Jeff Caley Fall 2025
Jeff Caley Fall 2025
Jeff Caley ’07, assistant professor of computer science, and his collaborator Seth McCammon of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution were recently awarded a three-year grant for $118,725 from the National Science Foundation (NSF). They are studying coastal headland eddies, which are ocean features that move marine materials. As part of this effort, a PLU team is creating an adaptive observing system that uses artificial intelligence to manage and guide fleets of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs). The team is training a learning-based "digital twin" that can quickly approximate traditional hydrodynamic models. Since these models are too slow to run in real time on the AUVs, the digital twin will allow for more efficient and responsive high-resolution 3D ocean observation in the field. This project combines the fields of oceanography, robotics, and machine learning.
Tamara WilliamsFall 2025
Bridget Yaden Fall 2025
Alexus Hamilton Fall 2025
Anna Y. Leon-Guerrero and Ann KelleherFall 2025
Chris Schiller Fall 2025
Chris Schiller Fall 2025
Chris Schiller, visiting assistant professor of biology, and his research collaborators had an article published in the November 2024 edition of PLoS ONE – “Mechanisms of Rapid Plant Community Change from the Miocene Succor Creek Flora, Oregon and Idaho (USA).”
Mike Behrens Fall 2025
Mike Behrens Fall 2025
Mike Behrens, professor of biology, has partnered with PLU alumna Stena Troyer ’17 of Harbor WildWatch to support a beach monitoring program where volunteers collect data in order to help measure and track the population numbers and biodiversity of marine species. Read more about this project in Gig Harbor Now: “Harbor WildWatch’s Beach Monitoring Program keeps volunteers up late.“
Sara Finley Fall 2025
Sara Finley Fall 2025
Sara Finley, associate professor of psychology, presented the poster “Learning and Processing Biases for Vowel Harmony Over Vowel Disharmony” at the Annual Meeting of Phonology. Her work, “Simulating Variability-Induced Learning Biases Using MaxEnt Grammars,” was also published in the 2023/2024 Proceedings of the Annual Meeting on Phonology.
Gordon West Fall 2025
Gordon West Fall 2025
Gordon West, assistant professor of nursing, was named a 2025 Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing’s leadership cohort. He also co-authored “New patient privacy curtains to provide passive infection prevention” in Infection Prevention in Practice. In addition, West is serving as a senior mentor for a $300,000 grant from the Triservice Nursing Research Program (TSNRP), supporting research on ultraviolet disinfection in Army field hospitals.
Akiko Nosaka Fall 2025
Charlie Katica Fall 2025
Charlie Katica Fall 2025
Rainier Adaptive Sports was named one of the Aspen Institute’s 2024 Project Play Champions. Project Play Champions are recognized for their commitment to innovative partnerships, commitment to quality coaching, exposure to new sports, and increasing opportunities for underrepresented youth. Charlie Katica, associate professor of kinesiology, is the president of the non-profit.
Hannah Pye Fall 2025
Fiona O’Farrell Fall 2025
Ricardo Alves Silva Fall 2025
Mary Ellen Biggerstaff Fall 2025
Dan Cline Fall 2025
Kayla Harvey Fall 2025
Kayla Harvey Fall 2025
Kayla Harvey, assistant professor of nursing, co-authored a pilot study (with a DNP student), “Emotional Freedom Technique for Stress Reduction in Nursing Students,” in the Journal of Nursing Education. Her manuscript, “Navigating Healthcare During a Pandemic: What Parents of CHD Children Want Healthcare Professionals to Know,” was also accepted for publication in Cardiology in the Young.
Doug Epps Fall 2025
Doug Epps Fall 2025
A research article by Doug Epps, assistant professor of social work, was accepted for publication in the Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research — “Attitudes Toward Immigration Detention, Community-Based Alternatives, and Mobilizing Reform: A National Study of Eligible Voters.”
Maria Chavez Fall 2025
Hazel Ali Zaman-Gonzalez Fall 2025
Jes Takla Fall 2025
Jes Takla Fall 2025
Jes Takla, assistant vice president for student life strategic initiatives and assessment, published two pieces in the Journal of Trauma Studies in Education: “Becoming CRITICAL CREATIVES: Radical healing for liberatory futures in higher education and beyond” and “Radical hope for radical healing.”
Rick Barot Fall 2025
Lise Ekani Fall 2025
Lise Ekani Fall 2025
Lise Ekani, assistant professor of French and Francophone studies and global studies, is the first recipient of the Wang Center’s Dorothy and Wilbur Mancke African Program Development Fund, to support the development of FREN 205/405: New Directions in Francophone African Film.
Rebecca Wilkin Fall 2025
Rebecca Wilkin Fall 2025
Rebecca Wilkin, professor of French and global and cultural studies, delivered an invited talk, “Louise Dupin’s Work on Women and the Forgotten Feminist Enlightenment,” at Columbia University. Wilkin also published “Settling Accounts: Inequality was a Feminist Idea before It Was Rousseau’s” in Aeon, and her piece “La Thérèse du Canada...” appeared in the colonial Québec history volume Regards sur l’âme en Nouvelle France.
Giovanna Urdangarain Fall 2025
Giovanna Urdangarain Fall 2025
Giovanna Urdangarain, professor of Hispanic and Latino studies, chaired a session for the Congress Track at the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) 2025 International Annual Congress — “To Put Your Body on Latinx América”— entitled “Human Rights and Memory” and “Hiding, Denouncing and Healing Bodies: Reading Cultural Production from the Corporeal Southern Cone.”
Michael J. Halvorson Fall 2025
Michael J. Halvorson Fall 2025
The book This Little World: A How-to Guide for Social Innovators by Michael J. Halvorson ’85, professor of history, and Shelly Cano Kurtz ’98 was named a finalist for a Book of the Year award by Business Book Awards, an independent UK organization focused on innovation, business, sustainability, and related issues.
Corey Cook Fall 2025
Jeff Caley Fall 2025
Katrina Hay Fall 2025
Katrina Hay Fall 2025
Katrina Hay, chair and professor of physics, recently had the first of three blog posts (“Navigating Your Cultural Commute: A Scientist’s Approach to Vocation”) that she wrote published on Vocation Matters, a NetVUE-associated blog. This is a part of a series exploring the teaching of vocation in physics.
Brenda Llewellyn IhssenFall 2024
Brenda Llewellyn IhssenFall 2024
Brenda Llewellyn Ihssen, associate professor of religion, contributed a chapter to Disability, Medicine, and Healing Discourse in Early Christianity: New Conversations for Health Humanities, published an article in the peer-reviewed Public Health, Religion, and Spirituality Bulletin, and curated a collection for an Oxford University museum.
Maria ChavezFall 2024
Maria ChavezFall 2024
Maria Chavez, professor of political science, was selected for Humanities Washington’s 2024-2025 Speakers Bureau. As one of 40 speakers, she will present "The Firsts: Latina Struggles in the United States," discussing the challenges many Latinas face as first-generation college students balancing higher education with traditional Latino values and family responsibilities.
Corey CookFall 2024
Corey CookFall 2024
Corey Cook, associate professor of psychology, collaborated with various researchers on an article titled "Personal Need for Structure as a Protective Factor on Beliefs and Coping with COVID-19: A Crowd-Sourced Multicultural Exploration," published in Social and Personality Psychology Compass.
Tom EdgarFall 2024
Tom EdgarFall 2024
In July 2023, Professor Tom Edgar, of Mathematics, delivered a virtual presentation titled "From Bourbaki to 'Look-and-See'" for Gathering 4 Gardner (G4G), an educational foundation and non-profit dedicated to celebrating Martin Gardner’s legacy in recreational mathematics.
Wendy GardinerFall 2024
Wendy GardinerFall 2024
Wendy Gardiner, associate professor and Jolita Hylland Benson Endowed Chair in Elementary Education, had her manuscript, “It’s Probably More Comfortable for Everyone: Niceness as a Factor in Mentor Decision Making About Inside Practices,” accepted for publication in the national peer-reviewed journal The Teacher Educator.
Rhoberta HaleyFall 2024
Alexus HamiltonFall 2024
Alexus HamiltonFall 2024
Alexus Hamilton, assistant professor of marriage and family therapy, was recently awarded the 2024 Foundation for the Advancement of Human Systems Dissertation Award for her dissertation "Centering Black Therapists in Practice: Exploring Factors Related to Retention and Attrition."
Cathy KimFall 2024
Cathy KimFall 2024
Cathy Kim, associate professor of education, recently published an article with Emily Borda (Western Washington University) and other university partners titled “What if universities started collaborating more and competing less? An approach for state-wide shared responsibility for STEM teacher education” in Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning.
Charlie KaticaFall 2024
Charlie KaticaFall 2024
Charlie Katica, associate professor of kinesiology, is the president and co-founder of Rainier Adaptive Sports, a nonprofit providing sports and recreation opportunities for individuals with physical disabilities. Rainier Adaptive Sports has been named one of the Aspen Institute’s 2024 Project Play Champions, recognized for innovative partnerships, quality coaching, exposure to new sports, and increasing opportunities for underrepresented youth.
Kate LutherFall 2024
Kate LutherFall 2024
Kate Luther, associate professor of sociology and criminal justice, published “The Impact of Mass Incarceration on Children of Incarcerated Parents” in Beyond Bars: A Path Forward from 50 Years of Mass Incarceration in the United States, published by Bristol University Press.
Hannah PyeFall 2024
Hannah PyeFall 2024
Hannah Pye, assistant professor of nursing, has been actively educating bedside and outpatient nurses on evidence-based breastfeeding practices over the past year. She presented on this topic at the Emergency Nurses Association fall conference and at the Board of Certification of Emergency Nurses conference. Pye also authored an article on emergency department care for breastfeeding mothers and infants, published in Journal of Emergency Nursing.
Michael SchleeterFall 2024
Michael SchleeterFall 2024
Under the leadership of Michael Schleeter, associate professor and chair of philosophy, the philosophy department hosted the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl in November 2023. PLU’s Ethics Bowl team, "The Ministry of Moral Ambiguity," secured third place out of ten teams, missing second place by just one point.
Tom SmithFall 2024
Tom SmithFall 2024
Professor Tom Smith’s play Drinking Habits was selected to join a repertory of plays presented over two years by Bulandra Theatre in Bucuresti, Romania. The piece will also be presented by the Rotterdam English Speaking Theatre in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and St. Patrick’s Dramatic Society in Dublin, Ireland. In addition, Smith’s play Deconstruction, exploring the challenges faced by a collegiate improv team, was selected as a finalist out of nearly 1,000 applicants in the 2024 Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival.
Rebecca WilkinFall 2024
Rebecca WilkinFall 2024
Rebecca Wilkin, professor of French, and her co-author and translator Angela Hunter, received the French-American Foundation’s nonfiction prize for their translation of the eighteenth-century text "Work on Women" by Louise Dupin. Wilkin and Hunter also presented "Mining a Toxic Quarry: Louise Dupin’s Construction of the Work on Women" at Princeton University.
Tamara Reed WilliamsFall 2024
Tamara Reed WilliamsFall 2024
Tamara Reed Williams, executive director of the Wang Center of Global and Community Engaged Education and professor of Hispanic Studies, recently co-edited two publications: Women Photographers and Mexican Modernity: Framing the Twentieth Century with Julia Brown and Radmila Stefkova. She also contributed a chapter titled "The Form That Contains Multitudes: The Mexican Long Poem (1924-2020)" to A History of Mexican Poetry, published by Cambridge University Press.
