Developments in SBS
Each SBS unit has chosen a departmental update to share with alumni and friends of the College.
GRD Professor Connie Woodhouse with research assistants and students near Monarch Pass, Colo.; they are getting ready to sample dead and living trees for a dendroclimatic study. Photo by Mark Losleben.
Anthropology
Last summer, the Department of Anthropology received a $2 million donation from the Salus Mundi Foundation in recognition of its excellence in teaching and research. Several initiatives will be supported by this gift, including student scholarships and faculty and student research travel. Within the area of student support is a scholarship for students of applied anthropology, one of the fastest-growing areas of research and employment in anthropology. This award will be made in conjunction with the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology.
Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology (BARA)
BARA has recently concluded an agreement with the Organisation du Mise en Valeur du Fleuve du Sénégal (OMVS), the multinational authority that manages the Senegal River through four west African countries (Guinea, Mali, Mauritania and Senegal). OMVS has committed $1.5 million over the next year to support the development of a dynamic decision- support system that will assist the OMVS in its effort to promote socio-economic development among the millions of Africans dependent upon the waters of the Senegal River. BARA, through its Africa Program, will manage this project, which includes the participation of several other departments from SBS, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Engineering.
Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS)
CLAS has received a Department of Education Title VI grant, which will allow the Center to renew its focus on the U.S.-Mexico border, enhance its undergraduate program, and promote international education and study abroad. The Center will be offering a new freshman colloquium course, as well as other seminars focusing on border studies. Last year, CLAS was privileged to present the Governor Raúl Castro Scholarship to two undergraduate honors students, Melissa Pitts and former Magellan Circle scholar Deyanira Nevarez. This year, CLAS is excited to announce production work on a documentary film about Raúl Castro, Arizona’s first and only Hispanic Governor. In addition, the Center has named their main conference room in honor of the Governor.
Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES)
This past fall, CMES offered many Middle East-related outreach activities for K-12 teachers. The Center created CDs of lesson plans to give to teachers, collaborated with the Center for Latin American Studies on an educator workshop on natural resources and conflict, and put together an extensive lending library of materials. CMES also sponsored visiting author Ibtisam Barakat’s presentations at the UA bookstore and two area schools, several presentations at the National Council for the Social Studies in San Diego, and a collaborative program with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Upcoming events include two spring workshops for teachers — one of them in rural southeastern Arizona, and an intensive summer institute for teachers and high school students.
Cognitive Science
The Cognitive Science Program is at the center of a new interdisciplinary effort at the UA, called Mind, Brain and Society. As behavioral and brain scientists gain new understandings of the human mind and its neurological underpinnings, they must be increasingly aware of how their findings could and should influence thinking in related domains, including medicine, business and the law. The Cognitive Science Program has begun a series of workshops and talks to explore these issues and how the UA could become the home of the Center for the Study of Mind, Brain and Society. The first lecture, held in the fall of 2007, was about biomedical ethics in the neurosciences.
Communication
The Department of Communication’s graduate programs in interpersonal communication and mass communication are ranked in the top 15 and top 20, respectively, in the United States. The department strives to maintain this excellence by recruiting top graduate students and providing them with the best training and research experiences possible. To facilitate this goal, the department has recently developed a Ph.D. dissertation scholarship program to provide research funding to students who plan to conduct cutting-edge research for their Ph.D. dissertation. These scholarships are particularly effective at enabling top students to design and conduct research projects that will significantly advance our understanding of human communication processes.
Geography and Regional Development (GRD)
Four GRD Ph.D. students received prestigious Fulbright-Hays scholarships to support their international field research during 2007-08. Heidi Hausermann, Katie Meehan, Brian Marks and Sara Smith received funds for between six to 12 months. Hausermann is studying how small-scale coffee farmers have organized to secure rights to natural resources in the wake of the coffee market collapse in Veracruz. Meehan is investigating the socio-ecological impacts of recycled wastewater in Tijuana. Marks is studying the role of household economies in export-oriented shrimp aquaculture in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. And Smith will explore religious differences in marriage and birth control decisions among women in Ladakh, northern India.
Planning Degree Program in GRD
Planning students working with the U.S. National Park Service ran a Foundation Planning Workshop in El Paso for Chamizal National Monument, a binational park that celebrates cultural exchange. This monument commemorates the diplomatic resolution of a long-standing boundary dispute. Another student project — a redevelopment plan for Bridgewater Channel at Lake Havasu — won honorable mention at the annual Arizona Planning Association meetings. And finally, as part of student and faculty research into policy barriers to the development of green infrastructure, Planning organized two seminars on sustainable planning for professionals. The seminar “The Green Building Revolution” looked at trends in commercial and residential real estate.
