Department News - October 2009
Art and Art History
Josh Jalbert returns as a 1yr sabbatical replacement in Photography. Michael Crane, new Schneider Museum Director, joins the Center for the Visual Arts team. We've already started working on future collaborations between the Art Dept. and the Museum, including an exhibit to accompany the SOU-Universidad de Guanajuato Anniversary celebration and the art faculty exhibition in the spring. This year we begin the next phase of developing the Digital Media Foundations collaboration with the Communications and Computer Sciences Departments, adding time-based media (e.g. video, film), to the interdisciplinary curriculum.
Biology
The Master's in Environmental Education program has rolled out their new curriculum this year which includes close ties to Deer Creek Center for Field Research and Education (DCC). DCC, located in the Illinois Valley, is a recent endeavor between SOU Foundation and Siskiyou Field Institute. We plan to offer field courses at DCC starting next summer.
Planning for several celebrations/conferences is underway including Darwin's 200th birthday this February, the Third Conference on Ecology of the Siskiyous in late May at DCC, and the regional conference of the Pacific Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in June 2010 at SOU.
Lastly, congratulations are extended to Drs. Michael Parker and Roger Christianson who will be enjoying sabbatical leave this year, and we look forward to permanently filling our half-time Professional Track position in human anatomy and physiology.
Chemistry, Physics, Materials, and Engineering
The Chemistry program has Hala Schepmann returning after a very successful sabbatical leave in 07/08. Lynn Kirms is on leave for 08/09, and we are very excited to have Dr. John Pearson join us as adjunct assistant professor. John received his Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley and will teach our advanced NMR course in the spring (in addition to numerous other teaching duties throughout the year.)
In the Physics, Materials Science and Engineering program, George Quainoo is the new coordinator. Peter Wu is on sabbatical for the 08/09 academic year at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. Panos Photinos has submitted a proposal to NSF titled "Electrical Conductance Study of Micellar Systems under Shear". George Quainoo, Ellen Siem and faculty from chemistry, biology, physics, and environmental studies plan to submit a proposal to NSF under the MRI program for a new Scanning Electron Microscope this academic year.
Communication
The Communication Department has been revising curriculum and is collaborating with the Art and Computer Sciences Departments on an introductory sequence of Digital Media Foundation courses. The Department is also planning a shift that will incorporate Journalism, Photojournalism, Video Production, and Film under one umbrella. It is an exciting time for us.
We are continuing to build community with our many students to help retention efforts. One way we have done this is by having an "All Majors" meeting which helped our students get to know each other, as well as our entire faculty and their research interests.
Alena Ruggerio is on sabbatical this year and is teaching in Greece. She keeps us up to date with a great weekly Blog. D.L. Richardson is serving as Chair of the Department this year and is excited about the opportunity.
Unfortunately, we experienced significant loss this summer when three of our students lost their lives in the Iron Complex fire helicopter crash in California. While we have honored their passing with several gatherings, including a memorial event this fall, it is still heart wrenching to accept the fact that such amazing individuals will not be physically with us. Their memories, however, will always be a part of this Department.
Computer Science
In October, Computer Science hosted the annual conference for the Northwest region of the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges. The keynote speaker was Dr. Barbara Simons, a national expert and critic of computerized voting machines. Dr. Tikekar, on leave of absence working on data mining for the IRS, and his research group recently met with the economic advisors for both Obama and McCain. Dr. Dan Harvey is just back from Canada training Native American educators how to use his ACORNS software program; its purpose is to support Native American tribal language restoration projects.
Criminology & Criminal Justice
CCJ started 2008-2009 with two new tenure track faculty who bring energy and expertise. The department continues to offer an emphasis in forensics and will be considering other curriculum emphases to anticipate the needs of our partner agencies in the criminal justice system. We are expanding our partnerships with community colleges so that students throughout Oregon and northern California can more easily transfer to SOU for degree completion. CCJ continues to be a strong, student-focused department with high academic standards and many extra-curricular opportunities such as the Lock-in, Pelican Bay Prison Tours, the Criminology Club, and an active national honor society.
