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A PublicAtion of the RobeRt D. clARk honoRs college Volume 10 No. 2 • Fall 2015

On Being a Global Citizen

Sheila Miller ’99

University of Oregon Clark Honors College Commencement Speech, Class of 2015By Sheila Miller ’99

Clark Honors College gradu-ates of the Class of 2015, it is a privilege to speak to you today on your commencement. I want to talk with you about being a global citizen. I know that many of you have in your time here at the honors college studied abroad and mastered a second language. Some of you wrote your thesis on a theme of global importance. You wrote about “Genocide Prevention in the Central African Repub-lic,” the “Impact of Social Media Platforms within the Girl Effect Movement,” and “Representation of Contested Narratives in the An-thropological Museum: Case Stud-ies on Rapa Nui and the Northern Paiutes in Central Oregon,” just to name a few. So you already are globally engaged and aware.

But there is more to being a global citizen, and that’s what I’d like to do today—explore how you can enrich the lives of others, and in so doing, enrich your life. A global citizen believes that all humans should be able to thrive no matter where they call home. This is not a new concept. After all, many before us—including our professors on this stage—are themselves global citizens and paved the way. What is new, however, is there are more ways than ever to be active global actors in our world.

Imagine a world where all humans are able to thrive. No ex-treme poverty. No hunger. When I was in your seat, graduating in 1999, the idea that we could even

cut poverty in half was frankly impossible. Now, there is real momentum behind the idea that we can actually get rid of extreme poverty by the time you’re 40 years old.

In 2000, when you began your formal education journey in elementary school, a small group of experts at the United Nations set audacious goals for the world. Eight goals, ranging from cutting in half extreme poverty and hun-ger, to stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS, to providing universal pri-mary education. The world’s lead-ers signed up to these goals. And over the past 15 years, govern-ments, multinational institutions, practitioners, and advocates all set about to work on them. And this year, these goals—the Millennium Development Goals—are also graduating. The amazing thing is that many of these goals are well under way, and some have even been met. The target of reduc-ing extreme poverty by half was met in 2010. The goal of cutting extreme hunger in half is almost met. Enrollment in primary edu-cation is now at 90 percent. New HIV infections continue to decline in most parts of the world.

And, there are now estab-lished global institutions making sure that kids are getting vacci-nated, that diseases have the fund-ing they need to be eradicated, and governments are being held accountable. There are companies applying innovative practices to meet people’s needs. And there

are jobs—like mine at the Bill and Melinda Gates Founda-tion—which offer career paths for people who want to work full-time on global development and global health. This foundation didn’t exist when I graduated, but now it’s just one of many places working to ensure that all humans have the ability to thrive no mat-ter where they call home. And we work with scores of global partners to create innovative solutions to global development and health—like creating a toilet that operates off the grid, sending money by mobile phone, and new technologies, practices, and poli-cies to enable women to plan and

space their births.But, there are still 1.2 billion

people living in extreme poverty. There is still serious unfinished business. So, this year that you are graduating is the year that every single country in the world will agree on a new set of goals. These goals will inform the way 193 governments operate for the next generation. They will set the standard for the next 15 years of work to make our world a more equal, prosperous, and sustain-able place. This is a time when we can realistically call for an end to extreme poverty and hunger, once and for all. It is a time when being

University of oregon Clark Honors College2

Editor’s Note: The Chapman Hall Architectural Programming Study may be accessed at uplan.uoregon.edu/projects/projects.html. As the project moves forward, additional information will be available on the Clark Honors College website, honors.uoregon.edu. For a summary of planning principles, see page 19.

An equal-opportunity, affirmative action institution committed to cultural diversity and compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

This publication will be made available in accessible formats upon request.

© 2015 University of Oregon MC1215-038fr-A18234

Scholar is published bi-annually. We welcome your questions, comments, and submissions.

dean Terry L. Hunt

associate dean Mark Carey

scholar interim staff Renée Dorjahn, Interim Editor Shelise Zumwalt, Alumni Outreach Coordinator

copyeditors Beth BonamiciRenée DorjahnCaitlyn KariShelise Zumwalt

designer David Goodman

clark honors college advisory council Margaret Moore, BA ’61, chairRichard Boyles, BA ’79, vice chairDan Cohen, BA ’84Liz DeneckeRon Fraback, BS ’66David Honig, BA ’84Mariann Hyland, BS ’86, JD ’91Mary Ellen Isensee, BA ’63Amy Kari ’82 (Chair, Development Committee)Don Klotter, BA ’86Sheila Miller, BA ’99Fred Poust, BA ’82Ginny Reich, BA ’64James Shephard, BA ’80 Joan Siegel, BA ’84Larry Tice, BA ’68Al West, BA ’67 Bruce Winterhalder, BA ’71

ex officio members

Terry L. Hunt, Dean Mark Carey, Associate Dean Renée Dorjahn, BA ’82, Dir. of Finance and Administration Jen Parker, Dir. of Development

D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 5

Robert D. Clark Honors College119 Chapman Hall1293 University of OregonEugene OR 97403-1293

Telephone: 541-346-5414Fax: 541-346-0125

E-mail: [email protected]

honors.uoregon.edu

This past July, the Oregon legislature authorized bonding for the renovation of Chapman Hall. During spring term, in anticipation of state funding, we engaged THA Architecture—recently renamed Hacker— of Portland, Oregon, for an architectural programming study of Chapman Hall. The purpose of the study was twofold: to understand how well spaces in Chapman currently meet the needs of our students, faculty, and staff, and to begin envisioning new spaces to better support the CHC community today and in the future. In tandem with the programming study, UO Campus Planning, Design, and Construction conducted a historical assessment of Chapman, and produced a focused report on Chapman’s original steel frame windows. The programming study, historical assessment, and analysis of Chapman’s windows will enable us to move more quickly through the design phase and develop construction plans for the renovation.

Throughout the programming study we sought significant input and interaction with all members of the CHC community: students, faculty, and staff. Through the study we learned more about how students see Chapman Hall—their home base on campus— and how much they treasure its historical qualities. The study also elicited faculty perspectives on effective seating and seminar-style classrooms, the potential

for incorporating a science studio or lab in Chapman, and the wide range of faculty needs for office space and degree of connectedness with student spaces. Last, staff members shared their needs: a welcoming space in which to meet prospective students and their parents, places to meet with graduating seniors on their thesis, as well as quiet spaces for focused work.

From these many perspectives, we developed a set of planning principles that led to a number of potential floor layouts. These will be a starting point as we engage both the architecture firm and general contractor chosen for the Chapman renovation. Many more ideas and inputs will be collected during the design phase. We expect to leave Chapman Hall during summer 2016 and return in December 2017. The renovation will focus on Chapman Hall’s interior space; no modifications of the current historical building envelope are planned.

We are presently engaged in a process of determining suitable “surge space,” where our students, faculty, and staff will create the CHC community beginning next summer. Wherever we are, in one campus building or two, supporting and nurturing the CHC community is paramount. For students, our temporary space will be where some students

experience their final year in the CHC, while others will enter the CHC community in a home outside Chapman Hall.

In addition to the state’s bond and deferred maintenance funding to upgrade Chapman’s utilities (many are still the 1939 originals) and complete a seismic retrofit, I would like to acknowledge the many generous donations made by our Advisory Council members, other CHC supporters, and a significant unrestricted gift allocated to our project by Interim President Scott Coltrane last fall. Securing enough private donations to meet our private-match goals was critical to obtaining state funding. This is an exciting time, and I invite you to envision a new Chapman Hall.

Scholar Dean’s Message

Scholar • Fall 2015 3

Editor’s note: This Scholar issue is the second in a series of three issues highlighting CHC alumni who pursued various academic disciplines, and the role of Clark Honors College in their paths and careers. This social science–focused issue features articles about two CHC courses that push the boundaries of an honors college education, one involving research on the Northern Paiute of central Oregon, and a second exploring the animal-human bond. Melissa Woo, vice provost for information services and Chief Information Officer (CIO), contributes an article on the use of mapping in advancing social science research. The last issue in the series will focus on the humanities. If you would like to contribute an article to a future issue, please contact Shelise Zumwalt, CHC alumni outreach coordinator, at [email protected].

