Kristin Replogle is supporting internships for students who are interested in nonprofits.

From the moment she put on a candy striper’s uniform as a child, Kristin Replogle knew she would have a passion for serving her entire life.

“I was raised with the philosophy of ‘paying it forward’ to help others,” Replogle says. “Whether it was volunteering in the hospital as an adolescent or serving on a nonprofit’s board today, service is a major thread woven throughout my life.”

Replogle, a former speech language pathologist who specialized in traumatic brain injuries, recently gave the College of Humanities and Social Sciences a $25,000 endowment that will support students minoring in nonprofit studies who are working in an unpaid internship.

“When I was a student at Miami University in Ohio, I was given a fellowship that really opened doors for me that I might not have been able to go through otherwise,” Replogle says. “I knew that when the time came, I would want to give back in the area of education because it is so important to me.”

Replogle began serving on the college’s Institute for Nonprofits advisory board in 2010. That’s when she decided to make her gift. “Once I met the students in the program, I knew this was the perfect place for me to give back,” she says.

The Institute for Nonprofits enhances the capacity of nonprofit organizations by connecting the university with the community. The Institute offers a nonprofit studies minor — one of only a few such undergraduate programs in the country.

“Our nonprofit studies minor requires an internship,” says institute director Mary Tschirhart. “Most of the internships are unpaid, and some students opt for a local internship so they won’t incur the living expenses involved with an internship outside our area. Kristin wanted to enable students to choose an internship based on their passion for that organization rather than basing it on the expenses that might be involved.”

Replogle’s endowment specifically favors students who have shown a passion in caring for children. “When I worked at Massachusetts General Hospital, I often worked with abused children,” she recalls. “As I got older and had children of my own, my passion for caring for children grew even stronger. And I’ve learned through the years that your passion will always lead you down the right path.”

Replogle lives in Raleigh with her husband, John, CEO of Vermont-based company Seventh Generation. The couple has four daughters. Replogle serves on several local nonprofit organizations that work specifically to protect and support children: SAFEChild, the Girl Scouts and KidzNotes, a Durham-based organization that teaches classical and orchestral music to underserved children. Farther from home, President Obama recently appointed Replogle to the President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Replogle is a big fan of the Institute for Nonprofits. “I think it’s wonderful that NC State has a nonprofit studies program,” she says. “We need so badly to prepare nonprofit leaders of the future. If we can find young folks who have a passion for service already, it is our obligation to help support them if we can.”

Taylor Elkins is one of four recipients to date of a scholarship from the Kristin Gatchel Replogle Nonprofit Internship Fund. Replogle’s gift allowed Elkins to intern with Outreach360 — formerly Orphanage Outreach — in the Dominican Republic during the summer of 2011.

“The scholarship gave me the amazing opportunity to stay at an all-boys orphanage in the town of Jaibon, where I taught English, Spanish literacy and public health to the boys at the home,” Elkins says. “I was also able to work with the local community in weekly summer camps. The relationships I developed with the boys have had a huge impact on my life, and that is what I am most grateful to Kristin for.”

Replogle is grateful to have found students who share her desire to give back. “Because I’m so aware of the many needs of nonprofit organizations, I’m thrilled to find students who have a passion for giving back,” she says. “It is very gratifying to give them the support they need and watch them grow.”

By Caroline Barnhill

This article is reposted from the CHASS 2012 magazine, Accolades.

In last meals and lost childhoods, CHASS alum Megan Roberts reveals the haunting stories behind the crimes of 16 women executed in the United States. "Matters of Record” is a collection of poems by Roberts, who earned her MFA in Creative Writing from NC State in 2010.

The book officially publishes in July, but Roberts' former teachers are already praising it. “This chapbook gives voice to women executed for their crimes,” says New York Times bestselling author and NC State Creative Writing faculty member Jill McCorkle. “And then, with the same masterful skill, Megan gives voice to victim, jury, system. As a whole, it stands as a chorus of life and death.”

Poet and faculty member Dorianne Laux agrees. "Megan brings dead women, executed women, back to life, giving them voices and gestures, earrings and memories, children and last suppers,” says Laux, who has won two Best American Poetry Prizes and a Pushcart Prize for her own work. “This is a murderous world not often seen, let alone in poetry.”

MFA alumna Megan Roberts

Roberts traces the roots of “Matters of Record” to a conversation in 2006 with Luke Whisnant, a writer and English professor at East Carolina University (ECU), where Roberts earned a master's degree in English. Whisnant, one of Roberts’ mentors, had taught English to prison inmates and was discussing Velma Barfield, who was executed in 1984 for the murder of a boyfriend. She later confessed to three other murders, including her mother’s.

Barfield’s harsh childhood and complicated personality – she was a nurse to two of her victims – inspired “Margie and Me,” the earliest poem in “Matters of Record.” Common threads bind the women Roberts probes in her poems.

“I think a lot of these women had some resentment about their place in the world and their place in society,” says Roberts. “And murder was a way of controlling that.”

A native of Greenville, N.C., Roberts teaches English at Methodist University in Fayetteville, N.C. While she was in the MFA program at NC State, she won the  2010 Academy of American Poets Prize. She is currently working on her first novel, “Everything's Only a Mile Away.”

You can like "Matters of Record" on Facebook.

Faculty from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences were recognized for outstanding accomplishments in teaching, advising, research and engagement at a ceremony held in Caldwell Lounge April 25, 2012. "The range of scholarship represented by these awards demonstrates the breadth of expertise in our faculty," said CHASS Dean Jeff Braden. "I am proud of all our faculty, and humbled to serve as your dean."

Ann Ross

University Alumni Association Outstanding Research Award

This award is among the highest honors a faculty member can receive at the university. Ann Ross (Anthropology) received the prestigious award for 2011-2012. Ross manages the internationally-respected Forensic Analysis Lab with colleagues in the Colleges of Textiles and Agriculture & Life Sciences.Her lab has been instrumental in helping investigators use evidence collected from bones of missing persons and of murder victims, so that missing people can be identified and perpetrators of crime can be brought to justice.

Maria Pramaggiore

UNC Board of Governors Teaching Award, CHASS Nominee

Maria Pramaggiore (English) was the CHASS nominee for the university’s most prestigious teaching award. Pramaggiore has been critical to developing film studies at NC State, establishing the B.A. and M.A. film concentrations, and developing and teaching more than 20 different courses. She served as director of the film studies program from 2003 to 2006 and again in 2010/11.

Jim Clark

The William C. Friday Award for Distinguished Service in Retirement

Jim Clark (English) received this honor which is given "for exemplary accomplishments and contributions made during retirement."  Before he retired in 2005 after a 38-year career at NC State, Clark was awarded the Alexander Quarles Holladay Medal of Excellence for his extraordinary record of service to the university and the citizens of North Carolina. His activities have included board involvement with the Paul Green Foundation (President); Friends of the Gregg Museum of Art (President); Thomas Wolfe Student Prize Committee (Chair); and Habitat for Humanity of Wake County (Executive Committee), among others. Clark led the NCSU Humanities Extension Program for many years, enriching the lives of many thousands of children and adults throughout the state with courses in folklore, creative writing, philosophy, and other subjects. In retirement, he has taught Encore classes and led study tours for NC State. And he has taught Life Writing classes in area retirement communities and other locations; his workshops have produced 12 books and booklets, which Clark has edited. As a champion of the state's 4-H program, he published Clover All Over: North Carolina 4-H in Action in 1984. Last year, he published an expanded edition that covers 4-H's first century in North Carolina.

University Outstanding Extension Service Award

Jim Horner (School of Public and International Affairs, photo not available) has led and taught extension, engagement, and educational programs for state and local law enforcement officers since 1995, primarily in North Carolina, but also throughout the Southeast. As director of the Public Safety Leadership Initiative, he leads  the Administrative Officers Management Program (AOMP) and the Law Enforcement Executive Program (LEEP). More than 1,200 police managers, sheriffs, chiefs, and highway patrol officers have graduated from AOMP, and hundreds have received LEEP certificates.

CHASS Outstanding Extension Service Award

Mary Haskett

Mary Haskett (Psychology) is an engaged scientist whose research extends into the fields of the family and the schools. Her recent work focuses on preventing children from being exposed to violence. She has sought to support the mental health and well being of vulnerable children who have experienced violence and other risk factors such as poverty and homelessness. She has applied her expertise in psychology and mental health and in her research specialties to advocate for safe, stable, nurturing parenting that establishes a positive trajectory for child development and mental health into adulthood.

University Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Professor, CHASS Nominee

Akram Khater

Akram Khater (History) directs the Middle East Studies Program. He is also the director of the Khayrallah Program for Lebanese-American Studies, for which he has just produced a documentary on the history of the Lebanese community in North Carolina.Khater developed the college’s Middle East Studies minor, for which he arranges campus visits from scholars, musicians, and poets and organizes an annual Middle East film festival. He helped organize an Egypt Study Abroad program. Khater is known as a highly energetic and enthusiastic teacher. His classes are a high-powered experience where students are “challenged to move past immediate reactions and answers, to recognize the improbability or even absurdity of simple explanations in a complex world.”

University Alumni Distinguished Graduate Professor, CHASS Nominees

Ted Greenstein

Ted Greenstein (Sociology and Anthropology) won the nomination as the 2012 CHASS Distinguished Graduate Professor. Greenstein directs the sociology graduate program, where he has distinguished himself as a responsive program administrator, a mentor, and an exceptional teacher and researcher. He is known for both his theoretical insights as well as his methodological advances. He focuses on the household division of labor, intersection of perceptions of fairness between marital partners, and gendered ideologies. He has literally written the book on how to do research in family sociology, Methods in Family Research (Sage). He has trained scores of students in sociology of family and in social psychology.  His students have gone on to faculty positions at universities such as Washington State, Oklahoma State, George Mason, and Cleveland State as well as to nonacademic positions at the Research Triangle Institute, among others, and they have become leaders in the discipline.

Chris Anson (English, photo not available) was the second nominee. Anson has distinguished himself as a graduate teacher, mentor, and researcher. He participated significantly in the implementation of the PhD program in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media. He has also created and offered 18 different graduate courses, some multiple times, all focusing on research on or the teaching of writing. As one of his colleagues wrote, “Students come to NC State specifically to work with [Dr. Anson], and they are not disappointed. He has endless energy and is one of the most productive scholars I have ever met. To me, and to many other graduate students in our programs, Dr. Anson represents what we hope to be as faculty members: knowledgeable, effective, motivating, engaging, productive, and inspiring teachers and scholars.”

CHASS Outstanding Teaching Awards

CHASS recognizes its outstanding teachers with college-wide awards. Recipients are inducted into the NC State University Academy of Outstanding Teachers. The 2011-2012 Outstanding Teachers are:

Matthew Booker

Matthew Booker (History)

Martha Crowley

Martha Crowley (Sociology and Anthropology)

Shevaun Neupert

Shevaun Neupert (Psychology)

CHASS Outstanding Lecturer Award

Stephen Puryear

Stephen Puryear (Philosophy and Religious Studies)

CHASS Outstanding Junior Faculty Award

Brett Clark

Brett Clark (Sociology and Anthropology) received the CHASS Outstanding Junior Faculty Award. This award recognizes the assistant professor in the College judged to have the most significant professional accomplishments during the first years of his or her career at NC State. Other nominees were Ora Gelley (English), Daniel Gruhn (Psychology), Kami Kosenko (Communication), and Jonathan Wipplinger (Foreign Languages and Literatures).

2012 CHASS staff nominees for SPA Awards for Excellence: Stephanie McBroom, Ann Rives, Lillie Kirby, Julia Matthews-McClain, Faye Walker, Donise Benton, Allen Emory, LaTonya Tucker, and Jamarian Monroe. (Photography by Robert Bell.)

The college held its annual Awards of Excellence luncheon on April 18, 2012, to recognize and honor CHASS staff, whose efforts, competence, and enthusiasm for their work keep the college functioning.Nominations for the Awards for Excellence are based on achievement in outstanding service, innovation, public service, safety, heroism, and human relations. This year’s CHASS nominees demonstrate the very best in commitment to service, quality of work, and dedication to excellence.

Dean Jeff Braden with SPA winner Julia Matthews-McClain.

Julia Matthews-McClain, who serves as the Department of Psychology's executive assistant, received the CHASS SPA award for excellence. Department Head Doug Gillan said Julia brings "innovative ideas ... and has been essential in helping develop new workflow in the department," particularly during the last year's reorganization of college business services. She brightens the department with impromptu celebrations, decorations, cards, and other little touches. And outside her work, she has founded Julia School, Inc., a nonprofit to teach children life skills.

Other SPA nominees for the CHASS Award for Excellence were Donise Benton, Dept. of Psychology; Allen Emory, Dean's Office; Lillie Kirby, School of Public and International Affairs; Stephanie McBroom, Dept. of English; Jamarian Monroe, Dept. of Social Work; Ann Rives, Dept. of Philosophy and Religious Studies; LaTonya Tucker, Dept of History; and Faye Walker, Dept. of Foreign Languages and Literatures.

CHASS 2012 staff nominees for EPA Awards for Excellence: Justin Daves, Billy Poindexter, and Missy Seate.

Justin Daves, director of CHASS IT and CHASS facilities coordinator, received the CHASS EPA award for excellence.Justin's office is responsible for networking support, desktop computing, software installation, hardware repair, class tech support, and other IT-related challenges. Supervisor Tom Birkland says Justin's  "hard work, commitment to the college's mission, his remarkable professionalism, and his calm, clear and competent demeanor" inspire trust and set a strong  ethic of supporting the research and instructional mission of the college.

Other EPA nominees were Billy Poindexter, Dept. of Social Work, and Missy Seate, CHASS Research Office.

Congratulations to all the nominees and winners.

Many thanks are due to the program committee, pictured at right (left to right): Trace Reid, Kathy Whaley, Neko Everett, Crissy Williams-Brown, Sonia Meeks, Michelle Branch, and Bob Kadle. Not pictured is Susan Gasman.

CHASS students continue to raise the bar. Here's a sampling of the prestigious scholarships our students have earned:

Alexander Gloss (Psychology) won a National Science Foundation fellowship for graduate research. Alexander is a doctoral student in psychology who came to NC State from the University of Colorado-Boulder. His fellowship includes three years of support and an annual stipend of $30,000, a cost-of-education allowance, TeraGrid Supercomputer access and international research and professional development opportunities.

Heidi Klumpe (English and Chemical Engineering) was one of four NC State students to earn a Goldwater Scholarship of up to $7,500, awarded to outstanding students preparing for careers as scientists, mathematicians and engineers. Heidi, who's from Murfreesboro, Tenn,  is a Park Scholar and a member of the University Honors Program.

Alex Martin (International Studies and Business Administration) won the Binational Business Internship Fulbright Scholarship to Mexico. Only nine such awards are made. Alex is a Caldwell Fellow and a Hamilton Scholar who was featured in NC State's Bulletin for his entrepreneurial efforts on behalf of a local fair trade store.

Matthew Ostrowski (History and Chemical Engineering) also won a National Science Foundation fellowship for graduate research. Matthew, a senior from Durham, is a member of the University Honors Program. He plans to attend the University of California at Berkeley.Like Alexander Gloss, his fellowship includes three years of support and an annual stipend of $30,000, a cost-of-education allowance, TeraGrid Supercomputer access and international research and professional development opportunities.

Lindsey Pullum (Political Science) was one of four NC State students to earn the highly prestigious Mathews Medal that recognizes seniors who have made significant contributions based on leadership and service. Lindsey, who's from Wilmington, N.C., was elections chair for student government. She founded the university’s first Arabic Club. As a resident adviser, she organized educational and cultural programs for other students. She also mentored an elementary school student and a number of incoming NC State freshmen.

Drew Rothenberg (Psychology) was a finalist for the Gates-Cambridge Scholarship -- a feat in and of itself. This scholarship is awarded to outstanding applicants who want to pursue postgraduate work at the University of Cambridge, England. The program "aims to build a global network of future leaders committed to improving the lives of others." Drew spent last summer in the UK on a research project involving child abuse. Read about his experience in the Park News. Drew plans to continue working with children and obtain his Ph.D. in clinical child psychology. He's also considering the possibility of divinity school after he completes his doctorate.

Josephine Yurcaba and her mother, Paris.

Sophomore Josephine Yurcaba hasn't had it easy this semester. The Philosophy and English double major learned over the Easter break that her terminally ill mom likely has only a few months left to live.

Josephine and her family are being very intentional about the time they have left together, as a recent Technician feature article describes. Read  “Paris to Paris”  to get a sense of Josephine's strength and her positive attitude in the face of great loss.

Josephine's family issues have not diminished her capacity to keep her grades up or to write high-quality articles for Technician, where she has served as the Life and Style editor.

The same edition of NC State's student newspaper includes an article written by Josephine about Associate Professor of Philosophy Timothy Hinton. Yurcaba’s article on Hinton, which is part of a center-page feature on service and activism, describes Hinton’s experiences as an outsider on the inside of Apartheid South Africa.  The South African native says that growing up under apartheid fostered his interest in political philosophy and ethics.

A new study from NC State University shows that more than one-third of restaurant servers discriminate against African-American customers.

Sarah Rusche, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at NC State, co-authored a paper describing the study with CHASS alum Dr. Zachary Brewster of Wayne State University, who earned his doctoral degree in sociology in 2009.

“Many people believe that race is no longer a significant issue in the United States,” Rusche says. “But the fact that a third of servers admit to varying their quality of service based on customers’ race, often giving African-Americans inferior service, shows that race continues to be an issue in our society.”

NC State News Services issued a news release about the pair's research findings. News outlets around the globe have picked up on the story, including UPI, CBS Local, the Daily Mail (UK),the Digital Journal, and BuzzFeed.

Shevaun Neupert

The NC State Alumni Association is honoring Shevaun Neupert, associate professor of psychology, as one of seven Outstanding Teachers. Enjoy this chat that Alumni Association writer Bill Krueger recently had with Dr. Neupert about the keys to being a successful teacher and what gives her the greatest satisfaction as a professor.

Neupert's research focuses on individual differences in the way people respond to stressors across the adult lifespan. She works with graduate and undergraduate students in her research lab, has invited undergraduates to academic conferences, has seven undergraduates who are authors on published journal articles, and she sits on 28 graduate student committees.

Although grad students often find statistics courses extremely challenging, Neupert makes the subject matter accessible by using an innovative, hands-on workshop style that creates a dynamic and interactive environment. And students report she has the special gift of being able to simplify complex material. As a result, her students gain confidence and can incorporate her methods into their own research. As one of her colleagues tells it, "Shevaun conveys and lives the idea that statistical methods are fun, fascinating and super cool. Her excitement is contagious.”

Filmmakers Josh Bielick, Nicholas Sailer, and Tim Reavis at the NC State CMF competition.

Three NC State undergraduate students are heading to Hollywood this summer with the short film they wrote and produced. “The Strong One” won Best Picture, Best Directing, and Audience Choice awards in the 2012 Campus Movie Fest (CMF) held at NC State University this spring. Next stop: the Campus Movie Fest International Grand Finale competition in Hollywood.

"The Strong One" has had nearly 3,000 views on the CampusMovieFest website. The five-minute film follows a young boy as his imagination takes him on adventures with a friendly brontosaurus who helps him deal with the struggles of growing up. The creature will look familiar to viewers who have ever been to Durham's Museum of Life and Science.

The film is based on the poem, “Jurassic Parking Lot,” written by Tim Reavis, a senior in English with a concentration in creative writing. Reavis served as the film's writer and also appears in the film. Josh Bielick, a Poole College of Management senior in business administration, was cinematographer. Nicholas Sailer, a senior in industrial design in the College of Design, served as director and screenwriter.

Read the full story about the project--written by student intern and English major Justin Lee-- on the College of Management's site.

James Bailey (Communication ’93) grew up in Seattle loving baseball. When his mom moved to North Carolina in 1990, Bailey followed and landed a job with the Durham Bulls. His passion for minor league baseball -- and his love of the Bulls -- inspired him to write his first novel, The Greatest Show on Dirt. 

“There’s something about the minor leagues that I’ve always liked,” says Bailey, who held a variety of jobs with the Bulls in the early 1990s when he was a student at NC State. “When it was such a small operation, everybody did a lot of different things. I remember running the scoreboard. [It had] a laid back small town kind of family atmosphere."

Read the feature about Bailey on the NC State Alumni Association's Red and White for Life blog.

Researchers found significant differences in skull shape between Portuguese women in communities only 120 miles apart.

In order to accurately identify skulls as male or female, forensic anthropologists need to have a good understanding of how the characteristics of male and female skulls differ between populations. A new study from NC State University shows that these differences can be significant, even between populations that are geographically close to one another.

Dr. Ann Ross, professor of anthropology at NC State, co-authored the paper describing the study. Ross is one of three university faculty members who is receiving NC State University’s Alumni Association 2012 Outstanding Research Award this spring.

The paper's lead author is one of Ross's former students, Ashley Humphries, who received her master’s degree at NC State and is now in the Ph.D. program at the University of South Florida.

The research was supported by the National Institute of Justice.

The paper, “Craniofacial Sexual Dimorphism in Two Portuguese Skeletal Samples,” is forthcoming in the journal Anthropologie.

Read the study abstract on the NC State News Services site.

Sierra Golden has won the prestigious Academy of American Poets Prize. Golden is completing her MFA in poetry at NC State through the Creative Writing Program.

For a number of years, Golden earned her living fishing for salmon and herring in  the northern Pacific with her father. Her poetry reflects and broadens that remarkable experience. At NC State, she was awarded an Alumni Fellowship.

The Academy of American Poets began awarding annual prizes to student poets at American universities and colleges in 1955. The program has expanded to include more than 200 schools. At NC State, the prize is reserved for a graduate student. Poet Kevin Boyle, chair of the Department of English at Elon University, judged the national contest this year.

Golden earned an honorable mention in NC State's annual poetry contest last year. Hear her read on a special   site created by NC State's DH Hill libraries.

CHASS Advisory Board member Terrence Holt.

Newly named CHASS advisory board member Terrence Holt and his brother Torry Holt were star football players at NC State before going on to play in the NFL. More recently, the Holt brothers have turned their powerful energy toward charity. NC State's Alumni Association featured the Holt brothers on the Red and White for Life blog.

Through the Holt Foundation, the brothers have worked for ten years to raise awareness about cancer and raise money for the Kids Can! Hospital Program and the Kay Yow Cancer Fund. It was their response to the death in 1996 of their own mother, Ojetta V. Holt-Shoffner, after a 10-year battle with cancer.

Now they have organized the first Answers for Cancer Walk for April 21 in Raleigh."Our whole family will be out there walking in our mom’s honor,” Terrence Holt says. “I quite often tell people that everything we’re doing now through our programs is therapeutic for us. We go and hear other people’s testimonies and share our testimonies. We would love for NC State alumni and students to come out and walk."

Terrence earned his undergraduate degree in Sociology at NC State. He joined the CHASS Advisory Board in April 2012.

Read the full story about the Answers for Cancer Walk and find out how to participate on the Red and White for Life blog.

A recording of NC State composer Rodney Waschka’s trumpet concerto, Winter Concerto, has been released on the RMA label in London. The London Schubert Players (LSP) chamber orchestra recorded the work for a compact disc called “As You Like It.” The recording was supported by a grant from the European Union.

