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Spring 2013 Dean’s Welcome

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Dear Friends of the College of Arts and Sciences,

Welcome to the Spring 2013 A&S News Website!  On behalf of the faculty, students, staff, and alumni of the College: it is good to visit with you.

Within winter’s solstice lies the promise of spring, of hope and resurrection!  As we enter Spring 2013 semester, I invite you to come to campus for one of our excellent symposia events or enjoy a cappuccino or hot chocolate from The Commons while taking in a crisp afternoon walk along the Bluff.  Nothing quite says “College of Arts and Sciences” like listening to a first-rate academic lecture or watching a student-directed play or catching the University of Portland’s Ethics Bowl.

Please take a couple of minutes to check out our “ethics and the arts” highlight events for spring semester.  And while you’re on campus, don’t forget to stop by the Dean’s Suite in Buckley 201 to introduce yourself.  We look forward to meeting you and welcoming you home.

I invite you to let the University of Portland’s College of Arts and Sciences help renew you, body and spirit!  For more information, check out the specific links on the College’s news website.  Some highlights of activities involving faculty and students in the College during Spring 2013 include:

  • Earth Care Summit, January 28, 2013 from 5:00 – 8:30pm at St. Andrew Lutheran Church.  The theme of this year’s Summit is entitled, “Living Waters,” and will include a keynote address by Bishop Skystad, leader in the Columbia River Pastoral Letter Project;
  • Winterreise Concert, Sunday, April 7 (details to be announced), with acclaimed pianist John Wustman and A&S faculty member Nicole Leupp.   Winterreise is a dramatic song cycle of 24 poems for voice and piano.  Written by German romantic poet Wilhelm Müller and published as Op. 89 by Franz Schubert in 1828, this song cycle is a celebration of human intellect, interpretive power, and the human spirit.
  • The Ethics Bowl, tentatively scheduled for Saturday April 20.  Specific room location and time to be determined.
  • Graduation Weekend, May 4-5, with Undergraduate Commencement Ceremony beginning at 2pm on Sunday, May 5 in the Chiles Center.
  • His Holiness, the Dalai Lama will speak in the Chiles Center on May 9, 2013.  Details regarding tickets and information will be made available later in the semester.

Thank you!  As you can imagine, the College of Arts and Sciences depends on your generous financial support to be able to offer and expand upon the many academic, social, religious, and public events that make us a unique and excellent Catholic university serving Oregon, the Pacific Northwest, and beyond.  We have great hopes to continue to build upon the strong foundations established by those who came before us.  Still, we need your help to ensure that our commitment to the humanities, the arts, and the social and natural sciences continues to grow and flourish.  Please choose to be a part of the conversation, a conversation that will help the College engage our nation and the world in striving to be the kind of place we want it to be for our children and our children’s children.  Any gift of financial support is deeply appreciated.  Please visit the “Support Us”  link, located here and on the main CAS News page.

Welcome to the College of Arts and Sciences!  Welcome to a whole new world!

Warm regards,

 Michael F. Andrews, Ph.D.

Dean, College A&S

McNerney-Hanson Endowed Chair in Ethics

Dundon-Berchtold Initiative in Applied Ethics names inaugural class of faculty fellows and student scholars

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The University of Portland recently launched the first semester of the Dundon-Berchtold Initiative in Applied Ethics. The initiative, funded by Amy Dundon-Berchtold and Jim Berchtold ’63, is designed to ensure that the University meets its “aspirations both to form the moral character of its students and to conduct sustained ethical reflection in applied aspects of business, science, engineering, education, health care and the arts.”

The initiative began in January 2013 after seven faculty fellows and seven student scholars were selected. The faculty-student groups will work on distinct ethics projects over the course of the semester. Here is a listing of the faculty fellows, students and their respective projects:

  • Brian Adams, Ph.D. and Colin Mahoney ’15, Pamplin School of Business
    • “Issues in Finance: Planning a Financial Ethics Symposium”
  • Timothy Doughty, Ph.D. and Jordan Schiemer ’14, Shiley School of Engineering
    • “Ethical Resources for Engineers: What To Do When You Don’t Know What To Do”
  • Karen Eifler, Ph.D. and Cady Anderson ’13, School of Education
    • “Ethics from the Teaching Trenches: A Principled Framework for Differentiated Instruction”
  • Deana Julka, Ph.D. and Georgia Wilson ’13, College of Arts & Sciences: Psychology
    • “Ethical Issues Related to the Adoption of Physical Activity Programs in Various Social Settings”
  • Jeff Kerssen-Griep, Ph.D. and Danielle Christensen ’13, College of Arts and Sciences: Communication Studies
    • “Exploring Ethics in Organizational Decision-Making Practices at the University of Portland”
  • Lorretta Krautscheid, Ph.D. and Molly Brown ’14, School of Nursing
    • “Micro-Ethical Decisions in Clinical Practice Settings: A Qualitative Investigation of Student Nurse Experiences”
  • Jacquie Van Hoomissen, Ph.D. and Tiffany Chau ’13, College of Arts & Sciences: Biology
    • “Ethical Issues Related to the Adoption of Physical Activity Programs in Various Social Settings”

