Celebrating Jazz

Written by

Jazz Appreciation Month (JAM) is celebrated every April in the United States. JAM was created by Smithsonian Jazz at the National Museum of American History in 2001 “to recognize and celebrate the extraordinary heritage and history of jazz. JAM is intended to stimulate and encourage people of all ages to participate in jazz – to study the music, attend concerts, listen to jazz on radio and recordings, read books about jazz, and more.” Jazz is considered by many to be “uniquely American music” and in 1987, Congress actually passed a resolution designating jazz an American treasure!

Join us in paying tribute to an influential art form with cultural influences from around the world and check out some of the jazz-related titles available in the Hatfield Library on our WU Reads Reading Guide.

Faculty Colloquium: Tabitha Knight

Written by

Please join us Friday, April 6th, at 3 p.m. in the Hatfield Room for our eighth Faculty Colloquium of this semester.

Presenter: Tabitha Knight, Assistant Professor of Economics

Title: “Gender and Public Spending: A Conceptual Model of Employment, an Empirical Application, and Paths for Future Work”
Tabitha Knight
Abstract: Women and men face largely differing opportunities and constraints in society, especially as they relate to the fundamental notion of one’s livelihood. With a focus on the distinct roles, options, and limitations women and men are faced with in today’s society, I explore a conceptual model of employment incorporating both supply and demand-side factors, apply the main tenets to U.S. data, and provide paths for future work incorporating gender dynamics into discussions of the impacts of public policy options on women’s and men’s employment. The focus of this paper is on public spending on healthcare and education in particular as such spending is likely to affect both women’s and men’s employment outcomes and opportunities though the magnitudes of the effects may differ strongly by gender due to social norms and occupational segregation.

Students are welcome and coffee and treats will be provided. We look forward to seeing you there.

Ellen Eisenberg and Bill Kelm
Faculty Colloquium Coordinators

Frankenstein Talk

Written by

You’re invited to attend the 2018 Humanities Seminar lecture on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein on Thursday, April 5th, at 4:30pm in the Hatfield Room.

Title: “Frankenstein’s Poetry”

Presenter: Dr. Forest Pyle (University of Oregon)

Abstract: Dr. Forest Pyle (University of Oregon) will deliver the 2018 Humanities Seminar lecture on Mary Shelley’s book entitled Frankenstein.  This talk will also commemorate the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s “hideous progeny.”

Dr. Pyle’s work explores the problems and possibilities posed by aesthetic experience, particularly in the context of Romantic and post-Romantic literature. His first book examined the ideological workings and implications of the Romantic concept of the imagination from Wordsworth and Coleridge through George Eliot. He is presently completing a book manuscript on something he calls a “radical aestheticism,” the term that he believes best describes the nature of a recurring event in certain of the most powerful and resonant texts of the British Romantic literary tradition. He is interested in the various forms and effects of this aesthetic radicalization in a strain of Romanticism that extends from Percy Shelley and Keats through Dickinson, Hopkins, and Dante Rossetti through Wilde.

Contact Information

Name: Stephanie DeGooyer

Phone: 503-370-6248

Email: sdegooye@willamette.edu

On PTSD & Its Affects on the Incarcerated

Written by

Please join us this Thursday, March 22nd, at 4:15 p.m. for a talk in the Hatfield Room.

Presenter: Chris Adsit Presentation Poster

Title: On PTSD & Its Affects on the Incarcerated

Abstract: Chris works with veterans at OSP, helping them to develop healthy strategies for coping.

Tessa Conroy Talk

Written by

You are all invited to a lecture by Tessa Conroy, an economist whose research is focused on women-owned businesses and other trends in entrepreneurship. Her work has been featured in both state and national media, including recently on Wisconsin Public Radio/Television.

Title: “Do as I Do: An Application of Discrete Choice with Social Interactions to Entrepreneurship”

Presenter: Dr. Tessa Conroy

Time & Location: Monday, March 19th, at 4:15pm in the Hatfield Room.

Abstract: Dr. Tessa Conroy is jointly appointed to the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Center for Community and Economic Development with University of Wisconsin-Extension. She earned her PhD in Economics from Colorado State University in 2014.  Her research and outreach focus on regional economic growth and development with particular emphasis on small business dynamics.   Her research on women-owned businesses, job creation, entrepreneurship, and labor market trends have been featured in both state and national media, including recently on Wisconsin Public Radio/Television.  Refreshments will be provided.

