Willamette Scores High on Sustainability Report Card

A 2009 report card from the Sustainable Endowments Institute gave Willamette University an “A” and named it a leader for its sustainability efforts in food and recycling, green building and investment priorities. Willamette’s overall score of a “B” was higher than any other small liberal arts college in the Pacific Northwest.

The College Sustainability Report Card evaluates sustainability initiatives from the 300 colleges with the largest endowments in the U.S. and Canada.

Willamette was recognized as a leader for reducing waste and purchasing food from local, organic farmers; following green building guidelines for all new construction and renovations; and aiming to optimize investment return and investing in renewable energy funds. The university also scored high and was singled out as a leader for its administration’s efforts.

This is the second time in recent months that Willamette’s initiatives have been recognized nationally. In the country’s largest survey to date, the National Wildlife Federation recognized Willamette as first in the nation for sustainability activities.

Read the entire report card at www.greenreportcard.org. To learn more about Willamette’s sustainability efforts, go to www.willamette.edu/about/sustainability.

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Regalia Exhibition Includes Teacher Workshop and Gallery Talks

In conjunction with its fall exhibition, The Art of Ceremony: Regalia of Native Oregon, the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University will host free gallery talks and a workshop for teachers interested in bringing their classes to see the exhibition.

Elizabeth Garrison, the museum’s Cameron Paulin Curator of Education, will teach the workshop Oct. 1 from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at the museum. The purpose is to help teachers prepare students for a field trip to the museum, develop strategies to tour the exhibition, and propose ideas that reinforce the gallery experience and broaden curriculum concepts back in the classroom. The workshop is free, but advance registration is required by calling (503) 370-6855.

The museum also will host a series of free gallery talks about the exhibition. Garrison or a museum docent will lead talks Tuesdays, Sept. 30 through Jan. 13, from 12:30 to 1 p.m. Willamette University students will present talks Saturdays in October from 1 to 1:30 p.m.

The Art of Ceremony: Regalia of Native Oregon, on display Sept. 28 through Jan. 18, is a major exhibition of historic and contemporary regalia from all nine of Oregon’s federally recognized Native American tribes, much of which is rarely seen by the general public. Organized by Willamette Anthropology Professor Rebecca Dobkins in partnership with the tribes, the exhibition is designed to introduce non-tribal audiences to the history, beauty and function of regalia within tribal life and thought.

The Oregon Arts Commission, with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, selected the exhibition as the state’s 2008 American Masterpieces project. Additional support has been provided by an endowment gift from The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde through the Spirit Mountain Community Fund, and by grants from the Siletz Tribal Charitable Fund, the City of Salem’s Transient Occupancy Tax funds, the Oregon Arts Commission, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and a Millicent McIntosh Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.

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 Mondays. Admission is $3 for adults and $2 for seniors and students. Children younger than 12 are admitted free, and Tuesdays are admission-free. For more information, call (503) 370-6855 or visit www.willamette.edu/museum_of_art.

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Hallie Ford Museum of Art Celebrates 10th Anniversary, Dedicates Outdoor Art Piece

The Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University will dedicate a major new piece of outdoor art and celebrate its 10th anniversary the first week of October.

“It’s hard to believe that we’ve been around for 10 years,” Museum Director John Olbrantz said. “It seems like yesterday that Willamette President Lee Pelton, benefactor Hallie Ford and I cut the ribbon to officially open the museum.”

The new piece of outdoor art, entitled Portals through Time, was created by Ellensburg, Wash., mixed-media artist Dick Elliott for the 45 windows on the second floor of the museum. Each panel measures 69 ¼ x 21 ¾” and consists of safety reflectors in amber, blue, clear, green and red. The piece will be dedicated at a free public ceremony Oct. 1 at 5 p.m. at the museum.

“Each individual panel will represent a unique geometric design, but when viewed as a whole, the panels will add color and excitement to the second floor of our building,” said Olbrantz, who has known Elliott for 25 years. “In addition, Dick’s reflector installation will help raise the visibility of our building and will add a subtle elegance to the structure while respecting the existing architecture.”

