Honors and achievements
Members of the College of Arts and Sciences community do excellent work that is recognized across the University and around the world.
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James Brozik, associate professor, chemistry, received the Marianna Merritt and Donald S. Matteson Distinguished Professorship in Chemistry.
Donna Campbell, associate professor, English, presented her paper, “Wasted Bodies: Poverty, Disability, and Cinematic Naturalism in Wharton, Crane, and Early Film,” and participated in the Delegate Assembly at the Modern Language Association conference in Chicago. Campbell also gave an invited keynote address, “Bitter Tastes: Recognizing American Women Writers of Naturalism,” at the international Association for the Study of Emile Zola and Naturalism conference in New Orleans, which drew scholars from 22 countries.
Peter Engels, associate professor, physics and astronomy, is co-author of a paper published in Nature Communicationsdescribing the successful creation of a Bose-Einstein condensate and the observation of “superradient” phenomenon predicted by Princeton researchers in 1954.
Michael Forbes, assistant professor, physics and astronomy, and colleagues at the Institute for Nuclear Theory at the University of Washington completed “one of the largest supercomputing calculations ever performed” to simulate vortex rings traveling through a gas of cold atoms. The results, “Quantized Superfluid Vortex Rings in the Unitary Fermi Gas,” were published in Physical Review Letters and featured by R&D Magazine online.
Steve Fountain, assistant clinical professor, history, Vancouver, authored “Ranchers’ Friend and Farmers’ Foe: Beaver Reintroduction and Better Nature in California” inEnvironmental History.
Bryan Fry, instructor, English, received the Faculty Library Excellence Award for his work with and support of WSU libraries. In addition, Fry’s essay “If You Find This” was accepted for publication in Front Porch Journal.
Dene Grigar, associate professor, English, Vancouver, received the Students’ Award for Teaching Excellence at WSU Vancouver, in recognition of her “success in building theCreative Media and Digital Culture program from 44 students to 210, increasing the number of courses taught per semester from 5 to 17, and raising more than $250,000 for the program and student fellowships.”
Grigar curated a month-long exhibit, Moving Words: An Exploration of Kinetic Poetry & Prose, 1984-2014, at the National University of Ireland Maynooth. She also lectured about curating and preserving archives to students in An Foras Feasa—The Institute for Research in Irish Historical & Cultural Traditions.
Lisa Guerrero, associate professor, critical culture, gender, and race studies, presented her paper, “‘I am not myself today’: Mimesis and the Crisis of Black Visibility in Percival Everett’s Erasure and I Am Not Sidney Poitier,” at the College Language Association Convention.
Michael Hanly, professor, English, began his two-year term as president of the Medieval Association of the Pacific during the society’s joint meeting with the Medieval Academy of America at UCLA.
Jon Hegglund, associate professor, English, delivered the keynote presentation, “Urban Geologies in the Anthropocene: From Settlement to Sediment,” at the Spatial Histories, Constructs, and Practices: Trajectories and Strategies of the North American City conference in Bochum, Germany.
Linda Heidenreich, associate professor, critical culture, gender, and race studies, received a Leadership and Engagement Awards of Distinction (LEAD) President’s Award for mentoring student leaders at WSU.
Jade d’Alpoim Guedes, assistant professor, anthropology, was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship in China Studies from the American Council of Learned Societies/Henry Luce Foundation.
Carol Ivory, CAS associate dean and professor, fine arts, was bid a fond farewell by colleagues and friends after 22 years of service to WSU. As a professor emerita, her continuing work in the creation, study, exhibition, and preservation of Pacific art includes guest-curating a major exhibition of Marquesan art for the Musée du quai Branly in Paris, opening in April 2016.
Sisouvanh Keopanapay, academic advisor, criminal justice and criminology, received the Best Advisor Award in the Faculty and Staff Appreciation Day ceremony hosted by the Associated Students of WSU Senate.
Buddy Levy, clinical associate professor, English, and co-author Mike Leach published a new book GERONIMO: Leadership Strategies of an American Warrior through Simon & Schuster/Gallery Books.
Matt McCluskey, chair and professor, physics and astronomy, delivered the faculty address at WSU Libraries’ inaugural Crimson Reads, a celebration of faculty-authored books.
Lindsey Neill, doctoral candidate, chemistry, was awarded a 2014 Chateaubriand Fellowship by the Office for Science and Technology of the Embassy of France in the United States. The fellowship includes a nine-month internship at the French Atomic Energy Agency where she will work on aspects of glass corrosion for application to nuclear waste management.
