effectiveness, and Expansions of the Model” forthcoming in the Idaho Law Review.

Steven Kale’s (history) article “Women, Salons, and Sociability as Constitutional Problems in the Works of Madame de Staël” will appear in the spring 2006 issue of Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques, which publishes works in European (primarily French) cultural and intellectual history. The article discusses Madame de Staël’s efforts to define the role of elite sociability in the functioning of French and English constitutional systems and explores the reasons why her ideas on political sociability were excluded from broader efforts to articulate liberal political theory in the era of the French Revolution.

Patricia Freitag Ericsson’s (English) coedited collection Machine Scoring of Student Essays: Truth and Consequences has been published by Utah State University Press. This volume is the first to seriously consider the educational mechanisms and consequences of the machine scoring trend and offers important discussions from some of the leading scholars in writing assessment. Ericsson’s review of Carl Whithaus’ recent book Teaching and Evaluating Writing in the Age of Computers and High-Stakes Testing will appear in Assessing Writing Journal 11(1).

Dave Demers’ (communication) new book, Dictionary of Mass Communication & Media Research, is drawing good reviews from scholarly and library review journals. “Demers has done a good job of giving this book as much user appeal as is feasible . . . informative . . . interesting to read . . . of interest to beginning graduate students . . . (and) to researchers in other fields . . .” writes Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. “An absolute ‘must-have’ for journalism and communication students of all levels of study,” writes the Midwest Review of Books. Demers is currently writing The Ivory Tower of Babel, his twelfth book and the first one about the role and function of social science in society.

Buddy Levy’s (English) article “The Trail of the Coeur d’Alene” will be published in the April 2006 issue of Alaska Airlines Magazine. The story features an out-and-back 145-mile bike ride in Idaho from Plummer to Mullan on the recently completed reclamation project.

Dana Lindemann (psychology, WSU Vancouver) and Tom Brigham (psychology) have just completed a chapter on AIDS to be included in Macmillan’s International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, second edition.

Laurie Drapela (political science, criminal justice, WSU Vancouver) and Alyson Galloway (M.P.A. ’03) have had an article, entitled “Are Effective Drug Courts an Urban Phenomenon? Considering Their impact on Recidivism among a Non-metropolitan Adult Sample in Washington State,” accepted for publication in the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology.

Vilma Navarro-Daniels (foreign languages and cultures) has recently published an essay, entitled “La invención interminable de la historia deseada en Lo raro es vivir de Carmen Martín Gaite” (The unending invention of the desired story in Carmen Martín Gaite’s Living’s Strange Thing), as a chapter in the book Leading Ladies: Mujeres en la literature hispana y en las artes, edited by Margaret R. Parker and Yvonne Fuentes and published by Louisiana State University Press in March. Written by Hispanic and non-Hispanic scholars, the book discloses how over the past four centuries static and formulaic images of women in Hispanic art and literature have given way to lively and original portrayals. The leading ladies include women who are objects of the male gaze, women who gaze upon the male body, women who are characters, and women who are writers, painters, and filmmakers. The essayists offer a panorama that stimulates the senses and challenges assumptions as they reveal strategies used by both male and female writers and artists to unmask conventions, identify spaces, and remake paradigms.

Jolene D. Smyth, Leah M. Christian, Michael J. Stern (all Ph.D. candidates, sociology), and Don A. Dillman (sociology) have published an article, “Effects of Using Visual Design Principles to Group Response Options in Web Surveys,” in the International Journal of Internet Science.

Thomas Kennedy’s (professor emeritus, history) article “Activism among Women of China’s Traditional Elite” appeared in Madame Chiang Kaishek and Her China (EastBridge, 2005), Samuel C. Chu, editor.

