Campus Connections

Issue Date: February 28, 2005

News and Notices

Inaugural: Affirming our past, looking toward the future

The campus community is invited to join the celebration when Thomas J. Hochstettler will be inaugurated as president of Lewis & Clark on Sunday, March 6, at 11 a.m. in Pamplin Sports Center. The event takes place in conjunction with Family Weekend and the 40th annual International Fair.

An academic inaugural affirms an institution’s past, defines its vision and looks toward the future. The ceremony is also a festive occasion, with colorful academic gowns, caps and hoods, and speeches and music. Delegates representing more than 50 colleges and universities around the world—including Yale University, Wellesley College, Harvard University, Cornell University, and University of Cologne—will gather as the College officially welcomes its 23rd president on board.

Hochstettler’s inaugural address is titled “The Imperative to Explore.” The talk will focus on the idea of exploration in an age of accelerating change and at a time of information overload. In particular, he will discuss how liberal arts institutions provide a context—cultural, scientific, and historical—to help students navigate the changing world through learning, scholarship, and preparation for world citizenship.

The true story behind “Hotel Rwanda”

Paul Rusesabagina’s story inspired the Academy Award-nominated film “Hotel Rwanda.” The entrepreneur and businessman will speak on Wednesday, March 2, at 7 p.m. in Agnes Flanagan Chapel. The event is free and open to the public.

In the 1990s, Rusesabagina managed the four-star Mille Collines hotel in Rwanda’s capital city of Kigali. In 1994, the assassination of an ethnic Hutu leader plunged the nation into genocide when Hutu militias killed ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus. When Rusesabagina saw genocide sweeping the nation, he converted the luxury hotel into a refugee camp and housed more than 1,200 Tutsis and Hutus. He has been called “the African Schindler” for his efforts to shelter both his family—he is an ethnic Hutu married to a Tutsi— and the refugees during 100 days of bloodshed in the country that left an estimated one million people dead.

Student groups including Students Organized for Activities, Organization for Peace and Politics, Black Student Union, International Students at Lewis & Clark, Amnesty International, Student Leadership and Service, and Ethnic Student Services are sponsoring Rusesabagina’s lecture. For more information, contact Ashley Smith at ashleys@lclark.edu.

Poetry reading in Hoffman Gallery

Poets Vincent Wixon and Paul Merchant will read from their works in the Hoffman Gallery on Thursday, March 10, at 7 p.m. The readings are free and open to the public.

Vincent Wixon has been a teacher at Crater Lake High School and at the Shakespeare Institute in Ashland. In 1988, he was named Oregon Teacher of the Year. He is the author of a volume of poems, “Seed,” and a second collection will be published later this year. Wixon has been scholar in residence at the William Stafford Archives since 1993 and is coeditor with Paul Merchant of two volumes of William Stafford’s prose: “Crossing Unmarked Snow” and “The Answers Are Inside the Mountains.”

Paul Merchant is director of the William Stafford Archives. He has taught at the universities of Warwick, Tennessee, Mississippi, Wroclaw, and Wittenberg, and at the Northwest Writing Institute. Merchant has written or edited books on epic literature, Elizabethan drama, and Wendell Berry. He has published two volumes of translations from modern Greek. His poetry collection, titled “Bone From a Stag’s Heart” (Five Seasons Press, 1988), earned a British Poetry Book Society recommendation. Merchant coauthored two volumes with Lewis & Clark archivists Doug Erickson and Jeremy Skinner: a Lewis and Clark Expedition bibliography and a critical edition of Thomas Jefferson’s 1806 Report to Congress.

The College’s special collections department sponsors the reading. A keepsake broadside from each poet will be available for purchase at the event.

Oregon Center’s conversation series continues

The graduate school’s Middle East/South Asian Conversation Series continues on Wednesday, March 10, at 7:30 p.m. with Shahriar Ahmed, president of the Bilal Mosque Association in Beaverton.

The event takes place in the South Campus Conference Center commons and is sponsored by the Oregon Center for Inquiry and Social Innovation. For more information, contact the center at orcenter@lclark.edu or ext. 6099.

Mastering the keyboard

Evelyne Brancart, professor of music and chair of the piano department at Indiana University’s School of Music, will teach Lewis & Clark piano students in a series of public master classes. The sessions in Evans Music Center on Sunday, March 13, at 1 p.m. and 3:30 p.m., are free and open to the public.

“Master classes offer our students the opportunity to play repertoire for different artists,” says Orla McDonagh, instructor in music. “Our students will benefit tremendously from this opportunity to interact with someone of Evelyne Brancart’s caliber. The master class should be one of the highlights of their piano studies at Lewis & Clark.”

