As you are all aware, we are facing challenging budget times as we look ahead to meeting our academic mission over the coming years. What gets me through these difficulties is recognizing and celebrating your achievements and the great events and plans we are moving forward with even as we make difficult adjustments moving ahead.
There are many such accomplishments to celebrate and many great events in the coming quarter. Please take a moment to read this memo and then reach out to congratulate someone noted here, or follow up with someone on an event of interest to you.
I’m sure I will see many of you at the different events around campus.
Shared Governance
Executive Committee: Recent Minutes
Faculty Staff Senate: Recent Minutes
David V. Powers, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, Seattle University
Call for Applications
The application deadline for 2020 College of A&S Summer Faculty Research Fellowships, Promotion Fellowships and Dean’s Research Fellowships is March 9, 2020. Each award carries a $5,000 summer stipend. Details, application instructions, and contact information are available here.
International Language Day Celebration
Listen to music and celebrate multilingualism on February 20 from 12:30 to 2 p.m. in Xavier Lobby. Students will be performing songs and poems in Arabic, Chinese, French, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish.Sponsored by the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures and Xavier Global House. For more information contact Annelise Pedersen by email.
Higher Ed on Homelessness (HEH) Hall of Fame
On February 22 from 7-9 p.m., we will honor Seattle University alums who have contributed to solving homelessness in our region. Celebrate our impact and be recognized for your work as a professional, student, or volunteer, at the first-ever SU HEH Hall of Fame during the SU Men's Basketball Hall of Fame Game against CSU Bakersfield. The goal is to fill the court at halftime with everyone in our SU community who has worked on homelessness. We will drive home the message that we can solve homelessness if we keep working together. Learn more and RSVP here by February 14.
ENCOMPASS, New Literary Series
The English Department will launch this new literary series on Thursday, February 27 in the Wyckoff Auditorium at 7 p.m. It is free and open to the public. The series plans to offer a reading each quarter of the academic year. The inaugural reading features Claudia Castro Luna, Washington State Poet Laureate, who will read from her book-length poem One River, a Thousand Voices, drawn from her experience with communities along the Columbia River. She will be joined by Mimi Lok, visiting writer and author of Last of Her Name, a debut short story collection that considers the intimate, interconnected lives of diasporic women and the histories they are born into, a book NPR calls “a gorgeous collection that urges us to do our best to connect with one another.” ENCOMPASS is co-sponsored by the English Department, Seattle University Office of Multicultural Affairs, student organization MECHA, and La Sala, a Seattle-based Latinx arts organization.
Impeachment and the Future of Politics and Bipartisanship
The video of this timely conversation hosted on January 21 by the SU Institute of Public Service, with Representatives Suzan DelBene and Derek Kilmer, and IPS’ Larry Hubbell, PhD, and Joni Balter is now available to view here.
Seattle University Consortium of Interdisciplinary Scholars
Faculty members recently received an email invitation to join the Consortium, 150 professors from all colleges who are interested in crossing disciplinary boundaries, meeting colleagues from across SU, and supporting advanced student work. The current membership is available here. Contact Sven Arvidson, PhD, by email to learn more.
Office of Sponsored Projects
The Office’s mission is to ignite and support Seattle University's externally funded research, scholarship, and service endeavors. Bookmark their Events page and attend one or more of their events and workshops.
The Office of Sponsored Projects and Lemieux Library and McGoldrick Learning Commons hosts their Winter Faculty Workshop: Essentials of Proposal Development. There are two sessions with the same content, January 27 from 12:30 to 1:20 and March 2 from 2:15 to 3:05. Participants will gain competency in positioning oneself for successful proposal writing with a particular focus on: --critically reviewing funding announcements, --developing project aims that respond to sponsor objectives, --strategically conceptualizing projects, --tips for crafting compelling proposals, and --improving as a grant writer. RSVP required here.
2020 Summer Faculty Fellowship Program
Congratulations to our Arts and Science colleagues selected:
This program provides financial support for tenure-track or tenured faculty and full-time librarians who are involved in an active program of scholarship, including the scholarship of discovery, integration, application, and teaching. The program’s goal is to support faculty efforts to build on previous scholarly or creative endeavors (e.g., for the writing of grant proposals) or to move projects in a new direction (providing the basis for future external support or publications).
From the Strategic Planning Committee
Since last year, the CAS Strategic Planning Committee has convened conversations and sought feedback from our community in order to elaborate our College´s Strategic Plan for the next five years. Based on your responses, questions, and ideas we have elaborated a draft of a Vision statement, a list of Initiatives, and a series of Strategy Screen Questions to guide decision-making in our College.
