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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Kristin Arola, associate professor, English, presented “Assemble With Care” at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Houston, Texas.



Troy Bennefield, director, Cougar Marching Band; Martin King, clinical assistant professor; and Danh Pham, assistant professor and director of bands, music, are performing this month with the Saigon Wind Ensemble at the Ho Chi Minh Conservatory of Music in Vietnam. Bennefield also recently traveled to the Netherlands to conduct research into wind band music composed by victims of the Holocaust.
Christopher Barry, associate professor, psychology, coauthored “Effects of tootling on classwide and individual disruptive and academically engaged behavior of lower-elementary students” in Behavioral Interventions.
G. Leonard Burns, professor, psychology, coauthored “Sluggish cognitive tempo and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) inattention in the home and school contexts: Parent and teacher invariance and cross-setting validity” in Psychological Assessment.
Kimberly Burwick, clinical assistant professor, English, authored three new poems to appear in Terrain. This summer she is conducting a multi-city reading tour in New York, Massachusetts, and Kentucky.
Donna Campbell, professor, English, presented “Jack London’s Marriage Revolution: Sex and Spiritualism in ‘Planchette’ and ‘The Little Lady of the Big House’” at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association conference in Seattle.
Eric Dexter, doctoral student, environment, was awarded a three-year EPA STAR Graduate Fellowship.
Katie Ericsson, instructor, English, authored “Thinking Outside ‘The Box’: Going Outside the CMS to Create Successful Online Team Projects” in Applied Pedagogies: Strategies for Online Writing Instruction (Utah State University Press).
Ken Faunce, instructor, history, received the Richard G. Law award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from the WSU Office of Undergraduate Education. Faunce also mentored the winning team in WSU’s sixth annual Global Case Competition, which included Madeleine Hunter, junior, history, and Kari Whitney, senior, general studies, humanities.
Lydia Gerber, clinical associate professor, history, and director, Asia Program, received the award for Excellence in Support of Undergraduate Research from the WSU Office of Undergraduate Education.
Rebecca Goodrich, clinical assistant professor, English, presented “Plateau Native Women’s Digital Storytelling Workshop” at the Washington State Indian Education Association conference in Ocean Shores, Wash.
Rachel Halverson, professor, foreign languages and cultures, received a Core Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to teach and conduct research at the Universität Duisburg-Essen in Essen, Germany.
Alexander Hammond, professor emeritus, English, presented “Melville’s Images of Poe in 1840s New York: Troubled Genius in the Marketplace” at the annual conference of the American Literature Association in San Francisco.
John Harrison, associate professor, environment, WSU Vancouver, received the Chancellor’s Award for Research Excellence.
Virginia Hyde, professor emeritus, English, guest-edited the current international issue of D.H. Lawrence Studies 20.2 (December 2015) with essays from the UK, United States, the Czech Republic, Belarus, Japan, Korea, and elsewhere.
Pedro Jiménez-Mejías, postdoctoral researcher, biological sciences, coauthored “Notes on South American carex section schiedeanae and description of the new species Carex Roalsoniana” in Phytotaxa.
Annie Lampman, instructor, English, authored the essay “Confessions of Uncharitable Thoughts Toward Others” in HerStories Project. She also authored six poems: “Night Song,” “Passage,” “A Boy Who Paints the Universe,” and “(untitled)” in Cascadia Review; “November Wind” in Dunes Review; and “Independence Day in the Yard” forthcoming in Grey Sparrow Journal.
Peter Larson, associate professor, environment, coauthored “The grizzly lake complex (Yellowstone Volcano, USA): Mixing between basalt and rhyolite unravelled by microanalysis and X-ray microtomography” in Lithos.
Debbie Lee, professor, English, co-edited The Land Speaks: New Voices at the Intersection of Oral and Environmental History to be published by Oxford University Press. Lee and alumnus Ben Bunting also contributed essays to the collection. This spring, Lee was a visiting scholar at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Penn.
Sean Long, associate professor, environment, coauthored “Pressure-temperature-structural distance relationships within Greater Himalayan rocks in eastern Bhutan: implications for emplacement models” in Journal of Metamorphic Geology.
Christopher Lupke, professor, foreign languages and cultures, authored two chapters: “Cold War Fiction from Taiwan and the Modernists” and “Nativism and Localism in Taiwanese Literature” in The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature (Columbia University Press). Lupke is also preparing for a residency at the Vermont Art Studio to work with poet Xiao Kaiyu of Henan University, China, to complete the translation of a collection of Xiao’s poetry for publication in English.
David Marcus, chair, psychology, coauthored “Psychopathic personality traits predict positive attitudes toward sexually predatory behaviors in college men and women” in Personality and Individual Differences.


