The CAS Dean’s office is delighted to announce that Dr. Hannah Highlander has accepted a 5-year appointment as Associate Dean for Students. Dr. Highlander has been a faculty member at UP in the Department of Mathematics since 2009, and was promoted to Professor last year. She has published work on Mathematical Modelling, Undergraduate Research, as well as in Mathematical Biology Educational Research. Dr. Highlander has been a strong supporter, advisor, and mentor of students from the earliest days of her time on the Bluff. For several years she was a CAS advisor for struggling students and has made it her mission to help students find their own voice and identify tools to become better learners. She has been recognized multiple times for her teaching and advising work, including the Outstanding Teaching Award in 2016, the Outstanding Mentor in Undergraduate Research in 2020, and the College’s Outstanding Advisement of Student Internships award this year. Dr. Highlander has also served as a leadership coach and has participated in the SURE program, publishing multiple papers with undergraduates. She has an unwavering commitment to supporting a diverse student population and will be a strong advocate in helping the college be more equitable and inclusive in how we advise and support CAS students. Please help us welcome her to this new role in the Dean’s office and the College.
College of Arts & Sciences
Laura McLary: Thank You and Congratulations!
After 22 years of service at University of Portland, interim dean of the College of Arts & Sciences Laura McLary has accepted the position of Nora Kizer Bell Provost at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia, effective July 1. According to Herbert Medina, provost, “This announcement is both joyful and somewhat unhappy for all of us at UP, especially those who have had the privilege of working with Laurie throughout the years. While we are saddened by her departure, we offer her our heartfelt congratulations as she takes on this new and exciting leadership position.”A prolific scholar of Austrian literature and culture and celebrated professor of German, Laurie has achieved many successes at UP. She established the German studies program; mentored dozens of students as they prepared Fulbright dossiers; was recognized in 2015 as Oregon Professor of the Year by the national Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; engaged in numerous service roles including the Collaborative for International Studies & Global Outreach (CISGO) and the Strategic Planning Committee; served as academic associate dean; and most recently served as interim dean of CAS.
Medina will appoint a new interim dean for CAS and, as planned, we will continue a national search for a permanent dean in the fall.
TLC From The TLC: Future Teaching, Super Courses, and Core Exploration
For this week’s Teaching & Learning tip, Andrew Guest, psychology and core director, offers possible prompts for summer teaching dreams – with a specific invitation to start imagining courses for the new Exploration Level of the University Core.
With the end in sight of this most challenging and odd academic year, it can be fun to start thinking about a near future of (maybe) having just a bit of time to read, dream, and do the kind of imagining that makes good teachers life-long learners. I’m particularly excited to dive further into a new book on Super Courses: The Future of Teaching and Learning – thinking more about how we at UP can merge the current impetus for evolving our curriculum with best practices in creating great courses.
Dreaming of ‘super courses’ may also be worth some time for us at UP because of core revitalization opportunities to re-develop and create courses for the new Exploration Level – a set of course offerings to be phased in starting Fall of 2022 that aspires to interdisciplinarity, addressing timely issues, and broadening opportunities for students to learn and faculty to teach. For a brief overview of and invitation to Exploration Level opportunities and possibilities, see a new Teaching and Learning Community blog post on “The Once and Future Core Course: Imagining (and Designing) the Exploration Level.”
Finally, as one additional suggestion for the fast approaching summer possibility of having actual time to read, Heather McGhee’s recent book The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together is excellent. While not specifically about teaching or higher education, it offers a robust and deeply evidenced take on what she calls the “solidarity dividend” – ways of working toward a better future by attending more carefully to the interests we almost all share (appropriate, perhaps, to the idea of the Core as UP’s shared academic experience).
Public Humanities at UP: Imagining PRF’s Future, April 8
What are the “Public Humanities”? How have UP faculty and students participated in Public Humanities work? And how might the Public Humanities enable or inspire your own thinking, learning, and teaching—and be mutually enriching for you and for the public? The organizers of the Public Research Fellows program invite you to join a discussion of these questions and more on Thursday, April 8 from 4-5:15 p.m. at this Zoom link. We’ll be sharing some pillars of the public humanities, giving an overview of how the PRF program has enacted these, and inviting input from participants about other ways of envisioning Public Humanities work at UP and beyond. Whether you’ve been involved in this work before, have been merely curious about it, or are even skeptical about the need for anything called “public humanities,” we’d love to hear your insights.
All members of the UP community–faculty, staff, and students–are welcome.
