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May 2005 |
This is a good time of the year to recognize and honor significant accomplishments in teaching, research, and service. Both the University and College have had award recognition events for faculty and students during the past several weeks, and I am very happy to take this opportunity to recognize our College's award winners. Earlier in the semester, we recognized outstanding staff and their names were in the last edition of the LA Times. Penn State could not function as a first-class university without great teachers and advisers who are committed to providing our students with an excellent education and to help them take advantage of what Penn State has to offer as they prepare for their post-bachelor's degree lives. This year we honored Carla Mulford, associate professor of English and American studies, and Eric Silver, associate professor of crime, law, and justice and sociology, with our excellence in teaching awards for tenure-line faculty; and Vincenzo Gatto, lecturer in Italian, and Dirk Mateer, senior lecturer in economics, with our non-tenure line teaching awards. We are also happy to recognize excellent teaching by our graduate assistants, who teach about 20 percent of all the College's student credit hours. This year, the University recognized Robert Bleil, English, and Paul Stegner, English; and the College recognized Jeff Pruchnic, English, and Brenda Ross, Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, for their outstanding teaching in their roles as teaching assistants. We were also pleased to recognize with the College's advising award Michael Anesko, associate professor of English and American studies, for his excellence in advising . We also are delighted to recognize excellence in research. This year Frank Baumgartner, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, was awarded the University's Scholar's Medal for Research in the Social Sciences. Winning the College's Class of '33 award for Excellence in the Humanities are Keith Gilyard, Distinguished Professor of English, and Robin Schulze, associate professor of English. The Excellence in the Social Sciences awards were made to Roger Finke, professor of sociology and religious studies, and Neil Wallace, Liberal Arts Research Professor of Economics. Terri Vescio, assistant professor of psychology and women's studies, won the Roy C. Buck Award for a significant publication by an untenured faculty member; and David Tell, communications, arts, and sciences, was honored for a significant publication in the humanities by a graduate student. The alumni association sponsors dissertation awards for excellence in that arena, and I'm pleased to report that this year Valentina Cesco, history, and Holly Dunsworth, anthropology, won those awards. For service contributions, the University presents the McKay-Donkin award, and John Moore, associate professor of English and comparative literature, was a most deserving recipient this year. Michael Johnson, associate professor of sociology, women's studies, and African and African American studies, received the College's Shields-Pavoucek award for outstanding work in mentoring. We also recognize an emeritus professor each year for his or her continuing contributions, and Robert C.S. Downs, Emeritus Professor of English, was the winner. Congratulations to these award winners, and thanks to all of our faculty and students who provide a first-rate education to our students and whose work advances knowledges in all of our disciplines. Susan Welch The Spring 2005 Undergraduate Commencement Ceremony will be held on Saturday, May 14, 2005, at 6 p.m. in the Bryce Jordan Center. We are delighted to announce that the commencement speaker will be Ron Filippelli, Professor Emeritus of Labor Studies and Industrial Relations and Associate Dean Emeritus of the College of the Liberal Arts. The Graduate School Ceremony will be held on Sunday, May 15, 2005 at 5 p.m. in the Bryce Jordan Center. Thank your colleagues on the staff for their contributions to your department or program on April 27—Administrative Professionals Day. Administrative, clerical, advising, technology, and research staff provide the vehicle to keep our many initiatives on track. Faculty Grants and Honors Duane Alwin, McCourtney Professor of Sociology, Demography, and Human Development and Family Studies, and Scott Hofer, associate professor of human development and family studies, for “International Conference on the Future of Cognitive Aging Research,” from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Two faculty were awarded prestigious NEH summer stipends, Hester Blum, assistant professor of English, for “The View from the Mast-Head: Antebellum American Sea Narratives and the Maritime Imagination,” and Adam Rome, associate professor of history, for “Environmental Reform and the Emergence of Modern America.” Robert Drago, professor of labor studies and industrial relations and women's studies, for “Coaching and Gender Equity,” from the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Cecil Giscombe, professor of English, for the “Mixed Blood Project,” from the Pennsylvania Rural Arts Alliance. Susan Welch, dean of the College of the Liberal Arts