Murdock College Science Research Program this weekend at Willamette

Willamette will host the 16th Regional Conference on Undergraduate Research, sponsored by the Murdock College Science Program. Various activities will take place Friday and Saturday in Sparks Center, Smith Auditorium and Hudson Hall as Willamette welcomes 550 visitors from institutions across the Pacific Northwest.

The Neil O. Thorpe Honorary Lecture will feature biologist Hazel Barton, who will speak about “Amazing Caves: Amazing Microbes” Friday, Nov. 2, at 7:15 p.m. in Smith Auditorium. Barton is the Ashland Endowed Professor of Integrative Science at Northern Kentucky University. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Students and faculty are invited to attend any or all poster and presentation sessions. For more information or a conference schedule contact Stasinos Stavrianeas via email or (503) 370-6392.

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Willamette Football Coach Featured on National TV this Saturday

Don’t miss the feature on Football Coach Mark Speckman on national TV this week, and cast your vote for Coach of the Year. Speckman will be one of three coaches featured this weekend on the Liberty Mutual Coach of the Year Spotlight on ABC-TV. The 30-minute show will air Saturday, Nov. 3, at 4 p.m. (PDT) on KATU-TV Channel 2 in Portland, Ore. Please check local listings for your area. Also featured will be Art Briles, coach at the University of Houston, and Dino Mangiero, coach at Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn, N.Y.

A Liberty Mutual Coach of the Year Award will be selected from each NCAA division in late December. Each winner will earn $50,000 for his choice of a charity or charities. An additional $20,000 will go to the alumni association of the institution where each coach is employed.

The winning coach is determined in a mixture of fan voting, plus voting by selected members of the College Football Hall of Fame and the national media. Fan voting will determine 20 percent of the selection process, with 55 percent from Hall of Fame members and 25 percent from the national media. Each fan is allowed to vote online one time each day through Nov. 27. Vote for Speckman

Feature on Head Coach Mark Speckman to air on ABC Saturday, Nov. 3 (4 p.m. PDT on KATU)

Fan Voting for Liberty Mutual Coach of the Year ends Nov. 27

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Willamette Among Top Producers of Fulbright Students

Willamette University is among the top producers of 2007–08 U.S. Fulbright Fellows, according to a recent announcement by the Fulbright Program that was highlighted in an Oct. 26 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Three students and alumni from Willamette won Fulbright awards for 2007–08, making Willamette one of just two Oregon schools in the listing of top universities. Twelve Willamette students and alumni have received Fulbright grants in the past five years.

This year’s winners are Elizabeth Humphrey ’07 and Maia Hoover ’07, who are teaching English in South Korea, and Craig Webster ’05, who is studying film in Hungary.

Under the Fulbright program, almost 1,500 American students in more than 100 different fields of study were offered grants to study, teach English and conduct research in more than 125 countries.

The Fulbright competition is administered at Willamette through Monique Bourque, director of Student Academic Grants and Awards. To learn more, contact her at mbourque@willamette.edu or (503) 370-6607.

Read more about our recent Fulbright scholars here: http://blog.willamette.edu/stories/archives/2007/04/fulbright_retur.php and http://blog.willamette.edu/stories/archives/2007/05/student_travels.php.

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New York Times Editor Reveals “Why We Publish Secrets"

Since 9/11 citizens and journalists have found it increasingly difficult to obtain public information, with government officials citing national security as a rationale for blocked access. In 2005 the New York Times broke a story about the Bush administration’s Terrorist Surveillance Program, which authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on citizens without their knowledge and without warrants.

Phillip Taubman, who serves as associate editor and national security correspondent for the Times, said that prior to the story’s publication, he and other Times editors had been invited to the White House — through the back door — for a private meeting with President Bush, who warned the article would put citizens at risk.