VISUALIZING BIKE TRAFFIC

At the 13th Avenue gateway to the UO campus, a new array of bicycle sensors under the bricks senses each cyclist who rides over them.

After the sensors were installed in October 2014, UO’s InfoGraphics Lab arranged to store the sensor data in a virtual machine managed by my unit, Information Services. Ken Kato, the lab’s associate director, then asked students in his Advanced Geographic Information Systems class to explore questions about bicycle transportation at the University of Oregon—the kinds of questions that could inform sustainable urban design and transportation planning. The students communicated

their findings visually through multifaceted charts and graphs.

Surprising results from one student’s final project in spring 2015 included high bike counts on Fridays despite low class enrollments that day, and the lack of a strong relationship between UO enrollment numbers and Eugene citywide bike traffic. As more data accumulates each year, students will have an even more robust data set with which to work.

When people talk about technology in the context of academic research, they often focus on the hard sciences. But a great deal of interesting work occurs at the intersection of social science and technology, including in the growing area of data visualization.

The InfoGraphics Lab, a mapping and visualization service in the UO Department of Geography, gives us a peek into part of this realm.

Mapping Genocide

Three years ago, Paul Slovic and David Frank sought to recruit cartography to a weighty cause: helping stop acts of geno-cide. Slovic, a UO psychology professor, and Frank, a professor of rhetoric in Clark Honors College, wanted to explore the idea of mapping incipi-ent genocides—violence in progress—as part of an effort to increase awareness among those who might be able to intervene before that violence escalates into mass atrocity.

Slovic reached out to Ken Kato, associate director of the InfoGraphics Lab. Even though Kato had previously worked with a varied range of collabora-tors, he was caught off guard. “That’s one thing that I never saw coming,” Kato says, “that psychology would have an interest in [maps].”

Indeed, according to Kato, the trend during the last five to ten years has been a growing interest in geospatial visualiza-

tion across a whole range of disciplines. Google Maps has made map-ping radically more accessible to nonexperts. Researchers are getting a taste for what mapping can offer them and are seeking to make sense of the kinds of vast, complex data sets that are becoming increasingly common—“Big Data,” as it’s called.

The InfoGraphics Lab can help research-ers—from chemists to art historians—un-derstand what kinds of spatial patterns are

Making an Impact: Social Science and Data VisualizationBy Melissa Woo

Melissa Woo

continued on page 5

Students in Ken Kato’s recent Ad-vanced GIS course, “Transportation, Sensors, and the Smart City,” analyzed data on bike traffic at the 13th Avenue gateway to campus. Their final data visualizations are available at blogs.uoregon.edu/bikecounter/.

Credit: Megen Britell. Data sources: Central Lane Met-ropolitan Planning Organization, University of Oregon Registrar, author data collection.

blogs.uoregon.edu/advancedgismegen/assignment-4

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a global citizen is not only the right thing to do, but it is a realistic movement where you all can take an active part and can expect to see results within your lifetime. At the time I was graduating, there were very few clear pathways into careers that addressed global poverty, and that contributed to equality and sustainability. But you have an unprecedented opportunity to put your intellect, talents, and skills to work on this agenda.

For you, the Clark Honors College Class of 2015, I urge each of you to make being a global citizen your call to action. You all care about the world. That’s why you are here. But what I’m telling you is that there are so many more ways to do something about it now than there were just a few years ago. There is a glob-al movement, and you can be an active part of it. This movement needs writers. It needs scientists. It needs doctors. It needs lawyers. It needs anthropologists. It needs teachers. There is not a single professional category that can’t contribute. So graduates, think about what you are good at and make sure you apply your in-tellect and your biggest talent to this enormous task of ensuring a more equal, just, sustainable world. Now is the time to do it, and you are the people to do it!

And now for a few pieces of practical advice:

First, remember the lessons of your thesis and put it on your résumé. I kept my thesis—both the title and the fact of defending it and being awarded “with honors”—on my résumé long after I graduated, and even after being advised not to by my Graduate School career counselor (who said, “If it isn’t directly relevant to the job you’re seeking, then don’t put it). I did have to admit that the title—“The Ubiq-uitous Olive: Spain, the European Union, and Politics of Olive Oil”—really wasn’t relevant to the jobs in international development that I was applying for. But the lesson of my thesis was that I completed a rigorous academic pro-gram that not only required an undergraduate thesis, but also required a thesis defense. And, when I interviewed at the Gates Foundation back in 2009, my hiring manager walked into the interview and the first words out of his mouth were, “I come from the land of the Ubiquitous Olive,” and I knew right then and there I had an in!

Second, go after your goals until you reach them. I know you all know something about going after your goals—that is why you are here today. I want to share a story of going after my goals. When I first applied to the hon-ors college, I didn’t get in. I was disappointed, but determined. I spent the summer before college literally studying how to study better. I read books and watched videos that taught me how to be a successful college student. I started at the University of Oregon that fall, spent hours getting to know my professors and seeking their advice on my work, worked hard and did well in my courses, reapplied, and then was admitted. Jumping in to complete the core curriculum in three years instead of four was daunting, but being among a com-munity of other driven and applied peers was encouraging. Taking on a double major, studying abroad, rowing crew, working and volunteering all fell easily into place for me in this community. Going after your goals shows you just what you are made of, and what you really desire. I thrived in the small, intellectual-ly driven community of the honors college that pushed my thinking and expected the most of me—and the more that was expected of me, the more and better I delivered. Going after my goals until I achieved them turned into a habit in my life. In the 16 years since, I have certainly had other challenges and disappoint-ments. But, I have kept on applying the lessons learned here, and am now in my dream job both in my work in global development, and as a mother of one—soon to be two children.

Third and last, is to seek out and make the kind of community you have here in the honors college wherev-er you go. You will thrive when you surround yourself with people who push you to be your best. You will find that this commu-nity is something you have to actively pursue and create for the rest of your

life, and I urge you to do it. Apply as much rig-or to your pursuit of your life as your career—to think analytically, write, reason soundly and eloquently, and to research rigorously, but most of all to love inquiry. If you continue to love inquiry, you will not only enjoy a personally rewarding and enriching life, but you will contribute to your community. Contribute to other communities you will join and build just as you have to the honors college.

In these ways, you can take your experi-ences from the honors college and apply them to how you will be global citizens in the world. There are so many opportunities for you, being global citizens, to demonstrate through your professional and personal paths that you believe all humans should be able to thrive no matter where they call home.

Thank you, and congratulations on this incredible achievement. You, the Robert D. Clark Honors College Class of 2015, are a tremendous addition to the world. I can’t wait to see what you make of it.

Editor’s note: Sheila’s commencement address was followed by two outstanding student speeches. One, given by Caellagh Morrissey, a history major, was titled “Don’t Forget to Ask” (http://bit.ly/1YrWoHC) and the other, given by Luciano Dolcini-Catania, a sociology major, was titled “Fear and Empathy” (http://bit.ly/1YwDf2b).

continued from front pageGlobal Citizen

Credit: Climate Analogues web application—UO Department of Geography, InfoGraphics Lab, and USGS


In this map, the purple dot represents Eugene. The peach-colored shading indicates locations in the U.S. whose climate is similar to Eugene’s projected climate in 2040. Red shading indicates even greater similarity.

significant. The lab also brings attention to the limitations of maps, such as the distortions intrinsic to the Web Mercator projections that most online mapping tools use in their 2-D depictions of the Earth’s surface.

In Slovic and Frank’s genocide prevention work, they sought to overcome the “psychic numbing” that tends to occur when people hear statistics about mass murder, a psychological phenomenon Slovic has studied. Perhaps cartography and informational graphics could help make mass atrocities feel more real, sparking an emotional reaction in viewers and thus motivating them to act.

Some provocative data were already being collected by antigenocide activists. In Sudan, groups such as the Satellite Sentinel Project were using satellite imagery to help detect recent attacks and pre-dict imminent ones, sometimes providing enough warning to protect the Sudanese government’s next targets. What if such data—or information culled from social media—could be mapped and transmitted to decision-makers who could then intervene more quickly?

