Professional notes
Jane Canney, Student Affairs, was elected to the Hmong American Partnership board of trustees. The board is composed of Hmong and non-Hmong members with a balanced representation of men and women with a Hmong majority. The group's purpose is to create a partnership of resourceful Hmong and committed Americans to educate, give support and provide positive role models so as to enable Hmong refugees to more fully participate with greater success in American life.
Dr. Thomas Hickson, Geology Department, was invited to speak in the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Geology Department colloquium on March 11. His talk was titled "Using a Deformable Swimming Pool to Understand Alluvial Stratigraphy: Jurassic Tank and LAB (Leeder, Allen, Bridge) Models." It focused on the processes that govern the shape of river deposits and has implications for oil exploration and production, as well as issues surrounding groundwater flow and contamination.
Dr. Lily Hwa, History Department, published three articles in the five-volume Berkshire World History Encyclopedia in December 2004. The encyclopedia was edited by Dr. William NcNeill, one of the most eminent world historians, and a board of several other noted historians. Hwa's articles are "Tang Taizong," "Laozi," and "Han Wudi."
Dr. Mary Reichardt, Catholic Studies and English departments, was invited to give a presentation in the annual Catholic Studies Lecture Series at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio. Her lecture was titled "Imagining Faith: The Enduring Vitality of the Catholic Literary Tradition."
James Rogers, Center for Irish Studies, is the author of an article, "The Journey Itself: How Essayists Avoid Being Bores," in the Journal of College Writing (Vol. 3, December 2004). The article considers the tension that writers feel between a need to stay open-need and a need to reach closure, using essays by E.B. White, Annie Dillard and James Alan McPherson as case studies.
Dr. Susan Webster, Art History Department, was awarded fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Fulbright to support sabbatical research next year in Ecuador.