Waschka, professor of arts studies, composed the piece in the winter of 2009 with the help of a computer program he designed based on the concept of genetic algorithms. The work, scored for trumpet, piano and strings, is in three movements and makes use of the Romanian folk song, “Jiana.” Read more about the project in the NC State Bulletin.

Waschka, known for his computer music and his theatrical works, including two operas, is an internationally recognized expert in computer music. He wrote the chapter on composing with genetic algorithms for the book, Evolutionary Computer Music, published by Springer. Learn more about this creative faculty member's work in film and music and hear an excerpt of the Winter Concerto.

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences at NC State University welcomed five new members to its Board of Advisors during its spring 2012 meeting. Four of the new members are NC State alumni; one is a current student.

Terrence Holt (BA Sociology, NC State) is president of Holt Brothers Enterprises, a holding and investment company that he runs with his brother Torry Holt. He is vice chair of the Holt Foundation, http://www.holtfoundation.com/index.html a nonprofit organization providing support services for children who have a parent with cancer. Holt played in the National Football League as a defensive back for six years. At NC State, he was a 1st Team All-American and two-time 1st Team All-ACC player.

Bryan Hum (not pictured, International Studies and Political Science double major, NC State) is serving as the board of advisors’ student representative. He is also a CHASS student ambassador and is involved in numerous campus activities.

Charlie Perusse (BA, Political Science, NC State; MPA, UNC Chapel Hill) is president of finance for the University of North Carolina System. He served as state budget director for three years and as deputy director of the Governor’s Office of State Budget and Management for six years. Perusse spent eight years in the General Assembly’s Fiscal Research Division.

Bing Sizemore (BS, Textile Chemistry, NC State) is an investment professional with Morgan Stanley Smith Barney and head of The Sizemore Group. He serves as a board member on the NC State Board of Visitors, the State Club, and Friends of Arts NC State.

Ken Wooten (BA, Political Science, NC State; JD, UNC-Chapel Hill) is a managing director at Ward and Smith, PA, in New Bern, NC, where he handles litigation including construction, business and commercial, contract, public housing, insurance coverage and federal litigation.  Wooten is an International Fellow and past district governor of Civitan International and has served on the executive boards of numerous civic organizations.

Arika Dean, a master's student in linguistics, teaches eighth-graders at the Ocracoke School during her spring break.

Graduate students in the linguistics program spent their spring break on the coast, but it was no beach trip. Walt Wolfram, William C. Friday Distinguished University Professor of English, took aclass to Ocracoke to teach middle-school students on the island about dialects.

Ocracoke, home of the Outer Banks brogue dialect, has long been a research subject for Wolfram and NC State’s North Carolina Language and Life Project. During their week on the island, the students taught Ocracokers about their own historic dialect and others, including Southern American, Appalachian, African-American and Spanish-American.

The trip was an eye-opener for Liang Zhang. It was her first opportunity to teach English to native English speakers. Prior to enrolling in the master’s linguistics program at NC State, she taught English in her native China.

“They are so interactive and so cooperative,” she said of the Ocracoke students. “They’re so clever.”

“They were very enthusiastic, and they were really, really sharp,” added John Forrest.

The graduate students also met some of the native Ocracokers who’ve appeared in films about Wolfram’s work. The students recalled studying some of the people they dined and socialized with during the trip.

“Knowing that I was going to actually see those people in real life was really cool,” said Carolina Myrick.

“Yeah, they’re like stars to us,” Arika Dean added.

The purpose of Wolfram’s annual expedition has shifted in the 20 years since his first. Initially, he and his students did research on the Outer Banks brogue. Today, however, the trip aims to teach young Ocracokers about a tongue rarely spoken by anyone but the elderly. Coming back to teach each year brings linguistic insights gleaned from Ocracoke back home, Wolfram said.

“When you do research with a group, you’re also obligated to work with that community and get that information back to them in a usable format,” Wolfram said.

“It gave a face to what we do,” Dean said. "Community interaction and community involvement are big tenets of this program.”

By Jimmy Ryals.

This article is excerpted from The New Spring Break, a feature article posted on NC State University's home page.

Poet Barbara Ras served as judge for this year's NC State Poetry Contest.

Plenty of promising poets took a chance and entered the 2012 NC State Poetry Contest, a statewide contest sponsored by NC State’s Creative Writing Program and supported by the Barnhardt Family Fund. The winners have been chosen (see below) and will be celebrated on Wednesday, April 11, at a poetry event that starts at 7:30 pm in Caldwell Lounge on the NC State campus.

Barbara Ras, poet and editorial director of Trinity University Press, judged this year’s contest. Ras is the author of Bite Every Sorrow (1998), One Hidden Stuff (2006), and The Last Skin (2010). She has won a Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets,  a Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.  She will congratulate the contest winners and read from her own work at the event on Wednesday.

The annual poetry contest, organized by the English Department's Creative Writing Program, is one of the largest free literary competitions in the South.

Winner of the 2012 Poetry Prize:

• Tasha Pippin, “At the Funeral”  (Rocky Mount, NC)

Honorable Mentions

• Claudia McQuistion, “After A Death”  (Greensboro, NC)
• Lance Morrison, “To Richard Siken”  (Raleigh, NC)
• Kari Smith, “Pink”  (Raleigh, NC)
• Matt Wimberley, “Black Mountain Poem”  (Beech Mountain, NC)

Finalists

• Elly Bookman, “In-Flight Poem”  (Greensboro, NC)
• Megan Bostic, “If It’s A Boy”  (Raleigh, NC)
• Evan Brisson, “My Father’s Hebrew Lesson”  (Raleigh, NC)
• Gavin Cobb, “The Vacation Homes”  (Winston-Salem, NC)
• Sierra Golden, “Bear”  (Raleigh, NC)
• Elizabeth Jackson, “Dressing the Wound”  (Raleigh, NC)
• Jonathan McClure, “Hospital, Night”  (Greensboro, NC)
• Jessica Marie Plante, “Horses”  (Greensboro, NC)
• Rob Shapiro, “The Map”  (Elon, NC)
• Jennifer Whitaker, “The Lesson”  (Greensboro, NC)

Winner of the 2012 Undergraduate Poetry Prize

• Evan Brisson, “My Father’s Hebrew Lesson”  (senior, English)

The Academy of American Poets Prize (for graduate students)

The national academy began awarding annual prizes to student poets at American universities and colleges in 1955. The prestigious program has expanded to include more than 200 schools.  Poet Kevin Boyle, chair of the Department of English at Elon University, judged the 2012 American Academny of Poets contest.

• Sierra Golden, “Bear”  (Raleigh, NC

Meet Rachel Barnum, student of the month.

Hometown: Greenville, NC

Class: Senior

Major: Science, Technology & Society

Sample Courses:

• Life Cycle Nutrition
• Bio-Medical Ethics
• Technology in Society and Culture

Activities:

• Intern, Stop Hunger Now, Spring 2012
• Intern, Safari Professionals, Spring 2012
• Co-founder/Secretary, Roots & Shoots (NCSU animal conservation club)
• Health Occupation Student Association
• Nutrition Club
• Intern, NCSU Office of Technology Transfer, Fall 2011

Previous Education: Transferred from Pitt Community College (Greenville, NC), 2009

Postgraduate Plans: Graduate school in International Studies or Development Studies, with the goal of working with non-profits.

 What have been your favorite courses?

World Population and Food with Dr. Bob Patterson. He really stands out. Also, Community Food Security. As part of that course, we participated as volunteers with the Inter-faith Food Shuttle, a Raleigh nonprofit that grows its own foods and provides to those less fortunate. I saw that even though we are surrounded by food in this city, some people cannot get access to affordable nutrition.

What has been your biggest challenge at NC State?

Deciding what I want to do! Every time I meet a faculty member who is passionate about what they do, I want to get involved. I would choose ten majors if I could! I began as a Nutrition major in CALS, but decided it wasn't for me. Science, Technology & Society really hit me as very policy-focused, and it showed me there are many avenues to working with nonprofits.

What advice would you give incoming students?

Contact your professors! Even if you send them one e-mail question about something they mentioned in class, it establishes a connection. Explore all opportunities. I had not even considered going to graduate school until coming here, and I also have a new appreciation for all Raleigh has to offer.

Filmmaker Robert Greene’s career making documentaries began with a paper he wrote on Rebel Without a Cause in Tom Wallis’ Intro to Film class at NC State. Until that paper, Greene thought movies were not capable of being deep, truthful investigations into the soul.

“The way Tom was talking about these movies, there was no way a movie was meant to be that deep,” says Greene, a 2000 CHASS graduate. But an analysis of the James Dean classic convinced him that movies could have depth. “It convinced me,” he says, “movies could be.”

And now, some 15 years later, Greene and 4th Row Films, the production company he’s involved with along with two other partners, have made seven films. Greene serves as director and/or editor on the projects. His passion for documentaries comes by default and an eye for honest portrayals of real people.

“I wrote some screenplays that sucked,” he says. “Writing a screenplay and dialogue, I’d rather be waterboarded. …I think I cared about real stories in a way.”

4th Row currently has three movies in theaters across the U.S. All In: The Poker Movie, a journey into the poker subculture, premiered last Friday at Cinema Village in New York City and will be available on video on demand April 24. Fake It So Real, a look at the big dreams of independent professional wrestlers in small-town North Carolina, is ending a run on the West Coast. And Kati with an I, an intimate look at at Greene’s teenage half-sister in Alabama who is about to graduate high school, is opening in Seattle.

Greene likes showing the essence of truth in these films, putting people front-and-center along with their hopes, dreams and faults. “My films are very loving to the subjects,” he says. “I’m very protective of them as people.”

Chris Moneymaker, a mere nobody who hit it big by winning millions in the 2003 World Series of Poker’s main event, is one of those subjects in All In. “Moneymaker is kind of the soul of the movie,” Greene says. “He says, ‘I was a fat, drunk, degenerate gambler.’ He figured he could take his gambling problem and use it as a skill. …He transformed himself.”

The Moneymakers of poker or the professional wrestlers of the rural South interest Greene because of their passion, and sometimes obsessiveness, to turn nothing into something.

“You can make films about people who are passionate about things,” he says. “They take their art, their things so seriously. When they talk about poker or cards, they’re really talking about life. …It’s like an American dream.”

By Chris Saunders.

This article first appeared in the NC State Alumni Association's Red and White for Life blog.

NC State has numerous traditions and annual events, and next week welcomes an old favorite with new and exciting features. COM Week 2012 will be held March 26 – 30 and will feature a variety of workshops, lectures, networking events, and panel discussions.

One of the most anticipated events this year is a lecture by Dr. Tarla Rai Peterson from Texas A & M University. She will discuss “the nature of public forums where citizens can participate in dialogue and debate about environmental policy,” says Dr. Jessica Jameson of the Department of Communication. “She is specifically going to argue that our desire for consensus might actually be harmful.” This lecture will kick off COM Week on Monday, March 26, in Caldwell Lounge beginning at 1:30 pm.

The department is also excited to welcome back Communication alumna Shelley S. Kelly, president and CEO of Kelly MarCom. On Tuesday, Kelly will talk about the “research and development that goes into transforming an organizational brand,” says Jameson. “This should be a really interesting presentation because her organization just unveiled a complete re-branding of Kelly MarCom, and she will describe this process and experience.”

Students will also be especially interested to hear from Larry Yon on Tuesday as he discusses how to do personal branding when interviewing for a job. Following Yon’s talk, students are encouraged to visit the Career Expo that will feature more than 30 representatives from a variety of organizations.

Wrapping up the week on Friday will be a networking event for faculty and students in Winston 201 beginning at 3:00pm. Students are invited to drop by, have a snack, and talk with faculty about their research and jobs.

Jameson encourages students to take full advantage of COM Week. “The primary goals of COM Week are the same as since it began in 1985: to provide enrichment for students and engagement in the discipline outside the classroom. We want to showcase the Department of Communication and all the opportunities it offers students.”

By Lauren Williams, CHASS Communication Intern

During the early 20th century, millions of southern blacks moved north to escape the violent racism of the Jim Crow South and to find employment in urban centers. They transplanted not only themselves but also their culture; in the midst of this tumultuous demographic transition emerged a new social institution, the storefront sanctified church.

Deidre Crumbley, associate professor of Africana Studies at NC State University, has written Saved and Sanctified: The Rise of a Storefront Church in Great Migration Philadelphia" (2012, University Press of Florida) "to illuminates the crucial role particular churches played in the spiritual life of the African American community during and after the Great Migration."

The book focuses on a Philadelphia church that was started above a horse stable, was founded by a woman born 16 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and is still active today. “The Church,” as it is known to its members, offers a unique perspective on an under-studied aspect of African American religious institutions.

Through historical and ethnographic research, Crumbley  provides a perspective on women and their leadership roles, examines the loose or nonexistent relationship these Pentecostal churches have with existing denominations, and dispels common prejudices about those who attend storefront churches. She includes personal vignettes from her own experience as a member, along with life stories of founding members and offers new insights into the importance of grassroots religion and community-based houses of worship.

Africana Studies is part of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences Interdisciplinary Studies Program.

At a time when many families are adjusting to soldiers returning from combat, significant job layoffs, foreclosures on home mortgages, high rates of crime, and interpersonal violence, there is an increased demand for social workers. NC State’s Department of Social Work has increased enrollment in its undergraduate and graduate programs to meet that demand. We are preparing the next generation of practitioners to help people deal with the aftermath of trauma.

Trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event that may leave the individual with intrusive memories, flashbacks and nightmares. This trauma may result from events such as combat; crime; an accident or natural disaster; and neglect, violence or abuse in one’s own home or community. Immediately after the event, shock and denial are typical. Long-term reactions include unpredictable emotions, strained relationships and even physical symptoms like headaches or nausea. While these feelings are normal, some people have difficulty moving on with their lives. They may even begin to avoid anything that reminds them of the trauma, and have anxiety that they didn’t have before. The feeling can be so intense that the person’s life is disrupted. Social workers can help these individuals find constructive ways of managing their emotions.

Why is it important to understand these issues?

Individuals with prolonged reactions that disrupt their daily functioning should consult with a trained and experienced mental health professional. Social workers are mental health providers who can provide psychosocial intervention and help educate people about trauma and the normal responses to extreme stressors.

To assist a loved one who may have experienced trauma it is important to:

• Recognize and understand the factors involved in psychosocial adjustment following extreme disruptive events.
• Encourage them to seek comprehensive mental health services that are culturally and linguistically appropriate.
• Help them to communicate the experience/ Talk about it.
• Engage in healthy behaviors to enhance their ability to cope with excessive stress.
• Establish or reestablish routines such as eating meals at regular times and following an exercise program.
• Avoid major life decisions such as switching careers or jobs, if possible, and other activities that tend to be highly stressful.

On March 21, 2012, the NC State Department of Social Work’s annual spring symposium will focus on trauma. Healing in Broken Places will address trauma experienced by five of the populations most impacted in our region. These include veterans, Latino immigrants and those affected by addiction/alcohol and drug dependency, incarceration, domestic violence and sexual assault. The keynote speaker will be Lynn Sanford, a renowned trauma specialist from Simmons College in Boston.

Those interested in attending the symposium can find more information here. Registration is required.

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Karen Bullock, associate department head in NC State’s Department of Social Work, which is hosting a symposium on trauma for social workers and those in related fields. This post first appeared in NC State's research blog, The Abstract.

Meet Brittany Copeland

Hometown: Montclair, NJ

Class: Senior

Majors:  Africana Studies; Psychology

Sample Courses:

• Health Psychology
• Psychology of Emotion
• Psychology & the African-American Experience

Activities:

• Founder/President , Jump-In!, a non-profit providing free swim lessons to Wake County children, 2009-present
• Study Abroad in Ghana, Summer 2010
• Research Assistant to Dr. Amy Halberstadt (topic: family affect), 2011-12
• Research Assistant to Dr. John Begeny (topic: early literacy), 2010-11
• Access Africa Chairperson, CARE @ NC State (international humanitarian organization)
• Peer Mentor
• African-American Symposium Counselor

Honors:

• Erdahl Memorial Scholarship, 2011-12
• Psi Chi Psychology Honor Society
• National Society of Collegiate Scholars
• Postgraduate Plans:
• Ph.D in Psychology/Counseling

What have been your favorite courses?

My two African-American Literature courses with Dr. Denise Heinze and Dr. Mark Dudley.  All the readings I have done are books that interest me and I had never been exposed to before – I stay up late reading them.  Both professors also really helped to improve my writing style, taking the time to offer well-thought out comments on my papers.  My peers in these classes have also been very engaged; they want to be there and are active participants.

What has been your biggest challenge at NCSU?

Acclimating to the culture.  My first year, I went to a university in Texas and transferred here from busy, metropolitan Houston.  I had to make more of an effort to go out and meet others here, and adjust to a slower pace of life.

What individuals at NCSU have made a difference in your college experience?

Dr. Sheila Smith McKoy (Africana Studies; English) and Dr. Craig Brookins (Africana Studies; Psychology).  They both led my study abroad program.  They helped to broaden my mind and made me realize how much I didn’t know.  They are always available and feel like family.  Toni Thorpe in the African American Cultural Center has also assisted me with public speaking skills and has offered very constructive advice.

What advice would you give incoming students?

First, study abroad.  This opportunity is most affordable now, as a student.  Don’t wait to travel until after you graduate.  Plus, you are surrounded by a peer group whose members are all learning together.  Second, get involved with events on campus, although you don’t want to spread yourself too thin.

Associate Professor of Communication Adriana de Souza e Silva is chairing the international Local and Mobile conference.

We no longer enter the Internet. Instead, we carry it with us. We experience it as we move through physical spaces. Mobile phones, GPS receivers, and radio-frequency identification (or RFID) tags are just a  few of the location-aware mobile technologies that mediate our interaction with networked spaces and influence how we move in these spaces.

Mobility has always been critical for the creation of social networks and to the development of connections to places. For the last several years, researchers in a variety of disciplines have been looking at how varying levels and speeds of mobility impact our technological, social and cultural developments in everything from transportation and mobile communication to border control, “intelligent” infrastructure, and surveillance.

More and more, our physical location determines the types of information with which we interact, the way we move through physical spaces, and the people and things we find around us. These new kinds of networked interactions are becoming part of our everyday social practices, from social networks and location-based services to location-based mobile games and social mapping.

As we engage with these practices, our thinking about our own identities, our sense of privacy, our notions of place and space, our civic and political participation, our policy making, and our everyday consumption all shift and change.

From March 16 – 18, 2012, NC State University is hosting Local and Mobile, a joint international conference of the Pan-American Mobilities Network and the Cosmobilities Network, and the third annual research symposium of the Communication, Rhetoric and Digital Media (CRDM) program in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.  Some 100 scholars from 16 countries will gather to address the intersection of mobility and location as well as these related topics:

• Mobile communication and location awareness in everyday life practices;
• New urban spatialities developed with mobile gaming and locative social media;
• Privacy and surveillance issues as they relate to mobile and location-based social networks;
• Identity and spatial construction through locative media art and embodied performance;
• Civic engagement and political participation through mobile social media, new mapping practices and location-aware technologies;
• Borders, surveillance, and securitization with ubiquitous and mobile technologies;
• Aeromobilities, air travel, and aerial vision;
• Alternative mobilities and slow movements;
• Planning, policy and design for future mobilities and location-based services;
• Tourism, imaginary travel, and virtual travel;
• Transitions toward sustainable mobilities; and
• New methodologies for mobilities research.

Mobility studies are interdisciplinary by nature. Disciplines represented at the Local and Mobile conference include anthropology, architecture and design, civil and environmental engineering, communication, criminology, cultural studies, geography, media and visual arts, politics and international relations, public policy, sociology, theater and performance studies, tourism research, transport research, and urban studies, among others.

More information can be found at the conference website.

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Adriana de Souza e Silva, associate professor in NC State’s Department of Communication, who is chairing an international conference, Local and Mobile, for researchers and students of mobility studies.

Rapper and CHASS alum J.O.T. performs at the Dixie Classic Fair.

James Otis Terry Jr. (Communication ‘96) says his parents taught him he didn’t need to swear to make his point. So, when he began to write music in 1995, Terry took that message to heart.

Terry, who is known as J.O.T. to his fans, has been pursuing his passion for music while also championing family values since graduating from NC State. Terry, a native of Winston-Salem, N.C., incorporates clean lyrics into his music that promote the acceptance of others’ individuality.

As a rap artist, Terry provides a clean alternative “to offer another opinion” on the widespread use of vulgarity in rap music.

Terry’s musical exploration started when he worked as a disc jockey in high school and at NC State. Terry says he has always felt need to disassemble stereotypes.

“I DJ’ed parties for fraternities and sororities,” Terry says. “When I DJ’ed for the black fraternities, I played rap, but when I DJ’ed at the white fraternities, I played rock. People were surprised I would do both.”

After retiring the turntables, Terry began a new venture — music production. He started his own record label, J.O.T. Records, to release his music.

“I wanted that creative freedom to put out music the way I wanted and how I wanted it to sound,” Terry says. This choice also allowed him the freedom to incorporate Spanish lyrics into his music as well. By creating a bilingual album, he hoped to bring the Spanish community into his fan base and pay tribute to his Spanish-speaking peers.

Full control brought full responsibility, though. “I had to wear multiple hats — I had to be a pro at everything — promotions, street team, recorder, producer and musician,” he says.

Eight albums and four CD singles later, Terry has mastered the art.

– Jeannene Lang

This article first appeared in Red and White for Life, the NC State Alumni Association blog.

Meghan O’Sullivan, the Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, will present the John W. Pope Lecture at North Carolina State University. Her talk is titled “Making Sense of the New Middle East: The Dynamics and Their Implications for US Interests.”

The lecture will be held on Tuesday, March 13, at 7:30 p.m. in 232-A Withers Hall, on the NC State University main campus. The event is free and open to the public.

O'Sullivan’s expertise includes the geopolitics of energy, decision making in foreign policy, nation-building, counterinsurgency, and the Middle East. Between 2004 and 2007, she was special assistant to President George W. Bush and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan during the last two years of this tenure. She spent two years in Iraq, most recently in the fall of 2008 to help conclude the security agreement and strategic framework agreement between the United States and Iraq.

Prior to this, O'Sullivan was senior director for strategic planning and Southwest Asia in the NSC; political advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority administrator and deputy director for governance in Baghdad; chief advisor to the presidential envoy to the Northern Ireland peace process; and a fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Her publications include Shrewd Sanctions: Statecraft and State Sponsors of Terrorism (2003). Dr. O'Sullivan is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a consultant to the National Intelligence Council, and a strategic advisor to John Hess, the Chairman and CEO of Hess Corporation, an American independent oil and gas company.  She is also a foreign affairs columnist for Bloomberg View, a director on the board of TechnoServe, a nonprofit organization bringing business solutions to help alleviate poverty, as well as a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Aspen Strategy Group. She is also an advisor to Mitt Romney, a 2012 candidate for the Republican nomination for U.S. president.

O’Sullivan has been awarded the Defense Department's highest honor for civilians, the Distinguished Public Service Medal, and three times been awarded the State Department's Superior Honor Award. In 2008, Esquire Magazine named her one of the most influential people of the century.

