Westmont Magazine Faculty Footnotes
Activities and awards for Westmont’s outstanding professors
Scott Anderson (art) illustrated a cover for Seattle Weekly’s fall arts issue and created a spot illustration for a financial column in the Wall Street Journal on financial housekeeping.
After directing “Henry VI, Part 3” at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London in May, John Blondell (theater) has been invited to direct “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” for the National Theatre of Albania in Tirana, the first time the play will be staged in the Albanian language. He has been named co-artistic director of the Bitola International Shakespeare Festival in Bitola, Macedonia.
Lisa de Boer (art) accepted an invitation to speak on “The Sidelong Glance: Tracing ‘Battlefield Emotions’ in Dutch Art of the Golden Age,” at an interdisciplinary symposium on Battlefield Emotion at the Vrij Universiteit in Amsterdam in January.
Steve Butler (music) composed an orchestral fanfare for Westmont’s 75th anniversary. The Westmont Orchestra performed the fanfare at the 75th Anniversary Gala in October.
Dinora Cardoso (Spanish) wrote a book review of Vania Barraza Toledo’s “(In)Subordinadas: Raza, clase y filiación en la narrativa de mujeres latinoamericanas” for Letras Femeninas. She contributed a chapter, “Laura Restrepo’s Delirio: A Refoundational Novel,” to “Global Issues in Contemporary Hispanic Women’s Writing: Shaping Gender, the Environment, and Politics” (Routledge).
Alister Chapman (history) spoke at the Evangelical Theological Society’s annual meeting on “John Stott’s Popularity in North America.”
Mary Collier (French) was the honoree and speaker at a meeting in October of the Los Angeles/Pasadena/Santa Barbara society of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in California. She discussed “Chivalric Orders of France: Pre- and Post-Revolution.”
Stephen Contakes (chemistry), Savannah Kelly (librarian), Tatiana Nazarenko (dean of curriculum and educational effectiveness), Jim Taylor (philosophy) and Randy VanderMey (English) participated in a two-day Performance Task Academy Workshop in San Francisco. VanderMey and Nazarenko designed a template for a possible senior capstone course for English majors.
Chemistry professors Steve Contakes, David Marten, and Michael Everest took six students to the Southern California Undergraduate Research Conference at CSU Channel Islands in November. The students presented five papers, including “Synthesis and Characterization of N-ferrocenyl isonicotinamide and Its Reaction with Co(salen)” and “Synthesis and Photophysical Characterization of Ruthenium-functionalized PAMAM Dendrimers.”
Mary Docter (Spanish) was invited to speak at the XII Congreso Internacional de Poesía y Poética (12th International Congress on Poetry and Poetics) in Puebla, Mexico, at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla in October. Her title was “‘Se hace entre todos’: La poética de la reciprocidad en José Emilio Pacheco.”
Michael Graves (communication studies) contributed “The British Quaker Sermon, 1689-1901” to the “Oxford Handbook of the Modern British Sermon, 1688-1901” (Oxford University Press, 2012).
Cheri Larsen Hoeckley (English) wrote an essay, “The Dynamics of Poetics and Forgiveness in Adelaide Procter’s ‘Homeless,’” for a special issue of the journal Literature Compass on poetry and forgiveness.
Michelle Hughes and Jane Wilson (education) co-presented “Changing the Conversation” at the final convention of the Association of Christian Schools International in Anaheim, Calif. In September, the education department hosted the third annual Educator Connections for primary and secondary teachers in the Santa Barbara area.
Wayne Iba (computer science) presented a talk, “All Technology is Value-Neutral but Not Always Beneficial,” at a meeting of the Southern California chapter of American Scientific Affiliation in October.
Heather Keaney (history) presented a paper, “Rebels and Revolutionaries in Medieval and Modern Egypt,” at the bi-annual Conference on Faith and History at Gordon College in October.
Jonathan Leech (mathematics) co-wrote an article, “Skew Lattices and Binary Operations on Functions,” for the Journal of Applied Logic.
Tremper Longman III (Robert Gundry professor of biblical studies) and Jeff Schloss(T.B. Walker professor in the natural and behavioral sciences) spoke on “Origins: A Biologist and a Biblical Scholar Discuss Genesis and Scientific Accounts,” at Westmont Downtown in November. Longman was elected president of the Institute of Biblical Research for a three-year term. He presented “The Theological Contribution of the Comparative Analysis of ANE Wisdom Texts—Job as a Case Study” at the Evangelical Theological Society’s meeting in Chicago in November.