During her long career, Brancart has earned numerous honors including Belgium’s Laureate de La Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth. In competition, she earned prizes at the Queen Elizabeth, Montreal, and Gina Baccauer international competitions. Brancart studied with Eduardo del Pueyo, Maria Curcio, Menahem Pressler, and Leon Fleisher. She has given solo recitals in New York, London, Brussels, Madrid, Berlin, Vienna, and Moscow and has recorded for several classical labels, including Deutsche Grammophon. She has taught on the faculty at Eastman School of Music, University of New Mexico, Rice University, San Francisco Conservatory, and Aspen Music School.

For more information, contact McDonagh at ext. 7459 or orla@lclark.edu.

A national win and impressive regional results at mock trial competitions

Law school student teams recently took top honors in regional and national competitions. A student team took first place in the 2005 national tax moot court competition. The team’s top prize came in the best brief category at the competition in St. Petersburg, Florida, February 10–12.

Lewis & Clark’s brief was ruled best overall out of 16 submitted by law school teams from around the country. Third-year law student team members Jeff Henry, Michael Reid and Vanessa Usui were assigned a problem surrounding the appeal of a hypothetical case to the U. S. Supreme Court. This is the fourth time Lewis & Clark has brought home brief honors, including three other first prizes, over the past nine years. The tax section of the Florida state bar association sponsors the competition.

A different competition that same weekend yielded great results for the law school’s mock trial team. Second-year law students Oubonh Phomvisay and Kimberly Martin won the western regional annual mock trial competition, sponsored by the Texas Young Lawyers Association and the American College of Trial Lawyers. According to Lisa LeSage, adjunct law professor and assistant dean, the competition is one of the oldest and most prestigious in the nation, to which all ABA-accredited law schools are invited.

“More than 20 teams competed representing all Oregon and Washington law schools, and schools in Idaho, Nevada, and northern California,” says LeSage. “We faced fierce competition at the regionals, but our team beat competitors from law schools like Boalt, Hastings, Santa Clara, and the University of California at Davis with only two preliminary rounds and two elimination rounds.”

In late March, Phomvisay and Martin will represent Lewis & Clark at the national mock trial competition in San Antonio. Erin Kollar and Phil Duong B.A. ’96, both second-year law students, also competed at the regionals but did not advance to the elimination rounds.

Graduate student artworks on exhibit in Rogers Hall

Wall space on the second floor of Rogers Hall serves as display space for artwork by teacher education students. Eighteen works from M.A.T. elementary, middle level, and high school art interns are on view. Media include watercolor, painting, acrylic, photographs, caricatures, illustrations, and sculpted relief.

“All teachers need their own creative outlet and art teachers are especially in need of continuing their own visual exploration, no matter what the medium,” says Jan Glenn, adjunct instructor in education and coordinator of the exhibition. “In today's public education world, this self-renewal process is essential.” The current works are on view through the end of May.

Nadelson and Sussman give readings

Authors Scott Nadelson and Ellen Sussman will read from their works on Friday, March 4, at 7:30 p.m. in Armstrong Lounge.

Nadelson is the author of “Saving Stanley: The Brickman Stories” (Hawthorne Books and Literary Arts, 2004), which won the 2004 H.L. Davis award for short fiction. Nadelson’s fiction has appeared in American Literary Review, Carve Magazine, and The Best of Carve, Vol. 3.

Sussman is the author of “On a Night Like This” (Warner Books, 2004), her first novel. The readings are sponsored by the English department. For more information, contact Joanie May at ext. 7405.

Travel the road to wellness

Travel the “Road to Wellness” at the College’s annual benefits fair on Wednesday, March 2, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in Stamm. Special avenues of information will take visitors to a variety of information-laden destinations along the Sports and Wellness Freeway, Lifestyle Wellness Way, Feng Shui Circle, and Health Testing Loop. More than 20 wellness-related exhibitors will offer free screenings for glaucoma, stroke, and osteoporosis, along with acupuncture and massage demonstrations, and information on holistic health and nutrition. The event brings representatives from all of the College’s benefit plans to campus including medical, dental, life, disability, Personal Choice Account, and TIAA-CREF retirement plans. Vendors have provided a mixed bag of raffle prizes for the fair.

Honoring sustainability efforts

Lewis & Clark’s Sustainability Council invites submissions and nominations from the campus community for the 2005 Dautremont-Smith Prize for Innovative Approaches to Campus Sustainability.

The $500 annual prize is awarded to the individual or individuals whose work, as determined by the council, “promises to significantly improve the College’s sustainable and environmentally responsible practices and/or contributes substantially to environmental awareness and education of the campus community.” The deadline for submissions and nominations is March 15; the award will be announced on Earth Day, April 22.