She holds a doctorate in Politics and a master’s in Economics from Oxford University and a B.A. from Georgetown University.

The John W. Pope Lecture Series is hosted by North Carolina State University's College of Humanities and Social Sciences and Poole College of Management to encourage dialogue on topics of political and economic interest. This lecture series is supported by a grant from the John W. Pope Foundation.

The lecture series is part of a program funded by a grant from the John W. Pope Foundation to support education and research in public policy and economics in the two colleges at NC State.

“Quality interaction with undergraduate students is a key component of the Pope Lecture Series,” says Dr. Andy Taylor, professor of Political Science at NC State. “Dr. O’Sullivan will offer a public lecture, but will also meet with our students.”

Driving and parking directions: Withers Hall is located at 101 Lampe Drive on NC State’s north campus, between Ricks and Daniels Halls. Parking is available in the North Hall Parking Lot on Hillsborough Street, along Hillsborough Street, or in the Cates Avenue Parking Deck beside Reynolds Coliseum.

Mark Kurlansky weighs in on the past -- and the future -- of food in the United States and abroad.

Editor’s Note: Mark Kurlansky is the best-selling author of “Cod,” “Salt,” “The Big Oyster” and other books focused on the story (and history) of food. He is the winner of the James Beard Award for food writing and the Bon Appetit Food Writer of the Year, among other awards. Kurlansky is the keynote speaker at the Food and History: From Theory To Practice conference, being held at NC State May 4-5. Kurlansky’s talk will be from 6:30-7:30 p.m. on May 4 in Withers Hall, Room 232. The talk is free and open to the public.

The Abstract: You’ve written about cod, salt, oysters and frozen food – among much else. While researching those subjects did you make any discoveries that were particularly surprising?

Mark Kurlansky: It is surprising how quickly valued commodities become entrenched in cultures. You would think this would be a process that evolves over centuries but it can happen over decades.

TA: Have you found any cooking or food preservation techniques that are universal, across cultures?

MK: Many cooking techniques are universal. Almost everyone boils and grills. Preservation is different. Probably the most universal is drying. Salt would be universal, but there have been cultures with not enough salt to rely on it. So the Vikings just wind-dried fish. And smoking and burying are both techniques of salt-preserving with less salt.

TA: How has our view of food in the United States changed over the past 100 years?

MK: Really it is our view of industry and with it our view of corporations that has changed. A century ago we thought that industry was going to make everything, including food, wonderful. It was going to produce incredible quantities of food, make all food available everywhere and end hunger. It has failed to end hunger. And while it has made food widely available, the quality of that food has declined and the quality of life for food producers and food producing communities has also declined. And so the magic word to replace modern industry is “artisanal.” Almost everything is being marketed as “hand crafted.” While we used to celebrate food being brought in from long distances—“California carrots” and “Florida grapefruits,” today the celebrated word is “local.” Both mentalities have their pitfalls.

TA: How can understanding the history of food inform our understanding of the current food landscape?

MK: History is a study of delusions, fantasies, and false hopes. It makes it invaluable to study because it teaches us to doubt ourselves.

TA: In regard to food, what are the biggest challenges we’ll have to tackle in the next fifty years?

MK: The biggest problem is a rapidly expanded world population.  The problem is not just how to produce food in safe, healthy, environmentally sound and sustainable ways but how to produce inexpensive food that is safe, healthy, sustainable and environmentally sound.

TA: Food can sometimes be the subject of political debate. Is there a particular food issue that you expect to become politically contentious in the next 20 years? If so, why?

MK: It all stems from this growing need for inexpensive food. This will lead to a major fight over fish farming which can produce large quantities of high protein food but damages the health of the ocean, wild fish populations and may not even produce healthy food in some cases. Rather than one side arguing that it is worth the downside and the other side arguing that it should be stopped, there needs to be an effort to learn how to do it better. The same is true of genetically modified foods, which hold potential to produce large quantities of food without using chemical fertilizers. People who oppose them have no suggestions for how to improve the process because there has not been enough research to understand if it is harmful in the first place.

by Matt Shipman. This article first appeared in NC State University's research blog, The Abstract.

Dr. Branda Nowell

Think fighting wildfires is just a job for forest rangers armed with water? Think again. Research in communication practices is improving the ways in which wildfires are handled.

On the front lines of this research is Dr. Branda Nowell, associate professor in the Department of Public Administration. Nowell, in collaboration with Dr. Toddi Steelman from NC State's College of Natural Resources, leads a research team dubbed the Fire Chasers who have been researching wildfires since 2008. The team’s goal is to better understand how to make communities more resilient to wildfires and other such disasters.

Nowell’s particular area of research “centers around organizational networks and inter-agency communication and coordination.”

Her specialization has led her to work in many contexts including domestic violence, public health, community development, and disaster response.

Branda Nowell, second from left at back, with members of the Fire Chasers research team.

It is in the latter area where Nowell sees a great need for research. “Disaster response is such a rich context to study,” says Nowell. “In order for the response to be effective, it generally requires many different organizations and agencies to come together very quickly into a coordinated system for meeting community needs and often under very challenging conditions.”

So why choose to focus on wildfires? “Wildfires are one of the most commonly occurring disasters in the United States,” says Nowell. “Historical fire management practices and increasing development pressures in wildland areas have led to an increase in the severity and complexity of wildfires.”

Such complex disasters require complex research. Nowell’s background in community and organizational psychology makes her an important member of the Fire Chasers team. However, she is quick to point out the variety of expertise needed in the team’s work. “Working in this area often requires tapping into insights from an array of disciplines including psychology, communication, sociology, public management, public policy, system science, and organizational science to understand these settings,” explains Nowell. “As scholars, it has been fun and challenging to think about disaster response dynamics from so many different perspectives.”

The Fire Chasers’ research sends them outside the classroom and lab into the thick of unfolding disasters. Their research has taken them from the east coast to the west as they observe incident management teams in action on multiple fires at sites in California, Arizona, and New Mexico. “I really enjoy being out in the field,” says Nowell, adding that the highlights of their trips include “getting to observe some of the best incident management teams in the nation in action, getting to talk to community members and agency officials involved, learning about the challenges these individuals have experienced during the response, and seeing what works and what doesn’t work.”

Through their fieldwork, observations, and research, the Fire Chasers team has become a valuable resource for local communities and federal incident response teams. “At the end of the data collection, we provide reports and presentations to each field site and incident management team about what we learned, in addition to our more academically oriented publications, in order to quickly get research findings out to those who might be able to use them,” says Nowell. “We have ongoing conversations with the officials involved who let us know the next set of questions where they would appreciate our input. We anticipate many of the lessons from the project will be useful to others who deal with large-scale disasters.”

By Lauren Williams, CHASS communication intern

Life has been something of a whirlwind for David Merritt (Political Science ‘94) since the New York Giants beat the New England Patriots to win the Super Bowl earlier this month.

Merritt, a former linebacker at NC State, is an assistant coach for the Giants, with responsibility for the defensive secondary. So it was his guys — the cornerbacks and safeties — who were on the line when Patriots quarterback Tom Brady tossed a last-ditch “Hail Mary” pass into the end zone as the final seconds of the game ticked away. When the ball hit the ground, incomplete, and the Giants’ victory was assured, Merritt hugged one of the other coaches working with him in the press box and then made his way to the field to find his wife, Yolanda Merritt (Communication ‘94), and their children.

It was Merritt’s second Super Bowl championship with the Giants, both of them against the Patriots. Merritt said the latest one was the sweetest because of how the Giants rallied from a 7-7 record to win the final two games of the regular season just to get into the playoffs.

“We got healthy at the right time,” Merritt says. “And the guys started trusting one another. They were determined not to lose the games. Sometimes it may not be your ability. It may be that you were more persistent than the other guy.”

Since that win, Merritt says there has been little time to catch his breath. The coaches were given 10 days off, but Merritt was back at work on Tuesday. He was getting ready to return to Indianapolis this week for the college scouting combine and has already been assigned a list of free-agent players to study and grade. “Our next season started today at 7:30 a.m.,” he says.

But Merritt took some time on Tuesday to talk about the Super Bowl and his career in coaching. Merritt got into coaching, first at the college level, after playing in the NFL for a few years.  He says that two of his coaches at NC State, defensive coordinator Buddy Green ‘76 and linebackers coach Ken Pettus, served as role models when he became a coach.

“I really liked the fact that Dick Sheridan and his staff treated us like men,” Merritt says. “At the same time, they were like father figures to us. You have to reach these young men with more than x’s and o’s.”

Merritt worked his way up to the NFL, initially as a coach for the New York Jets. After three years there, he joined the Giants in 2004. Merritt says there is little difference in his approach to coaching college players and professionals.

“The teaching I was doing back then is the same teaching I’m doing today in the pros,” he says. “You have to start from ground one.”

Merritt spent most of his years coaching linebacker, a position he was familiar with from his playing days. But in 2006, Giants Head Coach Tom Coughlin approached him about coaching the team’s defensive backs and safeties. “I had always told my wife I would never coach defensive backs,” Merritt says. “I don’t want anyone to see me when I screw these players up.”

Merritt told Coughlin that he wasn’t familiar with defensive backs, but Coughlin was persistent. “He said, ‘I know a good coach when I see one,’” Merritt recalls. “That was it. From that point on, I started finding every defensive back coach I knew, and conducted my own interviews. I learned as much as I could from film study and from talking to former NFL players.”

The Giants appreciate Merritt’s ability to get the most of his players, whether they be long-time stars or rookie free agents simply trying to land a spot on the roster. “I make sure that I teach them the basics,” he says. “Once you teach them the fundamentals, you can make a free agent or a high-draft pick look like he’s been playing for years.”

Merrill says the Giants approached the Super Bowl much like they would any other game. But he acknowledged being nervous about preparing his defensive backs to go up against Tom Brady and his talented receivers and tight ends. He says he still gets nervous watching tape of the game, even knowing the final result.

“It’s a nerve-wracking challenge,” he says. “You look at Tom Brady and you know what he can do with a football in his hands. He understands coverages and he can get the ball out of his hand.”

But Merritt told his players before the game that the only player who could defeat them in the Super Bowl was themselves. “You guys are prepared, you know what you’re doing, so I expect you to go out and execute,” he says he told them.

And as for that Hail Mary? Merritt says they practice defending that play every week during the season, but that one of his players made a mistake by not blocking out Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski, who was almost able to grab the ball before it hit the ground. But Merritt says he can use video of that when his players return in the fall.

“It’s a tremendous learning tool,” he says, “one that I will probably use for the rest of my career.”

By Bill Krueger. This post originally appeared in the NC State Alumni Association's Red and White for Life blog.

BY

The tarsals are the bones that make up the ankle, heel and rear part of the arch in a human foot.

Law enforcement officials who are tasked with identifying a body based on partial skeletal remains have a new tool at their disposal. A new paper by researchers Sheena Harris (MA, Anthropology '09) and Associate Professor of Anthropology Troy Case details how to determine the biological sex of skeletal remains based solely on measurements of the seven tarsal bones in the feet.

“Tarsals are fairly dense bones, and can be more durable than other bones – such as the pelvis – that are used to determine biological sex,” says Case. “Also, the tarsal bones are often enclosed in shoes, which further protects them from damage. That’s particularly useful in a forensic context.” The tarsals are the seven bones that make up the ankle, heel and rear part of the arch in a human foot.

Researchers looked at the tarsal bones of 160 men and women of modern European-American descent, taking length, breadth and height measurements for each bone, with the exception of the calcaneus. For the calcaneus, or heel bone, researchers measured only its length.

Previous studies had shown that the talus – or ankle bone – and calcaneus can be fairly good indicators of biological sex. However, little research had been done on the other tarsal bones, which are significantly smaller.

The researchers found that the tarsal bones of the right foot are generally more reliable indicators for determining biological sex. For example, the length of the talus on the right foot correctly determined biological sex 90 percent of the time.

However, a single measurement can be misleading. For example, a woman may be particularly tall, or a man particularly short. So the researchers looked at combinations of measurements from multiple bones, which allow them to measure the relative size of the bones to each other.

For example, researchers found that looking at the height of the talus along with the length of the third cuneiform bone – in the center of the foot – allowed them to determine the biological sex of a skeleton with 93.6 percent accuracy.

While the research has clear forensic science applications, it may also help researchers studying ancient populations. “We evaluated remains of modern European-Americans, so our findings are not directly applicable to ancient populations,” Case says. “However, it does tell us which tarsal bones are most indicative of biological sex. So, if you have a large number of skeletons, and some of them can be sexed based on skull or pelvis measurements, you could use the information we’ve provided on tarsals to create equations for sexing the other skeletal remains in that group based solely on tarsal measurements.”

The paper, “Sexual Dimorphism in the Tarsal Bones: Implications for Sex Determination,” will appear in the March issue of the Journal of Forensic Sciences. Lead author of the paper is Sheena Harris, a former master’s student at NC State.

-shipman-

Note to Editors: The study abstract follows.

“Sexual Dimorphism in the Tarsal Bones: Implications for Sex Determination”

Authors: Sheena M. Harris and D. Troy Case, North Carolina State University

Published: March 2012, Journal of Forensic Sciences

Abstract: An accurate determination of sex is essential in the identification of human remains in a forensic context. Measurements of some of the tarsals have been shown to be sexually dimorphic by previous researchers. The purpose of the present study is to determine which dimensions of the seven tarsals demonstrate the greatest sexual dimorphism and therefore have the most potential for accurate sex determination. Eighteen measurements of length, width, and height were obtained from the tarsals of 160 European-American males and females from the William M. Bass Donated Skeletal Collection. These measurements were made using a mini-osteometric board. Logistic regression analyses were performed to create equations for sex discrimination. All measurements showed significant sexual dimorphism, with the talus, cuboid, and cuneiform I producing allocation accuracies of between 88 and 92%. Combinations of measurements provided better accuracy (88.1–93.6%) than individual measurements (80.0–88.0%).

This news release was published by NC State University News Services.

Freshmen Kelly Darden (left) and Alfred Anderson at the Southeastern Undergraduate Sociology Symposium at Emory University with Emory's Department of Sociology Chair Karen Hegtvedt.

Freshmen Alfred Anderson and Kelly Darden met last summer as classmates in the university’s Summer START program that helps incoming students make the transition from high school to college. Anderson and Darden are making that transition with flying colors. The two freshmen are just back from presenting a research paper -- “Hip-Hop: A Societal Misunderstanding” -- at the Southeastern Undergraduate Sociology Symposium at Emory University.

“It is very unusual for first year students to present papers at a research symposium,” says Emily Estrada, their instructor for Principles of Sociology last summer. “But they were both strong students and they had worked hard to put their paper together. I wanted to give them an opportunity to take it to the next level.”

Estrada encouraged the students to pull together an abstract and apply to present at the symposium. “They were excited about the prospect, and they practiced and prepared,” she says. “I had every confidence they would represent NC State well. I am beyond proud of them.”

Darden and Anderson’s presentation grew out of a paper they wrote in their English 101 class last summer, and a presentation they gave for both their English and sociology classes. That topic—about the misconceptions the general public has toward hip-hop and rap lyrics—is better understood when seen in a sociological context, Darden says. “What most people fail to realize is that mainstream hip-hop does not represent the entirety of the culture. The stereotypes that are portrayed put African Americans in a negative light. In fact, hip-hop consists of a variety of topics that embody struggles of past generations.”

Darden says the experience of attending the symposium left Anderson and him both exhausted and energized. “There were students there representing states from Connecticut to California,” he says. “We were the only freshmen there, as far as I could tell. We got good feedback, and were encouraged to submit our work for conferences at Princeton and Harvard, among others. Our topic is not widely covered.

“I’m glad our professor suggested we participate. It gave us an opportunity to expose others to our work. It was definitely worth the effort.”

Becca Bishopric (Interdisciplinary Studies '11)

Becca Bishopric (Interdisciplinary Studies ‘11) and senior Anuja Acharya (Political Science and English) were fellows during the past year with WomenNC.org. They each spent time researching a topic dealing with rural women in North Carolina and wrote a paper on those findings. This week, they're in New York presenting their research on women's issues to the United Nations. The pair will represent WomenNC.org, a nonprofit organization that formed out of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. They will spend a few days attending U.N. workshops and seminars covering issues affecting rural women around the world. On Thursday, they will present their findings.

“In the past, there have not been a whole lot of youth going to this conference,” says Bishopric, who worked as a student at NC State to combat violence against women. “Part of what WomenNC is trying to do is to show that there can be young faces at these conferences. There are people who’ve been there who don’t necessarily have the same perspective as young people do in our world today.”

Bishopric, who has an interest in global public health, focused her research on human sex trafficking in North Carolina. She says research shows there are more slaves in the world today than ever recorded in human history and that the problem extends to North Carolina, where there are large proportions of homeless youth in rural counties.

It’s an issue, she says, that has gone ignored. “Nobody knows about it and nobody wants to talk about it,” she says. “But it really hit home to me that this is a huge problem.”

Anuja Acharya (Political Science '12)

Acharya, a CHASS Dean's Scholarship recipient, first gained an interest in politics in high school when she read George Orwell’s 1984. She researched political involvement of rural women in North Carolina and interviewed several women who have served, or run for state office.

One common response was that those women said they didn’t necessarily have political role models. And it had never occurred to some to even run for public office until a specific issue, like education, personally affected them. “The had issues they held some connection to,” Acharya says. “They had a strong sense of purpose.”

Both women are blogging about their experience this week for WomenNC.org. The organization selects four to five fellows each year who research issues the U.N. finds itself dealing with. Past issues have dealt with gender equality in Beijing, China, and women’s access to education, science and technology around the globe.

By Chris Saunders. Reposted from NC State's Red and White for Life blog.

Archival image courtesy of the Zaytoun family.

History is the essence of innumerable biographies, wrote historian Thomas Carlyle. An NC State historian is taking this notion to heart as he spearheads a multifaceted project to piece together the rich history of Lebanese-Americans who call North Carolina home.

NC State Professor of History Akram Khater, Director of Middle East Studies, is directing the Khayrallah Program for Lebanese-American Studies to research, document, preserve, and publicize the history of the Lebanese-American community in North Carolina from the 1890s through the present.

Cedars in the Pines, a documentary film produced with the help of the English Department’s Language and Life Program, represents the first phase of the project. The one-hour film premiered March 28, 2012, at the NC Museum of History in downtown Raleigh.

“This film is about an integral part of North Carolina history that has been hitherto unknown to many North Carolinians,” says Khater. “We collected letters, photos, and books, and conducted numerous interviews with first, second and third generation North Carolinians of Lebanese descent.

“The stories they tell are not just about a particular ethnic community – the Lebanese in this case – but they also narrate North Carolina as a multicultural space, culturally and economically enriched by immigrants.”

Khater hopes that this film will remind viewers that Arab immigrants are not a new phenomenon but rather they have been here all along.

“It is our hope that after seeing this film, the public will come to realize that Arabs have been a part of this state long before 9/11 and they have a positive role in its life,” says Khater. “In other words, they are not the menacing ‘other’ as they have been repeatedly portrayed in the media.”

Cedars in the Pines represents the first in a series of cultural projects undertaken by the Khayrallah Program for Lebanese-American Studies. “We are planning a museum exhibit that will tour North Carolina and an online archive that will house our growing digital collection of stories, photos, film, and objects,” explains Khater. A resource book for K-12 history teachers is also in the works.

By Lauren Williams, CHASS communication intern

The dean and the student talk about their days.

On February 16, 2012, CHASS Dean Jeff Braden and junior International Relations and Criminology major Laura Wilkinson traded places for CHASS’ annual Dean for a Day event. Braden attended Wilkinson's  classes and took over her work as editor of the Technician. Meanwhile, "Dean Wilkinson" attended Braden's meetings and even taught his PSY 200 class. Here are the pair's reflections on their experiences. And don't miss the pictures Communication Intern Lauren Williams took for our FaceBook page.

"Student" Braden's Reflections

5:45 pm Wednesday – Dean Laura Wilkinson and I are invited to the Call Center at the Park Alumni Center to address the students who make calls to alumni to raise money. One of them asks about the importance of study abroad, and Dean Wilkinson shares her personal experience in Spain. She notes that study abroad not only helps students learn about other cultures and languages, but it also helps them learn about themselves and how they can better communicate with others. I say study abroad is only important for those who plan to live on this planet; otherwise, it's really not needed.

6:20 pm – Dean Wilkinson and I compare our schedules for the next day over dinner at The State Club. We are so engaged that we miss the beginning of the talk given by Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club, but do manage to catch about half of it. After dropping Laura off, I go to the Technician offices and begin getting the weather, police blotter, and calendar events ready for page 2 of Thursday's edition. After editing a couple of pages, my grammatical sadism is in full swing, which was more than I can say for my energy level. As the midnight deadline approaches, I feel myself flagging. Still, we push to get things done in time. Despite the fact that the lead story is pulled at 10 pm and we have to scramble to replace it, I am assured that it is a relatively uneventful night.

Technician-editor-for-a-day Braden helps decide what will run on the front page of the student newspaper.

11:45 pm – I call to tell the N & O that the Technician is all in. Managing Editor Taylor declares, "It's closing time" (a song we've heard repeatedly throughout the evening as we worked to finish the paper). The staff quickly disappears; Taylor sends me home telling me he'll clean up.

12:15 am Thursday – I arrive home and am in bed shortly thereafter. I rarely stay up this late.

3:14 am – I wake up thinking about work.

7:02 am – I wake up and marvel at the time; I haven't slept this late in months. I enjoy a few extra minutes of rest, reminding myself that I don't need to get out of bed for almost an hour. However, I can't just lie there, so I get up two minutes later, exercise, and leisurely read the paper for the first time in a long time.

9:05 am – I have the red and green plaid sport coat, matching bow tie, and green straight leg pants that John McIlwee, the director of the University theater, has loaned to me so that I can nail the 1960s student look. I'll be the bee's knees, the cat's meow, a real Beau Brummell ... yikes, that's exactly what I'll be! It takes me an extra 15 minutes to get dressed because I have to remember how to tie a bow tie.

9:50 am – The traffic into work is a breeze … much easier than the 7:30 am run I normally make. That is, until I get just past Avent Ferry, heading west on Western! The traffic backs up a few hundred yards in the left lane as apparently every student on campus has decided to come in and turn left on Pullen at the same time. My big cushion of time gets thinner, but I still manage to find parking and get to class a few minutes before it begins.

10:15 am – Dr. Boettscher’s PS 437 class on US National Security is fascinating. I am reminded why I fell in love with college; an energetic professor, lively discussion, and fascinating subject matter mix together to make a heady elixir. Beats the heck out of a budget meeting! I find myself raising my hand more often than I might have thought but that’s not because I was better prepared with respect to homework. Rather, it was because we were discussing the US cold war strategy against the USSR. To me, those events were not history–they were my childhood! Sigh…I’m older than dirt and know it. Still, I walk out of class excited to tell my wife about the potential for cutting Iran from using the SWIFT banking network (which would effectively eliminate their ability to trade in dollars–a big deal given that’s the currency for oil exchange). [Note: Sure enough, I’m watching the News Hour the next evening and they have a panel to discuss this very topic. How cool is that?]

