In spite of the weather…
Oregon (and indeed much of the West Coast) has been repeatedly pelted by hail, snow, sleet, and atmospheric rivers of rain for the last several weeks. But we are persevering! Regardless of the weather, it’s still spring term and Chapman Hall is full of news about new beginnings. Here are a few things worth mentioning:
- Core faculty member Corinne Bayerl, who developed an innovative new course on cryptography this past year, just got word that she’s received a prestigious American Council of Learned Scholars Fellowship.
- Core faculty member Kate Mondloch just received a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend to work on her third book, “Art of Attention: Body-Mind Awareness and Contemporary Art.”
- This week, we welcomed one of four new core faculty members to the CHC. Professor Yalda Asmatey is teaching her first courses in the CHC this week: one on Islam and Muslims in the U.S. and our Thesis Orientation class. Professor Asmatey brings much-needed expertise in the Middle East to our curriculum.
- Joining the CHC in the fall will be Ulrick Casimir, who has an MFA in creative writing and a PhD in English and will teach courses on creative writing, literature, and film; Ellen Fitzpatrick, a global agricultural economist will teach courses on environment, disease and poverty, assessing social and environmental programs, and sustainable cities; and cultural anthropologist Tobin Hansen will teach courses on U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, Race and Language, and Gender Studies.
- We have two additional searches for core faculty members in the sciences underway this term and anticipate being able to share some more good news by the end of spring term.
In the meantime, our seniors are finishing up their theses and thinking about post-graduation plans. Students will be defending theses in which they translate short stories from French to Spanish, train AI to generate video based on text, use historical diaries to study the experiences of women on the Oregon Trail, evaluate methods for pricing stock options, contribute to the design of a new particle accelerator, assess the intelligibility of ASL in film, and explore how GenZ students get their news.
I also have a number of students that I advise and they have been stopping by my office to share good news: a business major who is heading off to the Future Leaders Program at Amica Insurance in Rhode Island after graduation; a political science major who will start at Georgetown Law in the fall; an art history major who’s deciding which of eight graduate program offers she’ll accept; and an environmental studies major who will kick off her career as a Wilderness Corps Intern for Siskiyou Mountain Club.
Sheltered from the unseasonable weather in Chapman Hall, we are excited about the new faculty joining us, bringing innovative programming for current and incoming CHC students. And we are so proud of those students who are taking the next steps into their future this June. I am confident that we’ll be hearing more about them soon!
All the best,
Carol Stabile
Acting Dean