
March 2006

Dean's Message

Each of our college’s units is currently engaged in completing a set of reports—all due March 1—related to planning, budget, hiring requests, unit productivity and progress on benchmarks, top ten accomplishments, and of course individual annual reviews. The effort to collect information and present it concisely and effectively is enormous—and everyone in the dean’s office wishes to reassure you that the effort is very much appreciated!! To read your submissions is, for me personally, one of the most exciting and energizing aspects of leading the college. Thank you!

Chairs and directors have likely shared with you the ways in which your planning fits in the larger planning arena. We will not draft the revised college plan until we see the unit plans March 1; however, there are two guiding principles that appear essential to any college plan. First, the University Strategic Plan and Academic Plan form a broad framework, and this year we have collectively tried to define an elegant supplement to these plans to more fully realize our land-grant role in societal impact and economic development. Second, at the college level we are coalescing two formerly separate ideas into a single comprehensive view. Last year, we focused on the balance of budget with instructional delivery on the one hand and, on the other, identifying important issues and methods of addressing those issues in which the college could take a lead role in improving our world locally to globally. These two elements complement each other and, as we create the college’s revised plan, will be central in prioritizing and implementing our fundraising campaign, our major capital projects, our allocation of the new faculty positions, choices of events for the CLA Season, and our partnerships with internal and external collaborators and constituents.

Among things that ask for attention as we formulate our plans are the recently and soon-to-be released reports on undergraduate education (the Schoenberg report), graduate education (Graduate Education Commission and Yardley reports), several documents related to conceiving of WSU as The University (drafts of WSU System documents and inventories of current and desired programs), and emerging versions of campaign goals, projects, and processes. I will make every effort to bring these elements to your attention in a timely fashion, via the CLA Leadership group, to ensure that you are allowed to contribute input and where appropriate to shape your plans accordingly.

In our most recent CLA Strategic Plan Implementation Update, delivered to the provost on February 20, we reported that in research funding we have double our approved external funding and in fund raising we have at mid-year already passed our target. Congratulations and thanks to all for these achievements! These achievements are partnered with another important message from our provost. He indicates that, in allocating the nine new positions to CLA, the intent is to better deliver the instruction already allocated to us. Our successes in research, teaching, and outreach—in my view—confirm that fully integrating our instructional delivery with efforts to produce societal impact lies at the center of our most effective planning to date and for the future of our college. Again, thank you for your many and varied contributions to a comprehensively praiseworthy College of Liberal Arts!

With best wishes during a frantic spring semester,

Erich Lear, Dean
College of Liberal Arts

Worthy of Note

Welcome to Dawn Gauthier, who joined the Office of Development and Alumni Relations as development coordinator in February. Dawn brings to the college a rich experience in development and will be responsible for donor stewardship, tracking of prospect moves and development metrics, and special events management, as well as other core functions of the development office’s day-to-day operations.

Aimee Phan’s (English) short story collection, We Should Never Meet, recently won the Association of Asian American Studies (AAAS) Book Award in Prose. The award will be presented at the annual meeting of the AAAS in Atlanta, Georgia, this month. The book was recently performed by professional actors at the New Short Fiction Series in Los Angeles. Her paperback reading tour includes stops in New York City, Seattle, Bowling Green (Ohio), San Diego, and San Jose (California).

Roberta Kelly (communication) is one of the investigators, with colleagues at the University of Idaho, recently awarded a $1.86 million National Science Foundation grant to support a program to teach scientists and science students how to communicate science to the public. Kelly comprises the “communication” component of the project.

John Streamas (comparative ethnic studies) presented a paper, “Liberal Internationalism and Racial Politics in Snow Falling on Cedars,” at the Western Literature Association conference in Los Angeles on October 20. He also organized and spoke at a roundtable session of the American Studies Association annual conference in Washington, D.C., on November 5. The panel title was “Junior and Contingent Faculty in the Minefield of Diversity.”

Michelle Forsyth (fine arts) had a solo exhibition of her recent work at Shift Studio in Seattle. The opening reception on February 2 provided an opportunity for the artist to meet the public and discuss her work. The exhibit ran through February 25.