Elliott is a nationally recognized mixed-media artist who creates artwork from safety reflectors. His installations have graced the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, the Sun Dome in Yakima, Wash., and numerous schools, transit centers, colleges and airports throughout the U.S. Elliott was recently awarded a Governor’s Arts Award in Washington state for his contributions to the visual arts.

The Hallie Ford Museum of Art also will celebrate its 10th anniversary October 3–5 with free admission; cake and refreshments; tours of its permanent collection; door prizes; tours of the special exhibition The Art of Ceremony: Regalia of Native Oregon; drawings for memberships and books; lectures by Olbrantz on the history of the museum; and behind-the-scenes tours of its recently remodeled basement and Print Study Center. All events are free; for a full schedule, visit www.willamette.edu/cal/event.cgi/9010.

The museum was founded in 1998 to serve as an artistic, cultural, and intellectual resource for Willamette University, the City of Salem, the mid-Willamette Valley and beyond. In just one decade, the museum’s accomplishments have included raising more than $4 million toward an endowment fund; publishing 10 major books; creating 14 exhibitions that traveled regionally, nationally and internationally; and increasing visitation from 10,000–15,000 visitors the year it opened to more than 30,000 annual visitors today. The museum includes four permanent galleries focusing on European, Asian, American, Native American and regional art, and two temporary exhibition spaces featuring historical and contemporary art.

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–Saturday from 10 a.m.–5 p.m., and Sunday from 1–5 p.m. The galleries are closed on 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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Sept. 22 Candidates Forum Confirms Participants

Republican Mike Erickson has agreed to join the forum scheduled for tonight, Sept. 22, at 5:30 p.m. in Cone Chapel in Waller Hall at Willamette University. Erickson will be seated with three additional candidates for the seat to be vacated by U.S. Rep. Darlene Hooley. They are Democrat Kurt Schrader, Libertarian Steve Milligan, and Green Party candidate Alex Polikoff. Willamette University President Lee Pelton will serve as moderator.

The event, co-sponsored by Willamette University and the Oregon League of Minority Voters, will also include as panelists Randall Edwards, Oregon State Treasurer; Gale Castillo, president of the Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, Portland; and Sho Dozono, president and CEO of Azumano Travel, Portland.

The event is free and open to the public.

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Green Building: The New Revolution is Here

Nationally recognized green-building expert Jerry Yudelson will speak about the rapidly emerging green building revolution in a free lecture Thursday, Oct. 2, at 7 p.m. in Paulus Lecture Hall at the Truman Wesley Collins Legal Center at Willamette University.

Yudelson will present a compelling business case for green buildings, both residential and commercial, and share dozens of building projects that demonstrate environmental excellence, many within conventional budgets. A dynamic speaker with an urgent sense of purpose, Yudelson will explain why thousands of individuals and corporations across the U.S. are choosing green over conventional design for their homes and businesses, and how the market for green buildings is likely to evolve over the next several years.

Green building has emerged as a proven strategy to improve the health of a building’s occupants, combat global warming, enhance public relations, and save money for businesses and home-owners, Yudelson says. Attendees will learn how to take advantage of opportunities in green building.

The event is sponsored by the Friends of Straub Environmental Learning Center, the Center for Sustainable Communities at Willamette University, the Marion County Soil and Water Conservation District, the Pringle Creek Community, and the Salem American Institute of Architects.

For more information call Nathan Good at (503) 370-4448 or Andrea Foust at (503) 370-6654.

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American Masterpieces Project Features Rarely Seen Native American Regalia

A groundbreaking exhibition of historic and contemporary ceremonial regalia from all nine of Oregon’s federally recognized Native American tribes, much of which is rarely seen by the general public, will be on display Sept. 27 to Jan. 18 at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University.

