LAtimes October 2007 Issue

Dean's Message

Welcome back! Another academic year has begun with all the promise and activity that comes with it. Particularly promising are our new faculty, of course: elsewhere in this message you will read about our twenty-two new tenure-line faculty whom we are glad to welcome to the College this year.

One challenge before us this year is the development of departmental and College strategic plans as part of the university-wide strategic planning process. These plans in the past have always been helpful in guiding and focusing our efforts and, in that spirit, I am looking forward to the process this year. I have asked each department to prepare a strategic plan of no more than six pages focused on how the department expects to be better in five years and what actions need to be taken to make it so.

The financial picture looking ahead is tight, but that is always the case to a degree. In retrospect, I can now see that, over the past years, some of the very best decisions we made collectively occurred during times of severe budgetary pressure. As I stated in the memo that some of you may have seen on the planning process, within a framework that has emphasized a commitment to building a stronger faculty and improving graduate programs, we have always been forced to make difficult choices. However wrenching some of those decisions have been at the time, by almost any measure of quality, we have together made virtually all of our departments better than they were 10–15 years ago, and a significant number dramatically better. In the current environment we must continue to find ways to get better, and that will be the motivation behind our planning process.

One of the key strategic issues for almost all of our departments is funding their graduate programs. The cost of recruiting top students continues to increase. Some departments must, and all departments should, make some adjustments to insure that we do not lose any top students because of inadequate funding. By adjustments I mean that, either departments must pare down the size of their program by a few students in order to pay more competitive stipends to the rest, or must raise new income to support the existing number of students. In the face of increasing competition for top students as we attract more top applicants, this must be an important focus of strategic plans in departments with Ph.D. programs. We are asking all units to provide specific plans for revenue increases for this purpose and any other initiatives that the departments see as high priorities.

Even as we continue to seed new initiatives within and across departments, our highest priority must be continuing to strengthen our units and helping them move into leading positions in their disciplines. At the same time, we must be open to bold new ideas and opportunities that will allow us to build our units and the interaction among units. I am looking forward to seeing the ideas and plans that will come forward during this process and look forward to working with you to continue our progress toward being among the best.

Susan Welch

swelch@psu.edu

Faculty News

New Department Heads and Directors

Greg A. Eghigian, director, Science, Technology, and Society Program, and associate professor of history, and science, technology, and society.

Carolyn Sachs, head, Department of Women's Studies and professor of rural sociology, women's studies, and sociology

Robin Schulze, head, Department of English and professor of English

Promotion and Tenure

It is a pleasure to report that eleven Liberal Arts faculty from seven departments at University Park, have been promoted or had tenure awarded. Congratulations to all!

Tenured:

Robert W. Schrauf, associate professor of applied linguistics

Promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure:

Paola E. Dussias, associate professor of Spanish, linguistics, and psychology
Catherine Wanner, associate professor of history and religious studies

Promoted to Professor:

Louis G. Castonguay, professor of psychology
Deborah L. Clarke, professor of English and women's studies
William J. Cobb, professor of English
Bénédicte M. C. Monicat, professor of French and women’s studies
Mark H. Munn, professor of ancient Greek history and Greek archaeology
On-Cho Ng, professor of history and religious studies
Mrinalini Sinha, professor of history and women’s studies
Shannon W. Sullivan, professor of philosophy, women’s studies, and African American studies

Promotion and Tenure Workshop

The College will sponsor a panel discussion and information session on promotion and tenure for tenure-track faculty on Wednesday, October 17, from 3 to 5 p.m. in 124 Sparks Building. Past attendees have found that this session increased their understanding of both the process and the requirements for promotion and tenure. The dean and two department heads will speak about a variety of aspects of preparing for, and going through, the tenure process. We will cover similar topics as in previous years (the responsibilities and expectations of tenure candidates, requirements for tenure, navigating the pre-tenure years, promotion and tenure procedures, and dossier preparation). Most of the time will be allocated to questions and discussion. Though the panel is targeted for tenure-track faculty, all faculty are welcome to attend.