Travis Pratt (criminal justice) coauthored four articles that appeared in print this month. These include “Rethinking the ‘Norm’ of Offender Generality: Investigating Specialization in the Short-Term,” published in the February issue of Criminology, and three articles that appeared in the March issue of Criminal Justice Policy Review, titled “Political Culture and the Death Penalty,” “Supermax Prisons: Myths, Realities, and the Politics of Punishment in American Society,” and coauthored with Nicholas Lovrich, Michael Gaffney (both political science), and Charles Johnson (Ph.D. candidate, criminal justice), “This Isn’t ‘CSI’: The National Backlog of Forensic DNA Cases and the Barriers Associated with Case Processing.”

Birgitta Ingemanson’s (foreign languages and cultures) chapter on Vladivostok as a “frontier town” (published last spring in the book The Siberian Saga: A History of Russia’s Wild East, edited by Eva-Maria Stolberg) has been translated into Russian by Andrey Sapelkin and published in Sotsial`nye i gumanitarnye nauki na Dal`nem Vostoke, a scholarly journal covering topics of the social sciences and the humanities in the Far East. This journal is based in Khabarovsk.

Alex Kuo’s (English) new novel Panda Diaries is due out this spring from University of Indianapolis Press. Panda Diaries is about Colonel Ge’s attempt to reclaim his personal life after a short, meteoric career in China’s secret service, the National Public Security Bureau. In charge of Beijing’s political security, he was banished to an insignificant position in Changchun in northern China on the night of June 3, 1989, because in that microscopic moment after the generals had assumed command of Tiananmen Square, Ge refused to answer deceit with deceit. His companion is his mailman, a panda bear from the animal kingdom, and together they discover that war is not only waged between peoples, but against animals as well. The ending of this green novel surprises with a grammar that diagrams the links between humans and animals.

Student Activities and Awards

Valerie Powell’s (M.F.A. candidate) piece “Landscaping My Insides” (ink and acrylic on wood, 2004) will be included in the Texas National 2006 competition and exhibition, April 8–30 at Stephen F. Austin State University. This year, 616 artists from 48 states and the District of Columbia entered the competition; only 77 artists were selected for the exhibition, juried by Paul Brach. Powell’s work will also appear in the exhibition Out of Paint: Traditional Is Non-Traditional,” April 4–25 at the Kuhn Gallery, The Ohio State University. The show’s focus is artwork that uses traditional paint and its material components to create artworks other than paintings, as well as “paintings” that use nontraditional material as paint.

Arina Gertseva (Ph.D. candidate, sociology) received a graduate fellowship from the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service to design a Web survey of WSU students in order to help the campus community more fully assess crime, perceived risk, fear of victimization, and security problems. Gertseva also presented a paper entitled “Parental Efficacy, Victimization and Offending” at the Western Criminological Society annual meeting held in Seattle February 23–26.

Asako Stone (Ph.D. candidate, psychology) won an NSF fellowship from the NSF Office of International Science and Engineering to the 2006 East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes–Japan Program. She will spend eight weeks at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, to research the U.S. foreign policy in northeast Asia.

Michelle Kayne-Langill (M.S. candidate, psychology) was awarded a fellowship to attend the 2006 Vivian Smith Summer Institute of the International Neuropsychological Society in Xylocastro, Greece. During the institute, she will be completing in-depth coursework in the areas of aging, dementia, and neuropsychological assessment.

Christa Herrygers, a Ph.D. student in cultural anthropology, is one of four students selected for the NSF Summer Field Training in Methods of Data Collection in Cultural Anthropology in Zambia. The program will focus on “Nutrition and Food Security in the Context of Migration” among the Gwembe Tonga.

Stacy Kowtko (Ph.D. candidate, history) was recently granted tenure at Spokane Community College. Her first book, Nature and the Environment in Pre-Columbian American Life, is due out in August as part of the Greenwood Press Daily Life through History Series.

