College of the Liberal Arts Electronic Magazine, Issue 8

Issue 8, 9/3/02

Contents:

Family Symposium

Fall Semester

Trivia

Democracy

Center for Language Acquisition

Unsubscribe

Penn State

College of the Liberal Arts

Alumni Relations and Development

Junior Journalism and Political Science Major to Study in D.C., Work with Wolf Blitzer

   “When I was in high school, I used to joke that I would work for CNN,” says junior journalism and political science major Rebecca Harkness. “Now, I’ll be working there this fall.”
   Just last week, Harkness, originally from “snowy” Rochester, New York, started as an intern at CNN, working on Wolf Blitzer Reports. She will spend her semester there as part of the College of Communications’ Washington Program, in which the Department of Political Science is a partner.
   Started in 1995 to give students a complete Washington internship experience, the program includes internship placement, an academic component, housing, and special events and programs. The Communications and Democracy Semester, structured specifically for students in the fields of communications and political science, offers Penn State coursework on-site for the Washington interns. Students may take up to 18 credits of classes taught in Washington by Penn State instructors as well as local professionals.
   In Harkness’ case, she will take courses with James Eisenstein, professor of political science. When Harkness arrived at University Park a journalism major, she signed on at the Daily Collegian, but also registered for American Politics, taught by William Bianco, associate professor of journalism. Bianco’s course inspired her to declare political science her second major.
   This fall, she will take 15 course credits (roughly five classes) in D.C., in addition to working four days a week at CNN. Harkness has prepared herself for such a load. During her first two years at Penn State, she volunteered with the Red Cross in addition to her duties at the Collegian and in classes. But she said the load was manageable because of her convictions about the importance of service.
   “It’s close to my heart,” she says. “People I know have been helped by the Red Cross. Plus, I wanted to do something that was service-oriented because so much of the Collegian is advancement and career oriented.”
   That’s not to say she doesn’t have plans. Harkness considers law school an eventual destination, though in what field she’s not sure. “Family law, child advocacy, rights of the elderly, something in that vein,” she says. Her volunteer efforts have included construction work to repair homes and mission work with her church. At the same time, her great-grandmother is 100 years old, and Harkness has seen what the elderly experience during transitions from homes to apartments to care facilities. She says, “I’ve seen a lot of things. Advocacy will have to be an underlying theme in my career, and I mostly credit the Red Cross with steering me in that direction. Whatever I do, part of it will have to be service.”
   Harkness looks forward to the inspiration she will find in D.C., a city which has already fascinated her. She recalls how she was very moved the last time she was in the city, for the inauguration of President Bush. She vividly remembers the crush of people, the rain, the enraged protesters, the serene supporters. “It was a very patriotic and moving moment, all those people and different opinions, everyone free to do their thing, and realizing that it was a change of power happening peacefully.” It is an inspiration Harkness brings with her to an arguably changed city, to work in politics or law or journalism, toward a career with service at its core.

Penn State to Host Tenth Annual National Family Symposium

   On October 10 and 11, the Population Research Institute, in concert with the College of the Liberal Arts and the College of Health and Human Development, will once again host its National Symposium on Family Issues. For the 2002 symposium, scholars will discuss “Work-Family Challenges for Low-Income Parents and Their Children.”
   Over the last two decades, family scholars have become increasingly interested in the interconnections between paid work and family life. Much of this research, however, has focused on the lives of middle class and professional families and has ignored low-income families and the working poor. This oversight is particularly troubling given recent welfare legislation that has pushed many single mothers into the paid labor force. In this year’s symposium, scholars will focus on issues faced by parents struggling to gain a foothold on the economic ladder.
   The 2002 symposium is the latest in a long series of highly influential symposia held at University Park. Every fall for the last decade, 200 scholars and policy experts attend what is now known as the National Symposium on Family Issues to consider a theme of multidisciplinary interest. Sixteen of the top scholars in the field of family research (some of whom are Penn State faculty) convene to present and critique research on the focal topic and to consider their implications for effective programs and public policy. The event brings scholars into contact with other distinguished researchers in such diverse fields as family studies, child development, sociology, psychology, economics, anthropology, law, and history. The symposium co-organizers—Alan Booth, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Human Development, and Demography, and Ann C. Crouter, professor of human development and director of the Center for Work and Family Research, make an effort where possible also to include international scholars, including speakers from Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and Sweden.
   This year’s symposium has two other distinctive elements to it. First, it comes just two months after co-organizer Alan Booth was selected by the Family Section of the American Sociological Association for its Distinguished Career of Scholarship and Service Award, the highest award given by the association, the field’s largest professional body. Dr. Booth received the award at the ASA meeting in Chicago in August.
   At the same time, the College of the Liberal Arts will honor Dr. Joan Huber ’45 arts and letters, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the Ohio State University. Dr. Huber, who will attend the symposium this fall, will receive the Outstanding Liberal Arts Alumni Award for her work in studying the effects of gender and race on work and economic stratification. She is widely recognized as one of the most important scholars in her field.