Bradford AndrewsFall 2024
Bradford AndrewsFall 2024
Bradford Andrews, associate professor of anthropology, published an article titled “Lithic Tool Provisioning in the Western Aztec Provinces: A View from Calixtlahuaca” in Ancient Mesoamerica. The article analyzes stone tools from an Aztec provincial site, examining their technology and the evolution of central Mexican exchange systems. Co-authors are Angela C. Huster and Michael E. Smith.
Vanessa TuckerFall 2023
Vanessa TuckerFall 2023
Vanessa Tucker, associate professor of education, co-authored an article with Laura Jean Matson titled “Collaboration for School Mental Health Needs: A Case for High-Leverage Practices in a Culturally Responsive Framework” in TEACHING Exceptional Children.
Miho TakekawaFall 2023
Miho TakekawaFall 2023
Miho Takekawa presented the world premiere of "Tamayura: The Orbs Encircling Me in Heaven," a composition by Hina Sakamoto for organ and marimba. She also organized and hosted the Washington State Chapter Percussive Arts Society Day of Percussion at PLU, featuring guest performers from diverse backgrounds.
Additionally, Takekawa and her partner Diego Coy were sponsored by the Washington State Folk and Traditional Arts Program to perform in a concert series that received partial funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. Additionally, Takekawa and Coy traveled to Namibia, Africa, where they taught marimba at Sunshine Private School in Windhoek and performed with the Namibian/Zimbabwean Marimba/Drum Group "Ongoma." They also conducted a masterclass at Waldorf School Windhoek in Namibia.
Tom SmithFall 2023
Tom SmithFall 2023
Ksenija Simic-MullerFall 2023
Ksenija Simic-MullerFall 2023
Ksenija Simic-Muller, associate professor of mathematics, has been named the Distinguished Teaching Award winner for the Pacific Northwest Section of the Mathematical Association of America for 2023. This section includes every university in Alaska, Washington and Oregon, and some universities from Montana, Idaho and Canada.
Ksenija Simic-MullerFall 2023
Ksenija Simic-MullerFall 2023
Ksenija Simic-Muller, associate professor of mathematics, has been named the Distinguished Teaching Award winner for the Pacific Northwest Section of the Mathematical Association of America for 2023. This section includes every university in Alaska, Washington and Oregon, and some universities from Montana, Idaho and Canada.
Amy SiegesmundFall 2023
Amy SiegesmundFall 2023
Kathleen RichardsonFall 2023
Kathleen RichardsonFall 2023
Lindsey NiceFall 2023
Lindsey NiceFall 2023
Mark MulderFall 2023
Mark MulderFall 2023
Mark Mulder, Dean of the School of Business and associate professor, collaborated with EnVia and three other academics on a research project sponsored by the Association for Consumer Research’s Transformative Consumer Research program. Their publication, titled “The Service Empowerment Model: A Collaborative Approach to Reducing Vulnerability,” will be featured in the Journal of Services Marketing.
Mark MulderFall 2023
Mark MulderFall 2023
Mark Mulder, Dean of the School of Business and associate professor, collaborated with EnVia and three other academics on a research project sponsored by the Association for Consumer Research’s Transformative Consumer Research program. Their publication, titled “The Service Empowerment Model: A Collaborative Approach to Reducing Vulnerability,” will be featured in the Journal of Services Marketing.
Cathy KimFall 2023
Cathy KimFall 2023
Cathy Kim, assistant professor of education, authored “Toward More Meaningful Tech Integration: Supporting Preservice Teachers to Connect and Ideate” in the Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice. She also presented a paper titled “Good Teaching and Innovative Practice: Where is Technology in Lesson Design?” at the American Educational Research Association.
Cathy KimFall 2023
Cathy KimFall 2023
Cathy Kim, assistant professor of education, authored “Toward More Meaningful Tech Integration: Supporting Preservice Teachers to Connect and Ideate” in the Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice. She also presented a paper titled “Good Teaching and Innovative Practice: Where is Technology in Lesson Design?” at the American Educational Research Association.
Ron GerhardsteinFall 2023
Ron GerhardsteinFall 2023
Ron Gerhardstein, associate professor of music, is currently serving as the president of the Washington Music Educators Association (WMEA) 2022-24. WMEA has 1,700 members, including K-12 public school educators, college and university faculty and teacher educators, collegiate students and retired members.
Quantas GinnFall 2023
Quantas GinnFall 2023
Quantas Ginn, visiting professor of marriage and family therapy, became a certified AASECT sex therapist. Additionally, he contributed a chapter titled “Finding your niche: The importance of specialization and branding” to the book The Professional’s Guide to Sexuality Consultation: An Exploration of Entrepreneurship, Strategic Planning, and Business Influence.
Terri D. FarrarFall 2023
Terri D. FarrarFall 2023
Taylor DodsonFall 2023
Taylor DodsonFall 2023
Psychology DepartmentFall 2023
Psychology DepartmentFall 2023
PLU’s Psi Chi chapter, the Psychology Department’s chapter of the International Honor Society in Psychology, was honored with the 2021-2022 Model Chapter Award for the second time in recent years. The award acknowledges the outstanding efforts of the chapter’s officers and faculty advisor, Corey Cook, associate professor of psychology.
Corey CookFall 2023
Corey CookFall 2023
Corey Cook, associate professor of psychology, has been awarded a 16-month Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In November 2023, he will conduct research at the University of Cologne. He also received a scholarship to attend a German language institute in Germany. His research will further develop the connections he established during his previous Fulbright U.S. Scholar program at the University of Cologne.
Jeff CaleyFall 2023
Jeff CaleyFall 2023
Jeff Caley, assistant professor of computer science, organized PLU's inaugural alumni programming contest. The competition brought together 16 alums and 15 students, allowing current students to form teams with alums and solve various programming problems.
Angie BoysenFall 2023
Angie BoysenFall 2023
Angie Boysen, assistant professor of chemistry, co-authored two published papers. The first, titled “Chemotaxonomic patterns in intracellular metabolites of marine microbial plankton,” appeared in Frontiers in Marine Science. The second, titled “Quantification of dissolved metabolites in environmental samples through cation-exchange solid-phase extraction paired with liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry,” was published in Limnology and Oceanography: Methods.
Bradford AndrewsFall 2023
Bradford AndrewsFall 2023
Bradford Andrews, associate professor of anthropology, published an article in Spanish titled “La economía de la lítica tallada y las Élites en Mesoamérica Prehispánica: El caso de Xochicalco durante el Epiclásico” (“Elites and the Flaked Stone Economy in Ancient Mesoamerica: The Case of Xochicalco”) in the Mexican journal Arqueologia Segunda Época (Archaeology: Second Generation).
Kathleen RichardsonFall 2022
Kathleen RichardsonFall 2022
Kathleen Richardson, assistant professor of nursing and associate dean of academic affairs for the School of Nursing, has been selected to be a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. The Academy is an honorific society that recognizes nursing's most accomplished leaders in policy, research, practice, administration, and academia.
Rick BarotFall 2022
Elizabeth BartonFall 2022
Elizabeth BartonFall 2022
Elizabeth Barton, director of the counseling center, wrote an op-ed for Living Lutheran titled “My take: The search for truth. Adolescents, the church and social media.” The opinion piece highlights the role of the church in a young person’s life in a digital world.
Sarah Robinson-BertoniFall 2022
Sarah Robinson-BertoniFall 2022
Sarah Robinson-Bertoni, professor of religion and environment, was quoted in Earthbeat, a National Catholic Reporter publication, about the movement to grow religious permissible foods and its benefits to the consumer and the land through sustainable agricultural practices.
Sara FinleyFall 2022
Sara FinleyFall 2022
Sara Finley, associate professor of psychology, presented a “flash talk” entitled: “Learning biases for syncretic morphological systems” at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. She also published a paper titled “Generalization to novel consonants: Place versus voice” in the June 2022 Journal of Psycholinguistic Research.
Neal YakelisFall 2022
Neal YakelisFall 2022
Neal Yakelis, professor of chemistry, and his collaborators received a grant of over $330,000 from the Murdock Charitable Trust: Research Across Institutions for Scientific Empowerment (RAISE). The three-year project titled “Development of novel light-up RNA aptamer-fluorophore probes with tunable optical properties” includes Yakelis, three co-principal investigators and eight PLU summer research students.
Corey CookFall 2022
Corey CookFall 2022
Corey Cook, assistant professor of psychology, co-authored the paper “Religious identity and intersectional privilege: (A)symmetric biases in Christians and atheists are unaffected by prompts to consider religious and racial privilege,” in the June 2022 journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality by the American Psychological Association (APA).
Wendy GardinerFall 2022
Wendy GardinerFall 2022
Wendy Gardiner, associate professor of education and Jolita Hylland Benson chair in elementary education, completed her four-year service as a member and chair of the International Literacy Association’s (ILA) Children’s Book Award Committee. The committee awards excellence in fiction and nonfiction books for young children.
Jessica SklarFall 2022
Jessica SklarFall 2022
Jessica Sklar, professor of mathematics, gave two public talks for the nonprofit Gathering for Gardner. She presented “Mathemalchemy” with Bronna Butler and Kimberly Roth. Her second talk was “Mathematical Art: Inspirations, Instantiations, and Installations.” Two of Sklar’s art pieces, “Still Life with Mathematics” and “Equilateral Enigma,” the latter with Bronna Butler, are part of the Joint Mathematics Meetings 2022 Mathematical Art Gallery.
Bridget YadenFall 2022
Bridget YadenFall 2022
Bridget Yaden, professor of Hispanic and Latino studies, spoke virtually at the Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning (CLTL) 2022 Spring Workshop titled “Future Thinking on Language Teaching and Learning,” hosted by Harvard University. Her talk was titled: “Access and Articulation through Proficiency: Second Language Teaching and Learning at the Post-secondary Level.”
Andrea MunroSpring 2022
Andrea MunroSpring 2022
Andrea Munro, associate professor and chair of chemistry, was part of a group that published the article “The Primarily Undergraduate Nanomaterials Cooperative: A New Model for Supporting Collaborative Research at Small Institutions on a National Scale,” in ACS Nanoscience Au.
Khalfalla AwedatSpring 2022
Khalfalla AwedatSpring 2022
Khalfalla Awedat, visiting assistant professor of computer science, co-authored the paper “COVID-CLNet: COVID-19 Detection With Compressive Deep Learning Approach” in the International Journal of Computer Vision and Image Processing. He also recently submitted his paper “Adaptive Density and Ego Vehicle Location-Aware DBSCAN for LiDAR Points Clustering in Autonomous Driving Applications,” to the 2022 International Electro/Information Technology Conference.
Daniel HeathSpring 2022
Sara FinleySpring 2022
Julie SmithSpring 2022
Julie SmithSpring 2022
Julie Smith, associate professor of biology, has co-authored two publications; “Nest-site selection by Cassia Crossbills and management implications” in the Journal of Field Ornithology, and “Diversification in trophic morphology and a mating signal are coupled in the early stages of sympatric divergence in crossbills” in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society.
Cathy KimSpring 2022
Cathy KimSpring 2022
Cathy Kim, assistant professor of education, has obtained recertification with National Board Certification. She has held the NBCT credential for 20 years. Kim was also chosen as a National Board mentor for the inaugural year of Learning CORE (Learning Community of Reflective Educators) to support diverse educators.
Michael HalvorsonSpring 2022
Saliu LiSpring 2022
Agnes ChoiSpring 2022
Suzanne Crawford O’BrienSpring 2022
Aram MrjoianSpring 2022
Aram MrjoianSpring 2022
Aram Mrjoian, visiting professor of English, has been named one of 10 Creative Armenia and Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) Fellows for 2022. The fellows include filmmakers, musicians, writers and artists who will receive year-long strategic support, including funding, mentorship and industry connections.
