About Our People

The university’s board of trustees affirmed the following faculty promotions during the general board meeting March 8. New titles will take effect in the 2014-15 academic year.

For Tenure: Carol Brazo, associate professor of education; Amy Dee, associate professor of education; Roger Nam, associate professor of biblical studies; Susan O’Donnell, associate professor of psychology

Promotion from Associate Professor to Professor: Lorraine DeKruyf, professor of counseling; Ryan Halley, professor of finance; Mary Peterson, professor of clinical psychology; Winston Seegobin, professor of clinical psychology; Randy Woodley, distinguished professor of faith and culture

Promotion from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor: Sarah Gibson, associate professor of media communications; Seth Sikkema, associate professor of accounting

Jim Smart (Biology), currently on sabbatical as a visiting scientist for the Department of Pediatrics at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital at Oregon Health and Science University, collaborated on a research paper with scientists from OHSU, the Netherlands and Georgia Institute of Technology. The paper, titled “STRAD Pseudokinases Regulate Axogenesis and LKB1 Stability,” was published in the most recent edition of Neural Development, an open-access, peer-reviewed online journal.

Phil Smith (Philosophy) published the book Why Faith Is a Virtue, in which he builds on the work of Alasdair MacIntrye and Robert Adams to argue that faith contributes to human excellence. To make the argument, Phil sorts through conflicting possible “faiths” and shows how some of them are not virtues at all. Nevertheless, he argues that faith, properly understood, contributes to crucial human practices: scientific research, social reform and parenting. The book was published by Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers of Eugene, Ore.

Ed Higgins (English) published three poems – “Thessaloniki Summer Visit,” “Icarus” and “Dido” – in the current issue of Mediterranean Poetry, a Sweden-based online journal. Ed also published one of his haikus in the Winter 2013 issue of the British quarterly Poetry Haiku Journal.

Rodger Bufford (PsyD) chaired the American Psychological Association accreditation site visit at the Florida School of Professional Psychology in Tampa, Fla., March 2-4.

Mark David Hall (Politics) published a guest opinion piece, “Oregonians Should Support Business Owners’ Religious Freedom,” in the March 8 issue of The Oregonian. It can be read on the OregonLive site.

Sarita Gallagher (Christian Studies) published an article in the Spring 2014 International Journal of Pentecostal Missiology, a peer-reviewed online journal. The title of her piece was “In the Times of Elijah and Elisha: The Universal Mission of God in the Narratives of the Sidonian Widow and Naaman the Aramean.”

Corwynn Beals (Christian Studies) taught the course “God and Nature” as part of the Creation Care Study Program’s study-abroad program in Belize March 10-14. Hosted by the Center for Environmental Leadership, the Belize curriculum offers “academically rigorous courses to consider what it means to live in right relationship with God, creation, others and ourselves,” according to the program website.

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