Developments in SBS
Each SBS unit has chosen a departmental update to share with alumni and friends of the College.
Abovet: UA anthropologist Mark Aldenderfer, pictured here near Ganden Monastery in central Tibet, works in the world’s highest plateaus. His recent discovery of a 4,000-year-old necklace made international news. Photo by Holley Moyes. the necklace — six hundred years older than other gold artifacts discovered in the Americas — suggests that even in the poorest early societies, people used symbols to convey power and prestige. Necklace photo by Mark Aldenderfer.
Anthropology
Field School, the A. Richard Diebold Professorship in Anthropology, and a joint professorship in dendroarchaeology with the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. Funds will also be used for the stabilization of the historic University Indian Ruins property, which includes a late classic- period Hohokam platform mound site and associated caretaker and laboratory facilities.
Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology (BARA)
Ethiopia is getting long-term assistance to help mitigate the kinds of disasters that have killed millions of people. Faculty from BARA, with colleagues from the Office of Arid Lands Studies and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, are working with faculty from Ethiopia’s Bahir Dar University (BDU) to create a regional center of excellence for disaster risk management and sustainable development. A $200,000 grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development started the project in the fall of 2007. The UA consortium will train professors at BDU who will in turn develop master’s curricula to teach courses in such topics as economic livelihoods, vulnerability analysis, geographic information system mapping, community-based disaster management and public health.
Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS)
With grant money from the Tinker Foundation, more than 20 graduate students conducted their original research in Latin America this past summer. Research topics included alternative energy, immigration, public health and education. In other grant news, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has awarded a $300,000 grant to researchers to study climate, water resources and growth in urban and rural areas in southern Arizona and northern Sonora, Mexico. Margaret Wilder, an assistant professor of Latin American Studies, is the deputy principal investigator of the project.
Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES)
CMES held two institutes this past summer. The first was an intensive week-long program for U.S. high school teachers and students that provided an introduction to Middle Eastern history, geography, languages, religions, culture and politics. Twenty-eight teachers and students participated and received UA credit. The second was a four-week institute for university students from Iraq. The 15 students studied Southwest culture and issues related to water and the environment; participated in a two-week leadership training program delivered by the Center for Student Involvement & Leadership; and visited the Navajo Reservation, Roosevelt Dam and Bisbee.
Cognitive Science
The Cognitive Science Program has begun several outreach efforts to Tucson schools. New faculty member Carole Beal has numerous grants that she brought to the UA from the University of Southern California; these grants are focused on computer-based intelligent tutoring systems for math and science that she will soon introduce into Tucson classrooms. Other faculty and graduate students have lectured on the mind and brain at Palo Verde Science and Technology Magnet School. Cognitive science graduate students have expressed tremendous enthusiasm for this outreach project.
Communication
The Department of Communication is working to raise funds for its Graduate Student Dissertation Research Scholarship. Last year, the department was able to award $500, and this year $750, to facilitate the completion of a dissertation research project that has exceptional promise to make a significant contribution to the communication research literature. Dissertation research can literally launch the career of young scholars. The department makes every effort to support the completion of these projects in order to enhance the debut of our newly minted Ph.D.s as they begin their careers at some of the top universities in the country. This year the scholarship was awarded to Sam Dorros for her project on changes in language use over time among women with breast cancer and their partners.
Geography and Regional Development (GRD)
This year, UA students will have another exciting option to add to their educational opportunities: a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in geography, with specializations in either environmental geography or geotechnology. The new B.S. option is designed to serve students who will fare best in the job market with a science degree, particularly with respect to government jobs. The department already offers the popular B.A. in geography and B.S. in regional development. Last year, the department graduated 217 students, and has more than 450 majors.
History
Katherine Morrissey, an associate professor of history, received a $200,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a project titled “Nature and History at the Nation’s Edge: A Field Institute in Environmental and Borderlands History.” The institute is for 25 faculty members who teach undergraduates at community and four-year colleges and universities. The goal is to provide them with a deeper understanding of the environment and history in the region. Morrissey and her colleagues directed a smaller-scale version of this field institute in May 2007, a project funded in part by a donation from UA history alumnus Jim Hunter and his wife, Joanne.