History
Paul Milliman, a new assistant professor in the department, received his Ph.D. from Cornell University, where he specialized in Medieval European history. His dissertation, “Disputing Identity, Territoriality, and Sovereignty: The Place of Pomerania in the Social Memory of the Kingdom of Pomerania and the Teutonic Ordensstaat,” examines the origins of Polish national identity amid the religious conflicts of the 14th century on the Baltic frontier. Milliman also has expertise in the history of medieval games, including chess, and pre-modern Islamic history. He will teach a variety of courses in medieval and early modern history and contribute to the work of the Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies.
Journalism
The Gannett Foundation has continued its commitment to the Department of Journalism with a $10,000 grant for curriculum development, travel and technical support. The revolution in digital communication technology during the past decade has compelled journalism programs around the country to take major steps to revise and update curricula. This grant boosts Gannett’s giving to the UA journalism department to more than $70,000. The funding will cover travel costs for faculty to attend conferences where curriculum development is the central focus. The additional technical support enables the department to maintain the hardware and software needed to continue providing students with the opportunity to learn professional skills utilizing multiple media technologies.
Judaic Studies
Beth Alpert Nakhai, associate professor in the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies, spent a month at the William F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. She was an associate senior fellow, and her work focused on the publication of the Tell el-Wawiyat Excavation Project. Tell el-Wawiyat is a small Bronze and Iron Age site in Israel’s Lower Galilee, particularly important for its contribution to the problem of the transition from the Canaanite to the Israelite period, and to the question of Israelite ethnicity. This excavation is co-sponsored by the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies.
Late Medieval and Reformation Studies
The High Country Seminar, hosted by Bazy Tankersley at her scenic ranch in Williams, Ariz., offered participants a weekend of historical lectures and lively discussion. The distinguished speakers included Professors Tracy Fessenden (ASU, Religious Studies), Susan Karant-Nunn, Roger Nichols and Thomas Brady, Jr., who is the first Heiko A. Oberman Visiting Professor of Late Medieval and Reformation History. In other good news for the Division, an anonymous donor has renewed the offer to match gifts to the endowment of the Oberman Chair/Library for a period of two years, beginning in August 2007, to an aggregate maximum of $300,000. The successful completion of this challenge gift will advance the endowment to within reach of its ultimate goal of $2 million.
Linguistics
Rapid growth of modern electronic communication, particularly the Internet, has greatly increased the demand for professional problem-solvers in the domains of information science, inspiring UA linguistics faculty to develop a Human Language Technology (HLT) Master of Science program. Aiming for a four student incoming class, HLT Director Sandiway Fong is excited by the program’s immediate popularity. Linguistics Ph.D. students also have the option to receive an M.S. in HLT along the way to the Ph.D. The new HLT program is one of four graduate programs in linguistics you can support — just check “Linguistics” on the enclosed envelope.
Mexican American Studies & Research Center (MASRC)
In 2004, Bob Majors, along with his son, Bob Jr., established a scholarship in MASRC in memory of his wife, Renée Jácome Majors, to support undergraduate students. This fall, Majors met four recipients of the Renée Jácome Majors scholarship at a lunch at the Arizona Inn. Majors spoke to the students about his wife, telling them about her passion for life. He related the problems Renée encountered with tolerance when they moved to Alabama, and how important it is for the students to have an open mind as they graduate and go into the world. Majors said this scholarship was his way of memorializing Renée’s spirit in a way that helps others.
Near Eastern Studies (NES)
Two new dual degree programs in Near Eastern Studies capitalize on its interdisciplinary nature and the increased interest in Middle East studies. The dual Ph.D. program with the anthropology department results in a Ph.D. in each program and fully prepares students for an academic career in either discipline. The dual M.A. with the School of Information Resources and Library Science prepares graduates for careers with a Middle East focus in libraries, archives, publishing, the Internet and technology companies.
Philosophy
Professor Michael Gill serves as a member of the Medical Ethics Committee at the University Medical Center. In that capacity, he has helped construct several crucially important hospital policies concerning patient care. He helped write the hospital’s “Allow Natural Death” form, which gives patients the opportunity to forgo aggressive treatment at the end of life. Gill helped draft the hospital’s policy on organ donation. He was part of a team that constructed a plan for dealing with large-scale medical disasters (such as occurred in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina). Gill has also worked with local hospice patients.