The prize honors the work of Julian Dautremont-Smith ’03, who championed environmental issues at Lewis & Clark. He conducted an evaluation of the institution’s greenhouse gas emissions and spearheaded an initiative to use student fees to purchase carbon offsets as a means to reduce the College’s environmental impact. His efforts led to Lewis & Clark’s being the first campus in the nation to comply with the emissions targets called for in the Kyoto Protocol. For more information about the prize, e-mail Jay Odenbaugh, assistant professor of philosophy, at jay@lclark.edu.

IT offers spring classes

Information Technology offers ongoing computer training courses. During the next two weeks, these classes are available: Photoshop Elements for Photoshop Users, Trillium, and Beginning PowerPoint (two-part course). For more information, contact IT at ext. 7020.

Historical snapshot

In 1942, trustees named Morgan Odell president, purchased Fir Acres estate from the Lloyd Frank family for $46,000, and voted to change the institution’s name to Lewis & Clark College.

View more College milestones online.

People News

Published, presented, honors and achievements

Faculty and staff serve as ambassadors for the College through their publications, presentations, awards, grants, and other accomplishments. Recent highlights include:

In January Katharina Altpeter-Jones, assistant professor of German, presented a paper titled “Inscribing Gender: Marital Violence in Late Medieval and Early Modern German Text and Image.” She delivered the paper at a conference in Leeds, England, organized by the Gender and Medieval Studies Group at the University of Leeds.

In February, Stephen Dow Beckham, Dr. Robert B. Pamplin Jr. Professor of History, gave a lecture in Salem as part of Oregon’s 146th birthday and to mark the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Beckham’s talk centered on his book “Lewis and Clark: From the Rockies to the Pacific.”

Emily Clark, adjunct professor of history, will publish a new book titled “Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines and the Development of a New World Society, 1727-1834” (University of North Carolina Press, 2005).

In January, the Oregon State Bar Bulletin published an article by Ron Lansing, professor of law, titled “Alice in Law School Land: A Story of Love and Law.” The article chronicled the life of Alice and John Gantenbein, who worked—through war, careers, and children—to keep Lewis & Clark Law School operating from the 1940s through the 1970s.

More listings of faculty and staff achievements can be found in our online pressroom.

L&C in the news

College faculty and staff are in the news on a regular basis. Recent mentions include:

The Oregonian: Kim Feicke, director of the graduate school’s Small Schools Northwest, is quoted in an article about the Small Schools Northwest Conference. The article featured interviews with five high school students about their experiences in leadership roles. February 14, 2005.

The Oregonian: An article about tsunami relief efforts details work being done by Allen Hall M.A. ’06 in conjunction with Architects Without Borders. Hall is one of four Portland-area volunteers who have traveled to south Asia to help rebuild coast villages and cities in Sri Lanka. Hall says, “I see it as a way to practice community building. We’ll be there to help, but I’m going to be on the lookout for what I can learn as well. It’s a two-way exchange.” February 12, 2005.

The Oregonian: A commentary piece by Aron S.Philips ’07 about the Trail Blazers’ NBA draft options. February 5, 2005.

For a sampling of how and where Lewis & Clark is mentioned by media outlets across the nation and around the globe, visit the online pressroom.

Events

Kushner’s “Illusion” offers fantasy and magic

Playwright Tony Kushner has been praised for his intelligence, wit, and humanity. Early in his career, he also earned accolades for a work that celebrates fantasy, magic, and romance. Kushner’s play “The Illusion, ” adapted from Pierre Corneille’s 1639 comedy, is the theatre department’s Main Stage production at 7:30 p.m. March 4–5 and March 10–12. The play is directed by Stephen Weeks, associate professor of theatre, with set and costume designs by Tim Stapleton, visiting instructor in theatre, assisted by Emilea Rivera ’03.

“The Illusion” follows the story of Pridamant, an ailing and remorseful father who wants to find his estranged son. After exhausting all the conventional avenues, he finally turns to a magician for help. She shows him three “visions” of the son’s life. Pridamant is suspicious, then curious, and finally enraptured by what he sees. The magician ultimately shares secrets with Pridamant that change the father’s perceptions of what he has seen and lead him to discover some surprising truths.

According to Weeks, Corneille’s original 17th-century play worked for audiences of the time because it contained universal ingredients of magic, love, desire, and adventure. For contemporary audiences, the formula still works. “Kushner’s language is gorgeous in a contemporary way, as is his sense of humor,” says Weeks. “It’s a wonderfully adroit mix of a classical French plot with a contemporary sensibility.”

Tickets are $8 for general admission, $5 for Lewis & Clark faculty, staff, alumni, senior citizens, and non–Lewis & Clark students, and $3 for Lewis & Clark students. The box office is open 1 to 5 p.m. weekdays and one hour prior to each performance beginning Monday, February 28.