New Hires

African and African American Studies

Kevin J. A. Thomas, assistant professor of African and African American studies, completed his M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. His dissertation focused on the demography of migrant populations in South Africa. The importance of his emerging field was highlighted when he was asked in 2006 to serve as a consultant to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). In addition to his major research focus on demographics, migration and migrant populations, he also works on developmental and social change in the Third World and diaspora populations in the United States. These different research interests will add greater depth to our course and program offerings, better preparing AAAS students to understand the changing context of world situations.

Anthropology

David Puts, assistant professor of anthropology, received his master’s and Ph.D. degrees in biological anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh. His dissertation investigated the evolution of sex differences in the human voice. In 2003, David published his first textbook (Human Sexuality: A Holistic Approach), and in 2004, he was awarded the New Young Investigator Award from the Human Behavior and Evolution Society. From 2005–2007, David completed a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience at Michigan State University in the laboratory of Marc Breedlove. David’s research has been featured on the National Public Radio program All Things Considered, and has also been covered by Pravda, The Guardian, Associated Press, Fox News, MSNBC, and USA Today.

Applied Linguistics

Suresh Canagarajah, Kirby Professor in Language Learning, joins us from the City University of New York. Professor Canagarajah also taught English language and literature at the University of Jaffna in Sri Lanka. His 1999 book Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching won Modern Language Association’s Mina Shaughnessy Award for the best research publication on the teaching of language and literacy. His 2002 publication Geopolitics of Academic Writing won the Gary Olson Award for the best book in social and rhetorical theory. His study of "World Englishes in Composition" won the 2007 Braddock Award for the best article in the College Composition and Communication journal. Suresh edits the flagship journal of the professional organization for those who teach English to speakers of another language, TESOL Quarterly.

Communication Arts and Sciences

Rachel Smith, assistant professor of communication arts and sciences, received her Ph.D. from Michigan State University and came to Penn State from a position as assistant professor at the University of Texas. Rachel’s research focuses on the “social” of social influence in health contexts. In other words, she investigates how the notion of “others” creates, maintains, bolsters, or hinders peoples’ health beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. She studies both inclusive processes such as norms, networks, and social support as well as exclusive processes such as rivalry and stigma. Rachel was brought into the Presidential Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in Namibia in 2003 to analyze social and community characteristics in different communities in Namibia and to help with the design and evaluation of interventions to address HIV. These studies showed that the leading barrier to effective health care for HIV was stigma. Pursuant to those results, Rachel and her colleagues have been working to understand the communication of stigma and its impact on health outcomes in Namibia. Recently, she has taken her stigma research into the domestic U.S. where it focuses on genetic counseling, cancer, and smoking.

Comparative Literature

Eric Hayot, associate professor of comparative literature, received his B.A. and M.A. from Georgetown University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He joins us from Arizona State University where he was an associate professor of English. His work focuses on the transnational history of literary and cultural forms, the historical relations between East and West, particularly the Asian diaspora, and a temporally and geographically expansive version of modernism. He is the author of Chinese Dreams: Pound, Brecht, Tel quel, and the co-editor of two collections, Sinographies: Writing China, and The EverQuest Reader; his essays have appeared in several journals, and he is a regular contributor to the online blogzine Printculture. He is currently finishing a book titled The Hypothetical Mandarin: Sympathy, China, and the Fate of the Modern Human.

English

Christopher Castiglia, professor of English, is an internationally-known and influential scholar of nineteenth-century United States literature and cultural studies. His research focuses on issues of gender, race, sexuality, and social reform in American texts. He is the author of Bound and Determined: Captivity, Culture-Crossing and White Womanhood from Mary Rowlandson to Patty Hearst, a formative study of the impact of transculturation (moving from one “racial” culture to another) on gender construction, and Interior States: Sociality, Reform, and the Inner Life of Democracy, forthcoming from Duke University Press. He is also the co-editor of Walt Whitman’s little-known temperance novel, Franklin Evans, or The Inebriate. He is also a pioneering scholar of contemporary gay popular culture and is co-authoring a book with Christopher Reed, who also joins the Penn State faculty this year, entitled Ah Yes, I Remember It Well, about the relationship between mass media, subculture, and queer memory. Castiglia holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University, and joins us from Loyola.