Sailaja ArungundramSpring 2022
Sailaja ArungundramSpring 2022
Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry Sailaja Arungundram wrote a chapter in the new book “Glycosaminoglycans Methods and Protocols” from Springer Science. Arungundram and her coauthor Karthik Raman wrote chapter 23: “Chemical Approaches to Prepare Modified Heparin and Heparosan Polymers for Biological Studies,” which details how to modulate heparin (an anticoagulant) to help regulate biological processes other than hemostasis.
Bridget YadenSpring 2022
Bridget YadenSpring 2022
Bridget Yaden, professor of Hispanic and Latino Studies, was selected to serve as the executive director of the Pacific Northwest Council for Languages (PNCFL ). This is a six-state organization of language educators that includes Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. PNCFL advocates for the value of world languages as a core curriculum and supports language policies that reflect this ideal.
Jon GraheSpring 2022
Jon GraheSpring 2022
The Collaborative Replications and Education Project, which psychology Professor Jon Grahe developed in 2013, has been awarded the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS) Mission Award for its contribution to the improvement of psychological science, and in particular the article “Publishing Research with Undergraduate Students via Replication Work: The Collaborative Replications and Education Project.”
Jessica SklarSpring 2022
Jessica SklarSpring 2022
Jessica Sklar, professor of mathematics, had artwork featured in the “For the Love of Math!” art exhibit, presented by the Seattle Universal Math Museum (SUMM) at the Suzanne Zahr Gallery on Mercer Island, Washington. The exhibit also included two pieces with her collaborator, Bronna Butler. Sklar co-authored “Mathemalchemy: A Playful Pandemic Project” published in the fall issue of the Mathematical Association of America magazine.
Brenda Llewellyn IhssenSpring 2022
Paul SuttonSpring 2022
Paul SuttonSpring 2022
Paul Sutton, assistant professor of education, co-authored the article “Doing Equity Work While Black in a Culturally White District” with Shomari Jones, the director of equity and strategic engagement for the Bellevue School District. The article appeared in the September 2021 issue of Phi Delta Kappan.
Nick PaternoFall 2021
Julie SmithFall 2021
Jeremy ReimersFall 2021
Michael BehrensFall 2021
Michael BehrensFall 2021
Michael Behrens, professor of biology, co-authored the article "Spatial and Temporal Distribution of the Early Life History Stages of the Native Olympia Oyster Ostrea lurida (Carpenter, 1864) in a Restoration Site in Northern Puget Sound, WA," in the Journal of Shellfish Research.
Catherine CaseFall 2021
Tom EdgarFall 2021
Evan EskewFall 2021
Evan EskewFall 2021
Evan Eskew, assistant professor of biology, co-wrote the opinion piece “Overselling wildlife trade bans will not bolster conservation or pandemic preparedness,” in The Lancet Planetary Health. He also contributed to the papers “Predicting wildlife hosts of betacoronaviruses for SARS-CoV-2 sampling prioritization,” and “Forty-four years of global trade in CITES-listed snakes: Trends and implications for conservation and public health.”
Andrea MunroFall 2021
Ron GerhardsteinFall 2021
Ron GerhardsteinFall 2021
Ron Gerhardstein, associate professor of Music Education and associate band director, was selected as the next President-Elect for the Washington Music Education Association (WMEA). The WMEA serves over 1400 member educators in the State of Washington teaching in public, private, and collegiate settings.
Tiffany ArtimeFall 2021
Tiffany ArtimeFall 2021
Tiffany Artime, associate professor of psychology, received the Western Psychological Association Enrico E. Jones Award for Research in Psychotherapy and Clinical Psychology for her work on a PCORI-funded project aimed at improving trauma-focused mental health services for college students.
Suzanne Crawford O'BrienFall 2021
Suzanne Crawford O'BrienFall 2021
Suzanne Crawford O'Brien, professor of religion and culture, wrote and co-wrote two chapters in the book Native Foodways: Indigenous North American Religious Traditions and Foods. The chapters are titled “Of Coyotes and Culverts: Salmon and the People of the Mid-Columbia River” and “Native Foodways: Indigenous North American Religious Traditions and Foods.”
Brenda Llewellyn IhssenFall 2021
Lathiena NervoFall 2021
Lathiena NervoFall 2021
Lathiena Nervo, assistant professor of biology, and Heidi Schutz, associate professor of biology, co-authored the article: “From panic to pedagogy: Using online active learning to promote inclusive instruction in ecology and evolutionary biology courses.” Nervo was also named one of Cell Mentor’s “1,000 Most Inspiring Black Scientists in America.”
Lisa MarcusFall 2021
Samuel TorvendFall 2021
Samuel TorvendFall 2021
Samuel Torvend, professor of the history of Christianity, published two pieces — “The topography of early Benedictine sites: Santa Scholastica, San Benedetto, and San Vincenzo al Volturno,” in American Benedictine Academy Monastic Research and “Care for the Earth in Episcopal worship," in In Spirit & Truth: A New Vision of Episcopal Worship.
Seth DowlandFall 2021
Jim AlbrechtFall 2021
Troy StorfjellFall 2021
Troy StorfjellFall 2021
Troy Storfjell, professor of Nordic studies, presented “Sámi Research in a Global Framework: Perspectives from North America” as the keynote speaker at the Social Aspects of Sámi Research Symposium. Sorfjell was also a panelist at the Sámi Film Festival, co-hosted by the Scandinavia House in New York and the National Nordic Museum in Seattle.
Tony FinitsisFall 2021
Kate Luther '02Fall 2021
Kate Luther '02Fall 2021
Kate Luther '02, associate professor of sociology and criminal justice, co-authored the published chapter “Longitudinal Perspectives on Mother-Child Separation Resulting from Incarceration” in the book Children with Incarcerated Mothers: Children: Separation, Loss, and Reunification.
Renzhi CaoFall 2021
Renzhi CaoFall 2021
Renzhi Cao, assistant professor of computer science, and student co-authors Kyle Hippe ’21 and Sola Gbenro ’20 presented a talk titled “CaoLab: Protein function and disorder prediction from sequence based on RNN,” during the 2020 International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology.
Jessica SklarFall 2021
Jessica SklarFall 2021
Jessica Sklar, professor of mathematics, is one of 23 mathematicians and artists involved in creating a multimedia art installation: “Mathemalchemy.” The piece celebrates the creativity and beauty of mathematics and is now on display at Duke University.. Sklar has also been working virtually on artwork with mathematical artist Bronna Butler. “Additive Mixing,” their latest collaboration, is in the virtual juried 2021 Joint Mathematics Meetings Exhibition of Mathematical Art.
Maria ChavezFall 2021
Dean WaldowFall 2020
Dean WaldowFall 2020
Professor of Chemistry Dean Waldow was awarded the Lynwood W. Swanson Scientific Research Award by the M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust. The award is given to exemplary senior faculty members who run established, productive and nationally recognized research programs.
Paul SuttonFall 2020
Paul SuttonFall 2020
Paul Sutton, assistant professor of education published an article for the Journal of Curriculum Studies titled, “How High School Academic Departments Impact School Reform Efforts” and an article in the journal Teachers College Record titled “Tending to the 'Deep Rules' of Teacher Collaboration.”
Renzhi CaoFall 2020
Renzhi CaoFall 2020
Renzhi Cao, assistant professor of computer science, and his 2016 capstone alumnus Caleb Chandler, Miguel Amezola, and Devon Johnson are to attend the global CAFA challenge. This is in the wake of their paper which has been accepted by peer review journal Genome Biology (impact factor 13.214). Cao published a paper in collaboration with PLU students Devin Ober, James Gentry, David Min, Ian Morgan, Hayden Simon, Fares Alshabanat, and Assistant Professor of Business Leong Chan. The paper, “Survey of AI in Cybersecurity for Information Technology Management” is available from publisher IEEE TEMSCON.
Angie HambrickFall 2020
Angie HambrickFall 2020
Angie Hambrick, associate vice president for Diversity, Justice, and Sustainability, co-authored “Barriers and Strategies by White Faculty Who Incorporate Anti-Racist Pedagogy,” along with Jennifer Akamine Phillips, Nate Risdon, Matthew Lamsma, and Alexander Jun. It can be found in Race & Pedagogy Journal, vol.3, no.2, (2019c)
Michael BehrensFall 2020
Michael BehrensFall 2020
Michael Behrens, professor of biology, published an article with research collaborators Becker, B., B. Allen, M. Hintz, H. Parker, M. McCartha and S. White. The work is titled “Spatial and Temporal Distribution of the Early Life History Stages of the Native Olympia Oyster Ostrea lurida (Carpenter, 1864) in a Restoration Site in Northern Puget Sound, WA” and will be published in the Journal of Shellfish Research. 39
Maria ChavezFall 2020
Wendy GardinerFall 2020
Wendy GardinerFall 2020
Wendy Gardiner, associate professor of education, and collaborator Nina Weisling's research on mentoring is cited in a short list of research informing mentoring practices in the state of Washington in an Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) document, “A Review of Best Practices in New Teacher Mentoring.”
Adela RamosFall 2020
Karen TravisFall 2020
Karen TravisFall 2020
Karen Travis, professor and chair of the Department of Economics, has been appointed vice president of the board for the Dave Purchase Project in Tacoma. This non-profit organizes and provides needles to needle exchanges throughout the U.S. as a public health harm reduction effort.
Bridget YadenFall 2020
Bridget YadenFall 2020
Bridget Yaden, professor of Hispanic studies has had a chapter “The Acquisition of Environment for Instructed L2 Learners: Implementing Hybrid and Online Language Courses” published in the book “L2 Grammatical Representation and processing, Theory and Practice.”
Catherine CaseFall 2020
Catherine CaseFall 2020
Catherine Case, lecturer of harp for the Department of Music, has been awarded a grant from the American Harp Society (AHS) in the amount of $2,000 to commission a trio from composer Alexandra Gardner for harp, flute and percussion. This new work will be composed for and premiered by PLU faculty in the spring of 2021.
Anna TrammellFall 2020
Anna TrammellFall 2020
Anna Trammell, archivist and special collections librarian, and the Archives and Special Collections for the PLU Library received a grant from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) to support work to improve access to their holdings related to Holden Village.
Claire ToddFall 2020
Claire ToddFall 2020
Claire Todd, associate professor of geosciences and environmental studies, has received a NASA grant for the project titled “Ice preservation and landscape erosion during glacial retreat on Earth and Mars.” Todd has also received a Grant from Pierce County for the project titled “Chambers-Clover Creek Archive at PLU,” co-led with Anna Trammel (Archive and Special Collections). Finally Todd has also received a Regency Advancement Award for the project “What triggers dangerous debris flows on Mount Rainier?”
Justin LytleFall 2020
Justin LytleFall 2020
Justin Lytle, associate professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry, co-authored a publication with collaborators from the U.S. Naval Research Lab in Washington, D.C. The work is titled “Pyrolytic carbon films with tunable electronic structure and surface functionality: A planar stand-in for electroanalysis of energy-relevant reactions.”
Kate LutherFall 2020
Kate LutherFall 2020
Kate Luther, associate professor and chair of the Department of Sociology & Criminal Justice, co-authored a chapter titled “Incarcerated Parents and the Children Left Behind: Findings from Qualitative Research.” The chapter appears in the Handbook on Children of Incarcerated Parents: Research, Policy and Practice (2nd ed.).
Daniel HeathFall 2020
Katie HayFall 2020
Paul SuttonFall 2020
Carmiña PalermFall 2020
Shannon SeidelFall 2020
Shannon SeidelFall 2020
Shannon Seidel, assistant professor of biology, and research students Courtney Hartman (biology) and Miranda Martens (sociology) recently had a paper published: “Investigating Instructor Talk in Novel Contexts: Widespread Use, Unexpected Categories, and an Emergent Sampling Strategy.”