Armand L. Mauss (professor emeritus, sociology) was appointed visiting scholar for the period 2005–2007 in the School of Religion at the Claremont Graduate University, where he is involved in the establishment of a new program in Mormon studies. As part of that program, he has taught graduate courses entitled “Mormons in the History of the American West” (2005) and “Mormons in Sociological Perspective” (2006). See the February 3 Chronicle of Higher Education 52(22), page B-9, for more on the emerging discipline of Mormon studies at Claremont and elsewhere.

Clare M. Wilkinson-Weber (anthropology, WSU Vancouver) was invited to lead a seminar on “Researching Women in the Hindi Film Industry: Prospects and Proposals,” December 15, 2005, at the Research Centre for Women’s Studies at SNDT Women’s University in Mumbai, India.

Lori Wiest (music) served as adjudicator and clinician for the Yakima Valley Regional Solo and Ensemble Festival, held at Central Washington University in Ellensburg on February 4.

Jana Argersinger (English) was elected president of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals at the Modern Language Association convention in Washington, D.C., in December.

Carol Ivory (fine arts) was invited to participate in an international symposium, “Changing Contexts—Shifting Meanings: Transformations of Cultural Traditions in Oceania,” at the Honolulu Academy of Arts (HAA) February 23–26. The symposium was held in conjunction with the exhibition Life in the Pacific of the 1700s: The Cook/Forster Collection of the George August University of Göttingen. The exhibit and symposium were cosponsored by HAA and the Institute for Cultural and Social Anthropology of the University of Göttingen, Germany.

Pavithra Narayanan (English, WSU Vancouver) was invited to give two talks at Western Washington University on February 1. She presented “Let’s Talk Economics: Bhopal, Twenty-Two Years Later” as one of Western’s World Issues Forums, and she presented “The Price of Peace,” focusing on Manipur, a state in northeast India, as part of the Human Security Lecture Series.

Daniel Balliet (Ph.D. candidate, psychology), Jeff Joireman (psychology), Eric Spangenberg (business), and David Sprott (marketing) coauthored a poster presented at the Society of Personality and Social Psychology conference in January titled “Ego Depletion, Consideration of Future Consequences, and Decision-Making Preferences: Implications for the Self-regulation of Behavior.” Other posters presented at the same conference include “Mortality Salience and the Ebenezer Shift Hypothesis,” by Joireman and Blythe Duell (Ph.D. candidate, psychology), and “The Environmentalist who Cried Drought: Reactions to Initial and Failed Warnings about Depleting Resources,” by Donelle Posey (Ph.D. ’05, psychology), Joireman, and Craig Parks (psychology). Posey, Parks, and Joireman also authored a poster, “Effects of Social Value Orientation on Resource Consumption under Conditions of Uncertainty,” presented at the Association for Research in Personality pre-conference.

Doug Gast (fine arts, WSU Tri-Cities) had or will have work included in the following juried exhibitions: Full Acquittal, March 11–31 as part of the Secret Show Series, Nashville, Tennessee; Purification, February 18–23 at Ouch My Eye Studio in Seattle; Tran•scen•dence, October 28–30, 2005, at the Society for Photographic Education Northwest Regional Conference in Pullman; America vs. America, September 2–15, 2005, at Gallery 300M in Gothenburg, Sweden; and Race: Enter Personal Politics, August 27 through October 23, 2005, at the Athens Institute for Contemporary Art, Athens, Georgia.

Romana Hillebrand (English) has been accepted to give a presentation, “Providing Present Lessons: Avoiding Common Errors and Lack of Coherence,” on March 6 at the National Council of Teachers of English regional conference in Portland, Oregon.

Bryan Vila (criminal justice, WSU Spokane) will be a featured speaker this month at the sixth annual International Conference on Occupational Stress and Health in Miami. The conference, “Work, Stress, and Health 2006: Making a Difference in the Workplace,” is sponsored by the American Psychological Association, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the National Institute of Justice, the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, and the U.S. Department of Labor. Vila’s luncheon address, “Consequences of Fatigue on Disaster Response and Counter-Terror Efforts,” will discuss the impact of fatigue on human performance during both pre-event (e.g., intelligence analysis or storm prediction) and trans-event (e.g., crisis management or first response) activities. The talk is based on his research on the effects of sleep restriction, shift work, and long work hours on police officer performance, health, and safety.