Download Draft Vision, Initiatives, Strategy Screen - PDF
We are currently seeking your feedback on this document, even as we are concerned and aware of the very challenging budget situation we find ourselves in at this particular moment. We are being asked to make significant cuts that will likely affect members of our community before our Strategic Plan is finalized. We present this draft to you with the hope that the values that come through in this document, values that were expressed by our community, will inform the decisions that are currently being made or will soon be made. We will revise this draft based on your responses and taking into account any budgeting decisions in the coming months.
Please add your feedback on the document to this online survey.
Throughout the month of February the Committee will be seeking our College’s input in the following ways:
Please do not hesitate to reach out to any members of the committee.
CAS STRATEGIC PLANNING COMMITTEE
Tonja Brown and the Pathways to Professional Formation Initiative sends gratitude to all faculty and staff support of promoting the LinkUp 2020 events and the College to Career Series.
LinkUp 2020 brought together 80 students and 66 professional mentors representing ten industry clusters. Conversation flowed through all three rounds of mentoring and networking. We could not have done it without your help! Great photos of the event are on Photoshelter!
Alexandra Adame, PhD, Psychology, presented her work with Plymouth Housing February 5, discussing her research on community building among residents and staff at Plymouth Housing, which is a Housing First model low-income housing provider with over 14 buildings located in downtown Seattle. This research was completed with the support of former graduate student Chris Perry, '19 and former undergraduate Emma Pierce, '19 who both served as research assistants on the project.
Caitlin Ring Carlson, PhD, Communication, and alum Hayley Rousselle published “Report and repeat: Investigating Facebook’s hate speech removal process.” Read the article here.
Jackie Helfgott, PhD, Criminal Justice, final report for the “Seattle Women’s Reentry – Second Chance Reentry Grant Strategic Planning and Evaluation” now available on the Seattle University Department of Criminal Justice Crime & Justice Research Center. This report presents findings from a Bureau of Justice Assistance funded study in collaboration with the Seattle Police Department, the IF Project, and the WA State Department of Corrections examining the reentry experience of women released from the Washington Corrections Center for Women in 2017 and 2018. This study is an outgrowth of several years of research in collaboration with the Seattle Police Department and the IF Project.
Jeanette Rodriguez, PhD, and Sharon Callahan, EdD, received a $30,000 grant from the Louisville Institute for their proposal, “From Ecclesial Challenge to the Renewal of the Church: Spirituality of Women Called to Roman Catholic Priesthood.” Through its Pastoral Study Project program (PSP), the Louisville Institute enables pastoral leaders to bracket daily work routines in order to pursue a pressing and significant question for the life of faith. Grants of up to $15,000 support independent or collaborative study projects – projects that privilege pastoral perspectives and rhythms and honor grassroots research conducted by skilled clergy. PSP grantees use a variety of platforms to share what they learn with a wider audience, extending their leadership in ways that benefit the broader church and culture in North America. Louisville Institute is funded by the Religion Division of Lilly Endowment and based at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary (Louisville, Kentucky). The Institute’s fundamental mission is the enrich the religious life of North American Christians and to encourage the revitalization of their institutions, by bringing together those who lead religious institutions with those who study them, so that the work of each might inform and strengthen the other.
Thanks to the generosity of alumni, faculty, staff and friends, Seattle U Gives achieved our goal of surpassing 2,500+ gifts and raising over $400,000 in 24 hours for programs all across campus. The College of Arts and Sciences reached 67 gifts and more than $10,000. And the Indigenous Peoples Institute made it to 54 gifts over $6,500. These giving day challenges are all about participation, and it it terrific to see more people and programs getting involved. Thank you to the departments who reached out to alumni and friends via emails and social media.
Gifts are still being processed and you will see donations deposited into your department gift accounts very soon. Programs designated by donors include (in no particular order): Film Studies, Theology & Religious Studies, Brady Battalion Alumni Scholarship (ROTC), Kinesiology, Matteo Ricci, Debate, Communications, LinkUp, SU Choirs, Theatre, Nonprofit Leadership, Modern Languages and Cultures, Sociology, Global Awareness, MAP - Psychology Grad program, all in addition to the College of Arts and Sciences Dean's Fund for Excellence, the CAS Dean's Research Fellowship Fund, and our CAS Annual Scholarship Fund. We look forward to making more progress next year and will be in touch with plans to make it even easier for programs to participate.
Caitlin Carlson, PhD, Communication and Media, was interviewed by the Stranger for “Amid protests Seattle Public Library affirms commitment to free speech.” Read the article here. She published an essay with Journalism History called "Media Ownership and the Marketplace of Ideas." Read the essay here.