and professor of political science, was selected as one of the recipients of the 2005 Achieving Woman Award from Penn State's Commission for Women. The award presentation was made at the Commission's annual spring banquet on March 21. Outstanding Teaching Award We honor two tenure-line faculty, two non-tenure line faculty, and four graduate assistants for their teaching this year, and we also presented an outstanding advising award. Carla Mulford, associate professor of English and American studies, is a specialist in American colonial literature. At every level, Professor Mulford aims to help her students to become independent thinkers, to challenge and question assumptions, and to expect no less than excellence from themselves. Her broad vision of what constitutes Early American literature gained national recognition when she incorporated slave narratives, writing by Native Americans, and writing by colonial women into the canon in her editing of four editions of The Heath Anthology of American Literature, a text widely regarded as changing the face of American literature for a new generation of students. She brings the political and cultural instability of the early republic to clear and vivid life for students accustomed to thinking of the United States as an established, fixed entity. In all her courses, Professor Mulford challenges her students to think anew about the relationship between literature and history, and to question how a “national identity” emerges in both literary and cultural contexts. Recently, Professor Mulford's expertise in teaching literature has expanded to include the teaching of teachers. She directs the graduate course, English 602, for first-time literature teachers, where she provides hands-on direction and pragmatic advice for creating syllabi, generating and managing in-class discussions, assessing student learning, and using technology in the classroom. Since coming to Penn State in 1999, Eric Silver, associate professor of crime, law, and justice, has consistently received high student ratings of teaching effectiveness, and excellent written comments. As one undergraduate said, "He is one of the best teachers I have ever had." Moreover, faculty members who have visited his classes have been struck by the high level of student engagement, even in large-enrollment courses. Eric also has developed first-rate Web-based materials for his courses. Professor Silver also is highly involved in graduate education, and he currently is serving as the graduate officer in the crime, law and justice program in the Department of Sociology. In addition to his popular graduate courses, Eric started monthly informal get-togethers for graduate students and faculty members to discuss substantive issues in criminology. Over the last six years, he has supervised one dissertation, and is currently chairing three more. In addition, he is or has been a member of fifteen dissertation and ten thesis committees during that period. Not surprisingly, graduate students frequently describe him as being "always available." Outstanding Teaching Awards for Non-Tenure Line Faculty were presented to Dirk Mateer, senior lecturer in economics, and Vincenzo Gatto, lecturer in Italian. Dirk Mateer has sixteen years of teaching experience and is now in his fourth year at Penn State where he has taught large sections of introductory microeconomics and macroeconomics, medium-sized sections of Money and Banking, and a Web-based course in macroeconomics. He has won the distinguished teaching award in economics for every course that he has taught. This year he has also served as co-director of undergraduate studies in economics. Dirk combines a rare talent for teaching with energy, creativity, enthusiasm, dedication, and a deep caring for his students' progress. He employs best practices, but goes beyond them by developing original and fruitful techniques for engaging his students. One of the best measures of student excitement for the learning environment created by Dirk is the phenomenally high attendance rates that he has for his large principles courses. Vincenzo Gatto, lecturer in Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, came to Penn State in 1999 after teaching at Cornell College and Middlebury College (both renowned for their excellent foreign language programs). Vincenzo is a mainstay of our undergraduate Italian language program. He teaches a mix of elementary, intermediate, and advanced Italian courses and has initiated courses in Italian conversation for travel and business and intensive language development. Despite the fact that many of his students are taking his courses to fulfill the language requirement, his teaching evaluations have consistently been among the very best among the department's teaching staff of nearly ninety, both in terms of numerical SRTE scores and glowing comments by students on departmental evaluation forms. In addition to his outstanding teaching, Vincenzo has been instrumental in program-building, enthusiastically recruiting students through his teaching prowess, his participation in the Circolo Italiano Italian club and a soccer team, and his promotion of study-abroad opportunities. Many of his students have become Italian minors and even majors