2006 WSU Women’s Recognition Awards

Rebecca A. Miles (B.A. ’97, criminal justice) was named Woman of the Year at the annual WSU Women’s Recognition Luncheon March 21. Miles began her career in policy and leadership as a student at WSU advocating for Indian tribes’ rights on campus. She had worked since she was a teen-ager for the Nez Perce Tribe in various positions and began her formal career with the Environmental Restoration and Waste Management Program of the tribe, first as a legal research intern and then as the communications team leader. Miles was elected as the Nez Perce Tribe General Council chairman at age 27. She was re-elected four times before she was elected to the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee in May 2004. In May 2005, she was elected by her peers as the first woman chairman of the executive committee, the youngest ever to be elected to that position.

Miles’ nominators cited her compassionate and positive attitude about life, and note that this, combined with her commitment to serving and her organizational skills and ability to work well with others, is a formula for leadership. They noted that Miles continues to be an excellent ambassador and role model for the Nez Perce Tribe, Indian Country, and anyone who dares to break through barriers to achieve their dreams.

Samantha Swindell (psychology) was also honored at the luncheon as the 2006 Woman of Distinction among faculty. Swindell completed her master’s and doctoral degrees at WSU under the direction of Frances McSweeney (psychology, vice provost for faculty affairs). She conducted post-doctoral research with Barbara Sorg (VCAPP) and served as a temporary instructor for the Department of Psychology and the Honors College for several years. In 2002, Swindell was appointed to the position of undergraduate program director for the Department of Psychology. As such, she teaches a variety of courses for the department and oversees various aspects of the undergraduate program, including recruitment, program assessment, advising, and retention. She has been recognized for her teaching abilities both as a graduate student and a faculty member. To date, she is the coauthor of thirty-one journal articles and twenty-six conference presentations.

WSU Music Students Receive Top Awards at Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival

Ensembles and soloists from Washington State University received top honors on College Day (February 23) at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival held at the University of Idaho.

WSU earned five first-place awards, more than any other college or university competing in the festival. The WSU Jazz Big Band, directed by Greg Yasinitsky (music), was selected as the Outstanding Guest College Band, and the WSU Jazz Quintet, directed by Horace-Alexander Young (music), was selected as the Outstanding College Instrumental Combo.

John Gronberg (M.A. candidate, music) received the Outstanding Trumpet Solo award, Matt Grimes (junior, music) received the Outstanding College Instrumental Bass Solo award, and Skylar Garcia (senior, music) received the Outstanding College Flute Solo award.

“It is something of a tradition for WSU to be honored in this way at the Hampton Festival,” said Yasinitsky, coordinator of jazz studies at WSU. “I am delighted to see our students recognized at this important event.”

The Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival is one of the largest events of its kind, attracting over 10,000 students from around the world.

Renowned Lewis & Clark Historian to Speak at WSU

James Ronda, one of the country’s most respected Lewis and Clark historians, will give his final lecture of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial at Washington State University at 7:00 p.m. on April 5 in the Smith Center for Undergraduate Education, room 203. He has titled his talk “'And In Conclusion…' James Ronda Sums Up Lewis and Clark.”

Ronda, the H.G. Barnard Professor of Western American History at the University of Tulsa, has twice been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his writing on western American history. He has authored eight books on Lewis and Clark, beginning with Lewis and Clark among the Indians in 1984. Four of Ronda’s books appear on the selected bibliography list of the official Monticello Web site. Ronda was keynote speaker at the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial kickoff lecture held at Monticello January 17, 2003. Since then he has given hundreds of lectures across America, from Harvard University to small prairie schoolhouses.

“James Ronda is a marvelous, dynamic speaker and not to be missed,” said WSU history professor Sue Armitage. “Many consider him to be the nation’s foremost Lewis and Clark expert, so his appearance here is a rare opportunity for anyone interested in the Lewis and Clark Expedition.”

WRICOPS Uses ‘Appreciative Inquiry’ to Assist Law Enforcement Agencies

The Western Regional Institute for Community Oriented Public Safety (WRICOPS) is conducting pilot studies of organizational change methods in three law enforcement organizations within its region in 2006, based upon the concept of appreciative inquiry.