Buddy Levy (English) will give a reading, do a signing, and participate in a Q&A session in support of his new book, American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett, at Elliott Bay Books in Seattle on Friday, March 3, at 7:30 p.m. On March 17 he will give a similar talk and presentation at Village Books in Bellingham. American Legend has garnered strong recent reviews and features in The Oregonian, the Knoxville News (Knoxville, Tennessee), and the Charleston Post and Courier (Charleston, South Carolina).

Camille Roman (English, American studies, women’s studies) presented a paper entitled “The Caged Bird’s Song and Its (Dis)Contents: Poetry Anthologizing and Cultural Justice” at the Hawaii International Conference on the Arts and Humanities, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, January 11–14.

In January, Washington State University hosted the Southeastern Washington Music Educators (SEWMEA) Jazz Night featuring performances by the WSU Jazz Big Band, directed by Horace-Alexander Young (music); VOJAZZ (vocal jazz ensemble), directed by Noel Barbuto (music); and numerous high school ensembles from throughout the region.

The following two posters were presented at the thirty-fourth annual meeting of the International Neuropsychological Society in Boston in February: “Cognitive Support for Verbal Episodic Memory in Older Adults,” by Ellen Woo (Ph.D. candidate, psychology), Maureen Schmitter-Edgecombe (psychology), Elizabeth Hollenback (B.S. ’05, psychology), Jacquelyn Benegas (senior, psychology), and Anna Curren (B.S. ’05, neuroscience; second major in psychology); and “Investigating the Foundations of Verbal Memory Dysfunction following High-Velocity Closed-Head Injury: An Application of the Item Specific Deficit Approach to the CVLT,” by Matthew Wright (Ph.D. candidate, psychology), Schmitter-Edgecombe, and Curren.

Tim Kohler (anthropology) has been invited to Yale on March 31 by the Department of Anthropology to give a talk entitled “Agent-Based and Systems-Level Models for the A.D. 1280s Southwest Collapse.”

Gene Rosa (sociology) accepted an invitation to join the Encyclopedia of Earth as a topic editor for the area of environmental sociology. Rosa was also a co-organizer, presider, and presenter at the symposium “Risk and Society,” one of the thirty featured Key Science Policy Symposia, at the annual meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in St. Louis, Missouri.

Luz María Gordillo (history, WSU Vancouver) will give a paper entitled “‘Si muero lejos de tí … [México]’: Mexicanas and the Formation of Transnational Citizenship, 1940–2000” at the Pacific Northwest FOCO, National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies & Latina/o Northwest Research Symposium. In this paper she maps out the creation of “transnational citizenship” as a concept that mirrors both the conditions of identification by Mexicanas with their community of origin as successful immigrants and, at the same time, the resistance, negotiation, and accommodation of hostile practices against Mexican immigrants in the U.S. She will also address the ideological baggage that Mexican immigrants unpacked as they navigated their new lives within their transnational communities and how they created new understandings of identity in relation to their experiences as immigrants. Gordillo explores the complexities of these identity formations and underlines the impact of hostile U.S. practices that directly target Mexicans. These practices affect the way Mexicanos and Mexicanas identify themselves as citizens of these transnational communities. Further, she analyzes different and sometimes conflicting perspectives of what citizenship means within definitions or understandings of residency and permanency in the immigrants’ collective imagination.

Stacey J.T. Hust (communication), with doctoral students Becky Vandevord and Yvonnes Chen, will present a paper entitled “Still Much to Learn from Peter Jennings: Newspapers’ Missed Opportunity to Educate the Public” at the annual convention of the International Communication Association. Hust will also present “Boys’ Use of Mass Media in Construction of a New Masculinity Typology” at the annual Gender Development Research Conference.

The Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences welcomes Dr. Lori Rowlett to WSU. Rowlett is a visiting professor in disability studies here for the remainder of this academic year and possibly the summer. She has taught women’s studies for nearly two decades at seven universities. She is currently an associate professor in religious studies and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, where she has taught for the past eight years. Her research program and teaching experience intersect a number of disciplinary areas, primarily feminist theory, disability studies, literature, and religious studies. She has presented numerous papers at conferences on disability studies. In addition to continuing her research this spring, the department hopes she will be able to teach a section of a disability studies course in the 2006 summer session. Rowlett understands disability studies philosophy and issues from both a personal and a professional perspective.

In December, the Coeur d’Alene Symphony performed a new orchestral arrangement by Greg Yasinitsky (Meyer Distinguished Professor of Music) of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” commissioned especially for the symphony’s holiday concert. In January, Yasinitsky’s composition “Squirrelly” was performed by the New Music Reading Band at the conference of the International Association for Jazz Education in New York City. In February, Yasinitsky was a featured saxophone soloist with the Spokane Symphony in the first movement of “Escapades,” a suite by John Williams drawn from his film score for Catch Me If You Can, and a number of Yasinitsky’s compositions for jazz band were performed by the New Music Reading Band at the conference of the Washington Music Educators Association.

Leslie Power (speech and hearing sciences, WSU Spokane) received a Schools Conference grant from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association to compare outcomes in three early childhood phonology programs.

Brigit Farley (history, WSU Tri-Cities) delivered a paper at the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies’ national convention in Salt Lake City in November. The paper, “Pragmatist amidst the Polemics: Oleg I. Zhurin’s Post-Soviet Projects in Moscow, 1991–Present,” was part of a panel entitled “Restoration as a Bridge between the Soviet Past and the Future.”

Nicolas K. Kiessling (professor emeritus, English) gave a paper on the fiction of Abdellatif Akbib at “Voices of Tangier: An International Conference,” held in Tangier, Morocco, in January 2006. This paper has also been chosen to be published in a special issue of the Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Intellectual and Cultural Studies. Akbib, a novelist and short story writer teaching at Abdelmalek Essaadi University in Tetouan, Morocco, will be a Fulbright visitor in American studies at WSU from September to November 2006.

Photo: Marina Tolmacheva with Richard LeBaron Marina Tolmacheva (history), who recently began an appointment as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the American University of Kuwait (AUK), has just been appointed acting president of the university, in addition to her duties as dean. She is pictured here with the U.S. ambassador to Kuwait, the Hon. Richard LeBaron; the photo was taken February 19 at AUK.

Faculty in Print

Todd Butler’s (English) essay “Image, Rhetoric, and the Politics of the Early Thomas Hobbes” has been accepted by the Journal of the History of Ideas and will be published in July 2006.

Buddy Levy’s (English) essay “The Singletrack to Paradise” has been accepted for publication in the May/June Fly Fishing 2006 issue of Hooked on the Outdoors magazine, a national publication. It’s a lyrical rumination on using mountain bike to approach remote fly fishing areas. Levy’s essay “Meditation on Silver Creek” has been accepted for publication in Sun Valley Magazine; it will appear in June 2006.

J.P. Garofalo (psychology, WSU Vancouver), Heidi Hamann (psychology), Kevin Ashworth (B.S. ’05, psychology), and Andrew Baum have an article titled “Stress and Life Quality in African American Cancer Survivors” in press with Ethnicity & Disease.

Jana Argersinger’s (English) essay “Where in the Wide, Wide World Is Susan Warner?” has been published in Scribner’s American History through Literature, 1820–1870, edited by Robert Sattelmeyer and Janet Gabler-Hover. This three-volume set, as the publisher describes it, offers original essays (rather than encyclopedia entries) on a wide range of literary works “as cultural and historical documents,” aiming to “cultivate critical skills in reading texts from various perspectives, including aesthetic, biographical, social, historical, racial, and gendered.” Coming soon to a shelf in Holland!