due to their happy encounters with his contagious love of language and language-teaching. University Outstanding Teaching Awards for Graduate Assistants Paul Stegner has taught multiple sections of "Technical Writing", "Writing in the Social Sciences", "Rhetoric and Composition", and "Reading Drama". His SRTE ratings are consistently well above 6.0, indicating his effectiveness and excellence in the classroom. Paul's students write of their enthusiasm and appreciation for his classroom work. One student notes, “As a senior performing student-teaching duties with the College of Education, I understand that teachers such as Paul are rare. I remember very clearly that as we left the room on the last day of class, some of us joked that we ought to return the following semester just to sit down, talk, and ultimately learn with Paul.” A senior faculty member wrote: “This was an excellent class, very professionally conducted and obviously a pleasure to the students, as well as an educational experience.” Congratulations to Paul! College Excellence in Teaching Awards for Graduate Assistants Brenda Ross is one of the most versatile and talented graduate teaching assistants in the Department of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies. In our ESL instructional program, Brenda has taught listening and speaking courses for international graduate students who need to improve their oral proficiency to work as teaching assistants. She has also taught both undergraduate and graduate ESL composition courses, using innovative methods through her corpus-oriented approach to writing instruction in the computer lab. Most recently, Brenda taught LING 100, "The Study of Language", a general education course for American undergraduates. With an enrollment of sixty students and no prerequisites, Brenda has been extremely successful at enabling her students to see the relevance of the study of language to their social and intellectual lives. Her supervisor describes her instructional style as direct but comfortable. Brenda has had a positive impact on the educational experiences of many, many international and American students at Penn State, and we have been extremely fortunate to have her be part of our instructional program. Outstanding Faculty Adviser Award Academic advising is an essential but sometimes unheralded part of higher education. In Liberal Arts we are fortunate to have a large number of faculty who—in addition to excelling at teaching, researching, and writing—are terrific advisers. For the last seven years, Michael Anesko, associate professor of English, has served as an adviser to many students, first as the director of the American Studies Program, and then as the faculty adviser for the Honors Program in English. In his role as Honors adviser, he serves as a recruiter, coordinator, and personal mentor to the more than sixty students in the program. These students, who are among our best and brightest, often put together complex programs involving different departments and even different colleges. Professor Anesko has excelled in his handling of these matters—not only by mastering the innumerable programmatic details of a complicated multi-campus university but also by his willingness to help individual students resolve a variety of academic and personal difficulties. We are pleased to honor Michael with the Outstanding Faculty Adviser Award. Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Social and Behavioral Sciences Frank has maintained an impressive research and publication agenda even while serving as the head of the Political Science department from 1999 to 2004. He is a prolific writer, having published four books and numerous articles over the past thirteen years. He has done more than any other scholar to use social science methods to understand the hidden face of political power: that exercised by lobbyists in their attempts to influence public policy. He co-directs the lobby project, a multi-year, multi-investigator project that is bringing together multiple forms of evidence about the causes, effects, and costs of lobbying in the national political arena. One of the fruits of his research is a web-based policy data base with detailed information on legislation and lobbyists of the past sixty years. This is a collective good used by students and faculty across the world. He has been supported by externally-funded research grants continuously over the past ten years. In sum, the stature and impact of his scholarly accomplishments make Frank Baumgartner a most deserving recipient of this year's Faculty Scholar Medal. Class of 1933 Distinction in the Humanities Award Keith Gilyard is a versatile and prolific scholar: a sociolinguist, critic, and writer whose intellect has invigorated the fields of rhetoric and composition, African American literature and culture, and creative writing. Since coming to Penn State in 1999, Professor Gilyard has edited a collection of articles titled Rhetoric and Ethnicity, a reader for first-year writing courses, a major anthology of African American writing, two books of poetry, and numerous articles and book chapters. His 2003 monograph, Liberation Memories: The Rhetoric and Poetics of John Oliver Killens, revitalizes our picture of an