Rona KaufmanFall 2020
Paul ManfrediFall 2020
Brenda Llewellyn IhssenFall 2020
Brenda Llewellyn IhssenFall 2020
Brenda Llewellyn Ihssen, associate professor of early and medieval Christian history, has had her essay “Disabling Theologies and Student Learning” accepted by the Journal of Disability and Religion. Llewellyn Ihssen also had two articles published in Studies in Late Antiquity and the Journal of Religion and Disability titled, “Using Late Antique and Medieval Sources to Challenge How Students Think About Healthcare.”
Sergia HayFall 2020
Jan WeissFall 2020
Jan WeissFall 2020
Jan Weiss, associate dean of education wrote a chapter in the edited book, “Handbook of Quality of Life in African Societies” based on her long time work in Namibia with University of Namibia and UNESCO regarding teacher education. Her chapter is titled “Quality of Life Through Capacity Development in Junior Primary Teacher Education.”
Abby LiuFall 2020
Abby LiuFall 2020
Abby Liu, assistant professor of business, presented a paper titled “The Role of Construal Alignment in Enterprise Risk Management” at the American Accounting Association (AAA) 2019 Annual Meeting. Liu also co-authored an article, “The relationship among psychological need satisfaction, class engagement, and academic performance: Evidence from China,” which is published in the Journal of Education for Business.
Jon GraheFall 2020
Jon GraheFall 2020
Jon Grahe, professor and chair of the Department of Psychology published two manuscripts titled “Checking Progress Toward a More Diverse, Just, and Sustainable Psychology” and “Open Science Promotes Diverse, Just, and Sustainable Research and Educational Outcomes” inspired by the PLU 2020 focus on diversity, social justice, and sustainability (DJS).
Grahe was also elected president of the Western Psychological Association (WPA). This is a three-year term and Grahe will begin as President-Elect in November, 2020, then preside over the WPA conference in Portland, OR in April 2022.
Akiko NosakaFall 2020
Akiko NosakaFall 2020
Akiko Nosaka, associate professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology, published “Fertility of First-generation Japanese Immigrant Women in Seattle: The Influence of Ken Affiliation, Residential Location, and Employment Status” in the Northwest Journal of Anthropology (JONA).
Katherine Ann WileyFall 2020
Katherine Ann WileyFall 2020
Katherine Ann Wiley, assistant professor of anthropology, published an article, “The Materiality and Social Agency of the Malahfa (Mauritanian Veil)” in the African Studies Review (Special Issue: Bodily Practices and Aesthetic Rituals in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Africa). Wiley also published, “Women in Mauritania,” an article that was released in May 2020 by The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History.
Justin EcksteinFall 2020
Justin EcksteinFall 2020
Justin Eckstein, assistant professor of communication is the recipient of the New Investigator Award. The New Investigator Award honors a current member of the division who has established an innovative and robust research project within eight years of having earned the Ph.D. degree.
Sheri TonnFall 2020
Katherine ForsythFall 2019
Ami V. ShahFall 2019
Gina GillieFall 2019
Christopher BrowningFall 2019
Christopher BrowningFall 2019
Distinguished Professor of history Christopher Browning will be honored, along with his groundbreaking book “Ordinary Men,” for his career as a Holocaust historian, at an October conference in Münster, Germany, “A Generation After ‘Ordinary Men’ — Perspectives of New Police Perpetrator Research and Holocaust Education.”
Maria ChávezFall 2019
Ksenija Simic-MullerFall 2019
Tony FinitsisFall 2019
Seth DowlandFall 2019
Nancy Simpson-YoungerFall 2019
Colleen HackerFall 2019
Michael BehrensFall 2019
Michael BehrensFall 2019
Michael Behrens, professor of biology, recently appeared in a short documentary about Salish Sea After Dark, the community/citizen science program Mike co-founded with PLU alumnus Stena Troyer (’12) in 2013. The film has been accepted at the Gig Harbor Film Festival and the Ireland Wildlife Film Festival.
Craig FryhleFall 2019
Craig FryhleFall 2019
Craig Fryhle, professor of chemistry, has been named a fellow of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society. With this recognition, Craig joins a nationwide list of 70 well- known professional chemists, including two Nobel laureates.
Adam GlassFall 2019
Adam GlassFall 2019
Adam Glass, visiting assistant professor of chemistry, co-authored a paper, “A Simple and Mild Microwave-Based Synthesis of Novel Functionalized Benzofulvenes,” which was published in September 2018. His coauthors include Katherine E. Caspary ’17, Cole Fisher ’19, Connor Whyte ’19, and James Okubo ’17.
Don RyanFall 2019
Wendy CallFall 2019
Wendy CallFall 2019
Wendy Call, assistant professor of English, co-authored an article, “Poetics and Politics of Indigenous- Language Literature in Mexico and Colombia: Forms of Protest and Resistance,” which will be published in spring 2020, along with two of Wendy’s translations, in Diálogo.
Renzhi CaoFall 2019
Renzhi CaoFall 2019
Renzhi Cao, assistant professor of computer science, has recently had a number of papers accepted for publication, including “AngularOA: Protein Model Quality Assessment with LSTM Networks,” “Artificial Intelligence for Bioinformatics: Applications in Protein Folding Prediction,” “Survey of Machine Learning Techniques in Drug Discovery,” and “Protein Tertiary Structure Modeling Driven by Deep Learning and Contact Distance Prediction in CASP13.”
Kevin O’BrienFall 2019
Anna TrammellFall 2019
Paul SuttonFall 2019
Paul SuttonFall 2019
Paul Sutton, assistant professor of education, recently had two articles accepted for publication: “How High School Academic Departments Impact School Reform Efforts,” an original research article accepted by the Journal of Curriculum Studies, and “Tending to the ‘Deep Rules’ of Teacher Collaboration,” a commentary article accepted by Teachers College Record.
Christine MoellerFall 2019
Angie HambrickFall 2019
Wendy GardinerSpring 2019
James AlbrechtSpring 2019
Christian GerzsoSpring 2019
Liam O'LoughlinSpring 2019
Adela RamosSpring 2019
Marit TrelstadSpring 2019
Marit TrelstadSpring 2019
Marit Trelstad, professor of Constructive and Lutheran Theologies, is the inaugural president of the Lutheran Women in Theological and Religious Studies Steering Committee. She has two new book chapters: “Cracking the Ice: Subaltern and Lutheran Principles of Knowledge” in “Luther from the SubAltern — the Alternative Luther” and “Scandinavian Creation Theologies: Fresh Air for Lutheran Thought” in “American Perspectives meet Scandinavian Creation Theology.”
Bridget YadenSpring 2019
Mike RingsSpring 2019
Melissa MichalSpring 2019
Melissa MichalSpring 2019
Melissa Michal, visiting assistant professor of English, had her story story collection "Living on the Borderlines," published by Feminist Press.
Wendy CallSpring 2019
Rebecca WilkinSpring 2019
Rebecca WilkinSpring 2019
Rebecca Wilkin, associate professor of French, has been awarded an NEH Summer Stipend for “An Edition and Translation of Selections from ‘Work on Women’ by French Enlightenment Philosopher Louise Dupin,” and a Harry Ransom Center Research Fellowship for archival research.
Tom EdgarSpring 2019
Tom EdgarSpring 2019
Tom Edgar, associate math professor, has been awarded the PNW MAA's 2019 Distinguished Teaching Award. Among his many accomplishments, he has been the capstone adviser for more than 50 PLU students; on average, he’s advised between a quarter and a third of PLU’s math major graduating class each year.
Katherine ForsythSpring 2019
Katherine ForsythSpring 2019
PLU Lead Cook Katherine Forsyth took first place in the NACUFS Pacific Region Culinary Challenge. She prevailed with an American Culinary Federation (ACF) silver medal besting chefs from Central Washington, Oregon State, Pomona, UC Irvine and Stanford. The silver medal win earns her a berth in the National Challenge in Denver on July 10.
Kristin MensonSpring 2019
Don RyanSpring 2019
Don RyanSpring 2019
The Egyptian archaeological project of Don Ryan ‘79, faculty fellow in the Division of Humanities, was featured in a television program produced by National Geographic and the U.K.’s Channel 4. The program, part of a six-part series called "Lost Treasures of Egypt,” filmed last year in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings.
Jennifer RhyneSpring 2019
Jennifer RhyneSpring 2019
Jennifer Rhyne, assistant professor of flute and music theory, will have her article, "Discovering Muczynski's Unknown Gem," published in the 2019 summer issue of The Flutist Quarterly, the flagship periodical of the National Flute Association. Rhyne first learned of Robert Muczynski’s unpublished work titled “Fuzzette, the Tarantula — A Fable for Narrator, Flute, Alto Saxophone, and Piano” a decade ago. After hearing a historic recording from 1962 of this charming work intended for children, she began an exhaustive search to find a copy of the original manuscript and to discover the history of the composition. As a result of her research and advocacy, Muczynski’s composition will receive its premiere publication by the Theodore Presser Company this summer. You can hear a PLU faculty recording of “Fuzzette”.
Maria Chávez-PringleSpring 2019
Maria Chávez-PringleSpring 2019
Maria Chávez-Pringle, associate professor of political science, was interviewed by NBC News on the college cheating scandal.
Michael FarnumSpring 2019
Psychology DepartmentWinter 2019
Psychology DepartmentWinter 2019
The Psychology Department is currently celebrating its 25th annual colloquium series. For the last 25 years, the department has been inviting scholars in the field to come to PLU to present their research to our students and faculty. The department is deeply committed to providing a vibrant, active research environment for students and faculty, and an environment that appropriately integrates psychological science into the curriculum.
PLU LISTENWinter 2019
PLU LISTENWinter 2019
PLU LISTEN won the Region V Innovative Program Award for an educational campaign to promote active listening in academic spaces and in our community at large. The multi-channel campaign is comprised of a website featuring videos and podcasts of a wide range of students, faculty, staff and alumni sharing their stories about race, microaggressions and privilege to spark meaningful dialogue amid pervasive racial tension that continues to plague our nation. Contributors include Jonathan Adams ’16, Chris Albert, Rustin Dwyer, Hans Fleurimont, John Froschauer, Donna Gibbs, Angie Hambrick, Sam O’Hara ’16, Kari Plog ’11, Zach Powers ’10, Logan Seelye, Lace M. Smith, and Simon Sung.
Maggie HendricksonWinter 2019
Maggie HendricksonWinter 2019
Maggie Hendrickson, Community Director for Tingelstad Hall, won the Region V Outstanding New Professional Award for outstanding service, innovative effort within student affairs; and indication of significant promise for future leadership roles in the student affairs profession.
Joanna Royce-DavisWinter 2019
Joanna Royce-DavisWinter 2019
Joanna Royce-Davis, Vice President for Student Life, won the Region V Distinguished Service to the Profession Award for her contributions to the field of student affairs; successful implementation of model innovations in the field and exemplary record of service as a mentor for students and fellow professionals.
Distinguished Staff AwardWinter 2019
Distinguished Staff AwardWinter 2019
The Distinguished Staff Awards Program is designed to recognize outstanding contributions made by employees through their accomplishments, leadership, and service to the university and its community members. This year, we honor the outstanding contributions of:
- Megan Grover, Assistant Director and Short-Term Study Away Program Manager, Wang Center, Wang Center for Global Education
- Nicole Juliano, Director, The Diversity Center
- Simon Sung, Executive Creative Director, Marketing & Communications
- Jes Takla, Assistant Dean for Campus Life, Co-Curricular Learning, and Assessment
Colleen HackerWinter 2019
Clement ReidWinter 2019
Korine FujiwaraWinter 2019
Leong ChanWinter 2019
Leong ChanWinter 2019
Leong Chan, assistant professor of business, and Renzhi Cao, assistant professor in computer science, have been awarded $10,000 from a Puget Sound Energy Grant to develop an assessment model to evaluate the innovation diffusion of smart home systems for residential energy efficiency and conservation in the Pacific Northwest. This interdisciplinary project will involve two MBA students, one BBA student and three other undergraduate students from computer science, psychology, and chemistry departments.
