CAS Staff Searches:
Currently, the College of Arts and Sciences is looking to fill the position of Budget Coordinator.
We are proud to announce that Drew Smith-Sahnow, our previous budget coordinator of two years, has been promoted to the position of Staff Accountant in the Office of the Controller. Drew was an integral part of the CAS team, and she will be missed greatly. We are looking for another detail-oriented, personable, and hard-working candidate to fill her position.
The College of Arts and Sciences is excited to announce that Dr. Gary Lee Malecha, professor of Political Science, has taken up his new position as interim dean.
Dr. Malecha, who has been at the University of Portland since 1992, has served on numerous committees at the University, most recently leading the University Ad Hoc Committee on Mental Health in 2016. He provided leadership as chair of the Political Science Department for many years, currently serves as the faculty athletics representative to the NCAA, and has served in many more leadership roles throughout his time at UP. Dr. Malecha is an expert in the area of American politics, teaching courses on U.S. Congress, the U.S. Presidency, public policy, and the politics of food. He was awarded the University’s highest honor for faculty, the James Culligan Award, in 1999 (University of Portland News).
Dr. Malecha agreed to serve the University in this capacity for one year to allow for a national search for the new dean of College of Arts and Sciences.
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2017 Becky Houck Award for Excellence in Advising
Dr. Katie O’Reilly |
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CAS Dean’s Award for Faculty Excellence in Academic Internship Supervision
Dr. Kevin Jones |
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Special Dean’s Gratitude Award
Dr. Terry Favero |
| CAS Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Part-Time Faculty Member
Professor Victoria Olivares |
The following CAS faculty have been nominated by first year students as “Shepard’s Shepherds” for AY2016:
Madonna Buenviaje, CHEM
Andrea Castanette, ILC
Marcela Cinta, ILC
Jeffrey Gauthier, PHI
Alexandra Hill, ILC
Molly Hiro, ENG
Steven Mayer, CHEM
David Turnbloom — (with three nominations), THE
Please join us in congratulating each of our fine colleagues for being named a Shepard’s Shepherd for the “positive impact each has had on a member of the University of Portland class of 2019.” On behalf of the College of Arts and Sciences: thank you for your personal and professional presence in the lives of our students and the many ways you continue to enrich the liberal arts mission of this University.
The University Museum has created two displays to honor the memory of Emeritus Professor of Spanish, Dr. Manuel Macias, who passed away on March 19, 2016. Please visit and remember him by viewing items in the Buckley Center first floor display case (across from the Studies Abroad office). See photos and memorabilia donated to the University Museum, including the extremely memorable blue “lampshade” academic cap and regalia.
The Committee on Teaching and Scholarship (TAS) has determined award recipients for the 2015-2016 Butine Faculty Development Fund Spring cycle, according to committee chair Aaron Wootton, mathematics. This spring’s Butine award recipients are:
For more information, contact Wootton at 7377 or tas@up.edu.
Sourced from UPBeat.
Dear Friends of the College of Arts and Sciences,
As the anticipation of spring approaches and we near the conclusion of another successful school year, faculty and staff are recognized for their hard work and innovation, graduating seniors look forward to their future, and the University’s community continues to grow in size and spirit. While we are also in the beginning of the season of Lent, the coming of Easter provides University members a time for reflection and self-examination. During Lent and with the growth of a new year we are called to acknowledge the progress and enterprise of the College by commending several professors and accomplishments.
Congratulations to the seven CAS professors awarded tenure: Bradley Franco (HST), Jennette Lovejoy (CST), Tara Maginnis (BIO), Charles McCoy (MTH), Gregory Pulver (PFA), Mark Pitzer (PSY), and David Taylor (BIO).