11:50 am – I visit Library Director Susan Nutter wearing my cool duds. She laughs, rolls her eyes, and shakes her head, muttering something about crazy deans. I then rush to meet Laura’s friend Brian for lunch at the Atrium. I’m disconcerted by how many students walk by me, look up from their smart phones, see my hideous plaid jacket, green pants, and bow tie, and look back down at their phones without even cracking a smile. Do deans really dress so badly that students can’t tell when we’re trying to look goofy?

12:05 pm – Brian fills me in on the next class we’ll be going to, his background, and the fact he’s heading up to Virginia for a dance workshop over the weekend. The diversity of interests and students in our Wolfpack community is incredible. We head to the East Wing of D.H. Hill to catch up on emails (I suppose Brian is catching up on texts). I try to write this blog and respond to a few urgent emails. After all, Laura and I swapped schedules but not email accounts; some stuff just can’t wait. I run into a candidate for a professor position in the English department who is visiting campus today. He looks at me and what I’m wearing, and although he quickly stifles the look of horror, the damage is done. He nods good-naturedly when I assure him I’m only dressing like this because I’m a student for the day. I can tell as I walk away he’s mulling over whether his potential employer is mad.

1:20 pm – Brian and I find our seats in Dr. Murray’s IS 491 Senior Seminar in International Studies class. Dr. Murray has such a low-key, friendly delivery that it takes me a few minutes to realize that he expects—and clearly demands—a lot from his class. We soon break up into writing groups, and it’s clear he’s carefully organized the class so that (a) people do the work, (b) they have to share their work with others, and (c) they critique each other’s work. I learn that Laura’s classmates are working on papers related to female suicide bombers, the ethics of pharmacological experimentation (using the Nuremburg Code as a foundation for inquiry), and the economic (dis)incentives of acquiring a nuclear by non-nuclear states and groups. It’s fascinating stuff, and I’m genuinely disappointed as class ends that we can’t keep going.

3:45 pm – I detour past Thompson Hall on my way to Witherspoon to show John McIlwee his success in picking out my duds. Sadly, he’s not there, but two others eagerly take my picture, giggling all the while. Geez, it’s tough to be so brave when it comes to fashion.

4:05 pm – I arrive at the Technician offices in Witherspoon ready to apologize for being late for the budget meeting, but I am among the first to arrive. As others come in shaking off the effects of the steady, cold rain, we gather in the conference room for the budget meeting. It’s a good thing I was warned that their “budget meeting” has nothing to do with budgets; rather, it’s deciding who’s going to do what for the next day’s issue. We must all agree on the editorial (so it reflects the consensus of the editors), and we start the discussion with one of the writers suggesting that it’s too easy to change/add majors. Others seem to share that opinion, which I find surprising, as I’ve spent a lot of time talking with other deans, the provost, and university leaders on how we can make it easier for students to do so. I point out that it’s easy for students who have GPAs above 3.0, but it’s a lot harder for an average student with a GPA in the 2.0-2.4 range to change majors. They consider my remarks, and the next day’s editorial reflects well our discussion.

Last Thoughts – As I finish up the Police Blotter for page 2 of the Technician and end my day as Laura Wilkinson’s replacement, I find myself amazed at the pace and the energy of our students and our faculty. This is one great place, and once again, I pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming. Sure enough, I’m not–although I’ll definitely sleep well tonight!

"Dean" Laura Wilkinson's Reflections

Dean Wilkinson and Student Braden pump students up at the Alumni Association's call center.

5:45 pm - Call Center Visit: It was great to see the fundraising side of the university. I knew people worked on fundraising, but I didn’t understand the actual operations side of it. I was able to answer a few questions about how CHASS has impacted me personally and why I would be proud to give back to my college. Hopefully I helped inspire some of the call center staff!

6:00 pm - Dinner at the State Club with “Student Braden” -- I was blown away by the State Club – it’s very elegant, the staff is very nice and the food is delicious! I am currently thinking about joining just so I can eat that well again. Over dinner Braden and I talked about some of the challenges facing the college, specifically how the salary freeze has affected the retention rate of key faculty members. I was able to make some parallels between the types of duties Braden has as a college dean and the duties I have as editor-in-chief of Technician. We try to do the best for our organizations but also have to deal with a lot of stress and problems.

8:00 pm - Creative Writing Speaking Series -- Braden and I caught the end of guest author Karen Joy Fowler’s reading. The event organizer and I chatted afterward and he had nothing but praise for the dean. He said Dean Braden consistently shows up to college-led events, which I think says a lot about how important the faculty and students are to the dean.

8:30 pm - Done for the night! I got to go home at a decent hour for once this semester! However, I still stayed up until 4:30 am to finish up the homework the dean would need to turn in to my professors the next day.

8:30 am Thursday - BORST Meeting - After going to the wrong building twice, I finally made it to the BORST (that's the university's Business Operations Realignment Steering Team) meeting on Avent Ferry Road. It was a very early start to the day for me, since I usually don’t get up until 9:15 am on Thursdays. At the meeting the board discussed the design of their new website and the benefits and drawbacks of a survey about small/large purchases. It was interesting to see people from each college debate back and forth, since I’m only familiar with CHASS.

10:00 am - Meeting with Dr. Karen Young, Assistant Dean & Director of Undergraduate Programs. Dr. Young has so much to do and not enough time to do it all in. She is a true advocate for CHASS students and I wish she had more time in the day to get everything done.

10:45 am - Meeting with Dr. Maxine Atkinson, Head of the Department of Sociology & Anthropology. Dr. Atkinson is a crusader. She’s very honest and straight-forward and I appreciated her openness. We talked about budget concerns and how she deals with faculty, as well as her accomplishments. I hope I can achieve as much as she has in the future.

11:45 am - Lunch at the State Club with Marcy Engler, Executive Director of Development and Emily Barbour, CHASS Advisory Board President. I was very excited to head back to the State Club again because I was ready for more delicious food. Marcy, Emily and I talked about fundraising for the college, the importance of giving back to the university to help future students succeed, and a little bit about what I wanted to do in the future. I was able to offer a few suggestions for how to get more students involved in alumni donations. They need more people to help with fundraising.

1:00 pm - University Advancement Committee Meeting. I had to hustle from the Alumni Center to Holladay Hall to make it on time to this meeting, but they ended up starting a little late so I didn’t feel bad. I was a little disappointed at the lack of diversity in the committee – the room was full of white males, with a couple of white females sprinkled in. The members gave an update on meeting the goal for the Chancellor’s Residence, progress made on the Lonnie Poole Golf Course and club house, progress on the Hunt Library campaign, Gregg campaign, Vet Center campaign, and an update on alumni giving. Alumni giving is up 30.12 percent from last year and the goal is to raise $1.5 million by June.

2:15 pm - Meeting with Dr. Tom Birkland, Associate Dean for CHASS Research, Extension, Engagement and Economic Development. Dr. Birkland was one of my favorite people to visit on Thursday. Although we spent some time talking about what his job entailed and about my work at Technician,we also discussed   various research projects faculty and graduate students were pursuing. One project in particular is an attempt at a recreation of St. Paul’s Cathedral, where English poet John Donne spoke in the 17^th century. After Dean for a Day ended, I took a tour of the Hunt Library in which that same project was also mentioned. I’m very excited about the research the college does and Dr. Birkland is a huge part of making those projects happen.

The brave dean teaching Psychology 200.

3:00 pm - Teach Psychology 200 class. I was armed with a Powerpoint presentation and courage when I stepped into that classroom. The TA was very helpful when I had no idea what the subject material was saying, but I still felt very bad for all the students in the room. I did the best I could in teaching operant conditioning, but I’m pretty sure I left them more confused than more educated. It seems I’m not meant to be a professor.

4:30 pm - Meeting with Dr. Helga Braunbeck, Assistant Dean, Interdisciplinary Studies. Dr. Braunbeck and I first met my freshman year during orientation because she was my first adviser at N.C. State, and I was so happy when she said she remembered me from three years ago! After catching up a little bit, she talked to me about the history of Interdisciplinary Studies, which I had always found confusing in the past. Soon, though, it was 5:00 pm and time for debriefing with the dean. My day was over and I was sad to see it go (except for the dressing like a businesswoman – I’ll take jeans over a pencil skirt every day of the week).

]]> http://news.chass.ncsu.edu/?feed=rss2&p=2271 0 http://news.chass.ncsu.edu/?p=2249&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=project-aims-to-improve-hivaids-prevention-materials-for-african-american-women http://news.chass.ncsu.edu/?p=2249#comments Fri, 24 Feb 2012 13:58:29 +0000 Lauren Kirkpatrick http://news.chass.ncsu.edu/?p=2249

African-American women make up a disproportionate number of HIV/AIDS cases in the United States. Researchers from NC State University--including faculty from the Department of Communication--are trying to change that, leading a National Science Foundation project aimed at developing HIV/AIDS prevention materials that resonate with African-American female college students.

African-Americans represent approximately 14 percent of the U.S. population, but accounted for an estimated 44 percent of new HIV infections in 2009. The estimated rate of new HIV infections among African-American women was 15 times that of white women and over three times that of Latina women.

“We want to know how we can improve the language and communication strategies used in HIV/AIDS prevention efforts targeting African-American female college students,” says Dr. Fay Cobb Payton, an associate professor of information systems at NC State and primary investigator (PI) of the project.

“Our goal is to help craft messages that will be resonant with these young women,” says Dr. James Kiwanuka-Tondo, an associate professor of communication at NC State and fellow co-PI of the effort.

The National Science Foundation awarded a two-year grant supporting the project, which is being conducted at NC State and Pennsylvania State University.

“Our previous research found a lack of ‘cultural competency’ in online prevention materials,” Kiwanuka-Tondo says. “Meaning the materials were not culturally relevant to the African-American population in general, and women in particular.”

The researchers have already begun conducting focus groups in an effort to define guidelines for prevention content and messaging that is culturally relevant to African-American female students.

“These guidelines will help us develop online content targeting this specific audience,” Payton says. The researchers plan to test the newly developed content and messaging with the focus groups at the beginning of the fall semester.

“This is an iterative process,” Payton says, “and we will incorporate feedback from the focus groups to fine tune these communication tools.”

Meanwhile, co-PI Dr. Lynette Kvasny of Penn State will be leading a similar effort on her campus – which should help the research team identify any regional differences among African-American female students.

The NC State research team also includes Kathy Gore of NC State’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management, as well as graduate and undergraduate students – several  of whom are volunteering their time and effort to work on this important issue.

By Matt Shipman, NC State News Services

For some older adults, the online video game World of Warcraft (WoW) may provide more than just an opportunity for escapist adventure. Researchers from North Carolina State University have found that playing WoW actually boosted cognitive functioning for older adults – particularly those adults who had scored poorly on cognitive ability tests before playing the game.

“We chose World of Warcraft because it has attributes we felt may produce benefits – it is a cognitively challenging game in a socially interactive environment that presents users with novel situations,” says Dr. Anne McLaughlin, an assistant professor of psychology at NC State and co-author of a paper on the study. “We found there were improvements, but it depended on each participant’s baseline cognitive functioning level.”

Researchers from NC State’s Gains Through Gaming laboratory first tested the cognitive functioning of study participants, aged 60 to 77, to set a baseline. The researchers looked at cognitive abilities including spatial ability, memory and how well participants could focus their attention.

An “experimental” group of study participants then played WoW on their home computers for approximately 14 hours over the course of two weeks, before being re-tested. A “control” group of study participants did not play WoW, but were also re-tested after two weeks.

Comparing the cognitive functioning test scores of participants in the experimental and control groups, the researchers found the group that played WoW saw a much greater increase in cognitive functioning, though the effect varied according to each participant’s baseline score.

“Among participants who scored well on baseline cognitive functioning tests, there was no significant improvement after playing WoW – they were already doing great,” McLaughlin says. “But we saw significant improvement in both spatial ability and focus for participants who scored low on the initial baseline tests.” Pre- and post-game testing showed no change for participants on memory.

“The people who needed it most – those who performed the worst on the initial testing – saw the most improvement,” says Dr. Jason Allaire, an associate professor of psychology at NC State and co-author of a paper on the study.

The paper, “Individual differences in response to cognitive training: Using a multi-modal, attentionally demanding game-based intervention for older adults,” is published online in Computers in Human Behavior. Lead author of the paper is Laura Whitlock, an NC State Ph.D. student. The research was supported by NC State’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

- shipman –

Note to editors: The study abstract follows.

“Individual differences in response to cognitive training: Using a multi-modal, attentionally demanding game-based intervention for older adults”

Authors: Laura A. Whitlock, Anne Collins McLaughlin, Jason C. Allaire, North Carolina State University

Published: Online, Computers in Human Behavior

Abstract: The effectiveness of a game-based cognitive training intervention on multiple abilities was assessed in a sample of 39 older adults aged 60–77. The intervention task was chosen based on a cognitive task analysis designed to determine the attentional and multi-modal demands of the game. Improvements on a measure of attention were found for the intervention group compared to controls. Furthermore, for the intervention group only, initial ability scores predicted improvements on both tests of attention and spatial orientation. These results suggest cognitive training may be more effective for those initially lower in ability.

The study found older adults' sense of control could fluctuate in a single day, and affect their cognitive abilities.

Everyone has moments when they feel more in control of their lives than at other times. New research from NC State University shows that this sense of control fluctuates more often, and more quickly, than previously thought – and that this sense of control may actively affect cognitive abilities.

“This is the first time we’ve been able to see how the day-to-day changes in our sense of being in control may actually influence the way we think,” says Dr. Shevaun Neupert, an associate professor of psychology at NC State and lead author of a paper on the research.

In a study focusing on older adults, Neupert and her co-author, NC State associate professor of psychology Jason Allaire, tested each participant’s sense of control every 12 hours for 60 days. In the study, participants were asked questions about whether they felt in control of their lives and whether they felt able to achieve goals they set for themselves. Cognitive functioning, such as memory and inductive reasoning, was also measured. Participants ranged in age from 61 to 87, with an average age of 74.

The study found that participants’ sense of control could fluctuate significantly in the course of a single day. That is particularly interesting, given that previous research has largely focused on the presumption that one’s sense of control remains relatively stable.

Researchers also found that participants who normally reported having a low sense of control performed much better on inductive reasoning tests during periods when they reported feeling a higher sense of control. Inductive reasoning is a type of problem solving. For example, being shown a series of letters and being able to determine which letter should come next in the sequence.

Further, the researchers found that people who normally reported feeling a high sense of control scored higher on memory tests when feeling more in control than usual.

Based on modeling, researchers say it appears that the improved cognitive functioning stems from the feeling of improved control, not vice versa. “This wasn’t part of the experimental design, so we can’t say for sure,” Neupert says. “But it is a first step toward determining which comes first – sense of control or improved cognition.”

The paper, ““I Think I Can, I Think I Can: Examining the Within-Person Coupling of Control Beliefs and Cognition in Older Adults,” is published online by the journal Psychology and Aging.

-shipman-

Nora Shepard, a poet and alumna of the college’s Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing program, was recently honored at the NC State Alumni Association’s eighth annual Evening of Stars gala as the 2011 CHASS Distinguished Alumna.

“Nora has given a good bit of her generous life to the arts, both as a remarkable poet and painter, but also as a promoter of the arts in our lives in the Triangle,” says John Balaban, director of NC State’s creative writing program and the university’s poet-in-residence.

Watch for your spring 2012 CHASS Alumni Magazine in late April, where you can read more about Shepard and her contributions to the arts in general and to the college’s creative writing program in particular.

 Jason Bivins grew up during the punk movement of the 1980s, rejecting the mainstream and staring in confusion at Reagan's America. He went off to college and decided he wanted to become a professional musician. When that chapter closed, he returned to academia and started looking at how religion affects the way we think and talk about politics. Bivins is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at North Carolina State University. Hear an interview with him about his life, work. and scholarship on WUNC's The State of Things.

Children's author Dolly Sickles (English '96)

When Dolly Sickles (English ‘96) and her husband had their son Peyton in1998, they knew they wanted to give him something that would always pay dividends for him. Savings accounts and college funds are great, but they decided on a gift that would challenge his imagination and teach him at the same time.

“We decided we were going to build him a great library,” she says. “Kids are a lot smarter than adults give them credit for, and books can teach them lessons they can apply without being preachy.”

Now Sickles is adding her own work to that library. Already the author of a string of romance novels written under the pseudonym Becky Moore,Sickles has released her first children’s book, Peggy Noodle, Hula Hoop Queen. The book is published under her pseudonym, Dolly Dozier, by Peak City Publishing.

Peggy Noodle follows a young girl who is dealing with peer pressure and outside expectations of what she should be. She’s a tall girl, so everyone expects her to play basketball while she wants to pursue hula hooping.

“Her friends have in mind what she’s supposed to be,” Sickles says. “Ultimately she caves, and the very first game is a disaster. What Peggy Noodle has to face is rejection and opinions.”

Sickles spent her career in grant-writing and marketing for several companies and nonprofits. She turned to writing romance novels and drafts of children’s books when she wrote grants for the Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina. Sickles would get disheartened looking at depressing epidemiological statistics and the harsh stories of the  people she was trying to secure money for with grants. So her own writing became an escape.

That experience made Sickles see a lesson that her adolescent protagonist must come to realize. “I learned how important it is to have self confidence and self esteem,” she says. “I learned how important it is to advocate for yourself.”

An earlier version of this posting, by Chris Saunders, appeared in NC State University's Alumni Association Red and White for Life blog.

Joan Pennell serves as lead guest editor for a special issue of the country's leading journal on child welfare. Child Welfare published the special issue, "Taking Child and Family Rights Seriously" (2011, Issue #4) to highlight family engagement in child welfare, and Pennell is an expert in the topic. "Involving families in decision making is the primary area of my work," says Pennell, an NC State professor of social work and director of the Center for Family and Community Engagement.

Pennell says the special issue "examines how taking child and family rights seriously reshapes child welfare practice, policy, and research. In what ways does this stance influence theorizing child welfare, redesigning services, and constructing evidence? In what ways does collective decision-making that engages the family group advance both child and family rights? And when family groups are engaged in making and carrying out plans, what happens to children, their families, and the involved agencies?"

She says the studies included in the journal issue "point to the benefits of family engagement in child welfare and also to its dangers when implemented without adequate supports and resources. ... The research highlights the need to increase our efforts to amplify the voices of children and to work out ways of placing children’s rights more fully on the research, policy, and practice agendas."

Pennell says that public child welfare in the United States and internationally "is increasingly turning to family engagement as a mechanism for advancing children’s safety, permanency, and well-being. Pragmatically, family engagement is a way to involve or reinvolve the family and their social support networks in caring for children and youth in partnership with professionals. Ethically, family engagement is a way to uphold both child and family rights."

To view the journal, visit NC State's libraries online, type "Child Welfare" in the "find" area, and select the year 2011, issue #4.

CHASS alumna Morgan Donnelly ('10) says the willingness of NC State professors to mentor students helps strengthen character traits that job recruiters find attractive.

NC State and other large state universities scored highest with job recruiters looking to hire the best trained and well prepared graduates to fill vacancies in the job market,  according to a survey conducted by The Wall Street Journal.

When the survey findings were announced in 2010, NC State Chancellor Randy Woodson said the story was "a testament to the real-world learning that takes place at great universities like NC State. Our students learn practical skills while maintaining a well-rounded approach to serving their state, their country, and the world, placing them among the nation’s most prepared university graduates.”

NC State ranked 19th overall by recruiters for some of the largest public and private corporations, nonprofits and federal agencies in the nation. Schools had to have a minimum of 60 companies who recruited at the institution to be considered for inclusion – in the final rankings, NC State finished ahead of UNC, Duke, Notre Dame and MIT, among others.

“NC State is consistently ranked as one of the nation’s best values in higher education, but this ranking is different,” said Dr. Louis Hunt, vice provost and university registrar at NC State. “This ranking encompasses the entire educational process – it acknowledges the quality of our faculty and students as well as the excellence and appropriateness of our curriculum.”

The university’s reputation in the workplace came as no surprise to CHASS alumna Morgan Donnelly (Political Science and Communication ’10), who works as a digital journalist/reporter with NBC affiliate WSLS 10 in Roanoke, Virginia. After being told by a number of future broadcast colleagues that it could take up to a year to land a solid position, Donnelly was offered two jobs on the same day less than a month after she graduated – a credit not only to her efforts, but also those of NC State faculty and staff in helping Donnelly prepare to succeed beyond the borders of campus.

“NC State professors have so much experience in their fields and they offer a wealth of interesting classes that are simply not offered elsewhere,” she said. “They get to know us as students, push us to succeed and show confidence in our abilities – all of which help us learn as much as we can. That, in itself, makes us more desirable for jobs.”

Donnelly’s study abroad and research experiences, as well as the job-preparedness skills she gained at NC State, gave prospective employers additional insight into her potential as a new hire.  Thanks to a pair of unique internship classes (designed in part to offer students regular critique and evaluations), Donnelly hit the interview circuit with an increased confidence and a solid portfolio to show her future bosses.

“When I applied I had a website, a portfolio, a DVD and a cover-letter template – all of which were made for a class,” she said. “Thanks to a lot of hard work and the tools NC State helped provide, I was ready. I think it really helped me stand out.”

Internships are more important than ever, according to The Wall Street Journal reporter Jennifer Merritt.  “Internships are the new full-time hiring,” Merritt said in a video interview on WSJ.com’s News Hub. “More and more companies are making internships extremely meaningful, and they’re judging their interns and offering them jobs before they go back to school. You’ve got to know about this before you select a college.”

Morgan Donnelly at her graduation.

NC State professors and advisors, Donnelly said, gladly play an essential role in helping their students land quality, high-profile internships that will pay off in the semesters or years to come.  “I did three internships, and all of them helped point me in the right direction,” she said. “During my last semester at NC State, my advisor, Sandra Stallings, insisted I do an internship at WTVD – despite the fact I was taking 18 hours and trying to enjoy my last semester here.

“That internship really helped me, and I’m so thankful she pushed me.”

It was an opportunity and an advantage that Donnelly didn’t take for granted – and one she can’t say is afforded to undergrads at other local colleges and universities.  “I worked with some students from other schools, and many of them didn’t want to try to find jobs,” she said. “They didn’t know how to apply or how to stand out.

“I don’t think other universities prepare their students for jobs as well as NC State does,” Donnelly said. “They teach them lessons, but they don’t teach them useable skills like resume building or website construction to use when they are out on their own.”

Giving students not only the tools they need to succeed, but to teach them how use them – it’s a mindset ingrained in both the advising and educational methods used across NC State’s campus, administrators say.

“Our students graduate with the skills necessary to excel in today’s competitive environment,” Hunt said. “It is especially gratifying to have the employers that hire our graduates recognize the university and its faculty in this way.”

note: An earlier version of this article, written by Dave Pond, appeared at ncsu.edu.

Think our ancestors didn’t blog? Think again. Although the term blogging and our electronic way of doing it are relatively new, the general concept of disseminating information is not.

As part of NC State's History Weekend on February 17 - 18, 2012, the History Department is sponsoring a lecture by Dr. Robert Darnton, director of the Harvard University Library, on the history of blogging. Darnton, whose early research focused on ephemera, will share how the bits and pieces of written material from years past were our ancestors’ ways of blogging. Darnton will take audience members back to 18^th century blogging in France and lead them through blogging history up to our present time.

