Brent Wilson (Computer Science) and many of his students helped the Oregon Computer Science Teacher’s Organization (OCSTA) host its Oregon High School Programming Contest and SuperQuest Teacher Conference on campus on March 17. The programming contest included nearly 40 teams with approximately 120 high school students. At the concurrent SuperQuest Teacher Conference, about 100 teachers from across the state, the largest group ever for the event, participated in a total of 17 separate classes and workshops focused on computer science education. OCSTA is committed to increasing and improving the computer science and digital literacy educational opportunities in the state’s K-12 schools.
Terry Huffman (Education) published his book, Tribal Strengths and Native Education: Voices from the Reservation Classroom, through the University of Massachusetts Press. Basing his account on the insights of six veteran American Indian educators who serve in three reservation schools on the Northern Plains, Terry explores how Native educators perceive pedagogical strengths rooted in their tribal heritage and personal ethnicity. He recounts their views on the issues facing students and shows how tribal identity can be a source of resilience in academic and personal success.
Ed Higgins’ (Faculty Emeritus, English Department) poem, “were you still here now,†was published in the March 12, 2018, issue of the journal Furtive Dalliance Literary Review. He also had two poems, “Mermaid Tale†and “Disposable Pleasures,†appear in Raw Journal of Arts, Issue II (March 29, 2018) and a micro-flash story, “Searching for Mr. Bharath Seshardi,†get published in the February/March 2018 issue of WORDPEACE.
Paul Anderson (Christian Studies) delivered presentations on the theological, historical, and literary riddles of the Fourth Gospel at the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Salem for three Sunday evenings in March, and his essay on “John: The Mundane Gospel and its Archaeology-Related Features†was translated into Spanish and published in the April issue of ArqueologÃa e Historia as “Juan. El evangelio terrenal y la arqueologÃa.” Paul also served as an external evaluator for a PhD viva at the Radboud University of Nijmegen (Netherlands) and delivered lectures at the Evangelical Theological Faculty of Leuven (Belgium) on “John Among the Gospels – A Bi-Optic Approachâ€Â and “The Spirituality of Jesus – An Inclusive Quest.â€
Gary Tandy (English) published an article, “C. S. Lewis’s Ambivalence toward Rhetoric and Style,” in The Bulletin of the New York C. S. Lewis Society. The article uses research into Lewis’s literary criticism and letters to argue that Lewis had concerns that an overemphasis on rhetorical technique and literary style could overshadow more important concerns about content and truth and that Lewis, in his later writings, preferred imaginative, fictional presentations of the gospel over argumentative/apologetic approaches.
Don Powers (Biology) cowrote a paper, “Integrating morphology and kinematics in the scaling of hummingbird hovering metabolic rate and efficiency†that was published in Royal Society Proceedings B. The work was done in collaboration with Ken Welch (University of Toronto) and Bret Tobalske (University of Montana).