A website that incorporates maps and infographics along these lines is currently under development by students in the Carn-egie Global Oregon Ethics Program. The students received a grant from the Genocide Prevention Initiative, which Frank and Slovic chair, and hosted a workshop on this topic in November 2014.

Visualizing the Past and Future

Other UO researchers with whom the InfoGraphics Lab is currently collaborat-ing include Daniel Rosenberg, a professor of history in the Clark Honors College, who’s working on a project about time-

continued from page 3Making an Impact

lines—essentially graphic representations of time—and Patrick Bartlein, a professor in the department of geography, with whom the lab is creating interactive maps that help people understand what future climate change might feel like. Indeed, climate data exemplify the way cartography can help communicate complex information. Telling someone that Eugene’s average July tempera-tures may increase by 8 degrees Fahrenheit in the next 25 years might be somewhat alarming. However, showing them a map in-dicating that predictions for Eugene in 2040 closely resemble the current climate around Sacramento, California, makes that projected warming seem much more real.

Melissa Woo serves as the vice provost for information services and chief information of-ficer at the University of Oregon. She previously worked for the central IT organizations at the

University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Melissa is a member of the advisory board for the Center for Higher Education Chief Infor-mation Officer Studies, vice chair elect of the InCommon Steering Committee, and is co-chair for the Higher Education Information Security Council Executive Council. She completed her PhD in biophysics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and her bachelor’s degree in biophysics at the University of California at Berkeley. Melissa frequently writes and presents on the topic of leadership, with a particular emphasis on encouraging aspiring IT leaders. Nancy Novitski, strategic communications spe-cialist at UO Information Services, contributed to this story.

Screenshot of Climate Analogues website


The Northern Paiute History Project: Engaging Undergraduates in Decolonizing ResearchBy Kevin Hatfield and Jennifer O’Neal

“We don’t care what you know, until we know that you care.” Visiting indigenous schol-ars and students resounded this maxim repeatedly when reflect-ing on their research collabora-tions with settler-society allies and academic institutions during the recent Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples conference we co-organized at the Uni-versity of Oregon with Mark Carey, honors college associate dean and associate professor of history, and Kathy Lynn of the Environment Studies Program. This conviction exemplifies the ethical framework guiding our annual Clark Honors College research colloquium, “Decolo-nizing Research: The Northern Paiute History Project,” and the overarching partnership with tribal elders and community members of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and Burns Paiute Tribe in the North-ern Great Basin of central and eastern Oregon.

We enjoyed the opportunity to offer the course for the third consecutive year in fall 2015, and continue to foster relationships with tribal commu-nity partners that date back over a decade.

Our course po-sitions undergradu-ates to perform original research and create new knowledge within a structure of formal research protocols for shared decision-making, research agendas, modes of inquiry, categories of analysis, dissemination of knowledge, and philosophies of scholar-ship. These values underpin our long-standing relationships with, and long-term commitment to, our tribal partners. Through continuous interaction in and out of the classroom with com-

munity partners, the students confront the dichotomy between the authorized “academic expert” and the “subordinated subject.” They also develop a metacogni-tive consciousness of how the process and products of their research projects can avoid functioning as acts of appropria-tion or academic neocolonial-ism extracting, alienating, and distributing knowledge for purposes external to the indig-enous source and knowledge

community. Stu-dents work closely with the commu-nity partners and receive feedback and mentorship on each step of their research papers through field trips to the Warm Springs Reserva-tion and adjacent cultural sites, as well as course-part-ner class visits on campus, conference calls, and written correspondence.

We aspire to immerse students in a historian’s appren-ticeship designed to offer an inquiry-based intellectual space fostering discovery, curiosity, empathy, and reciprocity. For many historians, this experi-ence represents an instructional reorientation from the primacy of “content mastery” toward the hands-on practice of the craft of the discipline—posing questions, asserting arguments, interpreting sources, interrogat-ing historiography, performing interviews, constructing narra-tives, and applying history as a “way of thinking” and “way of knowing.” Students take inspira-tion from the contributions their community-based research makes to the broader “usable past” objectives of the project, including the collection and digital return and repatriation of archival sources; the sharing of research papers; the creation of a Northern Paiute oral his-tory collection and annotated bibliography; and the develop-ment of K–12 curriculum. The

Class photo. Kevin Hatfield and Jennifer O’Neal at far right in front.

Northern Paiute landscape.continued on next page


restoration history work with central Oregon’s tribal, regional, and local history museums and historical societies similarly strives to ensure the Northern Paiute voice, knowledge, and perspective is incorporated into the narrative of their past and present in museum exhibits, historical signage, and other popular culture expressions in the region.

Indigenous scholar Eva Marie Garroute’s concept of radi-cal indigenism, articulated in her book Real Indians: Identity and Survival of Native America, un-derpins our work with students:

By asking scholars to enter (rather than merely study) tribal philosophies, radical indigenism asks them to abandon any notion that mainstream academic phi-losophies, interpretations, and approaches based upon them are, in principle, superior. The demand that researchers enter tribal philosophies cannot stand by itself. If the adoption of those philosophies is to be something more than mere appropria-tion and exploitation of Native [American] cultures, it must be accompanied by research-ers entering tribal relations. Entering tribal relations implies

maintaining respect for community values in the search for knowl-edge. This respect is much more than an attitude, it requires real commitments and real sacrifices on the part of those who practice it.

Thus, the two-day field research trip to the Warm Springs Reser-vation embodies the transformative center-piece of the course and places students directly in discussion with trib-al community course partners. The field research trip physically and intellectually immerses the students in the culture and his-tory they are studying, as well as encourages them to think critically about the way they have traditionally learned history and how their research dove-tails with the larger purposes of the course. Accordingly to one student, “this trip is an essential part of truly understanding the process of decolonizing history . . . engaging and interacting with the tribal community and writing about what matters to them.” Another student noted

that the experience “made the relevance and importance of our projects come to light . . . I now feel encouraged to work even more diligently on the research because we have met those to whom it is very important to.” The group discussions also generated new questions such as how to incorporate the multiple viewpoints and truths presented from tribal members, and how to negotiate differences and contradictions between documentary primary sources and oral history testimony and living memory. We unpack these

questions throughout the term by providing guidance about how to critically examine and construct meaning from often-divergent histori-cal evidence—especially for the Northern Paiute history that has been historically misrepre-sented in secondary sources.

The field research trip has evolved into a mandatory element of the course. In 2011, tribal elders from Warm Springs and Burns, as

well as visiting scholar James Gardner, escorted students to the Crooked River Canyon, where Wilson Wewa, Warm Springs elder and spiritual leader, shared the story “The Epic Battle of the Giant Numuzo’ ho and Coyote” while overlooking the ancient Northern Paiute sites of “Animal Village” and “Monkey Face.” Students also examined the “presentation” of Northern Pai-ute history and culture through exhibits, artifacts, text, images, and “living history actors” at memory institutions within cen-tral Oregon, including the tribal museum (Museum at Warm Springs), a regional art history museum (High Desert Museum), and a local historical society (Deschutes County Museum). Students spoke with librar-ians, archivists, curators, and directors. Kelly Cannon-Miller, director of the Deschutes County Museum, conveyed an incident that cemented the immediacy and real-world relevance of the students’ decolonizing research endeavor—as well as the influ-ence constituencies have on the ideological framing of public history. The week prior to our

Wilson Wewa and Ruth Lewis.

Map showing Northern Paiute lands in Oregon.

continued on next page


arrival, descendants of the pioneer-settler family who still take pride in their ancestor’s role in the killing of Northern Paiute chief Paulina—the great-great-great grandfather of Wilson Wewa—confronted Kelly for beginning to redevelop the tradi-tional dominant-culture display of Paulina and the incorporation of an indigenous perspective.

Highlights during the 2014 field research trip included a guided tour by tribal elder Myra Johnson Orange of the Warm Springs Culture and Heritage Department, Northern Paiute History Archives, and indig-enous language classrooms locat-ed in the former boys dormitory of the Warm Springs Boarding School. Myra explained how the tribes of Warm Springs had reclaimed this space that was once dedicated to assimilation, detribalization, and ethnocide to create a space for revitalizing Native languages and knowl-edge. Shayleen Macy, language instructor, tribal artist, and UO graduate, also presented her art exhibit along with other tribal artists at the Warm Springs mu-seum gallery to students.