Environmental Studies
The ES Department welcomes Dr. John Gutrich as a new faculty member and Chair; he is an environmental scientist working in the field of ecological economics with considerable experience in the interdisciplinary field of environmental studies. The ES department is submitting curriculum revisions this fall to augment the degree with a truly interdisciplinary ES core, provide substantive courses in key areas of environmental studies, and streamline the ES major to allow students more choice of course-work. The ES department continues to develop new applied ES courses, recruiting materials, and student outreach activities to grow enrollment. The ES department is also actively engaged with a campus-wide initiative to promote sustainability at SOU.
Health, Physical Education and Leadership
The HPEL faculty is looking forward to another exciting and full academic year. We are beginning our third term of two new programs in Outdoor Adventure Leadership; one is a minor and one is a "concentration" within the Health and PE major. Our numbers in both programs continue to grow. Some of the new class offerings include: Hiking/Backpacking, Whitewater Activities, Foundations in Outdoor Adventure Leadership, Outdoor Recreation Programming and the Environment, Adventure Based Facilitation, History of the Pacific Northwest Wilderness, and more. We are very excited and proud of these new programs and our ability to utilize the beautiful natural resources of our southern Oregon region. Our three other programs, the Health and PE major, the interdisciplinary major in Pre-Physical Therapy, and Military Science, continue to be strong as well.
History and Political Science
The HPS Department successfully completed a national search and welcomes Dr. Dustin Walcher who will be teaching U.S. and Latin American history. We are designing several new courses to build on our still new collaboration between history and political science. With the election season upon us Dr. Bill Hughes offered a public forum about the political impact of different outcomes. Dr. Gary Miller is deeply involved in documenting the history of the Amistad Program, the 40 year partnership with the Universidad de Guanajuato and the Sister City connections between Ashland and the city of Guanajuato.
Languages, Literature, and Philosophy
A new Master of Arts in Spanish Language Teaching was officially approved by the OUS board in September. This new program, conducted entirely at SOU's sister university, the Universidad de Guanajuato in Mexico, provides a unique curriculum to help Spanish teachers increase their linguistic and cultural competence while learning the most up to date second language acquisition theories and methodologies. The program draws Spanish teachers from around the country.
The department is looking at increasing the diversity of its language offerings through an affiliation with the National Association of Self-Instructional Language Programs. NASLIP provides support to establish cost-effective, self-instructional language programs in some of the less commonly taught languages, such as Chinese or Arabic. As the demand for greater foreign language proficiency continues to grow nationally, foreign language faculty will be working collaboratively with other faculty on campus to increase the language proficiency and global competency of our students.
Two new professional track Spanish faculty were added to the department this year: Viola Olsen, who has an Ed.M. from Oregon State University, and Brian Sullivan, who has a Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico.
Mathematics
Mathematics welcomes two new instructors this year, Nick Chura, from Portland State University, will be teaching a variety of precalculus and quantitative reasoning courses. Jim Hatton was most recently at College of the Siskiyous; he replaces Nancy Imig as our developmental mathematics specialist this year. Nancy returned to the mountain west and is teaching in Denver this year. In addition, Larry Shrewsbury is now a full-time instructor and continues to be a favorite of statistics students, to round out our instructor team. We are also searching for a mathematics educator to continue the department's strong contributions in K-12 teacher preparation. While much of our attention in recent years has been on hiring and integrating new faculty, we continue to keep our focus on meeting the mathematics needs our students, whether they want just one quantitative reasoning course or a sequence of courses to support their major, are preparing to enter the MAT program or majoring in mathematics. We want to meet their needs, helping them to achieve their educational and career goals.
Performing Arts
As of this year, two venerable and distinguished departments at SOU, Music and Theatre Arts, are uniting to form a dynamic new educational entity for the University - the Department of Performing Arts. Exciting developments are in the future for everyone involved as the two formerly separate departments come together and begin exploring new ways to enrich and broaden the scope of Performing Arts for the University. And in the next few years as the new department grows and matures, we'll be expanding our educational programs and increasing our production schedule to better serve the University and the general community at large.
At the helm of the new department is Noel Koran, Director. A Pacific Northwest native, he has spent his entire working life as an actor, opera singer, director, educator and producer, having worked professionally throughout the United States and Europe.