Richard King (comparative ethnic studies) recently edited a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport 23(2) entitled “Other Peoples’ Games: Indigenous Peoples and Sport in North America,” in which he published the introduction and the article “On Being a Warrior: Race, Gender, and American Indian Imagery in Sport.”

Fritz Blackwell (professor emeritus, history) has published two articles in Education about Asia, “Twentieth-Century India: An Overview” 10(2) and “EAA Interview with Romila Thapar” 10(3).

An article by George Kennedy (English), “One English Department’s Weathering of a Perfect Storm,” was published in the fall 2005 issue of The Department Chair: A Resource for Academic Administrators.

Lisa Fournier (psychology), Tracy Ryan-Borchers (Ph.D. ’04, nutrition), Linda Robison (health policy and administration), Matthew Wiediger (M.S. candidate, psychology), Jean Soon Park, Boon Chew, Michelle McGuire (all food science and human nutrition), David Sclar, Tracy Skaer (both health policy and administration), and Kathy Beerman (food science and human nutrition) have an article, “The Effects of Soy Milk and Isoflavone Supplements on Cognitive Performance in Healthy, Postmenopausal Women,” in press with the Journal of Nutrition, Health, and Aging. Ryan-Borchers, Park, Chew, McGuire, Fournier, and Beerman have a second article in press with the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition entitled “Soy Isoflavones Modulate Immune Function in Healthy Postmenopausal Women.”

Joddy Murray’s (English, WSU Tri-Cities) book manuscript, Non-Discursive Rhetorics: Image and Affect in Multimodal Composition, has been accepted for publication with SUNY Press (due out in 2007).

An article by Jolene D. Smyth (Ph.D. candidate, sociology), Don A. Dillman (sociology), Leah Melani Christian (Ph.D. candidate, sociology), and Michael J. Stern (Ph.D. candidate, sociology), “Comparing Check-All and Forced-Choice Question Formats in Web Surveys,” will appear in the spring 2006 issue of Public Opinion Quarterly. An article by Stern and Dillman, “Community Participation, Social Ties, and Use of the Internet,” has been accepted for publication in City and Community, a journal of the American Sociological Association.

Nancy Potter’s (speech and hearing sciences) article “Power and Precision Grip Force Control in Three- to Five-Year-Old Children: Velocity Control Precedes Amplitude Control in Development” is forthcoming in the journal Experimental Brain Research.

Julie Krivsky (Ph.D. ’01, psychology), Erin Stoffel (Ph.D. ’04, psychology), Jean Sumner (Ph.D. candidate, psychology), Bryce Inman, and Rebecca Craft (psychology) have an article in press with Behavioural Pharmacology titled “Role of VTA, PAG, and PBN in Morphine’s Discriminative Stimulus Effects in the Rat.”

Student Activities and Awards

An article by Chris Allan (Ph.D. candidate, history) will appear in the spring issue of the journal of the Alaska Historical Society, Alaska History. The article is titled “Symbolic Acts and the Claiming of Alaska” and examines the use of “symbolic acts of possession” used by the Spanish, British, French, and Russians as they competed for dominance of the coast of Alaska and British Columbia in the eighteenth century. Each had their own ritual acts used to symbolically claim vast stretches of territory based upon medieval traditions and more modern innovation. Allan also addresses indigenous concepts of ownership along the North Pacific coast and Native American reactions to the intruders.

Daniela Rumpf (M.F.A. candidate) has been selected to exhibit her work in the North American Graduate Art Survey at the University of Minnesota’s Katherine E. Nash Gallery in Minneapolis during the months of June and July.

Armand Garcia’s (Ph.D. candidate, history) peer-reviewed article “Situating Martí in a Global Context: The Bhagavad-Gita’s Wisdom in the Works of Cuba’s Preeminent Patriot and Poet” will appear in July in the Latin American Literary Review 67.

