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In the News

• Town meetings spark 2010 vision
• Norwegian leader speaks of peace, democracy
• PLU Scandinavian Collection awarded grant
• PLU Places High…Again
• Governor honors PLU Promise Scholars
• Wentworth garners highest honor
• The Choir of the West releases “Millennium” CD
• Scene welcomes new editor and writer
• PLU People
• Published Corner

Reflecting on the long-range planning process, President Loren J. Anderson said, “There are quite literally thousands of people who care about the university, who share our dreams for the future and are cheering us on our way. We must continue to build a university fully engaged in the future; a university that embraces technology, emphasizes international study, celebrates inclusiveness, demands excellence, and through it all, calls students to lives of faithful service.”

Norwegian leader speaks of peace, democracy
One of Norway’s most influential peace negotiators gave the annual Bjug Harstad Memorial Lecture this fall.

Thorvald Stoltenberg, former foreign minister of Norway and current president of the Norwegian Red Cross, met with students, faculty, staff, members of the Scandinavian Cultural Center and the public before his talk. They were eager to shake hands and take photographs with the man who has spent his life working for world peace.

While there are more democracies in the world than ever before, Stoltenberg said the change has resulted in more crime, mob activity and drug trafficking in some areas. In countries with new free markets, people are losing their jobs.

“It makes people wonder if the choice is between democracy and order, we choose order,” he said.

According to Stoltenberg, there is a way to maintain both democracy and peace, and world organizations such as the United Nations and NATO are an important part of that. The week of his visit to PLU, Norway won a hard-fought battle for a seat on the UN Security Council.

Stoltenberg is best known for his role as United Nations peace negotiator in the former Yugoslavia from 1993- 1996. He also served in the UN as high commissioner for refugees, and ended his political and diplomatic career as Norway’s ambassador to Denmark.

The university established the Harstad lecture in memory of PLU’s founder and first president, Bjug Harstad. His family created an endowment to fund the lecture series and help carry out Harstad’s wish that Scandinavian Americans not lose touch with their ancestral culture and traditions.

PLU Scandinavian Collection awarded grant
University archivist Kerstin Ringdahl ’82 and the Scandinavian Immigrant Experience Collection have been awarded a $49,116 grant. The grant, given by the Washington State Library, is part of the Digital Images Initiative 2000 grant cycle, sponsored by the Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services. The project is supported by the Manuscripts, Special Collections, University Archives Division of the University of Washington Libraries, and will give online access to Scandinavian manuscripts, oral histories and organizational records at both universities through www.plu.edu/~archives/sie/sieindex.html. Work on the project began Oct. 1, 2000 and will be completed Aug. 31, 2001.

PLU Places High…Again
Pacific Lutheran University is number nine on the list of Top Western Universities in the 2001 edition of the U.S. News and World Report guidebook, “America’s Best Colleges.”

All rankings and articles from the book are available from U.S. News Online at www.usnews.com. The rankings also appeared in the Sept. 11 issue of U.S. News.

The rankings were based on academic reputation, retention, graduation rate, faculty resources (including class size), student selectivity, financial resources, alumni giving rate, and other similar factors.

PLU tied for the ninth spot with St. Mary’s College of California and Whitworth College (Wash.). PLU remains the only Northwest university to be listed in all of the U.S. News best college surveys since they began in 1983.

The U.S. News ranking is only one indicator that students and families should use in choosing a college, according to Laura Polcyn ’75, ’74, vice president for Admissions & Enrollment Services at PLU.

“We hope that prospective students will use the rankings as a motivation to get out and visit the colleges they are considering,” Polcyn said. “There is nothing better than a campus visit to get a firsthand impression of the welcoming, supportive and challenging climate that exists at PLU. We welcome students to experience it for themselves before they make a college choice.”

Governor honors PLU Promise Scholars
Recalling his own struggles to pay for college, Gov. Gary Locke honored more than 150 outstanding PLU freshmen and sophomores who earned Promise Scholarships.

The scholarships are available to high-achieving students from low- and middle-income families. Locke believes the scholarships are important because they allow talented, hard-working students from working families to get an education at the school of their choice—including a private university.

Gov. Locke said he understood why so many scholars would choose PLU.

“It’s a great institution and a great center of learning,” he said.

At the October reception, he congratulated the students on their accomplishments and thanked their parents and teachers for helping them on their way.

Sophomore Kristy Van Nostran ’03 thanked Locke on behalf of students earning scholarships, and the Rev. Ronald Kempe, whose daughter Katherine ’03 attends PLU, discussed how it helps parents send their children to school.

“We are pleased and honored that so many of the state’s top scholars chose to attend Pacific Lutheran University,” PLU President Loren Anderson said.

Wentworth garners highest honor
Don Wentworth, professor of economics and education, received the highest award given in economic education: the John C. Schramm Leadership Award.

Given jointly by the National Council on Economics Education and the National Association of Economic Edu-cators, the annual award recognizes an educator who shows leadership at the state and national level, works to expand the role of economic education, and establishes programs that increase the quality and quantity of education and educators.

Wentworth has written numerous articles and designed much of the curricula used at all levels throughout the country. He serves as economic education adviser to the environmental think-tank Political Economy Research Center in Bozeman, Mont., and is a recognized expert on issues of economic education throughout the country.

Wentworth, who has been with the university since 1972, accepted the award at the national NCEE/NAEE con-vention in Savannah, Ga., in October.