Congratulations to the seven CAS faculty members granted sabbatical during one or both semesters of AY2017: Valerie Peterson (MTH), Kathleen McManus (THE) Hannah Callender (MTH), Jeff Gauthier (PHL), Patrick Murphy (PFA), Martin Monto (SOC), Lora Looney (ILC), Amy Beadles-Bohling (BIO), Eugene Urnezius (CHM), Mark Eifler (HST), Allie Hill (ILC), and Oz Bonfim (PHY).
CAS Faculty Recognition and Congratulations:
Martin Monto wins Hugo Beigel Award for Scholarly Excellence
University of Portland sociology professor Martin Monto has received the Hugo Beigel Award for Scholarly Excellence from the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality. The award goes to the best paper published in their Journal of Sex Research, and was chosen from a field of 70 papers. The award is designed to promote and reward research excellence in sexology. Monto wrote the paper with former UP student Anna Carey as co-author. The award will be presented at the society’s annual conference on Nov. 12-15 in Albuquerque, N.M.
Laura McLary named Oregon Professor of the Year
On Thursday, Nov. 19th, the national Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the international Council for the Advancement and Support of Education awarded University of Portland German professor Laura McLary for her innovation and dedication on teaching international languages, highlighting her leadership in growth of the University’s German language program.
Previous UP professors who have been recognized by the national organization include Kate Regan, who was named National Professor of the Year; Becky Houck, Terry Favero and Karen Eifler, who were all named Oregon Professor of the Year.
Difference Award:
Dr. Sarina Saturn, Department of Psychological Sciences
Dr. Mark Pitzer, Department of Psychological Sciences
Dr. David Turnbloom, Department of Theology
At the beginning of this semester, each senior and junior athlete-student was invited to nominate one professor for The 2015 Difference Award. The main criterion for this award is that the faculty member embody whatever difference-making characteristic, idea or attitude students felt made a positive and substantial impact in their life as an undergraduate Pilot. Professors Saturn, Pitzer, and Turnbloom were chosen by our athlete-scholars as key difference-makers at our University. I know we are all excited that students have chosen to honor three of our colleagues who have touched the lives of undergraduate students and who continue to work hard to make athlete-students successful both in the classroom and on the field. Sarina, Mark, and David will be honored as Difference Award recipients at a public presentation during the UP Men’s Basketball game on Thursday the 18th of February.
I trust you will enjoy reading several stories about our talented students and faculty by catching-up with the most recent edition of the CAS Blog. In the meantime, I look forward to welcoming you the next time you are on campus, especially if you are planning to celebrate UP Commencement in early May.
Warm regards,
Dr. Michael F. Andrews
Dean, College of Arts and Sciences and
McNerney-Hanson University Endowed Chair in Ethics
The Becky Houck Award for Excellence in Advising presented to Dr. Martin Monto at All-College Celebration, February 24, 2016
“This annual Award is named in honor of our beloved CAS faculty colleague, Becky Houck. The Award honors and recognizes an individual who has committed a large part of his or her faculty work to mentoring and advising students — something that doesn’t typically show up on a vitae. Like past recipients, this year’s award winner exemplifies Becky’s indefatigable spirit and love for helping prepare undergraduate students to live a life of integrity, compassion, and service. Please join me in congratulating Dr. Martin Monto of the Sociology Department as this year’s Becky Houck Award recipient.
Several former students note:
“Dr. Monto helps students find direction and often assists them to creatively pursue double majors or to customize their programs to individual goals and interests. “
“His creativity in advising serves the mission of the University in developing the whole person, which is only successful if we take the time to learn their individual goals and needs. In this regard, Dr. Monto is a rock star.”
“I transferred into the major late from Engineering. Not only did Dr. Monto help me to draw up a plan of classes to help me graduate on time, he also made it possible for me to add a minor in Education and take extra classes my senior year! After I graduated, my sister (then a sophomore at UP) was having difficulty scheduling classes without much assistance from her assigned advisor. All it took was a single email to Dr. Monto and he immediately took my sister under his supervision as an academic advisor. Professor Monto eased much of my sister’s stress and she actually graduated on time.”
