Clark
Named UW Adviser of the Year
Dalton's
Korean Adventure
Simpson
Honored by Fellow Journalists
Listing of Additional A&S Awards and Honors
Clark
Named UW Adviser of the Year
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| Judi Clark |
Students, faculty, and staff in the School of Art knew it all along. Now, thanks to the Association of Professional Advisers and Counselors (APAC), the rest of the campus knows: Judith Clark is an exceptional academic adviser. APAC recently selected Clark as its UW Adviser of the Year.
“I was really thrilled, and really surprised,” says Clark, director of academic advising and student services in the School of Art. “All of the advisers on campus are amazingly dedicated, so it means a lot to get this recognition from them.“
It doesn’t hurt that Clark was once a School of Art student herself. She was completing her master’s degree in art history when the School offered her an advising position. Although she had considered pursuing a PhD, Clark recognized that she was more motivated by people than by research and decided to take the job. That was in 1990.
“It’s been the perfect job for me,” she says. “I not only get to participate in art-related activities but also work with students interested in the same things I’m interested in. And I like the fact that I never know from day to day what I’ll be dealing with.”
The School of Art has among the most majors of any University department—the current figure is 1,200 majors—keeping Clark and the School’s other adviser, Matthew Campbell, extremely busy. Yet Clark has found the time to create new programs that benefit students.
“I’ve been lucky enough to have directors who said, ‘Get creative, do some things you’d like to do,’” explains Clark. “So I have.”
One of Clark’s most visible projects has been the Art on Loan Program, through which UW departments and units can display artworks created by School of Art students. More than 900 Art on Loan artworks are currently on view in buildings across campus.
Clark also has created several internship programs, including the Artist-on-Loan Program through which undergraduate and graduate students serve as interns in K-12 classrooms. And she spearheaded the School’s annual open house, which is an opportunity for the community to visit the School for a day and enjoy an impressive slate of activities. Now she is developing a new organization for School of Art students and participating in a major national conference concerning the arts in education.
With all that she’s done, Clark says it always comes back to the students. “The nice thing about my job is that I get to have a relationship with students over a four- or five-year period,” she says. “I watch the growth that takes place in students and it is so amazing. It is extremely satisfying to know that this growth is happening in the place where I work.”
UW graduate student Toby Dalton, working toward a PhD in political science, was ready to do some field work. He applied to the prestigious Luce Scholars Program, which provides stipends and internships in Asia to 18 American students each year. Selected as a Luce Scholar in March, he headed to Korea in August.
“I’m currently a visiting research fellow at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies, a think tank in Seoul focused on North-South Korean relations and security in northeast Asia,” says Dalton, who describes his main area of interest as “civil-military relations—how military institutions gain, wield, and let go of political power.”
Since arriving in Korea, Dalton has found time to rock climb, play on a soccer team, travel, and—most important—improve his Korean language skills. “I took an intensive intro course in Korean at the UW this summer,” he says, “but while it gave me some foundation, my biggest daily frustration (and motivation) is language. I’m now taking Korean lessons three days a week, so hopefully I’ll continue to improve to at least a conversational level.”
What has most intrigued Dalton since arriving in Korea is the country’s mix of traditional, modern, Confucian, Christian, American, and other influences. “I’m constantly surprised by some of the interesting ways—to foreign eyes anyway—this mix comes out,” he says. “Recently, for example, I attended Korean thanksgiving (called Chusok), which combines a typical harvest celebration with honoring relatives. Much of it is ritualistic and very traditional, but they also served Coke.”
Another surprise, adds Dalton, is the motorcycle porters who “wheel through traffic with huge loads and no regard for their own lives, or those of the hapless pedestrians on the sidewalk.”
Dalton will stay in Korea through next summer, returning to the UW in autumn 2002.
Simpson Honored by Fellow Journalists
When the World Trade Center was destroyed on September 11, journalists were there to report on the tragedy. As professionals, they documented what they saw. As individuals, many were as shaken as the rest of us.