Fall Semester in Liberal Arts: More Than Foliage and Football

   If your fall travel plans include a stop in Happy Valley for a football game, a conference, or just reminiscent strolling under the elms, you may consider extending your weekend stay to catch any of a number of Liberal Arts events occurring in the early part of fall semester. All events occur on the University Park campus.
   First, a writer whose book was profiled in the summer 2002 issue of Liberal Arts will give a public reading on September 5. William J. Cobb, associate professor of English and a faculty member of the Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing, will read work from The White Tattoo, his 2001 Sandstone Prize-winning book of short stories. A contributor to such periodicals as The New Yorker, The Houston Chronicle, and The New York Times Book Review, Cobb will be the inaugural reader for this year’s Allegheny Mountains Reading Series. The series is supported by the Mary E. Rolling Lectureship in Creative Writing, the English department, and the University Libraries. The reading begins at 8 p.m. in Foster Auditorium in Pattee Library.
   Also this fall, the Rock Ethics Institute will kick off several speaker series on topics related to ethical inquiry (for full calendar details, click here). The first speaker for the Institute’s Disability Studies Lecture Series will be Dr. Anita Silver. On Monday, September 16, Dr. Silver, professor of philosophy at San Francisco State University, will deliver the lecture, “Preserving the Promise of Genomics: A Civil Rights Route to Protection from Genetic Discrimination.” Silver’s lecture is one of six planned for the academic year, and details about the rest of the speakers, the abstracts of their talks, and the Rock Ethics Institute, can all be found on the Institute Web site.
   On October 7, the Ethics and Disability Studies series will welcome Dr. Simi Linton, founder and president of New York-based Disability/Arts, an organization which works with artists and cultural institutions to help shape the presentation of disability in the arts, and to increase the representation of works by disabled artists. Dr. Linton will deliver her lecture, Disability and the Holocaust: A History Revealed.
   Finally on October 9 at 8 p.m. in the Lipcon Auditorium of the Palmer Museum of Art, Michael Bérubé, Paterno Family Professor in Literature, will speak on “The Utility of the Arts and Humanities.” He writes, “Artists and humanists who work in universities are profoundly ambivalent about the idea of defending their enterprises in terms of social utility; on one hand they do not want to claim that the arts and humanities are so ennobling and self-justifying that no one need bother explaining why such things are worth pursuing, yet on the other hand they are rightly skeptical that cost-benefit analyses of universities will do justice to disciplines devoted to the varieties of human cultural expression. My talk will explore this ambivalence, in part by contrasting the arts and humanities with the speculative sciences, and will argue that artists and humanists can, in fact, justify the utility—and the uselessness—of studying both ancient and contemporary works of art and literature.”
   Also in October, the College will host the tenth annual National Symposium on Family Issues. See the story in this issue.