The Art of Ceremony: Regalia of Native Oregon, Oregon’s 2008 American Masterpieces project, features what the tribes consider their finest artwork, items they wear and use in private ceremonies and rituals. Hand-crafted dance outfits, jewelry, staffs, headdresses, musical instruments and a 21-foot cedar canoe — many on loan from Native families across the state — are among the items to be displayed. The American Masterpieces grant was awarded by the Oregon Arts Commission with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

“Most people have never really seen Oregon’s traditional regalia,” said Willamette anthropology Professor Rebecca Dobkins, who organized the exhibition in collaboration with Native community curators. “The only time much of this regalia is worn is during private events like funerals, feasts or dance ceremonies. These items are not largely shared outside their community.”

A multitude of free public events will accompany the exhibition, starting with a Procession of Nations through campus at 3 p.m. Sept. 27 that will include members of all Oregon’s tribes. The procession will be followed by an opening ceremony at the museum and a traditional Native American feast on campus. Visitors can watch regalia-makers at work from 1 to 5 p.m. Sept. 28 at the museum. Tours, films, lectures and demonstrations are among the other events scheduled throughout the exhibition.

The Art of Ceremony will showcase the diversity of regalia between tribes, from the western tribes’ use of feathers and abalone shells to the eastern tribes’ beadwork and buckskin. After leaving the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, the exhibition will travel to the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute in Pendleton, Ore., and the Museum at Warm Springs in central Oregon.

“A lot of people attend intertribal powwows and mistake what they see there as our traditional dances and regalia,” said Bud Lane, vice chairman of the tribal council for the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians on the central Oregon coast. “We want people to see that each tribe has its individual traditions and cultures that vary from region to region.”

In addition to the American Masterpieces grant, the exhibition is supported by an endowment gift from The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde through the Spirit Mountain Community Fund, a Millicent McIntosh Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, a Siletz Tribal Charitable Contribution Fund award, and by grants from the city of Salem’s Transient Occupancy Tax funds, the Oregon Arts Commission and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

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.–5 p.m. and Sunday from 1–5 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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Syndicated Columnist to Lecture on Religion and Politics

E.J. Dionne Jr., a syndicated national policy and politics columnist for The Washington Post, will address “Religion and Politics in the 2008 Election” in a Sept. 29 lecture at Willamette University.

The lecture begins at 7:30 p.m. in Smith Auditorium. Tickets are $10 for the public and will be available starting Sept. 22 at the information desk on the first floor of Putnam University Center. The event is sponsored by Willamette’s Center for Religion, Law and Democracy.

Dionne is a frequent politics commentator for National Public Radio, ABC’s “This Week” and NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He has been a columnist for The Post since 1993. Before joining The Post, he spent 14 years at The New York Times covering local, state, and national politics and serving as a foreign correspondent in Paris, Rome and Beirut. He is a professor at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution.

Dionne’s 1991 book Why Americans Hate Politics won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a National Book Award nominee. He is also the author of Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics after the Religious Right (2008), Stand Up, Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and the Politics of Revenge (2004) and They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era (1996). Dionne received the American Political Science Association’s Carey McWilliams Award in 1996 for a major journalistic contribution to the understanding of politics.

For more information, contact Reyna Meyers with the Center for Religion, Law and Democracy at (503) 370-6046.

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University Welcomes New Class

Willamette’s 542 new undergraduate students attend their first classes this week. The new class, which includes 51 transfer students, comes from 25 states and 12 countries, and 57 percent are women. Twelve percent are the first in their families to attend college, and 15 percent are multicultural or international students. They will represent Willamette well. Their median high school GPA was 3.77, with a median SAT score of 1850.

At the Atkinson Graduate School of Management, international students make up 39 percent of the new Early Career MBA class. They come from Bangladesh, India, China, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Peru, Japan and elsewhere. The 76 new students have the highest GMAT scores of any incoming class in the business school’s history. The MBA for Professionals Program will see about 40 new students — half in Portland and half in Salem.

More than half of the new College of Law class comes from outside Oregon. A diverse group, the 161 JD candidates speak 14 languages and represent 42 undergraduate majors.

The School of Education will see 91 new students seeking MAT degrees, with 71 attending full time.

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