Skip to main content Skip to navigation
COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

Honors and achievements

Members of the College of Arts and Sciences community do excellent work that is recognized on and off campus and around the world.

Share the good news about your accomplishments: online form

Dennis DehartDennis DeHart, assistant professor, Fine Arts, traveled to China to accept the Emerging Artist award at the 13th Pingyao International Photography Festival in the ancient walled city of Pingyao, Shanxi Province.

The award was juried by an international panel of
educators, artists, and curators from Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Shangahi, New York University, Parsons School of Design, and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, among others.

dehart_dennis3_croppedtwice_878x229

Doerte BlumeDoerte Blume, professor, Physics and Astronomy, co-organized a workshop on “Finite temperature and low-energy effects in cold atomic and molecular few- and many-body systems” at the Institute for Theoretical  Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics (ITAMP) at Harvard University.

Peter BoagPeter Boag, professor, History received the Ray Allen Billington Award (2013), Best Book on American Frontier History, granted biennially by the Organization of American Historians, for his book Re-Dressing America’s Frontier Past(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). Boag also recently delivered the Susan B. Cone Family Distinguished Lecture at the University of Wyoming.

Sukanta Bose
Bose

Sukanta Bose, professor, Physics and Astronomy, gave three invited talks this year: “Status of LIGO-India,” at the conference on “Gravitational Waves: New Frontier” in Seoul, Korea; “Compact Binary Coalescence: Computational Challenges,” at a meeting titled “Astronomy with the Global Gravitational-Wave Detector Network” in Cardiff, UK; and “Compact binary coalescences as progenitors of short hard GRBs: What can gravitational wave searches tell us?” at the International Meeting on Transients and Timing in Pune, India.

Nicholas CerrutiNicholas Cerruti, senior instructor, Physics and Astronomy, chaired this year’s Society of Physics Students (SPS) zone meeting with more than 40 participating students from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. SPS promotes undergraduate physics education.

Susan DexheimerSue Dexheimer, associate professor, and former graduate student co-workers Fran Morrissey (MS ’07), Jason Mance (PhD ’13), and Aaron Van Pelt (MS ’99), Physics and Astronomy, published an invited paper, “Femtosecond Dynamics of Exciton Localization: Self-Trapping from the Small to the Large Polaron Limit,” in the Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter special issue on “Ultrafast and Nonlinear Optics in Carbon Nanomaterials.” Their work was highlighted in an Institute of Physics LabTalk news article called “Ultrafast Dynamics of Polaron Formation.” The paper was also chosen for inclusion in IOP: a special collection of journal articles selected by the editors.

Ken FaunceKen Faunce, instructor, History, received the Eric W. Bell Learning Communities Excellence Award from University College this year in recognition of excellence in forming a first-year living-learning community that effectively bridged all partners, courses, and student classroom and living spaces.

Birgitta IngemansonBirgitta Ingemanson, professor emerita and former Marianna Merritt and Donald S. Matteson Distinguished Professor, Foreign Languages and Cultures, is continuing her vigorous research on Eleanor L. Pray, an American woman who lived in the Russian Far East at the turn of the 20th century. Letters from Vladivostok, 1894-1930, a collection of Pray’s letters edited and annotated by Ingemanson is to be published this fall by the University of Washington Press.

Ingemanson is currently a guest lecturer at the Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok, Russia, teaching a short course titled “Problems and Joys of Intercultural Communication: Examples from Film.” While there she will serve as a plenary speaker at a conference of the International Association for Intercultural Communication Studies and deliver her paper “The Communicative Approach of ‘Both-And’: American Patriotism Meets the Russian Soul.”

Steven KaleSteven Kale, professor, History, published the chapter “Women’s intellectual agency in the history of 18th- and 19th-century French salons” in the book Political Ideas of Enlightenment Women Virtue and Citizenship, edited by Lisa Curtis-Wendlandt and Karen Green. Download the pdf

Mark KuzykMark Kuzyk, Regents Professor, Physics and Astronomy,is a newly elected Fellow of the American Physical Society, cited for “outstanding contributions to the development of an understanding of the origins of the nonlinear optical response and applying this understanding to the development of novel nonlinear optical materials.”

