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The Changing English Major

Amid enrollment declines, speakers at Modern Language Association discuss shifts in the major, such as a de-emphasis of traditional survey and the addition of more writing-related courses.

Leeann Hunter
Hunter

In a panel on writing within the English major at the MLA convention on Saturday, Leeann Hunter, a clinical assistant professor and assistant director of undergraduate studies in the English department at WSU, presented on the Passport Program, a new set of related courses she developed to get students to think beyond the classroom and university. She began her presentation by observing that “one of the greatest barriers to recruiting for the English major has been the perceived lack of professional opportunities.”

The one-credit, pass-fail seminar designed by Hunter — of which there are a couple iterations — is structured as a series of workshops. One key assignment is a “finding your why” activity in which students identify six “foundational memories,” choose three to use (to) develop into pieces of creative writing and, with the help of a partner and Hunter, the professor, identify patterns, such as common beliefs or values, across the various pieces. A version of the course tailored for seniors focuses on things like résumés, cover letters, social media profiles and digital portfolios, and includes performance-art activities aimed at helping students develop confidence and presence. Hunter brings other faculty from the English department to help with various class sessions. She said 20 faculty members participated in the course last fall. » More …

WSUV teacher creates cyberspace memorial for gun violence victims

Approximately 190 miles separate the campuses of Washington State University Vancouver and Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore. But that distance seemed to disappear when 10 people were gunned down in a mass shooting at Umpqua Community College on Oct. 1, 2015.

John Barber
Barber

“It’s not safe to be anywhere,” John Barber realized. “What if a similar thing happened here?”

Barber, a digital-media artist who teaches in the Creative Media and Digital Culture Department at WSUV, wanted to find some meaningful way to memorialize the victims of that tragedy — and all the victims of intentional, homicidal gun violence in America. » More …

How an AG Jeff Sessions could change the conversation on criminal justice

Cornell Clayton
Clayton

As Sen. Jeff Sessions’s confirmation hearings for Attorney General draw closer, critics worry that his nomination could slow the momentum of police reform measures, disrupt a growing bipartisan effort to roll back the war on drugs, and further polarize a divided America.

Sessions’s nomination has drawn some comparisons to the similarly controversial appointment of Edwin Meese as attorney general under Ronald Reagan. But Sessions may take a less overt approach to reform than Mr. Meese, who aggressively pushed a clear policy agenda during his time as attorney general, says Cornell William Clayton, director of the Thomas S. Foley Institute of Public Policy and Public Service at Washington State University.

“My guess is what you’ll see is him simply use the softer power of the executive branch, prosecutorial discretion, to send important signals to local law enforcement agencies and state and local governments,” Dr. Clayton tells the Monitor in a phone interview. “That’s where you’re most likely to see the shift in federal law enforcement policy. There’s not going to be a sweeping reform bill. What you’ll see is an under the radar shift in enforcement policy and funding priorities.”

“That’s very real and very important, but it’s not high-profile like a crime reform bill would be,” he adds. “So it doesn’t provide the same lever for counter-mobilization.”

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Christian Science Monitor

Opinion: Stop dismissing Standing Rock Sioux as dupes

Lawrence Hatter
Hatter

Sinister forces are at work in North Dakota. At least that was the claim of the state’s former lieutenant governor, whose paranoid fears were right out of the eighteenth century, writes Lawrence Hatter, assistant professor of early American history at Washington State University.

Taking a leaf from a political playbook as old as the American Republic, then-Lt. Gov. Drew Wrigley dismissed the Standing Rock Sioux opposition to the planned oil pipeline in that state as the work of ominous powers. “The Native Americans are being used, absolutely being used,” Wrigley told reporters Dec. 8, “by these outside agitators.”

His statement could just have easily have been made in 1786 as 2016.

Dismissing the Standing Rock Sioux as dupes is a strategy intended to discredit the grounds of their opposition, while also undermining their efforts to form a broader coalition for political mobilization against the North Dakota pipeline.

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Grand Forks Herald

North Africa women researcher share among world highest

Julie Kmec
Kmec

University World News asked Julie Kmec, a professor of sociology at Washington State University in the United States, what factors were behind high female participation in science and research in predominantly Muslim countries.

“Studies indicate that this pattern emerges from a complex relationship between a country’s macro-cultural value systems regarding individualism and gender, the gender labelling of curricular and work fields, the organisational configuration of a country’s education system, and a country’s economic opportunity structures,” she explained.

“Overall, these countries may promote collectivism over individualism, gender label STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] fields as ‘masculine’ less-so than other countries, and their developing economies may shape choice.”

Kmec is also one of the principal investigators for the project on Women in Engineering in Predominantly Muslim Countries, which aims to identify mechanisms that motivate women to pursue engineering in Arab countries, to be used in America’s higher education and research system.

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University World News