Performing Arts: Music
The Department of Music looks forward to another wonderful season of music. Exciting performances are planned by students, faculty, and guest artists. The SOU Chamber Choir, directed by Dr. Paul French, will tour Leipzig, Prague, and Berlin in March 2009. Our symphonic band has been invited to perform at the Oregon Music Educator's Annual Conference in Eugene in January, where Dr. Cindy Hutton will also give a lecture-presentation. In addition, new improvements to the recital hall floor and seating, practice room sound isolation, and dry-erase boards in all classrooms improve our outstanding facility. With Theatre Arts they are beginning a national search for the Director of Performing Arts, a new collaborative unit to be created in July 2009. Please visit our events page at Events Schedule for a current list of recitals.
Performing Arts: Theatre
The Theatre Arts program continues to attract an abundance of excellent students from both Oregon and out of state who are seeking hands-on learning in an active performance environment. This year, comedies and musical theatre pack the upcoming season on two stages with a wonderful mix of mayhem, magic and myth. For the season schedule, please call 541-552-6348 or visit sou.edu/theatre/calendar.
The Ashland Center for Theatre Studies completed its sixth year offering the Master of Theatre Studies degree for high school and community college teachers. Our partnership with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and other performance venues continues to grow in ways that strengthen our program and provide internship opportunities for students.
Two long-time faculty are retiring at the end of this academic year: Dale Luciano, directing faculty, and Dennis Smith, performance faculty. Both have directed a SOU production each year since 1985. Please don't miss their farewell productions - "Blithe Spirit" by Noël Coward and "Wild Oats" by John O'Keeffe.
Psychology
Lots of good news for Psychology! We have great new opportunities for our students including a dedicated Psychology Lab to better facilitate research. Dr. Mark Krause, who joined our faculty in 2007, is currently studying memory and metamemory processes in college student populations; he plans to extend his work into community settings, namely with elderly populations. Our Psychology Club and Psi Chi are seeing an upswing in student membership and participation and are collaboratively putting together an impressive schedule of guest lectures, discussions, and fun events for the upcoming year. Our Mental Health Counseling master's program continues to be successful in training future counselors and provides us with the opportunity to interact with graduate students. Overall, Psychology is moving forward and is constantly reassessing our role in our students' lives and future.
Social Sciences, Policy, & Culture
The faculty of Social Sciences, Policy, and Culture (SSPC) are adapting well to their newly merged state, and starting to make progress on some collaborative efforts. We are setting up an applied research institute as a way for faculty to combine their disciplinary expertise in projects for the larger community. These are likely to include policy and program evaluations, regionally-based planning and economic analyses, and archeological field studies at the outset. We are also at the early stages of developing some joint curricula around development (local to international), policy, and social action.
SSPC has experienced some staffing changes. Assistant Professor of Sociology Julie Kochanek resigned in August to take a position with an educational research firm in Illinois. We were fortunate to hire Eva Skuratowicz as a one-year visiting professor in Sociology, and hope to conduct a national search this year. Michael Niemann, a professor from Trinity University on leave and in the Ashland area, is teaching a few courses for us in the International Studies program.
Our faculty and students continue to be active in a variety of contexts. Students in International Studies and the SOU UN club organized a Model UN for regional high school students in October. Women's Studies students were interviewed recently by local television for a report on issues around women in the workforce. Four economics faculty put on a public panel to discuss the current economic situation, and we have another panel planned to examine some of the Oregon ballot measures. Jim Phillips took a group of students to Nicaragua for a summer course examining local cultural and economic issues combined with intensive language study.
Theatre Arts
Our program continues to attract an abundance of excellent students from both Oregon and out of state who are seeking hands-on learning in an active performance environment. The Ashland Center for Theatre Studies completed its 5th year of the Master of Theatre Studies program, has increased its retention ratio to near capacity and is receiving quite positive evaluations from participants. We will have six productions this year beginning with Anouilh's Ring Round the Moon and Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. Our partnership with OSF and other performance venues continue to grow in ways that strengthen our programs and opportunities for students.
In June, the Center for Shakespeare Studies moved from the Languages, Literature, and Philosophy Department to Theatre Arts. In anticipation of Dr. Alan Armstrong's retirement in December, we conducted a successful national search and will welcome Dr. Don Weingust as the new Coordinator of CSS in January 2009. There will be other organization changes next summer when we combine with the Music Department to create Performing Arts; a search for the new Director is just beginning.
We are poised to begin fund raising for our long awaited building expansion project and look forward to the realization of the much needed space for our students and faculty to increase our contribution to the life of the campus. Please visit our events page at Events Schedule for a current list of performances.