Greg Yasinitsky, Regents professor and director, music, was nominated by two independent musicians for the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his Jazz Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. Yasinitsky’s recent commissions include Partial Eclipse for the 25th anniversary of the Las Vegas Academy and his arrangement of Creepin’ for an upcoming recording by the Colorado Repertory Jazz Orchestra featuring the music of Stevie Wonder.
Vilma Navarro-Daniels, associate professor, foreign languages and cultures, was elected vice president of the International Association of Women’s Studies in Hispanic Literature and Culture (Asociación Internacional de Literatura y Cultura Femenina Hispánica), whose members/voters are from across Latin America, the Caribbean, Canada, Europe, and the United States. Navarro-Daniels also recently presented “Suicide as Cultural Resistance: Sebastián Sepúlveda’s film, ‘The Quispe Girls'” at the 71st Annual Convention of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association.
Richard King, professor, critical culture, gender, and race studies, was selected to be a Fulbright Specialist for a three-year term.
Jennifer Binczewski, doctoral candidate, history, was awarded the Meyer Prize by the Sixteenth Century Society & Conference for research she delivered from her dissertation, Solitary Sparrows: Widowhood and the Catholic Community in Post-Reformation England, 1580-1630.
Jeff Pearson, instructor, English, won the 2017 New Alchemy Prize from Permafrost, the University of Alaska-Fairbanks literary journal, for his series, “User Reviews of Medications.”
Stephen Powers, postdoctoral research associate, environment, received the Gene E. Likens Award from the Ecological Society of America for outstanding publication by a junior scientist in the biogeosciences in recognition of his paper “Long-term accumulation and transport of anthropogenic phosphorus in three river basins” in Nature Geoscience.
Travis Ridout, professor, politics, philosophy, and public affairs, won the Jack L. Walker, Jr. Outstanding Article Award in the Organized Section on Political Organizations and Parties for his coauthored article “Loose Cannons or Loyal Foot Soldiers: Toward a More Complex Theory of Interest Group Advertising Strategies” in American Journal of Political Science .
Peter Christenson, assistant professor, fine arts, WSU Tri-Cities, received the Governor’s Arts & Heritage Young Arts Leader Award from the Washington State Arts Commission (ArtsWA).
Don Dillman, Regents professor, sociology, presented the president’s invited address, “The Challenge of Creating Data Collection Methods That Are Neither Too Far Ahead Nor Behind Our Survey Respondents,” at the Statistical Society of Canada’s annual conference in Winnipeg. He also presented the keynote address, “The Worldwide Challenge of Pushing Respondents to the Web in Mixed-Mode Surveys,” at the 28th International Workshop on Household Survey Nonresponse in Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Dillman and five recent sociology doctoral graduates, Michelle Edwards Neilson ’13, Morgan M. Millar ’12, Benjamin Messer ’11, Leah Melani Christian ’07, and Jolene D. Smyth ’07, received the 2017 American Association for Public Opinion Research Award for development of a new data collection methodology.
Mitchell Friend, doctoral candidate, chemistry, won first place in the open competition category of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Innovations in Nuclear Technology R&D Awards for his paper “Hafnium(IV) complexation with oxalate at variable temperatures,” originally published in the journal Radiochimica Acta.