In response, Times reporters quietly gathered more evidence, uncovering dissension on the issue among top policy makers. (Their sources risked their careers and are still under investigation and threat of jail time.) “Our deliberations were extremely cautious and deliberate,” Taubman said. “These are the most difficult decisions editors make. I’m not agnostic about the threats to the nation or the need for protection — I lived close to the Trade Towers at the time of the 9/11 attack — but we must do so in accordance with American liberties.

“The story’s publication generated an explosive public debate about the limits of presidential authority and the balance between security and liberty,” the Times editor said. “Many people were upset about the encroachment on protected rights, and the controversy still rages, with Congress debating the program even this week.” The reporting won a Pulitzer Prize.

Not everything is fit to print, Taubman said, especially in wartime. And when Thomas Jefferson said that American liberties must be protected by the freedom of the press, he and other founders could scarcely have envisioned how to apply that principle in a modern complicated world. “But a free press is essential to maintaining the equilibrium between government and citizens. That’s a social compact that’s animated American democracy since the beginning of the country.

“One of the largest threats to the press right now is that the 24-hour news cycle has now been reduced to the 24-second news cycle,” said Taubman. “People are attracted to celebrity tabloid news, where Britney Spears is more important than the U.S. relationship with Russia. It’s a regrettable pattern in news reporting. We need information to make decisions as citizens.”

The lecture was sponsored by the Associated Students of Willamette University in partnership with USA Today’s Collegiate Readership Program.

Taubman covered the first turbulent years of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev as the NYT bureau chief in Moscow and broke the story about the tangled finances of Bert Lance, President Jimmy Carter’s budget director, in an article for Time magazine. Author of Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America’s Space Espionage, Taubman has received two George Polk Awards for investigative reporting.

See a related story by Tatiana Mac ’08 in the Willamette student newsletter, the Collegian (Oct. 24).

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Author Addresses Innate Urge to Party

Activist and best-selling author Barbara Ehrenreich gave college students the words they wanted to hear this week: “We are hard-wired to be party animals.”

Could be a nice scientific excuse for them to remember the next time they’re late for class. Ehrenreich was discussing her latest book, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, while visiting Willamette University to deliver the fall Atkinson Lecture.

In the book, Ehrenreich traces the history of the phenomenon she has dubbed collective joy, “an innate joy that comes from being with large numbers of other people in certain settings” and typically involves dancing, feasting or costuming. Ehrenreich argues in her book, and emphasized in her talk, that many of these public festivities don’t exist today. “They were stamped out, driven underground by the people in power, by the elites.”

These festivities posed a threat to people in power, who wanted to force people to work instead of play, and so they squelched the celebrations, Ehrenreich says. Today, she argues, they have been replaced by spectacles where people observe the festivities instead of participate. Think dance concerts or football games.

Dancing in the Streets is Ehrenreich’s 14th book. She holds a bachelor’s degree in physics and a PhD in cell biology, but her interest in social change and activism led to a prolific career as a writer and social commentator. While on campus, she met with a small group of students and answered questions mainly relating to her most famous book, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, about the plight of the working poor.

“I was very frustrated in the mid-90s that after welfare reform, people said very poor women would do fine. I said, ‘Wait a minute, what are these women getting paid?’”

In Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich learned what it’s like to live on minimum wage by doing it herself, taking jobs as a waitress, hotel maid, housecleaner, nursing home aide and Wal-Mart salesperson.

“I certainly felt a lot of anger in many situations for the way these people were treated, most acutely in that housecleaning job. We were working in McMansions that were huge and had things like alabaster in the bathrooms, and I knew the women I was working with were struggling to eat.”

Ehrenreich gets frustrated when she sees people look down on the poor or say they must not be hard workers. “Poverty is not a character flaw. Poverty is a shortage of money. And the way that shortage of money chiefly comes about in this country is that the wages are too low.”

The next Atkinson Lecture is March 12 and features New York Times columnist Frank Rich.