Emily Harrington, assistant professor of English, is a scholar of Victorian literature and culture whose research focuses on Victorian poetry, women’s poetry, and lyric theory. She is currently at work on a book project entitled Second Person Singular: Lyric Intimacy in British Women Poets 1860–1900. She has already published two articles in refereed journals. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, where she completed a postdoctoral research fellowship.

Shirley C. Moody, assistant professor of English, is a scholar of African American literature and culture of the nineteenth and twentieth century. Her research interests include African American folklore, oral history, and issues of race and national identity in American literature and culture. Currently she is at work on Conjuring the Color Line: Folklore, Fiction and Race in the Jim Crow Era, a book-length project examining the role of folklore in constructions of U.S. racial ideologies and practices. She is the recipient of a Ford Foundation Fellowship, and she is a former fellow of Penn State’s Africana Research Center. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland.

Christopher Reed, associate professor of English and visual culture, is a leading interdisciplinary scholar of a wide range of topics in visual culture. Reed’s primary scholarly focus has been the Bloomsbury group. He has published on Roger Fry’s aesthetic theories, on their relationship to Virginia Woolf’s textual experimentation, on Bloomsbury’s relationship to its Victorian forebears, and, most extensively, in his book Bloomsbury Rooms, on how the domestic spaces created by the Bloomsbury artists related to the lives and work they contained. Reed’s edited volumes include A Roger Fry Reader and Not at Home: The Suppression of Domesticity in Modern Art and Architecture. He holds a Ph.D. from Yale University. He joins us from Lake Forest College where he was a professor of art.

Scott Smith, assistant professor of English, is a scholar of Anglo-Saxon literature and culture. His research focuses on legal writing, land tenure, and property dispute in Anglo-Saxon England, as well as Anglo-Latin, early Middle English and Old Norse literature. He holds an M.A. in Medieval studies from Western Michigan University, an M.A. in English from Truman State University, and a Ph.D. from Notre Dame University, with a specialization in Old English.

Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures

Martina Kolb, assistant professor of German and comparative literature, holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Yale University as well as M.A. degrees in modern philology and German studies from the University of Tübingen and the University of Oregon. Before joining Penn State, she was a visiting assistant professor in the humanities program at Bilkent University in Turkey. She has also held postdoctoral fellowships at the Universities of Bologna and Konstanz. Her interests are comparative poetics, international modernism, theater between Orient and Occident, psychoanalysis, and detective fiction. Her publications include articles on the uncanny in Uwe Johnson, Ezra Pound's prison poetry, and Bertolt Brecht's appropriations of Eastern theater. She currently works on a book on Mediterranean geopoetics.

History

Solsiree del Moral, assistant professor of history, holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin and was an Africana Research Center fellow last year. She is a social and cultural historian of Latin America and the Caribbean with an interest in the historical construction of race. Her research examines the interconnections of race, gender, and class with issues of nation, citizenship, and colonialism. Specifically, her most recent project shows how despite the U.S. colonial education policy of Americanization, early twentieth-century Puerto Rican teachers constructed and practiced an alternative nationalist project for the “racial” regeneration of the Puerto Rican citizenry through the island’s colonial public school system.

Labor Studies and Employment Relations

Samanthi Gunawardana, instructor in labor studies and employment relations, is finishing her Ph.D. in industrial relations and gender studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia. As part of her work on her doctoral dissertation, Samanthi spent a year as a worker in a textile mill in Sri Lanka. Her research focuses on local employment systems, management practices, and the experience of women workers in export industries in a globalized world, with an emphasis on South Asia. She will be teaching courses on international employment relations and workplace diversity.