Appreciative inquiry (AI), a derivative of social constructionist theory, is an approach to organizational change that identifies as operational “reality” that aspect of the objective setting of experience upon which we focus our attention. When addressing organizational change processes, it is critical that a common understanding of reality is shared if participants in the process are expected to adopt changed behaviors and/or circumstances. Conventional “problem solving” assumptions are premised on the belief that organizations have problems to be solved. In sharp contrast, AI reflects the belief that all organizations are capable of outstanding work, and organizational change efforts can be most effectively conceptualized as opportunities to engage in a collaborative effort to recreate the circumstances under which outstanding work can be more easily accomplished.

In 1998 the Ada County Sheriff’s Department requested and received an onsite organizational assessment from WRICOPS. Over the past seven years, the department has put into effect several of the recommendations designed to assist the agency to implement community-oriented policing. In 2005, the newly elected sheriff asked for an AI intervention focused primarily on helping law enforcement personnel come to a common understanding of the value and substance of customer service. The AI effort will include asking patrol officers to identify specific times when the public responded positively to their efforts with the expression of genuine appreciation. From this understanding, the officers can articulate the type of behaviors involved in effective police services in Ada County. Eventually all 560 members of the Ada County Sheriff’s Office will have participated in all phases of the organizational change process.

The Cheyenne (Wyoming) and Moscow (Idaho) police departments have also asked for AI interventions. Kay Kelsey Gray (rural sociology) and Mike Erp (political science, criminal justice, WSU Spokane) are co-team leaders for WRICOPS.

Teaching & Learning Improvement Initiative Grants

The WSU Office of Undergraduate Education announced that thirteen faculty teams will receive 2006 Teaching and Learning Improvement Initiative Grants in amounts up to $15,000 each. Grant applicants were encouraged to align department and program learning outcomes with WSU’s “Six Learning Goals of the Baccalaureate”—creative and critical thinking, quantitative and symbolic reasoning, information literacy, communication, self in society, and specialty—and to propose ways to foster inter- and intradisciplinary collaborations among scholars, all with the goal of continuous, sustained improvement of educational programs. Recipients of the 2006 Teaching and Learning Improvement Initiative Grants from liberal arts departments are:

“Improving Student Outcomes by Linking Critical Thinking to Program Development and Evaluation,” project leader Ella Inglebret, Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences. Inglebret’s project promotes students’ critical thinking as they apply the evidence-based method of inquiry to the evaluation of community-oriented clinical programs. Other members of the team include Susan Forbes, Michele Fredrickson, Jeanne Johnson, and Carla Jones.
“Project Access,” project leaders Irenee Beattie, Christine Horne, Julie Kmec, Kim Lloyd, and Christine Oakley, Department of Sociology.
“Creating a Culture of Assessment for the General Education Program,” project leader Candice Goucher (history), General Education at WSU Vancouver.

Approved for Professional Leave

Fall 2006: Carol Ivory (fine arts), Michael Myers (philosophy)

Spring 2007: José Manuel Alamillo (comparative ethnic studies), Heather Streets (history), Joseph Keim Campbell (philosophy), Steven Stehr (political science), G. Leonard Burns (psychology), Jeanne Johnson (speech and hearing sciences)

Academic Year 2006–2007: Jeannette Mageo (anthropology), Yolanda Flores Niemann (comparative ethnic studies), Frederick Busselle (communication), Patricia Sias (communication), Kevin Haas (fine arts), Christopher Lupke (foreign languages and cultures), Paul Thiers (political science, WSU Vancouver), Michael Morgan (psychology, WSU Vancouver), Rebecca Craft (psychology), Linda Heidenreich (women’s studies)

Tenure and Promotion

Effective August 16, 2006

Promoted to Regents Professor
Tim Kohler (anthropology)