Rashmi Chordiya, PhD, Institute of Public Service, received the 2020 Inaugural SWPA Dissertation/Thesis Award. This award is presented to an individual who is in the process of or completed a master thesis or doctoral dissertation thesis related to gender and public administration within the past two years. Dr. Chordiya's dissertation on “Enhancing Retention of Women, Minorities, and Employees with Disabilities: An Organizational Inclusion Perspective” was nominated for this inaugural award for the contribution to theory and practice of diversity and inclusion in public organizations and the impacts on the retention of female employees, employees of color, and employees with disabilities.
Angelique Davis, JD, Political Science, Global African Studies, Pre-Law Program, and Women and Gender Studies, participated in the Civil Justice Research Initiative’s Roundtable on Legal Remedies for Racial Trauma at UC, Berkeley School of Law. She and Rose Ernst also won the 2019 Politics, Groups & Identities Best Paper Award for the Western Political Science Association for their “Racial Gaslighting” article. Learn more about both on her LinkedIn posts.
Russell Duvernoy, PhD, Philosophy, published two articles in late 2019, “Climate X or Climate Jacobin?: A Critical Exchange on our Planetary Future.” Co-Authored with Larry Busk. Forthcoming in Radical Philosophy Review, 2020. (Currently available in online first format: DOI: 10.5840/radphilrev2019103100) and “A Genesis of Speculative Empiricisms: Whitehead and Deleuze read Hume.” Southern Journal of Philosophy, December 2019, Volume 57 (4): 459-482.
Rob Efird, PhD, Anthropology and Sociology and Asian Studies, gave a talk talk (in Chinese) on Seattle U’s ethnobotanical garden at National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, Taiwan on January 13, entitled (English translation) "Ethnobotanical Gardens as a Platform for Environmental and Nature Education.”
Brooke Gialopsos, PhD, Criminal Justice, was a co-author on two papers presented at the American Society of Criminology conference in November: 1) Scared or Prepared: A Test of the Effect of Competing Active Shooter Drills, and 2) Ranger Danger: Exploring Perceptions of Crime in America's National Park System. Additionally, Dr. Brooke became a certified youth Mental Health First Aider through the National Council for Behavioral Health.
Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, PhD, Modern Languages and Women & Gender Studies, Co-Director of the Patricia Wismer Center for Gender, Justice, & Diversity, and Theiline Pigott McCone Endowed Chair in the Humanities, will be the keynote speaker for three major conferences in Washington DC., Virginia and Ithaca this coming spring. In April she will be keynoting at the Organization for American Historians and in The Women of Color in the Academy's annual conference. "Presumed Incompetent, Volume II,"which she co-edited, will be launched in March. Her poetry and work will be featured in a chapter of Patric Vecchione’s new book, “My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice.”
Jacqueline Helfgott, PhD, Criminal Justice, was quoted in The Seattle Times, “ ‘Third World hellhole?’ New data shows Seattle had lowest property crime rate in decades.” Read the article here. he was also interviewed on KIRO 7 News on a proposed community police storefront in downtown Seattle. Watch the video here.
Roxy Hornbeck, MFA, Arts Leadership, published “Breathing Deeply: A Personal Pedagogy of Social Justice in Higher Education” in MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture. Read it here.
Wesley Howard-Brook, JD, MDiv, Theology and Religious Studies, wrote "Why We Need to Translate Greek 'Ioudaioi' as Judeans,” a chapter for the book, “Jesus Wasn’t Killed by Jews,” published by Orbis Books. Learn more here.
Audrey Hudgins, EdD, Matteo Ricci Institute, published an article on the intersections of poverty and conflict entitled “The Endless Cycle” in A Matter of Spirit, the quarterly justice journal of the Intercommunity Peace & Justice Center.
Nalini Iyer, PhD, English, was interviewed for "Seattle City Council tangles with Indian politics." Listen here.
Alex Johnston, PhD, and Kirsten Thompson, PhD, Film Studies Program, attended Sundance Film Festival January 27 to February 2 to join the Windrider Forum, a Christian social justice group that forms part of Sundance, to evaluate it as a culminating degree experience for its senior students.
Marco Lowe, MPA, Institute of Public Service, has appeared several times on KING 5 recently, once about the impeachment process (view here), then about presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (view here), and about the Iowa Caucus (view here).