Philosophy

Brady Bowman, assistant professor of philosophy, teaches and writes on the history of philosophy with a focus on the metaphysics, epistemology and methodology of post-Kantian philosophy. He is the author (in German) of Sense Certainty: The Systematic Prehistory of a Problem in German Idealism and editor of a number of volumes on classical German philosophy, most recently Darstellung und Erkenntnis, which presents original essays on the cognitive function of literary form in philosophical texts. He is also the co-translator of a forthcoming volume of Hegel’s Heidelberg Writings.

Psychology

Samuel Hunter, assistant professor of psychology, received his Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology from the University of Oklahoma last May. His research interests fall into two broad domains: leadership and innovation in organizations. Within the area of leadership, Sam takes an interest in pragmatic leadership as well as negative leader behaviors such as leader errors and ideological violence. Within the area of innovation, he focuses primarily on multi-level investigation – exploring the antecedents and moderators of innovation at the various levels in organizations. In addition to these two broad domains, he is also interested in analysis techniques such as multi-level modeling, quantitative analysis of qualitative data, and structural equation modeling.

Jenae Neiderhiser, Liberal Arts Research Professor of Psychology, received her Ph.D. in human development and family studies from Penn State in 1994, and joins us from a research professor position at George Washington University. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Society for Prevention Research and as the Behavior Genetics Association representative for the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological, and Cognitive Sciences. Jenae’s work focuses on understanding the interplay between genes and the environment, with an emphasis on family environment and parenting in particular. She is also involved in efforts to integrate genetic and prevention research.

Science, Technology, and Society

Donald Brown, associate professor for environmental ethics, science, and law, has been serving as Director of the Pennsylvania Consortium for Interdisciplinary Environmental Policy, Senior Counsel for Sustainable Development for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, as well as Director of the Program on the Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change. He has worked as an engineer and taught philosophy, environmental law, and sustainable development at a number of universities. Among other things, Don is the author of American Heat: Ethical Problems with the United States’ Response to Global Warming. In addition, he has written and lectured extensively on the need to integrate environmental science, economics, and law with ethics in policy making. Don has a law degree from Seton Hall University.

Sociology

Emily Greenman, assistant professor of sociology, holds a Ph.D. in sociology and public policy from the University of Michigan. Her dissertation research explored the determinants and consequences of assimilation among immigrant adolescents and racial variation in gender earnings inequality and the contribution of family-level factors in explaining such variation. Emily’s research and teaching interests include social stratification, immigrant youth, health inequalities, gender inequality in the labor market, and quantitative methods.

Jennifer Van Hook, associate professor of sociology, joins the faculty from a position as associate professor of sociology at Bowling Green State University. Jennifer holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research and teaching interests include international immigration, unauthorized migration, immigration incorporation and the health and well-being of children of immigrants, as well as other welfare and poverty issues. Jennifer’s research has been supported by the U.S. Census Bureau, Foundation for Child Development, NIH and other agencies. Recent publications have appeared in Social Forces and Demography.

Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese

Nicolás Fernández-Medina, assistant professor of Spanish, received two Ph.D.s, one in modern Spanish literature and the other in humanities from Stanford University in 2006. His area of specialization is late eighteenth- through twentieth-century Spanish literature and thought, with research interests that span from Enlightenment philosophy in Spain to liberalism and Romanticism in Spain’s nineteenth-century master poets and novelists. He has devoted much of his attention as a scholar to analyzing those junctures where philosophy infiltrated literary theory and vice versa. Nicolás has published in prominent peer-reviewed journals. Earlier this year, he was awarded Stanford’s distinguished Centennial Teaching Award for outstanding teaching.