Promoted to Professor
William Hamlin (English)
Yolanda Flores Niemann (comparative ethnic studies)
Noël Sturgeon (women’s studies)

Granted Tenure and Promoted to Associate Professor
José Alamillo (comparative ethnic studies)
Kevin Haas (fine arts)
Linda Heidenreich (women’s studies)
Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson (sociology)
Jeffrey Joireman (psychology)
Christopher Lupke (foreign languages and cultures)
Mitchell Pickerill (political science)

Promoted to Senior Instructor (non-tenure-track)
Elizabeth Siler (English)

Comm Students Receive National Honors

Cristina E. Romento and Rachel Padget (both juniors, communication) have been named winners in two national competitions for a project completed as part of their studies in the Murrow School of Communication.

In a letter received the last week of February, Romento and Padget were informed their video project, “Teaching a Woman to Fish,” had won a Telly Award. According to Recognition Media, owner of the competition, the Telly was created in 1978 to strengthen the visual arts community by inspiring, promoting, and supporting creativity.

Days earlier Romento and Padget had received word they had won the 2006 Gracie Allen Award sponsored by American Women in Radio and Television (AWRT) Inc. AWRT gives out the Gracie Allen Award to recognize exemplary programming created for women, by women, and about women in all facets of electronic media. Romento and Padget plan to attend the AWRT awards luncheon June 20 at New York’s Tavern on the Green.

The students’ winning entry was a video feature about WSU alumna Theresa Schulz and her organization, Women’s Enterprises International (WEI), a nonprofit group seeking to empower women in third-world countries.

“When we were assigned this feature, I immediately knew its potential,” said Padget, a junior broadcast news major from Nampa, Idaho. “While we were completing the project it was easy to get frustrated at the amount of time it was taking, but in the end we took the time and reaped the rewards.”

“Rachel and I both have a passion, and realize how profound an impact the media can have on society,” said Romento. A junior broadcast news and production major from Vancouver, Washington, who dreams of becoming a network foreign correspondent, Romento said her Spanish language training came in handy while working with the video from Latin America shot by WEI. The students estimate they logged and transcribed more than six hours of raw video including interviews.

The students said producing “Teaching a Woman to Fish” taught them many valuable lessons in addition to feature editing. “Being a part of this experience has taught me a lot about how to face challenges and how hard work can really pay off,” said Romento. “Theresa’s passion for her organization comes across well on camera. She is an inspiring and amazing person.”

Opera Workshop Performs The Elixir of Love

The School of Music and Theatre Arts will present Gaetano Donizetti’s opera The Elixir of Love during Mom’s Weekend. Performances will be held in Bryan Hall Theatre Friday, April 7, at 8:00 p.m. and Saturday, April 8, at 2:00 p.m. Ticket prices for general seating are $10 for adults and $5 for students and senior citizens.

The WSU Opera Workshop program does a full production every spring for Mom’s Weekend, alternating between opera and musical theatre.

“We feel it is important that the students, both in the productions and in the audience, be exposed to a wide variety of theatrical experiences,” said Julie Wieck, director of the Opera Workshop and associate professor of music. “The line between opera and musical theatre is often very gray, making it difficult to separate the two genres. Opera companies routinely include classic musical theatre productions in their season, such as Oklahoma!, Carousel, and My Fair Lady. Many of today’s Broadway shows require well-trained classical singers in order to successfully sing the roles.”

According to Wieck, “...we present our opera productions in the vernacular, as European opera companies often do, singing in the language of the audience. This removes the distance often created by a foreign language.”

The Elixir of Love takes place in the Italian countryside in the nineteenth century. The story revolves around a young man’s pursuit of his true love. Believing that he needs assistance from outside himself, he purchases an elixir from a traveling snake oil salesman guaranteed to make the young woman fall in love with him. The elixir, a bottle of cheap wine, gives him the courage to fight for the woman he loves.

