Copyr ight @ 1998 by The University of MontanaSPRING 1998 Volume 15, Number 3
Three University of Montana students were recognized during the 1998 Hearst Journalism Awards Program after competing with students from 105 accredited undergraduate journalism programs. Bruce Ely, a 1998 graduate who interned for the Roanoke Times in Roanoke, Virginia, placed thirteenth in the first round of the photojournalism competition, sixth in the second, and he earned third place and $1000 in the third round. As one of six finalists, Ely will compete on May 18 in the Hearst Foundation’s final “shoot-out” in San Francisco. Junior Stuart Thurlkill of Missoula earned sixth place and $500 in the photojournalism category. Senior Kimberly Jo Eiselein placed fourteenth in photojournalism in the competition’s first round; Senior Jason Asters earned twentieth place in the third round. Kathleen Jones, a 1997 graduate from Great Falls, placed twelfth in the television category. RX for a New Building The dream of a new addition to UM’s pharmacy building will become a reality, thanks to a $3.2 million gift from the ALSAM Foundation that topped off the project’s fund-raising goal. The donation is the second gift made by the private Salt Lake City-based foundation - in 1995, the foundation donated $2.5 million to the UM School of Pharmacy to kick off the $10.4 million fund-raising campaign. The goal has been met, thanks to $2 million from the 1997 Montana Legislature, $2.5 million from American Stores Co. and about $200,000 from faculty, alumni and friends. The construction can now begin on the addition to the Pharmacy/Psychology Building on the south side of campus. Construction on the 70,000-square-foot addition will start in June and will be finished by the end of 1999. Plans for the addition, which will join the school’s pharmacy and physical therapy programs under one roof, include classrooms, a lecture hall, science research labs, student learning labs, offices and conference rooms.
Faculty Approves Contract By a vote of two to one on February 20, UM’s faculty - who had been working without a contract since July 1997 - approved a two-year contract that provides a pay increase. The increase is 2.5 percent a year for 1997-98 and 1998-99 plus a permanent market adjustment that will vary by faculty rank and year. The state Board of Regents approved the contract on March 4. The increase will come as a 1.25 percent raise on July 1 and January 1 instead of a 2.5 percent pay increase on July 1. The faculty, in effect, delayed half of their salary increase to help offset a predicted shortfall in UM’s budget. The delay means a loss of $1,000 to $3,000 per faculty member over a two-year period. According to the 1996-97 Carnegie Classification system, the average faculty salary at UM is $44,700 or 95 percent of the average salary at six peer institutions. These institutions include University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa, University of Louisville and University of North Dakota. According to The 1998 State Fact Finder prepared by the Congressional Quarterly, which ranks faculty salaries by state, Montana’s faculty salaries rank forty-seventh out of fifty states. Around the World in Eighty Bites There were African Swazi satties and Korean kimbobs wad Ireland. And there were hundreds of students and townspeople at the eighth annual International Culture and Food Festival on April 5 at the University Center. Presented by students and faculty from sixty-two countries, the event titled “Discover Treasures of Diversity” featured food, dance, music and crafts from fortyshed down by Estonian honey beer. There was music from Malaysia and Moldavia, dances from Japan an countries, including a Children’s World with African storytelling, a Japanese tea ceremony and a Mexican counting game. The event kicked off UM’s International Week, April 5 to 11, a celebration of cultural diversity that spotlighted speakers including Ambassador Mark Johnson, deputy inspector general with the U.S. Department of State; conservationist and storyteller Vincent Kituku of Kenya; and Professor Shiro Ikeda of Japan’s Kumamoto University. Victory on the Air By the time the cowbell was rung at Montana Public Radio, the dogs beat the cats in the Sunday night pet wars, and listeners snatched up premiums such as ballroom dancing lessons, llama manure and huckleberry fudge. From March 28 to April 5, Montana Public Radio Week, the on-air fund-raiser, raked in $288,772 worth of pledges. And the unpledged donations continued to roll in, garnering another $6,396. The money raised, which exceeded the $295,000 goal, will support station programming for KUFM in Missoula and KGPR in Great Falls. In other radio news...Sally Mauk, news director for MPR, recently received a 1998 regional Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in electronic journalism. Mauk’s recognition came from a feature story, “Cheers for Charlie,” a five-minute profile about a deaf UM cheerleader. With the regional honor, Mauk is now in the running for a national Edward R. Murrow Award to be announced in June. Surveying Campus There’s been a whole lot of surveying going on at UM this past semester. First, 14 percent of UM students expressed their likes and dislikes about the University in the Student Satisfaction Inventory, then 11 percent of UM faculty, staff and administrators rated student experiences in the Institutional Priorities Survey. The results were something like this: After ranking academic excellence as UM’s most important priority, students and personnel felt that UM offered a good course variety, knowledgeable and well-prepared faculty, intellectual growth and a safe and secure environment. Students ranked inadequate parking and registration hassles as top concerns. UM employees felt that announcing financial awards in a more timely fashion and Great Falls Writer Honored Dan Cushman ’34, best known for his novel Stay