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COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

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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Ken FaunceKen Faunce, professor, history, was selected to receive the Martin Luther King Jr. Distinguished Service Award during WSU’s 2014 MLK Community Celebration. The award recognizes demonstrated altruism, community service, efforts to advance diversity, and educational commitment to inclusion.

Faunce annually teaches up to 10 sections of History 105, which focuses on the roots of contemporary issues. He also has chaired the City of Moscow Human Rights Commission for many years and leads the annual Moscow CommUNITY Walk.

“These two aspects of Ken’s life—teaching and human rights activism—are intertwined,” said Karen Weathermon, who nominated him for the award. “He brings his passion about human rights to the themes he helped develop for History 105—humans and the environment, our shrinking world, inequality, and diverse ways of thinking. Likewise, he brings his skills as a teacher to his activism.”

Bawa AvantikaAvantika Bawa, assistant professor, fine arts, WSU Vancouver, is the 2014 recipient of the Oregon Arts Commission’s honorary Joan Shipley Award. Bawa leads a group of 13 Oregon artists in visual arts and design selected from a pool of more than 190 applicants from 35 Oregon cities for the OAC’s 2014 Individual Artist Fellowships.

Nancy BellNancy Bell, associate professor, English, has been invited to join the editorial board of two journals, Applied Linguistics and the new E-JournALL (Euro-American Journal of Applied Linguistics and Languages).

Doerte BlumeDoerte Blume, professor, physics, has been appointed to serve a second three-year term on the editorial board ofPhysical Review A.

Patrick CarterPat Carter, associate professor, biological sciences, received the faculty Outstanding Advising Award from the local chapter of the National Academic Advising Association and was named the NACADA Region 8 Faculty Academic Advisor Certificate of Merit winner for 2014. He directs undergraduate programs for SBS and has been the pre-veterinary advisor since 2003.

Andy CavagnettoAndy Cavagnetto, associate professor, biological sciences/science education, has been appointed to the State Professional Educator Standards Board to Revise the State Science Teaching Competencies.

Nicholas CerrutiThe National Society of Physics Students–WSU Chapter, led by faculty advisor Nicholas Cerruti, was named a regional Outstanding Chapter for 2013. They were recognized for excellence in outreach, K-12 educational programs, and increasing public awareness about physics and physics research. Chapter activities last year included the annual Pumpkin Drop, educational outreach at the National Lentil Festival, hosting the regional zone meeting, and providing speakers and demonstrations on the Pullman campus.

Will HamlinMontaigne’s English Journey, the latest book by William M. Hamlin, professor and graduate director, English, was released by Oxford University Press in November in the United Kingdom and this month in the United States. Research for the book was supported by a 2008-09 J.S. Guggenheim Foundation grant.

Katherine HegewischKatherine Hegewisch, Ph.D. 2010, and Steven Tomsovic, professor, physics, published a paper based on Hegewisch’s thesis in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. The paper, “Constructing acoustic timefronts using random matrix theory,” introduced an efficient method of studying long-range acoustic propagation in the ocean.

Thabiti LewisAn essay by Thabiti Lewis, associate professor, English, WSU Vancouver, titled “‘Home to Harlem’ Again: Claude McKay and the Masculine Imaginary of Black Community,” was published in Escape from New York: The New Negro Renaissance beyond Harlem (Univ. of Minn. Press). Lewis is a Visiting Scholar in the Center for the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis this spring.

Kirk McAuleyKirk McAuley, assistant professor, English, published his first book, Print Technology in Scotland and America, 1740-1800, through Bucknell University Press.

Laurie MercierLaurie Mercier, professor, history, won the 2014 Donald J. Sterling Senior Fellowship in Pacific Northwest History at the Oregon Historical Society. The fellowship includes a $2,500 stipend to cover four weeks of research at OHS.

Aaron MoeZoopoetics: Animals and the Making of Poetry, a book by Aaron Moe, assistant professor, English, was published by Lexington books. Moe’s article “Toward Zoopoetics: Rethinking Whitman’s ‘original energy’” appeared in the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review; his “An Ontological Crisis: Rethinking E. E. Cummings’ Fairy Tales” was published inSpring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society.

Narendra Paruol ParmarPost-doctoral student Narendra Parmar, Ph.D. 2012,physics, published a paper in the Journal of Electronic Materials. Co-authored with professors Matthew McCluskeyand Kelvin Lynn, “Vibrational Spectroscopy of Na-H Complexes in ZnO” explores select properties in the consideration of zinc oxide as a light-emitting compound.

Tahira ProbstTahira Probst, professor, psychology, WSU Vancouver, has been granted “fellow” status in the Society for Industrial/Organizational Psychology (APA Div. 14).

Jesse SpohnholzJesse Spohnholz, professor, history, presented an invited lecture titled “Seeing Like a Church: Archival Power and the Problem of Confessionalism in Reformation History” at the University of Leiden, Netherlands.

Jacki TylerJacki Tyler, doctoral candidate, history, won the 2014 Donald J. Sterling Graduate Fellowship in Pacific Northwest History at the Oregon Historical Society. The fellowship includes a $2,000 stipend to cover four weeks of research at OHS.

Bryan VilaBryan Vila, professor, criminal justice and criminology,WSU Spokane, delivered an invited talk at a White House innovation conference in Washington, D.C., and presented a police safety app that he helped to develop. His work was among 10 safety innovations from the Whitehouse “DataJam” contest selected for the White House Safety Datapalooza, part of the White House DATA.gov open-data initiative.

Tom WhitacreTom Whitacre, associate director, general studies, received the Master Advisor Commendation from the WSU chapter of the National Academic Advising Association. The award honors lifetime achievement in student advising.

Roger WhitsonRoger Whitson, assistant professor, English, authored an invited article about chronic disease and graduate student labor, “How to Survive a Graduate Career,” in the journalWorkplace. Whitson’s co-written multimodal article about teaching digital publishing in 19th-century British lit courses, titled “Digital Literary Pedagogy: An Experiment in Process-Oriented Publishing,” appears in The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy.

Ashley WrightAshley Wright, assistant professor, history, published a new book, Opium and Empire in Southeast Asia: Regulating Consumption in British Burma; it is part of Palgrave Macmillan’s Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series.