Peter LarsonPeter Larson, professor, and Allen Andersen, graduate student, Environment, presented their research at the annual Goldschmidt Conference, sponsored by the Geochemical Society, in Florence, Italy. Larson delivered an invited keynote address, “Alteration and fluid flow in large continental hydrothermal systems,” focused on his ongoing NSF-funded research in Yellowstone National Park.

Jeannette MageoJeannette Mageo, professor, Anthropology, authored one paper and co-authored another in the book Attachment Reconsidered: Cultural Perspectives on a Western Theory(Naomi Quinn and Jeannette Mageo, eds. New York: Palgrave-MacMillian), part of in the Society for Psychological Anthropology’s series. The respective titles are “Toward a Cultural Psychodynamics of Attachment: Samoa and US Comparisons” and “Attachment and Culture: An Introduction.” Mageo also authored a major article appearing in Ethos this fall: “Dreaming and Its Discontents: US Cultural Models in the Theater of Dreams.”

Philip MarstonPhil Marston, professor, Physics and Astronomy, joined the ranks of Optical Society of America senior members, a designation for “well-established individuals” that “recognizes their experience and professional accomplishments or service within their field that sets them apart from their peers.”

Jesse SpohnholzJesse Spohnholz, associate professor, History, has been awarded three research fellowships, at the department, college, and university level, from The Free University, Amsterdam, where he will serve as Scholar in Residence for 2013-14. Spohnholz also recently published “Calvinism and Religious Exile during the Revolt of the Netherlands (1568-1609),” which is associated with his research project, Rhineland Refugees and the Culture of Toleration in the Dutch Republic.

Mark SwansonMark Swanson, associate professor, Environment, was honored with the R.M. Wade Award for Excellence in Teaching, one of WSU’s premier awards for faculty instruction, honoring teaching achievement in agriculture and related sciences or disciplines. The award was presented for his work in the 2011-12 academic year.

Pamela ThomaPamela Thoma, associate professor, Critical Culture, Gender, and Race Studies, recently published the scholarly monograph “Asian American Women’s Popular Literature: Feminizing Genres and Neoliberal Belonging” through the American Literatures Initiative.

Thoma also recently published the article “Romancing the Self and Negotiating Consumer Citizenship in Asian American Women’s Labor Lit” in the Oxford University journal Contemporary Women’s Writing. And she delivered an invited lecture at Middlebury College: “The Not-So-New Normal or Finding a Job in HBO’s GIRLS: Sexuality, Self-Work, and a Recession-era Update for the Recent College Grad in Postfeminist Popular Culture.” Thoma also was tapped to serve as chair and respondent for a panel titled “Immigrant Matters” at the American Studies Association’s annual meeting.

Joel TishkenJoel Tishken, professor, History, published a new bookIsaiah Shembe’s Prophetic Uhlanga: The Worldview of the Nazareth Baptist Church in Colonial South Africa (New York: Peter Lang, 2013), which examines the worldview generated and sustained by the Zulu Zionist prophet Isaiah Shembe and his congregation, the Nazareth Baptist Church, during South Africa’s colonial era.

Marine TolmachevaMarina Tolmacheva, professor, and Mary Jane Maxwell, alumnus, History, published articles about pre-modern travel in the most recent issue of World History Connected(vol. 10, No. 2), an affiliate of the World History Association. Maxwell (MA ’99, PhD ’04) wrote the Introduction, “Using the Forum on Travelers and Traveler’s Accounts” and guest-edited the issue. She also wrote “From Imposter to Imperialist: Ludovico de Varthema’s Journey from Italy to India, 1502-1508.” Tolmacheva wrote “Medieval Muslim Women’s Travel: Defying Distance and Danger.”

Kimberly VincentKimberly Vincent, clinical associate professor, Mathematics, received the 2013 Barb Chamberlain Award for being an outstanding promoter of mathematics in the state of Washington. The award was presented by the Washington State Mathematics Council.