Matthew J. Marr, assistant professor of Spanish, holds a Ph.D. in Spanish literature from the University of Virginia and joins us from a faculty position at the University of Illinois–Chicago. He specializes in contemporary Peninsular literature, with a particular emphasis on fiction and poetry produced during Spain’s transition to democracy and its integration with the European Union. In his research and teaching, Matthew is drawn to projects that position Spanish literary and cultural currents within an international critical framework involving, for example, issues in globalization, transnationalism, postmodernism, and intertextuality. He seeks to open up the field to comparative perspectives and insights. His work has appeared in major journals, and he is the author of a book, Postmodern Metapoetry and the Replenishment of the Spanish Lyrical Genre, 1980–2000. He has held appointments as a visiting assistant professor at Northwestern University and Middlebury College. He is currently beginning a second book project on marginal subjectivities in recent Spanish film and fiction.

Guadalupe Martí-Peña, assistant professor of Spanish, studied in Spain and then came to the U.S. where she received her Ph.D. at the University of Washington. Guada has been teaching at Penn State as a lecturer and senior lecturer for several years and has this year moved to a tenure- line appointment. Her main scholarly interests are in Spanish American contemporary prose fiction, particularly in the major Argentine writer Manuel Puig, and the renowned Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa. She has published articles in major journals and has a book-length bibliographical study of Manuel Puig. Guada has on-going interests in the interrelations of literary and visual arts, as well as literary and cultural theory.

Faculty Grants

Julia Kasdorf, associate professor of English and women’s studies, from the Fetzer Institute, for travel funds to research a book of essays on meaning, story, and forgiveness in the Anabaptist tradition.

Stephen Matthews, associate professor of sociology, anthropology, demography, and geography, from Stanford University, for collaborative research into measuring spatial segregation.

Sally McMurry, department head and professor of American history, from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, for “Agricultural Context for Washington and Greene Counties.”

Sandra Morgen, professor of women’s studies and geography, from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, for “Producing and Contesting Consent: The Cultural Politics of Taxes and the Imagined Neoliberal State.”

Wayne Osgood, professor of criminal, law, and justice and sociology, from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, for “Friendship Networks and Emergence of Substance Use.”

Glenn Palmer, professor of political science, from the National Science Foundation, for “Improving the Efficiency of Militarized Interstate Dispute Data Collection Using Automated Textual Analysis.”

Mark Wardell, associate dean for graduate student affairs, and associate professor of labor studies and employment relations, sociology, and information science and technology, from the Council of Graduate Schools, for “CGS Ph.D. Completion Project, Phase II: The Penn State Way.”

Provost’s Emeritus Faculty Teaching Scholars

Frank Gentry, John Moore, and Daniel Walden have been approved as Provost’s Emeritus Faculty Teaching Scholars. Gentry will be teaching in the Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures this fall. Walden will teach sections of comparative literature in the fall and spring, and Moore will teach comparative literature in the spring.

Obituaries

Vernon Aspaturian, Evan Pugh Professor Emeritus of political science and former director of the Slavic and Soviet Language and Area Center, died Aug. 1 at UCLA Medical Center. He was 85.

After serving in World War II and the Korean War, Aspaturian joined the faculty at Penn State in 1952. During his career, Aspaturian held a number of visiting professorships, authored and coauthored several books, and published numerous articles. A Russian native, Aspaturian also served as a consultant on Soviet issues to the U.S. government and the Rand Corporation. Aspaturian retired in 1992 and returned to Southern California, where he had spent much of his youth.

Elton Atwater, professor emeritus of political science, died July 1 in State College at the age of 85. Atwater taught international relations and American foreign policy at University Park from 1950 until his retirement in 1978. Atwater was particularly interested in the United Nations, and he took a two-year leave from Penn State in 1957 to serve as a non-governmental organization representative at the Quaker United Nations Office in New York City. While at Penn State, Atwater authored the book American Regulation of Arms Exports and co-authored two text books, World Affairs: Problems and Prospects and World Tensions: Conflict and Accommodation. He was recognized with an outstanding faculty adviser award while at Penn State and later with the distinguished professor emeritus award.