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St. Lawrence String Quartet Opens Artists Series

SALEM, Ore. — The Grace Goudy Distinguished Artists Series will present the St. Lawrence String Quartet with clarinetist Todd Palmer on Monday, Nov. 5, at 7:30 p.m. in Hudson Hall at Willamette University.

The concert will feature Beethoven’s “String Quartet in B flat, Op. 130, with Grosse Fuge, Op.133” and Osvaldo Golijov’s spectacular work for string quartet and klezmer clarinet, “Dreams and Prayers of Issac the Blind.”

The quartet has inspired audiences across the globe with recent tours of North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Their recordings have garnered critical acclaim, drawing Grammy nominations and winning Canada’s Juno Award and Germany’s Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik. The Boston Globe praised the quartet, writing, “The St. Lawrence String Quartet plays with imagination, sensitivity, sensational physical abandon, and a complete lack of emotional inhibition.” The Washington Post called the group “fearless musicians” who probe “music’s imaginative limits.” While not neglecting standard repertoire, the quartet is passionately committed to championing the work of contemporary composers. The St. Lawrence String Quartet is ensemble-in-residence at Stanford University.

Internationally acclaimed clarinetist Todd Palmer is winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions and the Concorso Internazionale di Musica in Italy. Palmer’s diverse artistic accomplishments include winning a grant from the National Foundation of Jewish Culture to make the Grammy-nominated recording of Golijov’s chamber music works. His playing has been praised by Fanfare and the American Record Guide as “extraordinary in its range and emotional depth.”

Composer Golijov is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and has been composer-in-residence at the Spoleto USA Festival, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Music Alive Series, Marlboro Music, Ravinia, the Chicago Symphony and the 2007 Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center.

The quartet will present a master class for strings Tuesday, Nov. 6, from 11:30–2:30 p.m. and Palmer will offer a master class for woodwinds Sunday, Nov. 4, from 7–9 p.m. Both classes are free and will be in Hudson Hall on the Willamette campus.

Tickets are $20 for adults and $12 for students and seniors, and are available at the Pentacle Theatre Ticket Office in Salem at 145 Liberty Street NE, Suite 102. Tickets can be charged over the phone by calling (503) 485-4300, and are subject to a service charge. For information call the Willamette University Music Department at (503) 370-6255.

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Willamette University presents Driving Under the Influence

SALEM, Ore. — Willamette University Theatre will present its second show of the 2007–08 season, Nick Zagone’s Driving Under the Influence, Nov. 9, 10 and 15–17 at 8 p.m., and Nov. 11 and 18 at 2 p.m., with a preview performance Nov. 8 at 8 p.m. The performance will be in the Kresge Theatre at Willamette University.

“Life,” they say, “is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” Find out what John Lennon and Yoko Ono meant as you follow eight crazy kids past their post–high school daze and on into suburbia, marriage, 2.5 kids — or not — and you’ll see it’s more fun when life doesn’t turn out as planned.

Visiting playwright Zagone, who graduated from Willamette in 1990, is a founding member of Open Circle Theatre in Seattle. He is winner of the International One-Page Play Competition in New York, the Mark A. Klein Playwriting Award, a Seattle Times Footlight Award, a Fulton Opera House Award and an artistic director’s Achievement Award from the San Fernando Valley Theatre League Alliance. Zagone has worked with the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, the Seattle Repertory Theatre, ACT and Printer’s Devil in Seattle, Cal-State Stanislaus and Stage 3 in Sonora, Calif. His screenwriting credits include the short Brainstorm and the feature Ricky Is Famous. He also has his own production company, Quality Pie Theatre.

Directing will be guest artist Marc Friedman, whose recent directing credits include Texts for Nothing by Samuel Beckett, The City Wears a Slouch Hat by Kenneth Patchen and John Cage, Bleeding in the Dark, and dramaturgical work for Hand2Mouth Theatre’s original show, Repeat After Me. Friedman currently teaches with the Northwest Children’s Theatre and is a member of the Voice and Speech Trainer Association.