Dr. Jonathan Ocko, head of the History Department, explains that Darnton’s work shows that “anything someone wrote down can hold historical information. All the bits and pieces contain opinion and commentary.”

You may think that historians wouldn’t be interested in something as seemingly modern as blogging, but that’s not true. “We [historians] are connoisseurs of change,” says Ocko. “We’re interested in anything that involves change and we study the causation of that change.”

Ocko also points out that historians frequently use blogs in their own work. “Blogs are often used by historians to study public history,” he says, adding that he finds blogs useful in his own work regarding Chinese history. “When looking at blogs and their historical counterparts, it’s interesting to find the democratization of expression.”

And blogs are not only important to current work. “When future historians study our time, they will be looking at blogs,” says Ocko.

Ocko is excited to bring historians such as Darnton to NC State’s campus, emphasizing that all are welcome to attend Darnton’s lecture and other History Weekend events. “This event is not just for scholars,” he says. “The aim of History Weekend is to bring distinguished historians to share their work in a way that is interesting and accessible to the general reading public. We pick themes that appeal to broad audiences and give a sense of why history matters.”

By Lauren Williams, CHASS communication intern

The cover story of the current issue of NC State magazine* details how faculty from across campus--including Professor of Anthropology Ann Ross--are working with law enforcement to transform the way we solve crimes:

The bones from a dismembered body found in Texas are awaiting inspection in a lab near the 1911 Building. On Centennial Campus, a computer screen blips as it records information from extracted dye as researchers build a database to help crime scene investigators compare automobile fibers. In the basement of Brooks Hall, video game technology is put to a different use as a 3-D version of a crime scene appears on a screen. And just off Western Boulevard, an entomologist awaits a call from a prosecutor to testify in the case of a suspected serial killer.

If it sounds like CSI: NC State, there’s good reason for that. All across campus, researchers from different disciplines have teamed up to develop a forensics institute that is providing crucial help to law enforcement investigators. The institute will also establish a framework for students to delve into forensics, the application of scientific knowledge to physical evidence. The effort involves nearly every college on campus, from textiles to humanities to design to engineering, and researchers have garnered nearly $3 million in grants along the way.

“The university right now is poised to become a national, even global, leader in this area,” says Billy Oliver, an archeologist and teaching associate who helped set up the NC State Forensic Sciences Institute, which brings together researchers around campus, establishes courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels, and provides training and help to law enforcement officers.   Read the full story on the NC State news site.  

Scientific American highlighted the lab when NC State hosted the national ScienceOnline2012 conference recently--a gathering of science writers from around the country. Ann Ross treated attendees to a tour of the forensic anthropology labs. NC State's news services staff member Matt Shipman gave an insider's view of the tour in The Abstract, the university's blog devoted to research.

*NC State magazine is a benefit of membership in the N.C. State Alumni Association.

Think you’re a promising poet? Enter the 2012 Statewide Poetry Contest, sponsored by NC State’s Creative Writing Program through the Barnhardt Family Fund.

This annual poetry contest, open to all NC residents (some exceptions apply), is one of the largest free literary competitions in the South. Unlike many other competitions, this one requires no submission fee.

The grand prize winner will receive $500. Honorable mentions and finalists will also be chosen. Additionally, special prizes will be rewarded to undergraduate and graduate student winners.

Barbara Ras, poet and editorial director of Trinity University Press, will serve as this year’s guest judge. Ras’ first collection of poetry, Bite Every Sorrow, won the 1997 Walt Whitman Award and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Her other works include One Hidden Stuff (2006) and The Last Skin (2010). She will announce the contest winners during her reading on April 11, 2012, at 7:30 pm in Caldwell Lounge.

With 400 entrants last year, the competition promises to be tough. So head to your desk and let the poetic inspiration flow. Don’t wait! The deadline for submissions is March 1, 2012.

For more info, including competition guidelines and rules, please visit the Creative Writing Program site.

By Lauren Williams, Communication intern.

Dan Neil (MA, English ’86), a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist who writes an automotive column for the Wall Street Journal, appears prominently in the recent documentary, “Revenge of the Electric Car.” The film follows four entrepreneurs as they fight to bring the electric car back to the world market during a global recession.

Neil returned to campus recently to address students in the University Scholars Program about the state of the electric car.

Read about Neil and his visit in the Alumni Association's Red and White for Life blog.

In an interview our college conducted with Neil a few months ago (see below), he told us he was a “singularly unpromising candidate” when he arrived at NC State for a master’s degree in English. He gives a lot of credit to English Prof. Mike Grimwood, who Neil says spent an inordinate amount of time teaching him the basics of grammar and giving him the tools he needed to be a writer.

Neil went on to write columns about cars for the News and Observer and The L.A. Times --and earning a Pulitzer Prize for his writing -- before going on to the Wall Street Journal.

Ever wonder what the Dean of CHASS does all day? Well, one lucky student is about to find out firsthand. Laura Wilkinson, an International Studies and Criminology major and the editor of the Technician, has been chosen to switch places with the dean for the college’s annual Dean for a Day event on Feb. 16.

Wilkinson will step into the dean’s shoes and take over his daily responsibilities, including meeting with department heads, staff, donors, and administrators. And watch out, PSY 200 students: Wilkinson will be teaching the dean’s psych class too.

Meanwhile, Dean Braden will take Wilkinson’s schedule and become a student again. He will attend her full day of classes and then experience what it’s like to be the editor of the Technician.

Stay tuned for more Dean for a Day coverage including pictures and reflections from both the dean and the dean for a day.

- Lauren Williams, CHASS communication intern

Paul Kelley

Hometown: Kernersville, NC

Class: Senior

Major: Leadership in the Public Sector (Distance Education Bachelor's Degree program for non-traditional students)

Sample Courses:

• Essentials of Fundraising
• Public Opinion Research Methods
• President and Congress

Activities:

• Lead Correctional Officer, Orange Correctional Center (Hillsborough, NC)
• State College National Wild Turkey Federation Chapter
• Ducks Unlimited
• College Republicans
• NCSU Student Wolfpack Club

Previous Education:

Associate of Arts Degree, Forsyth Technical Community College, Winston-Salem, NC, 2010

Postgraduate Plans:

Become a probation/parole officer.  Eventually I would like to get into criminal law and be a prosecutor for the state of North Carolina.

Why did you select CHASS?

The Leadership in the Public Sector program allowed me to work while I attended school. It was also a perfect degree for my career plan.

What have been your favorite courses?

My favorite courses have been Human Response to Conflict and my LPS internship. And working with Dr. Tracy Appling-Biel has been a great experience. I have had her for two classes, making her my only repeat professor, but she has always been willing to answer any question that I have and she especially supported and praised the work that I did for my internship.

What do you enjoy most about CHASS?

It offers all my classes online, which has been a major benefit for a non-traditional student.

What has been your biggest challenge at NCSU?

My biggest challenge at NC State has been working while maintaining my GPA. Also, scheduling exams with my work schedule has taken a lot of time management.

What new doors has college opened for you?

Being a student at NC State has gotten me involved with the National Wild Turkey Federation through the State College Chapter. I have met many new people and would consider working for this nonprofit organization in the future.

What advice would you give incoming students?

Take advantage of every opportunity you can. Remember these will be the most memorable years of your life and you shouldn’t pass on an experience that will make you a more well-rounded person. The hard work you put in to school will definitely pay off in the future!

Two NC State students have been witness to a revolution, and they want to share their observations with the world.  Mohammad Moussa and Sameer Abdel-khalek traveled with spoken word poets and youth educators Will McInerney and Kane Smego to the Middle East for two months this past summer to document the sights, sounds, and emotions of life in Egypt and Tunisia during a period of intense transformation for those areas.

Moussa served as a translator and interpreter; Abdel-khalek was photographer and videographer. The team got inside the revolutionary movements shaking the Middle East to collect oral histories, take photographs and video, and create poetic reflections.

They have now transformed the material they gathered into a live theater performance that they will premiere on January 31 in NC State’s Stewart Theatre, from 7:00 – 9:00 pm. “Poetic Portraits of a Revolution” is free and open to the public.

Dr. Anna Bigelow, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at NC State, will serve as facilitator at the performance. “When I first heard these young men interviewed on WUNC this summer I was so moved by the power of their words,” she says. “I thought it would be great if our campus community could also hear these voices, see these images, and grow in understanding of this moment in history.”

Bigelow says the project is important in part because “even though these are extremely motivated and dedicated artists, they are also just regular people who talked and witnessed the bravery, hopes, fears, and daily reality of the revolutionaries in Tunisia and Egypt. These revolutions are ongoing, complicated, and unresolved. Having this insight into the ways in which the people of Tunisia and Egypt imagined that their entrance into political action would unfold is an essential window into these history-making events.”

Although Bigelow says it’s easy for people in the United States to distance ourselves from political movements occurring across the ocean, she hopes many within the university and in the wider community will attend the "Poetic Portraits of a Revolution" premiere. “Recognizing that the activists want many of the same things that Americans also value—such as a voice in their governments, economies, societies, and futures—is an incredibly important insight for us all to gain,” Bigelow says. “Through spoken word art and photo/videography, we are drawn into both the experiences of the artist travelers and of the revolutionaries.”

In addition to the Stewart Theatre performance, a “Poetic Portraits of a Revolution” photography exhibit is open now through March 2 at NC State’s Crafts Center.

For more information about “Poetic Portraits of a Revolution,” visit http://www.ppr2011.org/ and http://www.ncsu.edu/faculty-and-staff/bulletin/2011/09/back-from-the-revolution/.

By Lauren Williams, CHASS communication student intern

The university's alumni magazine featured Anthropologist Ann Ross and other researchers who are advancing forensic science.

For the cover story of this winter's NC State magazine, the NC State Alumni Association magazine's editor talked to researchers across campus who are teaming up to advance work in the area of forensic science. From studying blow flies to mapping skulls to developing a database of fabric dyes, these scientists are using their specialized knowledge to help solve crimes.

Editor Sylvia Adcock ('81) says that while she enjoyed talking with the researchers--including CHASS anthropologist Ann Ross--about the very serious work they’re doing, she couldn’t resist asking them for their thoughts about the plethora of crime shows  on television these days:

Here are their responses, as they appeared in the Alumni Association's Red and White for Life blog:

Wes Watson, professor of entomology: I used to watch CSI for entertainment. I really enjoy finding flaws in the biology. I remember one time they incorrectly ID’d a type of beetle on remains. (Watson uses the life cycle of the blow fly to estimate the time of death.)

Ann Ross, professor of anthropology: Bones? Can’t stand it. Too unrealistic. Law & Order, love it, all of them. I love those shows. You get the police work and the prosecution side in the courtroom, and it’s a nice marrying of the two. CSI—they always work in the dark. It bothers me. Turn some lights on, people! (Ross has developed computer software to help investigators determine the ethnic origin of skeletal remains.)

Billy Oliver, archeologist and teaching associate: Some are better than others. My wife loves Dexter. I watch CSI and Castle and things that involve a twist. CSI: New York is a little out there. (Oliver helps teach classes on how to excavate bodies and document evidence; he has been called on to help investigate numerous crimes.)

Tim Buie ’88 ’98 MS, assistant professor of industrial design: I hate some of the stuff. They’ll have a video from an ATM and they’ll enhance it. Suddenly it’s super high-res and you can read the guy’s driver’s license from 300 feet [something that couldn’t happen in real life]. (Buie and a colleague from the College of Engineering are developing a system to help investigators virtually recreate crime scenes in 3-D.)

– Sylvia Adcock

Norma Wright Garcia during a 2007 presentation at NC State.

Norma Wright Garcia, the first African-American female to earn an undergraduate degree from NC State, died Monday in a small town in Eastern North Carolina not far from the Sampson County farm where she grew up. Garcia was a public school teacher for 25 years. She was 68 at the time of her death.

As a history major at NC State, Garcia took advantage of all the educational and cultural offerings available on campus, saying later that her time at NC State helped shape her world view. “I met a lot of people from other countries who I never would have met had I stayed on the farm,” she said. “My experiences at NC State made me more aware and interested in the world around me.”

Garcia was more interested in learning about history than in making it. In her life, though, she managed to do both. She used education as a way to explore the world, to learn about different cultures and, almost as an afterthought, to make a bit of history herself.

Read about Norma Wright Garcia on NC State's Red and White for Life blog.

Erika Koerner

• Home Town: Morganton, NC
• Class: Senior
• Major(s):
• International Studies; German Studies
• Minor in Russian Studies
• Sample Courses:
• Russian Cinema and Society
• Germany Since 1871
• U.S. Foreign Policy
• Activities:
• President 2011-2012, Delta Phi Alpha German Honorary Society
• Study Abroad Spring 2011, European University Viadrina (Frankfurt, Germany)
• NCSU International Delegations Ambassador
• CHASS Student Ambassador
• NCSU Housing Judicial Board
• NCSU Mountain Biking Team
• Ballroom Dancing Team
• Honors:
• University Scholars Program
• Postgraduate Plans: Seeking an internship in Germany; Free University in Berlin for graduate studies in international relations.
• Career Goals: Working in international or European politics.

Why did you select CHASS?

I was impressed with the number of programs offered, and with the quality of the German Studies and International Studies majors.

Which courses were your favorite?

I enjoyed European Politics with Dr. Mark Nance and Green Germany with Dr. Helga Braunbeck. Dr. Braunbeck has been particularly helpful offering guidance on study abroad and career issues.

What was most valuable about your study abroad experience?

In Germany, the focus is on European issues, such as environmental sustainability. Sometimes that gets sidelined here in the U.S., so it was helpful to get a different view. We truly live in a global community now, with business and science interconnected across the globe, so adding that perspective is beneficial.

What advice would you give incoming students?

Start a foreign language early in college. It is valuable to any career, and can complement any major.

Akram Fouad Khater, professor and director of Middle East studies, has written a new book about the history of Middle Eastern Christianity. Embracing the Divine: Passion and Politics in the Christian Middle East (Syracuse University Press, 2011) tells the story of young 18th century nun, Hindiyya al–’Ujaimi, who underwent two Inquisitions after seeking to establish a convent in the mountains of Lebanon. Khater examines what her story reveals about  religious minorities in the Middle East, early modern cultural encounters between the West and the Middle East, and the relationships of gender, modernity and religion.

Khater’s previous books are Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870-1920; and Sources in the History of the Middle East.

Janet Nguyen (seated, center) and the sorority she's forming show their Wolfpack spirit.

Working to establish NC State’s first Asian sorority, maintaining an interest group, hitting the books hard, and making the grade on all accounts might sound daunting. For Janet Nguyen (International Studies, ’14), it’s all in a day’s work.

Nguyen, a California native, is no stranger to hard work, dedicated service, or supporting her community.  In fact, she relishes it.

“I’ve definitely got the motivation,” she says. “All I need to do is find an issue that speaks to me, and I’m on it.”

Shortly after her arrival at NC State, she found what she’d been looking for. Nguyen, who is Vietnamese, became a member of the rather large Asian community at NC State. Through friends, she became familiar with the school’s Asian interest fraternity, Pi Alpha Phi. She saw  the close-knit, encouraging nature of the fraternity and wanted to recreate that for herself and other Asian females on campus.

“When I saw that brotherhood, I was amazed,” she says. “About five percent of State’s student population is Asian, and yet we’re not all that close. I wanted a sisterhood like that.”

Nguyen started by doing some research. "Asian interest sororities are relatively new in the south," she says. "There are quite a few up north and out west, but only two or three on campuses in the UNC system." So Nguyen set out to make it happen at NC State. A year later, Females Achieving Excellence (FAE) has been recognized as an official interest group on campus. Although there are a few more hoops to jump through before the group can be recognized as an official Asian interest sorority, Nguyen is pleased with the progress she and her sisters have made and looks forward to the group’s future.

Janet Nguyen

“We’re not just going to be a sisterhood—we’re going to help these girls build skills for the future,” she says. “We’re going to push people out of their comfort zones and make leaders out of followers. Asian American students tend to be under-represented in society. I want to help provide opportunities to prepare student leaders of our generation to grow into the young world leaders of tomorrow.It’s a long process, and it takes a lot of dedication, but it’s worth it.”

Her academic adviser, Professor Nora Haenn, has no doubt that Nguyen will succeed. "In addition to being a very strong student, Janet is an incredibly hard worker for causes in which she believes," says Haenn.  "She's not just interested in making this sorority a reality at NC State, but also in helping students on other campuses in the UNC system form similar groups. She is talking with people all around the state and inspiring students on other campuses.  I have complete confidence Janet will make the sorority a reality."

By Jen Jernigan, CHASS Communication Intern

Let’s be clear about what we’re talking about here: elder consumer fraud consists of financial, medical and/or service exploitation, with the prevalence heavily tied to aspects of elder abuse. It includes, but is not limited to: telemarketing fraud; prescription fraud; debt collection and identity theft; Internet promotion and purchases; car and home repairs.

Here is a list of tips on how to protect yourself from consumer frauds and scams. If you are not a senior, but have loved ones who are, take an active role in talking with them about these issues – and let them know what they can do to help protect themselves.

• Never share your Social Security Number, bank account or credit card information with someone you don’t know who calls you or emails you.
• Sign up for the Do Not Call Register  1-888-382-1222 or https://www.donotcall.gov/
• Walk away from anyone who tells you that you must make a decision right now.Don’t sign any contract or other paperwork until you’ve had a chance to read and understand it.
• Never pay money upfront to get a loan or win a lottery or sweepstakes.
• Don’t respond to letters or emails that ask you to transfer money into your bank account or wire money out of the country.
• Don’t cash checks you get in the mail along with a letter or call that tells you you’ve won an unexpected prize. The checks are most likely fake.
• Learn what crimes occur frequently in your community so that you can use protective measures.
• Check out a company with your state attorney general’s consumer protection division, before doing business with them. In North Carolina, you can reach the consumer protection division at 1-877-5-NO-SCAM.

The North Carolina Department of Justice has launched a website that provides educational information on consumer protection in the state. It has also created a Victim Services Center to answer questions about laws protecting older adults. More information available at the NC Department of Justice consumer awareness site.

Note: Matt Shipman wrote about this blog post for NC State's Abstract research blog after talking to Monica Leach and Jodi Hall, researchers and faculty in NC State’s Department of Social Work. They are co-authors of a chapter on consumer fraud and older adults in the forthcoming 2nd edition of the Encyclopedia of Health Promotion and Prevention, which is due out in 2012.

via The Abstract :: North Carolina State University :: How To Avoid Scams Targeting Older Adults by Matt Shipman

Mark your calendars for some exciting opportunities to participate in North Carolina’s Year of Communicating Science: 2012. The entire state of North Carolina – and the Research Triangle, in particular – will be center stage for science throughout 2012. NC State University will be very much a part of the conversations, and we invite you to join us.

Science Online

January 19-21 - McKimmon Center, NC State

ScienceOnline is a gathering of researchers, bloggers, reporters, authors and students who are passionate about science. And they’re not just passionate about science research, but also about communicating to the world about science. And we need more of that. Research shows that only 28% of adults in the U.S. are scientifically literate enough to understand the Tuesday Science section of the New York Times. Scientific advances are becoming increasingly complex, and those advances present opportunities and risks that we as a society will have to address.

North Carolina Science Festival 

April 13-29 – Statewide

The NC Science Festival is a multi-day celebration showcasing science and technology. The festival highlights the educational, cultural and financial impact of science in our state. Through hands-on activities, science talks, lab tours, nature experiences, exhibits and performances, the festival engages a wide range of public audiences while inspiring future generations. The NC Science Festival and others like it offer an opportunity to celebrate science in fun and welcoming settings. This festival provides the opportunity to cultivate a positive environment that encourages children to pursue science-related careers and encourages businesses to invest in North Carolina. Most importantly, scientists want everyone to know what they know - that science is fun!

Public Lecture: Canopy Meg on Communicating Science

April 14, 11:00 am – SAS Hall, NC State

Margaret D. Lowman (a.k.a. "Canopy Meg"), the director of the new Nature Research Center at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences and a research professor of natural sciences in NC State’s College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (PAMS), will deliver the keynote address on “Communicating Science” during the PAMS annual Scope Academy. Contact pams_info@ncsu.edu for details.

Nature Research Center Grand Opening

April 20-21 - NC Museum of Natural Sciences

The Nature Research Center (NRC) is a new 80,000 square-foot wing of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in downtown Raleigh. The NRC will bring research scientists and their work into the public eye, help demystify what can be an intimidating field of study, better prepare science educators and students, and inspire a new generation of young scientists. The NRC's centerpiece will be the SECU Daily Planet, an immersive, three-story multi-media space that will link virtual to real nature and be the site of live programming on breaking science news.

ScienceWriters 2012

October 26-30 - Research Triangle, NC

ScienceWriters is the joint annual meeting of the two largest and most influential professional organizations for science journalists: the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing (CASW) and the National Association of Science Writers (NASW). ScienceWriters is held in a different city each year and typically attracts 350 international participants over a three-day span, with added days before and after for intensive tours of local science-oriented venues. Hosting this meeting is an opportunity to showcase a region’s best science, its most impressive venues, and its most appealing researchers in a way that will make these journalists and authors take note and want to explore further. Planning for this event is being spearheaded by science and research communications leaders from NC State, Duke, and the UNC campuses in Chapel Hill and Charlotte, with a growing list of educational and corporate partners.

Undergraduate social work (BSW) students and friends spent a cold night on NC State's brickyard recently to bring attention to the plight of those who are homeless in Raleigh.

Some 20 students and faculty mingled with visitors from the Helen Wright Center Shelter and the Healing Place for Men and Women during the chilly evening. They shared coffee and doughnuts as they discussed the realities and consequences of homelessness. Then they set up refrigerator boxes in preparation for sleeping outside on an inhospitable night.

The guests from the shelter spoke candidly about their experiences, and shared resources and strategies for being homeless in the capital city. "We were so privileged to have their company," said Kathy Osborne, field director for the BSW social work program. "And we are so proud of our students for their active interest in social and economic justice issues."

The event was sponsored by the BSW student association.

Read a full account in technicianonline.com.

In a throwback to the serialized storytelling of the golden age of sci-fi, readers of NC State's research blog, The Abstract, are enjoying a serialized version of "Events Preceding the Helvetican Renaissance" (2009) by John Kessel. Kessel is a two-time Nebula award winner and a professor of English at NC State. New installments appear each Monday. If you're not already hooked, you can catch up by starting with the first installment on The Abstract.

Devin and Marsha Orgeron, associate professors of film studies at NC State University, along with Dan Streible of New York University, have edited the first collection of essays to address the phenomenon of film's educational uses in twentieth century America. Learning With the Lights Off  (Oxford University Press, 2012) shows how nontheatrical films in general and educational films in particular represent an exciting new area of inquiry in media and cultural studies. The collection illuminates a vastly influential form of filmmaking seen by millions of people around the world.

NC State's Abstract research blog invited the Orgerons to share their thoughts about why educational films matter. You can read Marsha Orgeron's post and Devin Orgeron's post in The Abstract. And don't miss reading the third guest post by NC State alum Skip Elsheimer and watching the fascinating short film he includes.

This peccary jaw is among the animal remains found at archaeological sites on Carriacou.