According to Wieck, “Donizetti is one of three Italian composers, including Bellini and Rossini, who are known for composing opera in the bel canto style, an important historical period in music history. Bel canto, which translates as ‘beautiful singing,’ was the traditional Italian art of singing which emphasized beautiful tone, legato phrasing, and strong technique. Some of the most well-known operas are from this period, and the audience will probably recognize at least one of the arias from this famous opera.”

For more information about the production, see http://libarts.wsu.edu/opera/.

WSU Theatre Presents The Elephant Man

The WSU Theatre Program will present its last production of the spring 2006 season, The Elephant Man, April 6, 7, 8 and 13, 14, 15 in Jones Theatre at 8:00 p.m. As part of Mom’s Weekend activities, there is also a special matinee on April 8 at 2:00 p.m.

Tickets will be available at the Daggy Hall box office starting April 4. Reservations may be made by calling 509-335-7236. Ticket prices are $10 adults, $7.50 seniors, and $5 WSU students with a valid university ID. GPSA members and domestic partners are admitted without charge.

The play tells the true story of John Merrick, who lived in London during the latter part of the nineteenth century. Merrick was a deformed young man who had been a freak attraction in traveling side shows.

After he is found abandoned and helpless, he is admitted for observation to a prestigious London hospital and cared for by a famous young doctor, who introduces him to London society. Although the doctor tries to help, Merrick is on exhibit in the hospital too, only in this context those who come to see him are higher-class people who give money out of charity.

Prominent in the WSU set design are six large mirrors, which, along with the use of masks, are unique features in the WSU production of The Elephant Man.

“Our setting literally holds a mirror up to the audience, asking us to examine our own shortcomings, imperfections, and oddities and try to appreciate the beauty which lies within each person we encounter in our lives,“ said director Terry Converse (theatre arts).

“It can be very painful to have someone recoil from you like you’re a leper,” said Converse. “But when this happens, when you suddenly find yourself on the ‘other side of normal,’ then you have a hint of what John Merrick faced every day of his life. When life hurls upon us such horrors as divorce, disease, and death, perhaps that is when we are most receptive to identifying with the Elephant Man and tapping into what this play is really about: empathy and sensitivity.”

For additional information, contact the Theatre Program at 509-335-7447.

Tom Brokaw to Accept Edward R. Murrow Award April 18 at WSU

Tom Brokaw, former anchor and managing editor of “NBC Nightly News,” will accept the Edward R. Murrow Award for Lifetime Achievement in Broadcasting at Washington State University Tuesday, April 18. The award presentation followed by Brokaw’s acceptance speech will take place in Beasley Coliseum at 7:30 p.m.

“We are pleased Tom Brokaw has accepted our invitation,” said Alex Tan, director of the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication. “Our faculty and advisory board felt strongly that Brokaw’s record as anchor and managing editor was a strong example for our students and in keeping with the Murrow tradition,” said Tan.

“Tom Brokaw is a legend in broadcast journalism in America,” said V. Lane Rawlins, president of Washington State University. “Like the name Edward R. Murrow, the name Brokaw is one people associate with excellence. I can think of no finer representative of the Murrow legacy.”

“The Murrow Award and the annual symposium celebrating Murrow’s achievements make us mindful of the importance of molding the journalists and communication professionals of tomorrow,” said Erich Lear, dean of the College of Liberal Arts.

Brokaw, a political science graduate from the University of South Dakota, began his journalism career in Omaha and Atlanta before joining NBC News in 1966. Brokaw was the White House correspondent for NBC News during Watergate, and from 1976 to 1981 he anchored “Today” on NBC. He was the sole anchor and managing editor of “NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw” from 1983 until stepping down from the anchor desk in 2004.