Chris Milner (kinesiology) received the Imagine a World Award from Alpha Resource Center in Santa Barbara, which honors people who help create an inclusive community.
Tatiana Nazarenko (dean of curriculum and educational effectiveness) received a $1,000 grant from the Council of Independent Colleges’ Engaging Evidence Consortium for the Critical Thinking component of Westmont’s assessment efforts.
William Nelson (religious studies) has published a commentary, “Daniel” (Baker Books).
Allan Nishimura (chemistry) co-authored two articles for the Journal of Undergraduate Chemistry Research with students Hannah Ryan and Shanan Lau: “Laser Induced Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer of 9,10-Dihydrophenanthrene and 9-Fluorenone on Alumina During Temperature Programmed Desorption” and “Laser Induced Fluorescence Decay of 1-Methyl-, 1-Methoxy- and 1- Ethylnaphthlene on Alumina During Temperature Programmed Desorption.”
Edd Noell (economics and business) read a paper, “‘Minding the Gap’ in Economics: The Contribution of Redeeming Economics,” at the 2012 History of Economics Society Conference at Brock University in Ontario, Canada, in June.
Gregory Orfalea (English) will speak at the opening of the exhibit “Patriots and Peacemakers” at UC Irvine, which portrays Arab-Americans in military and public service.
Ray Paloutzian (psychology) co-authored: “Spiritual Well-being Scale: Mental and Physical Health Relationships” for “Oxford Textbook of Spirituality in Healthcare”; “Spiritual Transformation and Engagement in Workplace Culture” for “Psychology of Religion and Workplace Spirituality”; “Interpersonal Forgiveness” for “Encyclopedia of Peace Psychology”; and “Religions, Meaning Making, and Basic Needs” for Religion, Brain, and Behavior. He presented “Creditions: Believing as an Aspect of Meaning System Processes” at the Second Conference on the Structure of Creditions: Memory, Space of Action and Social Binding in Graz, Austria.
Deanna Pini (art) created a commissioned work for Cottage Hospital, a 27-foot-by-7-foot ceramic mosaic tile design depicting Santa Barbara.
Caryn Reeder (religious studies) spoke at a special section of the Society of Biblical Literature’s annual meeting in Chicago, “Violence and Representations of Violence Among Jews and Christians.” She presented “Explaining Defeat: Josephus Among the Greco-Roman Historiographers.” In September she spoke on “Wives and Daughters: Women, Sex, and Violence in Biblical Tradition” at a symposium hosted by North Park Theological Seminary.
Helen Rhee (religious studies) has published a book, “Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich: Wealth, Poverty, and Early Christian Formation” (Baker Academic, 2012). She has written two articles: “The Authority and Function of the Jewish Scripture in the Acts of Peter and the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies” in one of the volumes of Cahiers de Biblia Patristica (University of Strasbourg); and “A Patristic View of Wealth and Possessions” in Ex Auditu: An International Journal of Theological Interpretation of Scripture. She presented “Do We Not Have the Right to Our Food and Drink? A Peek into the Development of Clerical Compensations in Christianized Patronage,” at the Society of Biblical Literature’s annual meeting in Chicago as part of a session on the “Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism.”
Steve Rogers (psychology) published a chapter, “Neuropsychology,” in the newly released Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religion.
Carmel Saad (psychology) co-authored a paper, “Asian American Mental Health: A Call to Action,” for American Psychologist. She will present her research at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s annual convention in New Orleans in January.
Sarah Skripsky (English) organized and co-led a session for writing center directors of small liberal arts colleges (SLAC), “SLAC-ers Unite: Finding Power and Making Knowledge in a Small College Setting,” at the International Writing Centers Association Conference in San Diego in October. Under her leadership, Westmont will host the Southern California Writing Centers Association’s Tutor Conference in spring 2014.
Pearson Education has created a website highlighting the work of Niva Tro (chemistry), “The Tro Approach to Chemistry.” It features new editions of two of his chemistry textbooks (www.pearsonhighered.com/troinfo/).
Randy VanderMey (English) played Leonato in Westmont Festival Theatre’s fall production of “Much Ado About Nothing” by Shakespeare.
Paul Willis (English) wrote a sequence of short poems, “Spots of Time,” for Westmont’s 75th anniversary and read the commissioned work at the Anniversary Gala in October.
A video of this reading is available online at player.vimeo.com/video/53978760.