Roger Simpson, associate professor of communications, recognizes the challenges journalists face in reporting on tragic events—and how important it is for them to be ethical and compassionate in their reporting. For his innovative efforts to raise students’ awareness of these issues, Simpson has been honored this year with the Society of Professional Journalists’ Distinguished Teaching Award.
About four years ago, Simpson first tapped the UWOnCue Program—which aims to make a difference in communication through art—to help prepare his students for reporting on emotionally charged situations. Actors from UWOnCue, all UW students themselves, presented scenes in Simpson’s class that were similar to those journalists face. The actors became grieving spouses or stunned survivors of a violent crime; Simpson’s students had to decide how they should, as journalists, approach these individuals. Because the characters were no longer just examples in a book, the lessons were powerful. Simpson has continued to use interactive drama in his classes.
Simpson also founded and heads the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, based in the UW School of Communications, which serves as a resource for students, journalists, and news organizations seeking information about victim and trauma issues. The Center recently received a $250,000 grant to open a branch in New York City to work with journalists there, including freelancers, who are trying to cope with the emotional strains of covering the World Trade Center story.
Additional Awards, Honors, and Professorships
Laada Bilaniuk, assistant professor of anthropology, has received the Shklar Research Fellowship from the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University and an IREX (International Research and Exchanges Board) Individual Advanced Research Grant.
The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture received the first annual Western Museums Association Award for Exhibition Excellence for its exhibit, “Entwined with Life: Native American Basketry.” The award is given to an exhibition that furthers the study and understanding of the American West, and is underwritten by the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University.
Michael Gelb, professor of chemistry, along with Kohei Yokoyama, research assistant professor of chemistry and Wesley Van Voorhis of the Department of Medicine, recently received a presitigious grant from the Medicines for Malaria Venture for work on developing anti-malarial agents.
Jack Haney, professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, has been appointed Supernumerary Fellow of the Queen’s College, Oxford, in recognition of his contributions to scholarship, especially his four volumes of Russian folk tales.
Peter Hoff, assistant professor of statistics and core member of the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences, won the Leonard J. Savage Award for best doctoral dissertation of the year in Bayesian Statistical Theory and Methods. The award is co-sponsored by the American Statistical Association, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the National Science Foundation, and the International Society for Bayesian Analysis.
Bryan Jones, professor of political science, has been awarded (with co-author Frank R. Baumgartner) the Aaron Wildavsky Award for the book, Agendas and Instability in American Politics, published in 1993. The award is given by the American Political Science Association Policy Section for “a book or article published in the last ten to twenty years that continues to influence the study of public policy.”
Meany Hall for the Performing Arts and The UW World Series was named Best Performing Arts Group or Venue in the recent CitySearch “Best of Seattle” contest.
Paul Moore, musical director of the Dance Program, has won the Sweetwater.com “Almost Famous Songwriting Contest,” for which he and his band, Very/Special Forces, were awarded $6,000 worth of recording equipment.
Shahid Naeem, associate professor of zoology, has been named a fellow of the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program, which provides training for experts in a range of environmental disciplines to improve their outreach and communications to the public, news media, and corporate, government, and science communities. The program, administered by Oregon State University, is funded through a grant from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
Kevin Quinn, assistant professor of political science and core member of the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences, was recently awarded the 2001 Harold Gosnell Prize by the American Political Science Association. For more about Quinn’s work, see “The Supreme Court in Flux—Always” in this newsletter.
Mark Smith, assistant professor of political science, is co-winner of the 2001 Leon Epstein Award of the American Political Science Association, Political Organizations and Parties Section, for the book American Business and Political Power. The award is given annually to honor the best book published in the field of political organizations and parties during the previous two calendar years.
Akio Takamori, associate professor of ceramics in the School of Art, received a $35,000 first place grant from the Virginia A Groot Foundation. The grant allows a ceramic sculptor or sculpture artist the opportunity to devote a substantial period of time to the development of his or her work. Three grants are offered each year.
[Autumn 2001 - Table of Contents]