Benedict J. Colombi (Ph.D. candidate, anthropology) has accepted a tenure-track position in sociocultural anthropology from the Department of Anthropology at Idaho State University, beginning July 1, 2006. He successfully defended and filed his dissertation, “The Nez Perce Tribe vs. Elite-Directed Development in the Lower Snake River Basin: The Struggle to Breach the Dams and Save the Salmon,” January 17 and 19, respectively, and he will be awarded his Ph.D. in anthropology this May.
Colombi has also been invited to participate in the 2006 Society for Applied Anthropology annual meeting in Vancouver, B.C., March 28 through April 2. He will present a paper on the Nez Perce Tribe and the social, environmental, and economic impacts of large dams in the Lower Snake River Basin in the organized panel “Contemplating, Negotiating, Facilitating: Indigenous Peoples and Capital-Intensive Resource Extraction,” hosted by the Political Ecology Society, and he is discussant for the organized panel “New Coyote Stories: Persistence of Indigenous Identities and Resistance to Acculturation in Many Places.”

Saxophonist Chris Siegmund, a junior music major who studies with Greg Yasinitsky (music), was the second place winner of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) Northwest Regional Solo Competition. He was selected as an alternate for the MTNA National Competition and was the first place winner of the Washington State Solo Competition.

Xianghong Feng, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Anthropology under the direction of John H. Bodley, has received the annual Peter K. New Award for student research in the applied social and behavioral sciences by the Society for Applied Anthropology (SAA). The award, which includes a trophy, a cash prize of $1,000, and travel funds to attend the annual meetings of the SAA, is made in honor of the sociologist–anthropologist Peter K. New, former president of the SAA. Feng’s winning paper reported on research she conducted to explore the effects of tourism on Hmong people in one region of her native China.

Valerie Powell’s (M.F.A. candidate) work will be included in the North American Graduate Art Survey Exhibition, June 13 through July 14 at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery on the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Powell was also accepted to the Montana Artists Refuge summer residency program and offered a partial scholarship to attend during the month of May 2006.

WSU Press Releases Alumna’s Book

Cover of Forbidden Red Washington State University Press has released the edited version of Kathey-Lee Galvin’s (Ph.D. ’03, anthropology) dissertation under the title Forbidden Red: Widowhood in Urban Nepal. Galvin, a former Fulbright fellow, received a WSU Outstanding Graduate Author Award for her dissertation. The award included the publication of her work.

Galvin’s manuscript was selected for the 2003 award because of the interest of the topic, which has few published studies, and because it was very readable and strongly researched.

In Nepal, red symbolizes life, vibrancy, and passion—a color and existence that is often denied to widows. By the time her husband’s funeral fire is extinguished, the woman as wife no longer exists. Her separation from both family and society has begun. Galvin traveled to urban Nepal to interview widows of various ages, castes, religions, and circumstances.

The compelling stories of these women vividly portray the plight of widows in Nepal. Applying kinship modeling and practice theory to an examination of widow rituals, residence choices, and religion, Galvin analyzed how widows are rejected, the choices available to them, and the survival strategies they employ.

Available in paperback, Forbidden Red is 176 pages and retails for $18.95. It is available at bookstores or can be ordered directly plus shipping from WSU Press by calling 800-354-7360 or online at http://wsupress.wsu.edu.

WSU to Host Conference on Latinos and Latinas in the Pacific Northwest March 4

WSU will host “El Otro Norte: Raza, Race, and Resistance in the Pacific Northwest,” an all-day conference on the Latinos and Latinas in the Pacific Northwest, March 4 at the Smith Center for Undergraduate Education.

A complete schedule of the conference events and locations can be found at http://www.josealamillo.com/latinonorthwest.htm.

“The Latino/a population in the Pacific Northwest, which includes Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, has more than doubled in the last decade, growing faster in each state than any other racial/ethnic group,” said José Manuel Alamillo (comparative ethnic studies). “These growing population numbers, however, have not translated into greater political and economic power, higher educational achievement rates, easier access to health care, or more attention by researchers.”

Devon Peña (University of Washington) will deliver the keynote address, “Indigenous Diasporas and the Future of Eco-Justice in North America.” The author of Mexican Americans and the Environment: Tierra y Vida will discuss his recent work on transnational indigenous communities and their “place-making” practices in Mexico and the United States transforming vernacular landscapes through urban agriculture. Peña will also discuss the implications of the indigenous diaspora for the future of the environmental justice movement in Latina/o communities of the Pacific Northwest and the United States in general.