Celebrating Local Leaders & Connecting with Future Change-Makers, March 30
Join UP’s I Am Psyched PDX, psychological sciences, social work, and the Career Center to celebrate local organizations serving QT/BIPOC communities working towards social justice and equitable practices in Oregon. The event will take place on Tuesday, March 30 from 6:30 – 8 p.m. Learn more about the amazing ways they are serving our community, and the career paths that got them there. Find out about upcoming volunteer, internship, and/or job opportunities so you can be among the next generation of leaders and change-makers in Portland. We will start with a panel of five local leaders telling us about their organizations, their accomplishments and challenges, and move on to small groups where you can ask questions of individual leaders.
Please register ahead of time on AirMeet.
Organizations on the Panel:
- Latino Network
- Q Center
- OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon
- Forward Together
- NextUp Oregon
For any questions or ADA accommodations, please email Erin Currie, psychological sciences, at curriee@up.edu
Destination Declared workshop, March 8 and 10
The Career Center and the College of Arts and Sciences are hosting Destination: Declared – a 2 session workshop series designed to help students explore majors and choose one that will be a good fit. Faculty and staff who know students who may be thinking about changing their major and/or need to declare a major are asked to encourage them to participate.
For more information, contact Chelsea Chase, Career Center, at chase@up.edu.
“Trust Black Women: The Importance of Black Women in U.S. Politics” by Brittney Cooper, Sept. 4
The College of Arts and Sciences’ Public Research Fellows program will present a talk by Brittney Cooper, “Trust Black Women: The Importance of Black Women in U.S. Politics,” on Friday, September 4, at 3:30 p.m, as part of the Public Research Fellows 2020-2021 Virtual Series. Cooper’s talk was postponed from its original March date, and in keeping with COVID-19 safety protocols, will take place via Zoom. To attend, use this link.
Cooper will explore the struggle for Black women’s suffrage and the historical role of Black women’s vote, making the case for why there is no progressive politics in America without Black women.
As an associate professor at Rutgers, Cooper studies and teaches Black Women’s Intellectual History, Black Feminist Thought, Hip Hop Feminisms, Hip Hop Studies, Race and Gender Representation in Popular Culture, Digital Feminisms, and New Media. She is co-editor of The Crunk Feminist Collection (The Feminist Press 2017). and author of Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (May 2017) and Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower (February 2018).
Sponsors include the College of Arts & Sciences, Juliet Ashby Hillman Foundation, The Jackson Foundation, and Juan Young Trust. For ADA accommodations and further information, contact Cara Hersh at x7262 or hersh@up.edu.
“Reading the Bible Disruptively” with Susanne Scholz, March 18
On Wednesday, March 18, scholar and author Susanne Scholz will present “Reading the Bible Disruptively for Gender Justice in an Authoritarian Age,” at 7:15 p.m., in Bauccio Commons. Scholz will ask whether gendered Bible readings constitute viable intellectual alternatives to transform contemporary structures of domination.
Scholz serves as professor of Old Testament at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Her research focuses on feminist biblical hermeneutics and the epistemologies and sociologies of biblical interpretation.
The lecture is free and open to all, and is sponsored by the Garaventa Center, CAS, Catholic Studies Program, the Department of Theology, and many more. For ADA accommodations or more information: up.edu/garaventa or x7702
UP Science Takes Home The Prize!
A group of 26 science faculty and students from the College of Arts and Sciences attended the annual M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust Undergraduate Research conference on November 8-9 in Vancouver, WA. The annual conference drew hundreds of college students and science educators from across the Pacific Northwest. A number of UP students gave oral and poster presentations to colleagues from around the Pacific Northwest. Students mentored by Laura Dyer (biology) and Eugene Urnezius (chemistry) took home poster prizes for outstanding posters in their sections: Pia Fornell won for “Identifying How Sonic Hedgehog Signaling Affects Cardiac Neural Crest Migration Following Fetal Alcohol Exposure” and Kailin Mooney won for “Physicochemical properties of 2,5-dihydroxy-1,4-quinones appended with phosphonato groups.”
Additional information about the conference is available on the Trust’s website.
Public Research Fellows Project Update
The Public Research Fellows Program, sponsored by CAS and the Humanities Collaborative, has lots of news to share on what we’ve been up to so far this inaugural year, as we engage with the Centennial of U.S. Women’s Suffrage. Have a look at our newsletter to learn more, or contact Molly Hiro, English, at hiro@up.edu.