An archaeological research team from NC State University, the University of Washington and University of Florida has found one of the most diverse collections of prehistoric non-native animal remains in the Caribbean, on the tiny island of Carriacou. The find contributes to our understanding of culture in the region before the arrival of Columbus, and suggests Carriacou may have been more important than previously thought.

CHASS anthropologist Scott Fitzpatrick was among the researchers who found evidence of five species that were introduced to Carriacou from South America between 1,000 and 1,400 years ago. Only one of these species, the opossum, can still be found on the island. The other species were pig-like peccaries, armadillos, guinea pigs and small rodents called agoutis.

Researchers think the animals were used as sources of food. The scarcity of the remains, and the few sites where they were found, indicate that the animals were not for daily consumption. “We suspect that they may have been foods eaten by people of high status, or used in ritual events,” says Dr. Scott Fitzpatrick, an associate professor of anthropology at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the research.

“Looking for patterning in the distribution of animal remains in relation to where ritual artifacts and houses are found will help to test this idea,” said Christina Giovas, lead author and a Ph.D. student at the University of Washington.

The team, which also included Ph.D. student Michelle LeFebvre of the University of Florida, found the animal remains at two different sites on the island, and used carbon dating techniques to determine their age. The opossum and agouti were the most common, with the latter remains reflecting the longest presence, running from A.D. 600 to 1400. The guinea pig remains had the shortest possible time-frame, running from A.D. 985 to 1030.

These dates are consistent with similar findings on other Caribbean islands. However, while these species have been found on other islands, it is incredibly rare for one island to have remains from all of these species. Guinea pigs, for example, were previously unknown in this part of the Caribbean. The diversity is particularly surprising, given that Carriacou is one of the smallest settled islands in the Caribbean, though the number of remains is still not that large – a pattern seen on other islands as well.

This combination of small geographical area and robust prehistoric animal diversity, along with evidence for artifact trade with other islands and South America, suggests that Carriacou may have had some significance in the pre-Columbian Caribbean as a nexus of interaction between island communities.

The animal remains are also significant because they were found in archaeological digs at well-documented prehistoric villages – and the remains themselves were dated, as opposed to just the materials (such as charcoal) found near the remains.

“The fact that the dates established by radiocarbon dating are consistent with the dates of associated materials from the villages means the chronology is well established,” says Fitzpatrick, who has been doing research on Carriacou since 2003. “In the future we’d like to expand one of the lesser excavated sites to get more information on how common these species may have been, which could shed light on the ecological impact and social importance of these species prehistorically.”

The paper, “New records for prehistoric introduction of Neotropical mammals to the West Indies: evidence from Carriacou, Lesser Antilles,” is published online in the Journal of Biogeography and was co-authored by Fitzpatrick, Giovas and LeFebvre. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, NC State, the University of Washington and the University of Florida.

-shipman-

Note to editors: The study abstract follows.

“New records for prehistoric introduction of Neotropical mammals to the West Indies: evidence from Carriacou, Lesser Antilles”

Authors: Christina M. Giovas, University of Washington; Michelle J. LeFebvre, University of Florida; Scott M. Fitzpatrick, North Carolina State University

Published: online in Journal of Biogeography

Abstract: This paper investigates the prehistoric introduction of five mammalian taxa to Carriacou, (Lesser Antilles) and refines the known anthropogenic ranges for these fauna in the pre-Columbian West Indies. The importance of such records for understanding the region’s historical biogeography and ecology is considered.

This news release was issued by NC State  News Services.

Win Bassett pursuing his love for running.

As a new assistant district attorney in North Carolina’s capital, Win Bassett ‘07 intends to serve the citizens of Wake County by administering justice fairly on their behalf.

The Virginia native initially came to Raleigh as a Park Scholar to pursue a double major in computer and electrical engineering at NC State. Given his love for reading and writing, Bassett also added an English minor. As he pondered his future, Bassett chose to cultivate his interest in law, inspired, in part, by his mother’s career as a paralegal.

“The relationships that I established during my Park Scholarship experience were, by far, the most important aspect of the program,” said Bassett. “Relationships, whether personal or professional, make life worth living and allow you to determine what life you want to live.”

After completing his J.D. at the University of North Carolina School of Law, Bassett incorporated his engineering background and served as a patent litigator. While working in patent law, he recalled an earlier experience during an internship with the Wake County District Attorney’s Office while in law school, and ultimately decided to change direction. When a position opened up under Wake County’s elected district attorney, Colon Willoughby, Bassett jumped at the opportunity to immerse himself in the human part of law that involved a fast-paced environment with ample time in the courtroom. He realized that the life of a prosecutor was an ideal fit.

These days, Bassett spends the majority of his week in district court on the second floor of the Wake County Courthouse in downtown Raleigh. He primarily handles traffic infractions and misdemeanors, involving cases ranging from speeding tickets to the possession of illegal substances, but is also the assistant district attorney that handles military matters and misdemeanor death by motor vehicle cases. Normally, Bassett is assigned to the same courtroom and the same judge for a week at a time, working with all the cases that come through that courtroom during the morning and afternoon sessions.

“The greatest challenge I have encountered so far in this position is prosecutorial discretion,” said Bassett. “Put simply, as an assistant district attorney, I have the power to charge people with crimes, amend crimes with which people have been charged, dismiss charges, and reduce charges – knowing when to do one of these when it furthers justice is sometimes difficult.

Outside the courtroom, Bassett is actively involved in a number of projects supporting the North Carolina beer community. He has authored several pieces in brewing publications, and co-founded the website NC Brewing. Bassett is also an avid runner who trains with Team Raleigh Running Outfitters-Fast Coaching Academy. He recently combined his passions creatively by helping launch the Big Boss Run Club.

Reprinted with permission from the Park Scholarships  program.

The photographer releases the shutter and the flash goes off, while the subject smiles. This may seem like an everyday occurrence with friends or family; however, for the less fortunate, photos of themselves or their families are hard to come by.

Enter the Help Portrait Raleigh project, an event organized by Andrew Vanover, a senior in Communication, and Austin Simmons, a junior in graphic design. The project is designed to provide free photography for those who would not usually have the opportunity for such luxuries.

Read the Technician article about these socially-aware students and their efforts to share the spirit of giving.

Nilakshi Phukan, a professor within the Hindi-Urdu program at NC State, hopes that the event sparked interest in those who attended.

“I hope it generated interest in the Hindi-Urdu language program at NC State. It’s a great program that allows students to explore exciting opportunities in the diversity-rich culture of South Asia.”

For pictures of the event, see our album on Facebook.

by Jen Jernigan, CHASS communication intern

International Education Week, a joint initiative of the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education, promotes programs that prepare Americans for a global environment and that attract future leaders from abroad to study, learn, and exchange experiences in the United States.

In celebration of  this exchange of language and culture, CHASS teamed up with the Office of International Affairs for two events in Caldwell Lounge.  On Tuesday, November 15, students, faculty, and staff lined up to complete paperwork and take photographs for passports as part of the eighth annual Passport Fair. Then on Thursday, November 17, they all lined up again—this time, to sample teas, coffees, and sweets from around the world in the International Tea and Coffee event.

Check out the photos from these events on our Facebook album.

by Jen Jernigan, CHASS communication intern

CHASS Alum Tommy Kane interviews Mr. Wuf

Keep an eye out on campus and throughout Homecoming Weekend. Former NC State basketball player Tommy Kane ’93 will be prowling the grounds visiting classes and filming spots for his award-winning show, “ACC Road Trip.” 

Kane, who earned his degree in mass communications from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, has been immersed in the world of sports broadcasting since graduation. An unpaid internship at Turner Sports in Atlanta evolved into a 14-year career doing on-air promotions and creative services for Fox Sports South. He’s emceed a steady stream of ACC gigs and even developed his own video production company, PACK 30 Productions, LLC.

But in the fall, Kane spends each week traveling across the country to report on the game day traditions at ACC football games. Kane said the trips are a blast, particularly when the producers suggest that he partake in some off-the-wall traditions. This year, he painted himself from head-to-toe in glitter following the lead of two iconic Florida State fans known widely as the Glitter Guys.

“We definitely push the envelope a little bit,” Kane said in a phone interview this week. He still finds gold glitter lurking in his hair now and again.

Kane is starting his campus visit with a trip to the NC State-Princeton basketball game tonight, followed by a meeting with CHASS Dean Jeff Braden and speaking in Jim Alchediak’s video production class. He’ll later meet with the coaches and do a radio interview.

No word on exactly what or where he’ll be filming in Raleigh on Friday and Saturday in advance of the NC State-Clemson football game, but he said there’s one place where the cameras will definitely be rolling — at the tailgating parties at Carter-Finley Stadium.

“When it comes to tailgating and the big atmosphere before the game, NC State ranks in the top one or two schools in the league,” he said. “Clemson’s experience is also among the best in the ACC. When you get the two together, it ends up being an exciting place to be. I can’t wait.”

– Diana Smith.

Reposted from NC State Alumni Association's Red and White for Life blog.

Scholarship recipient Christina LaCanfora with her benefactor, Nancy Snow.

Christina LaCanfora was so grateful for the scholarship support she received from the Department of Communication that she’s replenished the fund twice.

“It feels fantastic to know that you are making it a little easier for a student to finish a degree by reducing the stress of money,” said LaCanfora, 25, a 2007 graduate with a double major in communication and sociology.

LaCanfora was awarded the $1,000 Nancy and Melinda Snow Scholarship during the 2006-2007 school year. For the past two years, LaCanfora has donated to the scholarship, with her employer, ExxonMobil, matching her donation three to one.

“I just felt that I was so fortunate to have gotten a good job,” said LaCanfora, an upstream communications advisor for the company in Houston, TX. “I  remember how much it meant for me to get financial support when I was in school. I want to help other people.

“Receiving a merit-based scholarship is a great feeling. It acknowledges and rewards all the effort you’ve spent studying, writing papers, and being involved with extracurricular activities. It is amazing that someone who has never met you is so impressed by your dedication to your studies and contributions to your school that they are willing to provide you with financial assistance to help achieve your goal.”

The Nancy and Melinda Snow Scholarship was a surprise to Nancy Hill Snow, a popular communication professor at NC State from 1966 – 2006. It is also named in memory of Melinda Snow — the daughter of Nancy and A.C. Snow — who died in an automobile accident in 1996.

“When I was getting ready to retire, my students had this brilliant idea that they would start a scholarship, but of course they didn’t have any money,” said Nancy Snow, whose husband, A.C. is a well-known columnist for the Raleigh News & Observer. “So they called my husband, and he worked it out that they could get a scholarship started. I did not know anything about it until the day of my retirement; that’s when it was announced.”

Snow is thrilled with LaCanfora’s donation — and ExxonMobil’s match. “I hope the fact that Christina has done this is going to make other people want to do it,” Snow said. “I’ve always thought that instead of paying someone back you should just pay it forward to benefit another person.”
by Christa Gala

Laura Lunsford with her mentor Denis Gray.

Laura Lunsford (BS ’88, PhD ’07, Psy) is assistant professor of Psychology at University of Arizona South. She is the former director of NC State’s Park Scholarships program. Lunsford has created an endowment to support graduate students in the Department of Psychology. Lauren Kirkpatrick, CHASS director of communication, recently spoke with her about why she gives.

You came to NC State as an engineering major. What changed?

I loved math. I majored in Electrical Engineering my first two years. But one day in the lab it dawned on me that I was more interested in solving problems with people than with things. I took some human resource development classes in Psychology and loved them. Jim Kalat, Lynne Baker-Ward, Don Mershon, Craig Brookins were all terrific.

You returned to campus ten years later to become the first full-time director of the Park scholarships program. In addition to building it into one of the nation’s premier merit scholarship programs, you decided to earn your doctorate in Psychology. Why?

I was asking a lot of questions about the value of mentoring and about the value of programs that support talented students. The faculty I kept seeking out told me I was asking doctoral student-type questions. With Denis Gray’s help and support, I decided I could do my job and pursue my doctorate.

What is your area of scholarship?

I study mentoring, talent development, and emerging leadership for adolescents and young adults. I am also interested in educational access and equity for under-served populations. I am involved in a University of Arizona mentoring program now, looking at how the relationship benefits not only the students but also the faculty.

You dedicated your dissertation about mentoring to Dr. Denis Gray, and created a graduate student endowment in his honor. Why?

Denis was my mentor in every sense of the word: He would tell me when I needed to buck up. He helped me think through my practicum experience. He always encouraged me to be a faculty person. He saw me in ways I did not see myself.

Why do you choose to give back to CHASS?

When I was in the PhD program, I received a graduate scholarship from the Psychology Department. It was not huge, but it increased my ability to participate fully. I was so grateful for that support. Attending conferences is important, but it’s hard when you’re a student and your budget is tight. I wanted to give back to other graduate students because of Denis Gray.

Recent CHASS graduate Gellar-Goad (MPA, 2011) was no stranger to volunteer work when he chose to take Professor Branda Nowell's service-learning course on program evaluation. In addition to volunteering as a coordinator during Mark Kleinschmidt’s campaign in 2009, he also participated in unpaid service-learning experiences with United Way of the Greater Triangle and as an office intern for Chapel Hill’s Mayor Kleinschmidt in 2010.

So when taking Professor Nowell's course the opportunity to work with the non-partisan organization Democracy North Carolina arose, Gellar-Goad, who considers himself an advocate for good government, grabbed it.

During this service-learning project Gellar-Goad collaborated with his classmates to evaluate Democracy North Carolina internally and figure out how to improve its efficiency. As Gellar-Goad and his peers worked to accomplish this goal, they not only gained an invaluable first-hand experience, but also enrichment.

"Any class with a service-learning component is useful," said Gellar-Goad, who participated in four such projects over the course of his MPA studies. "It enriches you by bringing in experience, and also by the fact that you're making something or producing something that's meaningful in the real world."

Gellar-Goad’s service-learning experience also stoked his passion for working to improve the political arena, particularly in his home state. When Democracy North Carolina posted a full-time opening, he applied.

Although Gellar-Goad already had a sense of the value of his contributions to the organization during this experience, he got full confirmation when during his interview the research he had contributed was used as a major point of discussion. They had taken his work seriously and used it to better the organization. Needless to say, he was hired.

“Hands-on classes in the MPA program—like Organization Change Management and Program
Evaluation—were critical to my education,” Gellar-Goad said. “They were also key to launching my career. NC State's service-learning courses are some of the best.”

By Jennifer Jernigan, CHASS Communication Intern
Photo provided by Jake Gellar-Goad, pictured above on graduation day with his colleagues from the Democracy NC Program Evaluation Project, Caroline Bixiones and Jodi Swicegood.

• Make sure you’re available to be dean on February 16, and that you have at least two classes that day.
• In 300 words or less, tell us why you should be dean for a day ... and why the dean should experience your day.
• Send your reasons to DeanForADay@ ncsu.edu. Include your name, class year, and major(s)
• Deadline to apply: November 22, 2011.

All CHASS majors are welcome to apply. Essays are juried by CHASS student ambassadors.

Read last year's Dean for a Day Diaries. And picture yourself as CHASS dean for a day.

Students and faculty in the Department of Communication shared some of their work with Chancellor Woodson.

CHASS welcomed NC State Chancellor Randy Woodson for a visit to the college on October 31.  Chancellor Woodson started his afternoon with a lunch with CHASS students. He listened to their concerns about tuition increases, curricular adjustments, and other pressing issues, and shared his perspectives with the students. Then, after a session with college administrators, the chancellor toured three of the college's ten departments: the School of Public and International Affairs, the Department of Communication, and the Department of English. He rounded out the afternoon with an open forum with CHASS faculty in Caldwell Lounge. Topics ranged from the role of CHASS in the university to faculty recruitment and retention, student success, graduation rates, and more. See pictures of the chancellor's Halloween visit on the  CHASS Facebook page.

Park Scholars Joshua Chappell (Chemical Engineering, Spanish, Business Administration) and Sophie Austin (Biological Sciences and Classics) on the National Mall.

Park scholar Joshua Chappell was among a group of students who spent their fall break in Washington, D.C., analyzing the media’s impact on the dissemination of information in the United States. Chappell, who’s majoring in Chemical Engineering and minoring in Spanish and Business Administration, called the trip “informative and rewarding. I learned a lot from national leaders about how the media directly impacts our daily lives."

In light of events such as the WikiLeaks scandal and the national healthcare debate, the class was interested in exploring the responsibility assumed by the media in providing news to the American public."As a senior staff writer at the Technician, it was interesting to talk with media leaders and to hear from politicians who are impacted by the media," Chappell said.

During conversations with individuals representing organizations and government branches such as the Center for Public Integrity, Investigative Reporting Workshop, PolitiFact, Public Education Center, U.S. House of Representatives, and U.S. Supreme Court, students gained a deeper understanding of how journalists can affect individuals’ understanding of current events, why certain stories are covered over others, and the fine line between commentating on the news and objectively reporting the news.

Park Scholars are selected in part because of their potential as leaders, and thus should be aware of the important leadership challenges facing the nation. The Learning Lab II field experience allows students to develop a critical understanding of national and global issues by interacting with thought leaders immersed in these issues. "The media is something that impacts many parts of everyday life," Chappell said. "I think the class as a whole learned a lot about how the media works and ways to deal with media-related issues."

Learning Lab II guest speakers included Bill Adair, Editor, PolitiFact; Washington Bureau Chief, St. Petersburg Times; Adam Belmar, Director of Communications, Quinn Gillespie & Associates; Bill Buzenberg, Executive Director, Center for Public Integrity; Sue Garman Kranias, Senior Communications Strategist, Quinn Gillespie & Associates; Dick Gordon, Host, WUNC’s The Story; Charles Lewis, Executive Editor, Investigative Reporting Workshop, American University; Jim Manley, Senior Director of Communications and Government Affairs, Quinn Gillespie & Associates; Representative David Price (D-NC), Member, United States House of Representatives; The Honorable Antonin Scalia, United States Supreme Court Justice; and Joe Trento, President, Public Education Center.

An earlier version of this article appeared in Park News.

Imagine this: as a political science major, you’ve secured a three week internship in Washington, D.C., the hub of the nation’s political arena. You have the chance to work face-to-face with a member of Congress and to observe first-hand the ins and outs of the legislative process on the national level. After all, it’s not every day you get to sit in on a legislative committee meeting in the House or Senate. And in your down time, you can choose to explore the little-known underground network that connects important buildings in D.C. or meander through the typically off-limits stacks of the Library of Congress. Sounds nice, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately, such an experience often comes with a high price tag. Although by early 2011 Hayden Bauguess (Political Science, ’14) had secured a three week summer internship with North Carolina Congressman Howard Coble, he had not yet figured out how to fund it. Like many other undergraduates living on a budget, Bauguess thought the high costs of living in D.C. might make his dream of interning in the nation’s capital difficult to achieve.

Thankfully, Bauguess was resourceful. He applied for—and won—the Latta Washington Internship Scholarship. The

$1500 scholarship, provided by CHASS alumnus Sandra Latta (Political Science ’84) put his dream in reach.

In late May, he packed his bags and headed for D.C. While working for Congressman Coble, Bauguess learned about the Capitol and gave tours to groups made up of people both from around the world and, occasionally, from his small home town of Gibsonville. He completed office work for the congressman and talked to Coble’s constituents. During free time, Bauguess toured the floor of the House and Senate, explored the private stacks of the Library of Congress, and sat in on numerous legislative committees.

Bauguess says the experience opened his eyes and changed his perspective on Congress. As he sat in on various committee meetings, he gained new insights into the myriad factors that must be considered when lawmakers craft legislation for an entire country.

Could he have learned about this from home? “Sure, I could have learned about all of this in a political science class,” Bauguess said. “Anything can be taught. But you just can’t compare that to a hands-on experience like I had. I wouldn’t have come away with the same understandings I have now.”

Bauguess, who hopes to participate in another internship next summer, plans to either attend law school or join the Coast Guard after graduating in 2014.

“I like to serve, and I want to give back. I’ve got an intense passion for politics, and I want to use that to serve the people of this country who don’t have a voice, or those whose voices aren’t being heard. I want to make sure that people in power hear what little voice the people do have. Whether it’s in Washington or in the Coast Guard, I intend to give back to my community.”

by Jen Jernigan, CHASS Communication intern

NC State ROTC cadets recently toured India.

Ten hours a day, studying a foreign language? That’s daunting.

But it’s far less daunting than navigating a foreign country without the ability to communicate.

For the last two summers, future Army officers at NC State have put in those hours of study to give themselves an advantage in the field And with funding from the US Army, special operations soldiers from Ft. Bragg will soon join them.

In 2009, the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures received a grant grant to teach ROTC students five critical languages: Arabic, Chinese, Persian, Russian and Urdu. The grant launched Project Gold, a summer program that includes six hours in the classroom and up to four hours of homework each day. The classes, which are open to ROTC and non-ROTC students, cover two semesters of material in just six weeks.

The first three hours each day focus on grammar, vocabulary and practice. The last three aim to convey a sense of the culture surrounding the language. Inas Messiha, who teaches Arabic at NC State, said this portion could include films and food from Arabic-speaking countries.

“You really have to create an environment where students are challenged and are completely engaged all the time,” Messiha said.

NC State ROTC students visited the Great Wall of China in 2011.

The immersive approach worked for Zack Boyd, a cadet studying political science at NC State. Boyd went to China last summer as part of Project Gold. “I remember being in the middle of Shanghai, one of the largest cities in the world, lost and using the material we learned in class to guide the taxi driver to our hotel,” said Boyd, a junior from Fayetteville.

The success of Project Gold led to a $1.8 million grant from the National Security Education Program, which is administered by the Institute for International Education. With that grant, NC State is establishing the Language Training Center, which will use the same immersive approach to teach critical languages to special operations soldiers.

Starting in January, NC State faculty will teach intensive, six-week sessions at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (SWCS) at Ft. Bragg. During 2012 summer sessions, active-duty soldiers will join ROTC students from NC State and other universities, as well as non-ROTC NC State students, for the same type of instruction.

The students “are going to benefit from the presence in those classes of some men who’ve been in some unusual places doing some extraordinary things,” said Ruth Gross, professor of German and head of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, which is part of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Gross is also principal investigator for the project.

The partnership between NC State and the SWCS is part of a larger joint effort involving the University of North Carolina system and the military. It marks an evolution in cooperation between the military and higher education, according to Dwight Stephens, director of NC State’s Critical Languages Program.

“The historical separation of the public academic institutions and the military is sort of dissolving,” Stephens said. “We’re realizing that there is a lot to share and a lot to learn from each other.”

Language proficiency among ROTC cadets is a high priority for the US Army, according to Capt. Joseph Cofiori, assistant military science professor and member of the Army ROTC cadre at NC State. It’s a force multiplier, he said, a skill that vastly increases a solder’s potential.

“We don’t operate stateside,” Cofiori said. “We operate in places where people don’t speak English as their primary language. It enhances the mission when you can communicate with the locals in the country where you operate.”

“I think it’s crucial for us to send people who know, not just the languages, but the culture of the places they’re going,” Messiha said. “The difference between how you say a word correctly and incorrectly is sometimes literally the difference between life and death.”

by Jimmy Ryals, NC State Communication Services

Originally posted at ncsu.edu.