Zachary LymanWinter 2019
Zachary LymanWinter 2019
Zachary Lyman and the PLU Lyric Brass Quintet (PLU’s resident faculty brass ensemble) just completed a CD recording, funded in part by a Regency Advancement Award from PLU.
The CD was recorded in celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, and features a new large-scale work by Dr. Jerry Kracht, PLU emeritus professor of music. His piece depicts the life and story of Martin Luther in seven movements.
Jon GraheWinter 2019
Jon GraheWinter 2019
Jon Grahe professor of psychology: received a Regency Award to conduct the Emerging Adulthood Measured at Multiple Institutions 2: The Next Generation (EAMMi2) project. With the addition of a small teaching grant from the Association from Psychological Sciences, he conducted a crowdsourcing survey project with over 4200 respondents from 32 different locations starting the survey. A manuscript describing the data set was published in the Journal of Open Psychology Data.
Geffrey DavisWinter 2019
Seth DowlandWinter 2019
Jon KershnerWinter 2019
Bridget YadenWinter 2019
Bridget YadenWinter 2019
Bridget Yaden, professor of Hispanic studies and chair of languages and literatures, has been elected the president of ACTFL, the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages. The ACTFL serves elementary through college instructors and has 12,000 members.
Mike RingsWinter 2019
Tom EdgarWinter 2019
Tom EdgarWinter 2019
Tom Edgar, associate professor of mathematics, and Paul Dalenberg ’18 published an article in The Fibonacci Quarterly, 56 (2018) no. 2, Consecutive factorial base Niven numbers.
Edgar also published an article with Desiree Domini ’17 and Devon Johnson ’17 and others, Counting binomial coefficients divisible by a prime power, in The American Mathematical Monthly, 125 (2018), no. 6.
Edgar also published an article, On the number of hyper m-ary partitions, Integers. 18 (2018), A47.
Mallory MannWinter 2019
Maria Chavez-PringleWinter 2019
Karen TravisWinter 2019
Karen TravisWinter 2019
Karen Travis, associate professor and chair of economics, and Priscilla Cooke St. Clair, associate professor of economics, published “Assessing an Iterative Method for Improving Undergraduate Student Literature Reviews” in the Journal of Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research.
Beth KraigWinter 2019
Renzhi CaoWinter 2019
Renzhi CaoWinter 2019
Renzhi Cao, assistant professor in computer science, published “TopQA: A Topological Representation for Single-Model Protein Quality Assessment with Machine Learning” in the International Journal of Computational Biology and Drug Design with undergraduate students John Smith, Matthew Conover, and Natalie Stephenson.
Renzhi CaoFall 2018
Renzhi CaoFall 2018
Renzhi Cao, assistant professor of computer science, attended the TEALS Conference at Microsoft on April 19 with computer science majors Isiah Behner ’19 and Jessica Chase ’19. The TEALS event brings more than 1,500 high school computer science students to explore job and college opportunities.
Tom EdgarFall 2018
Tom EdgarFall 2018
Tom Edgar, associate professor of mathematics, and Jessica Sklar, chair and professor of mathematics, attended the Pacific Northwest Mathematical Association of America Conference in Seattle in April, along with math student, Cameron Raber ’19. Ksenija Simic-Muller, associate professor of mathematics, organized a session at the conference.
Heidi SchutzFall 2018
Jon FreemanFall 2018
Justin LytleFall 2018
Justin LytleFall 2018
Justin Lytle, chair and associate professor of chemistry, presented during the “Innovative Chemistry & Materials for Electrochemical Energy Storage” session at ACS (American Chemical Society) 2018. His research – titled “Studying the rate of electron transfer at pyrolytic carbon electrodes” — was conducted with student researchers Gabrielle Kamm ’18, Emily Ness '20 and Trang Le ’18, as well as collaborators Jeffrey Long, Joseph Parker and Debra Rolison from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. Kamm and Ness also received a travel award from the ACS Division of Inorganic Chemistry to support the presentation of their student-faculty research, mentored by Lytle, at the ACS National Meeting in New Orleans. These are often competitive awards from a national pool of applicants and fewer than 50 people receive these in the U.S. each year. Additionally, Ness was honored to be a runner-up for a Barry Goldwater Scholarship — one of two students in the state of Washington to be chosen.
Sean O’NeillFall 2018
Katrina HayFall 2018
Alex LechlerFall 2018
Duncan FoleyFall 2018
Mary MollerFall 2018
Jenny JamesFall 2018
Jenny JamesFall 2018
Jenny James, associate professor of English, was published in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. The article, according to the abstract, offers a comparative analysis of Patricia Highsmith's 1952 novel, The Price of Salt, and Todd Haynes's 2015 film adaptation, Carol, to bear witness to the often-overlooked history of pre-Stonewall queer parenthood and to imagine a more radical future of queer kinship.
Michael Halvorson and Alex LundFall 2018
Michael Halvorson and Alex LundFall 2018
Michael Halvorson ’85, professor of history, published a review article in the spring edition of Intersections with Alex Lund '18, a history and biology double major. The article explores recent writings on Martin Luther and vocational reflection on the PLU campus.
Rachel Betron, Dan Murray, Marco Polo Ramirez Becerra and Jes TaklaSpring 2018
Rachel Betron, Dan Murray, Marco Polo Ramirez Becerra and Jes TaklaSpring 2018
The following Lutes presented at the Northwest Association of College and University Housing Officers regional conference: Rachel Betron, resident director of Hong and Hinderlie halls; Dan Murray, resident director of South and Kreidler halls; Marco Polo Ramirez Becerra, resident director of Pflueger Hall; and Jes Takla, director of residential programs. They presented on the program “CAREfully Designed Teams: Deconstructing Bias and Creating Inclusionary RA Selection Practices.” It addressed the importance of hiring diverse and representative RA staff, cultivating a sense of belonging for residents, and how those impact retention and success. Participants reflected on their current RA selection processes, and gained strategies to enhance intentional, inclusive selection processes that yield diverse, representative RA staff members. Takla also presented at the annual conferences for NASPA — Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, as well as American College Personnel Association. Her presentation, titled “Flourish & Flow: Cultivating Creative Mindfulness to Support Student Development and Success,” focused on creativity as an essential element in innovation and cultivation of proactive resilience.
Maggie HendricksonSpring 2018
Maggie HendricksonSpring 2018
Maggie Hendrickson, resident director of Tingelstad Hall, presented a program — titled “Introduction to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity” — at the Saying It Out Loud conference, hosted by the state Department of Social and Health Services.
The Center for Gender EquitySpring 2018
The Center for Gender EquitySpring 2018
The Center for Gender Equity hosted its annual Celebration of Inspirational Women, featuring a keynote presentation by Jessica Spring, co-author of Dead Feminists; Historical Heroines in Living Color. Honorees included: Jennifer Smith, dean of inclusive excellence; Tess Matsukawa and Nicole Gonzales, resident directors; Nicole Jordan ’15 and Marleisha Cox ’17, and nearly 50 additional inspirational women and gender non-conforming people across campus.
Tiffany ArtimeSpring 2018
Tiffany ArtimeSpring 2018
Tiffany Artime, assistant professor of psychology, received a $249,309 contract from the Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Awards program through the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute for her research, titled “Treating Trauma in College Students: Creating Teams for Change.”
Tarka WilcoxSpring 2018
Tarka WilcoxSpring 2018
A proposal by Tarka Wilcox, assistant professor of geosciences, was accepted for a Murdock Grant. It will cover the next three years and supports six students (in geosciences or computer sciences) who will conduct summer research on studying erosion patterns and rates using small unmanned aerial systems (“drones”) to advance high-resolution topographical mapping, followed by considerable data analysis and modeling. The results of this research will be helpful in studying landslides, as well as flood risks associated with dams formed due to sediment deposited into waterways both during and following landslide events. Resulting models will be useful in assessing and preparing for geological hazards, such as the deadly landslide that hit Oso, Washington in 2014.
Lynn HunnicuttSpring 2018
Lynn HunnicuttSpring 2018
Lynn Hunnicutt, professor of economics, is the new assistant director of The Council of Independent College’s Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education (NetVUE). In this role, Lynn will have primary responsibility for administering NetVUE’s wide array of grant programs, working on a half-time basis from the PLU campus.
Ksenija Simic-Muller, Shannon Seidel and Wendy GardinerSpring 2018
Ksenija Simic-Muller, Shannon Seidel and Wendy GardinerSpring 2018
Ksenija Simic-Muller (associate professor of mathematics), Shannon Seidel (assistant professor of biology) and Wendy Gardiner (assistant professor of education) have been awarded an National Science Foundation grant to support their work strengthening connections between the Division of Natural Sciences and the School of Education. The work will help improve our science students’ exposure to careers in K-12 education, as well as help train education students in science.
Melannie Denise CunninghamSpring 2018
Melannie Denise CunninghamSpring 2018
Melannie Denise Cunningham, director of multicultural outreach and engagement in Campus Ministry, was named the 2018 laureate by the Greater Tacoma Peace Prize committee "for her exemplary work promoting racial reconciliation." The Greater Tacoma Peace Prize was founded by several Lutes in 2005, and the prize is believed to be the only local one of its kind in the country. Cunningham will travel to Oslo, Norway, to attend Nobel Peace Prize events later this year.
Ami Shah and Michael ArtimeSpring 2018
Ami Shah and Michael ArtimeSpring 2018
Ami Shah and Michael Artime — assistant professor of global studies and visiting assistant professor of politics and government, respectively — weigh in with NPR’s Malaka Gharib on how global development aid groups and media shape perceptions of the low-income countries.
Seth DowlandSpring 2018
Seth DowlandSpring 2018
Seth Dowland, associate professor of religion, was quoted in a Washington Post story, “Trump’s National Prayer Breakfast speech infused with God-and-country references.”
Colleen HackerSpring 2018
Colleen HackerSpring 2018
Colleen Hacker, PLU professor of kinesiology and USA Hockey mental skills coach, contributed to the U.S. Women’s Hockey win over Canada for the Olympic gold medal in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Hacker was featured and mentioned in publications including self.com, positivecoach.org, and ESPN.
Sergia HaySpring 2018
Sergia HaySpring 2018
Sergia Hay, assistant professor of philosophy, published “Foundations for Communities of Philosophical Conversation” in The Public Philosophy Journal. Co-authors include Andrea Christelle, James Lincoln and Eric Thomas Weber.
Wendy GardinerSpring 2018
Wendy GardinerSpring 2018
In an article about the effective mentoring of new teachers in Phi Delta Kappan, Wendy Gardiner — assistant professor of education — and co-author Nina Weisling observed that not all mentoring programs for new teachers are working well. They offer suggestions for supports, structures and resources that the most effective mentoring programs have in place.
Maria Guarneri-WhiteSpring 2018
Maria Guarneri-WhiteSpring 2018
Maria Guarneri-White, visiting assistant professor of psychology, published an article, titled “It's more than skin-deep: The relationship between social victimization and telomere length in adolescence.” It examined the relationship between peer victimization and telomere length, an indicator of biological aging that is associated with stressors.
Bret UnderwoodSpring 2018
Bret UnderwoodSpring 2018
Bret Underwood, associate professor of physics, recently shared his story about becoming a theoretical physicist for a piece in the winter issue of the Society of Physics Students’ magazine, The SPS Observer, titled “Considering a Career in Physics Research?” Underwood’s portion of the article is titled “From the Theoretical Physicist.”
