Professor’s Book Recommended for Sesquicentennial Reading

Looking to learn more about the Oregon experience as the state celebrates its sesquicentennial this year? The Oregon State Library recommends Willamette University education Professor Linda Tamura’s book, The Hood River Issei: An Oral History of Japanese Settlers in Oregon’s Hood River Valley.

The library placed Tamura’s book on its list of 150 books that are highly recommended for all Oregonians to read during the sesquicentennial. The list includes fiction, nonfiction, history and poetry books for children, teens and adults. Together, the books provide a comprehensive view of the Oregon experience, state library officials say.

The Hood River Issei, a finalist for the 1994 Oregon Book Awards, tells the story of the Japanese who immigrated to Oregon’s rural Hood River Valley between the late 1800s and the 1920s. Through interviews with first-generation Japanese, known as Issei, Tamura captures their memories of life in Japan, immigration and settlement in the U.S. and the hardships they faced during World War II — stories as integral to the Oregon experience as those of more “traditional” pioneers.

“There were other ‘Oregon trails,’” Tamura says. “It’s important that we share the stories of all Oregonians, including those who crossed the Pacific and those who have immigrated from the South.”

Tamura, a native of Hood River and a third-generation Japanese-American, teaches early childhood and elementary education in the master of arts in teaching program at Willamette’s School of Education. She is a co-editor-in-chief of the Oregon Encyclopedia, a comprehensive project compiling information about the state’s history and culture. Learn about the project at www.oregonencyclopedia.org.

Tamura will appear with Oregon Poet Laureate Lawson Inada Thursday, April 16, at 7 p.m. in Loucks Auditorium at Salem Public Library, 585 Liberty St. SE. The two will tell the story of a woman who created and operated a library inside a Japanese internment camp during World War II. The event is free and open to the public.

To see the whole Oregon Sesquicentennial Book List, visit www.oregon.gov/OSL/OR150.shtml. All books on the list are widely available in Oregon’s libraries and bookstores, or you can buy Tamura’s book at The Willamette Store.

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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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Willamette University Honors the Class of 2008

Willamette University will bid adieu to the Class of 2008 in four commencement ceremonies Sunday, May 11.

The College of Liberal Arts commencement begins at 3 p.m. on The Quad. The Atkinson Graduate School of Management ceremony is at 9:30 a.m. in Hudson Hall, and the College of Law commencement is at 11:30 a.m. on The Quad. The School of Education ceremony is at 11 a.m. in Smith Auditorium.

The College of Liberal Arts will honor 500 students with bachelor’s degrees. The College of Law will award 114 JD and LLM degrees, and the School of Education will award 101 MAT degrees. Atkinson will recognize 47 early career MBA graduates (18 professional MBA graduates were honored in January).

Helen Vendler, the A. Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard and a well-recognized poetry critic, will receive an honorary doctor of humane letters and deliver the CLA commencement address. The Honorable Wallace P. Carson Jr., former Chief Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court and a 1962 College of Law graduate, will receive an honorary doctor of laws.

Oregon Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul DeMuniz, a 1975 College of Law graduate, will deliver the law commencement address, and Jack McGowan, recently retired executive director of SOLV, will speak at the Atkinson ceremony.

For more information on Willamette’s commencement activities, go to www.willamette.edu/events/commencement/.

Update: Jonathan Kozol, a longtime educator and social justice advocate who was scheduled to receive an honorary degree and speak at the School of Education commencement, has canceled his appearance due to medical reasons. The School of Education speaker will be Dean Nakanishi '98, MAT'00, who teaches in a special education academy near Seattle and has researched and lectured on the history of Salem Japanese-American students sent to internment camps during World War II.

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Willamette University Bids Adieu to the Class of 2006

Professor S. Allen Counter, director of The Harvard Foundation of Harvard University and a neurophysiologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, will deliver the College of Liberal Arts commencement address at Willamette University Sunday, May 14.