According to Wilson Wewa:

[The class] is an opportunity for me to enlighten nonnative students about Native American history. The work has been a long time coming for the university community to reach out to the tribal communities, to get our perspective on the history that’s been written about us because most of the books and history that has been written that are in libraries . . . is not our own history, it has been a diluted history based on writings from the military, from the federal government, from the state gov-ernment, and the Indian agents. With dedicated researchers and students, they are the ones that want to know the truth; they are the ones that are unlock-ing those doors of change. The more that we realize that there is a true history out there that needs to be unlocked, the more opportunities we have to go in a positive direction of helping one another and understanding one another.

Myra Johnson Orange, Warm Springs tribal member, indigenous language instructor, and course-partner, similarly reflected:

[Northern Paiute his-tory] is a hidden history. We have history about Native American people, but none of it is really pertinent to our tribes here or to the Northern Paiute. There’s a brief mention of things like that, but usually it’s the ones that made names for themselves.” [The class makes] real the history of our people because you hear the things, but you never put it all together like a big puzzle. There’s

bits here, bits there . . . well the puzzle’s coming together now based on the research that I’ve been reading. Ah, now I under-stand why, or now I see things that I never really understood before. So I think it’s important for me at this age to finally put puzzles of my history together, based on the research done by this class and the students. [It] just gives me thrills and chills.

We wish to express our gratitude to the generous under-writing of the field research trip by the Robert D. Clark Hon-ors College. This support has strengthened the relationships with the tribal communities. We wish to close by highlighting a few of the CHC students’ signa-ture achievements. Kimi Lerner (2013) and Ayantu Megerssa (2014) each won a UO Libraries Undergraduate Research Award given to outstanding research papers that use a variety of UO Libraries’ resources. Ayantu also earned the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Student Essay Award. In spring 2014, we, along with two students from the class and course-partner Myra Johnson Orange, presented

at the UO Alternative Sover-eignties Conference. We also presented a session at the 2015 American Historical Associa-tion Conference in New York City with CHC student Simone Smith (the only undergraduate to present at the conference) and video interviews with Wilson Wewa and Myra Johnson Orange produced by the UO School of Journalism and Communica-tion. In December 2014, CHC hosted Wilson Wewa, Myra Johnson Orange, and Shayleen Macy on campus for the Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples Symposium. All three honored guests provided an important tribal perspective on a variety of topics during the student research poster and oral pre-sentation sessions (where all 18 students presented), as well as the general symposium meet-ings. Most recently, we presented at the Western Social Science As-sociation conference in Portland, Oregon, with Myra Johnson Orange and students Savannah Carter, Ayantu Megerssa, and Dean Dier. Dean, who worked closely with Myra Johnson Orange and Wilson Wewa on his paper “This Year the Birds Fly North: An Historical Short Story of Medicine Man Oytes and the Forced Removal of the Northern Paiute to Yakima,” had his essay published in the peer-reviewed Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal in summer 2015.

Kevin Hatfield, PhD Adjunct Assistant Professor, History [email protected] Jennifer O’Neal, MA, MLISRichard and Mary Corrigan Solari University Historian and Archivist, UO [email protected]

continued from previous pageNorthern Paiute History Project

Northern Paiute Elders. Jennifer and Kevin at far left.


The saying goes that the Peace Corps is the “toughest job you’ll ever love,” and for me the experience has been no different. I have been living and working as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Panama since February 2014. In 2013, I graduated from Clark Honors College with a double major in Spanish and geography. While there are many challenges of being a professional here, I am so thankful for all the experi-

ences I have had throughout my service. My time here in Panama is the perfect culmination of my undergraduate passions of geography and Spanish, topped off with a love of learning about the world, which I cultivated as a student in the honors college. I was drawn to geography because I loved to learn about places; my Peace Corps service has been like reading an academic journal of an in-depth study of Panama. I draw on my geography education to appreciate the diversity of Panama and its dynamic history.

Peace Corps volunteers are assigned to an individual community where they live and work for their 27-month service. My commu-nity is Alto Caballero in the Comarca Ngäbe-Buglé. “Comarca” is the Panamanian equivalent of a Native American reservation, and the 2,000 people in my community are indigenous Ngäbe (pronounced “naw-be”). Although Spanish is primarily spoken, for many people the indigenous Ngäbere is their first language.

At times, life here moves to the same rhythm as the past hun-dred years. Many of the gente (people) in my community are sub-sistence farmers and rely on the rains for their crops to grow and to feed their bellies. Plenty of the women wear the traditional nagwa, a

colorful, loose dress with an intricate zigzag design, which is symbol-ic of Ngäbe culture. When the rains come in the afternoon, all work stops and community members chat on the porch. But at the same time, my community has many elements of modernity—television, smart phones, and ubiquitous contemporary reggaetón and bachata music at all hours of the day. I credit the CHC and my undergraduate studies at the UO with my ability to understand how people live, and piecing together how history influences today’s world.

The Peace Corps’s goal is “sustainable development.” During my 10 weeks of training after I arrived in Panama, I picked up many development buzzwords such as “capacity build-ing”—meaning that I teach skills that individuals can use throughout their life to meet challenges on their own. In terms of work, my official title is “Eng-lish co-teacher and trainer.” Essentially,

I work with English teachers in my community’s school to improve their English and support them in the classroom. These goals can seem very lofty when schools work with very limited resources, and cultural attitudes toward education are very different than what I am accustomed to in the States. School is only four to six hours a day, and teachers often don’t have the books or materials they need to teach their lessons. My hope is that the small kernels of change Peace Corps volunteers plant over their service will help teachers to better use the time and resources they have.

While a student in the honors college, I learned that thought can set you free. I believe that, as Peace Corps volunteers, one of the most powerful things we do is fostering intellectual development, be it reading to a child or sharing some of our own stories. In that light, Peace Corps volunteers have the freedom to work on “secondary projects” to accompany our primary project. As a secondary project, I’ve focused much of my Peace Corps service on library development and literacy, and I am creating a library in my school. Through read-ing and books, I hope some students will find meaning and answers, and feel connected to the world of learning. The school I work at is kindergarten through the ninth grade, and I hope my library will reach students of ages four to 15.

The Peace Corps is a powerful, emotional, and beautiful experi-ence. If you have more questions or would like to get in touch, feel free to e-mail me at [email protected].

CHC Alumna Serves as Peace Corps Volunteer in PanamaBy Meredith Comnes ’13

Meredith Comnes

Ngäbe people

Meredith with Ngäbe people


The Animal-Human Bond in Science, Art, and HistoryBy Roxann Prazniak, Associate Professor of History

Colloquium students outside the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art

Honors college colloquia are an exciting feature of the CHC curriculum. Juniors and seniors return to the honors college seminar format infused with expertise from their varied academic majors to examine a topic from an interdisciplinary perspective. Last spring, I offered a colloquium entitled The Animal-Human Bond in Science, Art, and History. Although Chinese and Eurasian histories are my primary fields of research, this particular colloquium has become one of my signature courses. I first taught the course while on leave at Soka University, a school with a Buddhist-inspired ideology and student body. The experience at Soka University allowed me to explore aspects of my own thinking that were tucked away in files of articles on the subject I had collected but never developed. When I returned to the honors college the following year, Dick Kraus (then CHC director) suggested I teach the course here. I did, and it seems to have struck a chord with students.

The course is a natural for connecting with many University of Oregon resources. The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art always provides rich opportunities for thinking about the representation of animals in Asian and European art. In spring 2015, the colloquium was especially fortunate to view the work of Rick Bartow, a Native American Oregonian, in his exhibit filled with imagery of hybrid animal-human forms. Taking topics from cul-tural and animal studies out of the classroom into outdoor settings including the verdant green lawn and trees near Chapman Hall generated alternative perspectives. In many ways, this colloquium is the most important course I teach. It is solidly academic and cross-societal, with historical depth, and it also sustains an emo-tional chord that is truly transformative.