Diana Huffman Storch’s Passion for Flight Leads to This Issue’s Trivia Question

   Fifty-five years after her first solo flight at the University Park Airport, Diana Huffman Storch ’47 commerce and finance, found herself once again watching the ground recede beneath her. This time, she was a passenger helping to navigate in the second seat of a single-engine Cessna as it glided smoothly through the air.
   One thing she’d forgotten was the intense temperature drop that occurs with a plane’s ascension. Though she had worn extra socks and a warm jacket, she found herself shivering. “Up in the clouds it’s so cold.” Storch explains. “For every thousand feet, it grows several degrees cooler.” She admits to being a little nervous, after not having flown in a propeller plane in fifteen years. “I kept it straight and level. I didn’t shake, but I thought, For heaven’s sake, this is difficult.”
   In the 40's, while visiting campus with a friend, Storch decided to attend Penn State after she was taken by the beauty of the campus, the welcoming atmosphere, and the educational standards set by the University.
   At first, she thought she wanted to earn her degree in journalism. When she found she wasn’t enjoying the classes in this major, she changed. Storch made the unusual decision to work toward a degree in engineering. “All of the gals were taking home economics,” Storch says. “Very few women were in business majors. At that time the School of Business had not yet been established and was part of the Department of Commerce and Finance in the College of the Liberal Arts.”
   While she did not stay in engineering, it did lead to a scholarship in aviation training, which she took up with great enthusiasm. In the succeeding semesters, she earned her pilot’s license, becoming one of the first females at Penn State to do so. She graduated in 1947 and continued to fly single-engine planes in her spare time.
   Storch now lives on the east coast of Florida, and though she and her family sold their private planes fifteen years ago, she remains an avid fan of aviation. When she saw the picture of the prop plane in this year’s issue of Liberal Arts, she didn’t hesitate to call the College of the Liberal Arts to find out what kind of plane it is.
   So, we thought we would turn it over to you. The first person to answer correctly will receive a prize, so, please e-mail us with the make and model of the plane on page 5 of the current issue.
   What was the answer to the last trivia question? Mary E. Butterfield, one of the two women who were the first women to teach at Penn State, taught German. Robert Yuskavage, ’74 economics, ’75 M.A. economics was the first person to correctly answer the question, and he will receive a prize.

Over The Long Haul, U.S. Democracy Is Self-Correcting

   Despite its pendulum-like swings in policy from one extreme to the other, American democracy is in the long run self-correcting.
   “Our system is capable of making glaring mistakes, sometimes under-reacting, sometimes overreacting,”says Dr. Frank R. Baumgartner, professor and head of the political science department. “In any system of collective decision-making, it could hardly be otherwise.”
   Many pundits complain that modern democracies are held hostage by vested interests and are thus often vulnerable to corruption, Baumgartner notes. They forget, however, that dictatorships are subject to even more egregious forms of corruption, due to nepotism, institutionalized bribery, and simple inertia. Above all, they are far less capable of reforming themselves.
   “This is not to excuse, for instance, the current rash of scandals (e.g. Enron, Worldcom, Adelphia) that have undermined public confidence in corporate America and plagued the stock market,” says Baumgartner. “Another case in point would be the September 11 terrorist incidents and the war on terrorism. The U.S. government is now so focused on the latter that it engages in rampant ethnic profiling of Middle Eastern-looking people, especially in airports, where they can be subject to searches and long delays. This takes place despite assurances that the United States has no quarrel with Muslims but only with dangerous extremists operating in the name of Islam,” Baumgartner adds.
   “A past example from recent years would be pesticides, which enjoyed a popular image as a cure for hunger worldwide in the decade following World War II,” Baumgartner says. “Despite warnings that pesticides could be potentially toxic, the U.S. government enthusiastically supported the use of such pesticides as DDT, sprayed in the South for fire ants and in the North for the gypsy moth.”
   In 1956, however, media commentary on pesticides, based on further studies, went from overwhelmingly positive to predominantly negative, and government policy followed suit. This was six years before Rachel Carson published her book, Silent Spring, exposing the perils of pesticides.
   The tendency of American policymakers, including members of Congress, to do an apparent about-face on issues can be traced to two principal causes, Baumgartner notes. The first is basic human nature. The average citizen and policymakers alike find it extremely difficult to look at all sides of a complex issue at the same time. The result is that public discourse on that issue tends to be oversimplified and even polarized, with people taking a black-and-white, rather than shades-of-gray, perspective.
   “At the same time, policymakers in the various agencies of government may often have a one-dimensional view of that same complex issue (e.g. poverty, school safety), when the issue is usually multidimensional,” Baumgartner says. “Attention is often directed at only one of several aspects, while others are suppressed or ignored. Changes rarely occur at the behest of the government agency that has immediate jurisdiction. The last people to advocate policy revision are the guardians of the old regime.”
   Furthermore, elected or appointed officials are reluctant to push policy change if the overall level of support for it appears low and there is little chance of altering the status quo. This creates the illusion that the official government position on a certain issue is fixed.
   As new evidence emerges, a given policy monopoly begins to lose its aura of invincibility. Competing government agencies, which hitherto had not been heard from, may now assert their right to get involved, Baumgartner says. As more agencies and key players provide feedback about an issue, the more profound the change in public perception, so that the image of nuclear power or pesticides or smoking declines, sometimes sharply. This feedback mechanism explains many of the seemingly abrupt turnarounds in public policies toward a variety of issues.
   “With many actors simultaneously paying attention to the expected willingness of others to pay attention to the issue and help in expediting change, they may all act in rapid response to each other, or to a commonly perceived event,” says Baumgartner. “So an event such as the Columbine High School shootings can be important not so much because it changes anybody’s mind about the seriousness of an issue (although that can happen too), but because it may change policy makers’ calculations about the willingness of allies to join in the struggle. The expectation of success itself can create momentum.
   “Democratic systems, unlike any other form of government, provide complex feedback processes that have the potential, though not always the realized potential, for error correction,” Baumgartner says. “Errors, even large scale errors, are inevitable in any system composed of human beings. In the end, democratic policy making is to be judged not by the errors it makes, but the errors it corrects.”