Sponsored by the Economics Department.

Contact Information

Name: Tabitha Knight

Phone: 503-370-6232

Email: knightt@willamette.edu

Scott Nadelson Reading

Written by

Please join us Wednesday, March 14th, at 5:30 p.m. in the Hatfield Room for the second event of the Spring 2018 Hallie Ford Literary Series, a reading, and publication celebration with our own Scott Nadelson.

Presenter: Scott Nadelson, Hallie Ford Chair in Writing

Title: Scott Nadelson Reading

Abstract: Nadelson’s new story collection, The Fourth Corner of the World, was published by Engine Books just a couple of weeks ago and I hope you’ll join me in welcoming his work into the world! This is collection about outcasts: characters who abandon their lands of origin, sever their roots, and distance themselves from the people they once were. These stories roam geographically and historically, featuring a would-be assassin in 1920s Paris, Jewish utopians in 1880s Oregon, and teenage girls seeking revenge in 1980s New Jersey among their casts of beautifully rendered outcasts and seekers.

Scott Nadelson is the author of four story collections, most recently The Fourth Corner of the World; a memoir, The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress; and a novel, Between You and Me. His stories and essays have appeared in Harvard Review, AGNI, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and Alaska Quarterly Review, and have been cited as notable in both Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays. Winner of an Oregon Book Award, the Great Lakes Colleges New Writers Award, and the Reform Judaism Fiction Prize, he teaches at Willamette University, where he is the Hallie Brown Ford Chair in Creative Writing.

If you have any further questions about the event, please direct them to me: Danielle Deulen at dcdeulen@willamette.edu.

Faculty Colloquium: Rebecca Dobkins

Written by

Please join us Friday, March 16th, at 3 p.m. in the Hatfield Room for our seventh Faculty Colloquium of this semester.

Presenter: Rebecca Dobkins, Professor of Anthropology

Title: Using Digication for Student Research Projects

Abstract:
Rebecca Dobkins Photo
For many years, I have structured one of the upper division anthropology courses I teach, Indigenous Peoples, Human Rights and the Environment, around student research projects. Students engage in an individual research project on a topic of their choosing, but do so within a learning community of fellow students with intersecting interests. In the final few class sessions, students present their work and I found that Powerpoint did not allow the flexibility the students needed to convey what they had learned, either individually or as a group. With the help of Cheryl Cramer at WITS, I began using Digication as a learning platform for students to build and present their group project. Digication is an e-portfolio tool that Willamette, along with many other universities, has as part of the Google Education suite of tools. In this presentation, I will discuss how my students have used Digication to facilitate both individual and group learning, to teach fellow students (and me) about their research, and to conduct classroom sessions. We’ll take a look at several of the Digication e-portfolios that students have produced and discuss the challenges as well as the successes we have all had in using this tool.

Students are welcome and coffee and treats will be provided. We look forward to seeing you there.

Ellen Eisenberg and Bill Kelm
Faculty Colloquium Coordinators

Vietnam Revolution & War Lecture

Written by

Please join us Tuesday, March 20th, at 4:15 p.m. in the Hatfield Room for a guest lecture sponsored by the Center for Asian Studies.

Presenter: Tuong Vu, Professor of Political Science and Director of Asian Studies at the University of Oregon Tuong-Vu

Title: Vietnam Revolution & War

Abstract: Tuong Vu is a Professor of Political Science and Director of Asian Studies at the University of Oregon.  He has held visiting appointments at Princeton University and the National University of Singapore and has taught at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA.  Vu’s research concerns the comparative politics of state formation, development, nationalism, and revolutions, with a particular focus on East Asia.

His latest book, Vietnam’s Communist Revolution: The Power and Limits of Ideology (Cambridge University Press, 2017), focuses on the evolving worldview of Vietnamese revolutionaries and shows the depth and resilience of the commitment to communist utopia in their foreign policy.  The book challenges the conventional understanding of the Vietnam War and the Vietnamese revolution.