Students viewing the Rick Bartow Exhibit, taking notes and doing quick sketches.

Roxann Prazniak


NEW FACES at the CHCCaitlyn Kari

Caitlyn Kari joined the Clark Honors College this September. As our new director of communications, Caitlyn strives to bring attention to the wonderful and unique pursuits and achievements of the CHC community by connecting those stories into broader campus, commu-nity, and global conversations.

Establishing a director of communications role within the honors college has been an important step in ensuring that the CHC voice is equally represented alongside other colleges within the broader univer-sity. Caitlyn serves as a liaison with central communications, public and media relations, admissions, and alumni relations groups on campus to cultivate resource-sharing relationships and ensure that the honors col-lege identity interfaces with the overall UO brand and message.

Caitlyn graduated from Willamette University with a BA in anthro-pology and French. She has led the marketing and communications department at Willamette Valley Vineyards, and worked as the director of marketing for Teragren, North America’s leading bamboo manufac-turer. During her time in each of these positions, Caitlyn conducted major anniversary campaigns in conjunction with strategic work in brand revitalization.

Caitlyn is thrilled to be working with such a respected and long-standing institution as the honors college, and is excited to see what the future holds for this special college within the university.

Dear Scholar readers—

Part of my role as the new director of communications for the Clark Honors College will be to consider the current format and content of the Scholar, and to help determine what form this publication takes moving forward. As an engaged and thoughtful alumni community, I believe that your input and feedback will be a valuable contribution in shaping this discussion. We want to know which content you look forward to in every issue, and what stories you wish were being told. Do you value the printed format of the magazine, or would a digital version be equally accessible? Please, take a few moments to go online to the survey link listed below and let us know what your vision is for the Scholar. This is the publication of your honors college community—past, present, and future. Take this opportunity to express your opinions and share ideas that we may not have thought of yet.

Online Survey Link: http://bit.ly/1NtceNd

Thank you, and I hope you enjoy this issue of the Robert D. Clark Honors College Scholar.

Warmest wishes,

Caitlyn N. KariDirector of CommunicationsRobert D. Clark Honors College

[email protected]


NEW FACES at the CHC

Elizabeth RaisanenElizabeth Raisanen joined the Clark Honors College in May 2015

as the director of undergraduate advising and an instructor of literature. Elizabeth earned her PhD in English at UCLA, where she also worked as a student affairs officer in the Scholarship Resource Center. She spe-cializes in the women writers of the British Romantic period, and her dissertation, “Literary Gestations: Giving Birth to Writing, 1722–1831,” explores pregnancy and childbirth as metaphors for authorship in the Romantic era. Her research interests extend to 18th- and 19th-century British literature, Romantic drama, and the digital humanities. Elizabeth is also a founding editor of Digital Mitford: The Mary Russell Mitford Archive, a digital humanities project dedicated to creating a comprehensive digital archive of scholarly editions of Mitford’s cor-respondence, poetry, prose, and dramatic works.

As director of undergraduate advising, Elizabeth collaborates with colleagues across UO’s campus to assist CHC students with their advising needs. She has developed advising resources for CHC students, including guides to various campus resources, a four-year plan template for honors college students, and information sheets on the thesis process. She has also created a Peer Advising Program in the CHC that launched this fall (see next page). Elizabeth collaborates with campus partners to create programming for CHC students in Chapman Hall and in the Global Scholars Hall, and she works with CHC staff

members to distribute information about scholarship, fellowship, and internship opportunities for honors college students. Her Monday ad-vising e-mails to Clark Honors College students include an advising tip of the week along with important deadlines and event announcements as well as professional and academic opportunities.

Jennifer ParkerIn July, the honors college welcomed Jennifer “Jen” Parker as our

new director of development. As a member of the University Advance-ment team, Jen works with the philanthropic community to seek support for the CHC. Jen also collaborates with Enrollment Manage-ment’s university scholarships program to find support for the best and brightest students in Oregon and beyond. Her main focus is to meet the needs of students by seeking opportunities with donors to secure scholarship funding across campus. Jen also seeks support for study abroad, the Chapman Hall renovation, and for research opportunities for our award-winning faculty and talented students.

Jen has a BA in English literature and prelaw from Ohio University, and recently completed her MS in organizational leadership and ethics at St. Edward’s University. Prior to joining the CHC, Jen secured schol-arship support for St. Edward’s in Austin, Texas, and raised community awareness at the United Way of Northeast Florida, in Jacksonville. As a career fundraiser, she is driven to aid donors with their philanthropic goals.

On a personal note, after living far from the Pacific Northwest over the last 10 years, Jen is excited to return home to Eugene and get back to the amazing food culture and beautiful hiking trails throughout the Pacific Northwest.

continued from page 11


New CHC Peer Advising Program

Clark Honors College is pleased to announce the launch of its new Peer Advising Program during the fall 2015 term. Peer advising has long been an integral component of the advising culture in a number of academic departments at the University of Oregon, so the CHC’s direc-tor of undergraduate advising, Elizabeth Raisanen, was able to consult closely with established peer advising programs across campus as she developed a model for the honors college. The CHC has appointed three peer advisors (one each in the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities) who will conduct advising sessions in Chapman Hall and the Global Scholars Hall during the 2015–16 academic year.

Peer advisors offer advising support to CHC students by providing advanced students’ perspectives on honors college courses and programs, answering questions about the thesis process, and helping students prepare to have productive meetings with their CHC faculty and major advisors. Peer advisors also mentor CHC students by giving them information about honors college organizations and activities, as well as insight into other aspects of campus life.

In May 2015, Mark Carey, CHC associate dean and associate professor of history, received the Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award from the UO’s All-Campus Advising Association. More than 200 nominations and 54 applications were reviewed by the All-Campus Advising Association and the Division of Undergraduate Studies. Professor Carey’s mentoring is evident through the Glacier Lab, which he designed to train students in research skills and give them professional experience disseminating research results. (The Glacier Lab was the cover story in the last issue of the Scholar).

At the awards presentation, attended by many of his students, Megan Gleason, a graduating CHC senior and environmental studies major, shared why she nominated Professor Carey as an outstanding faculty advisor (read below).

CHC Associate Dean Receives All-Campus Advising Award

Mark Carey, CHC associate dean and associate professor of history; Megan Gleason ’15, and Lisa Freinkel, vice provost of undergraduate studies.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Megan Gleason. I am a graduating senior within the Clark Honors College and the environmental studies depart-ment. I’m thrilled to be up here to share why I nominated Associate Professor Carey as an outstanding faculty advisor. I’m also excited to share why I didn’t nominate him—but more on that later.

Professor Carey goes above and beyond when it comes to advising students. Within the three roles that I know him (professor, thesis advisor, and associate dean), he has provided me significant support in both personal and academic realms.

As a professor, he demands a lot of work, but always makes extra time for students. Last fall, I took his Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples course. He challenged us to produce exceptional research that we showcased at a conference he coorganized specifically for this class. The conference brought four indigenous scholars from around the country to present, and highlighted critical and underrepresented perspectives of climate change. The curricula from that class served as some of the most valuable academic advising I’ve ever received. I’ve studied climate change in the various departments for the last four years. But this course was the first that taught me how to think critically about the reproduction of knowledge and how to use indigenous sciences and ways of knowing to understand climate change.

But I’d like to reiterate that Professor Carey has always been very gener-ous with his time. I wouldn’t normally give him too much credit, because he’s also devoted generous amounts of my time to the library. Except—once I mentioned over e-mail that I was frustrated I wasn’t doing as well on his as-signments. In response, he invited me to coffee for an hour to talk about how

to improve, an offer I gladly accepted. He also paid, but that’s not why I’m up here.

As a thesis advisor, Professor Carey’s main job is to read the final draft of the thesis in spring term and make sure the work is up to honors college standards. However, he’s allowed me to come and speak with him about my thesis multiple times this term, and has actively helped me shape and frame my research. Most important, he’s challenged me to not underrate myself and encouraged me to think about the contribution I can make to my research field. (He recently attended my defense and made sure I answered all the tough questions. He also gave me a passing grade, but that’s not why I’m up here, either.)