“Devon Peña is the nation’s foremost expert on environmental racism as it pertains to Latino/a community,” Alamillo said.

The closing plenary will feature newly published research and explore the future direction of Chicano/a studies in the Pacific Northwest. Marcos Pizarro (San Jose State University) will discuss his new book, Chicanas and Chicanos in School: Racial Profiling, Identity Battles, and Empowerment. The book examines racial identity formation as a crucial variable in Chicana/o students’ success or failure in public schools of East Los Angeles and rural Washington state.

Jerry Garcia (Michigan State University) and Gilberto Garcia (Eastern Washington University) will discuss their edited volume Memory, Community, and Activism: Mexican Migration and Labor in the Pacific Northwest. Eleven essays by leading scholars on the Mexican experience in the Northwest shed new light on immigration/migration, the Bracero program, the Catholic Church, race and race relations, Mexican culture, unionization, and Chicana feminism. Maria Cuevas, one of the contributors, will discuss farm worker organizers in Washington State.

The conference, which is sponsored by the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Pacific Northwest FOCO chapter and the Latino/a Northwest Research Symposium, will also include panels and roundtables on immigration, citizenship, education, environmental racism, ethnic identity, literature, film and popular culture, electoral politics, grassroots community organizing, and coalition building.

“WSU recently became a Hispanic Serving Institution partner, the only four-year public university in Washington state to do so. This means that WSU will dedicate more resources toward increasing the recruitment and retention of Latino/a students, faculty, and staff,” Alamillo said.

WSU’s Mock Trial Team Prepares for National Competition

With a solid showing at the Portland Regional Qualifier Tournament February 10–11, WSU’s Mock Trial Team, for the first time ever, has won the distinction of an invitation to compete at the American Mock Trial Association’s (AMTA) national tournament, hosted by Stetson Law School in St. Petersburg, Fla., March 10–12. WSU took two teams to the Portland competition. The eight members of the winning team are Tristan Bullington (senior, philosophy), Sheila Gluzer (senior, criminal justice and sociology), Robert Colbert (junior, agribusiness), Kari Dixon (sophomore, political science), Amy DeSantis (senior, history), Neil Wilson (junior, philosophy), Annabel Defty (junior, philosophy), and Gordon Peterson (sophomore, philosophy).

“There were twenty-one teams from nine schools at the regional competition,” explained Mitchell Pickerill (political science), WSU’s mock trial coach. According to Pickerill, the annual powerhouse schools are Stanford, Berkeley, and Gonzaga; WSU was the only school other than those three to receive a bid to nationals. Bullington won an “Outstanding Attorney Award,” the first time a WSU student has won the distinction, and the WSU team was also named runner-up for the “Spirit of AMTA Award,” which recognizes teams that demonstrate justice, civility, and fair play, values AMTA extols.

Mock trial participation at WSU is an extracurricular activity and, according to Pickerill, a big commitment. “The students meet every Tuesday from 5:00–8:00 p.m. beginning in September,” Pickerill said. “They had to learn the facts of this hypothetical kidnapping case, courtroom decorum, and relevant law. They made a trip to Spokane in November to scrimmage teams from Eastern Washington University, then attended an invitational tournament at Gonzaga Law School in January. In my experience, it is rare to see students work so hard for something whose reward is really just a sense of personal accomplishment and pride.”

Mock Trial Team trips are made possible through funding and support from a broad section of the University and community. The team credits the College of Liberal Arts and the Departments of Political Science, History, and Philosophy for financial support. Denise Mowder, a graduate student in criminal justice and former prosecutor, served as attorney coach for the team and will travel to nationals. The team also credits the expertise of Tim Gresbeck, a local attorney, while Dan Donlan, a WSU alumnus and attorney at Lane Powell in Seattle, is credited with support the team calls “instrumental.”