Journalism
Few organizations value the importance of a printed newspaper more than Arizona Newspapers Association (ANA). The professional trade group is in the business of uniting strong newspapers across the state. So when the UA School of Journalism approached ANA for assistance with printing costs for its two capstone newspapers, the ANA Foundation was happy to help. The group’s $7,000 grant enables continuous printing and delivery of two newspapers produced in the school by journalism students: the historic Tombstone Epitaph and El Independiente, the only bilingual newspaper in the country produced by students for a real community on a regular basis.
Judaic Studies
The Hebrew program in the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies has been growing for years. Recent enrollment figures indicate that they now have the world’s largest Hebrew program in a public educational institution outside of Israel. The program offers three years of Modern Hebrew and two years of Biblical Classical Hebrew. Judaic Studies is also building an emphasis on the study of modern Israel. For the past two years, the Center has hosted Professor Shlomo Aronson of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem as the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Visiting Professor of Israel Studies. The Center is creating a new, permanent position in Israel Studies.
Late Medieval and Reformation Studies
Professor Ute Lotz-Heumann has been appointed the first occupant of the Heiko A. Oberman Chair in Late Medieval and Reformation History. She has written two books, The Process of Dual Confessionalization in Ireland: Conflict and Coexistence in the Sixteenth and the First Half of the Seventeenth Centuries, and Reformation and the Confessional Age (Controversies in History). The chair is named in honor of the
Division’s founding director, Heiko A. Oberman, and funded by an endowment established from private and outside foundation sources. To help complete the endowment, an anonymous match is in effect through August 2009. When the endowment is complete at $2 million, Oberman’s rare and valuable research collection will pass to The University of Arizona Libraries.
Linguistics
The Department of Linguistics is currently ranked 12th in the country and on trajectory to be a top five department nationally, in both academic quality and graduate training. Reaching this goal means expanding our Native American linguistics program. To help achieve this objective, the department hired Stacey Oberly, a Native American linguist, this fall as a visiting professor in linguistics and American Indian studies. Oberly received her M.A. in Native American linguistics and her Ph.D. in theoretical linguistics at the UA. Oberly’s a member of the Southern Ute tribe in southwestern Colorado, and her research focus is on language revitalization and documentation.
Mexican American Studies & Research Center (MASRC)
MASRC Professor Anna Ochoa O’Leary has recently published several articles in scholarly journals. “Close Encounters of the Deadly Kind: Gender, Migration and Border (In)security” was published by the journal Migration Letters. “Latinas’ Practices of Emergence: Between Cultural Narratives and Globalization on the US-Mexico Border” was published by the Journal of Latinos in Education. Ochoa O’Leary also was recently awarded funding from Mexico’s Programa de Investigación de Migración y Salud for her project “A Multidisciplinary Binational Study of Migrant Women in the Context of a US-Mexico Border Reproductive Health Care Continuum.”
Near Eastern Studies (NES)
Aomar Boum joined the Department of Near Eastern Studies this fall and is one of the few Muslim anthropologists who study the Jews of the Islamic world. His perspective brings a unique approach to the field of Judaic studies. Boum has written articles and presented research papers nationally and internationally that focus on the theme of North African Jewry. He has also been heavily involved with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which is in the process of building an archival database on North African Jewish communities. Boum plans to apply for grants that will enhance the UA’s research on Jewish-Muslim relationships and to collaborate with the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies to seek funding for research and curriculum on Jews of the Islamic world.
Philosophy
Philosophy Professor Jenann Ismael has completed her distinguished multi-year research fellowship at the University of Sydney’s Center for Time, where she researched the philosophical foundations of quantum mechanics and how they interface with human experience. Her UA students will be enriched by her work on the ways in which science and experience are mutually informative. Professor Uriah Kriegel resumed his regular faculty position this past fall after having completed a three-year postdoctoral research fellowship for the Australian National Research Council. During his fellowship, Kriegel completed a book, forthcoming from Oxford University Press, in which he develops his original conception of the nature and character of conscious experience.
Political Science
The Department of Political Science is now the editorial home of The Journal of Politics, a top tier journal in the discipline. Professors Jan Leighley and Bill Mishler will share editorial duties. The department is also working with the League of Women Voters on their “Running to Win” project, which brings women holding local or state elective office into a high school to meet with female juniors and seniors. The project is designed to get more young women interested in running for political office.