Scene designer and Theatre Department Co-Chair Chris Harris will conceive the play’s environmental surroundings, Bobby Brewer-Wallin will design costumes, and senior theatre major Ben Crop will serve as lighting designer.

To purchase tickets, call the Willamette University Box Office at (503) 370-6221 or contact them via email. Opening night is $12, and $8 for students and seniors. Most other evening performances are $10 for general admission and $6 for students and seniors. Contact the box office for specific pricing and details. The Willamette campus is located at 900 State Street in Salem. For more information contact the Theatre Department at (503) 370-6222 or visit the theatre website.

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Swedish gardener and scientist Magnus Lidén at Willamette

In celebration of the 300th anniversary year of the birth of Carl Linnaeus, Willamette University announces a rare opportunity to hear distinguished Swedish gardener and scientist Magnus Lidén, curator of the Uppsala Botanic Garden and the Linnaeus Garden. Lidén will give two free talks Tuesday, Oct. 9, in Paulus Lecture Hall, Room 201, Collins Legal Center at Willamette University.

Lidén travels internationally as a scientist and speaker; he is a knowledgeable gardener and collector, and has published widely on species concepts and plants in the Fumariaceae, especially those in the genus Corydalis. This primarily Asian genus is a native of Oregon and is a relative of Pacific bleeding hearts. Lidén has written books and numerous papers on plants. Visit his website, which includes his biography, main research projects, and spectacular photos.

The evening talk is especially for the gardening audience, whereas the first talk focuses on Linnaeus, who served on the faculty of medicine at Uppsala University, the site of the largest Swedish collection of plants cultivated and described by Carl von Linné. Refreshments will be served after the evening lecture.

The event is sponsored by Willamette University, Uppsala University, Northwest Perennial Alliance, the Salem chapter of Native Plant Society of Oregon and the Hardy Plant Society.

• 4:15 p.m. Taxonomy and the Legacy of Linnaeus
• 7 p.m. Hunting Corydalis on the Top of the World

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Museum Showcases Work by Women Printmakers

The Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University will open a major exhibition of work by women printmakers Oct. 27. Women’s Work: Contemporary Women Printmakers from the Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation will be on display until Jan. 20.

The exhibition presents a broad range of prints from the past 35 years by some of the foremost women printmakers at work in the U.S., Europe, Africa and Asia. Once the exhibition closes in January, it will travel to the Art Gym at Marylhurst University in spring 2008 and to several other venues in 2008 and 2009.

“This is the third major print exhibition that we have borrowed from Jordan, who continues to be a remarkable and amazing collector and donor,” says Museum Director John Olbrantz, who co-curated the exhibition with Marylhurst Art Gym Director Terri Hopkins.

The exhibition will include a full-color brochure by Robin Reisenfeld, an associate professor at Christie’s Education in New York and a leading authority on modern and contemporary printmaking. She will deliver a free lecture on contemporary women printmakers Friday, Oct. 26, at 5 p.m. in the Paulus Lecture Hall at Willamette’s Collins Legal Center. A free preview reception will follow from 6 to 8 p.m. in the lobby of the museum.

Included in the exhibition will be works by Anni Albers, Louise Nevelson, Louise Bourgeois, Suzanne Caporeal, Fay Jones, Judy Pfaff, Kiki Smith and Kara Walker, among others. A number of themes will be explored, including abstraction, humor and satire, race and gender, politics, and the environment.

Women’s Work: Contemporary Women Printmakers from the Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation has been supported in part by grants from the City of Salem’s Transient Occupancy Tax and the Oregon Arts Commission.

The Hallie Ford Museum of Art is located at 700 State St. (corner of State and Cottage streets) in downtown Salem near the campus of Willamette University. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. The galleries are closed Monday. Admission is $3 for adults and $2 for seniors and students. Children younger than 12 are admitted free, and Tuesday is an admission-free day. For more information, call (503) 370-6855 or visit www.willamette.edu/museum_of_art.

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