In his keynote address at the 2004 Radio and Television News Directors Association Awards Dinner, Brokaw borrowed the words of Murrow. “Edward R. Murrow, one of the founding fathers of this craft, characteristically said it best,” Brokaw told his peers. “‘We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.’ He also said after taking on Senator Joseph McCarthy, ‘We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven into an age of unreason if we dig deep into our history and doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and defend causes which were for the moment unpopular.’”

During his distinguished career, Brokaw has won every major award in broadcast journalism, including two DuPont Awards, a Peabody Award, and several Emmys. He continues to do projects for NBC and splits his time between New York and Montana. He is the author of three bestsellers: The Greatest Generation, The Greatest Generation Speaks, and An Album of Memories.

Among the previous winners of the Murrow Award for Lifetime Achievement are Peter Jennings, Daniel Schorr, Walter Cronkite, Sam Donaldson, Bernard Shaw, Keith Jackson, Ted Turner, and Al Neuharth.

The Edward R. Murrow Symposium also celebrates scholarship through the annual scholarship banquet held the evening of the symposium. Workshops throughout the day, led by communication professionals, provide students from WSU and the University of Idaho as well as Washington and Idaho high school students a glimpse of real-life career options. High school students from across the country compete in the annual Edward R. Murrow High School Journalism Awards Competition.

For more information: http://www.wsu.edu/murrow/

John Ashcroft to Speak in Vancouver

The Thomas S. Foley Institute is sponsoring former attorney general John Ashcroft at the fourth annual Public Affairs Distinguished Lecture Series, April 12 on the WSU Vancouver campus.

The lecture series brings nationally recognized speakers to WSU Vancouver. Ashcroft is scheduled to speak on “National Security and Civil Liberties in the 21st Century.” The event is cosponsored by the Associated Students of WSU Vancouver and the Foley Institute. Preceding Ashcroft’s lecture, there will be a panel discussion on balancing national security and civil liberties in a post–9/11 world.

WSU Vancouver alternates the partisan background of the selected speakers in order to accommodate a variety of political views. Past speakers include the chair of the Democratic National Committee and former Vermont governor Howard Dean, former New Hampshire governor John Sununu, and University of Maryland professor Benjamin R. Barber.

http://libarts.wsu.edu/foleyinst/

Panel Discussion: The Effects of War on Soldiers

The Palouse Peace Coalition and WSU Students for Social Responsibility will host a panel discussion on “The Human Costs of War: The Effects of War on Combatants” Thursday, April 20, in Wegner Hall G50. Panelists and topics include Craig Parks (psychology), “Psychological Factors in Conflict and Conciliation”; Frank Pelfry, psychologist, “Counseling Returning Veterans”; and Martha Cottam (political science), “Types of Warfare in the Post–Cold War Era.” Rula Awwad-Rafferty (architecture, University of Idaho) will moderate.

A reception with hors d’oeuvres will take place from 6:30–7:00 p.m. The panel discussion will begin at 7:00 p.m. Short presentations by the panelists will be followed by questions from the audience as well as discussion. In addition, educational materials—including lists of relevant books and movies, handouts, and a book display—will be available.

M.F.A. Thesis Exhibition

The WSU Museum of Art, in collaboration with the Department of Fine Arts, will exhibit the 2006 Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition April 14 – May 7, with an opening reception at 7:00 p.m. April 14.

This year’s group of master’s candidates include Daiken Asakawa, ceramics/sculpture; Ron Davis, drawing; Jason Gatewood, sculpture; Zach Mazur, photography; Rafael Ortega, sculpture; Shane Prine, drawing; Daniela Rumpf, ceramics; Jennifer Scott, photography; and Josephine Topholm, printmaking.

Chris Watts (fine arts), this year’s graduate advisor, has been the formal coordinator of M.F.A. students for six years. When asked if the exhibit will have an overall theme, he explained, “The strength of the fine arts department and the M.F.A. program is that we don’t have a certain style. Each student is allowed to shine on their own, find their own path. This year’s group was no exception. They continued the longstanding tradition of creativity and excellence.”