Alyssa Norris, doctoral candidate, psychology, received the 2014-2015 Anthony Marchionne Foundation for the Scientific Study of Human Relations and Psychological Processes Endowed Graduate Fellowship for Research. Norris’s research examines what constitutes sexual orientation and how minority sexual orientation is associated with mental health outcomes.
Io Palmer, associate professor, fine arts, is wrapping up a “busy and artfully productive” sabbatical year filled with travel and creative breakthroughs. In Dakar, Senegal, she participated in Dak’Art: The 11th International Contemporary Art Biennial, exhibiting work alongside well-established and emerging visual artists. Palmer also completed a month-long residency at the Kathmandu Contemporary Art Center and is preparing for exhibitions of her work across the United States and in Canada: Contemporary Art, Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.; Schomburg Center, New York City; Merwin Gallery, Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington; York College, The City University of New York, Queens; and Deluge Contemporary Art, Victoria, BC. Photo credit: Adam Davis.
Sue Peabody, professor, history, authored the essay, “La Race, l’esclavage et `la francité,’: L’affaire Furcy,” in Français? La nation en débat entre colonies et métropole, XVIe-XIXe siècle. She also presented her paper, “Charles Auguste Bissette and the Police des Noirs in the Nineteenth Century” at the meeting of the Association of Caribbean Historians, Fort-de-France, Martinique.
Karen Phoenix, instructor, history, authored “A Social Gospel for India” in the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era special edition on Women’s and Gender History in Global Context.
Jason Potwora, doctoral candidate, psychology, received the 2014-2015 Anthony Marchionne Foundation for the Scientific Study of Human Relations and Psychological Processes Endowed Graduate Fellowship for Teaching. Potwora’s teaching methods meld traditional techniques and online classroom technology to engage students in new ways.
Thomas Preston, professor and director, politics, philosophy, and public affairs, organized and chaired the LIVE (Leadership Initiative Vision Enterprise) Network Workshop at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association in San Francisco, Calif. Preston coauthored the paper “Advisor’s Role, Decision Making, and Psychology: A First Cut of Presidential Advisor Psychological Profiles from George W. Bush to Barack Obama,” presented at the 55th Annual International Studies Association Conference in Toronto, Canada.
Travis N. Ridout, associate professor, politics, philosophy, and public affairs, coauthored the articles “Advances in the Study of Political Advertising” in the Journal of Political Marketing and “Party System Change and Negative Campaigning in New Zealand” in Party Politics. Ridout also authored the article “The Market Research, Testing and Targeting behind American Political Advertising” in Political Marketing in the United States.
Michael F. Salamone, assistant professor, politics, philosophy, and public affairs, authored the article “Judicial Consensus and Public Opinion: Conditional Response to Supreme Court Majority Size” in Political Research Quarterly.
![Karen Weathermon](https://cas.wsu.edu/connect/wp-content/uploads/sites/38/2016/06/karen-weathermon_88x106.jpg)
![Leslie Jo Sena](https://cas.wsu.edu/connect/wp-content/uploads/sites/38/2016/06/leslie-jo-sena_88x106.jpg)
Leslie Jo Sena, instructor, and Karen Weathermon, alumna, English, and co-director of the WSU Common Reading program, presented a research poster about WSU Common Reading programming at the 33rd Annual Conference on First-Year Experience and Students in Transition in San Diego, Calif. Sena also was part of a roundtable exploring criticisms of Common Reading programs nationally.
Samantha Swindell, clinical associate professor, psychology, received the Exceptional Professor Award in the Faculty and Staff Appreciation Day ceremony hosted by the Associated Students of WSU Senate.
Pamela Thoma, associate professor, critical culture, gender, and race studies, presented several papers this spring, including “The Cautionary Tale and the Makeover Narrative on ‘Quality TV’: Girls, Anti-Work, and Managing the Threat of the Female College Grad” at Console-ing Passions: International Conference on Television, Video, Audio, New Media, and Feminism; and “Academia’s Next Top Model: Asian American Studies in the Neoliberal University” at the Association for Asian American Studies annual conference.
Xiuyu Wang, associate professor, history, delivered an invited presentation about China’s tea commerce with Tibet from the late 19th to the mid-20th centuries at the Third Himalayan Studies Conference at Yale University. His paper drew upon archival and ethnographic sources collected during his sabbatical in Taiwan last year and discusses political and social changes on the Sino-Tibetan frontier from ecological and economic perspectives.
William “Bill” Webb, professor and former chair,mathematics, gathered with colleagues and friends to celebrate his 45 years of service to WSU and to embark on his happy retirement.
Guy Worthey, associate professor, physics and astronomy, is the lead author on two recently published papers: “Individual alpha elements, C, N, and Ba in early-type galaxies” in Astrophysical Journal and “The LickX spectra” inAstronomy and Astrophysics.