Rick SpillmanSpring 2018
Rick SpillmanSpring 2018
Rick Spillman, professor emeritus of computer science and computer engineering, recently signed a three-book deal with Mountain Brook Ink, a Christian publishing house. His first book, The Awakened, is set to be released in January 2019. The second and third book in this trilogy will be released in June 2019 and January 2020. This is the culmination of a lifelong dream of Spillman’s to write and publish fiction, and one of the main characters in his trilogy teaches computer science at a medium-sized (unnamed) university in Tacoma.
Laurie MurphySpring 2018
Laurie MurphySpring 2018
Laurie Murphy, associate professor of computer science, co-authored a paper for the Association of Computing Machinery’s Transactions on Computer Science Education, titled “How Student Centered is the Computer Science Classroom? A Survey of College Faculty.”
Maria ChávezSpring 2018
Maria ChávezSpring 2018
Maria Chávez, chair of politics and government and associate professor of political science, is finishing her book, titled Latino Professional Success in America: Public Policies, People, and Perseverance. The book, which will be available in 2019, documents the paths of Latinos who are the first people in their families to graduate from college. Chávez interviewed 31 Latino professionals, across the nation, from a variety of fields. She also included her own story. The book explores how first-generation Latinos became professionals, their experiences as professionals amid the country’s institutional racism, and the policies and programs this group believes would help increase their presence in the professional world.
Pave the Way
Ksenija Simic-MullerSpring 2018
Ksenija Simic-MullerSpring 2018
Ksenija Simic-Muller, associate professor of mathematics, and PLU education student Liza Griffith recently published an article in Noticias de Todos’ Mathematics for All newsletter, titled “World Cup, Fairness, and Teaching Mathematics.”
Shannon SeidelSpring 2018
Shannon SeidelSpring 2018
Shannon Seidel, assistant professor of biology, recently co-authored an essay in the March issue of Life Sciences Education, titled “Scientific Presenting: Using Evidence-Based Classroom Practices to Deliver Effective Conference Presentations.” Shannon’s co-authors include Lisa A. Corwin from the University of Colorado and Amy Prunuske from the Medical College of Wisconsin.
Heidi SchutzSpring 2018
Heidi SchutzSpring 2018
Heidi Schutz, assistant professor of biology, published a paper in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, titled “Locomotor activity, growth hormones, and systemic robusticity: An investigation of cranial vault thickness in mouse lines bred for high endurance running.”
Tom EdgarSpring 2018
Tom EdgarSpring 2018
Tom Edgar — visiting assistant professor of mathematics and associate professor of mathematics, respectively — published a note titled “Proof without words: Rearranged alternating harmonic series” in the College Mathematics Journal. Edgar also published an article in the Rocky Mountain Journal of Mathematics, titled “The distribution of the number of parts of m-ary partitions modulo m,” as well as an article in the April issue of Mathematics Magazine – “Staircase Series.”
Rick BarotSpring 2018
Colleen HackerWinter 2018
Colleen HackerWinter 2018
Colleen Hacker, professor of kinesiology, was featured in an Excelle Sports article titled "How one mental skills coach plans to motivate the U.S. women's hockey team to Olympic gold" in August 2017, ahead of the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, which began this month.
Bret UnderwoodWinter 2018
Bret UnderwoodWinter 2018
Bret Underwood, associate professor of physics, published a paper in the May edition of Physical Review D: “Consistent Cosmic Bubble Embeddings” with his collaborator Shajid Haque, about the types of bubble universes allowed in Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.
Tom EdgarWinter 2018
Tom EdgarWinter 2018
Tom Edgar, associate professor of mathematics, had an essay in the September issue of Math Horizons: “Happiness Is Integral But Not Rational.” Tom’s co-authors included two PLU alumni — Desiree Domini ’17 and Devon Johnson ’17 — as well as five undergraduates and one faculty member: Andre Bland, Zoe Cramer, Philip de Castro, Steven Klee, Joseph Koblitz, and Ranjani Sundaresan. Edgar also has a short note in the October issue of Mathematics Magazine: “Proof Without Words: Series of Perfect Powers.”
Rachid BenkhaltiWinter 2018
Renzhi CaoWinter 2018
Renzhi CaoWinter 2018
Renzhi Cao, assistant professor of computer science, just had an article accepted to Molecules‘ Bioorganic Chemistry section: “ProLanGO: protein function prediction using neural machine translation based on recurrent neural network.” Co-authors include computer science student Colton Freitas and PLU Assistant Professor of Business Leong Chan. Cao also had an article accepted in the International Journal of Computational Intelligence in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology: “SMISS: A protein function prediction server by integrating multiple sources.”
Justin LytleWinter 2018
Justin LytleWinter 2018
Justin Lytle, associate professor of chemistry, and undergraduate co-authors Gabrielle E. Kamm and Ashlee D. McGovern published an article in the June issue of LANGMUIR: “Rewriting Electron-Transfer Kinetics at Pyrolytic Carbon Electrodes Decorated with Nanometric Ruthenium Oxide.”
Eric FinneyWinter 2018
Eric FinneyWinter 2018
Eric Finney, visiting assistant professor of chemistry, published an article (with co-author Richard G. Finke) in the September issue of Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research: “Catalyst Sintering Kinetics Data: Is There a Minimal Chemical Mechanism Underlying Kinetics Previously Fit by Empirical Power-Law Expressions-and
if So, What are its Implications?”
Pauline Shanks KaurinWinter 2018
Lindsey NiceWinter 2018
Lindsey NiceWinter 2018
Lindsey Nice, assistant professor of marriage and family therapy, was selected for the 2017 Volunteer of the Year award from Washington Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, a Bellingham-based division of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.
Bradford AndrewsWinter 2018
Bradford AndrewsWinter 2018
Associate Professor Bradford Andrews, Kipp Godfrey ’14, and Greg Burtchard (former Mount Rainier National Park archaeologist) recently published “Berkeley Rockshelter Lithics: Understanding the Late Holocene Use of the Mount Rainier Area” in the Journal of Northwest Anthropology.
Katherine WileyWinter 2018
Saiyare Refaei '14 and Tess MatsukawaWinter 2018
Saiyare Refaei '14 and Tess MatsukawaWinter 2018
Saiyare Refaei ’14, coordinator for sustainability integration, and Tess Matsukawa, resident director, presented on intersectional environmental justice education and programming at the Washington and Oregon Higher Education Sustainability Conference on Feb. 7-8 in Portland.
Jordan LevyWinter 2018
Jordan LevyWinter 2018
Jordan Levy recentlyJordan Levy, assistant professor of anthropology, recently published “Schoolteachers and National ‘Public’ Education in Honduras: Navigating the Reforms and Re-Founding the State” in the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology.
Tom HuelsbeckWinter 2018
Northwest Undergraduate ConferenceWinter 2018
Northwest Undergraduate ConferenceWinter 2018
In November, Richard "Bo" Frohock '19, Elsa Kienberger '19, Jamie Orefice '18 and Kate Wilson '18 were invited to present at the Northwest Undergraduate Conference in the Humanities in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho. Two of them brought home awards for their respective papers: Orefice earned Best Critical Writing Paper and Frohock earned an Honorable Mention for Critical Work.
Jes TaklaWinter 2018
Ksenija Simic-MullerWinter 2018
Ksenija Simic-MullerWinter 2018
Ksenija Simic-Muller, associate professor of mathematics, gave several talks related to social justice and math, at the Mathematical Association of America Pacific Northwest Division Meeting in Spokane (June 2017) and the 10th annual Northwest Conference on Teaching for Social Justice (October 2017). She also has the Mathlete Coaching Project in full swing, with seven coaches working with Keithley Middle School students. The project is funded by the Tensor-SUMMA grant from the MAA.
Julie SmithWinter 2018
Faculty Excellence AwardWinter 2018
Faculty Excellence AwardWinter 2018
The follow faculty members received Faculty Excellence Awards: Ksenija Simic-Muller, associate professor of mathematics, received the Faculty Excellence Award in Mentoring; Sara Finley, assistant professor of psychology, and Jennifer Jenkins, associate professor of German, both received the K.T. Tang Faculty Excellence Award in Research; Priscilla St. Clair, associate professor of economics and chair of global studies, received the Faculty Excellence Award in Advising; Keith Cooper, associate professor of philosophy, received the Faculty Excellence Award in Service; Zachary Lyman, associate professor of music, received the Faculty Excellence Award in Teaching.
Carol Sheffels Quigg AwardWinter 2018
Carol Sheffels Quigg AwardWinter 2018
The following Lutes accepted the Carol Sheffels Quigg Award for Excellence and Innovation: Karen McConnell and Harry Papadopoulos accepted a Quigg Award on behalf of the Department of Kinesiology, to support ongoing recruitment and retention of transfer students as part of a multi-year, collaborative partnership with Pierce College. Mary Duvall accepted a Quigg Award on behalf of the Student and Alumni Connections team, to support further development of the recent merger of career advising and alumni engagement services.
Distinguished Staff AwardWinter 2018
Distinguished Staff AwardWinter 2018
The following Lutes received Distinguished Staff Awards this year: Joel Zylstra, director of community engagement and service; Christine Nicolai, administrative and communications coordinator in the Division of Natural Sciences; Tolu Taiwo, outreach and prevention coordinator in the Center for Gender Equity; Sean Horner, senior web developer in instructional technologies; Randy Evans, waste diversion supervisor in Facilities Management.
Tolu TaiwoWinter 2018
Tolu TaiwoWinter 2018
Angie Hambrick, assistant vice president for diversity, justice and sustainability, and Tolu Taiwo, outreach and prevention coordinator in the Center for Gender Equity, presented their paper, "Navigating the Natural Hair Journey in White-Dominated Spaces," at the Association for the Study of Higher Education in November 2017. The paper examined ways to support black undergraduate women at predominately white institutions who are wearing their natural hair. The research team also presented "That Girl is Magic: Using Black Girl Magic as a Framework of Inclusion" at the National Women's Studies Association using "Black Girl Magic" as a tool for black undergraduate women to reclaim space at predominately white institutions.
Maria ChavezFall 2017
Maria ChavezFall 2017
Maria Chavez will be a featured speaker at the Pave the Way conference at Central Washington University on Oct. 19. Pave the Way will bring together educators, policymakers and community partners to ensure students receive the support they need to succeed, regardless of income, race, geography or other potential barriers.
Marit TrelstadFall 2017
Marit TrelstadFall 2017
Marit Trelstad, newly appointed chair of Lutheran studies and professor of religion, presented a paper at the largest conference of Luther research in the world in August. Leading up to the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, which is officially observed in October, the International Luther Congress was held in Wittenberg, Germany, and included events in Luther’s home and the Castle Church, famous for the Ninety-Five Theses.
Miho TakekawaFall 2017
Miho TakekawaFall 2017
Music lecturer Miho Takekawa brought free family concerts and workshops to the Orcas and Lopez island communities, thanks in part to a grant from the Washington State Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her band, Miho and Diego Duo, has been blending Latin and Japanese musical traditions since 2006, encouraging cultural understanding through music.
Dean WaldowFall 2017
Dean WaldowFall 2017
Dean Waldow, professor of chemistry, received a renewal for his Research in Undergraduate Institutions Award from the National Science Foundation. The award -- $188,000 over three years -- will fund nine student researchers, one small instrument, some equipment and supplies for his research group’s project “Dicarboximide-functionalized Oxanorbornyl Homopolymers and Diblock Copolymers for Use as Solid Polymer Electrolytes.” It will develop and study new polymer materials for use as membranes in lithium-ion batteries. Waldow also published an article in Polymer titled “Decoupling of ion conductivity from segmental dynamics in oligomeric ethylene oxide functionalized oxanorbornene dicarboximide homopolymers.” His co-authors include three PLU chemistry alumni: Marisa Adams ’14, Victoria Richmond ’14 and Douglas Smith ’15.