Paul Harrison, professor emeritus of religious studies, died at home in State College on July 26. He was 74. A 1949 Penn State graduate, Harrison returned to State College in the early 1960s to help found the religious studies program. He retired in 1988. Harrison is best known for his book Authority and Power in the Free Church tradition, often called a landmark study on ecclesiastical authority.

Campaign Update

Penn State began a new campaign January 1, 2007. For now, the campaign is entitled For the Future, reflecting the words of the alma mater. Our College’s goal in the campaign is currently set at $80 million, though it might be adjusted as we assess how well we are doing. The campaign will be in its so-called “quiet phase” until June 30, 2010, and when it goes public the next day, we will announce a goal for both the University and the College.

From January 1 through the end of August of this year, we received about $20 million in gifts, mostly to create or add to endowments, but some are to be spent in the current year. The larger gifts to the campaign thus far have supported a variety of areas of the college and kinds of activities, ranging from major gifts to support scholarships and study abroad, to new professorships, program funds for departments and centers, and graduate fellowships. We have numerous proposals under consideration by our alumni and friends and hope to be able to report more success as the months go by.

When I first came to the College, we raised about $1.5 million a year and our endowment was less than $10 million. Over the years we have seen the endowment grow to about $40 million along with a tremendous increase in the professionalism and scope of our staff and our fund raising efforts.

In addition to our talented staff, our increased success has stemmed from engaging more alumni in leadership roles in the campaign. We have tremendous volunteer leaders, including more than 100 who serve on development and alumni boards within the College. A third part of our success has been our department heads and faculty who have offered significantly increased opportunities for alums to meet students and faculty through student career events, mentorships, advisory boards, and many other activities.

I am confident that, working together, alums, the academic units, and our staff will have increasing successes in this vital activity. That success has been, and will continue to be, essential to the College’s forward progress. Today we have a significant and growing endowment. Income from that endowment, plus current gifts to be used in this year, yields revenue of about $2 million a year, a revenue source that is essential to support our faculty and student research, as well as teaching activities.

Susan Welch

College News

Benefits Open Houses and On-Line Enrollment

As previously announced, Penn State is moving to Highmark Blue Shield medical coverage in 2008. The 2008 benefits Time to Choose period has been announced as November 1 through 16. The Employee Benefits office will be mailing Time to Choose materials to the home addresses of all employees very soon. You can review your current benefits and make any requested changes during Time to Choose using the online Employee Self-Service Information Center System (ESSIC), www.ohr.psu.edu/essic. Visit www.ohr.psu.edu/benefits or contact Penn State Employee Benefits (865-1473 or benefits@psu.edu) if you have any questions about your 2008 choices.

NOTE: During Time To Choose, if you participate in either the Health Care or Dependent Care Reimbursement Options of the Flexible Benefits Program, you are required to re-enroll every year. You can also add dependents, pick up coverage you do not currently have, and increase AD&D for 2008. No action is required by employees to transition into PPOBlue if the employee currently participates in a University-sponsored health plan.

To learn more about your benefits package or in order to help you make more informed benefits decisions, the following open houses will be held:

Wednesday, Oct. 24, 10 a.m.–7 p.m. in Heritage Hall, HUB-Robeson Center

Thursday, Oct. 25, 8 a.m.–4:30 p.m. in Alumni Hall, HUB-Robeson Center

Tuesday, Nov. 6, 8 a.m.–4:30 p.m. at The Penn Stater Conference Center

Representatives from the Employee Benefits Division and staff members from Highmark Blue Shield will be available to answer faculty and staff questions at all open houses.

In addition, the College’s Director of Administrative Services, Jennifer Morris, will be presenting an informational group meeting beginning at 8 a.m. on Thursday, November 1, in room 121 Sparks, for all Liberal Arts faculty and staff.

United Way events

The United Way Committee has several events planned for October. Please take a moment to support us in supporting the community!

Pizza lunch, October 19

Once again Domino’s will donate pizza, and we will be selling it to benefit the United Way. Please consider having pizza for lunch on October 19.