Philip Marston, professor, and Daniel Plotnick, postdoctoral candidate, physics and astronomy, coauthored “Measured backscattering of a first order vortex beam by a sphere with helicity selective processing and imaging” in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.


Keri McCarthy, associate professor; Shannon Scott, assistant professor; Martin King, clinical assistant professor; and Danh Pham, assistant professor, music, will perform this summer at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Contemporary Festival in Nanning, China. Scott also will be the featured soloist in the Mozart concerto with the Eastern Festival Orchestra in Greensboro, NC.
Matthew McCluskey, chair, physics and astronomy, coauthored “Tutorial: Defects in semiconductors—combining experiment and theory” in Journal of Applied Physics.
Courtney Meehan, associate professor, anthropology, coauthored “Implications of lengthy development and maternal life history: Allomaternal investment, peer relationships and social networks” in Childhood: Origins, Evolution, and Implications.
Amber Morczek, doctoral candidate, criminal justice and criminology, received the President’s Award for Leadership from WSU Student Involvement and the Center for Civic Engagement. She also was awarded the Arnold & Julia Greenwell Memorial Scholarship for Social Sciences & Humanities from the WSU Graduate School.
Barry Moore, associate professor, environment, coauthored “Is lipid correction necessary in the stable isotope analysis of fish tissues?” in Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry.


Sean Mossman, graduate research assistant, and Mark Kuzyk, professor, physics and astronomy, coauthored “Time-domain simulation of three dimensional quantum wires” in PLoS ONE.
Melanie-Angela Neuilly, assistant professor, criminal justice and criminology, coauthored “Within and Inter-Institutional Differences Between Death Certifiers on Autopsy Conclusions” in Journal of Interpersonal Violence.
Leonard Orr, professor, English, was a featured poet at the Seattle Creative Arts Center where he read from his new book, A Floating Woman (WordTech Communications).
Chung-Min Park, assistant professor, chemistry, coauthored “PH-controlled hydrogen sulfide release for myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury” in Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Kirk Peterson, professor, chemistry, coauthored “Bond energies of ThO+ and ThC+: A guided ion beam and quantum chemical investigation of the reactions of thorium cation with O2 and CO” in Journal of Chemical Physics.
Linda Russo, clinical associate professor, English, authored the poem “The Birds: Their Arcs – The Years” in Entropy. She also authored the review, “but you whiz by: A Consideration of Slow Reading & Textual Curating Inspired by ‘Lake Superior: Lorine Niedecker’s Poem and Journal, Along with Other Sources, Documents, and Readings’ in Tripwire: a Journal of Poetics. This spring, Russo was a visiting writer at the University of Wyoming and at the University of Nevada-Reno.
Raihan Sharif, doctoral candidate, critical culture, gender, and race studies, presented “From ‘Murderous Inclusion’ to ‘Machinic Enslavement’: Networks for Ethnic Studies” at the Symposium on American Ethnic Studies: Toward Transdisciplinary Perspectives at the University of Washington, Seattle.


David Shier, associate professor, and Nathan Nicol, clinical assistant professor, politics, philosophy, and public affairs, received a Samuel H. and Patricia W. Smith Teaching and Learning Award for their project “Bringing Logic into the 21st Century: Retooling Classes for Enhanced Student Success.”
Balasaheb Sonawane, postdoctoral researcher, biological sciences, coauthored “Improved analysis of C4 and C3 photosynthesis via refined in vitro assays of their carbon fixation biochemistry” in Journal of Experimental Botany.
Charles Weller, professor, history, is a 2016 co-recipient of the Critical Literacies Achievement and Success Program (CLASP) faculty award from the WSU Office of Undergraduate Education for his work supporting underrepresented students.
Lori Wiest, associate professor, music, will direct and appear as a soloist with the WSU Concert Choir and Madrigal Singers in performances in South Korea this summer.