influential but neglected African American novelist by examining Killens both as an activist intellectual and as an artist. Gilyard's first two monographs, one of which received an American Book Award, continue to garner attention and praise. Keith's teaching is also exemplary. He has been lauded especially for his mentoring of graduate students, and his recent dissertation students have all obtained excellent tenure-track positions. Keith Gilyard's public prominence brings distinction to Penn State . The second distinction in the humanities award honors Robin Schulze, professor of English, and a prominent scholar in the field of American Modernism. She is the author of two respected books. Her first book, The Web of Friendship: Marianne Moore and Wallace Stevens, published by the University of Michigan Press in 1995, reconstructs a close relationship between two major American poets. The book is based on careful archival research and on close examination of the surviving correspondence between them. The scholarly diligence, compelling narrative, and sophisticated criticism in The Web of Friendship give a forecast of the brilliant editorial and interpretive achievement of Schulze's most recent book, Becoming Marianne Moore: The Early Poems, 1907-1924, published by the University of California Press in 2002. Schulze's energy and focus are most impressive. As part of her outreach commitment, Schulze also organized a major conference on Marianne Moore at Penn State in March 2003. In addition to being a distinguished scholar and an excellent department citizen, Schulze is a superb teacher. In 1998 she won the George W. Atherton Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. Distinction in the Social Sciences Award Since the mid-1970s Neil Wallace has devoted his career to providing a foundation for monetary theory. His work is required reading for graduate students in economics around the world. He has a separate research program on banking theory. Neil's 1978 paper, “Deposit Insurance and Bank Regulation,” identified the inherent flaw with deregulation and predicted the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s. He has been a Fellow of the Econometric Society since 1985. Approximately thirty Ph.D. students have been trained under Neil's supervision, including two Fellows of the Econometric Society and a member of the Nobel Prize Award Committee for Economics. The second award goes to Roger Finke, professor of sociology, whose path-breaking research on the organization and historical development of religious groups in the United States has reshaped the way sociologists study religious organizations and behavior. This work was presented in a 1992 book, co-authored with Rodney Stark, The Churching of America: Winners and Losers in the Religious Economy 1776-1990. The book received the Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, is now in its fifth printing, and will appear in a second edition in 2005. A second book, Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion, also co-authored with Stark, was published in 2000, and received the 2001 Book Award from the American Sociological Association's Sociology of Religion Section. In addition to his scholarship, Professor Finke has made data sets available to researchers and students through the American Religion Data Archive. Roger is the architect and director of the archive, which is housed at Penn State, and he has received over $2 million from the Lilly Endowment to support and maintain it. Currently, he is establishing an International Religion Data Archive, which will be a major resource for social scientists around the world. Roy C. Buck Award Two Liberal Arts students were presented dissertation awards by the Alumni Association on March 19. Valentina Cesco, a Ph.D. candidate in history, brings her European origins and perspective to the University. Trained at the University of Venice and native of Italy, she arrived in late 1999 to study with the former Weiss Chair in the Humanities, Guido Ruggiero, and continues today under the direction of Joan Landes. Her dissertation, entitled “Elopement and Kidnapping of Women for Marriage in the Venetian Republic,” follows in the rich tradition of Italian Renaissance scholarship, but also contributes to the growing field of early modern Balkan history. This project is based on extensive state and church archives and explores how law, dowries, property, and family traditions shaped women's fortunes and their “consent” to marriage through a highly variant system ranging from violent abduction to voluntary elopements. This sophisticated study addresses key questions in the history of gender, family, and culture in early modern Europe. She has already published several articles and should soon have a book that will help shape the future of Renaissance and family history. Holly Dunsworth, Ph.D. candidate in anthropology, also won a dissertation award from the alumni association. Holly is a talented young woman who is working with Alan Walker on foot evolution, and her dissertation research is on the foot of the earliest anthropoid apes. It is about the fundamental adaptations that underlie the structure of our own feet. Human feet are highly derived, having lost almost all