Pledge cards

Finally, and most importantly, the pledge cards should be in your mailboxes at the end of the month. While our special events are great fundraisers and wonderful opportunities for the College to work together and have some fun, it is the pledge cards that generate the income that supports all the wonderful local agencies that rely on us. We are planning to have another drawing for some great prizes. Details will be included with your pledge card.

Coming in November, the annual on-line auction

On the move

Over the summer, several departments in the Sparks Building moved to new locations. Below is a list of departments with new locations.

Alumni Relations and Development is now housed on the first floor of Sparks, in the southeast wing. The main office is in 138 Sparks.

The Financial Office and Outreach are both on the ground floor of Sparks in the office suite entered through Room 13.

Undergraduate Advising is now based out of Room 101.

Liberal Arts Parking Permit Information

If you need to obtain or exchange parking permits, please come to Room 111 Sparks Building, Monday through Friday, from 9 to 11 a.m. and 2 to 4 p.m. only. Please remember to bring your license plate number(s) with you when you register for your permit. Once you have a permit, please be sure you report new or changed license plate numbers to Heather Summerlin at 865-7691. As a reminder, if you are leaving the College, you will need to return your parking permit to 111 Sparks Building.

Lectures and Symposia

Thursday, Oct. 4
7:30 p.m.

2007–2008 Allegheny Mountains Reading Series presents Julia Kasdorf, associate professor of English and Women’s Studies.

Location: Foster Auditorium, Pattee Library

Thursday, Oct. 11
8 p.m.

Red Weather Reading Series presents area author Beth Goldner.

Ardmore resident Goldner wrote the novel The Number We End Up With and the short story collection Wake. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, as have her Op-Ed pieces. She also serves as adjunct faculty in Rosemont College’s Creative Writing MFA program. She is working on her second novel.

Location: TBA

Wednesday, Oct. 17
12:10–1 p.m.

Moments of Change: The Early 17th Century and the Roots of Modernity. School of Music voice students present arias, solo madrigals and motets by early 17th century Italian composers.

Location: Palmer Museum of Art

Thursday, Oct. 18
1–6 p.m.

Center for American Literary Studies presents a Ralph Ellison Festival.

Location: Foster Auditorium, Patte Libary

Friday, Oct. 19
1–2 p.m.

Working Papers in American Literature and Culture presents Rosa Eberly, associate professor of CAS and English, and “Towers of Rhetoric: Charles Whitman and the Whiteness of the Whale.”

Location: Burrowes Building, Grucci Room (Room 14/15)

4 p.m.

George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center presents Sean Kelley of Hartwick College and “Blackbirders and Bozales: African-born Slaves on the Lower Brazos River of Texas in the 19th Century.”

Location: 102 Weaver

Thursday, Oct. 25
4 p.m.

Rock Ethics Institute’s “Who Owns Our Species? Past, Present, Future” Lecture Series presents Jonathan Kahn, and “The Segregated Genome: Exploring the Intersection of Law, Commerce and Race in Biotechnology.”

Location: Berg Auditorium, 100 Life Sciences Building

Friday, Oct. 26
7:30 p.m.

2007–2008 Allegheny Mountain Reading Series presents Jim Daniels

Location: Eisenhower Chapel of the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center

Tuesday, Oct. 30
4 p.m.

Moments of Change: The Early 17th Century and the Roots of Modernity. A panel discussion on Shakespeare with actors from the London stage and Penn State faculty.

Location: Outreach Building Lobby

Wednesday, Oct. 31
7:30 p.m.

Moments of Change: The Early 17th Century and the Roots of Modernity present Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” performed by actors from the London stage.

Location: Schwab Auditorium

Thursday, Nov. 1
7:30–9:00 p.m.

The Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations presents the 2007 Outstanding Alumni Lecture speaker, Doug Allen, '73, National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator for the Screen Actors Guild.