Away, Joe, received the H.G. Merriam Award for Distinguished Contributions to Montana Literature at the Friends of the Mansfield Library spring banquet on April 22. Published in 1953, Stay Away, Joe chronicles a war veteran’s tumultuous return to an Indian reservation in Montana. The book sold more than one million copies and inspired an MGM movie starring Elvis Presley and a Broadway musical titled Whoop-Up. Cushman has written fifty-six books and in 1957 won the Best Historical Novel Award from the Western Writers of America. Kemmis Kudos The kudos keep finding their way to the Milwaukee Station, especially to the office of Daniel Kemmis, director of UM’s Center for the Rocky Mountain West. In the first three months of 1998, Kemmis received the 1997 Wallace Stegner Award and was named a resident fellow of Harvard University. Named for author Wallace Stegner, the award was given to the former Missoula mayor and Montana legislator in January to recognize his contributions to the understanding of the American West. As one of six resident fellows at Harvard, Kemmis will spend fall semester 1998 at his alma mater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, participating in the intellectual life of the community. Publication Prizes Well it wasn’t a gold, but good news is good news. The fall 1997 Montanan recently won a bronze award for overall excellence in juried competition sponsored by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education’s District VIII. The fall cover photo took a silver award as did the magazine’s Web site. Editor Caroline Patterson, graphic designer Mike Egeler, photographer Todd Goodrich and Web site manager Ross Jeffcoat are still celebrating. Betsy Holmquist, a publicity specialist for UM’s Alumni Association won a bronze award for a calendar featuring color reproductions from UM’s permanent art collection. Border Crossing The grizzly, which translates into “kyi-yo” in Blackfeet, has long been honored by American Indians. And like its namesake animal, the annual Kyi-Yo Powwow has grown in stature in its thirty-year existence at UM. This year, the annual gathering honored Indian graduates and Bonnie Heavy Runner, founder and director of UM’s Native American Studies Program, who died last November after a six-year battle with cancer. From April 24-25, hundreds of townspeople thronged the Harry Adams Field House to listen to the drummers and watch Indian ceremonial dancing, fancy dancing, grass dancing and women’s jingle dancing. Skills such as erecting tepees also were demonstrated. Starting next fall, UM Grizzlies and the University of Calgary Dinosaurs will have to learn to live with one another. UM President George Dennison and UC President Terrence White signed an agreement to exchange students, faculty and staff to promote international understanding and scholarly collaboration. The agreement allows students to pay tuition at their home school while attending the partnership school. UC, a research and teaching university with more than 17,000 students, is located in Calgary, Alberta. For more information on the university, check out its Web site at http://www.ucalgary.ca/. UM in Namibia First Senegal. Then Canada. Now UM is extending its reach to southern Africa. The U.S. Agency for International Development awarded UM a $1.6 million contract to provide graduate training for educational leaders in Namibia. The three-year professional enhancement program will provide training at the master’s and doctoral levels for more than thirty Namibian Ministry of Education officials. UM will subcontract with the University of the Western Cape in South Africa to provide course work and act as the degree-granting institution. Several graduate courses will be taught by UM School of Education faculty in Windhoek, the Namibian capital. Athletic Fee Waivers Remain Don’t expect to see more football players pumping gas at your local station. The state Board of Regents voted in April to retain the current level of athletic fee waivers. About 32 percent of all fee waivers at Montana’s universities go to athletes. Student Regent Jason Thielman had asked the regents to consider dropping that number to 30 percent. American Indian, veteran, faculty, staff and honor student waivers total 30 percent. Leading the Way A new organization has developed on campus to train UM’s budding leaders. Last July, the Center for Leadership Development set up shop in the University Center. The center hopes to hone skills, such as leadership and networking, in UM students. This spring, UM students took personality assessment tests and gained practical experience in center-sponsored workshops on career development, community service, Greek leadership and University leadership. Asian Financial Crisis Affects Montana The economic version of the Asian Flu will last longer than the 24-hour variety, but it probably won’t drag on forever, according to Paul Polzin, director of UM’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research. Polzin cited the layoffs at a high-tech manufacturing firm near Kalispell as a good example of the local effects of deteriorating economic conditions in countries such as Korea, Thailand and Indonesia. Asian markets, he said, have an impact on many Montana firms, even the ones that don’t sell their products overseas. “These conditions may get worse before they get better, but I’m betting that a year from now this crisis will be over,” Polzin said. “The major national economic forecasting firms all agree that there will be a slight slowdown in U.S. growth this year, but probably not a recession. Most of the effects will be over by 1999.” Montana’s economy should grow about 2 percent per year until 2000, a decrease from 4 to 5 percent in the early 1990s, Polzin said. The rapid increases early in the decade were due to temporary factors such as a construction boom, good years in agriculture and rapid increases in high-tech manufacturing.