Last, in his role as associate dean, Professor Carey takes the initiative to get students to talk with him about the future of the honors college. He’s invited me and other students to meet with architects about how to reshape our study spaces’; he’s talked with me about how to reduce stress in students’ lives. In general, he makes me feel like he appreciates my com-ments and suggestions even though I am a student and he is an associate dean. His commitment to teach, challenge, and listen to students is really empowering. But that’s not the reason I’m up here. I’m speaking in front of you today because Mark has worked with so many students—under-graduates and graduates, in his classes, in his glaciology lab, and multiple research projects—and they feel the same way I do. They were all willing to attest to his support in his application. That’s the real reason I’m up here. I’ll end by saying that I’m so excited that he is being recognized with this prestigious faculty-advising award. Congratulations, Professor Carey.

Professor Emeritus of Literature Henry Alley’s story “Border Crossing” was accepted by the anthology There: New Gay Fiction, published by Chelsea Station Editions. He has also been asked to read in the Lane Writers Readings Series next year.

Louise Bishop, associate professor of literature, continues her publication record with “Piers Plowman: Text and Context,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 21, 1 (Spring 2014): 27–36, and also “Reginald Pecock’s Reading Heart and the Health of Body and Soul,” Medicine, Religion and Gender in Medieval Culture, edited by Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015: 139–58, both of which were invited essays. Her work on Piers Plowman includes her invitation to the July 2015 Langland congress at the University of Washington and the seemingly never-ending book and manuscript reviews.

Mark Carey, associate dean and associate professor

of history, received the 2015 Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award for the University of Oregon in May 2015 (see article on page 13). This honor is awarded to one faculty member at the UO each year for exceptional work with students through “cultivating academic excellence, providing outstanding student support, having a strong understanding of the cultural factors that impact student success and development, and engaging in professional development.” Carey also continues research on his National Science Foundation (NSF) Career Grant, involving research on unruly icebergs in the North Atlantic, ice-core drilling in Greenland, and shrinking glaciers in the Andes. He published a book, The High-Mountain Cryosphere: Environmental Changes and Human Risks (Cambridge University Press, 2015) with coeditors Christian Huggel, John J. Clague, and Andreas Kääb. Carey authored two of the chapters in the book, including the final synthesis chapter, “The Future of High-Mountain Cryospheric

Research.” Carey also published the article “The Changing Water Cycle: Climatic and Socioeconomic Drivers of Water-Related Changes in the Andes of Peru,” which appeared in the journal Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews (WIREs) Water (2015) with an interdisciplinary team from Peru (Fabian Drenkhan and María Teresa Oré), Germany (Jochen Seidel), and Switzerland (Christian Huggel). As the recipient of a 2015 Global Oregon Faculty Collaboration Fund Award, a grant providing funds for international colleagues to spend time at the UO, Carey will bring Fernando Purcell from Chile’s Pontifica Universidad Católica to the honors college for the month of February (2016) so they can coauthor an article, “Energy, Water, and Hydrosocial Imaginaries in South America.” During 2015, Carey conducted research in Lima, Peru, Zurich, Switzerland, Columbus, Ohio, and Washington, D.C., at the national archives. He also gave invited lectures at Aarhus University in Denmark, the University of Bern in Switzerland, the Institute of Peruvian Studies and National Institute of Culture in Peru, and Ohio State University.

Mai-Lin Cheng, assistant professor of literature, presented a paper, “Byron’s Secret Rights,” as part of a panel on “The Right to Language and Silence” at the North American Association for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR) in Winnipeg in August. She was also selected as finalist for the NASSR Romantic Circles pedagogy contest, and participated in the finalist’s roundtable to present on “Romantic Stories.” She presented a paper, “Romantic Commonplaces,” in November at the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association conference in Portland, Oregon. She is also working with the rare books librarian at UO Libraries to bring students in HC 221H, Honors College Literature: Poetry, Myth, and Transformation, to the UO Special Collections and University Archives to see rare book editions of Ovid and others.

David Frank, professor of rhetoric, was one of 14 UO faculty members, and the second from the Clark Honors College, to be recognized with a Fund for Faculty Excellence Award in 2015–16. Intended to “recognize, support, and retain world-class tenure-


During the June 2015 meeting of the CHC Advisory Council,

Dean Terry Hunt welcomed Margaret Moore, BA ’61, as the coun-cil’s newest chair. Margaret is the first graduate of the Clark Hon-ors College and we are grateful for her continued involvement and support. Margaret graduated from the UO with a bachelor’s in education and served the Issaquah, Washington, school district for more than two decades in a variety of counseling and admin-istrative positions, retiring in 2003 as assistant superintendent.

Richard Boyles, BA ’79, president of InnSight Hotel Manage-ment Group and owner of Iris Vineyards, has agreed to serve as vice chair.

Outgoing chair Jim Shephard, BA ’80, helped the CHC achieve many milestone goals during his tenure, and the UO is fortunate that he continues to serve as board chair elect of the University of Oregon Foundation Board of Trustees. Thank you, Jim, for your dedicated service to the CHC!

FACULTY • NEWS

related faculty” members, the recipients celebrated the award in October at a reception hosted by UO president Michael Schill. Frank is in his second year of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to conduct research on the New Rhetoric Project of Chaïm Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca. Working with coprincipal investigators Paul Slovic and Robin Gregory, Professor Frank completed a National Science Foundation grant during spring 2015 titled “Understanding Decisions about Foreign Policy Interventions to Save Lives.” He helped oversee a workshop in April that brought government officials and others to campus to participate in government decisions on mass atrocities. One result of the NSF grant is an essay by Frank, Paul Slovic, Robin Gregory, and Daniel Vastfjall published in Against Boredom (Lund University Press, 2015) titled “Confronting the Collapse of Humanitarian Values in Foreign Policy Decision-Making.” Frank’s 2014 article in Rhetoric and Public Affairs, “Facing Moloch: Barack Obama’s National Eulogies and Gun Violence,” received significant media attention in the wake of mass shootings in South Carolina and Roseburg, Oregon. Politifact, The Trace, and McClatchy news services drew from the article in their reports. Frank’s review of Michael Walzer’s Book, The Paradox of Revolution was published in the New Rambler, a University of Chicago Law School publication. Professor Frank was invited by the

Carnegie Council in New York to present a paper on atrocity prevention, which he did during a conference in October.

Frank is chair of the UO Global Justice Program, which is funded by the Savage Endowment for International Relations and Peace. The Global Justice Program is collaborating with Peace Jam to host a Noble Peace Prize–winner spring 2016. Professor Frank also serves as the Clark Honors College residential academic community advisor for students in the Global Scholars Hall, and as chair of the university’s Faculty Personnel Committee.

Sander Goldberg, professor of practice of literature, has been active on the lecture circuit. Last spring, he delivered two papers, one on the editing of fragmentary texts and another on the reception of Greek comedy in the later Roman Empire, at the annual meeting of the Classical Association in Bristol, UK. He was also a guest speaker at a conference on Roman epic at the University of Colorado. In October, he was invited to speak on the transformations of the Odyssey story in opera at a plenary session of an international conference on the music of Gabriel Fauré held at the University of Washington. In January 2016, he will present on the interpretive challenges of fragmentary literature at the annual meeting of the Society for Classical Studies in San Francisco. His essay “The

Future of Antiquity” will appear as the afterword to a volume of essays titled The Classical Commentary (Cambridge 2016).

A book by Ocean Howell, assistant professor of history and architectural history, Making the Mission: Planning and Ethnicity in San Francisco, is now available from the University of Chicago Press. The book traces the history of neighborhood-based planning in San Francisco’s Mission District, from the great earthquake and fire of 1906 to the dissolution of Great Society programs in the early 1970s. Allison Isenberg of Princeton University writes “San Francisco’s Mission District deserves this sophisticated and fascinating history. Howell offers a rare frame for seeing an entire city through the lens of a single neighborhood. Making the Mission remaps the dynamics of power, planning, center and periphery, for U.S. cities in the twentieth century.”

This fall, Trond Jacobsen, director of forensics, hosted the British National Debate Team. Their visit included a debate on the question of Syria that drew a hundred people to the Great Hall in the Global Scholars Hall.

