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CAS in the Media Arts and Sciences Media Headlines

Todd Butler named interim dean of College of Arts and Sciences

Todd Butler.
Butler

Todd Butler has been named interim dean of Washington State University’s College of Arts and Sciences following an open, internal search.

Butler will begin as interim dean Jan. 1, 2021. He has served as a faculty member in WSU’s Department of English since 2003, including two terms as department chair (2012-2018), and currently serves as associate dean for faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences.

As associate dean for faculty, Butler has supervised personnel matters for the college, which includes more than 550 faculty across 36 different units in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. He has been responsible for hiring, tenure and promotion, annual and pre-tenure review, professional leaves, leadership and professional development, and joint participation in strategic planning, budget development, and enrollment management efforts. He also has served as the college’s representative on WSU’s Modernization Steering Committee and Fiscal Health Advisory Committee.

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WSU Insider

 

Oct. 27: Daily Show producer Ted Tremper to discuss socio-political comedy

Ted Tremper.
Tremper

Washington State University alumnus and award-winning writer, director, producer, and educator Ted Tremper will discuss socio-political comedy when he returns virtually to WSU as the guest presenter for the Common Reading Program at 5 p.m. Oct. 27.

“Ted is uniquely positioned to share his experiences with Mr. Noah as well as his own pathway from our university to the Daily Show and beyond,” said Karen Weathermon, director of the Common Reading Program, host and sponsor of the presentation that will be live-streamed using Zoom. “We welcome students and the community to join us for this discussion.”

Tremper graduated in 2004 magna cum laude with a BA in English with minors in film studies and professional writing. He went on to earn an MFA in writing from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. He has visited WSU to speak and teach a short course.

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WSU Insider

WSU Vancouver’s Electronic Literature Lab hosts two international scholars

Dene Grigar.
Grigar

Two international scholars will collaborate with Electronic Literature Lab (ELL) director Dene Grigar, professor of digital media/tech & culture at WSU Vancouver, on such projects as live-streamed performances of born-digital narratives originally produced on floppy disks and CD-ROMs from 1988 – 2000, and an open-source multimedia book documenting early works of computer-based literature.

Founded by Grigar in 2012 at WSU Vancouver, ELL is among only a handful of media archaeology labs in the United States and is used for advanced inquiry into the curation, documentation, preservation and production of born-digital literary works and other media.

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Mirage News

WSU Insider

 

Nine CAS undergraduate researchers earn WSU fellowships

The Office of Undergraduate Research at Washington State University has named 32 students, including nine in the College of Arts and Sciences, as recipients of nearly $50,000 in awards in support of their mentored research, scholarship and creative activities for the 2020-21 academic year.

Students received 10 Auvil Scholars Fellowship awards, three Scott and Linda Carson Undergraduate Research awards, four WSU LSAMP Research awards, and 15 general undergraduate research awards. All are students at WSU Pullman with around 20 majors across STEM and non-STEM fields. Awardees include five sophomores, 13 juniors, and 14 seniors; 18 females and 14 males; and, nine first-generation students. Thirteen recipients are members of the WSU Honors College.

The fellowship award-winning students majoring in CAS disciplines are:

  • Annie Lu, a senior mathematics major mentored by Nikolaos Voulgarakis
  • Lucas Blevins, a sophomore music composition major mentored by Gregory Yasinitsky
  • Christopher Huong, a senior psychology and sports science major mentored by Sarah Ullrich-French
  • Tabitha McCoard, a senior fine arts major mentored by Hallie Meredith
  • Georgie Rosales, a senior English and psychology major in the Honors College mentored by Rebecca Craft
  • Olivia Willis, a junior neuroscience and psychology major in the Honors College mentored by Cheryl Reed
  • Jesús Mendoza, a senior zoology major mentored by Douglas Call
  • Marcelo Ruiz, a senior mathematics and mechanical engineering major mentored by Jacob Leachman
  • Krista Brutman, a senior mathematics major in the Honors College mentored by Bertrand Tanner

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WSU Insider

In ‘Labyrinth of Ice,’ the grim fate of the Greely Polar Expedition gets a compassionate telling

Buddy Levy.
Levy

In “Labyrinth of Ice,” a recent account of Greely’s northward trek, Washington State University associate professor of English Buddy Levy, noted for bringing a fine novelist’s sense of storytelling to his narrative histories, tells this difficult but fascinating story with a compassion and vividness often lacking in works of this nature. In the doing, he adds another essential volume to what has become an onslaught of recent literature concerning the far north.

It’s here, a little more than a hundred pages into this book, that Levy’s remarkable skills as a writer, already evident earlier in the book, fully bloom. In page after agonizing page, he details the daily lives of the men as darkness and hunger overtook them. Up until digging in for the winter, they had beaten the odds of 19th century polar exploration; they were all still alive. This would not last.

Levy demonstrates deep compassion for all the men throughout, even those who did bad things under horrible circumstances. He could have been perhaps more critical of some, but he makes up for it with his genuine empathy.

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Anchorage Daily News