Political Science
Project Vote Smart, a national non-partisan research organization, now has a branch at The University of Arizona. Project Vote Smart, referred to as the “Voter’s Self-Defense System,” has affiliations with the College of SBS and the political science department to provide UA students with the opportunity to study practical American electoral politics. Interns and student volunteers compile legislative voting records, congressional ratings and other factual data on candidates and incumbents. Project Vote Smart and the political science department are also sponsoring forums on American democracy and elections. Call (520) 621-7600 for more information.
Psychology
New Professor Gene Alexander, who has held positions at the National Institutes of Health and Arizona State University, employs sophisticated brain imaging and neuropsychological technologies in his ongoing research on Alzheimer’s disease and memory aging. He is a distinguished contributor to the state-wide Alzheimer’s Disease Center, and he will be joining the newly established Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute. Alexander is initiating a new NIH-funded study of memory and brain physiology changes following a physical exercise program for older adults. Alexander adds to the department’s established research and teaching strengths in the clinical and cognitive neurosciences, aging and Alzheimer’s disease.
SBS Research Institute (SBSRI)
The SBSRI Summer Proposal Development Program teaches students and faculty how to develop winning grant proposals. Participants receive small grants to take grant writing workshops, write draft proposals, review each others’ proposals, collect preliminary results and submit their improved proposals to outside agencies. The seven graduate students and seven faculty members who took part in the summer 2006 program have already won over half a million dollars worth of grants since taking the training. On an investment of less than $45,000, that’s a 1,000% return. In addition, the grants make valuable research possible. Budget cuts are threatening this successful program. Please help SBS Research Institute keep it alive.
School of Information Resources and Library Science (SIRLS)
SIRLS is making plans for ongoing capacity-building and financial support for the internationally acclaimed Knowledge River center for the study of Hispanic and American Indian library and information issues, now in its sixth year. With Knowledge River’s third round of grant funding coming to a close this summer, SIRLS is focusing on developing new sources of support that will sustain critically needed scholarships as well as expand faculty and administrative resources. Knowledge River’s highly regarded national advisory committee met this fall to welcome several new committee members and to brainstorm how to shape the program in the coming years.
Sociology
Assistant Professor Kraig Beyerlein is conducting research on humanitarian aid and advocacy efforts in southern Arizona for immigrants from Central America and Mexico. His research focuses on two core questions. First, why do some Arizona residents but not others participate in these efforts? He is particularly interested in the role of religious convictions and practices for explaining this differentiation. His second question is about the consequences of these efforts. Among other things, he will examine the personal transformations of activists and how the humanitarian aid and advocacy groups shape how the public views immigrants from these countries. This project has received both internal and external funding.
The Southwest Center
Two books in the Southwest Center (SWC) Series edited by SWC Director Joseph Wilder at the UA Press have won 2007 Arizona Book Awards: Sunshot: Peril and Wonder in the Gran Desierto, by SWC research associate Bill Broyles (photographs by Michael Berman), won the “Best Embodying Arizona Book and Best Nature/Environment Book;” and Picturing Arizona: The Photographic Record of the 1930s, edited by UA historian Katherine Morrissey and Kirsten Jensen, won honorable mention for “Best History/Political Book.” In addition, SWC research social scientist David Yetman won a Rocky Mountain region Emmy award for a segment of “Arizona Illustrated,” produced locally by KUAT-TV.
Southwest Institute for Research on Women (SIROW)
SIROW is excited to be working with the Women’s Foundation of Southern Arizona to develop and disseminate a report on the status of women in southern Arizona. This report will include data on education attainment, poverty, labor force participation and earnings, health and safety, and political involvement of women and girls in Cochise, Pima and Santa Cruz Counties. The report will be a useful tool for researchers, policy makers and others who are interested in the existing inequities and progress of women and girls in southern Arizona.
Women’s Studies
This year, the Department of Women’s Studies is working hard to sell the remaining naming opportunities in the Women’s Plaza of Honor (WPOH). As part of this final campaign — which they hope will bring their endowment to $1 million — they are holding “house parties” at the homes of donors. Those house parties introduce people from the community to the department and the WPOH. Cathy Mendelsohn, Pam Grissom and Betsey Bayless have all hosted parties. President Robert Shelton also hosted a men’s breakfast at the Women’s Plaza of Honor on Nov. 1; prominent men in the community were asked to honor the women in their lives or to donate to the department’s ongoing effort to raise $25,000 to dedicate an arch to Arizona’s Native American women.
For more information, contact Lori Harwood at 520-626-3846 • Editor