Vera Keller, assistant professor of history, is currently on leave as a Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellow funded by the Mellon Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies. The Ryskamp Fellowship is awarded to 12 tenure-track faculty members in the humanities and social sciences across the country. While on the fellowship, Keller is finishing her second book. Her first book Knowledge and the Public Interest, 1575–1725, was published by Cambridge University Press in November. She has also recently published an article in Isis on the practice and motivations of international scientific collaboration in the early modern period. A book chapter on the history of the “book of friends,” the Renaissance ancestor of Facebook, has also recently appeared.

This year, Keller will be traveling to several conferences and invited talks. In June, she coorganized two international conferences in London, one at the Victoria and Albert Museum and another at the Royal Society, one of the oldest

scientific institutions in the world. She has been invited to return to the Victoria and Albert Museum in December to speak at an event marking the opening of the new European art galleries. She has also been invited to give


continued on page 16

FACULTY • NEWScontinued from page 15

talks this coming winter and spring in Berlin at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, in San Marino, California, at the Henry E. Huntington Library, and at the University of Cambridge in the Department for the History and Philosophy of Science and at the Center for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities. In addition, she will be attending the conferences of the Sixteenth Century Society, the History of Science Society, and the Renaissance Society of America.

Susanna Lim, associate professor of literature, presented a paper titled “Compassion for All Living Beings: Park Kyoung-ni and Her Epic Novel Land” at a conference dedicated to the South Korean writer Park Kyoung-ni (1926–2008) at St. Petersburg University, St. Petersburg, Russia, in November. The conference is organized by the Korea-Russia Dialogue Forum, and is part of a series of events that will lead up to the building of a monument to the Korean writer in St. Petersburg. In March 2016, she will give a talk at the Eugene Public Library titled “And That Something Is Music: Tchaikovsky and Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin.” The talk is part of a series of events designed to kick-start the Eugene Opera’s performance of the Russian

opera Eugene Onegin on March 11 and 13, 2016 (performances at the Silva Concert Hall, Hult Center, in downtown Eugene, Oregon). The talk will explore composer Piotr Tchaikovsky’s transformation of Alexander Pushkin’s novel in verse, Eugene Onegin, from a classic of Russian literature into a universally loved opera.

Barbara Mossberg, professor of practice of literature, served as scholar-poet in residence for the In Claritas retreat in Assisi, Italy, on the topic of “Other, at a Time of Emergent Global Crisis as We See Increased Refugee, Immigration, and Migration, Resulting in Cultural Collision.” In Claritas, an international forum convening leaders in government, media, arts, civic policy, public health, and academe, seeks to optimize governance, drawing on frontline discoveries in art and science to educate and inspire thought leaders in civic society. Mossberg was a featured speaker on the topic “Quantum Wholeness: Transformational Understanding of Other through Emergent Physics, Mythology, and Classical Literature.” Mossberg’s student from the spring colloquium on Emerson and Einstein, Luciano Dolcini-Catania, spring 2015 honors college graduation speaker, was given an internship to contribute to the In Claritas fall 2015 global retreat on freedom, diversity, and place, in Seattle, Washington, September 23–26, 2015.

Mossberg spoke at the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, University of Idaho, June 23–26, 2015, presenting “The Deep Structure of Subversive Understanding: Literature’s Subliminal Role Seeding the Soil in Eco-Law—A Subversive Talk.”

For the International Leadership Association Conference on Women and Leadership in Asilomar, California, in June, Mossberg gave an opening conference presentation on poetry and leadership: “‘I Dwell in Possibility’: Jump-Starting and Back Up on Our Poetic Feet: Poetry’s Rousing and Sustaining Role in Women’s Leadership,” in which she describes how poetry gives us a new way to think about and frame and resolve our fears, setbacks, obstacles, and challenges as women and leaders.

Mossberg’s poetry chapbook Sometimes the Woman in the Mirror Is Not You and Other Hopeful News Postings was published spring 2015 in Finishing Line Press’ New Women’s Voices Series (available at amazon.com). She gave readings of the collection at featured events as city poet emerita for Pacific Grove, California. Along with U.S. and U.K. book prizewinners, Mossberg has been selected to represent the Finishing Line Press at the Writers Abroad Conference in Dublin,

Ireland, UNESCO World Literature City, in December 2015. Mossberg’s poem, “This Thing Called Friendship Is Bigger Than We Know,” received honorable mention in New Millennial Writings, NMW 39 Anthology, 2015. Mossberg also took part in a fundraiser for the Tupelo Press 30-30 Project, to support a translation and publication of a Korean-American poetry anthology. She posted an original poem a day for 30 days in September.

Building on the spring CHC at Oxford, Mossberg developed and led the first CHC-based program on “The Genius of Study Abroad,” a two-course exploration of Clark Honors College foundational themes of interdisciplinary and global approaches to knowledge, tracing exemplar’s paths who studied abroad in London, Oxford, and Paris. Part one was “Travel as Transformational Learning,” and part two was “Revolutionary Imagination.” The program will be offered again in summer 2016.

For New Student Orientation, Mossberg spoke on this year’s Common Reading Program selection, Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel in a presentation titled “Distinction in the Age of Extinction: The Role of the Liberal Arts in Survival Schemes—or, Reasoning the Need.” The premise of Station Eleven is that when nothing’s left, only the greatest literature and arts will do.


Most recently, Roxann Prazniak, associate professor of history, wrote a paper on the 13th century observatory at Maragha, Iran, an institution under the direction of scholar Nasir al-Din al-Tusi that produced astronomical constructs critical to the work of Copernicus two centuries later. The paper, titled “Maragha Observatory: A Constellation in Eurasian Scientific Translations,” was composed for a conference, “Found in Translation: The World History of Science circa 1200–1600,” at the University of Pittsburgh in October and was included in their conference volume publication.

Daniel Rosenberg, professor of history, returned from Berlin full of Sturm und Drang and pushing a pram. Back at the UO, he was excited to debut a new CHC colloquium, Search, on the prehistory of Google, and to coorganize a conference at the Wayne Morse Center, “Living Data: Inhabiting New Media.” His article “Whence Data?” appeared in Berlin Journal. Another article, “History Debugged,” appeared in the Springer collection Everything Is Intertwingled: The Work and Influence of Theodor Nelson, and his review of Judy Wajcman’s book Pressed for Time appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Associate professor Helen Southworth gave a keynote address at the 25th Annual International Conference

on Virginia Woolf in June in Bloomburg, Pennsylvania. She talked about obscurity, an ongoing issue central to her research and work in the field of biography. An essay based on her keynote address is being developed for a collection tentatively titled “Women Writers and Community: The Making of Modernism” (University Press of Florida). A coauthored essay on the Hogarth Press in a global context (with Claire Battershill) is forthcoming in Jessica Berman’s Wiley-Blackwell publication A Companion to Virginia Woolf (2015). Other current work includes an essay on several women poets associated with the London-based Poetry Bookshop for a collection on women and print culture pre-1920, and a second on teaching modernist women and digital humanities.

Southworth recently joined the College of Arts and Sciences advisory board tasked with creating a digital humanities minor at Oregon. She presented at a workshop for UO faculty interested in digital humanities in early September. Southworth and her international group of Modernist Archives Publishing Project colleagues (modernistarchives.com) are collaborating on a book about building a digital humanities site for the Palgrave Pivot series. Southworth and colleagues gave a poster presentation at the Modernist Studies Association conference in Boston in November 2015.


Kelly Sutherland, assistant professor of biology, recently published two papers with students and colleagues. The first, titled “Commercial Fishers’ Perceptions of Jellyfish Interference in the Northern California Current” was published in the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) Journal of Marine Science and showed that jellyfish negatively affect Oregon fishers, especially salmon trollers. The second paper, “Multijet Propulsion Organized by Clonal Development in a Colonial Siphonophore,” published in Nature Communications described how a jellyfish-like organism called Nanomia bijuga uses multiple, coordinated swimming jets for highly effective and maneuverable swimming. Future work will investigate Nanomia and other colonial swimmers as natural models for undersea vehicles. Sutherland also recently received a National Science Foundation grant to explore feeding selection by jellyfish-like organisms called an appendularians. Appendicularians are important consumers of tiny plants and animals at the base of the food web, but their selection mechanisms are not well understood. Sutherland gave the Summer Public Lecture at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology (UO’s marine lab) in Charleston, Oregon, and was also recently invited to give a seminar at Oregon State University.

