Congratulations to the following CAS faculty members who were recently notified of tenure and promotion to associate professor, effective July 1, 2015:
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Hannah Callender, Mathematics |
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David De Lyser, Performing & Fine Arts |
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Vail Fletcher, Communication Studies |
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Alexandra Hill, International Languages & Cultures |
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Valerie Peterson, Mathematics |
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Bryan Rookey, Sociology & Social Work |
Dear Friends of the College of Arts and Sciences,
It is with tremendous sadness that we learned of the death of our friend and colleague, Dr. Kate Regan, on July 23 2014. As all who know and love her will attest, Kate was an outstanding teacher and scholar. Her boundless energy, enthusiastic leadership, and keen insight were tremendous gifts that benefited students, faculty, staff, and alumni of the University of Portland for two decades. Her work with the Center for International Studies and Global Outreach (CISGO) has had a particularly strong and positive benefit for international competency in the University’s curriculum. From across the globe I have received numerous emails from many of Dr. Regan’s colleagues, expressing intense sadness at her untimely death and joy at having had Kate enrich their lives. I know that I speak for all of the CAS faculty and staff when I express my condolences to all of Dr. Regan’s students — present and former — who have lost, not only an excellent teacher, but a life-long friend and mentor. We in the College are diminished by our loss; yet we remain hopeful in our faith that Kate’s generosity and joy-filled spirit will continue bear much fruit.
Kate’s loss to the College of Arts and Sciences and in particular to the Department of International Languages and Cultures and her loss to each of us, personally, is without measure. On behalf of the faculty, students, and alumni of CAS, please know that I share your sorrow at our personal and collective loss. In talking with so many of Kate’s colleagues, it seems clear to me that our tears are not merely for losing Kate, but for realizing that we have lost a part of ourselves. There are no words to describe the joy and love and sheer energy by which Dr. Kate Regan has (and continues) to inspire us and all that we do here on The Bluff. As we in the College try to come to grips with Kate’s passing and our own personal and collective grief, let us commend her to God, trusting that Kate’s work continues to be our own.
May the angels lead her to paradise, and may Kate’s soul, and the souls of all our faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
Vaya con Dios, nuestra amiga.
With warm regards, Michael F. Andrews, Ph.D. Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
Jeffrey White, German Instructor and LRC Director, will give two presentations at this year’s American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) conference on November 21 and 22 in San Antonio. The first presentation illustrates the applications of a humanistically oriented genre-based approach that integrates language and cultural studies content in an intermediate German class. Jeffrey’s second presentation delves in to the ongoing collaborative curricular planning efforts within UP’s German Studies program to develop a framework that integrates genre, the goals of advanced multiple literacies, and insights from Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics throughout the sequence of German courses.
Environmental studies and German studies double major Sarah Letendre (pictured) has been awarded a Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange Scholarship for Young Professionals and will spend a year in Germany starting in July, according to Laurie McLary, international languages and cultures. Letendre participated in the studies abroad program in Salzburg and recently traveled with the entrepreneur scholars program to China. She has begun a business creating handbags from recycled fabrics and will be pursuing study and an internship in eco-fashion in Germany with the grant.
The Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals (CBYX) is a fellowship funded by the German Bundestag and U.S. Congress. Each year it provides 75 American and 75 German young professionals the opportunity to spend a year in each others’ countries, studying, interning, and living with hosts on a cultural immersion program. Find out more at http://tinyurl.com/c2kjbrq, or contact McLary at 7255 or mclary@up.edu.
Sourced from UpBeat.
Andrew D. Cohen will present a lecture on using language and culture learning strategies to develop higher levels of proficiency and intercultural competency on Wednesday, March 26, at 4:15 p.m., in Shiley Hall room 123, according to Jeffrey White, international languages and cultures. The lecture is free and open to all students, faculty, staff, alumni, and the public.
Cohen is a leading researcher in the applied linguistics field of language and culture learning strategies. He co-edited Language Learning Strategies with Ernesto Macaro, (2007), co-authored Teaching and Learning Pragmatics with Noriko Ishihara (2010), and most recently authored the second edition of Strategies in Learning and Using A Second Language (2011).
The presentation has been made possible through funding from international languages and cultures, the College of Arts and Sciences, School of Business, School of Education, School of Engineering, School of Nursing, the McNerney-Hanson Endowed Chair in Ethics, and the Collaborative for International Studies and Global Outreach (CISGO). Cohen’s visit will include a full day of meetings with a variety of UP faculty, staff, and students who are involved with efforts to internationalize curriculum and programming.
For more information, contact White at 7141 or white@up.edu.