To prepare for this launch, there was a faculty colloquium held during the fall semester conducted by Michael Andrews, Ph.D., dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and the McNerney-Hanson Chair in Ethics; Rev. Mark Poorman, C.S.C., Ph.D., Executive Vice President and Professor of Theology; James Baille, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy; and Thom Faller, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy. The seven student scholars were selected based on their academic excellence and interest in applying ethical studies to their respective fields of study.

For more information on the initiative please go to http://www.up.edu/shownews.aspx?id=4612.

Welcome from the New CAS Dean

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Dear Friend,

On behalf of the faculty, staff, students, and alumni of the College of Arts and Sciences:  Welcome to our website!

Since its founding in 1901, the mission of the College of Arts and Sciences has been to engage the whole person  — head, heart, and hands.  Grounded in a rigorous, multidisciplinary curriculum that is humanistic, Catholic, and distinctively Holy Cross, our mission in the College of Arts and Sciences is to make every student as successful as possible.  Or, as Basil Moreau, CSC, the founder of the Congregation of the Holy Cross wrote in 1854, our goal as educators is “to see in all the image of God imprinted within.”  That is a tall order, and so we hope that the stories shared on these pages help you become the kind of person you wish to be, the kind of person God calls you to be.  As a community of scholars and teachers, musicians, scientists, and poets, we challenge our students to become lifelong learners, to raise complex and critical questions concerning the origin and nature of the universe, the existence of God and the meaning of faith, and the purposefulness and dignity of every individual human person.

And we don’t stop with questions.  At the University of Portland we expect our graduates to use what they learn in their classrooms to respond effectively and compassionately to complex social, economic, and political issues; we form leaders grounded in religious and ethical discernment and who possess a deep capacity to envision a more just and humane world; and we promote the common good through a lived experience of the transformative power of human creativity and love.  As you peruse these pages, I invite you to be moved by the kind of intellectual and existential experience that thousands of University of Portland alumni have also come to know: here in the College of Arts and Sciences, the world is our classroom.

Welcome to a whole new world!

Warm regards,

Dr. Michael F. Andrews

Dean, College of Arts and Sciences

McNerney-Hanson Endowed Chair in Ethics and Professor of Philosophy

Introducing the CAS NEWS Site

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Beginning in the Fall of 2012, the CAS Newsletter web site has a new look!

CAS NEWS will feature stories about CAS faculty, students, and alumni throughout the year, updating on an almost daily basis.  The site will also carry new extras–podcasts, interviews with faculty, book, music, and film recommendations, photos from around campus, and more.

The goal is to make the web site into a vehicle for CAS to tell its story, and to make the web site a place that viewers will want to return to, where they can find new ideas and insights into the many topics and activities that take place on the UP campus.

[Read more…] about Introducing the CAS NEWS Site

A&S Colleagues

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On Monday, October 1, CAS Dean Michael Andrews hosted the first “A&S Colleagues” gathering.  The gathering will meet once each semester.  The format is simple:  First, a 20-minute presentation from each of two invited speakers on a subject involving current research or a personal or professional interest, followed by an informal social gathering with wine and cheese.  For this first A&S Colleagues gathering, Vail Fletcher (Communication Studies) talked about “Work/Life Balance, Organizational Bullying, and Identity Conflicts” and Michael Connolly (Performing and Fine Arts) discussed, “Overcoming Distractions: Restarting Scholarship and Creative Work After Taking Time Away.”  Informal conversation over wine and cheese followed.

[Read more…] about A&S Colleagues

John Orr on the Value of a Liberal Arts Education

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John Orr, English Dept. & Asst. to Provost

At the age of eighteen, I did not know that I had an accent.  Emerson, in his essay “Circles,” says that “the life of a man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles.”   If this is true, the circle of my existence at 18 was extremely small and circumscribed by ideologies that derived from my heritage as a third generation Texan whose father hailed from North Carolina.  My childhood on a working farm was in many ways idyllic, though fraught with hardships such as the lack of potable water in the house I grew up in.  At age 12, instead of a bar mitzvah, I received a .22 rifle, and between throwing a baseball endlessly against the side of the barn and shooting at any number of creatures and objects, I managed to pass lazy summers playing by myself.  [Read more…] about John Orr on the Value of a Liberal Arts Education