An honorary Doctor of Science degree will be awarded to Counter and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree will be awarded to philanthropist Catherine B. Reynolds, Los Angeles schoolteacher Rafe Esquith, and Columbia Sportswear Company chairwoman Gert Boyle.

Willamette University College of Law alumnus, the Honorable Wallace P. Carson Jr., will deliver the law commencement address.

Honorary degree recipient Catherine B. Reynolds will give the commencement address for the Atkinson Graduate School of Management.

The College of Liberal Arts will award 334 degrees, the College of Law 146, Atkinson Graduate School of Management 60 and the School of Education 94 degrees.

The College of Liberal Arts and the School of Education will hold commencement at 3 p.m. on the Quad; Atkinson commencement is 9 a.m. in Hudson Hall, and the College of Law commencement is at 11:30 a.m. on the Quad.

CLA Commencement
For more than 20 years, commencement speaker Counter has engaged students at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School. As a neurophysiologist, he conducts both clinical and basic research studies on nerve and muscle physiology, auditory physiology, and neurophysiological diagnosis of brain-injured children and adults. His latest research focuses on toxic lead and mercury exposure in Ecuadorian children.

He is the first and only director of the Harvard Foundation for intercultural and race relations. The Foundation programs and mission have been replicated at universities across the country. His work through the Foundation earned him the distinguished NAACP Image Award in 1989. In 1994, the National Medical Association awarded Counter the Hall of Fame Award honoring his achievements in medicine.

He has published extensively in both cultural and scientific journals, including National Geographic and Scientific American. He has appeared on local and national television promoting scientific literacy of young people. He continues to work in the areas of ethics in science and technology, nature conservation, and human rights at the international level. He is presently co-host of EcoForum, a nationally televised program on earth conservation.

Law Commencement
Carson joined the Oregon Supreme Court in 1982 and was Chief Justice from 1991-05. Prior to joining the Supreme Court, he served as a judge for Marion County Circuit Court from 1977-82. He graduated from Stanford University in 1956 and Willamette University College of Law in 1962.

Atkinson Commencement
Reynolds created a new and affordable way for Americans to finance a college education. She developed a privately funded alternative to government student loan programs that has enabled hundreds of thousands of Americans to attend college. In only 10 years, this approach to private educational financing revolutionized student lending and spawned a multibillion-dollar industry of 65 lenders offering more than 200 financial products.

She is the creator and chairman of the Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation, one of the largest foundations in the nation. In 2004, Reynolds was selected by Business Week as one of the 50 most philanthropic living Americans and the first self-made woman ever to make their list. She is a graduate of Vanderbilt University.

Honorary Degree Recipients
Rafe Esquith introduces Shakespeare’s masterpieces to inner city fifth graders at Hobart Boulevard Elementary School in central Los Angeles. He molds his students into latter-day Renaissance scholars and shows them a world outside their neglected neighborhoods. His students spend an entire year studying and rehearsing one play and then perform it at Shakespeare festivals across the county. By any measure, these student actors, many of whom speak English as their second language, have been wildly successful including opening for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

As a result of his commitment to his students both inside and outside the classroom, Esquith’s students consistently score in the top 5 to 10 percent nationally in standardized tests and many of his students have moved onto college and law school.

Esquith has received several accolades for this dedication including the Walt Disney American Teacher Award for National Teacher of the Year and Oprah Winfrey’s $100,000 Use Your Life Award. He used his award money to create a charitable fund at his school. He is currently working with the NEA to help put Shakespeare in 10,000 American classrooms.

Gertrude Boyle is the matriarch and chairwoman of the board of the international outdoor apparel and footwear manufacturer Columbia Sportswear Company. Hailed by Working Woman magazine as one of America’s Top 50 Women Business Owners – and named one of 1994’s “Best Managers” by Business Week – Boyle is the center of Columbia’s irreverent, award-winning advertising campaign. She portrays cantankerous “Mother Boyle,” the stern taskmaster who enforces Columbia’s demanding quality standards.