their original grasping function in their service to our unique bipedal locomotion. Holly has a series of previously undescribed 18 million-year-old Proconsul foot skeletons to study, ranging from infant to adult. This means that she can study an ancestral foot growth series for the first time, and as evolution produces new forms mainly by changes in growth patterns, she can make a detailed assessment of the changes that must have led from a stem ape to the human condition. She has already collected much of her comparative sample of chimpanzees and macaques, and just undertook a trip to Nairobi where the fossils are housed before she finishes her dissertation this year. Graduate Student Award for Excellence in Research in the Humanities McKay Donkin Award A faculty member for thirty-eight years, John Moore's most visible contributions have been made in the University Faculty Senate, where he has held all the major leadership positions, including that of Senate Chair. Through his work on numerous committees of the Senate, John has had a substantial impact on a great many matters that affect all Penn State faculty and students, such as General Education requirements, advising policies, and issues of racial and ethnic diversity. Perhaps even more significant than these tangible contributions are the intangible ones that John has made as a role model and inspiration for faculty. John is one of the University's finest teachers, and has won every conceivable teaching and advising award at Penn State, College and University-wide. By taking his responsibilities as a faculty member so seriously and by doing his job so well, John Moore has helped all of us do a better job on our common enterprise and has been an inspiration for a generation of students. Stephanie Pavoucek Shields Faculty Award Mike has also been integral to the development of the Women's Studies Program. He was a leader in developing the undergraduate and graduate curricula, while inspiring other faculty to think critically about pedagogy and curriculum transformation. He has taught and developed numerous courses that focus on women, including "Women and the Family", "Racism and Sexism", "Sociology of Gender", "Feminist Sociology", and "Social Psychology of Domestic Violence". Mike has also had a substantial impact through his mentoring of students, both men and women, who do work on women's issues, and through his outstanding teaching in women's studies and sociology, for which he has been recognized with College and University teaching awards. Graduate Program Chair Leadership Award Due to John's efforts, the number of applications increased, as did their average GRE scores. With improved recruitment, retention rates also improved. To strengthen graduate students' professional qualifications, John instituted a four-course, Quantitative Methods Certificate. He also took steps to raise the quality of students' performance on job interviews, including a program of practice job talks that faculty members attend and critique. In addition, John increased the number of students applying for NSF dissertation support grants and other awards, with considerable success. Throughout this process, Dr. McCarthy adopted an active mentoring role, a strong personal interest in students' well-being, and acted on students' behalf at every point in their careers at Penn State . Emeritus Distinction Award Robert C. S. Downs, Emeritus Professor of English, won the College of the Liberal Arts Emeritus Distinction Award for 2005. Between 1980 and 1999, Professor Downs was an award-winning writer of fiction at Penn State, a valued advisor to undergraduate and graduate students, and an affable colleague who maintained cordial relations with a diverse department. He served as director of both the English Writing Program and the M.F.A. Program. During his productive career, Professor Downs has published six novels, including Going Gently, Peoples, Country Dying, White Mama, and The Fifth Season. Three novels have been made into films. He himself wrote the screenplay for White Mama, which became a CBS Wednesday Night Movie, starring Bette Davis, who earned an Emmy nomination. One of his short stories, “Waiting For Louis,” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Professor Downs continues to write in his retirement, publishing The Fifth Season in 1999 and now at work on his seventh novel. He continues to be absorbed by two inter-related topics: dying and surviving. Throughout, he takes on the challenging problem of surviving mortality against odds, through courage, intelligence, and quiet resistance. Philip J. Jenkins, Jon Nussbaum, and Jack Selzer were elected to represent the College on the Graduate Council. These faculty represent your views to the council. Please let them know of your concerns. The August Wilson Play Festival will be held from Wednesday, April 27, through Sunday, May 1, at University Park. The festival, part of an ongoing initiative, “In Pursuit of Social Justice: Recognizing Pennsylvania Black Artists,” will celebrate the creative achievements of Pittsburgh native August Wilson, one of the most important African American artists as well as one of America's most acclaimed playwrights and interpreters of the African American