• Home Town: Raleigh, NC
• Class: Senior
• Major(s):
  • Spanish; Business Administration
  • Minor: Psychology
• Sample Courses:
  • Literature & Culture of Spain
  • International Marketing
  • Learning & Motivation
• Activities:
  • Colonial Properties Trust (Morrisville, NC): Leasing Specialist, 9/10-present; Marketing Intern, 6/10-9/10
  • National Society of Collegiate Scholars: Executive Vice President 2011-12
  • Student Bridges Women’s Leadership Certificate 2011 (NCSU Women's Center)
  • Pi Beta Phi Sorority: Vice President of Membership Development 2009-10, Scholarship Chair 2010, House Manager 2009
  • Center for Student Leadership Ethics and Public Service
  • Students Advocating for Youth (SAY)Mentor: 2007-08
• Honors:
  • Pi Eta Sigma Honors Fraternity
  • Dean’s List
• Postgraduate Plans: Perhaps an MBA
• Career Goals: Marketing

Why did you select CHASS?

I initially started in CHASS as a Psychology major. My mother is from Spain, and I wanted to continue strengthening my cultural background. Then I added an interest in Business, and kept Psychology as a minor. It is applicable in many situations when you need to understand attitudes and behavior.

What have you enjoyed most about CHASS?

My favorite classes have been Abnormal Psychology with Professor Ticola Caldwell and Hispanic Cinema with Dr. Jorge Mari. Dr. Deb Luckadoo, Director of Campus Activities, was my Student Bridges Mentor and also offered great guidance. I love that CHASS is so open. You are not tied to a specific career. There is flexibility that prepares you for many situations.

What advice would you give incoming students?

Get involved while you have this chance to gain knowledge and leadership skills. It absolutely helps you to get a job and perform better academically and socially. Exposure to all different people is great as well – I have met so many wonderful people through SAY and NCSC. Also, be sure to use the University Career Center resources – the database helped me to get an internship.

Nominate a student for CHASS Student of the Month.

When children are placed in foster care, it often means a disruption in their education, as well as a change in living situation – which can hurt their educational performance. Now NC State researchers from the Department of Social Work are using a federal grant to launch a project designed to improve educational stability for foster children nationally and boost their overall chances of success.

The project, Fostering Youth Educational Success (Fostering YES), is funded by a grant from the U.S. Children’s Bureau and is focusing on educational stability for foster children because these children often struggle in the school system and are facing upheaval in other parts of their lives. The grant is for approximately $250,000 over 17 months.

As part of the project, researchers will be working with groups in Cumberland County, N.C., including social services, public schools, the court system, mental health services and community nonprofit organizations. Fostering YES is a joint endeavor of NC State’s Center for Family and Community Engagement and Department of Social Work.

“Currently, in Cumberland County as in most communities, there can be administrative delays in admitting a child to a new school when that child enters foster care. We’re hoping to devise ways of overcoming these administrative hurdles,” says Dr. Joan Pennell, a professor of social work and center director at NC State and principal investigator for Fostering YES.

“Ideally, children can be kept in the same school, to minimize disruption in their lives,” says Dr. Jodi Hall, a clinical assistant professor of social work at NC State and co-principal investigator on the project. “But moving to a new home can mean moving to a new school. If that happens, we need to make sure that important information about these children travels with them – so that new teachers and school administrators are aware of educational progress and any other relevant information that could contribute to academic and social success.”

But the project hopes to do more than ensure children are enrolled in schools promptly. “Getting a good education, and maintaining a child’s social network, are important parts of helping children become successful adults,” Pennell says. “To that end, we’re also hoping to increase the use of child and family teams (CFTs) in Cumberland County schools.” The CFT concept utilizes teams made up of youth and their families, teachers, social workers, pastors or other community members to develop a plan for helping a child succeed both in school and in the broader community.

The Fostering YES team will conduct interviews with foster youth, families, social workers, school personnel, and other involved parties in Cumberland County to identify existing barriers to educational stability, as well as potential solutions. This research will help in crafting plans to help individual children involved with the project.

However, this research will also inform the development of new policies and procedures designed to support a stable and continuous education and support system for foster children. “We’re hoping to create a blueprint that can be used throughout North Carolina and nationally,” Pennell says.

Researchers also plan to use information collected through this project to develop modules that focus on improving stability and academic performance for foster children. These materials could be used in academic classrooms or in training workshops for social workers, teachers, youth groups and others involved in child education, welfare and mental health. “This should have real value for students and professionals – as well as the children themselves,” Pennell says.

One reason the project is taking place in Cumberland County is because the county has a large military population – and approximately one-third of students in the school system are part of military-connected families. These families can be subject to high stress, particularly during times of deployment. In some instances, all of a family’s caregivers can be deployed simultaneously. And military families have often moved repeatedly as parents are assigned to different bases. “All of these things mean that the issue of school stability is particularly important to Cumberland County,” Pennell says.

This news release was issued by NC State's News Services office.

New technologies have expanded the possibilities for writing in multiple media, including digital media. Through the National Day on Writing, created by the National Council of Teachers of English, participants can learn about--and play with--some of the many new possibilities for self-expression in written form. 

CHASS is participating in National Day on Writing with an event in Caldwell Lounge on October 20 from 12:00 - 4:00 pm. 

Students, faculty, and staff are invited to come explore different writing practices while interacting with other writers. Attendees can participate in various interactive writing practices through features such as Post-It graffiti walls, a scar journal in which writers can share their scar stories, a poetry-exchange table, a Kinect interactive poetry site, and an open mic/spokenword performance for those who choose to share their writing with others.

Twitter users can connect using the hashtag#wolfwrite, and Facebook users can check out the page “WolfWrite.”

For additional information:  http://www.ncte.org/dayonwriting

Health literacy--the ability to read, understand, and act on health-related information--poses an enormous challenge to improving health and to lowering healthcare costs in the United States. Federal policies and agencies, such as HealthyPeople 2020, the 10-yearagenda for improving national health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recognize the importance of health literacy.  By some accounts, low health literacy is estimated to cost the U.S. health care system more than $58 billion annually. Yet many health care providers, payers and policymakers remain largely unaware of the extent of the problem. (See the Partnership for Clear Health Communication for more details.)

For R.V. Rikard, a doctoral student in sociology, the passion to improve health literacy grew out of work with the Communities and Health Disparities project led by Maxine Thompson in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at NC State. "The project brought together a group of sociology graduate students and faculty members, the Alliance of AIDS Services - Carolina, and members of the African-American community," he said. "We knew that low health literacy is linked to risk-taking behaviors that result in sexually transmitted infections. So we focused on developing a culturally sensitive HIV health literacy toolkit to raise HIV awareness in the African-American community."

As part of Health Literacy Month this October, Rikard and other professionals around the country--practitioners, policymakers, and researchers alike--are making a concerted effort to raise awareness about health literacy. "I advocate for a broad, diverse, multi-disciplinary coalition of practitioners, researchers, advocates, and most importantly people from all walks of life, to examine and understand how health literacy connects to age, sex, race/ethnicity, residential location, income, education, and other areas," he said.

RV recently contributed a blog post for a series on the national "Engaging the Patient" site from his perspective as a sociologist. The site features a roster of national experts sharing their take on the challenges of health literacy in America.

RV and his co-author's research is also featured in a special issue of The Journal of Health Communication focused on an approach to health literacy measurement. 

He will be a guest expert in a national Twitter discussion on October 20 at 2:00 EST about the challenges related to communicating health prevention. Tune in by using the hashtag #healthlit.

Calling all dingbatters!** When you head to the State Fair, make sure you get a taste of North Carolina dialect stew. A CHASS exhibit celebrating the state’s richly-flavored  dialects will introduce fair-goers to the language traditions that are uniquely ours.

The language and dialect booth, sponsored by the North Carolina Language and Life Project (NCLLP),  is a “unique opportunity for visitors to celebrate one of North Carolina's greatest cultural resources—our rich legacy of dialects and languages,” said Walt Wolfram, Director of the NCLLP. "North Carolina has one of the most varied dialect landscapes in the United States. I want folks to appreciate that cultural tradition.”

The NCLLP exhibit includes a variety of interactive posters, videos and audio stations where visitors can see and hear language variations from across the Tar Heel State. Can you tell the difference between Mountain Talk and the Outer Banks dialect? You may want to brush up on your dialect recognition skills  before you go.

**Pssst: a dingbatter is an outsider on Ocracoke.

History lecturer Nicholas Robins, an expert on the environmental history of South America, exposes modern day consequences of silver-mining practices used by 16th century Spanish conquistadors in his guest blog series on NC State's Abstract. In “Spanish Colonialism’s Environmental Legacy,” Robins reviews the history of mining in South America and its transformation into a modern day environmental concern which is exclusive to these historic mining communities—extremely high and dangerous concentrations of mercury which remain embedded in the soil more than 400 years later.

To read the three-part series, visit Origins, 'A Black Shadow of Hell,' and The Toxic Present.

CHASS Dean Jeff Braden and  Associate Dean Vicki Gallagher were among the administrators donning aprons to serve the staff.

Staff gathered on the Caldwell patio for the picnic.

Neko Everett, Michelle Branch, and Crissy Williams-Brown hung out with Mr. Wuf.

Allen Emory served as emcee and distributed raffle prizes donated by area merchants.

CHASS Dean Jeff Braden and his associate and assistant deans give a flip about the staff in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Actually, make that dozens of flips. The dean and his fellow administrators hosted a picnic during Fall Break to honor and thank the 135 staff in the college for all their hard work and dedication.

“We have not been able to give raises for the past several years,” the dean said as he flipped burgers and hotdogs. “And we have asked staff members to take on more and more work. We wanted to celebrate our staff and to let them know we value what they bring to the college each and every day.”

In addition to enjoying a picnic lunch served by the administrators, lucky staff members received items donated by businesses along Hillsborough Street and beyond. “We are some of the closest neighbors to these businesses, and they were generous in helping us thank our staff,” Braden said.

Many thanks to the 50+ businesses who contributed, including Porter’s, David’s Dumpling and Noodle Bar, Brueggers Bagels, Harris Teeter, WKNC, Dunkin Donuts, Amedeo’s,The NC State bookstore, The Pit and Sitti restaurants.

Special thanks to Robert Bell for photography and for providing music, to Allen Emory, for serving as emcee, and to Crissy Williams-Brown, organizer extraordinaire.

Susan Miller-Cochran and Chris Anson at the White House

English Professors Chris Anson and Susan Miller-Cochran were invited guests at the White House last week for a summit focused around their areas of expertise. Miller-Cochran directs the university's First Year Writing Program. Anson, a university distinguished professor, directs the Campus Writing and Speaking Program.

Here's their report:

We were invited to the White House for an October 7 meeting with representatives from the national Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA) as part of the Community Leaders Briefing Series. Our primary goals for the visit were to open doors of communication with the Obama administration about writing instruction, literacy, and connections between secondary and post-secondary education.

We were particularly interested in discussing a recent document that the CWPA has released: the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing . We also hoped to discuss some of the ramifications of the Common Core State Standards Initiative on writing instruction.

During a morning session, we heard about several initiatives of the Obama administration, and in the afternoon, we participated in a small group discussion with officials from the Department of Education. The DOE encourages participation in the discussion about the Common Core Standards, and we discussed some of the differences between high school and college writing.

Having students repeatedly practice narrowly defined, formulaic modes of writing doesn't prepare them well for the variety of writing tasks they'll encounter in college and beyond, so we stressed the importance of helping students develop flexibility, critical thinking, and problem solving abilities to be effective writers.

We also urged the administration to look more skeptically on the idea that students can fulfill college-level writing requirements in high school, and to shift part of its earmarked funding for increased access to dual-credit programs toward improved literacy education in high school and toward programs for greater curricular articulation between high schools and colleges.

Three universities have launched a Triangle Center for Japanese Studies  that will support fellowships, research, seminars, travel, guest speakers, and library development.

North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Duke University will cooperate in the center, founded by a $270,000 grant from the Japan Foundation in Tokyo. NC State's participation is supported by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and its Department of History. The center, described at http://trianglejapan.org/, will continue to seek funding for collaborative endeavors in research, community outreach, and education.

David Ambaras, associate professor of history at NC State and a leader of the center,  says a main goal of the center is to take advantage of the remarkably high concentration of Japan scholars in the Triangle and use it to enhance collaborative projects as well as each of the universities’ Asian studies programs.

“The intent is to serve as an umbrella over the activities that are already happening at NC  State, Duke and UNC relating to Japan, and to call attention to the strength and depth of those activities collectively,” said Morgan Pitelka, Ph.D., center director and associate professor of Asian studies in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences.

Interest in Japanese language and culture is growing in the United States, Pitelka said. He said he hopes the center can build on and support student and community interest with research and learning opportunities.

The center offers $2,500 research travel grants to faculty and graduate students at the three universities and $750 travel grants to scholars from other universities to come to the three partnering institutions to conduct research.

Faculty collaborating in the center are from fields including history, anthropology, art history and Asian studies, language and literature.

“By bringing together the resources of all three universities, we are building strength as a collective,” Pitelka said. “Our region offers diverse Asian cultural influences and a remarkable concentration of scholars who study Asia. I’ve been excited to find so many researchers to collaborate with in the areas of modern Japan, the Japanese empire and the relationship between Japan and Korea.”

The first event sponsored by the center to be held at NC State will feature Narita Ryuichi of Japan Women’s University and six colleagues from Japan. They will lead a workshop titled “Postwar Japan, Nuclear Weapons, and Nuclear Power: from the Perspectives of History, Literature and Cultural Studies” in Withers 331, 5:00 - 8:00 pm, Tuesday, October 25.

For details about other events, check http://trianglejapan.wordpress.com/events/.

This article is based on information that appeared at uncnews.unc.edu.

Home Movie Day is a celebration of local amateur home movies that also provides a chance for attendees to learn how to preserve those movies for the enjoyment of future generations. Come meet with local film archivists, learn about the long-term benefits of film over video and other digital media, and of course, watch a variety of old family films.

Comb through your attic, dig through your closets, call up Grandma, and search out your family's home movies.  Bring an 8mm, Super8mm, or16mm home movie (sorry, no video or slides) and get ready for a fun afternoon filled with the celebration of culturally-rich local heritage preserved in film.

Home Movie Day 2011 will take place on Saturday, October 15, from 1:00 - 4:00 pm at the North Carolina State Archives Auditorium,109 East Jones Street, Raleigh NC 27601.

Parking is free and easily accessible.

For more information, see http://www.avgeeks.com/hmd.html.

Mary Tschirhart directs the Institute for Nonprofits.

The college's Institute for Nonprofits was highlighted in a News and Observer article about its efforts to provide leadership training for nonprofits. 

As the article noted, NC State offers an undergraduate minor in nonprofit studies that "emphasizes key themes in the field, including earning the public trust and driving systemic change. These lessons are reinforced through intensive internships and service projects further preparing students for leadership roles. At the same time, as many nonprofits shift toward external training partners instead of trying to run their own development programs for staff, the Institute for Nonprofits is finding ways to support existing professionals in the field. For instance, it has joined with Habitat for Humanity International on an annual program that helps Habitat affiliates throughout the United States, including several in North Carolina, build stronger talent pipelines."

Join us at 7:30 on October 17 in Stewart Theatre, when the United States Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin will be our very special guest. Merwin is one of the most widely-read poets in America. During his 50-year career, his work has been recognized with two Pulitzer Prizes, the National Book Award, and countless other accolades. His reading is free and open to the public. Sponsored by the English Department's Creative Writing MFA program. Hear Frank Stasio's interview with Merwin on WUNC-FM's The State of Things. 

Casual sex clearly carries its own risks, but the academic literature on “hooking up” may be presenting an unduly rosy picture of dating. New research doesn’t advocate no-strings hookups (i.e., casual sex between people who aren’t dating), but does highlight gender inequities in traditional dating that have previously been overlooked.

“Most of the published research on hooking up analyzed it as an isolated behavior – separate from dating and relationships,” says study co-author Sinikka Elliott, an assistant professor of sociology at NC State. “Yet, a large-scale survey of college students found that, when asked about their last relationship of six months or more, over two-thirds of students said they’d had at least one hookup and one date before it became a relationship.”

To gain insight into how hooking up may be connected to dating, Elliott and her co-authors, Julie Reid of the University of Southern Mississippi and Gretchen Webber of Middle Tennessee State University, presented scripted scenarios to 273 college students, and asked them to explain the motivation for the characters in the scenarios.

In the first part of each scenario, a man and a woman meet at a party for the first time and hook up. In the second part of each scenario, the same man and woman go on a date a week after hooking up – and the date ends in a kiss (no sex). In one scenario, the woman asks the man out on the date. In the other scenario, the man asks the woman out.

The students explained the first part of the scenario (the hookup) based largely on mutual desire and alcohol consumption (which they assumed would be present at the party – despite no mention of alcohol in the scenario). One interesting finding here is that the students saw both the man and the woman as actively desiring sexual pleasure in the context of the hookup – and said that the hookup could be mutually desired and beneficial for the man and the woman.

The researchers were somewhat surprised by this response because women are often held to a different standard than men when it comes to sexual behavior, and had expected more students to disparage the woman in the scenario for having casual sex. However, very few of the 273 responses negatively labeled the woman for hooking up. Students also indicated that if the woman wasn’t expecting to see the man again after the hookup, she could be even freer to act on her desires and enjoy herself because she did not have to fear being judged for her actions.

When it came to explaining the sexless date, students often gave multiple possible rationales, with many saying that the main reason for both the man and the woman not having sex on the date was because they were both interested in a relationship and wanted to get to know the other person.  This challenges the stereotype that men are not as interested in relationships as women, and shows that students view hookups as a possible pathway to relationships.

However, other student explanations for the sexless date revealed stark gender differences.

For example, approximately half of the students said the woman ended the date that the man initiated with a kiss to fix the man’s impression of her and show that she is “respectable,” and thus good dating material. And when asked about the scenario in which the woman asks the man out, about half of the students said he only went on the date out of a sense of obligation—a pity date—and that he didn’t have sex because he had no real interest in her and did not want to lead her on.

“Students often brought attention to the fact that the woman asked the man out on the date to explain why he acted as he did,” says Elliott. “Students explained that if the man had been interested in her, he would have asked her out.”

Dating has been around for a long time and still reflects many gender stereotypes. Even today, the researchers say their students describe a first date much like their grandparents might have: the woman takes a long time getting ready, while the man picks her up in his car, opens doors, and pays for the date.

The researchers make clear that they do not view hooking up as a solution that levels the playing field for men and women. “We’re not suggesting that hooking up is a bastion of heterosexual equality,” says Elliott. However, they note that widely-held dating conventions carry their own gender-based assumptions and expectations – which don’t necessarily favor women.

For example, if the man is the one who is expected to ask the woman out, pick the place, pick up the woman and pay the tab, the man is clearly in the driver’s seat – both literally and figuratively. The emphasis for the woman is on trying to be liked – as evidenced by the idea that it is the woman who spends hours getting ready for the date and hopes her partner will judge her “respectable” and worthy.

The researchers argue that hookups need to be looked at in the bigger picture of dating, relationships, and sexual double standards since these choices and concerns represent many college students’ realities today.

The paper, “Casual Hookups To Formal Dates: Refining the Boundaries of the Sexual Double Standard,” is published in the October 2011 issue of Gender & Society.

This posting by Matt Shipman originally appeared in NC State's Abstract.

• Home Town: Apex, NC
• Class: Senior
• Major(s):
  • Religious Studies
  • Sociology
• Sample Courses:
  • Theories of Social Interaction
  • Early Christianity
  • Inequality, Ideology & Social Justice
• Activities:
  • Intern, Public Consulting Groups, Inc., May 2011-present
  • Co-president, Academic Study of Religion Club
  • Resident Advisor, 2010-11
  • Village Assistant, Scholars Program 2009-10
• Honors:
  • University Scholars Program
  • Alpha Kappa Delta International Sociology Honors Society
  • Sociology Honors Program
• Postgraduate Plans: Perhaps graduate school or working with a philanthropic organization
• Career Goals: Still exploring!

Why did you select CHASS?

I originally started out as an Engineering major, but after taking sociology and psychology courses my freshman year, realized that engineering wasn’t for me. CHASS allows your major to be what you want it to be. There are requirements, but there is a wide selection of courses, so I can make it challenging in my own way. For example, I am most interested in Sociological Theory, and have had the freedom to take four courses on that topic, including a graduate-level course. I have also experienced a deepened value of different cultures and an increased interest in travel.

How have faculty had a significant impact on you?

My sociology courses with Dr. Brett Clark and Dr. Richard Dellafave have been great. Hindu Traditions with Dr. Tony Stewart was phenomenal. Dr. Stewart was extremely knowledgeable and really engaged the class. I had individual meetings with him, and that really lit my “academic fire;” made me want to work harder. Kylie Parrotta also took a lot of time outside of class to talk to me and offer guidance.

What has been your biggest challenge at NCSU?

Probably what I would call “growing pains,” reconciling an internal conflict about the way I see the world. The courses that I have taken have encouraged me to reflect on and reconsider my perspectives. I also find that I use my majors in the way I make judgments and evaluations; they weave their way into everyday conversations and debates.

What advice would you offer to incoming students?

Take a few classes way outside your major. There are so many opportunities here at NC State to take advantage of.

Nominate a student for CHASS Student of the Month.

When Sandra Latta (Political Science ’84) first came to NC State in the early 1980s, she was certain she wanted to be an attorney. She even helped found the Pre-Law Club at NC State. Deep down, though, there was something else she really wanted to do.

“I wanted to work on the Hill,” Latta confessed. “But to me, that sounded analogous to saying I wanted to go to Hollywood and be discovered.” Today, she serves at the Pentagon as Deputy Chief of Legislative Affairs for the U.S. Department of the Navy.

You might say politics was in Latta’s genes. Her mother was the first woman ever elected to public office in Mocksville, NC. Her dad, J. Edward Latta (NC State, Agronomy, ‘50) was a WWII vet who was also involved with town politics. In high school, Latta took her first steps into the halls of government herself when she spent a week serving as a page at the state legislature.

As a junior, she wrote to Congressman Bill Hefner to try to secure an internship, but the positions were filled. The congressman wrote her back, however, encouraging her to apply again at the end of her senior year. Latta did.

“Fortunately, Congressman Hefner’s office carved out the stipend from their office budget,” said Latta. “My internship was everything to me. Without it, I’m not sure I would have ever realized my dream of working on Capitol Hill. I don’t know that I would have even had the courage to try.”

Her one-month internship turned into a 14-year job with Hefner and, so far, a 27-year career. Through the years, Latta began to fully appreciate the importance of her internship. At an NC State function in Washington, D.C., Latta met Rick Kearney, director of the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), and asked him if there was any money available to help students with internships. There was not.

Latta promptly established an endowment fund called the Latta Washington Internship Scholarship which provides $1500 each year for a student who has applied and been accepted into an internship program in Washington, D.C.

“Sandra feels it is a tremendous advantage for students to be able to intern in the nation’s capital and she knows how expensive that is,” Kearney said. “Most Washington internships, unlike the ones here in Raleigh, do not pay. You’re up there on your own. Housing is extremely expensive, and transportation is tough. You can’t afford to have a car there. Everything’s expensive.”