Diversity Town Meeting No, President Bill Clinton wasn’t at the University Theatre, mike in hand, fielding questions at the Town Hall Meeting on Race and Diversity in Montana on April 23, but plenty of other folks were. After an American Indian blessing and Honor Song, representatives from education, government and the community - including Montana Commissioner of Education Richard Crofts and Harvard Professor Emeritus Nathan Glazer - discussed affirmative action, multiculturalism and diversity at Montana institutions of higher education. Joseph Kinsey Howard and the West A journalist with the Great Falls Leader, a historian, So Who’s Talking? Communication studies Professor West Shellen and four graduate students completed research on conversations between husbands and wives that lays to rest the old myth that husbands interrupt more than wives do. The truth is, Shellen says, husbands and wives claim equal honors as conversation interrupters, with husbands interrupting more often to change the subject and take the floor and wives interrupting more often to display enthusiasm for the topic and join in telling the story. Foundation Director Resigns Larry D. Morlan has decided to rest on his laurels. After raising a record-breaking $71 million for UM’s Capital Campaign, Morlan resigned on May 1 as director of The University of Montana Foundation. He came to the post in April 1991. Sharen Peters, assistant executive director and director of development, will serve as acting executive director until Morlan’s successor is hired. She served in that capacity in 1990-91. Understanding Martin Luther King Charles Johnson, Pollock Professor of Humanities at the University of Washington, lectured January 29 about “The King We Left Behind,” as part of UM’s President’s Lecture Series. The author of four novels and a collection of short stories, Johnson recently published a historical novel called Dreamer exploring the life of Martin Luther King Jr. which was released on the anniversary of King’s assassination. In Dreamer, according to the New York Times Book Review, Johnson’s “truth seeking and passion for ideas” are inspiring “because the ideas he is most passionate about are...ideas that would help us to become better people and to create a more compassionate world.” Spring Cleaning Spring is traditionally the season when mops and sponges, garbage cans and rakes come out of their resting places and go into action. In the Garden City this April, volunteers from the UM and Missoula communities repaired hiking trails on Mount Sentinel, picked up litter in Greenough Park and cleaned up the Blackfoot riverbank. During the fourth annual “Give Missoula A Clean Start - A Community Celebration” on April 18, volunteers not only picked up litter in town and around campus, they also assisted elderly and disabled residents who needed help around their yards. A week later, additional volunteers tidied up Missoula’s three major waterways during Project Clean River. Honors College Dean Resigns Professor John Madden, dean of the Davidson Honors College since 1991, will be packing his things and heading west come June 30. He resigned his post to pursue job opportunities in California. Madden spent twenty-three years at UM, starting as a classicist in the foreign languages department, where he later took on the added responsibilities of initiating and running UM’s honors program. Provost Robert Kindrick said a new dean will be hired by January 1999. M |
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reducing bureaucratic runaround should be priorities for UM.
community promoter and inveterate champion of the underdog, Joseph Kinsey Howard promoted the view, revolutionary for the 1940s, that a disadvantaged place like Montana was culturally rich. At the Center for the Rocky Mountain West’s 1998 conference to be held September 18-19 at the University of Great Falls, American and Canadian scholars will discuss Howard’s influence on the West and his pivotal role in prodding Montanans to value themselves and their culture. Canadian scholars will cover trans-border issues, such as the treatment of the Metis and the Riel Rebellion. For more information about the conference, contact William Farr at (406) 243-7700 by June 15.