Assistant Professor of International Languages and Cultures, Alexandra Hill has been awarded an Arnold L. and Lois S. Graves Award in the Humanities. This competitive award, offered biennially, is “intended to encourage and to reward outstanding accomplishment in actual teaching in the humanities by younger faculty members.” The Graves Awards are administered by Pomona College under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies. The award recognizes excellence in teaching, and the funding that accompanies it is designed to help with research-related expenses. This award will help Dr. Hill begin a new project investigating the museumification of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the months leading up to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, an experience that will support her course Remembering Divided Germany, GRM 353.
By Kathryn Walters | From The Beacon
Ask senior Cerice Keller about one of her favorite memories of studying abroad in Salzburg, Austria, and instead of waxing lyrical about the delicious strudel, beautiful music or historic landmarks that Salzburg has to offer, she recalls a cold morning spent hiking a local mountain with fellow students and their Salzburg program residence director, Rene Horcicka.
“It was a Sunday morning and we woke up at 8 o’clock to hike the Kapuzinerberg,” Keller said. “He took us hiking through the snow and it was so serene, it was really awesome. He does little things like that for students on the weekends.”
For many Salzburgers, Salzburg administrator Horcicka is a special part of their study abroad experience. After seven years of working for the program, Horcicka visited UP for the first time this week at the invitation of Provost Thomas Greene.
Horcicka spent his time at UP meeting with students and many of UP’s administrators, as well as working on plans for the Salzburg program, like physical improvements to the Center and making the program more accessible for nursing and engineering students.
“It’s great to see how all this works, actually. It’s a great experience,” Horcicka said. “But to see where the students come from is new to me, so this is really interesting.”
Fr. Art Wheeler, Studies Abroad director, said Horcicka’s visit to The Bluff is special because he plays a vital role in the Salzburg program.
“It’s important to bring him over here because the students who go to Salzburg, it’s one whole quarter of their UP experience,” Wheeler said.
As fun as it is for Salzburgers to see him on this side of the pond, Horcicka also delights in catching up with his former students.
“It’s the thing I like best, to meet also former students here and to talk to them and ask them what they are doing now after graduating,” Horcicka says. “I think also the students like to see me – I have the impression that they are happy to see me here! I am looking out for them and they are looking out for me.”
Born and raised in Salzburg, Horcicka served in the Austrian army, attended university in Salzburg and taught in Bavaria before returning home as a program assistant for UP’s Salzburg study abroad program. From 2009 to 2012, he was the program’s residence director, which meant he was largely responsible for all the students and the Center. He also spent 100 days each year traveling all over Europe with the Salzburgers.
But the fast-paced life of a residence director became tiring for him and he now works part-time in an administrative capacity for the program.
“Sometimes I think it’s good to have a little break and to get a little distance because it enables you to reflect on your experiences, and I needed a certain distance to reflect on my experiences as residence director,” Horcicka said.
Keller appreciated Horcicka’s unique perspective on the many places they visited in Austria, Germany, France, Italy and Greece.
“He’s a really smart guy! He knows a lot of history,” Keller said. “Everywhere we went on trips, along with someone who would be speaking about the history, he would add in his own take on it because he knew so much about it, so that was really cool.”
Like many of his students, Horcicka has been bitten by the travel bug for many years. He has travelled all over the world, from Argentina and Canada to New Zealand and Africa. He says travel has enabled him to broaden his horizons beyond the small city of Salzburg, which he greatly values.
“My approach to traveling is really mind-opening, and I enjoy it a lot,” Horcicka says. “Here (at UP), the first day, just to notice that the windows are different, to notice that the toilet is different, you start to think of your own things and don’t think that this is just the world, but the world is much bigger.”
Senior Leah Becker, who studied abroad in Salzburg two years ago, said she and others felt a special bond to Horcicka during their year spent in Europe.
“When you’re in Salzburg, it’s really the first time that you’ve been – it feels different because there’s not a priest living in your dorm and parents are not coming to visit very often, so you just feel very much like you’re on your own, and rather than having a much older adult there, it was like having a big brother which I think made it really special,” Becker said.
Horcicka shares a close bond with his students because he has a lot of responsibility for them while in Austria. However he tries to differentiate the way he relates to past and current students.
“You need to be very close (to current students) in a certain way but at the same time you need to have a distance. So this is something that needs to be balanced out,” he said. “But with former students, it’s just the greatest fun to go out and drink a beer in the beer hall or to have fun!”
Salzburg, nestled in the shadow of the Alps, is a vibrant but rather small city, according to Horcicka. He says leaving Salzburg now and then for new places like UP is exciting, but he admits there is no place like home in Austria.