Susan Meyers, PhD, English, recently returned from the Jesuit University in Mexico City, Universidad Iberamericana, where she was invited to ofer creative writing workshops to university faculty across the disciplines. In February, she will be an artist in residence at Green Olive Arts Center in Tetouan, Morocco.
Rich Nafziger, MA, Institute of Public Service, was named to the Washington State Housing Finance Commission.
Erik Olsen, PhD, Political Science, published an article, “The Early Modern ‘Creation’ of Property and its Enduring Influence," in the European Journal of Political Theory. He also composed the music for an original musical, "Is You Is," which will be part of this year's Chicago Musical Theatre Festival, an annual festival organized and produced by the Underscore Theatre Company of Chicago. Feb 3-23.
Patrick Schoettmer, PhD, Political Science, was interviewed about impeachment and the Iowa caucuses by the Austrian Press Agency, the Austrian equivalent of our Associated Press.
Aakanksha Sinha, PhD, Social Work, presented a paper, “Undervalued & Overrepresented: Voices of Migrant Domestic Workers in India;” led a roundtable discussion, “Design Thinking for Social Work: A Method for Generating New Ideas, Scientific Exploration and Surprising Innovations; and led a workshop, “Design-Thinking in Social Work: Techniques and Approaches to Bridge Individual-Interventions with Policy Advocacy,” at the Society for Social Work Research Conference, held in Washington, DC.
Estella Williamson, DSW, MSW, ACSW, Social Work, recently attended and was a presenter at the 2020 Northwest Field Education Consortium on January 30-31, 2020 at the University of Washington. The theme of the event was "Advancing Environmental, Social and Economic Justice in Field Education" and presenters discussed the importance of helping students develop social work competencies through the lens of environmental, social and economic justice. Dr. Williamson also addressed field education as a key area of focus in the next iteration of the CSWE Educational and Accreditation Standards for Social Work Education in 2022.
Zachary D. Wood, PhD, Institute of Public Service, was selected as an ENACT faculty fellow this year through the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life at Brandeis University. This national fellowship is specifically aimed at developing undergraduate coursework centered around legislative advocacy and community engagement, particularly to connect students to issues of justice through direct advocacy alongside community and direct engagement with legislators at the state capital. He is the first ENACT faculty fellow from the State of Washington. This fellowship will be an important asset for Public Affairs students, and Seattle University as a whole. Learn more about ENACT here.
Monique Brown, MNPL, was surprised with the tickets to the Super Bowl and Seahawks gear for her 26 years of military service in the US Army and her dedication to helping homeless veterans. Read about it here.
Katie Diamond, MNPL ’19, is now an Associate at Imago, LLC.
Diane Narasaki, MNPL, was included in the Seattle Times’ “13 people who made an impact on the Seattle area in the past decade. Read the story here.
Elizabeth Scallon, Humanities/Biochemistry, ’04, was featured in Geek Wire’s “Working Geek” feature. Read the story here.
Mary Jo Torgeson, MPA, ’01, published an Op-Ed, “Why Anchorage Public Library has gone fine free,” in the Anchorage Daily News. Read the article here.
Monique Brown, MNPL, '20, received more than a tour of the Seattle Seahawk's Virginia Mason Athletic Center recently. She was surprised with the tickets to the Super Bowl and Seahawks gear for her 26 years of military service in the US Army and her dedication to helping homeless veterans. Monique created Forward Operating Base Hope in 2016, an organization that collects and distributes personal care items to homeless veterans who live in places that are not meant for human habitation. Read more.
Sadiqua Iman, MFA, '20, directed August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean at Chattanooga Theatre Centre. Read this preview article.
Paige Petrangelo, MFA, '20, launched the website for her project, Ramble On, a place where emerging musicians touring to Seattle can rest, recharge, and regroup while on the road in order to maintain their level of performance, mental health, and security. Paige will be presenting her work at the MFA '20 Summary Project Presentations.
Alexandra Hinson, ’21, Psychology and Women and Gender Studies, published “Stop Asking What’s Next” on HerCampus.com. Read it here.
The Seattle U Debate team won first and second place in JV debate in online debating on January 16. They also had a very successful fall season.
2019 Tournament Results
December Seattle University IV Tournament
November Online Debate Tournament
November U British Columbia Tournament
October Online Tournament
October Lewis and Clark College Tournament
Event descriptions and more on the Arts and Sciences Event page.
Thursday, June 17 at 12:00 PM
Wednesday, June 23 at 1:00 PM
Thursday, July 8 at 5:00 PM
Thursday, August 19 at 12:00 PM
The Dean’s Monthly Memo is published the second full week of the month, September through December and February through June. Send your updates to Karen Bystrom.