experience. Three full theatrical productions of Wilson's plays will be featured: Fences, performed by Pennsylvania Centre Stage; Seven Guitars, performed by the University of Pittsburgh's Kuntu Repertory Theatre; and Jitney, performed by Temple University Theatre. The festival will also feature staged readings of Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and Two Trains Running, performed by Philadelphia's Freedom Theatre and Walnut Street Theatre traveling repertories and by the local theatre company Loaves and Fish. The five-day event will also include a film presentation of The Piano Lesson and discussions by theatre and literary critics of Wilson's ten plays, each depicting the African American experience in a different decade of the twentieth-century. For more information, contact the Africana Research Center at 865-6482 or the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at 865-0495. Population Research Institute Brown Bag Series Wilbur Zelinsky, Professor Emeritus of Geography and Demography, and Stephen Matthews, senior research associate, associate professor of geography, demography, and sociology, and director of the GIA Core, will speak on Tuesday, April 19. Topic will be announced at a later date. David Bloom, Clarence James Gamble Professor of Economics and Demography, Department of Population and International Health, Harvard University, will present “The Health and Wealth of Nations,” on Tuesday, April 26. Both lectures will take place at noon in 302 Pond Lab. The Religious Studies Program will be hosting Brian Victoria, Senior Lecturer at The University of Adelaide in Australia, who is serving as Visiting Professor at S.U.N.Y. Binghamton this year and is the author of two recent controversial, and critically acclaimed, books: Zen at War and Zen War Stories. He will deliver a lecture “The Last Samurai Meets WW II: The Zen of Japanese Militarism,” on Wednesday, April 20, 2005, in 262 Willard Building at 4 p.m. Christopher Long, associate professor of philosophy, will present his inaugural lecture, “Saving the Things Said: Aristotle and the History of Philosophy,” on Friday, April 22, in Room 111 Chambers Building at 4 p.m. GIS and Population Science Workshop A two week long GIS Population Science workshop will be offered in Summer 2005 (and again in 2006) to provide standardized, intensive training for young researchers in geographic information science specifically tailored toward population science. The primary audience for these workshops are interdisciplinary pre-doctoral students of demography at NICHD-supported population training centers in the United States, institutional members of the wider Association of Population Centers (APC), graduate students in demography-related disciplines from both APC and non-APC institutions (including agricultural economics, anthropology, economics, geography, public health, rural sociology, sociology), as well as young faculty and researchers employed in population agencies. For more information please visit the project Web site http://csiss.ncgia.ucsb.edu/gispopsci/. Comparative Literature Luncheon The Comparative Literature Luncheon is a weekly informal lunchtime gathering of students, faculty, and other members of the University community. Each week there is a short (twenty-minute) presentation, by a visitor or a local speaker, on a topic related to a humanities discipline. Daniel Walden (dxw8@psu.edu) is the coordinator for the series this semester. We meet every Monday in 102 Kern at about 12:15 p.m. Coffee and tea are provided (no charge). You can bring your lunch or buy something on a tray in Kern Cafeteria (next door) and bring it into 102. The speaker will begin at about 12:40 p.m. Allowing a few minutes for discussion, we'll conclude in time for you to get to classes that meet at 1:25 p.m. All students, faculty, colleagues, and friends are welcome. For details, check the WebEvents Calendar. Click here for information regarding our luncheons from previous semesters. If you have not done so already, I invite you to take a look at the WebEvents Calendar which features lectures, talks, and conferences sponsored by units within the College of the Liberal Arts and by the College. I encourage you to use this great source of information. If you have something that you would like posted to the calendar for your department, please send entry submissions to Brandy Bower at bvb2@psu.edu. In Memoriam: Seven Emeritus Faculty of Liberal Arts Joseph H. Dahmus, Emeritus Professor of Medieval History and Emeritus Fellow of the Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies, died March 7, 2005, in State College at the age of 95. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Professor Dahmus served as a faculty member at Pensn State from 1947 until 1974. He was the author of numerous books and scholarly articles on the Middle Ages. Professor Dahmus began the medieval studies program and the medieval studies major. After his retirement, he received the Liberal Arts Alumni Society Emeritus Distinction Award. Lorraine Kapitanoff passed away March 9, 2005 at The Village at Penn State. She graduated from Penn State with a Ph.D. in comparative literature and retired as Emeritas Professor of Russian after thirty-one years of service in 1989. She was author of five books, contributed and translated several additional books, had numerous book reviews and newspaper bylines, and was published in national magazines. Lorraine created and was the executive director of the Slavic Folk Festival, a showcase for cultural achievements of Pennsylvania's Slavic Americans. She also received the College of the Liberal Arts Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching. Donations may be made to the Jerome J. Kapitanoff Memorial Scholarship Fund, c/o Pennsylvania State University, 102 Old Main, University Park, PA 16802. Jacob Kaufman, Professor Emeritus of Economics, died Sunday, March 6, 2005. Professor Kaufman joined Penn State as an associate professor of economics in 1956 and retired in 1977 as a professor. Gerald Moser, Professor Emeritus of Spanish and Portuguese, died Wednesday, March 2, at The Village at Penn State. Gerald taught at the University of Illinois from 1945-49, then came to Penn State, where he taught Portuguese, Brazilian, and Spanish American literatures for the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese from 1949 until he retired in 1978. A memorial service was held at the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship, State College, on April 2. Memorial contributions may be made to the Moser Award for Excellence in Portuguese in the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship, the Park Forest Day Nursery, or the Green Party. Margaret Benson Matson, Professor Emerita of Sociology and Social Welfare, died Wednesday, March 16, 2005 at her home in Baltimore. Margaret started at Penn State as an instructor in September 1951 and retired as professor in June 1978. Margaret was a leader in the development of the undergraduate social welfare major and in institutionalizing study abroad programs for students. She was active in departmental and University governance. Margaret and her husband, Fred, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, were active in the community for years after their retirement. A memorial service was held on March 21 in Baltimore. Memorial contributions may be sent to the Margaret Matson Education Abroad Award, c/o College of the Liberal Arts, Pennsylvania State University, 13 Sparks Building, University Park, PA 16802. Merrill Noble, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, died Friday, February 18, 2005. Merrill received his Ph.D. from Ohio State University in 1951, where he continued as a research associate until 1954. He was head of psychology at Kansas State University from 1962-67. He served as head of the psychology department at Penn State until 1977, when he stepped down to become a senior professor, and retired from Penn State in 1989. Anthony M. Pasquariello, former head of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, died peacefully at home on Saturday, February 19, 2005. He left Penn State in the late 1960s, when he went to the University of Illinois as head of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, from which he retired. 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 Alice Fogg at axf1@psu.edu or 863-8328. As a reminder, if you are leaving the College, you will need to return your parking permit to 111 Sparks Building. Jennifer Glasgow, staff assistant V, undergraduate studies Amy Jo Larimer, administrative assistant I, psychology Michael Renne, microcomputer information specialist, Liberal Arts Computer Support Services (LACSS) Jaclyn Keeler, staff assistant V, sociology, PA Commission on Sentencing Dustin Kemp, staff assistant V, psychology clinic Louise Sharrar, staff assistant VII, dean's office Linda Spangler, administrative assistant IV, political science LA Times is compiled by Brandy Bower, Dean’s Office, 111 Sparks, 865-7691, bvb2@psu.edu LA Times is also available on the Web at: http://www.la.psu.edu/ This publication is available in alternative media on request. Penn State encourages persons with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. If you anticipate needing any type of accommodation or have questions about the physical access provided, please consult Louise Sharrar 814-865-7691 in advance of your participation or visit. The Pennsylvania State University is committed to the policy that all persons shall have equal access to programs, facilities, admission, and employment without regard to personal characteristics not related to ability, performance, or qualifications as determined by University policy or by state or federal authorities. It is the policy of the University to maintain an academic and work environment free of discrimination, including harassment. The Pennsylvania State University prohibits discrimination and harassment against any person because of age, ancestry, color, disability or handicap, national origin, race, religious creed, sex, sexual orientation, or veteran status. Discrimination or harassment against faculty, staff, or students will not be tolerated at The Pennsylvania State University. Direct all inquiries regarding the nondiscrimination policy to the Affirmative Action Director, The Pennsylvania State University, 328 Boucke Building, University Park, PA 16802-5901; Tel 814-865-4700/V, 814-863-1150/TTY U. Ed. LBA 05-218 |