Jeff StuartFall 2017
Jenny JohnsonFall 2017
Joanne LisoskyFall 2017
Joanne LisoskyFall 2017
Joanne Lisosky, professor of communication, will be serving her third Fulbright teaching award at the College of Science, Technology and Applied Arts in Trinidad and Tobago this fall. This was the first community college to institute a journalism program on the islands five years ago. Lisosky has been asked to help the school develop a curriculum for certifying working journalists. Lisosky also served a Fulbright teaching journalism in Kampala, Uganda (2003), and Baku, Azerbaijan (2011).
Chung-Shing Lee
Chung-Shing Lee
Chung-Shing Lee joins PLU as dean of the School of Business. He will continue serving as a business professor. Lee brings to the table extensive research experience.
Previously, he worked as visiting professor in the College of Management and as a research associate in the Institute of Knowledge Service and Innovation at Yuan Ze University in Taiwan. Lee has also worked as a faculty research associate in the Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE) at the University of Maryland.
His research has been featured in dozens of national and international journals, earning him many awards. Most recently, he received the Research Award from the School of Business at PLU for the 2011-12 academic year.
Education
- D.Sc., engineering and technology management, The George Washington University, 1997
- M.A., economics, University of Maryland, 1985
- B.A., economics, National Taiwan University, 1980
Rae Linda Brown
Rae Linda Brown
Rae Linda Brown, Ph.D., joins PLU as its provost after eight years at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where she served as associate provost. There she restructured the study away program, internationalized the curriculum and helped develop new core curriculum. She also revamped LMU’s Disability Support Services, Academic Resource Center, University Honors Program and the Office of National and International Fellowships.
Previously, Brown worked at University of California, Irvine as the Robert and Marjorie Rawlins Chair of the Department of Music and as faculty assistant to the executive vice chancellor and provost.
"We are delighted to welcome Rae Linda to PLU, and we look forward to applying her vision and experience to advancing the distinctive mission of PLU," said PLU President Thomas W. Krise, Ph.D.
Education
- B.S., music education, University of Connecticut, 1976
- M.A., African American studies and music, Yale University, 1980
- Ph.D., musicology, Yale University, 1987
Terry Bergeson
Terry Bergeson
Terry Bergeson joins PLU as interim dean of the School of Education and Kinesiology with enthusiasm and extensive education experience.
"I am proud and excited for the opportunity to help build on the excellence of PLU’s undergraduate and graduate education programs and the long-term, productive school and district partnerships that undergird our work," Bergeson said.
She previously served as Washington state superintendent of public instruction from 1997 to 2009, as well as executive director of the Washington Commission on Student Learning from 1993 to 1996. She also worked as the executive director of the Central Kitsap School District, as the vice president and president of the Washington Education Association, as a counselor at Gault Junior High and Lincoln High School in Tacoma, as a teacher and counselor at schools throughout Massachusetts and Alaska, as executive director of the San Francisco School Alliance, and as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Washington Tacoma.
Education
- Ph.D., education, University of Washington, 1982
- M.A., counseling and guidance, Western Michigan University, 1969
- B.A., English, Emmanuel College in Boston, 1964
Kevin O’Brien
Kevin O’Brien
Kevin O’Brien has been named the new dean of humanities. He first joined PLU 11 years ago, straight out of graduate school. O’Brien says he was excited for the opportunity to teach both religion and environmental studies as interconnected subjects.
Since that time, he’s served as associate professor of Christian ethics and also as chair of environmental studies. He teaches courses in Christian ecological ethics, comparative ethics, religion and the environment.
He also won the K.T. Tang Faculty Excellence Award in Research for 2015-16. Now, he says he will work with his team to remind everyone the importance of the humanities, which relate to all subjects of study, he says, and make students’ worlds bigger."I came here because I was so excited to teach both religion and environmental studies,” he said. “I stayed because of the amazing colleagues and students."
Education
- Ph.D., ethics and society, Emory University in Atlanta, 2006
- M.A., theology, Union Theological Seminary in New York City, 2001
- B.A., religion, Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, 1999
Andy Foltz
Andrea Munro, Ph.D.
Andrea Munro, Ph.D.
Assistant professor of chemistry, she is part of a partnership that seeks to advance solar energy. Four Pacific Northwest universities, including PLU, will research an emerging technology for improving efficiency of photovoltaic solar cells, thanks to a $240,000 M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust grant.
Jon Grahe, Ph.D.Winter 2017
Jon Grahe, Ph.D.Winter 2017
Professor of Psychology Jon Grahe, Ph.D., presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s annual conference in San Antonio on Jan. 20. His presentation was titled “Evaluating Institutional Variation and Emerging Adulthood: A Preregistered Hypothesis.”
Jan Weiss, Ph.D.Winter 2017
Jan Weiss, Ph.D.Winter 2017
Assistant Professor of Education Jan Weiss, Ph.D., earned a Fulbright Specialist Award for work in Namibia in 2017. She’s already received two previous ones for past work there. The Fulbright Specialist Program links U.S. scholars and professionals to their counterparts overseas, allowing them to engage in short-term collaborative projects at eligible institutions abroad.
Maria Chavez-Pringle, Ph.D.Winter 2017
Maria Chavez-Pringle, Ph.D.Winter 2017
In October 2016, Maria Chavez-Pringle, Ph.D., associate professor of politics and government, participated in a panel presentation on the United States presidential election at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. Chavez-Pringle was also quoted in numerous national news articles about the 2016 election and was featured as NPR's “Source of the Week” in August 2016.
Jen Jenkins, Ph.D.
Tolu TaiwoWinter 2017
Tolu TaiwoWinter 2017
Tolu Taiwo, outreach and prevention coordinator in the Center for Gender Equity, was honored by Region V of NASPA, Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. She earned the NUFP Champion Award, honoring her instrumental work developing PLU’s chapter of the NASPA Undergraduate Fellows Program, which helps mentor students -- primarily with marginalized identities -- who are interested in student affairs work.
Bridget Yaden, Ph.D.Winter 2017
Grace ZimmermanWinter 2017
Grace ZimmermanWinter 2017
Grace Zimmerman ’18 was one of 2,800 students nationwide to earn the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship. More than 10,000 people apply each year. Zimmerman is the only PLU student to receive the award, and only the second Lute to earn it in a decade.
Colleen Hacker, Ph.D.Winter 2017
Colleen Hacker, Ph.D.Winter 2017
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of soccer in Washington state, Professor of Kinesiology Colleen Hacker, Ph.D., was honored in September as one of the top 50 influential people in the sport. She also was featured on the Olympic Channel, on a show broadcast worldwide called “Gold Metal Entourage.” The episode, which aired in early October, highlighted Hacker’s work with athletes and teams over the course of five Olympic games. Hacker also has been elected to Distinguished Fellowship in the National Academies of Practice in the Academy of Psychology. She will be inducted March 2017 in Philadelphia.
Shannon SeidelSpring 2017
Shannon SeidelSpring 2017
Shannon Seidel, assistant professor of biology, created a highly accurate software tool (Decibel Analysis for Research in Teaching or DART) with co-researchers to measure and analyze the sounds of a classroom in order to report how much time is spent in active learning mode.
Christine MoonSpring 2017
Teresa CiabattariSpring 2017
Korine FujiwaraSpring 2017
Ed CastroSpring 2017
Maria Chavez
Maria Chavez
In October, Dr. Maria Chavez gave a talk on The (de)Americanization of Latino Youth at the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy at Washington State University. Dr. Chavez, coauthor of Living the Dream: New Immigration Policies and the Lives of Undocumented Latino Youth, expanded upon her recent TEDx talk on U.S. immigration policy, and address the implications around the approximately five million undocumented Latino youth who are being raised in the U.S.
Samuel Torvend
Samuel Torvend
In November, Samuel Torvend, University Chair in Lutheran Studies, spoke on the “Forgotten Luther” at a national conference in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the German Embassy to the United States and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Torvend addressed Luther's frequently “forgotten” critique of emerging global capitalism and predatory banking practices. Torvend had been invited in 2012 to participate in the Radicalizing Reformation Project by Dr. Ulrich Duchrow of the University of Heidelberg as one of only four U.S. scholars to join the international consortium of Luther scholars from Europe, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. His resulting chapter, “Common property for all who are needy: Eucharistic practice in the midst of economic injustice," was published in Volume 3: Politics and Economics of Liberation (Munster: LIT Verlag, 2015).
Robert Marshall Wells
Robert Marshall Wells
Associate Professor of Communication and Director of the Center for Media Studies at PLU, was chosen as a fellow for an entertainment industry seminar in Hollywood. One of only 20 professors from colleges and universities nationwide selected by the Television Academy Foundation, Dr. Wells spent a week in November learning about the entertainment industry from some of the top professionals in the business. "I'm thrilled and honored to have been chosen for such a prestigious fellowship," said Wells, the co-founder of MediaLab and founding director of the Center for Media Studies. "Meeting and talking firsthand with entertainment industry executives will help better inform out efforts in media here at PLU."
Bradford Andrews
Bradford Andrews
The Associate Professor of Anthropology published, published “La habilidad de los artesanos de navajas prismáticas y su relación con la intensidad productiva: un análisis comparativo de datos del periodo clásico en Teotihuacán y del periodo epiclásico en Xochicalco” (The Skill of Prismatic Blade Making Craftsmen and its Relationship to Productive Intensity: A Comparative Analysis of Data from Classic Period Teotihuacan and Epiclassic Period Xochicalco) in the Mexican Anthropology journal Cuicuilco. This publication is his first journal article in Spanish.
Cameron Bennett
Cameron Bennett
Cameron Bennett, Dean of the School of Arts and Communication and Professor of Music, has been reappointed as a Commissioner of the Washington State Arts Commission. Bennett has served on various arts and culture organizations, including the Arts & Culture Grants Committee of The Greater Tacoma Community Foundation, Music Teachers National Association and Upper Arlington Cultural Arts Commission.
Brian Galante
Christine Moon
Christine Moon
Psychology Professor Christine Moon’s research, “Language Learning Starts Before Birth,” was named the No. 8 science story of 2013 by Science News magazine. By hooking up newborns to special pacifiers that detected sucking rates, Moon and her colleagues found that fetuses learn to discern native vowel sounds from foreign ones.
Elisabeth Esmiol Wilson
Elisabeth Esmiol Wilson
On Dec. 6, Assistant Professor Elisabeth Esmiol Wilson received the Educator of the Year award from the Washington Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. The award honors a faculty member who demonstrates creative and innovative teaching abilities, fosters and maintains strong relationships with students, and is published in the field of marriage and family therapy.
Elisabeth Ward
Elisabeth Ward
Elisabeth Ward, director of the Scandinavian Cultural Center, had an article published in the July 15, 2014, issue of LÖGBERG HEIMSKRINGLA, The Icelandic Community Newspaper, the oldest continuously published newspaper in Canada. The article, titled “The Rise, Fall and Rise of Icelandic Banking,” focused on Professor Hilmar Þór Hilmarsson, a guest lecturer at PLU in April.
Troy Storfjell
Troy Storfjell
Troy Storfjell, Associate Professor of Norwegian and Scandinavian Studies, had a chapter published in L’Image du Sápmi., Vol. II: “The Ambivalence of the Wild: Figuring Sápmi and the Sámi in Pre-Colonial and Colonial Discourse to the Eighteenth Century.” Storfjell also gave a talk titled “Implementing Indigenist Collaboration in the Pacific Northwest (USA): Pacific Lutheran University and the Puyallup Tribe” at the Crossroads in Indigenous Research Conference at the Centre for Sámi Studies at UiT Norway's Arctic University in Tromsø, Norway.