Since Boyle and her son Tim began managing the company, Columbia Sportswear has gone from near bankruptcy to become one of the world’s largest outerwear manufacturers and the leading seller of skiwear in the United States. Columbia’s sales have soared from $12.9 million in 1984 to $1.1 billion in 2004, and the company continues to forge ahead with product diversification and innovation.

Throughout her career, Boyle has been a leader in the Portland community. She has received many honors recognizing her business savvy and philanthropic endeavors. Most recently she received Oregon’s prestigious First Citizen Award in 2005.

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New Office to Aid Faculty

Here’s an OFFRR faculty shouldn’t refuse. It’s the newly created Office for Faculty Research and Resources located in Gatke Hall and directed by Gary Tallman, professor of biology and holder of the Taul Watanable Endowed Chair in Science.

The office, which opened in June, will promote and support faculty research and creative pedagogy for the College of Liberal Arts and the School of Education. Assisting Tallman are Pat Alley, associate director, and Kendra Mingo, grants specialist. While Alley and Mingo will devote their full attention to the new initiative, Tallman will split his time between OFFRR and his teaching and research commitments.

The office will help faculty identify sources of grant funding for research and teaching programs and identify foundations appropriate for both purposes. “We will assist faculty with proposal preparation, grant administration and post-award reporting,” Tallman said. “If a grant is renewable, we’ll assist with that process as well. We are available to help individual faculty and groups of faculty seeking grants for interdisciplinary course work and projects.” OFFRR is currently investigating available databases that will assist faculty with locating funding sources

Educating faculty about the finer points of grantsmanship is another function envisioned for the new office. OFFRR will coordinate workshops for faculty on how to find grant sources and how to write proposals. OFFRR will also encourage faculty members to attend off-campus grant writing workshops.

To get things rolling, the office will sponsor a faculty colloquium, “Securing Grants for Research & Teaching: Faculty Tell Their Stories,” Friday, Oct. 28, at 3 p.m. in the Alumni Lounge. Along with WITS and the International Debate Education Association, OFFRR will also host in Gatke Hall the TGIF event following the colloquium.

According to Tallman, policy development is the fourth objective of OFFRR’s mission. “We will help faculty develop policies related to research that are currently lacking. For example, we have no policy on allocation of indirect costs associated with federal grants that typically cover overhead. We also need policies that address intellectual property and research ethics.”

OFFRR will also attempt to help faculty secure funding for projects that fall outside the foundation arena.

“OFFRR will act as a clearinghouse for faculty projects,” he said. “We now have regular meetings with the major gift officers in University Relations to discuss faculty needs and how they might be prioritized and addressed. We encourage faculty to begin their funding requests with us and let us champion their project.”

As the name suggests, OFFRR serves full-time faculty and administrators with faculty status in the CLA and School of Education. OFFRR will also support the development of joint projects among Willamette’s various schools and colleges that involve in a substantive way faculty members from the CLA or School of Education.

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Willamette Initiates Innovative Teacher Training Program

In August, the Willamette University School of Education will launch MAT Aspire, a two-year program with evening and weekend classes for teachers who seek a master’s degree in early childhood, elementary, middle level or high school education.

“We want to reach those educators who need a non-traditional approach to earning a master’s degree,” said Karen Hamlin, director of the School of Education. “Classes meet one night a week and one Saturday per month. We also hope the schedule will appeal to a more diverse applicant pool.

“MAT Aspire combines a flexible course structure with innovative classes that integrate technology with teacher development,” Hamlin added. “The program will also enable candidates to receive credit toward their degree for past work and volunteer experiences in schools. I think these aspects of MAT Aspire will be particularly appealing for instructional assistants or parent volunteers who have prior school experience."

MAT Aspire will carry the same course work and practicum requirements found in the School of Education's full-time program. Students will need to pass the Oregon required Basic Skills Test prior to application but will be able to pass their content tests during the first year of the program.

Applications for the MAT Aspire program are now available. Classes begin in September. For more information about MAT Aspire, contact Charlie Bowles at 503-375-5453 or visit the School of Education's web site at www.willamette.edu/mat.

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