Tim Williams, visiting assistant professor of history, received an Archie K. Davis Fellowship from the North Caroliniana Society, which he used to conduct research for his new book project on intellectual history of the Confederacy and postwar South. He presented papers at the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic annual meeting in Raleigh, North Carolina, in July, and at the Association for British American 19th-Century History at Cambridge University in October. He wrote two book reviews, which will appear in the Journal of the Civil War Era and Civil War History. He wrote an article titled “The Readers’ South: Literature, Region, and Identity in the Civil War Era,” which is under review. He is also happy to report that his edited collection of Civil War writings (coedited with Evan Kutzler) is now under contract with the University of Georgia Press.


Rachel Grant and Michael Enseki-Frank

CHC Students Present Papers to the Carnegie Council for EthicsBy David Frank, Professor of Rhetoric

Two Clark Honors College Students, Rachel Grant (Japanese, economics, Asian-studies, 2016) and Michael Enseki-Frank (economics, math, Japanese minor, 2016) were selected by the Carnegie Council for Eth-ics in International Affairs as “Ethics Fellows for the Future” after they were nominated by two University of Oregon faculty members and were invited to present research papers at a conference hosted by the Council October 20–23, 2015 on the topic “An Ethical Dia-logue between Asia and the West: Philosophi-cal Traditions, Moral Contentions, and the Future of U.S.–Asia Relations.”

Grant and Enseki-Frank were nomi-nated for the recognition by professors Shaul Cohen and Cheyney Ryan. Professor Cohen is a professor in the Department of Geogra-phy and serves as a Carnegie Ethics fellow as the Director of the Carnegie Global Oregon Program, which bridges the Carnegie Council ethical mission to sixty University of Oregon students who are members of a community that addresses questions of ethics. Professor Ryan, who is a senior ethics fellow with the council, directs the Human Rights Program at Oxford University and is responsible for developing a relation-ship between Carnegie and the University of Oregon. Grant and Enseki-Frank, both members of the Carnegie Global Oregon com-munity, were nominated because of their commitment to global social justice and outstanding academic records.

Rachel Grant presented a well-constructed and received paper on the role of women in Japanese society. She presented research on the importance of increasing the number of women in the labor force in Japan and creating more opportunity for women, especially in leadership roles. Her presentation considered out-come of Japanese Prime Minister’s structural reforms intended to help women in order to highlight the ethical dimension of his promises.

Michael Enseki-Frank’s paper featured an analysis of article nine of the Japanese constitution, which renounces war and militarism, and Prime Minister Abe’s efforts to revise it. He placed the controversy sparked by Abe’s attempt in its context as South Korea, China, and a host of Asian countries express deep con-cern about Japan’s effort to remilitarize. Enseki-Frank concluded by calling for a U.S. foreign policy that supports a demilitarized Japan.

Professor Cohen, Director of the Carnegie Global Oregon program, worked with both students on their presentations and stated “Rachel and Michael blended their knowledge of and experi-ences in Japan with a passion for promoting a more ethical world. They are exemplary representatives of the Carnegie Global Oregon Ethics Program, and I’m delighted that they were able to share their perspectives with a world-class group of scholars and students in New York. To date our program has generated four outstanding Carnegie Ethics Fellows for the Future, and we are eagerly antici-pating next year’s Carnegie Council events.” Devin Stewart, Senior Program Director of the Carnegie Council, found both presenta-tions well grounded and coherent. “Rachel and Michael were among truly outstanding students, drawn from universities and colleges throughout the world, including Dartmouth and Singapore National University. Their presentations demonstrated that the University of Oregon, and its Carnegie Oregon students, are well prepared to participate with the best undergraduates anywhere.”


The architectural programming study developed a set of plan-ning principles which will guide future design work. The principles below were incorporated into the Request for Qualifications for architecture firms to work on the renovation. Both the architect and Construction Manager/General Contractor will be selected by the end of February 2016. For updates on the Chapman Hall renovation project, visit honors.uoregon.edu (updates will be posted beginning in early 2016).

Welcoming Building: Consider the experience of all building visitors, not only students, faculty, and staff, but alumni and prospective students and their parents. Create welcoming build-ing entry areas and subsequent traffic flow throughout the entire building that is both well connected and clearly expresses the CHC’s identity.

Building Hearths: Chapman Hall is the home of the CHC while also serving as an important campus building. There is a need to create a social hearth for the building, and also a separate CHC hearth that is the perceived center of social converges for the CHC community.

Balance Historical and Functional: Chapman Hall holds historic significance to the university. Honor the historical look and feel of Chapman to preserve the building’s identity while balancing the desire for modernization to support a diversity of learning and working styles.

Integrated Community: Chapman Hall is currently fragmented and somewhat cloistered. Build a more integrated community through a mix of faculty office clusters, student study spaces, semi-nar rooms, and circulation paths through the building that create and encourage informal interaction between building users, particu-larly with faculty-to-student and student-to-student encounters.

Vertical Connection: Currently the ground floor of Chap-man is isolated from the main stair to the upper levels, and upper level circulations could be enhanced. Improve vertical connectivity between all levels – certainly physically and potentially visually, and if possible, ADA access to all levels.

Seminar Rooms for Flexible Teaching and Learning: Teach-ing more CHC classes in Chapman would increase interaction and engagement of faculty and students. As more classes migrate to Chapman, it becomes even more important for the Chapman semi-nar rooms to serve a broad range of teaching and learning styles and to accommodate a variety of seating arrangements. Create appro-priately sized, flexible, and reconfigurable seminar style classrooms

Planning Principles Guide Chapman Hall Renovation

which also integrate technology.Flexible Offices: Faculty use their offices in many different

ways. The same is true for staff and administration. Create flexible and appropriately sized office space for faculty, staff and adminis-trative office types for the full range of uses: social, quiet, highly interactive, high and low volume storage, part-time use etc.

Security Zones: Creating vibrant spaces for collaborative, creative endeavors in a building with improved vertical connec-tions and access can leave building security issues seriously com-promised. Organize the building to make rational security zones that feel open and interconnected yet allow for different functions to be separated after normal working hours when they must be closed off.

Display Learning and Research: The CHC is an interdis-ciplinary and collaborative enterprise. Showcase the variety of topics that are taught and researched by CHC faculty and students. Consider physical displays and interior transparency that reveal the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of learning and research at the CHC. In particular, provide support and display for the science disciplines that are an important part of the honors college but whose focus has historically been outside of Chapman Hall.

Study Spaces: Students study in a variety of modes. Create and array group study and personal study spaces throughout the building that provide varying degrees of privacy and acoustic isola-tion, while enhancing the sense of CHC community.

Acoustical Choice: Some building users, students and employees alike, thrive in the active “buzz” of occupied space, yet some people crave quiet areas. Provide a variety of acoustical pri-vacy and background noise to provide for this range of user needs for all types of users.

Sustainable Campus: The university is committed to sustain-able practices. The University’s Oregon Model for Sustainable Development (OMSD) requirements in particular address limiting energy use, applying LEED Gold standards, and engaging build-ing occupants in the operation and performance of their building. Meet or exceed OMSD requirements while paying particular atten-tion to how the building environment may enhance the occupants’ connection to nature.

NonprofitOrganizationU.S. PostagePAIDEugene ORPermit No. 63

Robert D. Clark Honors College1293 University of OregonEugene OR 97403-1293

Save the Dates!May 20, 2016 Sixth Annual UO Undergraduate Symposium, a campus-wide celebration of undergraduate research, creative and performance works; Global Scholars Hall, Friday.

June 12, 2016Clark Honors College Commencement, Matthew Knight Arena; Sunday, 4:00 p.m.

June 13, 2016UO Commencement, Matthew Knight Arena; Monday.

The Scholar, Fall 2015

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Transcript of The Scholar, Fall 2015