This event is sponsored by the Center for Asian Studies.  For more information contact Greg Felker (gfelker@willamette.edu).  This event is free and open to the public.  Refreshments are provided.

Is Google the Right Database for You?

Written by

By Gary Klein

When you are researching something for a class assignment, and have to restrict your search to only articles that were published in peer-reviewed, academic, and scholarly journals, is turning to Google the best way to find those sorts of articles? Turning to Google is certainly a quick way to find stuff, but is it a good place to find academic or scholarly research?

Google is great when you want to know what time the newest blockbuster movie starts at the mall, to locate the nearest cash machine, or to find a good recipe to make chestnut stuffing on Thanksgiving Day.

But there are a lot of academic research topics where Google just does not deliver relevant results.  The quick response time that you enjoy after hitting the “enter” key is lost when you have to scan through hundreds of results that totally miss the mark.  A mismatched search phrase can waste a lot of your time downloading, reading, and evaluating results before you reject an entry and check the next citation offered by Google.

One of the big things that Google lacks is context. For example, Google does not currently ask which type of depression you mean.  Instead, Google will offer you 122 million web pages, followed by a dictionary entry explaining only two ways that depression can be used as a noun in the English language (see example at https://tinyurl.com/y8rjgyvh).

If you turned to Wikipedia to begin your research, you will find 6 major types of depression (see example at https://tinyurl.com/lscmyg2).

6 Major Types of Depression via Wikipedia 
Biology – Physiology Reduction in a biological variable or the function of an organ.
Earth Science – Geology Land form sunken or depressed below the surrounding area.
Earth Science – Meterology Area of low atmospheric pressure characterized by rain and unstable weather.
Economics Sustained, long-term downturn in economic activity in one or more economies.
Exercise Science Anatomical term of motion, refers to downward movement, the opposite of elevation.
Physiology State of low mood and aversion to activity.

On the other hand, by turning to a subject-oriented database that compliments a research assignment, you would save time.  You start working with a database that is focused on academic journals, which are peer-reviewed, and provide scholarly research in your field of inquiry.

Below are examples of results you might find when turning to the Hatfield Library’s website and using a library guide for Economics:

 

The Hatfield Library also has tools to help you find databases for specific types of documents. Did you know that we have special databases that focus primarily on book reviews, or images, or statistics?

If you tackle a research topic that does not fit well within our academic departments or document types, another route is to ask one of our librarians to help. One responsibility of librarians is to help match people with the right database. We provide instant messaging chat service on many of the library’s web pages and databases. We also provide contact options to reach subject specific librarians on all of our LibGuides.

“When you are looking for information…
Turn to a librarian first,
And it will be the last place that you go to!”

The Hatfield Library employs full-time professional librarians that you can meet with in person, talk with over the phone, chat with via instant messenger, or contact via email. Our subject librarians can schedule an appointment to meet with you, or you can get help from the librarian on duty at the Reference Desk.

With over 200 databases, we know the volume of potential resources is daunting, but we’re here to help you. And that is something that you cannot get from Google nor from Wikipedia!

Faculty Colloquium: Susan Kephart

Written by

Please join us Friday, March 9th, at 3 p.m. in the Hatfield Room for our sixth Faculty Colloquium of this semester.

Presenter: Susan Kephart, Professor of Biology

Title: Stalking the Wild Camas “Lily” Susan Kepart Photo

Abstract: Camassia, “qém’es” or camas lily, includes spectacular, spring-flowering bulbs that still enrich diverse indigenous cultures, and provided a staple food for Willamette Valley Kalapuyans. Camas plants also sustain ecological complexes of pollinators, gophers, and unusual “parasitic” flies. First described in 1813 from specimens collected by Lewis & Clark, they remain challenging scientifically due to extensive variation in form and genetic makeup.

How do we decipher the puzzling variability of this culturally and ecologically significant genus? I will share recent discoveries based on diverse data sets gathered with students, colleagues, and local volunteers. These include new findings with deep historical roots in environments ranging from the Columbia River drainage to the base of Mt. Adams. I will also highlight the field and lab experiments.

Students are welcome and coffee and treats will be provided. We look forward to seeing you there.

Ellen Eisenberg and Bill Kelm
Faculty Colloquium Coordinators

Page 24 of 39
1 … 22 23 24 25 26 … 39