Psychology
“UA Discusses” series on Cultural Models and Stereotype Threat, Fryberg and Schmader presented new research findings suggesting that a diverse educational environment elevates the performance of women and minorities by presenting different cultural models of success and reducing the threat posed by negative gender and ethnic stereotypes of intellectual inferiority. The social psychology program at The University of Arizona is internationally recognized for its research on prejudice, discrimination and cultural diversity.
The SBS Research Institute (SBSRI)
In the present budget crunch, it is more important than ever for SBS faculty to win grants to support their students and their research. The SBS Research Institute has started a new program to help SBS faculty collaborate across departments and with other colleges to initiate interdisciplinary research projects that can compete with the best that other institutions have to offer. SBSRI will provide seed money for these initial research efforts. SBSRI is trying to raise funds to sustain this program.
School of Information Resources and Library Science (SIRLS)
SIRLS’ Knowledge River program, which trains American Indian and Hispanic students to become librarians, is getting the attention of the federal government. Annabelle Nuñez, an assistant librarian with the Arizona Health Sciences Library and a 2003 graduate of the program, spoke about the Knowledge River program before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Healthy Families and Communities on Sept. 4, 2008. The subcommittee is taking a look at what roles libraries play in supporting and fortifying communities across the nation, especially those with high populations of people of color. The Knowledge River program, which is currently teaching its seventh cohort, has received funding from numerous supporters as well as federal grants. As part of the program, students work with high school-aged youth to address the problem of disparities in consumer health information.
Sociology
The Department of Sociology welcomed two new professors this past fall. Professor Robin Stryker has written extensively on the politics of social science in American regulatory law, including labor, employment and antitrust law, the comparative welfare state, politics and gendered labor markets. She has won numerous professional research fellowships and awards, including the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (2008-09). Scott R. Eliason, who is also affiliated with the BIO5 Institute, researches labor markets, stratification and the welfare state. His work includes an analysis of gender inequalities in job and market reward attainments, how market structures facilitate and constrain attainments, and the role of social and political institutions in market process.
The Southwest Center
Gary Paul Nabhan is a new research social scientist in the Southwest Center. This position was made possible by funding from Agnese Haury. Nabhan, a past recipient of the MacArthur “genius” Fellowship, is an ecologist, ethnobotanist and writer whose work has focused primarily on the plants and cultures of the desert Southwest. His most recent book is Arab/American: Landscape, Culture, and Cuisine in Two Great Deserts, published by The University of Arizona Press (2008). Nabhan, along with colleagues Maribel Alvarez and Kimi Eisele, founded the “Sabores Sin Fronteras: Flavors Without Borders” foodways alliance in January 2008. This alliance celebrates, sustains and promotes the farming, ranching, foraging and food folkways of the binational borderlands region. The alliance brings together farmers, ranchers, cooks, chefs, folklorists, artists and food advocates.
Southwest Institute for Research on Women (SIROW)
SIROW received a $1.2 million federal grant in September 2008 to study challenges that young women and their families face within the substance abuse treatment system. This project, “Las Rosas: A Recovery-Oriented Support System Approach for Adolescent Girls,” will target public systems of care that adolescent girls maneuver through to seek and receive needed services. While examining the treatment system, the project will also provide services for 120 girls — ages 12 to 17 years — of various racial/ethnic backgrounds, and assess the impact of those services on the girls’ mental health, substance use and other health indicators. While the Las Rosas project provides for research and treatment services, funds to assist the girls with daily needs such as food, clothing, hygiene products, school supplies and bus passes are needed.
Women’s Studies
The Department of Women’s Studies received a generous donation of $21,500 from the Tohono O’odham Nation for the completion of an arch in the Women’s Plaza of Honor (WPOH) that will recognize the contributions of Native American women of Arizona. It will honor 25 women selected by the 22 tribes of Arizona. In other fundraising news, the Women’s Studies Advisory Council (WOSAC) has been busy supporting the department with an impressive calendar of events designed to raise funds, members and awareness. These events included a welcome reception for the first Ph.D. students, a fall salon with department head Laura Briggs, the 12th annual Women Who Lead reception, the 4th annual Tucson LUNAFEST, and a series of forums on the HPV vaccine.
For more information, contact Lori Harwood at 520-626-3846 • Editor