It’s an all-too-common and discouraging refrain, and Latta was tired of hearing it. “I just came across too many people—both here in Washington and in North Carolina—who said, ‘Oh I would love to have interned in Washington,’ but they couldn’t afford to come here. It broke my heart to hear it,” Latta said.

Hayden Bauguess, a sophomore majoring in Political Science, is the first recipient of the Latta Washington Internship Scholarship. From May 16 to June 3, 2011, he interned for Congressman Howard Coble of North Carolina’s 6th Congressional District. Bauguess is pictured here with the congressman.

“I really wanted to do an internship in Washington, and felt lucky to be accepted for one in Congressman Coble’s office,” Bauguess said. “However, the internship was unpaid, so the scholarship meant that much more to me. I did all kinds of jobs, including running errands, answering the phone, and giving tours of the Capitol. The money I received helped cover the financial strain that was put on my parents during my time in Washington.”

That’s the point, said Latta: to make it easier for kids to pick up and go get real-world experience.

“For somebody who’s struggling to be in college, to take a month away to be up here and, at most, break even, that’s a tough financial commitment,” Latta said. “I wanted to help take the financial pressure off a little bit. It also gave me a way to honor my past. It’s my way of giving back.”

Although it’s the money the recipient needs and that Latta provides, the real gift is the chance.

“To me it’s all about opportunity,” Latta said. “I was given that opportunity, and there was a lot of luck involved. This endowment is helping someone else have a little bit of that luck, a little bit of that magic.”

By Christa Gala

Most people who were lucky enough to snag a ticket for President Obama’s recent speech at Reynolds Coliseum heard NC State’s marching band play a brassy fanfare in honor of the Commander in Chief. They heard the tiny clicks and whirs of thousands of digital cameras attempting to capture fleeting moments. And when the President walked on stage and began to speak to the crowd of thousands, they listened carefully to his every word.

Braden signed for the president.

However,those in the audience who were deaf or hard of hearing had to rely on the skills of an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter to deliver the president’s speech through signing. As President Obama stood behind the podium and spoke to the audience about the American Jobs Act, a man in black stood behind him relaying his message to those who could not hear it for themselves. If you looked closely enough, you probably recognized that man as CHASS Dean Jeff Braden.

Typically, licensed ASL interpreters are sought out to serve at large public events. However, some situations, such as an unexpected visit from the president of the United States, are exceptional. Although university officials contacted licensed ASL interpreters to serve during the president’s speech,  they couldn’t get the information they needed to provide two interpreters in time to meet the White House’s stringent security clearance standards. To ensure that every attendee was given the opportunity to hear the president’s message in one way or another, the university turned to Braden, who gladly accepted the assignment. He was joined by ASL interpreter Grace Bullen Sved.

As a former certified ASL interpreter, Braden has along history with the language. During his senior year of high school, his mother, who was a social worker, placed a deaf child with special needs in a neighbor’s home. She asked Braden if he could help the family with child care after school. Braden agreed and soon began visiting the child regularly. He grew exceptionally fond of signing during this first exposure, and decided to continue sign language studies at college.

As an undergraduate at Beloit College, Braden was required to complete a “field term” during which he could explore his own personal academic interests or get involved in public service efforts. He opted to get hands-on experience in sign language, and spent a year working in the deaf-blind unit at the Perkins School for the Blind.

While there, Braden met an intern from Gallaudet University,the world’s only university specifically designed to meet the needs of the deaf and hearing impaired. The intern, who was born deaf and going blind, was also from Braden’s home state of Wisconsin. During one of their many conversations, the man suggested that Braden spend some time at Gallaudet. There, his friend suggested, Braden would be fully immersed in a deaf community and could hone his signing skills.

Braden spent his junior year immersed within the deaf community at Gallaudet, and left fluent in sign language. He was so confident in his abilities that as a senior, he talked his way into a job at Beloit teaching ASL to his peers. “When I got back to Beloit, I walked straight to the foreign languages department and said ‘Hey, if you need an ASL instructor, here I am.’ And that was that,” Braden says.

Braden’s skills in sign language have given him access to a number of opportunities, including collaborative work with renowned psychologists and chimpanzee researchers Trixie and Allen Gardner. “I was doing student teaching in preparation for being an elementary school teacher,” Braden says. “One day in class, a voice comes over the intercom and says, ‘Excuse me, Mr.Braden, you’ve got a long distance phone call. Could you come to the office and answer it?’ And back then, long distance phone calls were a big deal.

“I go to the office, pick up the phone, and hear, ‘Hello, this is Allen Gardner. I’m wondering if you might be interested in working with me to teach sign language to chimpanzees at the University of Nevada, Reno.’ I’m thinking it’s one of my friends pulling a prank on me or something, so I say, ‘No, really, who is this?’ But it was him, and I ended up teaching sign language to chimps for a year.”

Braden’s gig with President Obama was not his first experience with interpreting for celebrities. He interpreted at the May 1979 NoNukes Rally in Washington, DC, for acts including John Sebastian, Jackson Browne, and Joni Mitchell. The rally attracted 65,000 people who were protesting for nuclear safety standards in the aftermath of the Three Mile Island incident.

Although the number of people for whom Braden has interpreted reaches into the tens of thousands—a figure that might intimidate the best of public speakers—Braden remains unfazed.

“When you first walk up there and you look out and see thousands of people, it’s definitely nerve-wracking,” he admits. “But then sign language requires the use of so many different faculties, you just get focused and forget about the crowd.”

When reflecting on all the experiences he has had through sign language, Braden stresses the importance of broadened perspectives. “It certainly expands your sense of diversity. Deafness is another culture, sign language is another language. And at Gallaudet, I had the experience of being a minority, which definitely will change your outlook on life. It gave me a deep appreciation for what it means to be human. I am so lucky to have had the opportunities I’ve had.”

Jen Jernigan, CHASS communication intern

“Major league teams have their farm teams, colleges have their talent scouts. This is our way of shaking loose some of the talent in the state,” said Wilton Barnhardt, associate professor and past MFA program director. (Barnhardt is pictured above.) “Almost every year we find someone writing in isolation who we try to reach out to and make part of our community.”

The number of contest entries received each year just keeps growing. The writers come with a variety of skill sets—from graduate students at established university programs to fledgling writers in tiny towns. Three prizes in as many categories are awarded: $500 for the best longer story (20 pages or less); $250 for the best short-short (5 pages or less); and $100 to the best undergraduate effort. For the poetry contest, one of the largest free-entry poetry competitions in the South, the top winner earns $500.

For both contests, writers must be North Carolina residents, and there are no entry fees. However, the contests themselves incur expenses for the program; in addition to the prizes, there are costs associated with promoting the contests. Barnhardt couldn’t stand to see the contests plagued with money woes, so he dug into his own pockets—and reached out to family—to help fund the 2011 contests, creating the Barnhardt Family Fund.

“We have a longtime family connection to the university and my mother—who has been my own greatest encourager in my writing life—decided we would support the contests, poetry and fiction, because it could be the first bit of praise or encouragement a writer gets.

“It could start a hopeful contestant on the path to writing or, at a minimum, allow us all to read a really fine poem or story we might otherwise never have seen,” Barnhardt said. “I was lucky to have my supportive family and lots of encouraging English professors along the way. Maybe these contests will be that catalyst for a writer who barely suspected there were others who would love what they write. How wonderful that NC State can be part of that discovery.”

Objective judges lend credibility to both contests, said John Kessel, also a professor and the MFA program’s first director. “Since the final judging is done by an impartial outside reader who is a distinguished national writer or editor, the contest brings our local writers, including some from our MFA program, to the attention of a wider literary audience and increases the prestige of our program,” said Kessel, who expects more than 200 entries in the fiction contest this year.

The 2011 poetry contest, held in March, drew more than 500 entries from across the state. The guest judge was Thomas Lux, poet-in-residence at Sarah Lawrence College. In 2012, Barbara Ras will serve as judge. Her poetry has won her awards from the Academy of American Poets and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, among others. Ras directs Trinity University Press.

The 2011 fiction contest will be judged by Ron Rash, a well-known poet, short story writer and novelist. Winners will be announced in November, and Rash will be on campus to hand out the prizes and read from his work. Rash is the Parris Distinguished Professor in Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina University. His 2008 novel, Serena, was a 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist and New York Times bestseller; his latest release, a collection of stories, is Burning Bright.

Over the years, both the poetry and fiction contests have grown. “We started out local, with undergraduate writing classes filling the box outside my office door,” Barnhardt said. “Now we advertise in more than 50 papers and send posters and contest information to 40-plus colleges and universities in North Carolina. We have hundreds of entries each year from all the major writing programs in the state. Many come from UNC-Wilmington, UNC-Chapel Hill, and UNC-Greensboro, but we also get contributions from writing circles in every corner of North Carolina.”

By Christa Gala
Photograph by Marc Hall

A cutting-edge interactive art exhibition is opening at Raleigh's Contemporary Art Museum, and faculty and students from the college's interdisciplinary Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media (CRDM) doctoral program are among the artists.

ID:ENTITY is a group exhibition that explores the complex dichotomy between the public and private versions of “self.” Radical changes are emerging at the technical, cultural, and aesthetic intersections of contemporary life due to the speed and prevalence of digital media. The exhibit looks at the changes that occur between the boundaries of the self and the world.

Making its museum premiere is CRDM doctoral student David Gruber and English Professor David Rieder’s Tunnel Vision, an interpretation of Mark Strand's poem, The Tunnel. Their piece uses a web cam with motion-tracking software that enables viewers to experience an externalized projection of themselves on the screen--selves that become linked to the words from Strand's poem. The work contributes to a type of experimental writing known as cybertext. Strand's poem and a scholarly essay about their work will be displayed alongside this interactive work.

NC State's College of Design and its Department of Art+Design are also involved in ID:ENTITY.

An opening reception will be held on Friday, Nov. 18, from 6:00–9:00 pm in conjunction with CAM Raleigh’s Third Friday event. The reception is open to the public and free with museum admission. The exhibition will run from Nov. 18 - Feb. 13, 2012.

Got a story to tell? Enter it in the creative writing program’s statewide short story contest.
Monday, Oct. 17, is the postmark deadline to enter your work of fiction. Competition is open to North Carolina residents who have never published a book and are not tenure-track faculty in the UNC system. This year’s guest judge is Southern author Ron Rash.
The writer of the best story under 5,000 words will win $500. The prize for the best story of less than 1,200 words is $250.
For submission information, visit the contest page.

The Wake County Board of Education has been the subject of intense scrutiny in recent years as it debates issues related to diversity and “neighborhood schools,” and voters are preparing for board elections October 11. But researchers from NC State have found that the issues are more complex than media outlets have made them appear. This is a guest post by those researchers, Dr. Toby Parcel, professor of sociology, and Dr. Andy Taylor, professor of political science.

Media coverage of Wake County’s assignment policy has been intense since the last school board election in October 2009. During that time, the county’s long-standing diversity policy has been discarded in favor of a yet-to-be-announced policy that will give more weight to parental choice and neighborhood location. One superintendent has resigned over the issue and another has been hired specifically to formulate a new policy.  More money is being raised to fund the candidates’ campaigns this year than has ever been raised for a Wake County School Board election before. Everyone agrees there is much at stake, and that the education of our children is critical to the progress of our community.

Much of the local discussion has centered on whether parents, citizens and candidates favor “diversity” or “neighborhood schools.” These two possibilities have typically been framed as polar opposites. The stark contrast clarifies the issue nicely and gives its politics a tribal quality: people favor either one or the other as a basis for assigning children to schools. There is little room for subtlety or compromise.

Since October 2010, we have been studying attitudes about Wake County schools and the policies that govern them. We have interviewed current and former school board members, community leaders on both sides of the assignment issue, and members of the business community. We have conducted focus groups where citizens explain their varying views and react to one another’s opinions. We have also conducted a survey of a representative sample of over 1,700 Wake County adults in an effort to obtain more detailed information on attitudes towards school assignments, and to gather demographic and other data that might explain why people see these issues the way they do.

Our research shows that the values surrounding school assignments are more complex than they first appear. For example, in addition to having opinions regarding whether diversity or neighborhood schools is the best principle to shape children’s assignments, citizens are concerned with three other things. First, they worry that reassignments for children create challenges for both parents and the children themselves. Second, they worry that reassignments are a threat both to children’s friendships and their learning. Third, they dislike the uncertainty that has been associated with the sometimes lengthy processes through which reassignments have been discussed and eventually decided. These findings suggest that concerns regarding reassignments go well beyond the simplistic notion of favoring a global policy of either “diversity” or “neighborhood schools.”

In addition, we have found that the diversity and neighborhood schools policies are not considered poles of the same single dimension. Our findings suggest that many people prefer neighborhood schools. At the same time, a sizeable subset of these people believe that children learn best when they are in schools and classrooms that are socio-economically and/or racially diverse. Although there is a tendency for those who favor diversity to be less supportive of neighborhood schools, and vice versa, this is not a particularly strong relationship. In short, many people support both concepts – and might even argue that any board assignment policy can and should reflect this.

In the months ahead we will provide additional detail to our findings including who is most likely to favor certain school assignment policies over others. In addition, we will be discussing the kinds of citizens who are most concerned about the challenges and uncertainties of reassignment.

In the meantime, we believe that debates regarding policies guiding student assignments in our public schools should take into account that citizens’ sentiments are more complex than they may have appeared. For the longer term, policies that acknowledge the complexity of these sentiments stand a better chance of enduring as our county faces the important challenge of educating children in the 21st century.

If you’ve been looking for some critically-acclaimed reading material on the darker side of Kentucky’s history, look no further than Professor Craig Thompson Friend’s award-winning book Kentucke’s Frontiers.

Friend recently won the 2011 Kentucky Governor's Award for Kentucke’s Frontiers. The prize is given once every four years for that state's best book related to Kentucky history.

The book exposes Kentucky’s little-known transformation from a democracy that offered opportunity for all to a patriarchy that supported the rights of white men while limiting or eliminating those of white women, African Americans, and Native Americans. In Frontiers, Friend explores political, military, religious, and other public records to recreate the story of how Kentucky abandoned its dreams of egalitarianism in favor of white male privilege.

by Jennifer Jernigan, CHASS student intern

Carol Rahmani (BA ’71, MS ’75, PhD ’81, Psychology) Rahmani worked as a school psychologist and administrator of student support services in the Wake County Public School System for 29 years. Although she retired from her position as Senior Director of Counseling and Student Services in 2007, Rahmani maintains her licensure as a practicing psychologist in the state of North Carolina and remains active in the field by supervising psychologists in private practices and providing her services gratis for those in need. In memory of her husband, Rahmani established several endowments at NC State. Those endowments include scholarships for students of CHASS, the College of Engineering, the Wolfpack Club, and North Carolina State University’s Encore Program for Lifelong Enrichment.

Steve Bullard (BA ’85, Economics) Bullard earned his undergraduate degree in CHASS before the Department of Economics moved to the College of Management. Bullard later earned his MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Bullard is Corporate Banking Manager for BB&T’s Corporate Banking Group in the Triangle Region. He leads corporate business development for BB&T by servicing publicly traded companies, large private companies, hospitals, universities, and other large organizations.

The CHASS Board of Advisors supports and promotes the welfare and development of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences through advocacy, fundraising, and service.

by Jennifer Jernigan, CHASS communication intern

The U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences is providing $11.6 million over the next five years to create a National Center on Assessment and Accountability for Special Education (NCAASE). The University of Oregon is the lead institute in the initiative, and will be working with NC State and Arizona State University. NC State will receive $1.6 million of the funding over the next five years.

NCAASE is launching with two main goals: to better understand the academic growth of students with disabilities, and to determine which accountability mechanisms do the best job of accurately reflecting a school’s impact on students. Academic growth, in this context, is defined as a child’s improvement in reading and math skills over time.

Measuring academic growth is important because it reflects the amount of progress a student has made, rather than simply showing how a student is performing at a single point in time.

Currently, most accountability systems don’t track individual student growth. Instead, the performance of one year’s cohort is compared to a second year's cohort. Schools are then expected to show increases in achievement from one cohort to the next. “Imagine if you measured the height of one student in grade 3 in one year. Then, in the next year, measured the height of a new third grader to decide whether the first third grader had grown,” says Dr. Ann Schulte, a professor of psychology at NC State and leader of the NC State component of NCAASE. "There are some situations where comparing results from one cohort with results from a previous cohort provides an accurate gauge of a school's improvement, but many situations where it does not."

Schulte’s team at NC State will initially establish a baseline understanding of academic growth in students with disabilities by examining data collected by the N. C. Department of Public Instruction from 2001 to 2010. North Carolina was one of the first states to implement a testing program that allows growth to be assessed, and has one of the most robust datasets on academic growth in the country.

“Once we’ve established a baseline, we can better assess the performance of various schools,” Schulte says. “And then we can compare the schools’ actual performance to the way they were assessed under various accountability models. If the accountability model results are not consistent with a school’s actual performance, something is clearly wrong.”

by Matt Shipman, NC State News Services

After most of the bodies were hauled away
and while the FBI and Fire Department and NYPD
were still haggling about who was in charge, as smoke cleared,
the figures in Tyvek suits came, gloved, gowned, masked,
ghostly figures searching rubble for pieces of people,
bagging, then sending the separate and commingled remains
to the temporary morgue set up on site.
This is where the snip of forefinger began its journey.

Not alone, of course, but with thousands of other bits not lost
or barged off with the tonnage for sorting at the city landfill.
A delicate tip, burnt and marked “finger, distal” and sent over
to the Medical Examiner’s, where forensic anthropologists
sorted human from animal bones from Trade Center restaurants,
all buried together in the Pompeian effect of incinerated dust.

The bit of finger (that might have once tapped text messages,
potted a geranium, held a glass, stroked a cat, a lover’s face,
tugged a kite string along a beach) went to the Bio Lab
where it was profiled, bar-coded, and shelved in a Falcon tube.
Memorial Park, that is to say: the parking lot behind the ME,
droned with generators for the dozens of refrigerated trucks
filling with human debris, while over on the Hudson at Pier 94
families brought toothbrushes or lined up for DNA swabbing.

As the year passed, the unidentified remains were dried out
in a desiccation room--humidity pumped out, heat raised high--
shriveled, then vacuumed sealed. But the finger tip had
a DNA match in a swab from her brother. She was English.
30 years old. She worked on the 105th floor of the North Tower.
The Times ran a bio. Her friends posted blogs. Her father
will not speak about it. Her mother planted a garden in Manhattan.
In that garden is a tree. Some look on it and feel restored.
Others, when the wind lifts its leaves, want to scream.

Johnson (MFA candidate, 2012), who did not start writing until she was 25, is the winner of two consecutive Nebula Awards, one of the most prestigious literary awards offered within the science fiction community. She won her first award in2010 for the short story “Spar,” and traveled to Washington, D.C., recently to receive her second award for the short story “Ponies.”

For most writers, receiving such honors would be validation of a certain level of mastery of the craft. For Johnson, who recognizes the potential to continuously improve, it simply wasn’t enough. Determined to hone her skills, she applied to graduate school for creative writing after winning her first Nebula.

“Even supposing mastery is possible in something as mutable as fiction, it's necessary for any artist to return to the basics again and again. I knew that wherever I entered a writing program I would be looking at my craft with new eyes, and I hoped this would make me ask questions I hadn’t even thought about in years. And it did.”

NC State’s MFA program was Johnson’s top choice from the start. According to Johnson, many creative writing programs are resistant to recognizing speculative fiction as a valid literature and tend to discourage writing within genres pertaining to the fantastical. As a writer seeking to develop her skills within such a genre, she anticipated a nurturing environment in which she could grow.

“I had heard so many horror stories about other programs that basically said, ‘No genre whatsoever.’ It’s incredibly cool that State’s program is so friendly towards science fiction. That’s what brought me here.”

After being accepted into the program, Johnson found the nurturing community she had been looking for. At NC State, she felt at home not only with her genre-friendly professors but with her talented peers as well.

“Of course you learn from the professors, but then you learn from other people in the program, too. They’re a thoughtful, positive, critically savvy group. I’m learning something different every day.”

Johnson considers this unique combination of talent,collaboration, and openness to be one of the best features of NC State’s nationally-competitive young MFA program for aspiring writers of all genres.

“What’s great is that it’s a new program and it’s already got such a strong national reputation. I’m going to be proud to be a graduate.”

Jen Jernigan, CHASS Communication Intern

“Major league teams have their farm teams, colleges have their talent scouts. This is our way of shaking loose some of the talent in the state,” said Wilton Barnhardt, associate professor and past MFA program director. (Barnhardt is pictured above.) “Almost every year we find someone writing in isolation who we try to reach out to and make part of our community.”

The number of contest entries received each year just keeps growing. The writers come with a variety of skill sets—from graduate students at established university programs to fledgling writers in tiny towns. Three prizes in as many categories are awarded: $500 for the best longer story (20 pages or less); $250 for the best short-short (5 pages or less); and $100 to the best undergraduate effort. For the poetry contest, one of the largest free-entry poetry competitions in the South, the top winner earns $500.

For both contests, writers must be North Carolina residents, and there are no entry fees. However, the contests themselves incur expenses for the program; in addition to the prizes, there are costs associated with promoting the contests. Barnhardt couldn’t stand to see the contests plagued with money woes, so he dug into his own pockets—and reached out to family—to help fund the 2011 contests, creating the Barnhardt Family Fund.

“We have a longtime family connection to the university and my mother—who has been my own greatest encourager in my writing life—decided we would support the contests, poetry and fiction, because it could be the first bit of praise or encouragement a writer gets.

“It could start a hopeful contestant on the path to writing or, at a minimum, allow us all to read a really fine poem or story we might otherwise never have seen,” Barnhardt said. “I was lucky to have my supportive family and lots of encouraging English professors along the way. Maybe these contests will be that catalyst for a writer who barely suspected there were others who would love what they write. How wonderful that NC State can be part of that discovery.”

Objective judges lend credibility to both contests, said John Kessel, also a professor and the MFA program’s first director. “Since the final judging is done by an impartial outside reader who is a distinguished national writer or editor, the contest brings our local writers, including some from our MFA program, to the attention of a wider literary audience and increases the prestige of our program,” said Kessel, who expects more than 200 entries in the fiction contest this year.

The 2011 poetry contest, held in March, drew more than 500 entries from across the state. The guest judge was Thomas Lux, poet-in-residence at Sarah Lawrence College. In 2012, Barbara Ras will serve as judge. Her poetry has won her awards from the Academy of American Poets and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, among others. Ras directs Trinity University Press.

The 2011 fiction contest will be judged by Ron Rash, a well-known poet, short story writer and novelist. Winners will be announced in November, and Rash will be on campus to hand out the prizes and read from his work. Rash is the Parris Distinguished Professor in Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina University. His 2008 novel, Serena, was a 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist and New York Times bestseller; his latest release, a collection of stories, is Burning Bright.

Over the years, both the poetry and fiction contests have grown. “We started out local, with undergraduate writing classes filling the box outside my office door,” Barnhardt said. “Now we advertise in more than 50 papers and send posters and contest information to 40-plus colleges and universities in North Carolina. We have hundreds of entries each year from all the major writing programs in the state. Many come from UNC-Wilmington, UNC-Chapel Hill, and UNC-Greensboro, but we also get contributions from writing circles in every corner of North Carolina.”

By Christa Gala

Photograph by Marc Hall