“I found everything so far in Salzburg that I need,” Horcicka said. “I was able to study, I found a great job that I really enjoy and it’s the place where I grew up and I know every little corner, and almost everyone in some way.”
By W.C. Lawson | (From The Beacon)
Last Thursday students and faculty gathered in the Buckley Center Auditorium for Spanish Professor Kate Regan’s film, “Trekking with Quijote” – the first eve
nt in UP’s new international film series.
“I admire the great filmmakers of the world,” said Regan. “I want to use filmmaking to enhance my teaching.”
A scholar, writer, traveler and avid enthusiast of Spanish culture, Regan has found filmmaking to be a novel way to impart knowledge to her students.
“I didn’t like the traditional way of education,” said Regan. “I wanted to find another way of engaging my students.”
“Trekking with Quijote,” Regan’s most recent film, is also her first focused on Spanish literature.
“I wanted to make a film that would not only speak to students, but I also wanted to make a film that would speak to people who are interested in Spain,” said Regan.
The film presents the experiences of Spanish families who have passed the 1605 novel, “Don Quijote a la Mancha,” an important piece of Spanish culture, down through many generations.
“I truly enjoyed watching the film including the questions that were asked to readers of Don Quijote,” junior Baris Inan said.
Regan’s passion for filmmaking is not a new development. When Regan was a child, she found over 1,500 feet of film her father had made of family videos. She fell in love with her father’s camera and movie projector in high school and started making videos of her classes.
After the camera broke down shortly after receiving it, she put filming aside. But 14 years later, while teaching and working on her doctorate in Spanish culture and literature in 1992, she picked it back up, using film in projects with her students to make classroom skits.
While taking the first group of UP students to Segovia, Spain for the Spanish study abroad program in 2003, Regan found an opportunity to work with Segovians who researched their ancestry to share the history and culture of Segovia. Instead of pursuing her original plan of translating texts from Spanish into a book, Regan chose to use filmmaking to dig into the history of medieval Spanish culture. In 2005, Regan completed her first film, “The Sephardic Legacy of Segovia: Pentimento of the Past.”
“If you scratch the surface of a medieval town, you’re going to hit into some history, and all of this history has been covered up,” Regan said.
In January 2006 Regan began working on another film project called “Fiesta Remos.” This film focused on singer Judy Frankel and her role in Sephardic Jewish culture and musical tradition in Segovia. After four days of gathering footage, Regan went back to Portland to begin editing the project. A year later she realized she needed more material, but her beloved friend, Frankel, had been diagnosed with cancer. With 90 percent footage, Regan connected with Frankel one last time to complete the film.
“The gift in this film was the chance to meet and work with Judy Frankel,” Regan said. “And even though we only knew each other for a short amount of time, thanks to her generous spirit we created a beautiful bond.”
Regan said that the showcase of her latest film, “Don Quijote,” was an amazing experience last Thursday, and wanted to thank everyone who came out and supported the film. The film will be used in the Don Quijote Spanish class this year.
“I feel like Dr. Regan did a very good job capturing the cultural importance of Don Quijote in Spain,” senior Katie Chale said. “I enjoyed the the stories that the cast had to share about their experiences with the book.”
Although Regan doesn’t necessarily want to make a career out of filmmaking, she feels that it is a great medium to engage her students in a way that writing cannot.
“I am very much coming to peace with how I am using film,” Regan said. “Teaching will always be a part of my filmmaking.”
The Collaborative for International Studies and Global Outreach (CISGO) is pleased to announce the first International film series on campus that will begin this semester, 2013, and continue into spring semester, 2014. Filmmakers from Portland, including faculty and staff from UP, will screen their works related to international travel and research. The first screening will be on Thursday, September 12, from 4:30 to 5:15 p.m., in Buckley Center Auditorium. Kate Regan (pictured), international languages and cultures, will screen her latest film, “Trekking with Quijote.” Courtney Vail Fletcher, communication studies, and Jeff Kennel, marketing and communications, will screen their film on Nicaragua in November. For more details, go to the CISGO website at www. up.edu/cisgo.
FROM THE BEACON
By Olivia Alsept-Ellis|
You see the artifacts in their offices every visit. You want to ask about the Star Wars X-Wing fighter and the garden gnome but don’t want to come across as nosy. But the questions don’t stop plaguing you. Why does he keep a toilet brush in his office?
Some professor’s offices look like scholarly sanctuaries while others are more sterile and focused. However, all of them carry special artifacts with interesting stories attached.
And perhaps the best thing about the stories behind the asparagus plants or Alexander Pope is being reminded that professors aren’t just teachers, but highly creative and intriguing people. The complexity of their environment is evidence of their individuality.
Five professors from different departments share the stories behind their beloved clutter. [Read more…] about More than an office