Adapted from a story by Paul Blaum, Penn State Public Information

Center for Language Acquisition Hosts First Summer Institute

   On a hot day in mid-July, a group of students peered at a blackboard filled with words like “the power of tests,” “cognitive psychology,” and “human brain.” These seven individuals leaned forward in their desks, intent on listening to each other and the professor and to add their thoughts to the discussion of language teaching practices. The class was part of a larger assembly of more than 150 graduate students who came to Penn State from twenty-five countries, including Japan, Egypt, Italy, and Turkey, to participate in the Center for Language Acquisition’s first Summer Institute in Applied Linguistics.
   The field of applied linguistics uses the theories and insights of a variety of disciplines (linguistics, chiefly, but also sociology, psychology, philosophy, education, and more) to understand how people learn, use, remember, and change language—usually languages beyond those they learned in childhood. The Summer Institute provides an opportunity for graduate students and faculty from around the world to interact with some of the leading scholars in applied linguistics on a daily basis. With its focus on what research tells us about how languages are learned and about how to optimally teach them, the Institute also helps non-native speakers of English to become both advanced speakers of the language and effective teachers in their home countries.
   Advanced language learning requires total cultural immersion. It is not enough to simply learn a grammar and mode of speech. Communication entails navigation of the subtleties of language, culture, metaphor, and behavior. To understand those complexities for a given language is required to be a truly advanced speaker. Thus, students and teachers from around the world came to University Park for immersion, teaching, and learning.
   The Summer Institute came about through Linguistics and Applied Language Studies program (LALS), the newest academic degree program in the College of the Liberal Arts. The director of the Penn State Center for Language Acquisition, James P. Lantolf, worked with Karen Johnson, director of LALS, to keep the program running smoothly. The courses, held in two sessions, from July 1-July 12 and another from July 15 to July 26, brought together graduate students and faculty interested in understanding how languages are learned and on improving the teaching of languages.
   Professor Tim Murphy, who teaches in Taiwan, found that the attendees were very excited by the lectures, classes, and workshops offered. “They love it,” he explained. “I hear them having lots of conversations about what they’re learning—in the dining halls, in Simmons, everywhere.” The dialogues are a key part of the Institute’s mission. “We need to work together to gain new ideas and methods to inspire students to achieve greater levels of success,” Murphy said.
   In the lunch break between two classes (“Language, Ethnicity, and Late Modernity,” and “Writing in Second Languages”), Zhao Hong from China mentioned one of the added benefits of the Institute. “We’re meeting professors whose names we’ve only seen in print and we’re hearing experiences from different perspectives. It’s very intense.” She echoed Murphy’s observations, stating that “I don’t think I could have learned as much without the mixture of student and faculty voices of experience.”
   The next conference will be held in the summer of 2005. For more details, please contact the Center for Language Acquisition at 814-863-7035.