Lecture examines European political models

Max Kaase will talk about European social and political structures during a lecture about civility in politics on Thursday, March 3, at 6:30 p.m. in the Council Chamber. His talk is titled “Innovative Pathways to Comparative Social and Political Research: The European Social Survey.” The event is free and open to the public.

Kaase, vice president and dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at International University Bremen, is one of the foremost experts in the fields of political sociology, comparative politics, and mass communication. He is president of the International Political Science Association. Kaase is the author and coauthor of several books focusing on political research, including “Beliefs in Government,” coauthored with Kenneth Newton (Oxford University Press, 1995); “Political Action: Mass Participation in Five Western Democracies, coauthored with Samuel H. Barnes and others (Sage Publications, 1979); and “Estranged Friends? The Transatlantic Consequences of Societal Change,” coauthored with Andrew Kohut (Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1996).

The Civility in Politics lecture series is presented by Lewis & Clark’s political science department and sponsored, in part, by a generous grant from the Arkay Foundation. For more information, call ext. 7640.

Obo Addy taps the roots of his heritage

African music history comes to life through the creative efforts of Ghanaian master drummer Obo Addy. Along with the music and dance troupe Okropong, Addy will premiere his new work “Pulling at the Roots of My Heritage” on Saturday, March 5, at 8 p.m. in Agnes Flanagan Chapel.

“Okropong means ‘eagle’ in my native Ga language,” says Addy. “These musicians build driving rhythms using a variety of hand and stick drums, talking drums, bells and shakers, while the dancers—clad in colorful West African garments—engage in a physical conversation with the drummers.”

The concert will feature Addy in many roles, as composer, performer, and teacher. Professional groups, other musicians, students and faculty from Lewis and Clark, and students from the Beaverton Arts and Communication Magnet Academy will join Addy onstage.

Tickets are $5 for the Lewis & Clark community, available in advance from the Bookstore.

Gender Studies Symposium explores rights and freedoms

Questions surrounding the interplay between the law, free speech, and gender will be addressed during the annual Gender Studies Symposium. The event, titled “Taking Liberties: Power, Change, and Expression,” runs Wednesday through Friday, March 9 to 11. All events are free and open to the public.

“This year’s symposium explores dynamic questions of rights and freedoms as they relate to gender and sexuality,” says Kimberly Brodkin, visiting assistant professor of humanities and symposium faculty adviser. “A broad range of renowned scholars and observers will help us consider an array of pressing social, cultural, and legal questions that relate to concerns such as freedom of speech, workers’ rights, ideas about privacy, and the definition of marriage.”

American Civil Liberties Union President Nadine Strossen, a professor of law at New York Law School, will deliver one of the symposium’s keynote addresses. Her talk on Thursday, March 10, at 7:30 p.m. is titled “Gender, Sexuality, and Civil Liberties.” Strossen’s writings explore areas of free speech, pornography, and hate speech.

Most events take place in Templeton Student Center. The symposium Web site features the complete schedule of events.

Higgins lecture focuses on comparative law

According to University of Georgia School of Law Professor Alan Watson, laws around the world developed parallel forms because societies borrowed from other legal systems. He will talk about “Comparative Law and Legal Understanding” on Wednesday, March 9, at 7:30 p.m. at the law school. Watson is the law school’s 2005 Higgins Distinguished Visitor. His lecture in the student lounge of the Legal Research Center is free and open to the public.

“For more than two decades the Higgins Visitor program has brought many of the country’s leading law professors to our community and campus,” says James Huffman, dean of the law school and Erskine Wood Sr. Professor of Law. “As a result of visitor participation in the life of our law school over a two-week period, our students get a window on the broader legal world.” Watson will visit the law school March 7 to 18.

The annual Higgins program, established in 1984 and endowed by a grant from the Lorene Sails Higgins Charitable Trust, brings a nationally prominent scholar and lawyer to the law school for two weeks each year to teach classes and to present a free public lecture.

Exhibit ties together wide-ranging graphic design concepts

Nearly a dozen student-created graphic design works are on view through May 31 in the Aubrey R. Watzek Library. The exhibition is titled “Tying It All Together: The Book as Art Form.”

“The materials used to create a book are basically the same materials used in the development of artwork in other media,” says Heather Watkins, visiting assistant professor of art. “The works in this showcase question the very core of graphic design forms and concepts and some pieces question the book form itself, asking, ‘Is it a book if it can’t be opened, has no words, and isn’t bound?’”

In addition to handmade books, the exhibit includes collaborative class portfolios that focus on design history. The students have been in Watkins’ beginning, intermediate, and advanced graphic design classes.

Upcoming

Visit the campus Web calendar for events coming up in February and March.