Over the last many years Martin has been a long-term mentor on advising issues for other faculty members in his own department, in CAS, and across the university. Here are several peer comments:
“I regularly discuss advising issues with Monto and routinely solicit his advice on how to best help and mentor students during advising sessions. . . . I have worked with him to become a better advisor using methods that he has developed over the past two decades.”
“Several years ago, Martin served on the College’s first Advising Consortium. As a member of the consortium, he took an active role in building the initial advising website for the College of Arts and Sciences. He also helped to design and lead an early session focused on advising at the University of Portland on Faculty Development Day. “Dr. Monto has spearheaded several surveys of graduating seniors, each time taking the data received seriously and implementing changes [to the major that would] that help students improve internship experiences and better prepare them for graduate studies.
Martin has been a faculty model in helping further develop the advisor’s role from “course scheduler” to “mentor” or even “life coach.” In his role as mentor to undergraduates, Martin’s good influence reaches beyond simple scheduling and career advice, as he has also sponsored undergraduate research, even publishing an award-winning article with a former student, for which he received the Hugo Beigel Award for Scholarly Excellence for the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality.
An extension of Martin’s advising / mentoring role to students is clearly evident in his taking the lead on the Green Dot initiative, a university-wide mentoring effort to educate students about violence. Through traditional and non-traditional advising, Martin’s efforts as a respected faculty advisor to students inspires students to live the kind of life of service to one another that represents the highest goal of the College’s educational mission.
I am very pleased to present this year’s 2016 Becky Houck Award for Excellence in Advising to Dr. Martin Monto.”
-Dean Micheal F. Andrews
Universit
y of Portland theology professor Dave Turnbloom will present “The Sacraments: God’s Life in our Lives,” February 25, 2016, 7;30-8:30pm in Franz Hall 120. It is a pleasure to introduce the newest member of the Theology Department in the first of two Theology Thursday Events for Spring 2016. We hope you can join us.
For more information contact the theology department at (503) 943-7274 or theo@up.edu.
On the evening of Saturday, January 23, 2016, over 400 students, faculty, and guests packed Buckley Auditorium for a special showing of “The General,” a classic black and white silent film staring Buster Keaton that featured a full film score written by Environmental Studies major Dana Coppernoll-Houston as her senior capstone student research project. Under the directorship of Dr. David DeLyser, the film score was performed live by the UP Orchestra. Sponsored by the McNerney-Hanson Endowed Chair in Ethics, Dr. Andrews, Dean of CAS, noted that, “The General explores ethical themes of war, love, death, honor, loss, and joy. Produced in 1926, it is a film that critics have called the greatest comedy ever made, the greatest Civil War film ever made, and perhaps the greatest film ever made. The film and orchestral score invite us to enter-into a work of art in order to be transformed by it. The film raises the question of the relationship between ethics and art. Why do human beings create art / music / poetry / drama / theater at all? The General illuminates for us deep, moral truths about the human condition. It is no accident that artists, ranging from Plato’s Republic down to our own American democratic experiment, are often viewed as perhaps the single most dangerous element in society. After all, artists speak thru the discourse of symbol, illusion, metaphor. On the other hand, ethics, the Greeks remind us, entails rational discourse amidst the search for virtuous action. As a work of art, The General pushes rational discourse to its absolute limit. Think of Greek tragedy, the medieval passion play, 19th and early 20th century Italian and German opera, the works of Moliere and Jean-Paul Sartre and Chekov, improvisational jazz, contemporary RAP music, etc. In the College of Arts and Sciences, this uneasy relationship between ethics and art underlies what is principally meant by the ‘liberal” or ‘liberating’ arts. It is what makes the humanities and the liberal arts possible, it is what animates the Catholic sacramental imagination and the Holy Cross mission of this University.” Edmund Stone, national film score expert, presented a pre-concert film and music talk.