The Choir of the West releases “Millennium” CD
The new recording by The Choir of the West—PLU’s premier choral ensemble— is now on sale.

“Mass for a New Millennium” fea-tures the title work composed by PLU’s own Richard Nance, associate professor of music.

The CD also includes live performances from the Northwest Conference of the American Choral Director’s Association and a joint concert of the Choir of the West and Choral Arts Northwest. Both are conducted by Dr. Richard Sparks, PLU’s director of choral activities.

To order, contact the PLU Bookstore at 1-800-727-5566 or 253-535-7665 or email at books@plu.edu. Compact discs are $15 each, $13 each for two or $12 each for three or more.

Scene welcomes new editor and writer
DREW BROWN joined PLU in September 2000 as Publications Manager. Along with being editor of Scene, he also oversees production and content development for several University Communication projects. Drew received his BA in English from the University of Puget Sound and his MA in English from Kansas State University. He has taught college courses in Expository Writing and Interactive English, been a Creative Writing Department Liaison for the KSU Beach Museum of Art, worked as an editor, and tutored students at both the high school and college levels.

KATHERINE HEDLAND ’88 recently became Director of PLU News and Information. She has been a reporter and editor since earning her degree in communication at PLU in 1988. Most recently, Katherine was the night city editor at the Eastside Journal in Bellevue, Wash. She handles media relations and writes for Scene along with other university publications.

PLU People

PLU welcomes new regents

	ROBERTA GOODNOW ’75 of Bellevue, is in an at-large position. Principal owner of The Goodnow Group, she is on the PLU Campaign Steering Committee and the executive board of directors for Q Club. She also serves on the board of advisers for TraceDetect Corp., in the student-mentoring program for the Kennedy School at Harvard University and as a member of Northwest Venture Group.
	ANNE LONG ’84 of Bellevue served the Board of Regents from 1989-97, and has returned to represent the ELCA. Co-founder of Long Painting Co. and Swift Equipment Co., she is co-chair of the Capital Campaign steering committee and is a member of Q Club. She is also a board member of Marymoor Museum of Eastside History and St. Andrew’s Housing Group, and is an active member of St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church.
	KAREN PHILLIPS ‘55 of Mercer Island also represents the ELCA. She was hired as the first nurse at the University of Washington, and is now retired and a member of the University of Washington Retirement Association. A native of Ritzville, Washington, she is a member of the National Wheat Association, Washington Wheat Association, Washington State Potato Commission, Q Club, and Holy Trinity Church.
	REV. MARTIN WELLS, bishop for the Eastern Washington-Idaho Synod and Spokane resident, represents the bishops and the ELCA. Before being elected as bishop this past spring, Bishop Wells served five years as executive director of Holden Village, a center for the renewal of persons and the Church, located in the Central Washington Cascades near Lake Chelan. His connections to PLU are strong—he and his wife, Susan Briehl, served eight years as campus pastors. They have two daughters and are members of St. Marks Lutheran Church.

Published Corner

CARLTON BENSON, assistant professor of history, is the author of a chapter titled “Consumers Are Also Soldiers: Subversive Songs from Nanjing Road During the New Life Movement” in the book “Inventing Nanjing Road: Commercial Culture in Shanghai, 1900-1945,” edited by Sherman Cochran (Cornell University East Asia Series, 1999). The chapter argues that retailers in 1930s Shanghai incorporated the mili-tant, anti-capitalist rhetoric of Chiang Kai-shek’s New Life Movement into their advertising campaigns by recasting consumers as soldiers who served the nation by shopping. In effect, their efforts to build a consumer society not only inspired, but also swamped, a state-sponsored political campaign.

MEGAN BENTON, associate professor of English and director of the publishing and printing arts program, is the author of “Beauty and the Book” (Yale University Press, 2000), a cultural history of the post-World War I publishing boom in fine editions. Buyers of these deluxe editions were often critics of modern mass culture, satisfying their desire for social distinction and cultural superiority—in addition to their aesthetic ideals—by purchasing these books. Benton explains, however, that fine bookmaking embodied some troubling ambiguities as bookmakers were unwilling to compromise with machinery, popular taste or the bottom line.

PATRICIA O’CONNELL KILLEN, professor of religion, is a co-author of “The Catholic Experience of Small Christian Communi-ties” (Paulist Press, 2000). The book is the largest empirical study of small faith communities in the Roman Catholic Church ever undertaken. Killen and her co-authors explain the attraction of these groups to people of various ages, and report on the attitudes and practices of members on a range of religious and social issues. The authors also suggest ways that small faith communities function as a venue for the formation of Catholic life and practice that bridges mid-20th-century ethnic communities to the post-modern world of the 21 st century. Killen is also the author of a chapter titled “The Irish in Washington State” in “The Encyclopedia of the Irish in America” (University of Notre Dame Press, 2000). This article surveys the history of the Irish in what is today’s Wash-ington State, and shows how the experience of the Irish here cannot be explained using the dominant interpretive categories of Irish-American history—neighborhood, parish, and union.

ANDREW MILTON, visiting assistant professor of political science, is the author of “The Rational Politician: Exploiting the Media in New Democracies” (Ashgate Publishing, 2000). Milton examines the role and status of the news media during the transition to democracy in post-communist East Central Europe. He finds that efforts to free the media from the ties that bound them (to the state) were often thwarted by political actors seeking to exploit the media for their own ends.