Rick Barot
Suzanne Crawford O'Brien
Suzanne Crawford O'Brien
Suzanne Crawford O'Brien, professor of Religion and Culture and author of Coming Full Circle: Spirituality and Wellness Among Native Communities in Western Washington, gave a talk on American Indian culture and its connection with the land in the Pacific Northwest as part of the Cathlapotle Plankhouse’s Second Sunday speaking series. O'Brien explained the deep connection Chinookan and Coast Salish communities have had with their lands, the historical struggles they've been through and their contemporary efforts to safeguard the environment and their food sources.
Dr. Kate Luther
Dr. Kate Luther
Dr. Kate Luther, Assistant Professor of Sociology, was featured on NerdScholars’ new list of “40 Under 40: Professors Who Inspire.” Luther was nominated by her colleagues at PLU, who described her as dynamic, involved and committed and said she has inspired countless students to major in Sociology. “In fact, we see a drop in the number of our majors if we ever take her out of the Intro to Sociology teaching rotation,” said Dr. Joanna Gregson, PLU Professor of Sociology and Sociology Department Chair.
Dr. David Ward
Dr. David Ward
Dr. David Ward, Associate Professor and Program Director for PLU’s Marriage and Family Therapy program, was the keynote speaker at the Illinois Association for Marriage and Family Therapy State Conference on March 5. His topic was “The Power of Hope to Affect Change.”
Melannie Denise Cunningham
Melannie Denise Cunningham
Melannie Denise Cunningham, Director of Multicultural Recruiting, delivered the keynote address at the City of Tacoma’s 27th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Celebration on Jan. 19. Cunningham was a driving force in the event’s creation in the late 1980s, when she was the city’s Equal Opportunity Employment Officer.
Dr. Martin Wurm and Dr. Neal Johnson
Dr. Martin Wurm and Dr. Neal Johnson
Economics professors Dr. Martin Wurm and Dr. Neal Johnson presented their second annual economic forecast at the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber’s 2015 Horizons Economic Forecast breakfast at the Greater Tacoma Convention & Trade Center on Jan. 15.
Dr. Nolen Gertz
Dr. Nolen Gertz
Dr. Nolen Gertz, Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy, was interviewed by the BBC about his book The Philosophy of War and Exile. (Listen to the interview.) He also has written articles for the Australian Broadcasting Company’s Religion and Ethics website on issues such as just war theory and the crisis in Gaza and how faith is presented on television, and has published articles or chapters on drone warfare, censorship and propaganda in World War I and how the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry can help us better understand Nietzsche.
Dr. Amy Young and Dr. Justin Eckstein
Dr. Amy Young and Dr. Justin Eckstein
Associate Professor of Communication Amy Young and Clinical Assistant Professor of Communication Justin Eckstein published two pieces on rhetoric and food in the February 2015 edition of Communication & Critical/Cultural Studies, one of the top journals in the communication field. The first paper, “Rhetoric & Foodways,” outlines the potential for a rhetorical examination of food politics; the second paper, “Cooking, Celebrity Chefs, and Public Intellectuals,” examines the roles of celebrity chefs who are products of consumer capitalism versus the Public Chef Intellectuals, whose focus is on teaching cooking techniques.
Dr. Douglas E. Oakman
Dr. Rebekah Mergenthal
Dr. Jan Weiss
Dr. Jan Weiss
Three proposals from University of Namibia faculty members and a fourth from a doctoral student were accepted to the Comparative and International Education Society Conference in Washington, D.C., thanks in large part to the work of PLU Assistant Professor of Education and 2014 Fulbright Scholar Jan Weiss, who engaged and supported the faculty groups to help them develop coherent 750-word abstracts, and accompanied the four UNAM scholars who comprised the Namibian delegation to the March conference.
JP Avila
Dr. Erik Hammerstrom
Dr. Gregory Youtz
Dr. Joanne Lisosky
Dr. Daniel (Deej) Heath
Dr. Daniel (Deej) Heath
Associate Professor of Mathematics Daniel (Deej) Heath will be recognized with the 2015 Carl B. Allendoerfer Award, a national award sponsored by the Mathematical Association, at the MathFest in August. This represents the second recipient from PLU; Associate Professor of Mathematics Jessica Sklar was the first.
Dr. Richard Nance
Dr. Richard Nance
PLU’s Choir of the West, conducted by Professor of Music and Director of Choral Studies Richard Nance, brought back the grand prize from the Fifth Annual Anton Bruckner Choir Competition and Festival in Linz, Austria. Nineteen choirs from 12 countries took part in the competition, with the Choir of the West achieving the overall highest score. “Compliments from the judging panel and the other participants were very positive, and as I told the choir, we made a difference for everyone that heard us sing,” Nance said. In addition to the Grand Prize, PLU took home gold awards in the Sacred Music and Mixed Choir divisions; PLU’s Chamber Singers (eight singers from the Choir of the West) won Gold in the Vocal Ensemble division; and both PLU choirs were selected to perform in the Grand Prize competition with five other choirs.
Dr. Chung-Shing Lee
Dr. Chung-Shing Lee
Due to his outstanding research contribution to the field of technology and innovation management, Dr. Chung-Shing Lee, Professor of Business and Associate Dean of the School of Business, was invited to serve on the Editorial Board of the Technological Forecasting & Social Change (TF&SC), an international journal published by world-leading publisher Elsevier. TF&SC is ranked among the top journals in technology and innovation management. It’s listed on the Social Sciences Citation Index and ranked as an A-level journal on Harzing and Australian Business Deans Council Journal Quality Lists. His initial appointment will be for three years.
Dr. Jon Grahe
Dr. Jon Grahe
Psychology Professor Jon Grahe has been elected the 2015-16 president-elect of Psi Chi, the international honor society in psychology. His three-year term began in May 2015; he’ll serve as president-elect in 2015-16, president during 2016-17 and past president from 2017-18. Grahe is a passionate advocate for undergraduate participation in crowd-sourcing science opportunities and a supporter of open science. He currently serves as a councilor in the Psychology Division of the Council for Undergraduate Research, is the managing executive editor for The Journal of Social Psychology and has been the Psi Chi Western Regional Vice President since 2011.”This is an opportunity to serve my discipline, including students and peers,” Grahe said. “Since I arrived on the Psi Chi Board of Directors as vice president four years ago, I have advanced an agenda to increase research opportunities and participation (including crowd-sourcing projects) for our members.”
Dr. Ufuk Ince
Dr. Ufuk Ince
Assistant Professor of Business Ufuk Ince, CFA, has been elected president of the CFA Society Seattle for the 2015-16 term. Ince and his team will lead the 980-member organization in its mission to advance the investment profession in the Puget Sound region in technical competence and professional integrity. Ince specializes in financial derivatives and investments and is a CFA charter holder and Registered Investment Advisor in the state of Washington. He joined the CFA Society Seattle in 2003, soon after earning his CFA designation. Ince said his deep involvement with the CFA Society is an opportunity to bring industry, students and universities together. “I have seen many Finance students— including those at PLU—get involved in the global CFA community in various ways, and the impact on their professional formation and career opportunities has been significant. At the same time, the finance industry is happy to engage with talented students early in their careers via internships, scholarships, competitions and networking. It is a win-win-win for both sides and the financial markets.”
Dr. Sara Finley
Dr. Sara Finley
Assistant Professor of Psychology Dr. Sara Finley presented a weeklong graduate course and colloquium at the University of Leipzig in June. Finley, whose cognitive research in language is gaining international attention, presented a course investigating how to integrate theoretical and experimental approaches to understanding phonological representations and the typology. “One of the best things about being in academia is the ability to travel and connect with people all over the world,” Finley said. “I bring all of these experiences into the classroom and my lab.”
Dr. Lynn Hunnicutt
Dr. Lynn Hunnicutt
Professor of Economics Lynn Hunnicutt edited "Redefining the Paradigm: Faculty Models to Support Student Learning," a New American Colleges and Universities monograph that encourages colleges and universities to more effectively structure departments to address changes in higher education and better support student learning. The project is part of a grant the NAC&U had from the Teagle Foundation; Hunnicutt and Associate Provost for Undergraduate Programs Jan Lewis facilitated PLU's participation in the grant, with help from Cameron Bennett, Ann Auman, Gina Hames and Lisa Henderson.
Bridget Yaden
Bridget Yaden
Through her work as a board member for Washington Association for Language Teaching, Bridget Yaden, Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies, worked extensively to help pass Senate Bill No. 6424, which Gov. Jay Inslee signed on March 27. Thanks in part to Yaden’s work coordinating testing for thousands of high school students statewide who have received credit for their language proficiency, the state now will award a new Seal of Biliteracy to high-school graduates who become proficient in a language besides English. (That’s Yaden, second from right in the back row, behind her son, Anderson, who attends a bilingual elementary school.) (Photo courtesy of Bridget Yaden.)
Kathy Russell
Sven Tuzovic
Sven Tuzovic
Dr. Sven Tuzovic, Associate Professor of Marketing, is the co-author of two recent publications: with Jochen Wirtz and Volker Kuppelwieser, (2014), “The Role of Marketing in Today’s Enterprises,” Journal of Service Management, Vol. 25, No. 2, 171-194 (read more here) and, with Kuppelwieser, Meri Simpson and Joerg Finsterwalder, (2014), “From ‘Free’ to Fee: Acceptability of Airline Ancillary Fees and the Effects on Customer Behavior,” Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Vol. 21, No. 2, 98-107 (read more here).
Tuzovic also was selected by The Advertising Educational Foundation’s 2014 Visiting Professor Program (VPP) Selection Committee as one of 15 professors to participate in this year’s VPP, held June 2-13.
Rachel Haxtema
Jan Weiss
Jan Weiss
During her Fulbright Fellowship in Namibia, Assistant Education Professor Jan Weiss was featured on the U.S. Embassy-Namibia’s Facebook page for facilitating a classroom-management workshop centered on strategies that promote positive connections between learners and teachers.
Mike Hillis
Mike Hillis
Associate Dean of Education Mike Hillis has been elected President of the Association of Independent Liberal Arts Colleges for Teacher Education, billed as the voice of teacher preparation in independent institutions across the nation. Read his “From the President” posts at http://bit.ly/1phnQlZ.
Tyler Travillian
Tyler Travillian
Tyler Travillian, Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics, had an article and a review accepted, both in A-list journals:
- 1: Article: “In the Belly of the Beast: A Note on Seneca’s Thyestes 1032-1033,” Mnemosyne.
- 2: Review: Priapées. Text établi, traduit et commenté par Louis Callebat. Étude métrique par Jean Soubiran. Paris: Les Belles Lettres 2012. XCII, 315 z.T. Doppels. (Collection des Universités de France. Association Guillaume Budé.) 59. Gnomon.
Lisa Marcus
Lisa Marcus
Lisa Marcus, Associate Professor of English and Chair of the Women's and Gender Studies Program, participated as a Fellow at the 19th annual Holocaust Educational Foundation Summer Institute on the Holocaust and Jewish Civilization. The intensive two-week course of study at Northwestern University was designed to broaden and deepen the background of current and prospective Holocaust educators.
Dr. Joanna Gregson
Dr. Joanna Gregson
Joanna Gregson, Chair of PLU Sociology, was featured in The New York Times in July. She and her research partner, Dr. Jennifer Lois, also published “Sneers and Leers: The Gendered Sexual Stigma of Romance Authors,” about their research on the gendered stigma of romance authors; it was the lead article in the top sociology journal Gender & Society.