Philosophy Professor to Receive Faculty Achievement Award

Photo: Joseph Keim Campbell Joseph Keim Campbell, associate professor of philosophy, was selected as recipient of the 2005–2006 Marian E. Smith Faculty Achievement Award. The $5,000 award recognizes unusually significant and meritorious achievement in teaching during the academic year, including successful and innovative performance in instruction.

Campbell, who joined the Department of Philosophy in 1996, received the award for his exceptional accomplishment in undergraduate instruction. In the 2004–2005 academic year, he conducted a seminar in which students interacted with internationally known philosophers whose work they were studying. The students met the philosophers at the Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference hosted by WSU and the University of Idaho.

After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University, Campbell earned advanced degrees in philosophy from the University of Arizona. He has an impressive record of publication, has been the principal investigator on more than a dozen grants, and has been invited to make many professional presentations at national and international conferences on philosophy.

Watch WSU Today for announcements of other university award recipients.

Upcoming Events

WSU–ICU Peace and Security Research Partnership presents

The Survey of Attitudes and Global Engagement (SAGE)

Professor Andrew Appleton
Professor Travis Ridout
Department of Political Science

Wednesday, March 1
1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
CUE 512
All are welcome to attend.

The SAGE is a joint project between International Christian University (Tokyo, Japan) and Washington State University to investigate individual attitudes towards concepts such as peace, security, risk, and community by conducting public opinion surveys in Japan and the United States. Through this comparative study, the research team hopes to contribute a new understanding of the manner in which individuals integrate ideas of peace and absence of conflict into their views about politics and collective action.

For further information contact Noriko Kawamura, Department of History, at nkawamura@wsu.edu. SAGE is sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts, the Foley Institute, International Programs, and the Department of History.

WSU Showcase March 24

9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | Bohler Gym
Academic Showcase
Celebrate the achievements of individuals engaged in WSU’s central mission: the advancement of scholarship, research, and the arts. Work will be on display for the campus community to view.

12:15–1:45 p.m. | CUB Ballroom
Distinguished Faculty Address Luncheon
Open to all faculty and staff, this luncheon will feature the 2006 Distinguished Faculty Address. Reservations are required and space is limited.

3:30–5:00 p.m. | Lewis Alumni Centre
Legacy of Excellence Retirees Reception
Make plans to join President Rawlins and Provost Bates at Washington State University’s first reception honoring our retirees.

5:30 p.m. | Beasley Coliseum
Celebrating Excellence Recognition Banquet
Celebrating Excellence honors the outstanding achievements of faculty and staff. The newest recipients of the Eminent Faculty Award, the Sahlin Faculty Excellence Awards, the Marian E. Smith Faculty Achievement Award, the President’s Employee Excellence Awards, and the presenter of the Distinguished Faculty Address are honored at this banquet. In addition, this year’s regents professors, newly tenured and promoted faculty, and new patent awardees will also be spotlighted during this special evening.
   Jazz Northwest, WSU’s faculty jazz ensemble, will be the featured entertainers during the banquet, performing two selections, one of which will be “Reverend Jack,” a new piece by Horace-Alexander Young (music).
   Social begins at 5:30 p.m.
   Recognition banquet begins at 6:30 p.m.
   Reservations are required and space is limited.

Reservations will be accepted at the WSU Showcase Web site through March 15 or until capacity is reached.

Conference on Race & Ethnicity
Friday, April 14
8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Cosponsored by the College of Education, School of Communication, Department of Sociology, and Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies.

This interdisciplinary conference features panel presentations by WSU faculty, who will discuss original research on issues of race/ethnicity and work, gender, globalization, media, sport, popular culture, and pedagogy. The purposes of the conference are to highlight current research on race and ethnicity at WSU, stimulate dialogue across departments and colleges, and create opportunities for future collaborative projects. All WSU students and faculty are invited. RSVP by March 31 to merriam@wsu.edu.

Save the Date for Tom Brokaw

Tom Brokaw will accept the Edward R. Murrow Award for Lifetime Achievement in Broadcasting on April 18. The award presentation followed by Brokaw’s acceptance speech will take place at 7:30 p.m. in the Beasley Performing Arts Coliseum on the Pullman campus. The event is free and open to the public.