Location: 112 Chambers Building

WebEvents Calendar

The WebEvents Calendar features lectures, talks, and conferences sponsored by the College of the Liberal Arts and units within the College. If you have something that you would like posted to the calendar for your department, please send entry submissions to Katy Heltman.

Staff News

Staff Professional Development Sessions Continue

Many employees have taken advantage of attending the monthly workshops offered by the LA Office of Human Resources. The workshops are held in Room 124 Sparks from 8:30–10:30 a.m. and offer staff members the opportunity for professional development. Future workshop topics include:

Tuesday, Oct. 30
Emergency Management and Preparedness
Presenter: Steve Shelow, Director of University Police Services

Wednesday, Nov. 28
Highstakes Etiquette
Presenters include various staff members from the College of the Liberal Arts, Office of Alumni Relations and Development and Sophie Penney, Director of Development

Interested staff members may register by contacting Betsy Will. If you have suggestions for future workshops, please let us know.

Human Resources and Administrative Update Program

From 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday, November 12, the College will have an administrative update session for administrative assistants. The workshop will include promotion and tenure and human resources issues, as well as several presentations. The program will be held at Stone Valley in the Civil Engineering Lodge.

Dean’s Staff Advisory Committee

The Dean’s Staff Advisory Committee has been meeting monthly to review suggestions that have been submitted to the Committee. The Web site is being updated monthly with new suggestions and progress reports on suggestions in process.

We expanded on one suggestion that we felt we could not implement—working four ten-hour days instead of five eight-hour days to save on gas for those who have a great distance to commute—by creating a Ride-Share posting on the Committee’s Web site. Check it out!

Subcommittees are actively working on suggestions to develop more networking and training opportunities. We are also working on recognition programs for our staff.

All suggestions are welcome! Go to the Web site http://dsac.la.psu.edu to submit yours.

New Colleagues

Mary Lee Carns, strategic planning specialist, Sociology and Crime, Law, and Justice
Jennie Daley, writer/editor, Office of Alumni Relations and Development
Angeline Francisci, staff assistant V, Psychology, psychological clinic
Marcella Fickes, staff assistant IX, Science, Technology, and Society
Melissa Gayman, academic counselor, Undergraduate Studies
Jason Gullifer, research technologist, Psychology
Lynn Hepfer, staff assistant V, French and Francophone Studies, and Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese
Rachel Johnson, research technologist, Psychology
Nicola Kiver, assistant to the director, Office of Alumni Relations and Development
Lynn Maggs, staff assistant VII, School of Languages and Literatures, Center for Language Acquisition and Department of Applied Linguistics
Mark Minnick, research technologist, Psychology
Gannon Nordberg, IT consultant, ITLA
Tamaira Quezada, assistant to the director, Race Relations Project
Joyce Tam, research technologist, Psychology
Krista White, staff assistant VII, English
Lindsay Williambrown, staff assistant V, Communication Arts and Sciences

Transfers

Dawn Corman, staff assistant VI, financial office, Office of the Dean
Katelyn Perry, lead counselor, Undergraduate Studies

Promotions

Christine Laur, administrative assistant III, Undergraduate Studies
Faye Maring, college advancement assistant, Office of Alumni Relations and Development
Rose Niman, staff assistant VII, Departments of History and Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, and Programs in Religious Studies and Jewish Studies

Departures

Richard Brungard, lead counselor, Undergraduate Studies
Shelley Davenport, staff assistant V, French and Francophone Studies, and Spanish, Italian, and
Portuguese
Christine Doster, staff assistant VII, School of Languages and Literatures, Center for Language
Acquisition
Carol Falke, associate director of development, Office of Alumni Relations and Development
Sherry Hoffman, staff assistant VI, CASSP Program, Psychology
Annie Pletcher, college advancement assistant, Office of Alumni Relations and Development
Laura Poulter, staff assistant V, Psychology, psychological clinic
Alishia Urbanik, staff assistant V, Sociology and Crime, Law, and Justice

Retirements

Patricia Varacalli, staff assistant IX, Psychology, psychological clinic